*UNDER CONSTRUCTION* Signal-boosting #ToryBritain truths to the nation. Helping YOU be part of the fightback.
From The Independent: Conservative leadership contender Jeremy Hunt would boost defence spending by £15bn – a massive 25 per cent increase to military budgets – if he makes it into 10 Downing Street.
From The Independent: Two-thirds of Conservative Party members believe parts of Britain operate under sharia law, a new poll has shown amid a mounting Islamophobia scandal.
From ITV News: Jeremy Hunt has said Britain would consider joining the US in military action against Iran.
Tensions between the US and Iran have increased in recent weeks after the downing of an American drone and claims by Washington that Tehran was behind attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.
The Foreign Secretary’s comments came as his department minister Andrew Murrison held talks with the Tehran government at the weekend where he said he was “clear” about the UK’s concerns over Iran’s activities.
While campaigning in Scotland for the Tory leadership Mr Hunt said Britain would weigh up military intervention in Iran on a “case-by-case basis”.
“We will stand by the United States as our strongest ally but of course we have to consider any requests for military support on a case-by-case basis,” he told the Daily Mail.
From the Guardian: Austerity, inequality and job insecurity are bad for mental health and governments should counteract them if they want to face up to the rising prevalence of mental illness, the UN’s top health envoy has said.
Dr Dainius Pūras said measures to address inequality and discrimination would be far more effective in combatting mental illness than the emphasis over the past 30 years on medication and therapy.
“This would be the best ‘vaccine’ against mental illness and would be much better than the excessive use of psychotropic medication which is happening,” said Pūras, who as the UN’s special rapporteur on health reports back to the UN human rights council in Geneva.
He said that since the 2008 financial crisis, policies that accentuated division, inequality and social isolation have been bad for mental equilibrium. “Austerity measures did not contribute positively to good mental health,” he said. “People feel insecure, they feel anxious, they do not enjoy good emotional wellbeing because of this insecurity situation.”
From iNews: Staff working for Network Rail have been told to fly around the UK for business when it works out cheaper than taking the train.
From The Guardian: Neighbours of the man who overheard a row between Boris Johnson and his partner Carrie Symonds, prompting a late-night police callout, have corroborated his account of the incident with one saying the “tear-up” led him to believe that someone was being murdered.
From The Independent: Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have been warned they risk making the Conservatives unelectable if they take Britain out of the European Union without a deal.
From The Independent: Ben Wallace, minister and key Boris Johnson ally, dismissed the police being called to investigate a screaming row at his home as a “non-story” and attacked the “lefty neighbours” who alerted them.
From the Independent: Bruised and still shaken, Janet Barker is incredulous at the violent reaction of the Foreign Office minister Mark Field to her peaceful protest with fellow Greenpeace activists at the chancellor’s Mansion House speech.
From the Morning Star: Over 1,000 pensioners took to the streets across Britain on Friday to protest against the withdrawal of TV licence funding for over-75s.
From The Independent: The Bank of England governor has rubbished a key Boris Johnson claim for avoiding economic damage after a no-deal Brexit, in a severe blow to the Tory leadership favourite.
From The Guardian: Police were called to the home of Boris Johnson and his partner, Carrie Symonds, in the early hours of Friday morning after neighbours heard a loud altercation involving screaming, shouting and banging.
The argument could be heard outside the property where the potential future prime minister is living with Symonds, a former Conservative Party head of press.
The neighbour said they recorded the altercation from inside their flat out of concern for Symonds. On the recording, heard by the Guardian, Johnson can be heard refusing to leave the flat and telling Symonds to “get off my fucking laptop” before there is a loud crashing noise.
Symonds is heard saying Johnson had ruined a sofa with red wine: “You just don’t care for anything because you’re spoilt. You have no care for money or anything.”
From The Independent: Expenses cheat MP Chris Davies has been stripped of his seat, plunging the next Conservative leader into a perilous by-election. A recall petition easily cleared the 10 per cent threshold for triggering a by-election, with 19 per cent of local voters – a total of 10,005 people – demanding Mr Davies be removed.
From The Independent: Conservative MP Mark Field has been filmed manhandling a climate change protester who interrupted Philip Hammond‘s Mansion House speech.
From The Guardian Letters section: “It seems that these characters are more concerned with demonstrating good spirit, a stiff upper lip and carry-on attitude than creating jobs, security and wellbeing for the citizens of the UK. They have never truly grown up. Life is a game and the person who dies with the most wealth and power has won. It is going to be a long and difficult journey for the UK out of this mess. There is a need for a fundamental change of culture in UK politics.” – TheDanishVIking
From The Guardian: Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt will battle it out to become Britain’s next prime minister after a day of drama at Westminster that saw Johnson’s team accused of conniving to knock his bitter rival Michael Gove out of the race.
The environment secretary drew narrowly ahead of Hunt in the fourth round of voting among Tory MPs on Thursday, which saw Sajid Javid knocked out.
But when the results of the fifth and final round were announced at 6pm, Hunt had narrowly beaten Gove, by 77 votes to 75.
Suspicions were raised by the fact that Johnson’s vote increased by just three MPs between the rounds, from 157 to 160 – despite the fact that at least four Javid supporters had publicly declared their backing for Johnson, during a nail-biting afternoon of lobbying in Westminster’s wood-panelled corridors.
From Disability News Service: Disabled activists were locked inside the Department for Work and Pensions’ headquarters by security guards as they delivered thousands of copies of a newspaper that feature “deliberately misleading” DWP adverts which “whitewash” the truth about universal credit.
From The Guardian: British arms sales to Saudi Arabia have been ruled unlawful by the court of appeal in a critical judgment that also accused ministers of ignoring whether airstrikes that killed civilians in Yemen broke humanitarian law.
Three judges said that a decision made in secret in 2016 had led them to decide that Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt and Liam Fox and other key ministers had illegally signed off on arms exports without properly assessing the risk to civilians.
Sir Terence Etherton, the master of the rolls, said on Tuesday that ministers had “made no concluded assessments of whether the Saudi-led coalition had committed violations of international humanitarian law in the past, during the Yemen conflict, and made no attempt to do so”.
From The Independent: Boris Johnson today took another step closer to 10 Downing Street with an emphatic victory in the fourth round of MPs’ votes at Westminster, as home secretary Sajid Javid was eliminated from the contest.
From LBC: A GP has called Jeremy Hunt‘s LBC phone-in to urge him to pull out of the Conservative Leadership Contest as no-one who worked in the NHS would ever vote for him.
Mr Hunt was Health Secretary for nearly six years and oversaw a number of Junior Doctors strikes.
Naomi, a GP from Hendon, labelled him the “most hated Health Secretary” she could remember and insisted he would never get the support of medical workers.