Chris Whiteside's Blog

Congratulations to Mike Starkie who was selected by Conservative party members in Cumbria tonight to be Conservative candidate for Mayor of Cumbria. The post is due to be elected in May 2027.  

Here's an extract from Stephen Pollard's Jewish Chronicle article about the Prime Minister of Israel He writes  ' Don’t make the mistake of dismissing Netanyahu as a shallow caricature. However strongly one might disagree with his policies and behaviour in government, the Israeli PM has a serious and deep understanding of history, of strategy and of tactics. ' I am absolutely no fan of Netanyahu. Before the present round of conflict in the Middle East started with the October 7th genocidal attacks by Hamas, the PM of Israel was trying to dismantle one of the best things about Israel - the fact that it is almost the only country in the Middle East with an independent judiciary. Nor would I defend everything he has done since the 7th October attacks. I believe that we should approach the terrible conflict in Gaza starting from the viewpoint that both Jews and Palestinians are human beings, that we don't wat to see innocent civilians of either race killed, and that it ...

"I’ve been working in politics a long time. I’ve seen some bonkers stuff. But having the Prime Minister blast an opponent’s policy as racist on Sunday, then getting the Home Secretary to announce the same policy on Monday is about the maddest thing I’ve seen at a party conference." ( Dan Hodges , former Labour and Trade Union staffer who is now a journalist, on X yesterday)

 

Matthew Syed has a piece in today's Sunday Times on why he joined the Conservatives last week. Most of his article is not so much about why he has joined the Conservatives, as a cogent and powerful analysis of what has gone wrong with our society in general and the UK economy in particular. He makes an incredibly strong case that the centre of gravity of British politics has moved dramatically and unsustainably to the left, away from the politics of responsibility and balance, and instead towards policies which would have been considered far left as recently as twenty years ago. Matthew stood as as Labour candidate in 2001 on a manifesto which he describes as "nothing like" what any party is currently offering. He writes " I was proud to stand on that manifesto, but it was miles to the right of anything today ."  Here is a fuller version of the quote: His analysis does not spare the high-spending policies of either Labour or Conservative governments, and he adds...

 

Matt Ridley put up a tweet on X today about what he called "the Boomerang effect." This expression, the  Boomerang effect , has often been used to mean an unsuccessful attempt to persuade people of the merits or benefits of some policy, belief or action which backfires so badly that it pushes people towards a diametrically opposed policy, belief or action. Matt uses it to mean when people criticise or dislike some trend in thought or actions without noticing that their own previous actions or statements have had the unintended consequence of boosting the very trend which they are now complaining about. I don't necessarily concur with all the examples in his tweet, which you can read in full by clicking on the link below. Matt Ridley on X: "I've noticed a common phenomenon. Let's call it the boomerang effect. Lament the rise of an opinion or policy without noticing how your preferred policies helped cause it." / X However, I think he is absolutely right t...

The Jewish Leadership Council response to the news that the prosecution of KNeecap band member Mo Chara failed because of basic mistakes: Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch commented on this story that " Labour can’t even get the basics right. "  

Kemi Badenoch'a comment on Labour's Digital ID card proposal: "Labour’s “Digital ID” gimmick won’t stop the boats. It’s a desperate distraction from their scandals. We won’t back any system that makes ID mandatory for British citizens.  Only Conservatives have a real plan to secure our borders. 👉 http://stopthedigitalid.com

 

On Sky News earlier this month, Health secretary Wes Streeting claimed that “ We’ve seen record levels of returns of people who have no legal right to be here, record levels of deportations, thanks to this home secretary. ” This is a false claim and has been debunked by the Full-Fact organisation, whose report can be read at Immigration returns aren’t at ‘record levels’ under Labour – Full Fact Their Fact Check gave the following verdict on the Health Secretary's allegations: “This is not correct, based on official returns data. Neither the overall number of immigration returns nor the number of enforced returns carried out during Labour’s first year in office is a record for a 12-month period.”   Wes Streeting's claims are not even supported by the Labour government's own figures. During Labour’s first year in office (between 5 July 2024 and 4 July 2025) a total of 35,052 returns of people with no legal right to be in the UK took place. Because this figure was published on...

 

At Prime Minister’s Questions on 21 May the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer claimed that under the previous Conservative government “living standards were at an all-time low”. Full Fact contacted Number 10 to ask what the PM meant by this, and said they would update their assessment if they ever get one - which seems rather unlikely as they have not had any such reply in the months since Starmer made the statement. Full Fact were unable to find any data to support Mr Starmer’s claim and the Resolution Foundation told them it believes he “clearly misspoke”. During the last parliament the Covid pandemic resulted in the worst recession for 300 years. Of course this meant that growth in living standards was badly affected, though as Full Fact says "At the time this claim was made, full data covering the entire parliament wasn’t available. We now know that, measured quarterly, RHDI per person was slightly higher in Q2 2024 (the last quarter before the election) than in Q4 2019 (when th...

 

"Don’t punch us in the face on Sunday and wish us better on Monday" Headline on an article by Daniel Sugarman , in the Jewish News on Monday. You can read the full article at   OPINION: Don't punch us in the face on Sunday and wish us better on Monday - Jewish News Here are some extracts. " The government's recognition of a Palestinian state at this juncture has rightly been seen by many in the UK Jewish community as a grotesque betrayal. " “ Happy Rosh Hashanah from all of us at the Labour Party ,” the Jewish community was informed today. "I get it, I really do. Acknowledging the primary festivals of a range of the UK’s religions is a tick-box exercise for any government. Now this particular box can be ticked off. But I hope you’ll forgive me for observing that this particular Rosh Hashanah greeting was akin to being punched in the face on Sunday and receiving a ‘ get well soon ’ card on Monday." "I don’t really need to go into why yesterday’...

I support a two-state solution. That does not mean I think it is a good idea to "recognise" at this time a Palestinian state which does not, on any meaningful definition, currently exist. We should recognise a Palestinian state as part of a diplomatic solution which brings the hostages home and guarantees peace to Jews and Palestinians alike. Britain should be trying to put pressure on both Israel and Hamas to agree such a deal, not one side only. This is what Kemi had to say today about the UK government's decision to "recognise" Palestine:

 

 

Great to meet up with some of the members of Carlisle Conservatives today for a leaflet-folding session with tea, coffee and cake, and then to get some leaflets delivered. And now some music to relax to having got a couple of walks delivered.

"Shortly, Rachel Reeves is going to take more money from you. This is because she messed up. Conservatives left office with an economy badly beaten by the pandemic, but on the up.  It’s taken Labour less than a year to completely derail it." Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch on X yesterday.

The interesting thing about this 2015 version of the Lord High Executioner's song from the Mikado is how many of the then topical targets, from Donald Trump to Jeremy Corbyn, though sometimes in different positions, remain prominent enough in 2025 that the jokes still land.

This is an updated version of an article first written in December 2007. The principles in the post are all still absolutely valid, but some of the detail was now out of date because but in the intervening period of nearly twenty years there has been local government reorganisation and some of the electoral boundaries referenced had changed. As the principles are still as relevant as ever, I am posting a this new version of the post with updated examples and detail. Anyone who wants to read the original version of the post can find it here . A West country MP, Gerry Neale, used to tell the story that he was once making a speech to Cornish farmers and said that "on average, I do not think you are doing too badly." "Look here, mister" replied one of the farmers, "Stand me with my left foot in a block of ice and my right foot in a bucket of boiling water and tell me on average I am all right and I'll tell you I'm not!" I was reminded of this during a ...

When I first started writing this blog a very wise local West Cumbrian statesman, Honorary Alderman David Gray, told me that it was important to get some traffic counters up so that I could see how many people were reading it and what they are looking at. When I eventually did get the traffic monitors up the results were quite fascinating and David was right, as he usually is. There have been 3.87 million pageviews since then: sometimes wor a period they will run at a few hundred a day, sometimes the number of daily pageviews is in the thousands, occasionally it is in the tens of thousands. When I look to see what people are reading, it is most often what I have posted about topical issues, but there are some posts that come up again and again in the traffic statistics many years after I put them up. For example a post put up in on November 21st 2009 about a visit that day to flood-hit areas of Cumbria by Nick Herbert MP, who was then the shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food...