Grant Shapps’s latest efforts to promote his government have turned into a bit of a shipwreck, judging from the online reaction.
The defence secretary was on the broadcast round this morning to discuss the “new golden age of British shipbuilding”.
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He announced that the UK would be building 28 new ships and submarines for the Royal Navy, including “up to six new warships”.
But eagle-eyed critics on X (formerly Twitter) were quick to notice that Shapps was curiously inconsistent around the details.
For instance, the pledge sounded quite similar to another, relatively recent promise from the Conservatives – Boris Johnson’s famous vow to build up to 40 new hospitals.
BBC Breakfast interview with aka Grant Shapps. Apparently 27 new ships are being built. When pressed, he’s visited one and the rest are in design stage. Didn’t ask where those ships were being built either. Sounds like the 40 new hospitals Johnson used to shout about 🙄#GTTO
— Patty Cakes Part 2 (@Flippineckers) May 14, 2024
People were also completely mystified over exactly how many ships were included in this promise.
Shapps said the government was looking to build 28 ships – but then changed it to “up to 28”.
Many critics also picked up on Shapps’s confusing conflation of the six ships the government promised to build two years ago and his current pledge.
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He told journalists that the Tories had the “desire to” build these boats two years ago – but did not have the “means”.
He claimed that now the UK’s defence spending has increased, the government does have the means – and so will finally be following through on this two-year-old pledge.
So…how many is the government actually building? Social media seemed to decide it was anybody’s guess.
After listening to Grant Shapps on Today programme, I am none the wiser as to whether we are building three ships, six ships or 28 ships.
Shapps says they had “the desire to” build the ships “but not the means”. We have the desire to kick this disastrous government out but not the means so we can understand your frustration Shapps. #r4today
However, if the star-studded season does end up going ahead, they’ve already got their eye on a few potential contestants.
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Speaking to Deadline on the red carpet of the TV Baftas, executive producer Stephen Lambert named Liz Truss as being among his dream contestants.
“She’d be great,” he said of the former prime minister. “It’s very important on that show to be able to tell the truth, and also to not tell the truth. And you know, she would be challenged, possibly.”
Truss wouldn’t be the first British politician to take up residence in the famous Traitors castle, after former speaker John Bercow took part in the show’s American counterpart last year.
Liz Truss
NurPhoto via Getty Images
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Meanwhile, although the team insisted they’re still only “thinking about the possibility of doing” a celebrity spin-off of The Traitors, they were much more upfront about the third season of the regular show, filming for which is currently underway.
“It’s had some amazing twists,” Stephen shared.
“It’s quite hard making season three, because the expectations get bigger and bigger. But fortunately, I think it’s going well. Touch wood.”
“I was reluctant to do the second, and now I’m extra reluctant to do the third,” she shared during an interview on Good Morning Britain. “Like, guys, just leave it! It did OK, leave it. And they just say ‘no’.”
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According to unconfirmed reports, the first celebrity series will reportedly film and air in 2025, once season three of the regular version of The Traitors has already been shown.
Keir Starmer did not make an “error of judgement” when he accepted former Tory MP Natalie Elphicke into the Labour Party, shadow cabinet minister Jonathan Ashworth has said.
Elphicke, the MP for Dover, shocked Westminster when she sensationally defected to Labour on Wednesday.
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But many Labour MPs are unhappy given her right-wing views on immigration and previous support for her ex-husband who was found guilty of sexual assault.
According to The Sunday Times, in 2020 Elphicke also lobbied the justice secretary, Robert Buckland, on behalf of her then husband Charlie.
Elphicke is reported to have pressed Buckland for his case to be moved to a less high profile court to avoid public scrutiny.
Challenged over the report on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Ashworth said Elphicke had dismissed it as “nonsense”.
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“If Robert Buckland has evidence or has more to say then let’s hear what he says,” Ashworth, the shadow paymaster general, said.
But he was asked: “Don’t these allegations start to create a sense maybe Keir Starmer and the Labour leadership team have made an error of judgement?”
Ashworth said: “No, no, no, no, no, no.”
“I think whatNatalie Elphicke’s crossing of the floor reveals is the extent to which we are witnessing a disintegrating and decaying Conservative government,” he said.
“More broadly what she has done – like thousands and thousands of conservatives across the country – she has shifted to he Labour Party because she can see after 14 years of failure its time for change.”
Labour MP Jess Philips, a former shadow domestic violence minister, told Sky News last week Elphicke’s admission to Labour was “a bit like being punched in the gut”.
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While former Labour leader Neil Kinnock told the BBC that Labour should be “choosy to a degree about who we allow to join” as while it is a “very broad church” churches “have walls and there are limits”.
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s last vice president was called upon to defend the Constitution and American democracy by refusing to overturn the results of an election. Then his boss turned against him, whipping up an angry mob of supporters so intensely that they constructed a gallows and chanted for him to be hanged.
But Florida Sen. Marco Rubio still wants the job. So do Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio and Tim Scott of South Carolina. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (yes, even after the story about shooting a dog) and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum are also still in the mix to become Trump’s running mate.
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Why? Because if you’re an ambitious Republican with an eye on higher office, becoming Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate could be the quickest path to the Oval Office. Whoever Trump picks to join his ticket will become the immediate favorite to become the next GOP presidential standard-bearer, whether the 77-year-old ex-president wins in November or not.
That’s why so many Republicans are not-so-secretly vying for the position with appearances at Trump’s campaign events and on cable news programs in recent weeks, seemingly hoping to out-do each other on who can be the most obsequious MAGA messenger.
But winning Trump’s affection often requires unquestionable loyalty, and that means defending even his most shocking actions — including his unprecedented effort to overturn an election he lost, his vow to pardon rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, his 88 felony charges and his personal conduct, such as his alleged extramarital affair with an adult film star.
Besides — it’s not like they’ll end up in the same position as former Vice President Mike Pence, right? After all, Republicans who want the job say the Constitution limits presidents to serving two terms.
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An attempt by the incumbent to stay in power past 2028 is “not going to be an issue for the next vice president, right?” Rubio told HuffPost. “No matter who’s elected president now, they can’t run again.”
Vance, meanwhile, said that what happened between Trump and Pence was a result of “the political consequences of what happened at the time.”
“I think Mike Pence [and] Donald Trump had a very strong disagreement,” he added. “And Mike Pence, you know, he’s fundamentally just was never really on board with the underlying agenda.”
Vance has also said he doubts that Pence’s life “was ever in danger” on Jan. 6.
Rubio and Vance’s decision to downplay the threats to Pence, who said in March he could not support his former boss for president in 2024, are just the latest example of the efforts running mate contenders will go to prove their loyalty.
Scott, for example, last week refused to commit to accepting the outcome of the 2024 election, echoing Trump’s own refusal during an earlier interview with a Wisconsin news outlet. Pressed several times for a direct yes or no, Scott dodged, maintaining there won’t be any issues, since Trump will be the inevitable victor.
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“At the end of the day, I said what I said,” said Scott, who made a failed run against Trump in the 2024 primaries, on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I know that the American people, their voices will be heard, and I believe that President Trump will be our next president. It’s that simple.”
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) this week refused to commit to accepting the outcome of the 2024 election. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
via Associated Press
Prior to dropping out of the presidential race, the South Carolina Republican had previously defended Pence for certifying the 2020 election. When asked at a GOP primary debate last year whether Pence did the right thing on Jan. 6, Scott said he “absolutely” did.
Vance also defended Trump’s claim to “absolute immunity” from prosecution during a combative interview on CNN — an argument that would essentially put the ex-president above the law.
Rubio, who Trump once derided as “Little Marco,” faces a key hurdle to getting the job: The Constitution states that electors in the Electoral College may not cast votes for both a president and vice president from their own state. Since Trump is also a resident of Florida, and since Republicans don’t want to cede a crucial swing state to Joe Biden in the 2024 election, either Rubio or Trump would have to change their residency before the election. And it almost certainly won’t be Trump.
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Noem, meanwhile, continued to make the rounds promoting her book on cable news programs this week, drawing fire from all sides for dodging questions about both her dog and her telling of a meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that never happened.
Trump allies scratched their heads at Noem’s decision to write a tell-all memoir that volunteered so much damaging information — but they maintained getting on TV to fight with the press and defend Trump was a good way to stand out.
“I think it’s important he sees you in action and how well you do in front of the public,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told HuffPost, when asked what criteria would help prospective VP candidates.
“He’s finding out that having multiple people vying for the job means that he’s got a lot of proxies out there promoting his message,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) added of Trump.
Democrats lamented the GOP’s subservience to the ex-president, calling the jockeying to be his vice presidential pick another embarrassing display of sycophancy.
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“It’s a cult,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. “Logic doesn’t prevail in a cult. You just want to get as close to the leaders as you can. That’s what every day is about. How many invites do I get to Mar-a-Lago? How many phone calls do I get from him? Does he look at me kindly? That’s all that matters.”
Whoever Trump picks for vice president this time around will likely be more aligned with than Pence on talking points about the 2020 presidential election and his false claims of fraud. Trump has made glorifying the Jan. 6 attack on Congress a cornerstone of his campaign, embracing rioters as heroes and saluting them at his campaign events. Another contested election could play out similarly, given Trump could face prison time if he is not elected president.
“Most of the people who he would seriously consider to be VP will do whatever he asks, so they won’t have that conflict this time,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said when asked why anyone would want to be Trump’s running mate, given what happened with Pence.
“Would they volunteer to put their heads into a loop?” a reporter asked.
“Absolutely,” he responded.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) warned against joining the ticket, pointing to former Trump backers, including some former top Trump administration officials, who have since offered strong criticism of the former president.
“History has a very profound lesson about the people who become associated with Donald Trump, which is it ends badly,” Blumenthal said. “There is virtually no one that has escaped the Trump gravity for malign impact on their lives. Even when they sought to disassociate themselves from [him], they’ve still been tarred in some way. There’s some good people who found out the hard way that Donald Trump is toxic.”
David Cameron has said cutting British arms sales to Israel would strengthen Hamas, as the government comes under pressure to impose an export ban.
The foreign secretary said Israel did not have a “clean bill of health” when it came to its military operations in Gaza.
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But speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, he said the government would not block weapons being sold.
“Just to simply announce today that we will change our approach on arms exports, it would make Hamas stronger and it would make a hostage deal less likely,” he said.
Cameron did say Israel was “permanently on notice” when it came to receiving weapons.
“If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah,” he told CNN.
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Biden, long a staunch and unquestioning supporter of Israel, has come under intense pressure from Democrats to finally place conditions on military aid to the country.
It came as a US government report found “reasonable” evidence American-supplied weapons had been used by Israel to breach international law.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has indicated he is prepared to defy Biden. “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone,” he said.
Rafah, where one million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, is one of the last remaining safe zones in Gaza.
Humanitarian groups fear a full-on Israeli invasion of the city would result in mass civilian deaths.
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Israel launched its campaign in Gaza following the October 7 attacks by Hamas, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 252 others were taken hostage.
Since then, the Hamas-run health ministry has said more than 34,780 people have been killed in Gaza.
While the chancellor was celebrating the news from the ONS that the UK is officially out of recession, the Today programme host kicked off the interview by saying: “It’s not a strong recovery is it?
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“Some people would call it anaemic. You’re not calling it strong are you?
“That’s not what it is. The economy has barely grown over the last two years.”
Hunt claimed over the last quarter, the UK had the joint-highest growth in the G7– and then blamed slow growth on the Bank of England’s high interest rates.
Husain hit back: “You’re portraying yourself as the people in whose hands the economy is safe, and yet many voters, particularly those who are perhaps finding themselves re-mortgaging this month on higher rates and seeing the facts that fixed rate mortgage deals have been edging up – and others – will be remembering what happened under Liz Truss and that mini-budget.
“And they’ll say: ‘How can you possibly, after the events of the last two and half years, portray yourself as the party of economy competence?’”
Sunak’s predecessor unveiled £45bn of unfunded tax cuts in her mini-budget in 2022, causing the pound to plummet.
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“Well, there were some mistakes that were made in that mini-budget and we corrected them within weeks,” the chancellor said.
He also pointed to the energy shock triggered by the Ukraine war and said it was “just wrong” to attribute all price rises to the mini-budget.
“But, it wasn’t economically competent, was it, to do that?” Husain pushed. “And do you accept that it’s fair for voters to go into the next election, remembering that happened under the Conservatives?”
Hunt said the “overall picture” shows that the UK has grown faster than France, Germany, Italy and Japan since the Conservatives took over in 2010.
He also pointed to the IMF’s predictions that the UK would continue to grow faster over the next six years.
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He failed to mention that the think tank OECD predicted last week the UK would be the second slowest-growing economy in 2024, and the slowest in 2025.
Hunt maintained that voters support the Conservative Party because “they trust us to take tough and difficult decisions in the long-term interest of the economy”.
“You’re asking us to ignore Liz Truss, aren’t you? To say Liz Truss never happened,” Husain said – which Hunt denied.
The minister then blamed the figures on the delay in passing the Rwanda bill through parliament.
She also said the new act was already working as a deterrent as Ireland have been complaining that more refugees are arriving from the UK.
But Ridge replied: “I’m happy to say it’s a deterrent when we have evidence it’s a deterrent. Right now, it’s a deterrent for people already in the UK. Which I’m guessing, is not what you’re aiming for.”
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Donelan continually tried to say the government has a “multi-prong strategy” but the Sky News host repeatedly reminded her: “It hasn’t worked!”
“Just having a plan isn’t enough,” Ridge reminded her.
Explaining how she empathises with Britons’ frustration over the issue, Donelan said: “I always view it as one of our values, fairness.
“It’s inherent in our values – we literally invented the queue.
“It’s downright unfair that illegal immigrants think they can bypass our systems and come here after having been in a safe country, and that’s what we are determined to stop.”
Labour has taken a 30-point opinion poll lead over the Tories – just days after Rishi Sunak said the UK was heading for a hung parliament.
YouGov put support for Keir Starmer’s party on 48%, with the Conservatives on just 18%.
Reform UK are just five points behind the Tories on 13%, with the Lib Dems on 9% and the Greens on 7%.
It is the biggest lead Labour has enjoyed since Liz Truss’s disastrous time as prime minister.
The poll is yet another hammer blow for Sunak, who is still reeling from Natalie Elphicke’s shock defection to Labour yesterday.
Earlier this week, the PM said last week’s local elections – in which the Tories lost nearly 500 council seats – “suggest we are heading for a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party”.
But according to the Electoral Calculus website, Labour would have a 452-seat majority if the YouGov poll was replicated at the general election, with the Tories left with just 13 seats.
Announcing his decision on X (formerly Twitter) he said: “The time is right for a new, energetic Conservative to fight for the honour of representing Stratford-on-Avon.”
Susanna Reid effortlessly demolished calls for Boris Johnson to return to frontline politics on Tuesday by reminding his supporters about nothing other than partygate.
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Speaking on ITV’sGood Morning Britain, former Tory MEP David Campbell Bannerman said he would install Johnson as party chairman with a seat in cabinet, and make sure he got elected to parliament at the next general election.
He claimed: “He’s a great campaigner and we really are missing that now – we’ve seen that at these disastrous local elections.”
But, Campbell Bannerman said the ex-PM was “set up” on that, as Johnson’s keen ally Nadine Dorries claims in her book, The Plot.
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Reid said: “Sorry, he was set up? Set up by whom?”
When the ex-MEP said it was Johnson’s own staff who were setting him up, Reid reminded him: “Boris Johnson was in charge during lockdown, [there was] legislation he introduced and [he] then proceeded to have a whole load of social events and breach of rules in No.10 Downing Street.
“In what way was that a set-up?”
Campbell Bannerman claimed Johnson “doesn’t like partying” to which Reid said: “I just saw him with a wine glass in his hand!”
When the ex-MEP just claimed the reality is very complex, Reid recalled how Johnson was fined for breaching lockdown rules.
Campbell Bannerman then claimed that “it was the media”, and said that Johnson was only a few percentage points behind in the polls – and that he does not understand why he resigned as an MP.
“I think he will be back,” Campbell Bannerman said.
Apparently not deterred by Reid’s reminders, the ex-MEP later added: “I say to Conservative MPs, for heaven’s sake, step up, get rid of Sunak, let’s have a new leader, which can bring Boris back as part of a team – it has to be Suella [Braverman] or Kemi [Badenoch].”
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He added that he “would not be averse” to having Nigel Farage back into the Conservative fold, too.
Should the Conservatives bring back Boris Johnson into the Party in order to save it?
Former Conservative MEP David Campbell Bannerman would like to see Boris back in the Conservative Party.
Health minister Maria Caulfield struggled to answer as Justin Webb pointed out the major flaws in the prime minister’s argument.
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Sunak has said an analysis of last week’s local elections, in which the Tories lost nearly 500 seats, showed Keir Starmer will not win a majority and will need to be “propped up by the SNP, Liberal Democrats and Greens”.
That was a reference to a projection by the polling expert Michael Thrasher, who said the results suggest Labour’s lead over the Conservatives is just seven points, well short of what opinion polls have been saying for months.
However, other polling experts pointed out that Thrasher’s forecast was based on the assumption that Scotland – where there were no local elections last week – would vote the same way it did in 2019, when Labour won just one seat.
On Radio 4′s Today programme this morning, Webb told Caulfield: “Let’s look at what you and the prime minister are depending on.
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“Number one: it’s not a prediction, it’s a projection based on these results. In other words, if these results were replicated, this would be the result in a general election. But people vote much more for third parties in local elections than they would in a general election.
“Number two, how many seats under this projection, would Labour win in Scotland?”
Caulfield replied: “Well I think because there were English local elections it doesn’t touch on the Scottish result.”
Webb then told her: “It assumes it would be the same as last time, so one seat. Do you seriously think that’s probable, that Labour will only win one seat in Scotland?”
Avoiding the question, the minister replied: “Polls are just projections and the polls were clearly wrong ahead of these local elections.”
But Webb said: “So do you believe that in Scotland, Labour will only win one seat at the next election? Is that the working assumption of the prime minister, because that seems to be it?”
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The minister said: “These are not our analysis, and the BBC did their own analysis as well and showed it will be a hung parliament based on these results.”
Webb then told her: “But that’s the point, isn’t it? Based on these results, but nobody is suggesting that these results would be replicated at a general election. The experts aren’t suggesting it.
“I put it to you that the prime minister, if he is suggesting it to his own side, he’s taking them for fools.”
But Caulfield said: “What we can see from these results, is that people are not switching to Labour. Labour did not get the results in places like Teesside or Harlow that they were expecting, even though they threw the kitchen sink at some of those.
“Our voters are tending, at the moment, to stay at home. They don’t want a Labour government.
“The polls that were saying we would lose by about 20% did not materialise in London, did not materialise with Andy Street in the West Midlands, and we had some good results as well.”
