Mayor of the Tees Valley
North East, England
Joined March 2010
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Ben Houchen retweeted
Huge news for Teesside, and the country👇
Building 3.2GW of power on a single site in Teesside means Britain can now be serious about having its own AI capability, with sensitive data stored safely on British soil.
Better that it is Teesside than Texas, Beijing or Abu Dhabi.
news.sky.com/story/national-…
Building 3.2GW of power on a single site in Teesside means Britain can now be serious about having its own AI capability, with sensitive data stored safely on British soil.
Better that it is Teesside than Texas, Beijing or Abu Dhabi.
news.sky.com/story/national-…
Ben Houchen retweeted
Slavery was an evil in which people from every continent and region participated. We should be honest about the whole history, not select the parts that are politically convenient today, especially given Britain's leading role in ending the transatlantic slave trade.
If Caribbean countries are asking Britain for a formal apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, will they also be asking the same of the descendants of African kingdoms, rulers and merchants who captured, sold and profited from the trade?
On demands for reparations, whether through cash or debt relief, we have been down this track before. Twenty-five years ago, Jubilee 2000, Drop the Debt and Make Poverty History argued that cancelling the debts of poorer countries would give them a fresh start. More than $100 billion of debt was eventually written off, but many of those countries have since built up even bigger debts. Labour are already spending too much on Britain's welfare state, now is not the time for Andy Burnham to be providing global welfare.
There is no reason British taxpayers today should be held financially responsible for things that happened generations before any of us were born. And I have even less patience for political elites in commonwealth countries who don’t know how to make their own citizens prosperous now looking for another opportunity to blame Britain.
As Prime Minister, Andy Burnham should be Britain’s greatest defender. Instead, he is writing articles saying we need to confront our history (as if we haven't done enough of that) and considering another formal historical apology. Tony Blair already expressed Britain’s deep sorrow and regret for our role in the slave trade nearly twenty years ago. There is no need to do so again.
This is all another navel-gazing distraction. The Commonwealth should be looking forward, not endlessly backwards. That means economic partnerships to make us all richer and deeper military and security cooperation against common threats. If every Commonwealth summit becomes an exercise in presenting Britain with demands for cash then we need to start asking if it is worth the effort.
Ben Houchen retweeted
The crime: intimidating MPs.
My motive: correcting the record.
My method: quoting Hansard and offering to meet.
My weapon: "Kind regards."
🫡
Ben Houchen retweeted
Most senior Tory mayor @BenHouchen backs @JamesCleverly to take on @SadiqKhan in London standard.co.uk/news/london/j…
Ben Houchen retweeted
NEW: MI5 chief Ken McCallum has said Britain must be careful not to exaggerate the impact of Russian interference and bots on democratic events like Brexit, warning that risks doing the Kremlin’s job for them.
“I'm a little bit worried that if we all stay in this debate for another few days that the Russian trolls who didn't appear to do all that at various points over the years, they'll be delighted.
“They are front page news once again, despite the comparative un-impressiveness of much of what they do at all the points along the journey.
“I am a little bit anxious that we don’t play into our adversaries’ hands by making these trolls look 10 feet tall. That’s not our experience of them.”
“There is a really important difference between interference attempted and outcome swayed. It’s quite important to focus on the difference between what may have been attempted and what actually resulted.”
He said he agreed with Andy Burnham’s comments in the House of Commons yesterday, including about the Russian hack-and-leak that was used in the 2019 general election.
Ben Houchen retweeted
Andy Burnham on @RestIsPolitics: "I asked the question coming to Downing Street, was there interference in the 2016 referendum from Russia? And I’ve had the clear answer that yes, there was.”
MI5 boss Ken McCallum: "I’m a little bit interested that we don’t play into our adversaries’ hands by making these trolls look ten feet tall. That is not our experience."
huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/m…
Ben Houchen retweeted
“The fasten seat belts sign is on”.
This is a message I received early this morning from one of the UK’s most experienced, savvy and respected financial traders. Someone I have come to know and trust for the last 25 years.
10-year bond yields are now almost 4.5pc - up some 50 basis points over the last month.
30-year yields this morning went above 6pc - a 28-year high.
Yet the UK’s political and media class continues to focus on party posturing and folksy rhetoric, ignoring the slow-motion disaster that has been happening on the UK’s sovereign bond markets for at least the last 18 months - a disaster that will inevitably, unless we drastically change course, turn into a fully blown market meltdown.
At that point, the UK government won’t be able to borrow enough money to finance our already spiralling debt interest bill.
Britain’s financial management will be taken over by overseas technocrats - that will be the condition of additional borrowing, to maintain the basic functions of the state, as happened in Greece and Italy back in the early 2010s and here in Britain 50 years ago this year (when we were forced in 1976 to apply to the IMF for a bailout).
The austerity then imposed on Britain would make 2010-2019 feel like a picnic - far, far worse than it would be if we took serious action now to control our public finances.
Lower-income households would suffer most - and there would be serious damage done to the UK’s already rapidly-fraying social fabric ….
I have been warning about these looking fiscal dangers publicly, in my newspaper columns and elsewhere, since at least early 2024.
Doing so hasn’t been easy or fun. I have been dismissed and derided by numerous economists, “economists”, officials and policymakers - as well as lots of journalists.
I absolutely don’t want a disastrous 1976-style outcome - which is why I’ve taken the blows and issued the warnings.
The state is too big. Public spending is out of control. Our fiscal rules are a convenient nonsense - designed to kick the can of financial reality into the future. We need to get real … and take bold action to tame the growth of spending, push back a now totally over-bearing state and snap the British economy out of today’s high-tax-high-borrowing-low-growth doom loop - the result of myopic, counter-productive policy-making by successive governments for the last decade and more …
Other prominent economists who agree with me - ie who are financially-literate, can read a yield curve, have a passing interest in economic history and who understand the dangers of some 80pc of UK government borrowing going on debt interest as it currently is - need to chuck “career risk” in the bin, and start saying publicly what so many of them have, for quite a while now, only had the bottle to say to me in private …
Remember: “The fasten seat belts sign is on”
Ben Houchen retweeted
Here is one of the 700 prisoners that Labour have released today.
His plan now that he’s free?
“I’m going to go stealing again.”
Ben Houchen retweeted
Thank you Cllr Burnham, I’ve treated myself and my family to two extra Freddos every week. The cost of living crisis is solved and you have brought back hope to every postcode.
Ben Houchen retweeted
I mean… I’d also argue you don’t get shot at or carry grenades in M&S either. A truly pathetic view, that needs ignoring and binning 🚮 (4/4)
The decline of Britain in a tweet.
Pencil pushing civil servant cries because **checks notes** the SAS aren’t kind cuddly blokes. The absolute state of it. (1/4)
EXCLUSIVE: Special forces soldiers believe they are “untouchable” and not all of them are the heroes they think they are, according to a former female civil servant who worked alongside them.
Monica Grenfell, who was employed at the Special Air Service (SAS) headquarters in Credenhill, near Hereford, for three years, said some of the elite troops were “feral” and it was “the nasty characters who really ruled the roost”.
She has given evidence under oath to the Afghan Inquiry and has now been interviewed by @thetimes
thetimes.com/article/5706a8a…
Our SAS are HEROES. And frankly I am reassured that they don’t conform to normal office behaviour. They are some of the toughest and bravest soldiers we have, throwing themselves into danger to protect all of us - they are not accountants at the LocalAuthority… (3/4)
And in other breaking news, the sky is blue.
A landmark Finnish study has found a sharp rise in psychiatric illness among adolescents following sex-alteration procedures.
The peer-reviewed study, published in Acta Paediatrica, tracked every young person under 23 who contacted Finland's gender clinics between 1996 and 2019.
A total 2,083 individuals were studied, with 16,643 matched controls. They were followed for up to 25 years.
Finland's health registers are mandatory, which means no one opts out — this is the complete national picture.
The numbers: psychiatric morbidity rose from 9.8% to 60.7% in adolescents who underwent feminising reassignment, and from 21.6% to 54.5% in masculinising reassignment.
Even after adjusting for prior psychiatric history, gender-referred adolescents faced five times the risk of male population controls, and three times the risk of female controls.
"Psychiatric needs do not subside after medical gender reassignment," the authors concluded.
Referrals after 2010 arrived sicker. 47.9% had already needed psychiatric treatment before their first clinic visit, against 15.3% among controls.
The authors' read: for some adolescents, gender distress may be secondary to other mental health challenges.
The evidence keeps mounting. The silencing continues anyway.
How many more adolescents will be told this is "care"?
The problem with this statement is Phillipson can’t tell you what a woman is… which kind of undermines her point somewhat
Phillipson to Piddington Women Concerned About Their Safety: ‘All Women in Society Are Unsafe’ order-order.com/2026/09/20/p…
Ben Houchen retweeted
It’s worrying to read the Government is considering an increase in Capital Gains Tax.
Britain needs people willing to take risks, build businesses and invest their capital here.
Incentives matter! Increasing CGT will mean fewer jobs.
inews.co.uk/news/politics/ca…
I remember we thought about doing exactly this as part of a transport announcement. We were offered the bus, by a bus company, for free and a local company said they could decorate it for £5k.
We thought that was far too expensive so didn’t bother
£78,400,000 of taxpayers money given to France so they take 1,400 immigrants, but then we take 1,400 of their immigrants and still the small boats come every day…
Not sure why we spent £78,400,000 to not reduce illegal migration