At the Salmond enquiry Ms S said she “could not remember”, “was not sure” and “need to check that”. It appears clear she has lied and misled parliament, but she has lied and misled parliament and voters all through her career. She was willing to lie again to save her skin.

Powerful piece on the real costs of AI and data centres. Benefits claimed are illusory but costs and problems are real.

Shabana Mahmood abandons plan to house asylum seekers at Scottish army barracks gbnews.com/news/shabana-mahm…

Just a third of voters put Labour in power. They have no mandate for a hard left turn. The best thing hapless Starmer could do is call an election.

Bravo, @Keir_Starmer, for getting in an Adviser on Women and Girls who thinks the definition of women and girls includes men and boys. That'll definitely win back people who believe Labour's a party for smug, lanyard-wearing, luxury-belief-espousing cultural elitists. 1/2

Wearing a keffiyeh in support of Palestine is taken as tacit support for Hamas that runs Gaza. Such apparent support for Hamas gives licence to anti-semitic attacks on Jews here. Pro-Palestine protesters share responsibility for deaths and injuries.

Dumbass you don’t even know the context. Iran has been occupied by radical Islamists from Iraq for 47 years, and now we want to throw them into the trash bin of history.

Will no one think of the poor lefties? They are struggling to pick a side when one is an evil, terrorist-funding theocracy, but the other is President Trump.

Respect to President Trump, the US, and Israel for acting on the need of Iranian people to be released from the yoke of an evil theocracy. Starmer's blocking the use of UK bases is as pathetic as we would expect.

companies are driven out of Scotland by the incompetent SNP! They hammer workers and businesses with highest taxes. Absolute useless party. Anyone who cares for Scotland will vote #SNPOUT

Is this really going to happen? Can nothing stop the government from doing this?

Times Radio Can poor Sir Keir can sort out his problems? All he needs to do is turn back time and undo all the damage caused by his chancellor! The problem with any replacement is that if socialists understood economics and business they would not be socialists.

Some basics about Chagos for BBC reporters, Sky anchors and others coming new to the debate. 1. The Chagos Islands lie half-way between Africa and Indonesia, and host a key Anglo-American military base on the main island, Diego Garcia 2. France ceded the archipelago to Britain in 1814 separately from Mauritius; the islands were always a distinct territory, though, lacking suitable facilities, their administration was sited in Mauritius 3. To put the issue beyond doubt, Mauritius permanently renounced any claim to the islands in 1965 in return for a cash payment from Britain 4. It eagerly trousered the money, its first post-independence PM, Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, explaining that he had been glad to sell any theoretical right to “territory of which very few people knew, which is very far from here, and which we had never visited” 5. Mauritius is indeed 1337 miles from the islands, and began to press its claim again only when it grew closer to China in the early 2000s 6. The barrister it hired was Philippe Sands, a co-founder of Matrix Chambers and a close friend of Keir Starmer’s, who has always been cagey about what conversations they have had about Chagos 7. Far from providing a mandate for the deal, the Labour manifesto explicitly promised the opposite (see graphic) 8. Starmer justifies the surrender by pointing to a non-binding resolution by a UN court, which included a Russian and a Chinese judge, and whose jurisdiction had been expressly denied in disputes between Commonwealth or former Commonwealth states 9. In November, a different UN body issued another non-binding resolution, this one ordering the transfer to be halted, but Labour did not change direction 10. The party may have a guilty conscience, for it was Harold Wilson’s government that removed the 1800-odd inhabitants from the islands after 1968 to make room for the base 11. Chagossians, who now number around 10,000, do not see themselves as Mauritians and overwhelmingly oppose the transfer 12. British and American generals have expressed reservations about the deal, warning that a future Mauritian government might lease adjoining islands to unfriendly powers 13. The base has proved its strategic value many times, lying as it does lies within reach of four of the seven global choke points that funnel maritime traffic: the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Straits of Hormuz, the Malacca Straits and the Cape of Good Hope 14. Mauritius has no navy and admits it cannot protect the territory 15. At the same time, it wants commercial fishing in the matchless marine conservation zone around the islands 16. A Freedom of Information Request shows that the payments to Mauritius will total £34 billion 17. Mauritius says that this money will wipe out its national debt and still allow tax cuts 18. Opponents of the Bill want Chagossians themselves to decide the issue in a referendum 19. If the deal falls, Britain will be under a moral obligation to allow Chagossians to settle the outer atolls (see video in next post) 20. Providing for a permanent settlement will cost (on the government’s figures) one sixth or (on the actual figures) around one fiftieth as much as Labour wants to hand to Mauritius 21. The transfer cannot go ahead without both parliamentary ratification and the formal approval of the US, neither of which has been secured

Robert Jentick speaks well. That's it. I heard him give a good speech with no notes. That is the skill of an actor, not a thinker or leader. His departure can achieve the clever trick of improving the average quaiity of both the party he has left and the one he has joined.

Well deserved ass kicking does not equal genocide. Hamas & Gazans should think before parade broken bodies of young girls from the Nova festival through streets...to cheers.