Mark Menzies strongly disputes the allegations that were put to him by the Times. Photograph: Richard Townshend/UK Parliament/PA
A Conservative MP has lost the party whip after an investigation was launched following claims that he misused campaign funds.
Mark Menzies, 52, also faced allegations that he made a late-night call to a 78-year-old aide asking for help because he had been locked up by “bad people” demanding thousands of pounds for his release.
The Fylde MP disputes the allegations reported by the Times, but the Conservative party is looking into the claims and taking them seriously. A spokesperson for the chief whip, Simon Hart, said on Wednesday night: “Following a call with the chief whip, Mark Menzies has agreed to relinquish the Conservative whip, pending the outcome of an investigation.”
According to the newspaper, £14,000 given by donors for use in Tory campaign activities was transferred to Menzies’ personal bank accounts and used for private medical expenses.
The MP, who is one of Rishi Sunak’s trade envoys, is also said to have called his 78-year-old former campaign manager at 3.15am in December, claiming he was locked in a flat and needed £5,000 as a matter of “life and death”.
Right-wing Channel GB News, which has made a mockery of broadcasting rules, has had over 20,000 complaints made about it since its launch in 2021.
The shocking figures were revealed after a freedom of information request from the i, which found that in 2021, the year GB News was launched, Ofcom received 3,481 complaints – an average of around 290 complaints a month.
Between 2021 and until 12 March 2024, GB News has had a total of 21,671 complaints made against it.
The paper reports that overall, ‘complaints about news broadcasters have soared almost seven-fold since the launch of GB News and Talk TV’.
GB news is no stranger to controversy and has had a number of high profile incidents which have resulted in complaints being made against the channel, having platformed bigoted and racist views and conspiracy theories.
When England’s water industry was privatised in 1989, we were told it would lead to ‘shareholder democracy’. Instead, what we’ve seen is a monopoly which has resulted in consumer bills soaring, while infrastructure deteriorates and the debt of water companies soars.
Since the 1990s, investment by the 10 largest water and sewage companies has fallen by 15%. Now new research published by the Financial Times has found that 16 water monopolies have paid out a total of £78bn in dividends in the 32 years since privatisation.
The paper states: “The £78bn payout is nearly half the £190bn the companies spent in the same three decades on infrastructure. The utilities meanwhile chalked up more than £64bn net in debt over the same period, despite being sold at privatisation with no borrowings.”
The FT also finds that water companies in England and Wales paid £2.5bn in dividends and added £8.2bn to their net debt in the two financial years since 2021.
David Cameron stumbles while defending Israel on Sky News
The West jumps through rhetorical hoops to defend Israel and condemn Iran after Iranians respond to attack on diplomatic premises in Syria
It is difficult to dispute the major escalation that Israel undertook on April 1 when it bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus, assassinating a top Iranian Commander. This was a major escalation that the West—namely, the US, UK, and France—failed to condemn during an April 2 UN Security Council meeting.
On April 13, after multiple warnings, Iran retaliated—becoming the first country to directly attack Israel in 33 years—launching “extensive” missiles and drone strikes at military targets within historic Palestine.
The attack did not result in any casualties. No hospital attacks, no mass graves, no thousands of women and children dead. Iran showed no intention of creating a mass casualty event, and predictably, many of the dozens of Iranian missiles were intercepted.
Although to some, this is a sign of Iranian weakness, not restraint. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes, Iran’s attack “showed the whole world that Israel and its Western allies have far superior anti-missile capabilities than Iran has missile capabilities.” Friedman also claims that Iran revealed “that President Biden was able to predict almost the exact hour of attack over a day in advance,” citing that fact that Biden warned Iran not to attack the day prior. Friedman does not take into account that Iranian officials had been openly stating their intention to retaliate against the Zionist state since the embassy attack in Damascus.
This is a point of view seemingly shared by Biden, who said shortly after the attack that “Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks—sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel.” It is unclear how the attacks were unprecedented, however, given that following the embassy attack, Iran’s Ambassador to Damascus Hossein Akbari, whose residence was bombed in the strike, said, “We will give a decisive response to this action.”
It is international relations common sense that the bombing of an embassy is a major escalation. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, following Iran’s striking of Israel, that “the principle of inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and personnel must be respected in all cases in accordance with international law, as I stated when condemning the 1 April attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.”
David Cameron, British Foreign Secretary, went on Sky News to denounce the Iranian attack on Israel, but was thrown off guard when a journalist asked, “What would Britain do if a hostile nation flattened one of our consulates?”
Cameron stuttered through his response, “Well, we would take very strong action.”
David Cameron: Iran attacking Israel was "reckless"
Journalist: What would Britain do if our consulate was flattened?
David Cameron: Well, w-we would take very strong action…
Israel has been attacking both Iran and Iranian targets for years. On January 20, Israel killed five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Damascus. At the time, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian claimed that, “although the Zionist enemy has destroyed Gaza on a large scale and martyred tens of thousands of people, it has not achieved any of its goals, so it is trying to make up for its defeat by resorting to blind terrorism.”
In February of last year, Iran accused Israel of attacking a military workshop complex in Isfahan. Iranian oil tankers carrying oil to Lebanon through Syria were attacked late on November 8. According to IRIB, Iran’s state news source, the attacks were carried out using “Israeli drones.” Israel has openly boasted about committing covert operations against Iran, including the assassination of a nuclear scientist in 2020.
Biden reiterated the US’s “ironclad” support for Israel, promising a Group of Seven (G7) diplomatic response. However, following a similar pattern of recent Biden administration responses to Israeli aggression, a Biden official leaked to Axios that the president privately warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US would not support a counterattack against Iran. Biden has severaltimesexpressed private frustrations with Netanyahu as the genocide against Gaza continues to unfold, but continues to send massive weapons shipments to Israel and provide unconditional support in public.
Israel’s war cabinet is now meeting to discuss potential responses. According to a source communicating with NBC News, an Israeli counterattack could be imminent.
Several experts fear the UK government’s new definition of extremism targets Muslim groups [File: Hannah McKay/Reuters]
Experts say a new definition disproportionately targets groups that advocate for Muslims’ civil rights.
The United Kingdom government’s new definition of “extremism”, touted as a bid to tackle rising Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in the aftermath of Israel’s war on Gaza, has ignited fierce debate across the political spectrum, with critics on all sides claiming it will erode freedom of speech and civil liberties.
Communities Secretary Michael Gove last month named several UK-based far-right organisations, including the neo-Nazi British National Socialist Movement and the Patriotic Alternative, which will be held “to account to assess if they meet our definition of extremism and [we] will take action as appropriate”.
Amid heightened domestic tensions since October 7, he also named several prominent groups advocating for Muslims’ civil rights, including the Muslim Council of Britain, the Muslim Association of Britain – which he described as the UK affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, Cage, and Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND).
“The fact that there are immediately Muslim organisations who are labelled as [‘extremist’] tells you exactly what this piece of legislation is intended for,” said Imran Khan QC, the British lawyer who rose to prominence representing the family of Stephen Lawrence, whose racist murder in 1993 exposed institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police.
Organisations deemed “extreme” under the new definition will be blacklisted, made ineligible for government funding, and they will be banned from meeting with ministers.
