UK Politics
Best of X Today: Lowe Slams the SNP’s 11am Post, Yusuf’s “903” and the Five-Job Civil Servant
Lowe and Badenoch go after the SNP’s 11am Remembrance post, Yusuf’s 903 boat arrivals and a five-job civil servant: Monday’s top posts on X, checked.
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Should the Scottish Government apologise for its 11am post?
News | By Matt, Editor
At 11am on Sunday most of the country stood still for two minutes. The Scottish Government’s official X account used the moment to wish Sikhs a happy Bandi Chhor Divas. By Monday morning that post had become the biggest political row on X, and Rupert Lowe’s take on it had more than 21,000 likes.
Here are seven posts from the right that got the loudest reaction on Monday, and what the record actually shows behind each one. Sunday’s round-up is here.
1. Lowe: “utter disgust with the SNP”
Lowe’s point was simple. The Scottish Government account posted “Happy Bandi Chhor Divas” at 11.00am on Remembrance Sunday, and he said it posted “absolutely nothing” about Remembrance all day. The timing is right: the post went out at 11.00am on the dot. The “nothing” is close but not quite. The account never wrote a Remembrance post of its own, though it did repost the First Minister’s account showing John Swinney laying a wreath in Edinburgh (The National). It also found time for a post about a minister at the COP31 climate summit (The Spectator).
Have your sayTap to comment2. Badenoch: “cringe and disrespectful”
Kemi Badenoch piled in behind her shadow Scottish secretary, Harriet Cross, who had written to Swinney asking whose decision it was (The Scotsman). Cross pointed out that 83,000 Sikhs died fighting in the two World Wars, and asked why the account couldn’t have marked both. Swinney’s reply was furious. He called her claim “categorically false”, said she was “knowingly perpetrating a falsehood” and told her to apologise to veterans (Scottish Daily Express). Badenoch called that “hysterical bluster and weasel words”. Cross says her question still hasn’t been answered: why 11am?
3. Yusuf: 903 in three days
Zia Yusuf’s number checks out. Home Office figures show 161 people crossed the Channel in small boats on Friday, 364 on Saturday and 378 on Sunday (GOV.UK; The Spectator). That’s 903 in three days, after four days with none at all. Yusuf says Labour has left the country praying for bad weather to stop the boats. The word “invaded” is his.
4. Yusuf: Wethersfield is staying
His earlier post was about where many of them end up. The Home Office has applied to keep using the former RAF Wethersfield base in Essex beyond April 2027, when its permission runs out (BBC), and plans to raise its standard capacity from 800 to 1,245 (Braintree District Council). Yusuf’s crime figures come from a GB News analysis of Essex Police data: about 170 offences mapped to the site since June 2023, 97 of them violent or sexual (GB News). In January a resident admitted sexually assaulting a medical worker. The Home Office says there is “no evidence” of more crime in the surrounding area.
5. Tice: “Reform lead, Labour listen”
Richard Tice was up early claiming a win on net zero. Ministers are expected to sign off a cut to the electric car target on Wednesday, at a meeting chaired by Louise Haigh. The mandate says 80% of new cars sold must be electric by 2030, and options of 70%, 60% and 50% are on the table (The Telegraph). Andy Burnham said on Monday that “no decision has been made”. Separately, gas boilers will be allowed in some new homes after all, in “exceptional circumstances” (The Telegraph). Whether Reform deserves the credit is Tice’s claim. Labour MPs are already unhappy about the EV climbdown (The Guardian).
6. Goodwin: the civil servant with five jobs
This one sounds made up. Kashim Chowdhury, 56, was found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of nine counts of fraud on Monday. In spring 2023 he held five full-time government jobs at once, working from home, and was contracted for 183 hours a week, more hours than a week has (CPS). He took home about £350,000 over three years from eight public sector roles (BBC). The Cabinet Office says its fraud checks have caught 301 “polygamous workers” since 2016 (The Telegraph). He will be sentenced later. On GB News, Matt Goodwin called it “a symbol of everything that is wrong with our civil service”. Our own story on empty desks at DWP headquarters is here.
7. Guido: the red lines were a ploy
Guido Fawkes picked out a Guardian piece by Labour MP Chris Ward, who advised Keir Starmer on the party’s Brexit red lines. Ward wrote that ruling out rejoining, the single market, the customs union and free movement was “designed precisely to close down the debate”, and that by the next election “those red lines will have served their purpose” (Guido Fawkes). Guido asked the obvious question: so is Burnham reopening it? Read our report on the leaked EU summit draft on fishing.
Our view
This section is opinion.
Nobody is saying the Scottish Government can’t mark a Sikh festival. Badenoch said as much, and Cross reminded everyone how many Sikh soldiers died for this country. The question is why the one post that went out at 11am was the one that wasn’t about the war dead. Swinney could have said “we got the timing wrong” and it would have been over by lunch. He accused a Tory MP of knowingly peddling a falsehood instead. On the same day we reported that injured veterans face 17-month waits for a war pension decision, that is a bad look.
The rest of Monday wasn’t much better for the government. Nine hundred boat arrivals in three days and a camp kept open longer. A climbdown on EV targets that Labour won’t admit is coming. A civil servant contracted for 183 hours a week, and it took a data check to catch him. And a Labour MP saying out loud that the Brexit red lines were only ever there to win an election. Meanwhile foreign criminals still aren’t being sent home, and Burnham has a US consultancy helping write his plan.
Should the Scottish Government apologise for its 11am post? Vote in our poll below.
Sources
- The Scotsman; The National; Scottish Daily Express; The Spectator; Scottish Government on X
- GOV.UK small boat data; The Spectator; BBC; Braintree District Council; GB News
- The Telegraph; The Telegraph; The Guardian; Crown Prosecution Service; BBC; The Telegraph; Guido Fawkes
- Posts on X by Rupert Lowe, Kemi Badenoch, Zia Yusuf, Richard Tice, GB News and Guido Fawkes (embedded above)
- Main image: ©House of Commons / Laurie Noble, CC BY 3.0; Thomas Roessler, CC BY-SA 3.0; via Wikimedia Commons, cropped and combined
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