Alex Beatty

Very important piece from Sam.

Labour have been literally hopeless in many areas but its childlike faith in the monorail sellers is perhaps the most dangerous.

Fines for UK financial crime nosedive to ‘pitiful’ lows Penalties from the FCA drop by 78% in five years as it prepares to take on a new role as 'super-regulator'

strikes me that one of the most obvious things this government should do is properly resource regulators. There’s a gigantic gap between law and its enforcement, yet politicians always focus on announcing new rules rather than applying the old ones www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...

Harry Cole is a traitor who should be interned

Glad the government has listened and done this.

📣 We also want to see:
1️⃣ Reform of the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Committee which puts rules in place preventing the ruling party of the day from having majority membership.
2️⃣ The appointment of a senior judge to Chair the Electoral Commission.

Democracy in danger: why the government must restore the Electoral Commission’s full independence - Spotlight on Corruption A fully independent Electoral Commission is critical to ensuring the integrity of UK elections, and maintaining public confidence that elections are run fairly.

🎉 Really positive news coming from parliament that the government will scrap the Strategy and Policy Statement for the @electoralcommission.org.uk.
⚠️ We previously warned about the risks of keeping the statement in place in our report, Democracy in Danger 🧵 ⬇️

Ex-minister adds to UK calls for ban on political donations in cryptocurrency Exclusive: Labour’s Rushanara Ali plans to intervene in elections bill amid warnings of foreign interference

🗳️ Today, MPs will be debating the second reading of the Representation of the People Bill.
One of the big things on the agenda will be adding a ban on crypto donations to the Bill – something that we’ve been at the forefront of calling for over many months ⬇️ 🧵

Labour minister Josh Simons resigns after falsely linking journalists to ‘pro-Kremlin’ network Makerfield MP has been under pressure over thinktank’s commissioning of PR firm to investigate reporters

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Tiniest violins for the many European tax exiles and gangsters who never quite understood how much of a geopolitical house of cards the UAE is

Because of course BVI is involved in some way. The unwillingness of Whitehall and Westminster to get a grip on Caribbean tax havens under UK oversight is one of the great systemic scandals of British politics

I can't remember a time when every party was trying so hard not to win the next election.

So much that could be said on the 4th anniversary of the full scale invasion, but it all just boils down to the ultimate admiration for Ukrainians who have endured so much, fought so hard and deserve victory, peace and prosperity. Slava Ukraini!

Just try going after a Jeffrey Epstein in Britain Huge legal costs and bad laws make it much harder to expose the rich and dodgy in this country

Edward Lucas is dead right. If Epstein had been British he’d never have been exposed. Our libel law is an ongoing disgrace.

www.thetimes.com/article/1786...

Briefing: Banning crypto donations – Why prevention is better than cure - Spotlight on Corruption Banning crypto donations: The government’s Representation of the People Bill does not yet contain a ban on crypto donations.

Here's a new Q&A paper I have put together with the @spotlightcorruption.org team on why the UK government should implement a full ban on crypto donations in UK politics, including addressing the emerging threat of party political memecoins 🪙🪙🪙

www.spotlightcorruption.org/report/brief...

Ah, from 'zero tolerance' to 'bullying is good now actually'. Who'd be a civil servant?

Submission to the Public Office (Accountability) Bill committee, November 2025 - Spotlight on Corruption

Our submission to the Bill Committee goes into a lot more detail - click on the link at the bottom for the full document. And I'm sure @suehawley.bsky.social can run you through it if you're interested in following up?

Mandelson’s misconduct – a moment of reckoning for the UK’s political establishment - Spotlight on Corruption The Mandelson scandal must lead to a review of whether the new misconduct in public office offence in the Hillsborough Bill is robust enough, and urgent

Yeah, it doesn't really live up to its name and is currently being revised as part of the Hillsborough Bill, as we covered here 👇

It's not just my sector though. How can a strong case for Britain be made to the rest of the world if the people tasked with making it in FCDO and British Council face a constant ratchet of shrinking budgets and personnel numbers.

Oh, one last thing on this: I'm really interested in the folk from my generational cohort who are pointing either up (to the over 65s) or down (to the kids) as the people who are "the problem" online, when, um, it's obviously us? The current state of the Internet is literally our fault.

🤔 Fancy doing my job? You won't be bored and #corruption seems to be one of the UK's few growth industries right now! There's just a couple of days left to apply. Details below 👇

🤔 Fancy doing my job? You won't be bored and #corruption seems to be one of the UK's few growth industries right now! There's just a couple of days left to apply. Details below 👇

👏 Great to see strong cross-party support for an innovative way to secure sorely needed funding for law enforcement to fight economic crime in last week’s debate on the Crime & Policing Bill. Here’s Crossbench Peer Lord Cromwell making a compelling case for an Economic Crime Fighting Fund (ECFF).

People rightly want Peter Mandelson to face accountability.

But the UK law for prosecuting misconduct in public office is weak & the new Ethics and Integrity Commission lacks statutory standing.

👉Here @suehawley.bsky.social explains how a key parliamentary bill should address both these issues.

I’m being sued for £8m for publishing a report on tax avoidance Barrister Setu Kamal is suing me for £8 million over our Arka Wealth investigation. We’re applying to strike it out as a SLAPP and will not remove the article.

⚖️ We’re at court today for the first test of the new #economiccrime #SLAPPs strike out power, as @danneidle.bsky.social asks the judge to throw out an £8m libel claim by Setu Kamal, a tax barrister whose alleged role in a tax avoidance scheme was the subject of a report by Tax Policy Associates.

No-one seems to have noticed, but many of the core developments in the Mandelson/Epstein story these last few days have been broken on this website. @pickardje.bsky.social and @petergeoghegan.bsky.social are both posting each breaking development on BlueSky, not X.

I find the apathy about Trump’s wholesale corruption - by US and overseas institutions- among the most perturbing indicators about our current era.

No more tinkering – root and branch reform of how politicians are held to account is now essential - Spotlight on Corruption There is rightly huge public demand that Mandelson and those who saw fit to appoint him face meaningful accountability.

💥 With public opinion of politicians at rock bottom, the government must urgently commit to root-and-branch reform of the way standards in public life are regulated or risk the future of the UK’s democracy, says @suehawley.bsky.social.

Darren Jones says there's a lack of clarity about non-corporate communication channels (ie WhatsApp, gmail) inside govt - I don't think it's unclear, if you're in the cabinet don't send sensitive info onto your personal email and then onto your mates.

If some random MP's can meme Al Carns to leader on the basis, essentially, he was in the military we can meme Yuan Yang leadership from Bluesky on the basis of her dog.