John Simon Bercow is a British former politician who was Speaker of the House of Commons from 2009 to 2019, and Member of Parliament (MP) for Buckingham between 1997 and 2019. A member of the Conservative Party prior to becoming Speaker, he was the first MP since Selwyn Lloyd in 1971 to be elected Speaker without having been a Deputy Speaker. After resigning as Speaker in 2019 and opting not to seek re-election as MP for Buckingham in the 2019 general election, Bercow left Parliament. In 2021, he joined the Labour Party but was suspended in 2022.
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve is a British barrister and former politician who served as Shadow Home Secretary from 2008 to 2009 and Attorney General for England and Wales from 2010 to 2014. He served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Beaconsfield from 1997 to 2019 and was the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee from 2015 to 2019.
Winterval was a season of public events in Birmingham, England, organised by Birmingham City Council in each of two consecutive winters: first from 20 November to 31 December 1997, and then again from mid-October 1998 to mid-January 1999. The intention was to encourage people into the newly rejuvenated city centre, with secular and religious events marking religious and other occasions, including Christmas, during the relevant period. The name "Winterval" has since become used in the UK as shorthand for what are misrepresented as attempts to "rebrand" Christmas so as not to exclude non-Christians.
James Edward O'Brien is a British radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter. Since 2004, he has been a presenter for talk station LBC, on weekdays between 10 am and 1 pm, hosting a phone-in discussion of current affairs, views and real-life experiences. In October 2017, he hosted an interview series titled, Unfiltered with James O'Brien on Joe.i.e. He was an occasional presenter for BBC's Newsnight. His Spin-off podcast Full Disclosure for LBC commenced in March 2019.
Migration Watch UK is a British think-tank and campaign group which argues for lower immigration into the United Kingdom. Founded in 2001, the group believes that international migration places undue demand on limited resources and that the current level of immigration is not sustainable.
Johann Eduard Hari is a British-Swiss writer and journalist who wrote for The Independent and The Huffington Post. In 2011, Hari was suspended from The Independent and later resigned, after admitting to plagiarism and fabrications dating back to 2001 and making malicious edits to the Wikipedia pages of journalists who had criticised his conduct. He has since written books on the topics of depression, the war on drugs, and the effect of technology on attention spans.
Carole Jane Cadwalladr is a British author, investigative journalist and features writer. She is a features writer for The Observer and formerly worked at The Daily Telegraph. Cadwalladr rose to international prominence in 2018 for her role in exposing the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal for which she was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, alongside The New York Times reporters.
Richard Horton is a retired Police Sergeant with Lancashire Constabulary, and former blogger who lives in Lancashire. He is the author of the Orwell Prize-winning anonymous blog NightJack which commented on his work as a police officer during his time as a Detective Constable.
Sally Kate Bercow is a British public personality and the wife of the former Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow.
For the American architect, see David Osler (architect).
R v Paul Chambers, popularly known as the Twitter Joke Trial, was a United Kingdom legal case centred on the conviction of a man under the Communications Act 2003 for posting a joke about destroying an airport on Twitter, a message which police regarded as "menacing". The conviction in the Magistrates' court was widely condemned as a miscarriage of justice, but was upheld on appeal to the Crown Court. Chambers appealed against the Crown Court decision to the High Court, which would ultimately quash the conviction.
Sir Michael George Tugendhat, styled The Hon. Mr Justice Tugendhat, and referred to as Tugendhat J in legal writing, is a retired High Court judge in England and Wales. He was the High Court's senior media judge, taking over that role from Mr Justice Eady on 1 October 2010.
Guido Fawkes is a right-wing political website published by British-Irish political blogger Paul Staines.
McAlpine v Bercow was a landmark libel case in 2013 between Conservative peer Lord McAlpine and Sally Bercow, the wife of John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons.
William James Quince is a British politician and former lawyer who served as Minister of State for Health and Secondary Care from September 2022 to November 2023. A member of the Conservative Party, he was first elected at the 2015 general election as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Colchester, defeating the incumbent Liberal Democrat MP Sir Bob Russell. From 2011 to 2016, Quince was a borough councillor in Colchester. On 9 June 2023, Quince announced he would not run as an MP at the next general election.
Jolyon Toby Dennis Maugham is a British barrister. Initially a practitioner in contentious taxation law, he stepped away in order to act as the founder and director of the Good Law Project, through which he has played a role in bringing to court a number of legal challenges to the Brexit process, which he opposed. He has written on Brexit and legal issues for publications such as The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and the New Statesman. He published his first book in 2023.
James Massola is an Australian journalist and author, currently the National Affairs Editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Oh God, What Now? formerly known as Remainiacs, is a British hour-long weekly political podcast about Brexit, speaking from the pro-Remain point of view. It was started on 26 May 2017 as Remainiacs after the European Union membership referendum as "a no-holds-barred podcast for everyone who won't shut up about Brexit". In October 2020, Remainiacs was renamed "Oh God, What Now?", due to the nature of Brexit making the unlikelihood of re-joining and changing nature of the British government.
"Bollocks to Brexit" is a meme and grassroots campaign slogan used by people opposing Brexit, following the result of a 2016 referendum.
On 28 August 2019, the Parliament of the United Kingdom was ordered to be prorogued by Queen Elizabeth II on the advice of the Conservative prime minister, Boris Johnson – this advice was later ruled unlawful. The prorogation, or suspension, of Parliament was to be effective from some point between 9 and 12 September 2019 and would last until the State Opening of Parliament on 14 October 2019. As a consequence, Parliament was suspended between 10 September and 24 September 2019. Since Parliament was to be prorogued for five weeks and reconvene just 17 days before the United Kingdom's scheduled departure from the European Union on 31 October 2019, the move was seen by many opposition politicians and political commentators as a controversial and unconstitutional attempt by the prime minister to avoid parliamentary scrutiny of the Government's Brexit plans in the final weeks leading up to Brexit. Johnson and his Government defended the prorogation of Parliament as a routine political process that ordinarily follows the selection of a new prime minister and would allow the Government to refocus on a legislative agenda.
