Politics
Politics Home Article | PM Says His Principles Are The Same As Public On Iran War

(Alamy)
4 min read
Keir Starmer has said he believes that his principles on how to approach the Iran war “are shared by the British people” as he set out support for UK households using heating oil.
At a Downing Street press conference on Monday morning, Starmer said there would be “immediate support” worth £53m for households reliant on heating oil that are “most exposed” to rising prices.
Referring to reports that oil companies had been cancelling orders and hiking prices, the Prime Minister said legal action would be taken if they had been found to have broken the law.
UK households will be protected by the Ofgem cap until July. However, energy bills could rise that month if global prices remain high.
Drivers are already seeing the impact of the war in Iran, with diesel and petrol prices rising sharply in recent weeks.
On Sunday night, US President Donald Trump called for European allies to join him in the Middle East, telling the Financial Times that NATO faces a “very bad” future if allies like the UK do not help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The threat of attack by Iran for traffic passing through the Strait, which is one of the most important trade routes in the world, has led to a spike in oil and gas prices.
Starmer said he was working with allies on a “viable collective plan” to restore freedom of navigation for ships seeking to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
“We’ve already acted alongside other countries to release emergency oil stocks at a level that is completely unprecedented. But, ultimately, we have to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ensure stability in the market.”
Questioned by the media about what shape this plan would take, Starmer said he was “looking at options” and wanted to involve “as many partners as possible”.
The Prime Minister said that while the UK would take “the necessary action to defend ourselves and our allies”, it would “not be drawn into the wider war”.
Starmer has so far committed the UK to “defensive” action, allowing the US to use British bases to carry out strikes in Iran.
However, he refused to join the initial US and Israeli attacks on Iran, arguing that there was no viable, long-term plan or clear legal basis for the action.
In his press conference, Starmer said the question of “whether to commit British troops to military action is the most serious responsibility for any Prime Minister”.
“I have been attacked by some for my decision not to join the offensive against Iran.
“But at every stage, I’ve stood by my principles, principles which I held just as strongly when it came to debate about the Iraq war in 2003, principles which I believe are shared by the British people, that our decision should be based on a calm, level-headed assessment of the British national interest.
“And that if we are to send our service men and women into harm’s way, the very least they deserve is to know that they do so on a legal basis and with a properly thought-through plan,” he said.
Referring to the Conservatives and Reform UK’s initial stance on the war, when both parties called on the UK to join the first US and Israeli strikes, Starmer said some would have “rushed the UK headlong into this war without the full picture of what they’re sending our forces into, and without a plan to get us out”, adding that approach was “not leading”, but “following”.
“My leadership is about standing firm for the British interest, no matter the pressure. And I believe time will show that we have the right approach, right on the economy and the cost of living, right on defence and energy, and right on this war in the best interests of the British people.”
Politics
Palantir out, demands NHS staff
Doctors and human rights groups are demanding that NHS trust bosses stop using a ‘nothing special’ patient data management platform provided by ‘murder tech’ firm Palantir.
Disgraced Blairite peer Peter Mandelson pushed for Palantir to receive huge UK government contracts, without a competitive process. The Starmer regime awarded them despite – or because of – the firm’s involvement in Israel’s genocide. Despite, too, the fact that Palantir’s bosses are linked to serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein. And boast about using their systems to murder people they don’t like and musing about spraying others with fentanyl-laced piss.
Palantir OUT
The so-called ‘Federated Data Platform’ (FDP) gives Palantir access to patients’ information from all parts of the NHS, supposedly so hospitals can provide more effective treatment more efficiently. But medics and campaigners say there’s “nothing special” about Palantir’s system and no particular benefit to using it – and they decry the government’s “drive” to push hospitals to use it.
Human rights group Amnesty has asked the NHS and all public bodies to dump Palantir completely. Its AI and human rights researcher Matt Mahmoudi said the firm:
has a track record of flagrantly disregarding international law and standards, both in the violations of the human rights of migrants in the United States, which it risks contributing to, and its ongoing supply of artificial intelligence products and services to the Israeli military and intelligence services.
Dr Rhiannon Mihranian Osborne said the company’s involvement is destroying trust in the NHS among patients and staff. She said health workers want the system dropped completely to:
put the interests of patients and workers above American big tech corporations. We know the rollout isn’t going to plan – NHS analysts have told us the software offers nothing special, implementation costs are spiralling and the drive to adopt Palantir tech risks pushing out local, trusted data solutions.
Featured image via the Canary
Politics
Why Michael B Jordan's Oscars win is so significant
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Politics
How to solve Britain’s energy crisis
In response to the Iran conflict, fossil fuel prices are yo-yoing faster than the UK prime minister’s policy agenda. Roughly 20 per cent of the world’s supply of oil and natural gas passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint separating Iran from the Gulf States. Unfortunately, much of that passage sits squarely within range of Iranian missiles and drones.
Oil prices have risen sharply again after a brief period of tranquility last week. Traders either believed the conflict would end soon, or they thought that alternative supplies would soon come on stream. But both options were always uncertain – particularly the former. Trump’s promise to end the war quickly is, at the end of the day, a Trump promise. There are Persian sand dunes with more consistency and permanence.
Given this uncertain state of affairs, wouldn’t a country with an established oil and gas sector be crazy, bordering on reckless, to stand in the way of developing it as fast as possible? Apparently not. According to UK energy secretary Ed Miliband, the latest war in the Middle East is ‘yet another reminder’ that the ‘only route to energy security and sovereignty’ is Net Zero. It is further proof, Miliband said, that the UK must ‘get off our dependence on fossil-fuel markets, whose prices we do not control, and on to clean homegrown power we do’.
Miliband’s statement shows that the weakest arguments deployed in 2022 – when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused global energy prices to skyrocket – are making a return. Fossil fuels are too expensive, no one wants to invest and it’s a depleted basin anyway, we are told. Plus, domestic production can’t affect prices, the future is electric, the public doesn’t like it, a ladder fell over during test drilling and greedy corporations are profiteering. And will no one think of Greta’s sad face as she pines for the fallen ayatollah on her next diesel-yacht jolly to a warzone?
The reality is this. The UK uses oil and gas for around 75 per cent of its energy needs, just over half of which is imported. We will continue to use oil and gas for decades to come, and access to secure supplies remains an imperative, wherever it comes from. The alternative is lights out and heating off in winter, not a utopian counterfactual of nymphs frolicking in meadows around windmills. If resources come from the UK’s own soil or seabeds, we can ensure they are drilled to our own standards, and that we reap the benefits – both through economic activity and tax.
If it’s imported, we cannot. We instead pay the taxes and wages for others and consume a grubbier product, emitting 50 per cent more CO2. This is moronic. ‘Leave it in the ground’ isn’t a policy stance. It is an admission of being so blind in your pursuit of a cleaner, greener world that you’re prepared to deliver a dirtier, greyer one to avoid making adult choices.
But what about our genius Net Zero mission and clean power plan? Surely three to four fossil-fuel crises in 50 or so years are an endorsement of this strategy? Not really. Net Zero means trying to replace gigawatts of reliable power from old nuclear, coal and gas as fast as possible with wind and solar and, much later, any new nuclear power that can get past British regulations. The fly in the ointment – or cod trapped in a fish disco, if you prefer – is that wind and solar power also rely on gas.
By now, it should hardly need stating that weather-dependent power is unreliable and infirm. When the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining, our energy is provided by gas – kept on standby at vast expense, to ensure power grids can keep running on overcast and windless days. Renewables also require a vast amount of land and infrastructure. That infrastructure of wire, concrete, steel, solar panels and turbines relies on fossil fuel-intensive manufacturing and mining. This is also true of hypothetical future solutions like batteries and hydrogen, neither of which are remotely viable at scale at present.
This is why our energy prices continued to rise after oil and gas prices fell in 2023-24. It was what the system costs. Selling sunlight and breezes to the public as free energy – without mentioning the cost of capturing, converting, connecting, balancing, storing, financing and backing them up – was always a catastrophic folly.
The obvious low-carbon substitute is nuclear. If we build it under a sensible regulatory regime, it can compete with both gas and older renewables. If we can do that cost-effectively in a decade hence, why load the grid with gas-dependent renewables capacity today? It is the height of absurdity.
So what can be done about the latest, inevitable energy crisis? It would be good if the government had a plan. One where predictable policy levers are pulled in reaction to the length and extent of the higher prices. This does exist at the extremes – there are emergency plans for grid failure, and the civil disorder that may follow. But solutions to exorbitant energy prices caused by the shocks we are now witnessing are thin on the ground. So here are some suggestions.
Short-term, it is easiest to bring down pump prices for transport. With roughly 65 per cent of people commuting by car and over 90 per cent of those not in electric vehicles, cutting fuel duty, cutting the VAT rate from 20 per cent to five per cent and suspending or ending the biofuels mandate would have an immediate impact. That MPs are still debating planned increases in fuel duty in September shows the metropolitan disconnect of current ministers with how most people live their lives.
The most obvious thing to do would be to scrap Labour’s crippling policy on the North Sea oil and gas industry. Ditching the 78 per cent ‘windfall tax’ is common sense, but this alone will not restore investor confidence. The only sensible thing to do is reverse Labour’s ban on new drilling in the North Sea.
The 2008 Climate Change Act, which set legally binding decarbonisation targets, also needs to go. This will avoid never-ending judicial reviews and appeals to international courts that prioritise a right to a hypothetical global temperature over national economic security.
We are in this mess as a result of deliberate political choices that have placed utopian ideals above reality. The goal of UK energy policy should be to have energy supplies that are secure, affordable and abundant – in that order, delivered through a competitive set of energy markets that make efficient choices.
Decarbonisation will only be rational when it doesn’t damage those ends. But that remains a long way off. Britain’s energy crisis, however, is now. Only by abandoning Net Zero will we be able to get ourselves out of it.
Andy Mayer is chief operating officer and energy analyst at the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Politics
Babies And Toddlers Are Already Masters Of Deception, Study Finds
If you’ve ever had the sneaky suspicion your toddler’s a master manipulator, prepare to feel vindicated.
A new study suggests around one-quarter of children start to understand deception by as early as 10 months old (!!), and this rises to half of kids by the time they’re 17 months.
Previous research has often focused on deception as something “very sophisticated”, however researchers in the new study were able to document much earlier forms of trickery in young kids.
The study’s lead author, Elena Hoicka, Professor of Education at the University of Bristol, said: “It was fascinating to uncover how children’s understanding and usage of deception evolves from a surprisingly young age and builds in their first years so they become quite adept and cunning ‘little liars’.”
What did the study involve?
The parents of 750 children aged 0-47 months were asked a range of questions about their child’s deception development.
Some parents noted their children’s deceptive ways began as early as eight months old.
Once children learned the art of deception, this activity was found to be pretty frequent: half of children reported as “deceivers” had done something sneaky in the last day.
By analysing the responses, researchers from the Universities of Bristol, Oxford, Sheffield, Warwick, and Waterloo in Canada, identified numerous types of deception that children mastered.
What are the different types of deception?
From the age of two, researchers found deception tends to be action-based, or requiring basic spoken responses.
It might involve pretending not to hear a parent or caregiver say ‘time to tidy up’, hiding toys so others can’t play with them, or denial (like eating chocolate but shaking their head to say they didn’t when a parent asks if they ate it).
They might also engage in “forbidden” activities in secret – for example, looking in a bag they were told not to look in when no one’s watching – or making excuses when asked to do something.
By the age of three, the study found children started to understand and engage in even more types of deception, involving a deeper understanding of language and how other people’s minds work.
This could mean exaggerating (for example, saying they ate all their peas when they ate far less); understating something; or flat-out lying (ie. saying a ghost ate their chocolate).
They might also simply pretend not to know, see, or understand if they don’t want to do something.
At this age, researchers said they also start to withhold information – for instance, telling their parents their sibling hit them, while leaving out the fact they hit their sibling first.
Three-year-olds also start to use distraction techniques, like telling someone to ‘Look over there!’ when they want to do something they’re not supposed to.
Prof Hoicka concluded that “parents can be reassured deception is entirely normal in toddler development”.
“They can also look at our findings to know which types of deception to expect by age, so they can better understand and communicate with their children in order to stay one step ahead of their deceit,” she added.
Politics
Zionists ‘will siphon your soul’
Zohran Mamdani’s condemnation of Susan Abulhawa is a capitulation to the Epstein class, Abulhawa said in a searing but graceful response to the New York City mayor.
Abulhawa views on Israel and Zionism were condemned by Mamdani in a recent press conferece.
Abulhawa has a new book called “Every Moment is a life.” It is an anthology she compiled featuring the writings of young Palestinians experiencing the UK/US/Israeli genocide of Gaza. Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, illustrated a piece within the collection called “A Trail of Soap.”
Susan Abulhawa’s warning
Susan Abulhawa warned Mamdani in a post on X:
You succumbed to forces that seek to pick away at you, at your talented, beautiful wife, and at your work, they will claw harder with each apology or concession you make. If you are not careful, they will siphon your soul before you even realize it.
As the Zionist press in the USA got wind of Duwaji’s contribution — Mamdani felt compelled to publicly condemn Abulhawa. He said Duwaji never met Abulhawa and was commissied through a third party, Abulhawa confirmed this.
Mayor Mamdani says his wife, Rama Duwaji, was not aware of anti-Israel posts (like calling some Israeli citizens “parasites”) from an author she illustrated an essay for.
Mamdani calls that rhetoric “reprehensible” and says his wife booked the gig thru a 3rd party pic.twitter.com/HQqJvRYC53
— Josie Stratman (@JosieStratman) March 13, 2026
The fact that Mamdani publicly condemned a Palestinian American author whose work is crucial amid the silencing of voices witnessing the Gaza genocide has disappointed many of his supporters.
The poignancy of the story that Duwaji illustrated, a young Gazan called Deema’s first encounter with the indignity of a public toilet after her home was destroyed, was lost entirely in Mamdani’s condemnation. In his rush to distance himself from a Palestinian voice, he buried the very humanity his wife’s art sought to illuminate.
In her response to Mamdani, Abulhawa reserved her deepest sorrow not for herself but for the young writers she mentored in Gaza —children who risked their lives walking through bombed streets just to reach writing workshops she held in Gaza in 2024, in the middle of the violent, bloody genocide.
During two trips to Gaza in 2024, Abulhawa conducted eight writing workshops for young Palestinians. The workshops took place amid Israel’s relentless bombing campaigns. She said in her video reply to Mamdani:
No words can adequately capture the evil I have witnessed or experienced at their hands. I do not have sufficient language to describe what they have done to us, what Gaza smells like, feels or looks like up close now. But it is the kind of knowledge that alters one’s life.
She said it was extraordinarily difficult for the young writers to attend the workshops. They traveled for hours on foot, by bicycle, or on donkey carts just to reach the meeting places. Sometimes the journey itself put their lives at risk.
Palestinian-Americans condemn Mamdani
Other Palestinian Americans also condemned Mamdani’s capitulation.
Anas Saleh’s take down on Mamdani’s zionist position during his mayoral campaign was reshared by him.
After I heckled Mamdani, I got flooded with hate from the left for attacking “my allies.”@NerdeenKiswani reached out and told me that in a few months or a year that Zohran will expose himself to the people and they’ll realize you were right. Well… here we are. Nerdeen was right. https://t.co/ULqGUTe3ts
— Anas Saleh انس صالح (@AnasSaleh_NYC) March 14, 2026
Nerdeen Kiswani said that Palestine movement was expendable to Mamdani. She said:
He knows he’ll anger us. He just believes that when the time comes, we’ll vote for him anyway.
Zohran Mamdani throwing his own wife under the bus for not “vetting” who she made artwork for was never going to appease Zionists. They were always going to attack him anyway.
So why do it?
Because in his political calculus, Zionists are a constituency to appease. The Palestine…
— Nerdeen Kiswani (@NerdeenKiswani) March 14, 2026
Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian writer recalled a conversation with Mamdani in which the mayor once warned him that criticism of politicians ‘gives people permission to go after his wife.’
Once in a meeting w Mr Mayor he told me that when I criticize him I “give people permission to go after his wife.” Very funny remark in retrospect.
— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) March 14, 2026
Yet in condemning Abulhawa, Mamdani himself had now handed his wife’s critics that very permission — sacrificing on the altar of political ambition the very principle he had once invoked to protect his family.
Zionist journalists circling Mamdani
The pressure on Mamdani has been relentless.
Since Duwaji’s illustration was discovered, Zionist journalists have targeted both him and his wife.
For instance, New York Post published a column attacking Duwaji. It accused her of holding “abhorrent, disgusting opinions” and celebrating “mass murder” based on her social media activity. The piece questioned whether Jewish New Yorkers could trust a mayor “who sleeps next to a woman” with such views!
The journalist who asked the question about Duwaji’s links to Abulhawa at the press conference mentioned above — is called Jon Levine of the Washington Free Beacon.
He is a Gaza Holocaust denier.
Israel’s response in Gaza was in fact far too lenient https://t.co/VBhh4BgpOb
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) February 12, 2026
Why Mamdani would condemn Abulhawa to a genocide denier shows the limitations of liberal politics.
Featured image via WikimediaCommons
Politics
Bees Can Live Underwater, And ‘Gills’ May Be Involved
If you want to attract bees to your garden, a special, shallow “bath”, which isn’t deep enough for our flying friends to fall into, is a great place to start.
But for queen bumblebees, apparently, a mini plunge pool would pose no threat.
That’s because new research published in the Royal Society’s Proceedings B has found that bumblebee queens can “avoid drowning” through “underwater respiration,” allowing them to live underwater for days.
How can bees live underwater?
A 2024 paper showed that bumblebee queens can live underwater for anywhere from eight hours to seven days. This newer research sought to figure out how.
Some bee species, including bumblebees, enter a period of deep rest called “diapause” in the winter. In that time, their metabolism and development slow way down.
But sometimes, the world around them doesn’t stay as rested. Flooding, for instance, can affect a hive (many of which stay underground in the colder months).
Scientists figured the response to submersion noted in the 2024 research was a survival tactic from the bumblebee queen. So, for this study, they put some bumblebee queens who were in diapause underwater and measured the gaseous exchange.
They found that carbon dioxide levels rose, while oxygen levels sank, suggesting the bees were respirating.
But the carbon dioxide emissions decreased compared to those emitted when the bees in diapause were out of water.
Researchers linked this to metabolic activity; the less that was happening in bees’ bodies, they reasoned, the lower the CO2 output would be.
Prior to being placed underwater, diapausal queen bees – whose metabolism had already dropped compared to non-diapausal levels – produced 15.42 microlitres of carbon dioxide per hour per gram of body mass.
But after eight days underwater, that shrunk to 2.35 microlitres. That’s almost a six-fold decrease in presumed energy use.
Scientists termed this a “profound metabolic depression”.
Wait – but what about that “respiration”?
That dip in metabolic activity explained some of the survival rates of queen bees living underwater. But, quick question – how are they getting enough oxygen to respirate in the first place?
Well, scientists couldn’t answer that definitively in this study. However, they hypothesised that queen bees can form a kind of “physical gill” with trapped air that allows gas exchange.
“Future studies manipulating water conditions and the likely physical gill, alongside detailed recovery analyses, will further clarify the adaptations enabling queens to withstand extended submersion,” the researchers wrote.
Politics
Xander West: The Conservative Party must revive the CPC
Xander West is an independent writer and author of the Grumbling Times substack.
An essential part of any political party’s recovery from major defeat is reform of its internal machinery or institutions.
The Conservative Party, unfortunately, seems not to have taken this endeavour as seriously or comprehensively as is necessary to restore its status as the centre-right’s party of government, in other words to publicly show it has changed for the better over repeating such ad nauseam.
Perhaps this contributed to Danny Kruger, Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell’s decisions that conservatism may be better realised in another party. Nevertheless, the Conservatives’ history provides plentiful inspiration for reorganisation following severe defeats which, whilst not a panacea, could strive to fulfil several present challenges. In particular, the Conservative Political Centre (CPC) embodies the kind of party institution which should be urgently revived.
The chairmanships of Ralph Assheton and Frederick Marquis, 1st Baron Woolton, with a strong supporting role by R. A. Butler as head of the Conservative Research Department, were the most transformative of the postwar era. To quote Philip Norton’s The Conservative Party (1996), they “not only resuscitated the party but effectively galvanised it” following the landslide defeat of 1945; the creation of the CPC the same year was no exception.
Butler in particular, who influenced its formation, considered breaking the intellectual monopoly of socialism a crucial aspect in radically renewing the party. As its political education body and wholly independent until 1964, the CPC sought to produce well-informed and intellectually self-confident Conservatives at all levels without subjecting them to propagandising diktats or soundbite sloganeering.
Through its extensive publications, lectures, conferences, schools and study groups, it stimulated political thinking and the discussion of new ideas without formally committing the party to certain policies or forcing its members to conform to official opinions. Indeed, the body prioritised the two-way movement of ideas between the Conservative leadership and membership by circulating responses from local branches on specific topics, to which the relevant minister or senior party figure would be obliged to reply and consider in their decision-making. CPC pamphlets were also intended to reach a wider public who might be sympathetic to conservative ideas or arguments.
However, after nearly half a century of prominence in Conservative politics, the CPC appeared to atrophy in its final decade or so, with the idea of education becoming more top-down than grassroots. Perhaps its consolidation into a directorate with the Research Department in 1988 crippled whatever independence and authority it still enjoyed, forcing a greater orientation towards merely reviewing official policy directions. Its closest successor, the Conservative Policy Forum, inherited only a fraction of the role once performed by the CPC in ensuring party members are represented in policymaking, with scant reference to ideas beyond policy and no notion of political education.
Most importantly, the CPC in its prime was dedicated to explaining problems and suggesting solutions in accordance with conservative principles, its arguments thus setting it apart from conventional think tanks.
Although conservatism has frequently been the most pragmatic body of modern political thought, such considerations must be anchored in some underlying convictions to avoid being attracted into all manner of expediencies and undermining one’s own stated positions. Sometimes trusting the strength of Conservative politicians’ instinctive or dispositional conservatism has proved enough, yet other times this has failed or the right spirit towards conservation has been all but absent, whereupon dire straits ensue.
This demonstrates why the CPC was such a vital asset in policy formation and election campaigns alike, for its educational mission essentially advanced conservatism and strong, articulate conservatives within the Conservative Party. To disregard this role, it implied, would impair the party’s chances of election and the quality of government thereafter. It should be self-evident that disseminating bullet-point lists of ‘values’ via email or press releases will never suffice for thought, nor what the party forgot about itself in recent years in forsaking its distinct and rich political tradition.
Of course, there are obvious benefits in hosting a vibrant environment for ideas within the party today, or in producing competent and knowledgeable activists, both of which the CPC facilitated through its activities. Whilst some may argue the need to teach Conservatives about conservatism shows the party was never conservative in the first place, this is an inaccurate assumption.
Political education done right entails informing, articulating and deepening conservative expressions of common sense or disposition, indeed of substantiating values and the motivations behind policy proposals. The need for articulated principles and applying the conservative tradition are simply inextricable from the party’s form and function, its identity and purpose.
Reviving an institution like the CPC could begin to satisfy the immense unrealised demand for a party which represents something solid and understands itself, whilst guarding against possible future drift from leaderships seeking more convenient choices. Perhaps the window in which the Conservatives could have monopolised this potential support, however, has already closed.
It is a damning indictment against the Conservative Party of recent years that a plurality of the electorate now supports, for lack of other perceived options, a party which offers fireworks with assertive rhetoric in lieu of solidity, nuance and true depth of thought or feeling. Both options carry ample persuasive power, but only one may engender permanence, although the prominent defections to Reform could quickly upend this assessment in its favour.
Furthermore, whilst the formation of a concrete policy suite at the 2025 party conference was a positive development, recreating the CPC would give them the substance and verifiably conservative credentials they desperately need.
Again, ‘authentic’ conservatism is more than albeit important counters to Labour policies the Conservative leadership tends to promote and deeper than attempts to find merely popular taglines or policy solutions. Moreover, the realisation that contemporary conservatism ought to defend what is good in society does not make it ‘muscular’, for such an idea is so skeletal to the entire philosophy that it barely should need restating.
Nevertheless, where the party has clear ideas, a reimagined CPC could readily support, campaign for and build upon them. It could also show conservatives, rather than nostalgic centrists, remain the preponderant faction. Yet, the overriding consideration might become that of legacy, not of the past twenty years but two centuries of Conservative achievements which risk being forgotten amidst the political tumult.
In 1945, as now, the repository of wisdom in the conservative tradition demands rediscovery and readapting to present circumstances. The Conservative Party’s survival is much less assured than in 1945 or 1997, but the reinvigoration of a party cannot occur through its leadership alone.
Energy, ideas and self-confidence must be shared by the whole party; the question of sustaining them is where a party institution focussing on political education would come into its own. Given those preconditions, there is little but individual egos preventing Reform from forming an organisation along similar lines and further assimilating the core Conservative vote.
If given a fair chance, re-establishing a body like the CPC could facilitate much in a Conservative recovery, but if current trends persist might equally find itself passing the torch for the conservative political tradition.
Politics
LIVE: Tice Hosts Reform DOGE and Local Government Press Conference
LIVE: Tice Hosts Reform DOGE and Local Government Press Conference
Politics
Why migration can’t solve the birth crisis, with Stephen J Shaw
The post Why migration can’t solve the birth crisis, with Stephen J Shaw appeared first on spiked.
Politics
Met Police announced successful repression of antiwar protest
The Met Police has issued a statement praising itself for its decision to ban today’s London march against the Iran war. The force allied with the Israel lobby to ban the annual Al Quds Day march and limit it to a ‘static rally’. Then it boasted how great its decision had been because its repression of British citizens’ right to march in peaceful protest had caused some not to attend. It ended by thanking police officers for coming from all over the place to prevent an anti-war protest and “keeping protestors and Londoners safe”:
News – 15 March 2026 17:05
Public order update
Today’s policing operation at the Al Quds day protest and counter-protest concluded this afternoon.
Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan, Public Order lead said:
“Our policing plan worked, with both groups kept apart and we saw no attempts from either side to breach conditions by marching. Both sets dispersed as planned from 15:00hrs.
“We saw significantly fewer people attend than we had anticipated. The restrictions and conditions meant many people chose to stay away and not to attend the protest or counter-protest.
“This shows our decision to apply for the ban was the right one. A static protest meant it was easier for officers to keep the two groups apart and prevent serious public disorder.
“We made 12 arrests including for showing support for a proscribed organisation, affray and for threatening or abusive behaviour. We are also investigating chants made by a speaker at the Al Quds protest.
“As I said from the outset, the decision to ban the protest march does not set a precedent and we will continue to consider each protest on a case-by-case basis.
“I want to extend my thanks to the officers, including those from across the country who supported us. Their professionalism and commitment helped us to keep protestors and Londoners safe.”
Yeah, well done lads and lasses. You protected us all from the big bad mob that doesn’t want the UK to assist two genocidal regimes from killing people. Bravo 👍.
Met Police, happy to repress
The Met doesn’t say so in its statement, but the “chants made by a speaker” were rapper Bob Vylan repeating his Glastonbury 2025 “Death death to the IDF” chant. As well he might, since police and the CPS already looked at the exact same chant then and decided just four months ago, in December 2025, that the chant merited no further action. Ok then, ok now — unless of course the point is to smear the protest rather than to prosecute.
But the dishonesty ran even deeper. Both the anti-war protest and the several phone-booths worth of pro-war, pro-Israel counter-protesters were treated as if equal in size and significance — when in fact, tens of thousands still turned up to demand peace, despite police and state repression:
Contrast this with the open racism and tiny numbers of the pro-Israel hate-gathering:
Today, at the Al-Quds Day counter-protest in London, the Mossad-linked hate group “Stop the Hate UK” played a tune gloating about the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader.
They’re such incredibly sick and hateful people. pic.twitter.com/JhTeWwugBO
— Wokerati Marty (@WokeratiMarty) March 15, 2026
Contrary to its claims of keeping both ‘sides’ apart, sources at the scene said the Met also allowed far-right pro-Israel ‘auditors’ in among the peaceful anti-war protest.
In reality, the Met Police and its bosses in Whitehall and Downing Street are repressing the will of the British public. More than twice as many UK people oppose the US-Israel war of aggression on Iran. Almost as many oppose the Starmer regime allowing the US to use British airbases to attack Iran. Even more certainly would, if they understood that this enabling consists of directly refuelling and re-arming the carpet-bombing B-52 high-altitude bombers Trump is using to slaughter Iranian civilians:
Keir Starmer has turned Britain into a police state over the heads, and against the will, of the people of this country. He is a war criminal just as surely and just as guiltily as Trump, Netanyahu and their racist enablers.
Featured image via Middle East Eye
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