London Tory leader joins mass deportation campaign
Plus: Scroll to the end for a story about the mysterious arsonist of north London — and why parliament is talking about the capital's dubious Harry Potter shops.
Susan Hall, the leader of the Conservatives in the London Assembly, has joined the advisory board of a new political organisation that promises to “carpet-bomb the cancer of wokery” and wants to send hundreds of thousands of Londoners with the legal right to live in the capital back to their countries of birth.
Hall, who was runner-up to Labour’s Sadiq Khan in last year’s mayoral election, was unveiled as an adviser to the newly-formed Restore Britain movement on Tuesday.
Restore Britain’s initial stated policies, which it says will be voted on by members at some point in the future, include the complete abolition of the right to claim asylum in Britain under any circumstances, Donald Trump-style “mass deportations” of illegal immigrants, plus the large-scale “departure” through unspecified means of “legal migrants”.
Rupert Lowe MP launched Restore Britain after being kicked out of Reform by Nigel Farage earlier this year and has since adopted a more extreme stance than his old boss. He said on X (formerly known as Twitter) that Susan Hall is “a proper campaigner with fantastic experience” and her involvement shows he is building a “genuine cross-party movement”. Lowe said other policies include the banning of face coverings such as the burqa, the reintroduction of the death penalty, and the restoration of “Christian principles” to the UK.
While many mainstream political parties have long campaigned for a reduction in the numbers of new immigrants arriving in the UK, Restore Britain goes further and actively wants to see mass emigration through the removal of millions of existing legal residents from the country.
Given the demographics of the capital, with 41% of residents born overseas, this policy would require the removal of hundreds of thousands of legally-resident Londoners over the coming years. Aside from creating enormous social upheaval and potentially causing the depopulation of the capital, it would impact on everything from tax revenue and staffing for key services.
Several Tory activists in the capital contacted London Centric to raise concerns that Hall’s association with Restore Britain’s policies could undermine the party’s attempts to rebuild support in the city.
One prominent Conservative pointed out that many local Tory party officials are foreign-born and Restore Britain “isn't a movement that is likely to win the enthusiastic support of Londoners”.
They added: “The bar for ‘not looking racist’ is unbelievably low and yet we still struggle to clear it.”
In a statement issued to London Centric, Susan Hall said: "I have yet to meet with any other [Restore Britain] board members to discuss policy, and as I understand it no policies have been voted on or supported. My engagement thus far has been one conversation with Rupert Lowe.”
“I support those who migrate here with a view to integrate and help build our communities, and I do not support their deportation. However, I am deeply concerned about those who do not integrate, or who commit crimes, who should not be here.
“Restore Britain is not a political party, and I have been clear with Rupert Lowe that should it go in a direction away from what I believe, I will no longer be involved — I am a Conservative, I have been a Conservative all my life, and I will remain a Conservative. There is no room in my life for another political party, or organisations against our party."
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Preposterous property of the week
Housing and the cost of housing dominates everything in London and understanding the housing market, whether it’s an oligarch’s house or a new-build flat, is one of the best ways to understand how the capital works. As a result we usually like to feature the weirdest, silliest, most Omaze-able properties going.
But the thing that stopped us in our tracks this week was this four bedroom house in Sheen, south west London. What would pass as a nice suburban house in most of the rest of the UK could be yours in London for a mere… £3.4m. That’s the same price as buying more than a hundred terraced houses in County Durham or a literal castle with several cottages and a forest on the Isle of Skye.
What we’re saying is: If you really think London is over, this particular home suggests it remains just as desirable as ever to some people.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenixing Gift Shop
London Centric’s ongoing investigation into the tax arrangements of the Harry Potter shops spreading across central London has reached the House of Commons.
Kensington and Bayswater Labour MP Joe Powell — an anti-corruption campaigner who is seeing the gift shops spread into his west London constituency — raised our reporting in parliament with ministers on Tuesday morning.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves was sitting in the chamber as he asked about “phoenixing” Harry Potter shops in central London, where the retail unit continues trading while the registered legal owner changes to a different company every few months, “none of which pays corporation tax, VAT or business rates”.
Powell asked: “Can the minister encourage officials at His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to walk along Whitehall, just a few hundred metres from this Chamber, and take a look at whether the series of Harry Potter-themed gift shops across London — which have been accused by London Centric of doing exactly that — are playing by the rules?”
If you want to know why central London looks the way it does — and why councils are short on cash — then you need to learn about phoenixing.
One of the people listening was journalist and London Centric reader Andrew Marr, who invited us on his LBC show to explain the issue.
Is arson on the rise in the capital — and who is the mystery skip firestarter of north London?
A recent cluster of apparent arson attacks in north London has left residents fearful and perplexed, London Centric can reveal. Green party leadership candidate Zack Polanski has called on Sadiq Khan to address “the significant and sustained increase in arson incidents” in the capital over recent years.
Since late May, flaming skips – as well as fires in piles of building rubble, and even one alight abandoned sofa – have been a repeated sight on seven neighbouring roads in the vicinity of Finsbury Park and Green Lanes.
The number of incidents and the apparent links between them seemed to suggest that the trend was not an accident, explained one resident on Lothair Road North. “Everyone on the street is super aware of it,” he added: “It’s got everyone on edge.”
The fires could be a protest against gentrification, speculated Issy Harvey, a relative of a local resident. “The skips represent people moving in,” she said, on streets where house prices have rapidly risen to over £1m in recent years. Many houses in the area were getting loft extensions.
London Assembly Member Zack Polanski called for a cross-authority Arson Task Group to address deliberately started fires in the capital, amid concerns arson is on the rise and there is no coordinated response. He said his colleagues had heard evidence that while young men used to be responsible for most arson attacks, increasingly it’s middle aged men who are setting things on fire.
“There’s a lack of data, a lack of information, and no one really knows what’s going on,” Polanski told London Centric. Unlike other crimes, arson literally destroys the original evidence, he added, with the London Fire Brigade only having one specialist arson sniffer dog to deploy in the hunt for evidence.
“Councils haven’t necessarily picked up that there’s been a sharp rise in some boroughs on arson”, said Polanski, who is also running to be leader of the national Green Party.
These latest attacks come after a series of fires at properties linked to Prime Minister Keir Starmer in May, with three men due to stand trial next April.
When the skip outside one house caught alight earlier this week, it was no surprise – one neighbour said they felt the it had been “a ticking time bomb” given the slew of similar incidents.
Eleven days earlier, fires in two skips on Lothair Road North and Lothair Road South were spotted on the same night, around twenty minutes apart.
Grainy footage from the latter road showed a man, seemingly alone, cycling up to the skip, facing away from the camera. Later videos showed the skip – and the portaloo beside it, which partly melted in the fire– fully ablaze.
The motive behind the incidents remains unclear.
Houses in the area used to cost “semi-reasonable prices for London, now you’re looking at one million,” said Clare Heal, who moved into her house on Lothair Road North over a decade ago – “but that’s [true of] the whole area”, not just the targeted streets.
A spokesperson for the London Fire Brigade said that it had referred the “cluster of incidents” to the Metropolitan Police, and confirmed that its fire engines had attended seven incidents across the neighbouring streets in June. “Crews are being proactive in the area,” they added.
Adam Wieczorek said rubbish in front of his house had been set on fire twice in recent weeks.
“There needs to be a thorough investigation,” he said. In the meantime, Wieczorek has taken it upon himself to warn residents living near new skips in the streets that they may be a potential target amid a flurry of incidents that appear to be occurring with increased frequency.
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As you said in twitter, the far right campaign in London that consists to go against London is really really weird. As if their London message is aimed to everywhere but London actually.
If you've not seen it, may I recommend Martin Sheen's turn as President Bartlett in The West Wing. Worth memorizing the verses used by the President should you need to excoriate one of these ’Christian Principles' bigots in real life. I've only used it once, but it worked marvelously at a recent PTA meeting where the idea of banning anything to do with 'pride' from a school library was drafted. If Hannibal can crib Horace, stealing from Sorkin should be allowed for hoi polloi.
(you'll find it on YouTube with 'West Wing Bible' scene').