"Cleared"? I think not

Ajouté : 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]There's significant turmoil in British politics at the moment, particularly with regard to trust, ethics, honesty, transparency, and all the rest of it.

[00:00:08]But first of all, in this video, I'd like to start with something of a refreshing change. And that is that very first thing this morning, uh, coming back to my house fairly early, I was greeted by a lady with a warm nothing but a warm smile. She didn't know who I was, and it turns out she was delivering a leaflet on behalf of Restore Britain.

[00:00:26]And do you know what? That really gave me the sense of that is what Restore Britain is all about. Restoring that sort of sense of British courtesy, openness, friendliness, just a warm smile, a warm greeting. That is exactly what I believe this party stands for.

[00:00:46]So, I just thought I'd share that with you because it's the first leaflet that actually I've not been annoyed to receive since as long as I can remember and that I don't intend to immediately throw away was what I said on X when I posted this there. So, I thought I'd share that with you before I talk about the state of British politics politics in this video because let's talk about what happened yesterday with this vote as to whether Kiama would be referred to be investigated for misleading the Commons and all the rest of it. Because, put it bluntly, a lot of people seem to be saying at the moment that Kstama was somehow cleared yesterday, but I don't quite see it like that. You see, um I don't think a great many people watching politics right now see it like that either. What actually happened in my view is that because the commons voted 335 to 223 against the motion to refer K Starmmer to the committee of privileges over this whole Manderson affair. Now, Reuters reports that Starmer ordered Labour MPs to oppose the motion and that the motion was defeated on that basis. And as you can see here, um only um for the eyes, for the nose here, uh only one independent Dan Norris voted no and the rest 334 were Labor. But interestingly, there were a number of Labor as you can see here. 15 Labor who did in fact uh vote in favor of this motion. So to me that is not the same thing as being cleared as it's been reported that effectively there was some sort of threat against MPs in Labor if they didn't vote against this motion. Being cleared, let's be clear, pun intended, let's be clear, being cleared would mean that the facts had been properly tested and he came out vindicated and cleared of any wrongdoing and there's nothing to see here. But that is not what happened.

[00:02:52]So let's be transparent.

[00:02:55]What happened is that the numbers were there. The whip was applied and the government essentially shut down any investigation and scrutiny over what really happened. That is why so many people now are just uncomfortable with this whole thing because this is supposed to be open democratic politics.

[00:03:20]It's supposed to be transparent. It's supposed to be accountable. It's supposed to be possible for parliament to examine whether a prime minister has misled the house and if so why and what you know what happens after that where do we go from there because individuals constituents depend on their MP to represent their views in parliament but what kind of representation is that if they are whipped into voting the way the prime minister says so when he says you must vote against this motion to investigate me for misleading the house.

[00:04:02]So instead, what people saw was a government party uh essentially being instructed to close up ranks, ignore what happened, vote against this motion. And as I said, Reuters says that Starmmer ordered his Labour MPs to oppose this investigation.

[00:04:25]So the person in charge orders other people to vote against this. And as I said, 15 Labour MPs still defied him and backed this referral. Whilst another 53, it's reported, there's a discrepancy on the page. It says 52, it's reported as 53. That sometimes happens. 53 abstained. they didn't vote at all. So, sort of squarely sat on the fence. Now, remember the numbers here. This was 335 against uh to 216 voting in favor of it.

[00:05:00]This is the the problem of politics right now. Because if the prime minister were really comfortable with the facts, you might expect him to say, "Fine, let the process happen. He loves his processes. I've got nothing to fear. He might say they can investigate. They can look it up all they want. They can interview whoever they want. They can consider anything they want. Nothing to fear. Nothing to see here. Everything will be fine. But no, that's not what happened. Instead, the message was you must vote this down. And that's what they did. Uh although there were some rebels among them, but by the by. Um but this this is what's being called being cleared. I think that is a bit generous.

[00:05:46]I think saying that he's been cleared is a bit of a stretch. It was blocked. He wasn't cleared. This was a blocked motion to have him investigated for misleading the commons when there's so much evidence to suggest that actually there might be something to see here because you've heard the quote. I won't play it to you again, but you've heard the quote where he said there was absolutely no pressure where clearly there was pressure over the Mandlesson appointment. Now, some people are saying, you know, why are we still talking about this? Why, you know, why is this such a big deal? Well, it is a big deal because it comes down to trust.

[00:06:22]It's trust and integrity, which is something that he said all along and certainly in his campaign to get into government, he said he was going to restore restore trust in British politics. This is not restoring trust in British politics when you block a vote to investigate something and you know essentially whip your party to to shoot this motion down. Now one person who did speak clearly about this was Richard Burden MP and to be fair I've disagreed with him on a number of occasions on various different things but on this occasion I think he is right. He voted for the scrutiny and I think he's right on the very basic principle that this he should have been held to account. uh star should have been held to account.

[00:07:04]The Labour MPs who voted in favor include Espana, Richard Bergen, Ian Burn, uh Mary Foy, uh Imran Hussein, and a list of of others. You can find that on the I'll try and link it below. And whatever anyone thinks of any of those MPs politically, at least on this point, they were making something very, very clear. They were saying, "Let the scrutiny happen. Let Parliament do its job." Now I mean to be clear they might have been voting in favor of it just to say well look if there's nothing to hide there's nothing to see then let it happen and then you know prove to the public that there is nothing wrong and so on and so forth and you still may not believe that if that was the outcome etc but now we'll never know but you know letting this happen letting the scrutiny happen surely that's not too much to ask because the real problem is and the real problem is not Mandos and now okay I mean it it obviously was it was a a big appointment which shouldn't have happened and everyone agrees Now, pretty much everyone agrees that it shouldn't have happened. But this is about wider British politics. This is about people constantly being told that this government is rebuilding Britain, acting in the national interests, restoring standards, restoring trust and confidence. And I I I draw a rise smile as I say it because I know that that is not how people think. A lot of people look around the country right now, they don't see that at all. They see businesses under pressure. They see businesses collapsing. Claire's accessories with, you know, over I think like one and a half thousand jobs. They see these jobs disappearing. They see schools closing. The devastating, you probably saw my rant yesterday. Um it it was quite it was quite the rant. I know a lot of people who have suffered at the hands of uh this in my view this government destroying these schools and I know people work so hard to send their children to these schools and this this one school that um grammar is one of the British heritage schools and you know almost one and a half thousand years of history and as I put it in my sort of adlib rant yesterday. It survived two world wars and the plague and a civil uh civil war and everything else, but it couldn't survive this Labor government.

[00:09:24]Absolutely disgraceful. That is what people see as well as more taxation.

[00:09:29]I've been speaking to a few people in the last few days who, you know, desperately trying to grow businesses and there's there's a few different areas uh where whereby this is all linked to this government says it's rebuilding Britain. Well, here's what people actually see. I have a few categories of sort of associates, colleagues, etc. Um, clients, you know, people that I know, people that I speak to, real people, real lives, real situations. And there's a few categories of people here. And you've probably seen some of these examples reported, but for example, there's one group who might be dependent on universal credit. There might be sort of two partners in a household. One of them works, one of them doesn't work. So, they get a certain amount of universal credit without going into the numbers. And they've worked out that if the second person gets a full-time job, they lose all of the universal credit if they get the job that they were looking at. And therefore, they only gain a relatively small amount net overall. So, it's not worth them getting the full-time job.

[00:10:29]Then you've got the comparison between someone on £50,000 who goes to work full-time whereas some a family on uh benefits with several children etc is getting the same amount of money in net benefits as someone working for that salary. Then you've got the £100,000 cliff edge where you end up paying an effective 60% tax rate and all the rest of it. And so it is ultimately is very difficult to really get ahead whether you're at at the top at 100 plus or at not the bottom but at the lower rates of earning where you're dependent on universal credit but getting that job that might pay quite well you lose you know the full rate of universal credit and therefore they just many people just don't bother and all of that on top of the costs to business taxation more intervention pressures rules regulations etc. As I said, Claire's Accessories has just said that it's going to shut all of its 154 stores across UK and Ireland with well over a thousand jobs disappearing. And the company's owners have said that this is down to highly adverse government fiscal policies as the pressures on these retailers. That is on top of the schools and everyone else that I've mentioned thus far with the VAT, etc. You'll see my rant in my video yesterday. Now, of course, it would be too simplistic to say all of this is the government's fault. But it is perfectly fair to say this. When business confidence is weak and when taxes are rising, costs are rising and these companies and institutions etc. are closing and blaming government policies. That is why then yesterday's vote leaves such a bad taste for so many people because at a time when a country needs honesty and scrutiny and confidence in public life and instead what we really see is a prime minister using party discipline to protect himself from this inquiry into whether he misled parliament. That is just frankly ridiculous. Some people can call that politics if they like, but a lot of people just call that something else.

[00:12:29]They don't call that politics at all.

[00:12:32]People being polite will call it the system becoming closed, managerial, controlling, some might say autocratic and dictatorial. And so that's what I think of this vote. I think it's a little bit disingenuous. It is not just about one vote, one incident, one appointment, etc. It is about the wider trust in this government. And this is not what open democratic politics is really supposed to be.