‘Are You Not Mortified?’: Dermot O’Leary Roasts Sunak Over Braverman’s Immigration Comments

Rishi Sunak was asked on live TV if he was “mortified” by Suella Braverman’s controversial comments about immigration.

The home secretary said the west was facing a “hurricane” of migrants in the years to come during her speech to the Tory conference.

Appearing on ITV’s this morning, the prime minister was asked by presenter Dermot O’Leary for his thoughts on Braverman’s rhetoric.

In particular, he expressed concern about her use of the word “hurricane”.

“Are you not embarrassed and ashamed when you hear words like that? Because I’m meeting you for the first time and you seem like a decent guy” O’Leary asked.

The prime minister responded: “I think that this debate gets charged a lot where people focus on one thing. So, if you just take a step back, what do I think we all agree on? We all agree that Britain is incredibly welcoming place. We haven’t failed in any way.”

O’Leary said: “Are you not mortified? That’s evil. It’s not a good word.“

Sunak replied: “They are being exploited by criminal gangs. And that’s why I’ve said it’s got to be … the British people who decide who comes to our country and not criminal gangs. They are exploiting vulnerable people.”

O’Leary did not let Sunak off the hook, adding, “It’s this weaponising of the word that worries me. It’s demonising the people that come here in the first place.

“It’s an issue, of course it is. It’s the incendiary use of that word, that I think most people find unhelpful and harmful because it’s not the people who are coming here’s fault.”

Failing to answer the question, Sunak replied, “I think your viewers probably feel that there is an enormous sense of frustration that there are tens of thousands of people who have come here illegally over the past few years, and that’s not right.

“And I think most people in their local community may now have a hotel that’s been put over to house illegal migrants that’s costing taxpayers.”

Rishi Sunak on This Morning
Rishi Sunak on This Morning

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Meanwhile, the PM also sent well-wishes to This Morning presenter Holly Willoughby after a man was charged over an alleged plot to kidnap the presenter.

On Friday morning, it was reported that the daytime star was “under police guard at her home” after “sinister” messages were found on a man’s phone reportedly threatening to “seriously harm” the daytime TV presenter.

Sunak said he was “so sorry to hear about everything that is going on with Holly”.

“I wanted to send my best to her and her family and to all of you,” the PM added.

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Rishi Sunak Announces Plan To Gradually Ban Smoking

Rishi Sunak has announced plans to eventually ban smoking by raising the legal age people can buy cigarettes by one year, every year.

It would mean someone who is currently 14 years old will never be legally be sold a cigarette.

The prime minister said the change would “save more lives than any other decision we could take”.

Sunak told the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on Wednesday that his MPs would be given a free vote on the new law.

It means Tory MPs will not be ordered to back his plan if they do not want to.

The proposal mirrors the law in New Zealand, where tobacco cannot ever be sold to anybody born on or after January 1, 2009.

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HS2 U-Turn: Rishi Sunak Confirms Manchester Line Is Scrapped

Rishi Sunak has confirmed that he is scrapping HS2 to Manchester.

The prime minister made the long-awaited announcement at the Tory conference being held in the city.

He also revealed that phase one of the multi-billion pound line will start at Euston station in central London.

And he said the £36 billion saved on scrapping the Birmingham to Manchester stretch would be used to fund major new transport projects in the north of England.

The decision is likely to spark a furious backlash from opposition politicians, business leaders and senior Tories including West Midlands mayor Andy Street, who this week appealed to the PM not to axe to next phase of the HS2 project.

Sunak said: “I say to those who backed the project in the first place, the facts have changed and the right thing to do when the facts change is to have the courage to change direction.

“And so I am ending this long-running saga. I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project and in its place we will re-invest every single penny – £36bn in hundreds of new transport projects in the north and the Midlands across the country.”

The PM said a new “network north” project would boost transport links and slash travel times to towns and cities across the country.

He said: “You will be able to get from Manchester to the new station in Bradford in 30 minutes, Sheffield in 42 minutes and to Hull in 84 minutes on a fully, electrified line.

“We’ll protect the £12bn pounds to link up Manchester and Liverpool as planned and we will engage with local leaders on how best to deliver the scheme.

“We’ll build the Midlands Rail Hub, connecting 50 stations. We’ll help Andy Street extend the West Midlands Metro, build the Leeds tram, electrify the North Wales main line, upgrade the A1, the A2, the A5, the M6 and we’ll connect our Union with the A75 boosting links between Scotland and Northern Ireland.

“We’ll fund the Shipley bypass, the Blyth relief road and deliver 70 other road schemes. We’ll resurface roads across the country. We’ll bring back the Don Valley line. We’ll upgrade the energy coast line between Carlisle, Workington and Barrow, build hundreds of other schemes and keep the £2 bus fare across the whole country.”

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Trans Women Will Be Banned From Female-Only Wards, Says Steve Barclay

Health secretary Steve Barclay has said trans people will be banned from male-only and female-only hospital wards.

Speaking to the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on Tuesday, he said the NHS constitution will be amended following a consultation later this year to bring in the change.

Barclay said this would respect the “privacy, dignity and safety of all patients” and “recognise the importance of different biological needs and protect the rights of women”.

“I know as Conservatives, we know what a woman is and I know the vast majority of hardworking NHS staff and patients do too,” he told Tory members.

“To deliver the long-term change the NHS needs, we need a relentless focus on patient outcomes and that means prioritising frontline resources.

“It does not mean spending huge sums of taxpayer’s money on diversity consultants or hiring bloated internal diversity and inclusion teams.”

Barclay also said he had ordered a reversal of changes to the NHS website that removed references to women for conditions such as cervical cancer.

And he said the NHS had been told to stop telling staff to declare pronouns to each new patient.

The move is the latest in a long-line of Conservative policies aimed at what many in the party like to brand “woke” id.

Elliot Colburn, the MP for Carshalton and Wallington, told a meeting on the fringes of the conference to “drop this hardcore rhetoric and we have to drop it now”.

“I want to make one thing perfectly clear to our Conservative colleagues. We will not win the next general election fighting with the LGBT+ community,” he said.

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This Video Of Priti Patel And Nigel Farage Singing And Dancing Together Cannot Be Unseen

The song of choice? Frank Sinatra’s I Love You Baby, obviously.

The short video was shared by Conservative Party member Emily Hewertson – with the caption “Priti X Farage. What a combo” – and has racked up more than 310,000 views in less than 12 hours.

It’s the first singing or dancing clip to have emerged from the Tory conference this year, but far from the first time the Conservatives have been caught busting a move at a work event.

So, perhaps Patel and Farage’s duet was not a complete surprise.

The former home secretary had praised the right-wing commentator and the “dynamic, no-nonsense” GB News channel on Sunday.

She called the “incredible” channel a “defender of free speech” and thanked the controversial broadcaster’s staff for “absolutely everything they do”.

GB News currently employs former ministers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Esther McVey, among other Tory backbenchers.

This year also marks the first time Farage has been allowed inside a Tory party conference since the 1980s, he told Express.co.uk, even though he officially left in 1992, founding UKIP the following year.

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Russian Defence Spending To Surge As Kremlin Prepares For ‘Multiple Years’ Of War In Ukraine

Russia is set to dramatically increase the amount of money it spends on defence as the country prepares for “multiple years” of war in Ukraine, according UK intelligence.

The Ministry of Defence’s latest intelligence update on the war said documents apparently leaked from the Russian finance ministry shows its military spending will reach 30% of all public expenditure in 2024.

“The ministry proposes a defence budget of 10.8 trillion roubles (£91.7 billion), equivalent to approximately 6 per cent of GDP and a 68 per cent increase over 2023,” the MoD said.

To put that in context, the UK spends around 2% of its GDP on defence. In 2021/22, that worked out at around £45bn.

The MoD said Russia’s military spending splurge will come “at the expense of the wider economy”.

“Full details on Russian defence spending are always classified, but these figures suggests that Russia is preparing for multiple further years of fighting in Ukraine,” they said.

“This follows public comments by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on 27 September 2023, suggesting he was prepared for the conflict to continue into 2025.”

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 in a “special military operation” that Vladimir Putin believed would be over in days.

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Senate Clears Bill To Prevent Government Shutdown

With hours left to go on the eve of a government shutdown, Congress passed a stopgap bill to keep federal agencies funded and workers at their desks through mid-November.

The price? About $6 billion in aid to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian invaders and new worries Russian dictator Vladimir Putin will be encouraged to continue the full-scale invasion he started in February 2022.

On Saturday afternoon, the House voted 335 to 91 for a temporary funding bill to keep the government operating through Nov. 16 and also fund disaster assistance. Two hundred and nine Democrats joined 126 Republicans in voting for the package.

Later that night, the Senate passed it 88 to 9, though only after some last-minute public misgivings by a few Democratic senators, including a brief hold on floor action by Democratic Senator Michael Bennet over the Ukraine aid.

The bill will now go to the White House for President Joe Biden’s signature.

The deal will avoid the worst case politically that both parties feared ― being blamed for the first government shutdown since 2019 ― but leaves several issues unaddressed, like the future of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Putting the bill on the floor was a stark turnaround for McCarthy, who has spent all year trying to placate far-right members of his conference — something that has proved almost impossible. On Friday, he moved a bill that would have kept the government open with severe spending cuts and 21 hard-line Republicans still voted no, dooming it.

Republicans such as Representative Matt Gaetz have said they would force a no-confidence vote in McCarthy if the House passed a funding bill with Democratic support.

But pulling his party back from the brink of a shutdown may have boosted his stock with the more moderate wing of his party. “If we have folks in the conference that don’t like his leadership, that want to put a motion to vacate forward, that’s on them to do that and explain to the American people why,” said Republican Representative Mike Lawler.

And McCarthy remained defiant.

“If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it. There has to be an adult in the room,” he said.

Another open question is what happens when the stopgap bill expires. While lawmakers have a few more weeks to work on spending bills, it’s unclear that they will get them finished by then. And the near-shutdown this time could merely be a dress rehearsal for an actual one later in the year.

Democrats initially balked at the bill, saying they had not been given enough time to read its 71 pages. But faced with the political reality that they could be blamed for a shutdown by insisting on aid to war-torn Ukraine, many decided to embrace the bill.

Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, however, read a letter from Mike McCord, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for defense, who warned that European allies would be unlikely to keep up their support for Ukraine without U.S. leadership.

“From the very beginning of the war, Putin has bet that America is weak, unreliable, and that his desire to rebuild the Soviet Empire was greater than our will to oppose him,” said Scott Cullinane, director of government affairs at Razom for Ukraine, a pro-Ukraine advocacy group. “Our unwillingness to give Ukraine the weapons it needs to win and Congress’ delay in funding threaten to prove Putin right.”

McCarthy has said there is enough Ukraine aid still in the pipeline for another 45 days. Aid could be attached to another bill later on, but would probably have to be more than the $6 billion that was at issue here and it’s unclear what bill it would have to be attached to in order to pass.

Representative Jim McGovern said the stopgap was a win for Democrats, especially compared with what House Republicans had been proposing earlier in the week. He also said he thought Ukraine aid would eventually be passed.

“Talk to me in a few weeks,” he said.

“We have to deal with these issues again in 45 days but, for today, I’ve got a little bounce in my step.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly included the word “all” when referring to the 126 Republicans who voted for the House bill. There are currently 221 Republicans in the House.

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‘Rich. Money. Wealth.’ Rishi Sunak Shown What Voters Think Of Him During Toe-Curling Interview

Voters associate Rishi Sunak with wealth, money and greed, according to a survey carried out for the BBC.

The multi-millionaire prime minister was presented with the public’s brutal verdict during a live interview as the Tory Party conference kicks off in Manchester.

Appearing on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the PM was shown a so-called “word cloud” outlining the answers voters gave to the More in Common think-tank when asked their opinion of him.

It showed the most common was “rich people”, followed by “money” and “himself”.

Other answers included “greed”, “elite” “wealth”, “upper class” and “prosperity”.

However, some people answered “fairness”, “equality”, “stability” and “leader”.

The word cloud setting out how people view the prime minister.
The word cloud setting out how people view the prime minister.

During the ill-tempered interview, Kuenssberg told him: “You can see there, rightly or wrongly, what many people associate with you is your personal wealth.

“What does that make you think? Does that worry you if people might think you’re out of touch?

“Or perhaps, you are very wealthy, you could be living on a beach not working at all. A lot of people might think you’ve got all this wealth, you could be living on a beach, not working at all.

“A lot of people might think you’ve got all this wealth, you could do anything at all, good on you for being in public service. What goes through your mind when you see that?”

A clearly-annoyed Sunak said : “My job is to deliver for people. We’ve been talking a lot about this net zero decision …”

Kuenssberg replied : “Hold on, I think people would like to know what your response is.”

But the PM said: “But this is a great example of it. That was a decision motivated by me wanting to ease the burden on families.”

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Ukraine Says It Killed A Russian Admiral, But Russian Media Says He’s Alive. Experts Don’t Know What To Believe

Russian media just put out more supposed evidence that an admiral Ukraine claims to have killed is actually alive – but experts still don’t know what to believe.

On Monday, Ukraine alleged that Viktor Sokolov, the commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, died along with 33 other officers following a missile strike on Moscow’s naval headquarters in Crimea last Friday.

If true, it would deal a significant blow to the Russian Navy, on par only with Ukraine’s successful sinking of the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet last year.

But, on Tuesday, Russia’s defence ministry released a video on Telegram – supposedly filmed the day before – which apparently showed the admiral remotely attending a large military conference with the defence minister.

While the BBC used facial recognition software to confirm the man in the clip was indeed Sokolov, the broadcasters were not able to pinpoint when it was filmed.

The clip prompted Ukraine’s military to clarify their statement, saying: “According to available sources, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet is among the dead. Many have not yet been identified due to the fragmentation of body parts.”

However, it’s also not clear how Kyiv would be able to look at the area it struck because it took place in Russian occupied land.

The following day, the Russian state media started to issue more unverified videos of the admiral – and this time, he could be heard speaking to journalists.

An undated clip posted on the Russian state-run TV network, Zvezda, seemed to show Sokolov saying the Black Sea Fleet has been “fulfilling goals that are set by command”.

Another video posted by a local news outlet showed Sokolov responding to a question about the impacts about a Ukrainian strike, saying: “What happened to us? Nothing happened to us. Life goes on.”

This turn of events – the latest in the ongoing information war between the two countries – have left experts quite bewildered.

The US think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, said in its daily update that it is “unprepared at this time to make an assessment about the authenticity of the footage or the date of the filming”.

It added: “The Kremlin and Russian Ministry of Defence have been notably silent on the matter and have not directly confirmed that Sokolov is alive.”

Russia also has a reputation for obscuring narratives which might cause embarrassment for the Kremlin.

While Sokolov’s fate is still unknown, clips on social media suggest the attack last Friday did take place in one form or another.

Russia also claimed at the time that it had shot down five incoming missiles and only one serviceman had died in the incident, though it admitted its headquarters were damaged.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said at a briefing that the West were to blame for the strike.

She said: “There is no doubt that the attack had been planned in advance using Western intelligence means, NATO satellite assets and reconnaissance planes and was implemented upon the advice of American and British security agencies and in close co-ordination with them.”

The Black Sea has become the new focal point of the war, with Kyiv attacking Russian warships to stop any advances towards the Ukrainian mainland, deter cruise missiles and disrupt Moscow’s blockade on Ukraine’s ports.

Ukraine is also determined to liberate Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

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UK Government Guilty Of ‘Cultural Appropriation’ Over Dennis The Menace, Says SNP MP

UK ministers have been accused of “cultural appropriation” after appearing to suggest that Dennis the Menace was “created in London”.

SNP MP Chris Law reacted angrily after the comic book character and his dog Gnasher were used in a government advert.

The billboard, for the GREAT campaign, shows the pair standing on a man’s shoulder beside the message: “Created in London, unleashed in more than 100 countries.”

That is despite the fact that Dennis the Menace was in fact created in Dundee by George Moonie, the then editor of The Beano.

Law, who is the MP for Dundee West, said the advert was “utter garbage”.

Writing on X (formerly Twitter), he said: “Dundee city created Dennis the Menace and Gnasher through the publishers DC Thomson. Cultural appropriation is a desperate measure to claim credibility.”

A government spokesperson said: “The Dennis and Gnasher animated series was created in London, based on the brilliant Beano cartoon that originated in Dundee.

“In this way it is the perfect representation of the ‘Made in the UK, Sold to the World’ campaign, which seeks to highlight success stories from across our great union of nations.

“We work closely with businesses like Beano to tell their start-up story, demonstrating the support the UK government provides to help companies grow and export around the world.”

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