Politics

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The on-line voting registration system had crashed, EU citizens had wrongly been given polling cards and both sides have predicted the world will end on the 23rd June depending on which box you tick. So unsurprisingly the EU referendum led today’s session. At one stage Cameron pointed across the chamber and said: “look, the Lib Dems, Greens, and trade unions are all on the same side.” A Brexiteer axis of evil if ever I seen...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor John Hayes, a Tory and “proud union member,” is a rare beast in the corridors of Westminster. Unlike many in his party he believes in the need for strong unions and he accepted Labour alterations to the Investigatory Powers Bill. This means that the Government have now canned a law which would have allowed intelligence agencies and the police to spy and monitor union activity. The changes were agreed after Andy Burnham, Shadow Home Secretary,...

The former and current Mayors of London are set to lock horns at Wembley in front of 6,000 people in a live debate on Europe. Labour Mayor Sadiq Kahn will face the former Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson just hours before the country goes to the polls. According to The Standard, the debate will see each side of the argument advocated by three speakers at the event on June 21, to be broadcast on BBC One at 8pm. It will be...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Ex-PM John Major, wasn't known for his strong personality when leading the country, but he was very animated when he discussed the Brexit Campaign on Andrew Marr's BBC show. Major, who was born in Brixton and whose father was in the circus, called Boris Johnson a "court jester." He also told Marr "All my life people have regarded me as being guilty of understatement. I am angry at how the British people are being misled."...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg was booed and hissed at during a Q & A with the Labour leader. Corbyn raised his hands to calm the activists, but did not attack them for their hostile reaction. Many Corbyn supporters see Kuenssberg as "biased" and this comes just a day after a Vide documentary on Corbyn said the BBC was "obsessed" with attempting to discredit him and ruin his leadership. It seems clear from this...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Jeremy Corbyn has vowed to bin the EU’s highly controversial free trade deal (TTIP) with America. During an anti-Brexit rally he promised to get rid of the trade deal if he is voted in as PM before it is implemented. He hates the deal so much he said he is happy to work with rebel Conservatives and SNP in parliament to halt the deal. TTIP has worried people on both sides of the electoral divide...

By Simon Horton Whatever happens in the poll on June 23rd, David Cameron will be doing plenty of negotiations from June 24th onwards, both with the European Union and within his own party. So what strategies should he be taking? The odds-on favourite with the bookmakers is that we will stay within the union and if this happens there will be no need for too much negotiation with Europe, most of that already took place earlier this year. The mother...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor For the second time NHS England has refused to fund a preventative treatment for HIV. Earlier this year they said they would not fund pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a drug described as a "game changer" by HIV charities.
 The decision has caused wide spread anger by AIDS charities and those at high risk of catching the infection and the wider general public. PrEP helps prevent infection in people without HIV who are at substantial risk of...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The issue of Twitter abuse raised its ugly head again after a Labour MP was subjected to 600 rape threats in one evening. Jess Phillips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, received the abuse when she launched a campaign to stop sexual and sexist bullying on-line. The backlash she experienced was appalling and led her to declare that social media platform Twitter is “dead.” She discovered that in total there were almost five thousand notifications on...