💰 Since the VAT raid was announced, we've always said that it is those scrimp and save who are most likely to be impacted - the millionaires so many on the left want to target will just suck up the costs. Now our analysis of 1,100 schools shows this has indeed played out. Schools with the cheapest fees have seen dramatic drops in entry, particularly at younger years. This tax isn't removing inequality gaps - it's entrenching them. Mine and @NoahEastwood9 analysis here: telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/ne…

Within hours of being announced as the nominee to be the U.S. Director of the CIA, I received a hand-delivered message on MI6 stationery congratulating me on my nomination. It was signed simply "C" in green ink. Legendary. I shared it with my son and even he thought I was now cool! More than that, this note, from Sir Alex Younger, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service of the United Kingdom, confirmed what I already believed: the work that the CIA and MI6 did together mattered, that the partnership was critical, and that two leaders focused on the mission could save lives and provide tools for our nations to deter our adversaries. Alex's passing this week brought back so many memories of our time in service together. He flew to Langley to see me the day I was confirmed. We brought our two senior teams together in the UK to plan and coordinate and build in the first several weeks of my time on duty: making clear to them all that this relationship was more than special - it was critical for the security of our two countries. Alex was a remarkable intelligence partner. When we needed help, it wasn't "let me see;" it was "this matters to you and America we'll get it done." And he and his team always did. I think he knew we would do the same for him and his team and his nation. Many Americans are alive today because of his leadership of MI6, I never knew how to thank him enough. Alex became a friend as well. In the years since we both left office we would see each other from time to time. He was always so kind, so thoughtful, so smart. His deep love of his country was surpassed only by his deep commitment and love of his family. Decent and proper - and funny as hell - Alex was "C." As espionage requires, he was quiet, not attention seeking. He knew what evil was and he was ruthless in his efforts to crush it with every legal tool at his command. And he knew who his friends were and committed himself to supporting them. I miss Sir Alex Younger. He was a role model for me and a man with whom every minute I spent was valued and savored. Blessings to you Alex. Praying for you and for your family. Well done and may you rest in peace in His hands.

Here is our Education Secretary, the minister in charge of setting strategic direction, making key policy decisions, and being accountable to Parliament for everything the DfE does. It is worth remembering The DfE has a duty to ALL children in our country. Here she is proudly displaying her personal vindictiveness toward the 500,000 independently educated children. "State school proud". She proclaims, whilst promoting a group which pushes the stereotypes and prejudice against independent schools - referring to them as old boys clubs and pushing the narrative that only state school pupils are working class. The prejudice and vindictiveness of @bphillipsonMP on full display.

The real inequality in the education system is not between state schools and independent schools, but between the best and worst state schools. The best tenth of state schools achieve a 90.4% pass rate; the worst tenth achieve just 8.1%. [Source: explore-education-statistics…]

A Green Party candidate, Antoinette Fernandez, pushing Britain to pay trillions of pounds in slavery reparations is descended from a Nigerian royal family that traded slaves. 😂🤡 dailymail.com/news/article-1…

Thankyou @Katie_Lam_MP for describing so clearly the way that the executive leadership of @UKLabour is hardwired to ensure the continued “persecution by process” of our country’s soldiers.

Lord Hermer is Keir Starmer's most senior legal adviser. He worked with a convicted fraudster to drag British soldiers through the courts over false claims. Now, he wants to let activist lawyers do the same to veterans who served in Northern Ireland.

Green Party conference going well.

Shameless hypocrite. Absolutely shameless.

Lord Hermer went after our soldiers despite warnings murder allegations were false. I referred him to the Bar Standards Board. They've confirmed they're assessing the case, and Lord Hermer could face formal disciplinary proceedings. He should be fired. x.com/NJ_Timothy/status/2047…

Jews were just stabbed in London and this morning a Green Party candidate is telling ppl on the doorstep that Israel shouldn’t exist. Is Philip Notley representing your party policy of annihilating the only Jewish State @TheGreenParty?

Yesterday's edition of the Financial Times carried a lengthy interview with Lord Hermer KC, the present Attorney General of the United Kingdom. If you haven't seen it: oh, boy. The interview was part of the FT's fluffy "Lunch With" feature, a sympathetic profile format whose previous subjects have included most of the 'grown ups in the room' of the British establishment over the last 40 years. The Hermer instalment was, by the FT's own pitch, an opportunity for the Attorney General to "open up about the Keir Starmer people don't see," and to explain the merits of the Chagos deal. The piece appeared. The comments section opened. And in those comments, you could see a country on the precipice of major change. The Financial Times's readership is not, to put it as politely as the situation will allow, known for its raucous lower-class anger. It is the readership of senior partners at City firms, central bankers, retired civil servants, retired ambassadors, and the broader metropolitan managerial caste of Britain at the fatter end. It is, on almost every available political question, the most reliably establishment-tarian readership of any newspaper in the United Kingdom. The comments, before they were closed, were so brutal that readers were openly asking for the article to be withdrawn and threatening to cancel their subscriptions in numbers the FT had not seen before. When the FT readership turns on a Labour Attorney General, the Labour Attorney General has a problem. If you were wondering what caused such an outbreak of fury from the terribly polite class, here's a summary of the last three decades of Lord Hermer's career. Lord Hermer, before he became Attorney General, made his name and his living as a human-rights barrister whose principal practice, for a meaningful slice of the relevant period, was the prosecution of civil claims against the British state. Suing his own country. He got particular mileage out of pursuing claims against the British armed forces, on behalf of foreign nationals alleging mistreatment by British servicemen and women in the field. The most notorious of these matters is the Al-Sweady litigation. Lord Hermer was lead counsel for eight Iraqi claimants who alleged that British soldiers had murdered, mutilated, and tortured Iraqi prisoners after the Battle of Danny Boy in May 2004. The claims occupied the Ministry of Defence, the Royal Military Police, and a public inquiry for the better part of a decade. The inquiry, at its conclusion, found the claims to be "wholly without foundation," and the result of "deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility." On 22 April this year, the Daily Telegraph published more than 25,000 pages of contemporaneous emails and legal documents from Lord Hermer's chambers' handling of the Al-Sweady litigation. Among the documents was an internal communication in his own writing, advising on how to "get the big story out there" and noting the need for "wriggle room if the killings did not in fact happen." Today's edition of the same paper carries further documents from the same info dump showing Hermer privately criticising serving British soldiers, in correspondence with his legal team, while praising publicly the Iraqi lawyers whose own clients the inquiry had found to be lying. Hermer has, rightfully, been formally referred Lord Hermer to the Bar Standards Board for serious professional misconduct. Lord Glasman, a Labour peer who knows him personally, has called him "an arrogant...fool." Boris Johnson, the former Prime Minister, has said directly that Hermer "aided false war crimes claims against British troops." (Fancy losing a moral high-ground to Boris Johnson...) This is the Attorney General. He is the chief legal officer of the Crown. The man whose entire constitutional function is to ensure that the legal interests of the British state are properly defended in the highest forums is a man who, before assuming the post, made his career attacking the British state on behalf of liars, liars whose lies were specifically calibrated to destroy the reputations of British servicemen and women. There is a word for this kind of legal practice when it is done at scale and in a particular direction. The word is "lawfare." The deployment of judicial mechanisms as a substitute for politics by other means. The systematic use of human-rights frameworks, judicial review, and aggressive litigation to constrain the actions of one's own state, to attack one's own armed forces, and to advance a worldview that the elected institutions of one's country have repeatedly declined to advance through the ballot box. It is, at its outer edge, a form of treason that wears a wig. And Hermer, who practices it, is an enemy of our state.

Enemy of the state.

.@Keir_Starmer @10DowningStreet How can Hermer retain his post as Attorney-General, when he so deliberately targeted our soldiers and has not apologised when proven to be wrong. @AlistairCarns @DanJarvisMBE You are both good men: you know what to do.

“… although barristers are required to represent all sorts, they are not required to take any pleasure in their cases. Yet in 2008, Hermer wrote that “these Iraqi cases are a good reminder of why I wanted to be a lawyer” …

Dear Donald John Trump & Javier Gerardo Milei you can kiss our lilli white àrse .. stay away from the Falklands

Attorney general Lord Hermer must go. His involvement in the Al-Sweady scandal, when British troops faced false allegations of torture and murder, can’t be allowed to pass. This was a shameful episode, and Hermer was front and centre, says Luke Gittos buff.ly/bX71pkM

This dark period of British military history has left so many veterans - and current-serving personnel - furious. The armed forces are asked to do extraordinary tasks on behalf of the nation. It’s an old quote but so pertinent: “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” Lawfare cases and unfounded legal attacks against military personnel are eroding this ability. As several former defence chiefs and SAS commanders have told me, it’s creating a threat to Britain’s national security, with special forces troops now resigning in significant numbers.

Starmer and Hermer Built the Machine Together. Now They Run the Country. In 2007, two barristers worked without pay on a case that would change the legal landscape for every British soldier who had served in Iraq. Keir Starmer and Richard Hermer appeared as interveners in Al-Skeini v Secretary of State for Defence, representing eleven human rights organisations including Amnesty International and Liberty. Their argument was that the European Convention on Human Rights should apply to British forces operating overseas. They lost in the Court of Appeal. They appealed to the House of Lords. They lost again. But the legal principle they had argued for eventually prevailed at the European Court of Human Rights, and what followed was the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, sixty million pounds of public money, seven years of investigations, and not a single prosecution. The soldiers it pursued were, in almost every case, found to have acted properly. Starmer believed in it enough to do it for free. Johnny Mercer, who spent years dismantling the consequences, put it plainly. Starmer had insisted on doing it for free. That is not the behaviour of a barrister following the cab rank rule. That is ideological conviction. Hermer's conviction, it subsequently emerged, was not without financial reward once the machinery was running. Documents obtained by the Daily Telegraph show that having helped establish the legal architecture pro bono in 2007, Hermer then used that same architecture to pursue Iraqi claims against British soldiers at £450 an hour, fifty percent higher than the only other KC involved in the group action. He set his success fee at the maximum level permitted, one hundred percent of his normal rate. The MoD's own lawyers challenged his fees as excessive and said he was too junior to command that rate. He is thought to have earned around six figures from the broader group action. The claims he was pursuing were eventually ruled to be deliberate lies. The soldiers were fully exonerated. Sergeant Richie Catterall had been cleared of wrongdoing by the British Army in 2003 for a fatal shooting in Basra. The Army found he had acted in self-defence. The legal precedent Starmer and Hermer established triggered two further investigations spanning thirteen years. A 2016 inquiry again concluded he had acted in self-defence and found a false document had been created to shift blame onto the military. Catterall was finally exonerated. He told the Telegraph he was gutted that Starmer had helped bring the case against him and that the Prime Minister owed him an apology. Starmer is now Prime Minister. Hermer is now Attorney General, appointed by Starmer personally, elevated to the House of Lords specifically for the role, chosen over Emily Thornberry who had held the shadow brief. The former head of the Army, General Sir Peter Wall, has said Hermer's role in the Al-Sweady claims was tantamount to treason. A former commanding officer of 22 SAS said Hermer must step down. The Bar Standards Board has been asked to investigate. Nigel Farage has reported Hermer to the House of Lords standards commissioner. The Troubles Bill that is now subjecting Northern Ireland veterans to the same lawfare is not an accident of policy. The process that drove Fred, a special forces veteran, to attempt suicide after his medical records were handed to terrorists' families was not an oversight. The machine that cost sixty million pounds and produced no prosecutions was not a mistake. Starmer and Hermer built it together, one working for free out of conviction, the other later working for maximum fees out of the same conviction, and now both occupy the positions from which they can ensure the machine keeps running.

And now Northern Ireland. Veterans who served to keep the peace, decades ago, face the same prospect of reinvestigation, prosecution, a process designed never to end. Our Legacy Act tried to close that door. This Government, under its current Attorney General, is reopening it. 7/9