The Conservatives are investigating three parliamentary candidates over antisemitism and are facing calls to suspend them before the election.

Sally-Ann Hart, standing in the Tory marginal seat of Hastings, shared a video with an image implying that the billionaire George Soros, who is Jewish, controls the EU, and she also liked a Nazi slogan on Facebook.

Lee Anderson, standing for the Conservatives in Labour-held Ashfield, is an active member of Ashfield Backs Boris, a Facebook group where Soros conspiracy theories have been promoted and which includes supporters of the far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

Richard Short, the candidate for St Helens South and Whiston, is being investigated for asking whether a Jewish journalist was more loyal to Israel than to Britain.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/07/tories-investigate-three-candidates-over-alleged-antisemitism

Tory candidate defends low pay for people with learning disabilities

Sally-Ann Hart sparks row after claiming some disabled people ‘don’t understand money’
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Sally-Ann Hart was heckled as she made the remarks at a Hastings and Rye constituency hustings on Thursday evening, where she is vying to defend the Tories’ wafer-thin majority after Amber Rudd stood down.

A furore ensued after Hart, a councillor in East Sussex, was challenged over an article she had shared on Facebook that said “people with learning difficulties should be allowed to work for less than the minimum wage”.

“It was about people with learning difficulties,” she told the crowd. “About them being given the opportunity to work because it’s to do with the happiness they have about working … Some people with learning difficulties they don’t understand about money.

“It is about having a therapeutic exemption and the article was in support of employing people with learning difficulties, that’s what it was. You should read the article.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/06/tory-candidate-sally-ann-hart-defends-low-pay-people-learning-disabilities

Rosie Clarke @Rknepper_

Conservative candidate Sally Ann Heart defending her view that Disabled people / those with learning disabilities should be paid less as they ‘Don’t understand money’! Actually unbelievable. Audience do not agree... #GeneralElection19 #tory #jc4pm

[Twitter video]

Leaked communique signals caution over PM’s 11-month timeframe for negotiations
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If he wins a majority, the prime minister has vowed to take the UK out of the EU on 31 January and agree a trade deal with the bloc within 11 months, an unprecedentedly short time for such a complex negotiation.

Johnson, who has built his election campaign around the misleading slogan “Get Brexit done”, has promised not to extend the 11-month transition period, seen by many as far too short to agree a future relationship with the EU.
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The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has said it would be possible to negotiate a basic free-trade deal with the UK in 11 months. Others are more sceptical, with one senior diplomat saying he could not imagine it in his wildest dreams.
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The latest EU text also has a reference to “the level playing field”, meaning the UK must respect core EU standards on workers’ rights, state aid, and environmental and consumer protection, to reach a deal ensuring zero tariffs and zero quotas on British goods.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/06/eu-distances-itself-boris-johnson-timetable-post-brexit-trade-deal

Alexandra Hall Hall, Brexit counsellor in Washington, described UK government’s ‘use of misleading or disingenuous arguments’
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Alexandra Hall Hall, the Brexit counsellor at the UK embassy in Washington, had been frustrated with the job for some time, according to friends and colleagues.

They said she felt she was not being given enough reliable information to do her job, which was to explain Britain’s departure from the EU to US audiences and help promote a strong US-UK relationship post-Brexit.

Her resignation, which was addressed to the chargé d’affaires, Michael Tatham, and circulated among close colleagues at the embassy, was damning in its description of the Johnson government’s integrity.

“I have been increasingly dismayed by the way in which our political leaders have tried to deliver Brexit, with reluctance to address honestly, even with our own citizens, the challenges and trade-offs which Brexit involves; the use of misleading or disingenuous arguments about the implications of the various options before us; and some behaviour towards our institutions, which, were it happening in another country, we would almost certainly as diplomats have received instructions to register our concern,” Hall Hall wrote in the letter, dated 3 December.
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“It makes our job to promote democracy and the rule of law that much harder, if we are not seen to be upholding these core values at home,” Hall Hall said. “I am also at a stage in life where I would prefer to do something more rewarding with my time, than peddle half-truths on behalf of a government I do not trust.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/06/alexandra-hall-british-diplomat-resigns-letter-cant-peddle-half-truths-uk-government

Super PACs in the US are notorious for smear campaigns and disinformation – now we're seeing them in the UK election. Be careful where you take your phone.
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How they are shaping this election

Up and down the country, we’re beginning to see something a lot like Super PACs shaping this UK election.

They aren’t all on the same side. By far the biggest spender on Facebook ads is the pro-EU group Best for Britain, which has thrown nearly three-quarters of a million pounds at sponsored posts over the past year. The legal limit for non-party spending on election campaigning for the year before the vote is £480,000 – though, as Best for Britain points out, many of its ads are non-partisan voter registration messages, which don’t count.

On the other side of the Brexit rift, Leave.EU quickly established almost as much Facebook traction as Labour. With nearly a million Facebook likes, the group – founded by the millionaires Arron Banks and Richard Tice – pillories pro-EU politicians. Like America’s most notorious Super PACs, it courts controversy, incites rage and drives debate.

In a recent post – shared 7,000 times – the pro-Tory group reused an image of refugees from a notorious poster unveiled by Nigel Farage during the Brexit referendum, an image widely compared to Nazi propaganda.



https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/american-dirty-tricks-are-corroding-our-democracy/

Boris Johnson Is Threatening To Review Channel 4's Broadcasting Licence After They Replaced Him With An Ice Sculpture At Thursday's Debate

A Conservative source told BuzzFeed News that if they win the coming election they will reassess the channel’s public service broadcasting licence.
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In a dramatic escalation of the war of words between the Tories and Channel 4 that will likely provoke outcry, a Conservative source told BuzzFeed News that if they win the coming election they will reassess the channel’s public service broadcasting licence.

“If we are re-elected we will have to review Channel 4’s Public Services Broadcasting obligations,” the source said.

“Broadcasting organisations are rightly held to a higher standard — and particularly Channel 4 which has a special role enshrined in legislation. Any review would of course look at whether its remit should be better focused so it is serving the public in the best way possible.”

The inflammatory move came after Channel 4 said it would empty-chair the prime minister and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage at its climate change leaders’ debate, after the two leaders declined to take part.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/boris-johnson-is-threatening-to-review-channel-4s

Michael Gove ✔
@michaelgove

Tonight I went to Channel 4 to talk about climate change but Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon refused to debate a Conservative #climatedebate

[Twitter video]

Radio Free Zeitgeist @ZeitgeistFree

"Like a drunk albino walrus, always groping women's thighs...."

[Twitter video]

Polymath also had career in medicine and was member of Beyond the Fringe comedy team
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He rose to prominence in the 1960s as part of the irreverent satirical show, Beyond the Fringe alongside Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett.

He studied medicine at Cambridge, qualifying as a doctor in 1959. He combined his early stage appearances with hospital rounds. But he was soon in demand as a theatre director, in both London and New York, and also worked with the BBC presenting cultural programmes and adapting plays for television.

He directed a series of critically acclaimed operas in the 1980s and 90s.

Oliver Mears, director of opera at the Royal Opera House, said: “Jonathan Miller was one of the most important figures in British theatre and opera of the past half century. Combining a supreme intellect with a consistently irreverent perspective, formed from his experiences in both comedy and medicine, Miller shone a unique light on our art form.”

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/nov/27/jonathan-miller-writer-and-director-dies-aged-85

Boris Johnson is planning an extraordinary attack on the courts if he wins the general election, prompting accusations he is determined to prevent a repeat of judges thwarting Conservative Brexit plans.

The alarm has been raised over proposals in the Tory manifesto to curb the power of people to mount legal challenges – after historic defeats over the triggering of Article 50 and the unlawful shutdown of parliament.

A little-noticed section also hints at expanding the use of the royal prerogative to allow, it is claimed, the next government to ram through plans for the future relationship with the EU without proper scrutiny by MPs.

The moves appear designed to prevent a repeat of the damaging setbacks inflicted by the courts on both Theresa May, over invoking Article 50 without MPs’ approval, and Mr Johnson himself, over the prorogation of parliament.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/general-election-brexit-latest-boris-johnson-article-50-second-referendum-a9217656.html

In June, a message pinged on Tory peer Sayeeda Warsi’s phone. “Right, sorted out that Conservative party Islamophobia investigation!” it read triumphantly. The sender? Sajid Javid, who was then home secretary.

Earlier that evening, during a televised Tory leadership debate, Javid had bounced his fellow contenders, including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, into apparently agreeing to the Conservatives holding an independent inquiry into Islamophobia.

For Lady Warsi, who had tirelessly campaigned against Islamophobia for years, having been the country’s first female Muslim cabinet minister, it was a moment she had longed to see. Unable to contain her delight, she tweeted her thanks to Javid, who now serves as chancellor. “It’s a shame,” she added, “that it’s taken four years and a leadership contest to finally drag my colleagues kicking and screaming to address this issue.”
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Now, however, it appears that that commitment has been watered down. Earlier this month, days after Gove insisted that the Tories would “absolutely” hold an independent inquiry into Islamophobia before the end of the year, Johnson performed a U-turn. It would instead be a “general investigation into prejudice of all kinds”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/27/sayeeda-warsi-tory-islamophobia-muslim-prejudice-investigation

Michael Gove has mocked Stormzy for expressing his support for Labour and Jeremy Corbyn in the forthcoming election.

Gove told Talk Radio: “I think we again know that Stormzy, when he took to the stage at Glastonbury wearing a stab vest, he made clear what his political views were then.”

During his headline set at the 2019 festival, Stormzy wore a stab vest painted with a monochrome Union Jack. The garment was customised by Banksy and hailed as “a perfect image of our moment” by the Guardian’s art critic, Jonathan Jones. “Stormzy’s tense and provocative stage-garb exploited the flag’s visual strength in a new way. Amid all the stage razzmatazz, he wore the banner of a divided and frightened nation.”

Gove added: “He is a far, far better rapper than he is a political analyst.”

Labour’s Angela Rayner tweeted: “And Michael Gove is crap at both”, adding a winking emoji. Gove responded: “I set trends dem man copy.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/nov/26/i-set-trends-dem-man-copy-michael-gove-mocks-stormzy-labour-support

General election: Voter registration spikes by 236 per cent on day Stormzy endorses Labour

Voter registration saw a 236 per cent spike on the day Stormzy tweeted in support of Labour (Monday 25 November).

The grime star wrote that he believed Boris Johnson to be a “sinister man” with a “long record of lying and policies that have absolutely no regard for the people that our government should be committed to helping and empowering”.

According to a performance breakdown on the GOV.UK website, 366,000 people registered to vote on Monday, compared to 109,000 the day before.

Some 150,000 of those registration applications were from people under the age of 25, while 114,000 were from those aged 25 to 34.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/general-election-jeremy-corbyn-stormzy-voter-registration-grime-a9218086.html

John Crace ✔
@JohnJCrace

Sajid has just said no one has ever accused leadership of Tory party if Islamophobia. Er.... Boris and letterboxes

Josh Halliday ✔
@JoshHalliday

NEW Sajid Javid refuses SEVEN times to say whether he would use the terms 'bank-robber' and 'letterboxes' to describe hijab-wearing women as Boris Johnson did in a Telegraph article.