Badenoch gives credence to race-swap conspiracy theory about Adolescence (which she hasn’t watched)
Kemi Badenoch has given credence to a conspiracy theory about the Netflix hit Adolescence being based on a real story, but involving a black boy not a white boy.
This has been described as wholly untrue by Jack Thorne, the writer and co-creator of the series, which has been praised by Keir Starmer for the way it has opened up a debate about the radicalisation of young men.
Starmer met Thorne, and some of the shows other creators, in Downing Street this week, along with charities engaged in child protection, and the PM said he would like as many pupils as possible to watch the series.
The four-part drama is about a 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of a girl at his school. The Guardian’s reviewer described it as “the most devastating and immaculately scripted and played series I have ever seen – as close to televisual perfection as you can get”.
In an interview with GB News, asked if she has seen it, Badenoch replied:
Well, I think Adolescence is a fictional story. It’s based on a real story, but my understanding is that the boy who committed that crime was not white.
So, people can do whatever they like in fiction. The prime minister should not be building policy on fiction. He should be building policy on reality. What is the reality? Phones are disrupting schools and not enough schools have effective bans.
Badenoch went on to talk about the Tory policy to ban mobile phones in schools. In an earlier LBC interview this morning she said that she had not actually watched the programme, because “I don’t have time to watch anything these days, to be honest.”
Speaking to LBC, Badenoch also stated her belief that Adolescence was based on a true story. She said:
The story which it is based on has been fundamentally changed and so creating policy on a work of fiction rather than on reality is the real issue.
But, in an interview last week on the News Agents podcast, Thorne said there was no truth in the claim that he had adapted a real story involving a black boy. He said:
They’ve claimed that Stephen [Graham] and I based it on a story and so they’re saying that we race swapped it, because we were basically here and then ended up there, and everything else, and nothing is further from the truth.
I have told a lot of real-life stories in my time. I know the harm that can come when you take elements of a real-life story, and you put it on screen, and the people aren’t expecting it. There is no part of this that’s based on a true story, not one single part.
Asked about critics who complained about the main character being white, Thorne said:
It’s absurd to say that this is only committed by black boys, it’s absurd, it’s not true. And history shows a lot of cases of kids from all races committing these crimes.
We’re not making a point about race with this. We are making a point about masculinity. We’re trying to get inside a problem. We’re not saying this is one thing or another. We’re saying this is about boys.
The claim that Adolescence was based on a real story involving a black boy has been circulated on social media, including by people claiming that the colour of the main character was changed to conform with an anti-white agenda.
Ian Miles Cheong, a prominent rightwing commentator on X, floated this argument last month in a post that has attracted 4.8m views saying:
Netflix has a show called Adolescence that’s about a British knife killer who stabbed a girl to death on a bus and it’s based on real life cases such as the Southport murderer.
So guess what. They race swapped the actual killer from a black man/migrant to a white boy and the story has it so he was radicalized online by the red pill movement.
Just the absolute state of anti-white propaganda.
This attracted a comment from Elon Musk, the X owner, billionaire Trump ally and far-right provocateur, saying: “Wow.”
Badenoch has been accused, including by Keir Starmer at PMQs, of spending too much time reading social media.
Key events
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Afternoon summary
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Lawyers attack ‘dangerous’ decision to halt Sentencing Council guidelines
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Andy Burnham calls for jobcentres to be renamed Live Well centres
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Green party say it is ‘sickening’ Labour is boasting about deportation flights on campaign leaflets
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Chagos Islands deal now being finalised with Mauritius, No 10 says, after Trump gives it approval
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Badenoch gives credence to race-swap conspiracy theory about Adolescence (which she hasn’t watched)
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Jarvis refuses to rule out China being included in Firs enhanced tier in future
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Tories demand to know why China not included in enhanced tier of foreign influence registration scheme
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Russia to be in enhanced tier of foreign influence registration scheme, security minister Dan Jarvis tells MPs
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Green party claim Sentencing Council bill based on ‘wilful misunderstanding’ and will lead to more unjust punishments
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Diane Abbott says government should not be interfering with independence of Sentencing Council
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Robert Jenrick suggests chair of Sentencing Council should resign
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Mahmood confirms new bill will stop Sentencing Council making pre-sentence report guidelines relating to race
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Mahmood says, despite ‘noble’ intentions behind controversial Sentencing Council guidelines, they went too far
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Shabana Mahmood makes statement to MPs about Sentencing Council
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Starmer tells cabinet talks with US on economic deal are at ‘advanced stage’
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Conservation groups criticise Starmer over ‘spiders blocking housing’ claims
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Asylum system risks ‘damaging social cohesion’, Glasgow city council warns
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Rayner says it would be ‘ridiculous’ to cancel Trump’s state visit in retaliation for tariffs
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Badenoch rejects claims differing food standards might be obstacle to US trade deals, saying quotas more important
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Badenoch rejects claim she has told her MPs not to criticise Trump
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Badenoch claims Labour’s ‘jobs tax’ will cost average families £3,500 by end of this parliament
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Lib Dems call for Cobra meeting to discuss US tariffs, saying ‘we can’t kowtow to Trump any longer’
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Limited global trade war, with Britain exempt from US tariffs, could have ‘mildly positive’ impact for UK, MPs told
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OBR did not include US tariff policy in its forecasts partly because it was ‘changing every day’, its chair says
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Starmer says firms needs ‘calm’ not ‘knee-jerk’ response to US tariffs, playing down prospect of retaliatory measures
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Badenoch says Tories would oppose retaliatory tariffs against US because they would just make ‘everyone poorer’
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Starmer says he accepts cost of living crisis ‘ongoing’, despite wages going up
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OBR chair Richard Hughes gives evidence to Treasury committee
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Starmer dismisses claims he’s been ‘played’ by Trump, and says future trade deal could lessen impact of tariffs
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Badenoch says local elections will be ‘very difficult’ for Tories
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Kemi Badenoch interviewed on LBC
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Reynolds rejects claim prosecution of anti-abortion campaigners in UK could block trade deal with US
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UK in ‘best possible position’ to negotiate future exemptions from Trump tariffs, business secretary Jonathan Reynolds says
Afternoon summary
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Keir Starmer has rejected claims that the expected imposition of US tariffs on Britain means he has been “played” by President Trump. Starmer said that the UK and the US were at an “advanced stage” in negotiating an economic deal, and he suggested that this could lead to the UK getting exemptions from US tariffs in future. (See 9.53am and 1.15pm.) According to Steven Swinford from the Times, a deal is ready to sign. “But US is refusing to sign it until after hitting UK with tariffs on April 2, aka Liberation Day,” Swinford says.
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Richard Hughes, the chair of the Office of Budget Responsibility, has told MPs that the OBR is likely to downgrade its growth forecast in the autumn. As the Telegraph reports, he said the OBR’s most recent report, which downgraded the UK growth forecast for 2025 from 2% to 1%, was based on IMF projections from January, before Trump’s policies kicked in. Hughes told the Treasury committee:
Putting in place more restrictions on global trade around the world is not very good for global output, and it’s pretty reasonable to say the direction of that is going to be down.
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Kemi Badenoch has given credence to a conspiracy theory about the Netflix hit Adolescence being based on a real story, but involving a black boy not a white boy – despite also admitting she has not seen the show. (See 3.59am.)
Lawyers attack ‘dangerous’ decision to halt Sentencing Council guidelines
Shabana Mahmood’s intervention to halt new guidelines on sentencing is “dangerous” and a “deliberate step backwards”, according to senior legal figures and prison campaigners, Rajeev Syal reports.
Andy Burnham calls for jobcentres to be renamed Live Well centres
This morning the Commons work and pensions committee held a session in Manchester town hall, where it took evidence from witnesses in relation to jobcentres and pensioner poverty.
Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, gave evidence, and, as the Daily Mirror reports, he argued that jobcentres should be renamed live well centres, in line with Greater Manchester’s Live Well initiative to promote wellbeing that links healthcare with employment support.
As Ashley Cowburn reports, Burnham said:
I would like Jobcentre Plus to be renamed Live Well centres. In the name it should be positive – it should say to the public ‘you are going to be helped when you come in here.
It’s not just the name. It’s what happens when you go inside. What’s the atmosphere like? What’s it like to be in there? I just think there’s a huge opportunity.
As Steve Robson reports in the i, Burnham also also said that Westminster governments put too much emphasis on punitive sanctions when reforming welfare. He said:
From my time in Westminster, and I was probably guilty of it at the time, I think benefits policy in this country has too much, under all governments, been written to create headlines to please certain newspapers and not actually to do the job of encouraging the recovery of people back to a better position in their lives.
I think once you leave as a minister and become a mayor, you just don’t think ‘will this please that paper? It’s a completely different, bottom-up offer that you give to people
If you really want to help people, if you really want to save money and get more people into work, I think you have to come at it a completely different way.
Green party say it is ‘sickening’ Labour is boasting about deportation flights on campaign leaflets
Yesterday, in his speech to the Organised Immigration Crime conference, Keir Starmer announced that 24,000 migrants have been removed from the UK since Labour took office. This included the four biggest return flights ever, he said.
If you are a Labour activists, you can now buy leaflets from party HQ making the same point.
The Green party says it is horrified. Carla Denyer, the Green’s co-leader, said:
Labour’s recent leaflet boasting about deporting more people than the Tories is sickening.
Labour are failing to provide safe and legal routes into the UK while seemingly revelling in turning people’s lives upside down.
Any claim the Labour party may have once had to be a party of compassion or principle has well and truly gone.
The controversy is reminiscent of what happened in 2015, when the party produced official mugs with the slogan “Controls on immigration”. This was one of the party’s five election pledges, and so it was understandable that the party wanted to publicise it. But the mugs were very unpopular with some Labour activists who felt they sounded rightwing.
Chagos Islands deal now being finalised with Mauritius, No 10 says, after Trump gives it approval
A deal to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is being “finalised” after winning approval from Donald Trump’s US, Downing Street has said. PA Media says:
The plan will see the UK give up sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory but pay to lease back the strategically important Diego Garcia military base, which is used by the US.
Discussions are ongoing between the UK and the Mauritian government over the terms of the deal.
“The finalisation of the deal is ongoing,” the PM’s spokesperson said.
US President Trump indicated his backing for the deal during Keir Starmer’s visit to Washington in February, saying: “I have a feeling it’s going to work out very well”.
The PM’s spokesperson said: “You will have seen from the president that he recognised the strength of the deal.
“I think we are now working with the Mauritian government to finalise the deal and sign the treaty.
“My understanding is it’s now between us and the Mauritian government to finalise the deal, following the discussions with the US.”
Shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel said: “Labour should have the courage to come to the House of Commons and face scrutiny over their deal to surrender the Chagos Islands and pay for the privilege.
“This remains a very bad deal for British taxpayers – and we now know money is going to be frontloaded to Mauritius, at a time when Labour is stripping vulnerable pensioners of their winter fuel payments and whacking family farms and businesses with punishing taxes.”
Badenoch gives credence to race-swap conspiracy theory about Adolescence (which she hasn’t watched)
Kemi Badenoch has given credence to a conspiracy theory about the Netflix hit Adolescence being based on a real story, but involving a black boy not a white boy.
This has been described as wholly untrue by Jack Thorne, the writer and co-creator of the series, which has been praised by Keir Starmer for the way it has opened up a debate about the radicalisation of young men.
Starmer met Thorne, and some of the shows other creators, in Downing Street this week, along with charities engaged in child protection, and the PM said he would like as many pupils as possible to watch the series.
The four-part drama is about a 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of a girl at his school. The Guardian’s reviewer described it as “the most devastating and immaculately scripted and played series I have ever seen – as close to televisual perfection as you can get”.
In an interview with GB News, asked if she has seen it, Badenoch replied:
Well, I think Adolescence is a fictional story. It’s based on a real story, but my understanding is that the boy who committed that crime was not white.
So, people can do whatever they like in fiction. The prime minister should not be building policy on fiction. He should be building policy on reality. What is the reality? Phones are disrupting schools and not enough schools have effective bans.
Badenoch went on to talk about the Tory policy to ban mobile phones in schools. In an earlier LBC interview this morning she said that she had not actually watched the programme, because “I don’t have time to watch anything these days, to be honest.”
Speaking to LBC, Badenoch also stated her belief that Adolescence was based on a true story. She said:
The story which it is based on has been fundamentally changed and so creating policy on a work of fiction rather than on reality is the real issue.
But, in an interview last week on the News Agents podcast, Thorne said there was no truth in the claim that he had adapted a real story involving a black boy. He said:
They’ve claimed that Stephen [Graham] and I based it on a story and so they’re saying that we race swapped it, because we were basically here and then ended up there, and everything else, and nothing is further from the truth.
I have told a lot of real-life stories in my time. I know the harm that can come when you take elements of a real-life story, and you put it on screen, and the people aren’t expecting it. There is no part of this that’s based on a true story, not one single part.
Asked about critics who complained about the main character being white, Thorne said:
It’s absurd to say that this is only committed by black boys, it’s absurd, it’s not true. And history shows a lot of cases of kids from all races committing these crimes.
We’re not making a point about race with this. We are making a point about masculinity. We’re trying to get inside a problem. We’re not saying this is one thing or another. We’re saying this is about boys.
The claim that Adolescence was based on a real story involving a black boy has been circulated on social media, including by people claiming that the colour of the main character was changed to conform with an anti-white agenda.
Ian Miles Cheong, a prominent rightwing commentator on X, floated this argument last month in a post that has attracted 4.8m views saying:
Netflix has a show called Adolescence that’s about a British knife killer who stabbed a girl to death on a bus and it’s based on real life cases such as the Southport murderer.
So guess what. They race swapped the actual killer from a black man/migrant to a white boy and the story has it so he was radicalized online by the red pill movement.
Just the absolute state of anti-white propaganda.
This attracted a comment from Elon Musk, the X owner, billionaire Trump ally and far-right provocateur, saying: “Wow.”
Badenoch has been accused, including by Keir Starmer at PMQs, of spending too much time reading social media.
Lisa Smart, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson, says she is in the unusual position of agreeing with much of what the Conservative spokesperson said. She also asks about China, and in particular about China’s application to build a new super embassy in China.
Jarvis says national security has been the core priority for the government in dealing with the embassy application. But he says there is a limit to what he can say because the final decision will be taken by Angela Rayner, as housing secretary, in a quasi-judicial capacity.
Jarvis refuses to rule out China being included in Firs enhanced tier in future
Jarvis is responding to Philp.
He says he can understand why Philp is asking about China.
Countries will be considered separately, he says.
He says he won’t speculate on what countries may or may not be included in the Firs (foreign influence registration scheme) enhanced tier in future.
On China, the government’s policy is to “coperate where we can, compete where we need to, and challenge where we must”.
Tories demand to know why China not included in enhanced tier of foreign influence registration scheme
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, is responding to Jarvis.
He welcomes the decision about Russia.
But he says Jarvis ignored “the elephant in the room”, China. Why was he silent?
Philp goes on:
We know China engages in industrial scale espionage, seeking to steal technology from government, universities and from industry.
They repress Chinese citizens here, and have sought to infiltrate our political system. In 2022 it was exposed by MI5 that China sought to infiltrate this very parliament via their agent, Christine Lee.
China has set up undeclared and illegal police stations in the UK and in December China placed a bounty on the head of three Hong Kong dissidents living in the UK.
He says MI5 and the FBI have both warned about the “epic threat” posed by China.
Russia to be in enhanced tier of foreign influence registration scheme, security minister Dan Jarvis tells MPs
Dan Jarvis, the security miniser is now making a Commons statement about the foreign influence registration scheme, an initiative to allow the government to monitor people lobbying on behalf of foreign governments in the UK. It is part of the National Security Act 2023.
Jarvis says it will go live in July.
The scheme imposes routine requirements for people lobbying on behalf of foreign governments, but it also has an enhanced tier, covering hostile countries, where the rules are much tighter. If a country is in this tier, anyone carrying out activity in the UK on behalf of the country, or an entity linked to it, will have to register. Failure to comply will be an offence.
The government has already said that Iran will be in the enhanced tier.
Today Jarvis says Russia will also be in the enhanced tier.
Green party claim Sentencing Council bill based on ‘wilful misunderstanding’ and will lead to more unjust punishments
The Green party has also criticised the government’s decision to introduce the sentencing guidelines (pre-sentence reports) bill. In a statement, the Green MP Siân Berry said:
It has been chilling to witness the government pile pressure on an independent body which has been nothing but clear about the importance of these guidelines for passing effective sentences.
The new guidelines, which were publicly consulted on, would have helped create safer sentencing for many women, parents, pregnant and young people, for whom extreme custodial sentences can compound the harm that led to their offending in the first place. This delay will condemn too many people to unjust punishment while we wait for new plans.
Pre-sentencing reports offer judges information, they do not determine sentences. Politicians’ wilful misunderstanding of these processes is dangerous and will cause irrevocable harm for many if this bill is passed.
In the Commons the Labour MP Nadia Whittome said she was alarmed by the implication that, if the Sentencing Council guidelines are withdrawn, judges would not be advised to get pre-sentence reports before sentencing pregnant women.
Mahmood said the bill would not affect policy relating to pregnant offenders, because there is already court of appeal precedent saying pre-sentence reports should be obtained before pregnant women are sentenced.
