UK Politics
Best of X Today: Piddington’s “Cannot Eliminate All Risk”, Yusuf v Philp and Rotherham’s Runaway Rapists Jailed
Ministers admit the Piddington camp “cannot eliminate all risk”, Yusuf and Philp clash in the village, and two runaway rapists are jailed: Friday on X.
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Should the Piddington asylum camp go ahead now the government admits it cannot eliminate all risk?
News | By Matt, Editor
The government’s own planning decision on the Piddington asylum camp says the safety measures “cannot eliminate all risk” to the village. GB News and The Telegraph reported that line this afternoon, on a day when Piddington dominated political X.
Here are the posts that drove Friday, and what the record shows behind each one. Thursday’s round-up is here.
1. Piddington: the risk they admit
Kemi Badenoch’s post first thing this morning called the approval “a betrayal of the women of Piddington”, and it was one of the most-liked political posts of the day. By the afternoon the planning document itself was doing the rounds. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner’s department says it weighed “concerns about the safety of women and girls, perceptions of safety, community cohesion, policing demand and protest activity”. The site will have 24-hour staff, CCTV and patrols, but the men will be free to come and go, and officials wrote: “While these measures cannot eliminate all risk, officials consider that they would materially reduce security and community safety risks” (GB News; The Telegraph reports the same admission). The document also records local police bosses’ concerns about an “increased risk of crime” and “significant additional policing costs”.
Have your sayTap to commentThe permission is for up to 1,256 single men at the former MOD Bicester site, next to a village of about 350 (BBC; The Telegraph). GB News reports around 20 local women have signed up for self-defence classes. The Home Office still says a final decision to go ahead has not been taken. Earlier today we reported that the decision report logged 3,177 representations against it and one in support.
2. Yusuf v Philp in the village
The clip of the day. Reform’s Zia Yusuf and the Tories’ Chris Philp ended up at the same press conference in Piddington and turned on each other over who broke the borders. Philp told Yusuf to “read the room” and called him “disingenuous”; Yusuf kept asking whether the Tories would apologise (Sky News). GB News’s clip passed half a million views. It didn’t stop there. Badenoch said Philp “won that exchange” and that the “fake” shadow home secretary, meaning Yusuf, “made an arse of himself”. Nigel Farage hit back that “Chris Philp has a lot to apologise for”. Villagers who wanted the camp stopped got a row about the Tories’ record instead.
3. Rotherham: jailed, but nobody knows where they are
Zia Yusuf’s morning post about two Rotherham grooming gang rapists who vanished on bail passed 3,000 likes, and by lunchtime they had been sentenced without being there. At Sheffield Crown Court, Judge Sarah Wright jailed Mudasar Hussain for 23 years for 12 counts of rape and Kamir Ifzal Khan for 25 years for two rapes and trafficking for sexual exploitation, both in their absence (The Independent; Sheffield Star). Hussain had handed in his passport and still disappeared. Khan, on unconditional bail, flew to Qatar on 22 September, and the NCA thinks he went on to Pakistan. The judge said the victim, groomed as a young teenager, had finally “been heard”. Our full story on how they got away is here.
4. Badenoch: “Labour are the Welfare Party”
Badenoch’s six-word put-down sat on top of the Daily Mail’s story about Stephen Nott, a North Shields burglar with 30 convictions who is eligible for about £3,000 a month in Universal Credit plus £750 a month in PIP, and who told the Mail he gives £100 a month to Labour (Daily Mail). That claim is his, not Labour’s. The Mail’s post was seen more than 175,000 times. We had the court case and the numbers this afternoon, the same day Labour’s tax rises reach almost £85bn a year by 2031-32 on the Mail’s count of OBR figures.
5. Braverman: why she left the Tories
Suella Braverman, now on Reform’s front bench, shared the GB News clip of the Piddington row with a sharp line: “This is exactly why I left the Conservative Party.” She says that when she fought to leave the European Convention on Human Rights to stop the boats, “people like Kemi, Rishi and the cabinet objected”. That is her account. The timing stung, because on the same day David Cameron told Bloomberg that Badenoch, whom he advises, is right that Britain should leave the ECHR: “whatever it takes, we’ve got to fix this problem” (Guido Fawkes). Also today, a Lords committee heard Burnham’s reset might generate at least 780 EU laws a year.
6. Lowe: 28% in Huncoat
The most-liked post we found from any party leader today was about a council by-election. In Hyndburn’s Huncoat ward, Labour held on with 318 votes to Reform’s 275, a majority of 43, with Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain on 257 (27.8%) with a first-time candidate, and the Conservatives on 74 (Lancashire Telegraph; BBC). The winning candidate had been suspended by Labour during the campaign over old social media posts. Lowe called the result “astonishing”. Reform’s line was that a vote for anyone else in Lancashire “is a vote to keep Labour”. Turnout was 26.2%.
Our view
Ministers have now written down, in their own decision, that their safety measures “cannot eliminate all risk” to a village of 350. They approved it anyway, and the women of Piddington are booking self-defence classes. Meanwhile the two main opposition parties spent the afternoon arguing about whose fault it was.
Two rapists given bail walked off before their trial, and one boarded a plane. A burglar on about £45,000 a year in benefits says it’s “not that much”. Earlier today we also covered HMRC scrapping the four-year limit on dead taxpayers’ affairs, water bosses still being paid to stay and Holyrood voting 73 to 38 for temporary-visa candidates. People aren’t angry because of X. X is just where they say it.
Should the Piddington asylum camp go ahead now the government admits it cannot eliminate all risk? Vote in our poll below.
Sources
- GB News, 13 November (planning decision wording); BBC, 12 November; The Telegraph, 12 November
- Sky News politics live, 13 November (Yusuf v Philp clip)
- The Independent, 13 November; Sheffield Star, 13 November (sentencing)
- Daily Mail, 12 November (Stephen Nott)
- Guido Fawkes, 13 November (Cameron, Bloomberg interview)
- Lancashire Telegraph; BBC (Huncoat result)
- Posts on X by Kemi Badenoch, GB News, Zia Yusuf, Suella Braverman and Rupert Lowe (embedded above); posts by Nigel Farage and Chris Philp quoted
- Main image: UK Home Office (CC BY 4.0); Steve Daniels / geograph (CC BY-SA 2.0); via Wikimedia Commons, cropped and combined
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