David Shipley

There’s so much bad news about our prisons that it’s easy to become fatigued by it. Another failing jail, another prison awash with drugs, another inmate released in error. As a result, often it’s only the most extreme or shocking examples which hit the headlines. But there is one particular kind of prison news story

Ever since Labour was elected, every time there has been another disaster in our jails, or another set of terrible data, it has been briefed that ‘this government inherited prisons in crisis’. To be fair to the government, the Tories did leave our jails broken, overcrowded and crumbling, but this line has also been a

This government knows that if it doesn’t turn the tide on migration it is destined for electoral oblivion. The Home Secretary has said that ‘illegal migration has been placing immense pressure on communities’, and that ‘asylum hotels…are blighting communities’. This is why the government is determined to close the asylum hotels. But its ‘solution’ is

Even as he resigned, Craig Guildford couldn’t do the decent thing. Perhaps that’s no surprise. We have learned in recent weeks that the Chief Constable of West Midlands Police has been habitually obfuscating over the circumstances under which Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned from Birmingham, and even misled parliament when he failed to disclose

Keir Starmer is, in many ways, a remarkable prime minister. He is remarkably uncharismatic and remarkably unable to discern the mood of the nation he governs. He is remarkable in his unpopularity, with the British public now even preferring Nicolas Maduro to Our Man From Islington. He is remarkable in his number of U-turns, digital

There’s a strange pattern in how the UK discusses policy, and once you notice it you realise it’s everywhere. What happens is that there’s a problem, often something which makes us less safe. The problem will be fundamentally a result of policy, and often something we’re ‘forced’ to endure because of laws we have created.

It’s a difficult Monday for the Prime Minister. Shortly after Keir Starmer expressed his ‘delight’ that Egyptian dissident Alaa Abd el-Fattah had arrived in the UK, it emerged that the PM’s ‘top priority’ apparently hates Jews, white people and the English most of all, if his past tweet are anything to go by. As a

British civil servants have almost never faced real consequences for their failures. If Reform come to power, that might change. Nigel Farage’s party has announced yesterday that they will introduce a new criminal offence of ‘dishonestly determining an asylum claim’. They will use this law to prosecute civil servants who have knowingly put British women

Shabana Mahmood’s plans to reduce migration hit a setback yesterday. It emerged that around 2,500 foreign national prison officers who no longer qualified to remain in the UK will have their visas extended. The officers, most of whom are from West Africa, were going to have to leave their jobs because the new skilled worker

Perhaps because it’s the week before Christmas, the Migration Advisory Committee’s (MAC) latest annual report has attracted little attention. Many people can’t have read it, because it is full of incendiary details which demolish the case for mass migration. The MAC is ‘an advisory non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Home Office’. It is not

It’s now over six weeks since Hadush Kebatu’s ‘release in error’ sparked a two day manhunt, and highlighted our prison system’s disastrous habit of regularly releasing inmates who should remain in jail. Since then we’ve heard about the accidental releases of Kaddour-Cherif, a prolific criminal from Algeria who overstayed a visa six years ago, and

Another week. Another video from within a prison. More words of outrage. This time it’s a video showing a prison officer inside a crowded cell, playing Fifa with a prisoner. Is this a problem? Is prison more of a holiday camp than a punishment? Is this another example of prison officer misconduct, just like the

Just two weeks ago Epping lost its court battle to shut the Bell Hotel and expel unwanted asylum seekers from the town. Now it seems the state has decided to punish the town for its act of rebellion. Eight properties in the town are to be converted to ‘Houses in Multiple Occupation’ (HMOs) and will be

I had hoped I would never have to write about Hamit Coskun again. After the Quran-burner won his appeal in October, it seemed that this particular battle in the free speech wars was over. Unfortunately the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have other ideas. On Friday evening the state prosecutor announced that it was going to appeal Coskun’s

After the pandemic the Boris Johnson government took a fateful and disastrous decision to suppress rising inflation by massively expanding migration. It was one of the worst decisions made by a British government in my lifetime, made all the more appalling because it followed a solemn promise that Brexit would bring a tough, ‘points-based’ migration