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Politics Home Article | Baroness Bertin: We need to talk about porn
Baroness Gabby Bertin thinks that we all need to talk about porn a bit more. As part of our Women in Westminster series, we sat down with the Conservative peer to do just that
If the British have a reputation for being a little squeamish when it comes to talking about sex, it seems that Baroness Gabby Bertin didn’t get the memo.
“It’s quite amusing at dinner parties,” she told Women in Westminster during our sit-down interview. “My husband says to me, ‘For God’s sake, try not to talk about porn literally within five minutes of getting into any sort of social situation.’ I try, but people do ask. So, I always do end up there.”
As a slightly squeamish Brit myself, there is certainly something a little disconcerting about the openness with which Bertin breezily lists the sorts of material readily available on some of the major pornography sites. But the former aide to David Cameron is adamant that porn has become so prevalent in our society that such frankness is essential if we are to regulate it properly and guard against harms.
“Porn’s fine,” she says. “People are watching it. Loads of people are watching it. But what is bad is harmful porn that is totally different from what would be legal offline.”
Bertin is clear throughout our conversation that her objective in taking on the review of online pornography was never to judge or moralise. Rather, it was to ensure that online spaces were regulated in much the same way as offline ones are.
“I was trying to avoid becoming ‘Mary Whitehouse Mark II’,” she tells us. “It wasn’t remotely prudish. It’s just you’ve got to get the guardrails back in place. It’s as simple as that.”
Bertin was commissioned by the then Conservative government to lead her independent review into the regulation of online pornography in 2023. The concluding report was published early in 2025 and led to significant changes to legislation, including the banning of pornography depicting strangulation.
“These companies were making so much money by making it very extreme in the online world with no legislation stopping them from doing it,” she tells us.
She recounts that at the start of her work, the reluctance of some parts of government to engage with the problem came as something of a shock.
“What surprised me most was the total lack of interest at government level,” she recalls. “I remember the first few meetings when we started going around each department that may have had a thumb in the pie. It was pretty clear that they just hadn’t thought about this.”
Bertin sees that reluctance as symptomatic of a culture that essentially regarded porn use as an entirely private matter. However, she believes that a reluctance to discuss pornography openly has left policymakers operating with a significant blind spot.
This is something she herself experienced. Bertin was already campaigning on topics such as domestic abuse, but increasingly recognised that many of the issues she cared passionately about were being exacerbated by an environment where online pornography was often violently misogynistic. Yet that element was often missing from the policy conversation.
“You’re making lots of legislative progress, you’re changing the law, providing more funding, raising awareness,” she says, referencing the Domestic Abuse Act. “And yet there’s this parallel universe where pornography sites were not being regulated, were not being held to task. And they are showing such violent porn in such a normalised way.”
She also claims that a tendency to ignore pornography and its potential harms, often stemming from squeamishness or embarrassment, was creating gaps in policy and regulation that were leading to real-world impacts.
“There was no proper interrogation of what is on these sites,” she tells us. “Nobody wanted to raise it. Who’s going to go into their meeting and say, ‘God, I was on Pornhub last night, some pretty, pretty dreadful stuff on there.’ You know, that just wasn’t happening.”
Bertin tells us that much of the material on those sites is normalising new behaviours and harms. “They are not being driven by our sexual taste. They are driving our sexual taste,” she explains.
The review recommended action to ban degrading, violent and misogynistic pornography, and proposed that porn videos considered too harmful for any certificate in the offline world should also be banned online. The report has already led to action from the government.
“Banning the depictions of strangulation, I think, is really important, but also the depictions of incest, the depictions of step incest,” she says. “You don’t have freedom to see people being hurt or harmful content. I think you’ve got to be really black and white about that.”
The Conservative peer believes that the UK is now one of the most pioneering in the world when it comes to online safety. Alongside her own review, she cites the Online Safety Act and recent announcements to restrict social media use. Given the borderless nature of the pornography industry, she argues that there is now a need to work with other countries to deliver change.
“There’s a responsibility on us as a country to show leadership,” she says. “With terrorism, everyone just works together and no one says it’s a bad thing. I don’t really understand why very serious online harms, particularly against women, shouldn’t be viewed in the same way.”
By the end of our conversation, I am pretty certain that Baroness Bertin is not “Mary Whitehouse Mark II”. However, she does possess a very British no-nonsense approach that recognises the world as it is rather than as some might want it to be. Bertin is essentially a realist who has focused her talents and energies on delivering a report that was actionable rather than full of what she describes as “pie in the sky ideas”.
“If there’s a job to be done, you’ve just got to do it,” she says with a shrug. “That was what I thought with this. There could have been part of me that said, ‘Oh no, that subject is just too controversial’. But I just thought, no, come on, let’s do it.”
Image by: Guy Bell / Alamy
4 min read
Proposed cuts to the parliamentary education and outreach team risk reducing access to Parliament and increasing disengagement with politics
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the UK Parliament Teacher Ambassador Programme, an initiative that gives teachers across the country a chance to experience Parliament beyond a screen or textbook. This knowledge is brought home to inspire pupils, colleagues, and their wider community, and spark interest in our political system.
Yet, against the backdrop of this anniversary, there has been a proposal to cut the UK Parliament education outreach service and move toward more online provision – a move that risks reducing access to parliamentary education for rural and coastal areas like Cornwall.
For constituencies like mine in Truro and Falmouth, this outreach provision is vital. Some schools cannot get to Parliament – and those that can often struggle to secure places. Not long ago, students from King Charles Primary School in Falmouth were in London but were unable to get a slot for a tour of Parliament. I ended up meeting them at Millbank Pizza Express, which was not quite the visit I hoped the pupils from Year 6 would have.
This is not an uncommon experience for my area. If children from Cornwall are rejected for their parliamentary visit, then the six hour journey, minimum two night trip to the capital becomes simply unaffordable. And those children, many of whom will have never been to London, will miss out.
Currently, the South West has a regional outreach officer who plays an important role in connecting people with Parliament. Last year alone, they worked with 20,000 children and 780 adult learners, including Youth Parliament members, SEND learners, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) learners, young people not in education, employment or training (Neets), and other communities often underrepresented in democratic participation.
For constituencies like mine in Truro and Falmouth, this outreach provision is vital
The team has helped facilitate several non-partisan politics summer schools for MPs across the region, including my own in 2025, and they will support me again this summer. At my last politics summer school, the outreach officer taught 23 young people from Truro and Falmouth about how Parliament works, how laws are made and the traditions and procedures that underpin our democracy. This sort of outreach feels more important than ever as discussions around votes at 16 continue and efforts are made to engage those who might otherwise feel disengaged.
Having worked in schools, I know that online provision doesn’t effectively replace in-person engagement. The outreach team already delivers digital sessions, yet in-person engagement is categorically favoured, with digital uptake accounting for less than five per cent of total delivery. This work requires a unique skill set, and I have seen how much it helps young people to participate in an objective and helpful way – something of great value in a politically divisive time.
Communities closer to Westminster already benefit from greater access to Parliament, so it seems counterproductive to cut regional staff while retaining a small Westminster-based team. Those of us who are more than 200 miles away are not only physically distant but often socially disconnected too. It risks creating more unequal opportunity, something rural communities know all too well. The education team are changing the rules this summer so that schools from remote areas will be able to apply early for visit places and this cannot come soon enough. But if there is also any way of increasing visit capacity I know it would be immediately filled.
This is about protecting democracy and ensuring access and opportunity wherever people live. I am concerned how areas situated far from Parliament will be considered and how the loss of in-person services will affect SEND schools, those with disabilities, and those facing digital exclusion. Parliament belongs to everyone, and everyone should have the opportunity to properly engage with it, whether that’s through a visit to Westminster or outreach in their own community. I understand the limitations of cost – but I would hate to see this diminished.
Jayne Kirkham is Labour MP for Truro and Falmouth
To the surprise of no one, it has been revealed that the UK is unable to deport 50 per cent of illegal migrants due to human-rights claims. A government document leaked to The Times found that, of the 400,000 illegal immigrants identified by the Home Office as living in the UK, more than half could not be deported as they awaited the outcomes of various tribunal decisions.
But it is not just failed refugees we cannot deport. The UK is also unable to deport criminal monsters, even if they have been found guilty of the most heinous crimes.
Last week, we discovered that Shabir Ahmed, the infamous ringleader of a Rochdale rape gang, cannot be deported to Pakistan. Ahmed was convicted in 2012 of 30 child-rape offences, with some of his victims as young as 12. The girls he raped were ‘plied’ with alcohol and drugs, gang-raped in rooms above take-away shops, and sent to other men in taxis to be abused.
Ahmed – who, in a bleak twist of irony, was a ‘welfare officer’ for Oldham Council at the time of his offences – was released on Thursday after serving 14 years of a 19-year sentence. Incredibly, he is protected from deportation by a provision in the 1971 Immigration Act, which exempts Commonwealth citizens who arrived in the UK before 1973 from removal. This sadistic paedophile was stripped of his British citizenship at the time of his conviction, but will nonetheless be free to roam the streets here for as long as he pleases.
Another similarly outrageous case is that of Dwight Merrick. The 45-year-old Jamaican ‘asylum seeker’, also known as ‘Yardy’, who committed a brutal murder in Camden, north London.
On 27 September 2025, Merrick ‘came to blows’ with 44-year-old Shaun Latimer-Kayser, beating him with a plank of wood before fatally stabbing him. It was a crime that Merrick should never have been able to commit. In 2010, he was deported to Jamaica for firearm offences. He then returned to the UK in 2014, claiming that he was an asylum seeker. This surely bogus claim was still being mulled over by the sclerotic British state when he carried out the murder, 11 years later.
This week, Merrick was jailed for life. Shaun’s cousin Sarah Whaley told the Camden New Journal:
‘Our family adored him. Shaun had a big family and many siblings who loved him. He did not have the easiest start in life, but he never let that define him. He was a true gentleman – polite, moralistic, loyal and very family-oriented.’
Merrick now begins a life sentence in Britain, many thousands of miles from the island where he was born. What possible reason can someone have for claiming asylum from Jamaica – a country which 230,000 British tourists visit each year? If you were to create a horror story of how asylum has gone wrong in Britain, Merrick’s case would be it.
We currently have no clue why Merrick was still here 15 years after he was initially deported for gun crimes, but we do know that the British public needed protection from him. Yet the state failed to provide this most basic duty.
The Home Office has made no statement on the failure to deport Merrick. But for soon-to-be-released serial rapist Shabir Ahmed, it said:
‘On his release [Ahmed] will be on the sex offender’s register for life, ordered to stay away from his victims and banned from contacting any child or young person. As well as facing strict curfews and restriction zones, his every movement will be tracked, forced to wear an electronic tag. Should he breach his conditions, he will be immediately locked up.’
Needless to say, this is totally inadequate. The financial cost of these failures to deport is eye-watering. Daily monitoring of known violent offenders, 24-hour surveillance tracking their every move, and endless checks that they aren’t roaming or applying for work near children are just some of the expenses.
Then the human cost is unfathomable. Imagine being the victim of this rapist, knowing you could bump into him at any time, or – in the horrendous and completely avoidable case of Shaun Latimer-Kayser – be stabbed to death in the street by a known violent offender who should have been removed from Britain, once and for all, a decade-and-a-half ago
Without a government that actively protects us, Britons are merely left to hope that these men – who seemingly have no morals, have never obeyed the law, and have never respected Britain’s borders since they arrived here – will somehow suddenly obey such whimsical ideas as ‘curfews’ and ‘restriction zones’ in their newly released, free lives. This is delusional.
The cases of Shabir Ahmed and Dwight Merrick must be a wake-up call. Britain’s uncontrolled borders are literally lethal.
Andy Jones is a journalist and broadcaster.
Anyone with even a passing interest in celebrity culture will surely be aware that chart-topping musician Taylor Swift and NFL star Travis Kelce have officially tied the knot.
Over the last few weeks, whispers about the pair’s planned big day turned to very loud rumours about them getting hitched in a lavish 1,000-strong ceremony at New York’s iconic arena Madison Square Garden – which turned out to be very much true.
The worst-kept secret in showbiz was confirmed to be the case on Friday when the screens outside the venue flashed up a message reading “JUST&T MARRIED”, with a similar slogan popping up on the licence plate of a car spotted leaving the venue shortly afterwards.
Since then, it’s emerged that the couple went all out for the ceremony, which included the creation of a European-style castle inside the arena, as well as an outside-inside garden theme and wedding looks designed by Jonathan Anderson, the creative director of Dior’s Haute Couture Collections “in close collaboration” with both Taylor and Travis.
Of course, what we all want now is more details, and with the wedding dominating pretty much every entertainment news outlet right now, it may well be hard to keep up with what actually went down at the Swift-Kelce wedding.
Here are some of the biggest celebrity moments you might have missed…
Adam Sandler was the officiant at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding
One detail that Taylor’s spokesperson was happy to confirm once the singer was hitched was the fact that Adam Sandler was the one to do the honours, marrying the Grammy winner and her new husband.
Adam and Travis first crossed paths when the latter made a cameo in the Happy Gilmore sequel last year, while the comedy actor has apparently known Taylor for years through his daughters.
He was also a guest on Travis’ New Heights podcast last year, where he told the Kansas City Chiefs star: “When you guys first started dating, my family was like, ‘Yes. Look how good they are together. He’s a gentleman and she’s having so much fun’.”
According to TMZ, Adam was anything but a traditional officiant, delivering a specially-written original song for Taylor and Travis’ big day.
Stevie Knicks and Paul McCartney are also thought to have performed at the wedding reception
When Madison Square Garden emerged as a potential venue for Taylor’s big day, fans pointed out that the last time she made an appearance there, she sported a Stevie Nicks t-shirt, which may have been an Easter egg for the Fleetwood Mac singer performing at the bash.
According to People magazine, Stevie was, indeed, one of the A-list performers at Taylor and Travis’ wedding reception, where Sir Paul McCartney apparently gave a rendition of the Beatles classic I Want To Hold Your Hand.
TMZ also indicated that Haim might have performed at the event, while Page Six claimed that Tim McGraw, one of Taylor’s earliest musical inspirations, was booked to perform.
Speaking of music, Taylor Swift apparently walked down the aisle to one of her own songs at her wedding
Music was always going to be one of the talking points at Taylor Swift’s wedding, and since it was suggested in a TMZ report that the You Belong With Me star had walked down the aisle to a Bridgerton-esque orchestral reimagining of one of her own songs, fans have been speculating about which it could have been.
One we can probably rule out is Blank Space, her 2014 hit about her past bad luck when it came to romance, although a line from this song was embossed on handkerchiefs given to guests on their arrivals.
Suffice to say, the wedding guestlist was absolutely enormous
Days before the wedding, it was reported that the guestlist could reach numbers as high as 1,000, with Taylor even joking that “anyone I’ve ever talked to” would be getting an invite.
Indeed, the list of celebrities in attendance is an especially long one.
Joining the bride and groom’s respective families were some of Taylor’s famous friends, including Selena Gomez, the Haim sisters, Gigi Hadid (who apparently attended with boyfriend Bradley Cooper), Ed Sheeran, Gracie Abrams, Karlie Kloss (and her husband Joshua Kushner), Ice Spice and Lena Dunham.
It seems that Taylor also made good on her promise to invite presenters Greg James and Graham Norton, while Hugh Grant – who previously enjoyed a night of partying with Travis when his now-wife’s Eras Tour landed in London – also put in an appearance.
Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lawrence, Tom Cruise were reported to be there, too, as were Lana Del Rey and Sabrina Carpenter, both of whom have appeared on Taylor’s albums Midnights and The Life Of A Showgirl.
Taylor Swift seemingly avoided having to choose between her infamous ‘squad’ by not having bridesmaids
Instead, the singer’s representative confirmed that, in lieu of bridesmaids, she had a single “man of honour” in the form of her brother, Austin.
Similarly, Travis didn’t have groomsmen, but his brother Jason Kelce served as best man, while Jason’s daughters were reportedly on flower girl duties.
Lena Dunham apparently caused quite the stir with her speech at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding
One of our favourite stories to come out of the wedding so far is that Girls creator Lena Dunham, a long-time friend of Taylor’s, was tasked with performing a speech at the reception.
Per the Daily Mail, true to form, Lena held nothing back with a speech the outlet described as “shockingly rude”, eliciting “gasps” from the crowd, but thankfully plenty of “laughs” too.
Fortunately, it seemed Taylor was a fan, with a supposed “insider” claiming she hailed her friend as a “genius” afterwards.
Come on then… who wasn’t at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding?
With a guestlist as big as this one, sometimes the story is who didn’t make the cut.
Among the most notable absentees were Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, which at one point would have been unthinkable, but the couple’s relationship with the bride is reported to have turned frosty in recent history.
It should be noted, though, that they were watching their six-year-old daughter competing in a horse show on the day of the wedding, so it could just be that they couldn’t get out of a prior commitment.
While Zoë Kravitz was in attendance, her rumoured fiancé Harry Styles was not.
Harry, of course, once dated Taylor, and is rumoured to be the inspiration for numerous songs on her hit album 1989, including Out Of The Woods and, indeed, Style.
Pop fans will know, however, that Harry was performing his last of 12 record-breaking nights at London’s Wembley Stadium on the night of Taylor’s nuptials, with Variety claiming he was invited to the event, but couldn’t make it due to this previous booking.
The former One Direction star wasn’t the only famous +1 to miss out on the Swift-Kelce wedding, as the Daily Mail claimed that Jack Antonoff’s wife Margaret Qualley was also not in attendance.
Vladimir Putin snubbed Donald Trump’s latest attempts at ending the war in Ukraine by launching a brutal attack on Kyiv just hours after the two leaders spoke.
The US president spoke to the Russian autocrat over the phone for nearly 90 minutes on Saturday while America was celebrating the 250th anniversary of its independence.
The Kremlin claimed their conversation was “business-like and quite constructive”.
But Russia was back to bombing Ukraine by Sunday night.
At least 11 people were killed overnight and a further 46 others injured as Putin’s missile and drone strikes targeted the capital.
It was the second set of strikes on Kyiv in a week.
Trump’s phone call with Putin came after previous US-brokered peace talks between Ukraine and Russia stalled while the White House was focused on its war in Iran.
The US president has also shifted away from his sympathy for Putin in recent weeks and instead acknowledged that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “holding his own” on the battlefield.
Even so, the Kremlin described Putin and Trump’s conversation as “business-like and quite constructive”.
Russian aide Yuri Ushakov said early on Sunday: “The American president once again confirmed his readiness to work towards a rapid end to the fighting and find solutions to overcome the crisis.”
He said Putin was pushing for a “political-diplomatic resolution of the conflict, with due account of Russia’s fundamental approach”.
Ushakov then accused both Ukraine and its European allies of “counting on extending and even escalating the conflict and on terrorism against civilians”, referring to Ukraine’s long-range missile strikes on Russian targets.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy also revealed he spoke to Trump over the weekend.
He said they had “very good” discussions about the war, including its 1,200-kilometre front line.
He said: “There is a real prospect to end this war and American resolve will have a crucial meaning.”
Zelenskyy and Trump are set to attend this week’s Nato summit in Ankara, where member states are expected to reaffirm support for Ukraine and offer more financial support.
The US is not expected to contribute to any further funding.
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Critics have pointed to the glaring irony of Donald Trump’s intervention in the 2026 FIFA World Cup to help get US star Folarin Balogun’s red-card suspension overturned ahead of Monday’s Round of 16 clash with Belgium.
They noted on social media that Balogun is only eligible to play for the US men’s national team because he is a birthright citizen, after an airline in 2001 denied his British citizen mother from boarding a flight home because she was too close to giving birth to him, and then gave birth in Brooklyn.
The constitutional right that Balogun enjoys is the very same one that Trump has spent years trying to end and whose attempts to do so were struck down by the US Supreme Court this month.
Balogun, who plays his club soccer for Monaco in France’s Ligue 1, was sent off during the United States’ Round of 32 victory over Bosnia & Herzegovina, triggering an automatic one-match suspension.
After many fans and pundits argued the red card was unjust, Trump reportedly called FIFA’s Peace Prize-awarding President Gianni Infantino to request a review.
FIFA announced on Sunday that the suspension had been overturned.
“Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
While Balogun’s reincorporation into the team was celebrated by many, critics pointed out the hypocrisy of Trump’s move and also suggested that America’s run in the competition had now been tainted.
President Donald Trump took another social media potshot at Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni on Sunday.
As part of a flurry of dozens of posts and reposts on Truth Social, Trump shared a pic of himself with Meloni ― who is about a foot shorter ― looking up at him during the recent G7 summit in France.
“RESTRAINING ORDER NEEDED” he wrote:
Trump, who last year called Meloni “a beautiful young woman” while also complaining he’s “not allowed to say it,” started a feud with the world leader in June when he claimed she “begged” him for a photo at the summit.
“She wanted a picture with me so badly. I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her,” Trump said.
In a video on social media, Meloni hit back, saying Trump’s story was “completely fabricated.”
“Italy and I do not beg,” she declared.
Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani then cancelled his trip to the United States in protest of Trump’s claim, which he called “serious and offensive.”
Before long, a moment between Meloni and Trump at the summit went viral, and it was footage the image-conscious U.S. president likely wasn’t happy about:
Trump hit back days later, saying Meloni had asked for a pic “over and over.” He also told NBC News that Meloni “was a big fan” of his.
“But I don’t want her as a fan because she was not there ― along with the NATO group ― having to do with the strait,” he said, referring to the Strait of Hormuz, which has been a sticking point in Trump’s negotiations to end his war on Iran.
Trump also said Meloni needed the photo because “she is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity.”
“My popularity is none of your concern,” she fired back. “I suggest you focus on yours.”
Things seemed to quiet between the two leaders for a couple of weeks until Trump made his “restraining order” post on Sunday. Meloni has not yet responded, but Trump’s critics on X blasted him for the post:
Music legend Sir Paul McCartney performed the Beatles classic I Want To Hold Your Hand at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding on Friday, 62 years after it was last performed.
People magazine has reported that Sir Paul and Stevie Nicks were among the performers at Taylor and Travis’ wedding reception, which took place at New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden arena.
For the event, the former Beatles star revisited one of the band’s earliest hits, I Want To Hold Your Hand, which topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1960s.
According to Rolling Stone, the last known performance of I Want To Hold Your Hand was at a Beatles concert at Paramount Theatre in New York in September 1964.
Sir Paul’s rep did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation.
He and Taylor have a long friendship, and in 2020, they appeared together on the cover of Rolling Stone’s Musicians On Musicians issue, where the two singers spoke highly of each other’s work.
Before that, they had performed together at various parties.
Sir Paul has previously said he sees the “parallel” between the Beatles’ and Taylor’s fame.
In addition to this, Taylor has also supported the fan theory that her song Sweet Nothing, from her Midnights album, was inspired by Sir Paul and his first marriage to the late Linda McCartney.
Taylor and Travis’ wedding was a star-studded event with more than 1,000 guests in attendance.
Adam Sandler officiated the ceremony, and other stars, including Gigi Hadid, Selena Gomez, Lena Dunham and Hugh Grant, also put in appearances. Taylor’s brother, Austin, served as the Man of Honour, in lieu of bridesmaids, while Travis’ brother, Jason Kelce, was the best man.
As soon as the couple officially wed, the screen outside Madison Square Garden read “JUST&T MARRIED”, in a nod to the couple’s first initials.
Ron DeSantis has been roasted on social media after he launched an “embarrassing” attack on Britain’s record in the Second World War.
The former Republican presidential hopeful posted a bizarre message on X after another user poked fun at America as it marks 250 years of independence.
Above a picture of the Old Ferry Boat Inn in St. Ives, No Context Brits wrote: America is 250 years old. This pub is 1,466 years old.”
DeSantis, who is the governor of Florida, responded: “And if it wasn’t for America the insignia on the pub would be written in German.”
This was a reference to US troops joining forces with the Allies to defeat the Nazis in World War 2.
However, other X users were quick to point out that DeSantis’s observation was historically inaccurate, given Britain had already repelled Germany’s attempts to invade before America joined the war.
Others left DeSantis in no doubt what they thought of his comment.
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Nigel Farage has claimed he is the victim of “an establishment hit job” as he faces a fresh sleaze probe into financial support given to him by a convicted criminal.
The Reform UK leader insisted he had “done no wrongdoing” after he was reported to the parliamentary standards commissioner over his relationship with George Cottrell.
The Sunday Times reported that Cottrell – known as “posh George” – provided funding for Farage’s staffing and security, as well as the use of a London townhouse, before he became an MP.
Under parliamentary rules, new MPs need to register any gifts worth more than £300 they received in the previous 12 months, except where the gift “could not be reasonably thought by others” to relate to their political activities.
Farage said: “I have done no wrongdoing, followed the rules and I am now considering legal action against The Sunday Times.
“It’s now clear the establishment will stop at nothing to hurt Reform – we want to smash their cosy consensus.”
Robert Jenrick, Reform’s Treasury spokesman, said on Sunday that Cottrell, who was convicted of fraud in the US in 2017, is an “old friend” of Farage and has “no formal role within Reform”.
However, The Times reported on Monday that he handed out a business card printed with the Reform UK logo and Nigel Farage’s official email address.
Lib Dem MP Josh Babarinde has written to the standards commissioner Daniel Greenberg urging him to investigate Farage’s links to Cottrell.
He said: “Mr Farage has made a career out of ‘taking back control’, but he is not being straight with the British people about who controls him.”
Greenberg is already investigating a £5 million “gift” Farage received from the Thai-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne before the general election but did not declare.
If he is found to have broken the MPs’ code of conduct and suspended from the Commons for more than 10 days, he could face a by-election to hold onto his Clacton seat.
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “Nigel Farage and Reform are engulfed in a huge and growing scandal.
“It’s not going to go away, and trying to take the public for fools by saying it’s ‘none of your business’ won’t help.
“These new allegations of secret payments from a wealthy convicted criminal are on top of the ongoing scandal of his secret £5 million gift from a crypto billionaire.
“How much money has he been given, what did his donors get in return, and why has he tried to cover them up and avoid legitimate questions?
“Time and again Farage pretends to be on the side of working people.
“In reality he’s just in it for himself and can be bought by the highest bidder. He’s completely unfit for high office.”
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
President Donald Trump went on a frenzied social media spree on Sunday, firing off more than 100 Truth Social posts, but only a handful addressed his rocky America 250 party.
Appearing to have a lot on his mind following a turbulent Independence Day celebration in Washington DC on Saturday, Trump’s posts careered from complaints about communism and boasts about his TikTok stats to a string of defences for the “crystal clear” Reflecting Pool that’s created weeks of controversy on the National Mall.
Trump showed off banners featuring himself and former President George Washington on the front of the Interior Department’s building, one tagged “America’s First” and the other “America First.”
He also lashed out at US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan and her decision to block his plans to use a Department of Homeland Security database containing sensitive personal information to vet voter eligibility.
As the afternoon went on, Trump continued to flood his feed with more random posts, including commentary about boxer Mike Tyson’s 1990 bout with Henry Tillman, a racially-insensitive photoshop of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama on a graffiti-covered Air Force One, and an image of his frenemy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, giving him doe-eyes with the text “Restraining order needed” on top.
On Sunday evening, Trump pretended to be a hero, claiming the July 4th “Salute to America 250” celebration was canceled until he stepped in to save the day. In reality, the National Park Service had ordered attendees to shelter in place around 7:15 p.m. Saturday, due to safety concerns about severe weather. After about a three-hour delay, guests were invited back to the National Mall to hear the president speak and watch the fireworks.
“When I heard that it was cancelled, I immediately overturned that decision, and waited a while for people to come back,” he wrote, along with a typo-tinged addendum that proclaimed, “it was an even more spectacular evening than it would have been as normalised!”
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