Politics
Calum Davies: What do Reform UK stand for, in Wales?
Calum Davies is a Conservative councillor in Cardiff and a candidate for the Senedd in May.
A great deal has been written about Reform UK’s potential electoral performance in May’s devolved elections, but what do they actually stand for? There is much cause for concern.
Reform’s rise has come too quickly for its own good.
Polling suggests it will be the second largest party in both the Welsh and Scottish parliaments in two months’ time, and the most popular (and unpopular) party in the wider country. This has required a rapid and large scale-up not just in terms of its operations, but its philosophy. With so many new people and a general anti-establishment message, the party is courting a range of views from a variety of political hinterlands. This leads to intellectual inconsistency and a vibes-over-policy mindset.
This is quite handy for campaigning, being all things to all people, but it sows the seeds for an early demise as voters are led to believe they are for one thing when they are not. Once unravelled, it would be a particularly devastating charge for Reform who explicitly position themselves as more trustworthy than the traditional parties who they (not unfairly) claim have a poor record of keeping promises and delivering results.
The tightrope has been walked over the last two years as its more libertarian, tax-cutting desires clash with its more interventionist, statist approach. Only one can win and voters deserve to know which. Such an obvious misstep was its fluid position on the two-child benefit cap which, at the last vote, led to its MPs voting in different directions. A party confident in its guiding values would not have made a mistake like this.
Indeed, what does it tell us about their values? It has been suggested to me more than once that I defect to Reform – but what would I be joining? I know both the triumphs and shortcomings of the Conservative Party. It is imperfect, but I know where I stand. Can the Reform member say the same without reverting to the general lines of the anti-establishment protest voter?
What concerns me, in particular in these elections, is how Reform’s self-defining image as a party that is against so much and for so little will impact on the most important faultline of all.
In January, a piece in The Times highlighted Reform’s ambivalence towards the Union under its new Scottish leader, Lord Offord. One might think a party often caricatured as an English nationalist one and led by an ex-Tory would not be flirting with Scottish independence. Yet, Offord claimed, “rational nationalists” could find common ground with “moderate unionists,” and they could “deal with the constitution later”. He was not “ruling [a referendum] out in the future” when a decision on independence could be based on “strength, not just emotion”.
Those of us who place the preservation of the United Kingdom and recognise the dangers of enabling separatist rhetoric know that there is no such thing as a “rational nationalist” and understand that all their actions are designed to lead to an end goal. Reform may want to win pro-independence voters, but it should be through persuasion of the merits of their agenda (for what it is), not by humouring that of the separatist. It should oppose another referendum.
Something similar is happening in Wales too. The Welsh Conservatives produced a great montage of Reform figures, including Nigel Farage and his new Welsh frontman, saying they want more devolution and more powers in Cardiff Bay. Have they not learnt the lesson of the British Conservative Government who did that and the Welsh Labour Government who abused those powers, all in turn servicing Plaid Cymru’s nationalist agenda time and time again? They claim to hate the world Blair made, yet here they are building on his legacy, not demolishing it.
Reform supports the expansion of the Senedd from 60 to 96 members at a cost of £120m. On both enlarging and empowering the Senedd, Reform is on the same page as Labour, Plaid, the Lib Dems, and the Greens. Only the Welsh Conservatives have opposed this expansion from the start and want to reverse it. As a candidate, I have spoken with many people who are considering Reform believing they are anti-establishment. Once they are made aware of this enabling agenda, they reconsider and will look at the Conservatives again.
Reform councillors are not even living up to some of the party’s supposedly reliable positions, with their sole Cardiff councillor failing to back my motion to close the illegal migrant hotel in the city. If Reform councillors cannot back even this, then what can we expect of them?
It is this ongoing inability to pick a lane – as well as the feuds with Farage – that inspired the founding of Advance UK and Restore. It is noticeable that the Lowe outfit is established on the basis that Reform is too mainstream. Whilst this has mainly centred on immigration, given its closeness to establishment policy in Wales and Scotland, it does give credence to an emerging pattern – that Reform is not a radical break from the norm. It is just another flawed political party destined to repeat the mistakes all others make. Its new branding, but politics as usual.
However, Reform’s youth coupled with its sudden popularity is a recipe for these mistakes to become catastrophes. With less than two months until the Senedd election, Reform has announced no candidates. It is not just to avoid scrutiny – it has a serious problem in finding quality people to stand. My fear is a large group of Reform MSs will be elected but will fall under the spell of the devocratic establishment and go native, which correlates with its devocratic calls for more powers and politicians in Cardiff Bay. We need serious anti-establishment politicians to challenge the devolved system of government that has failed Wales for three decades, not easily bored rabble-rousers who don’t recognise the dangerous of separatism.
I assert that Reform is actually to the political left of the Conservatives. Faragists may talk in more forceful terms, but Kemi Badenoch’s policy programme does outflank Farage from the right. The Conservatives are notching up a lot of wins and doing much of the legwork of the Opposition but, frustratingly, the scars of government run deep, and other are the beneficiaries.
Convincing evidence of this is the volume of Conservative defectors, another source of anger for those who choose Restore but also those within Reform. Its Scottish and Welsh leader as well as all its MSPs and MSs are ex-Tories. Most Reform MPs used to be Conservative MPs. Whilst I consider Robert Jenrick and Danny Kruger to be losses to our party (in terms of their ability, not loyalty), Reform have also done us a favour in taking off our hands the mediocre and the mad.
Reform just being an outfit for the dregs of the Conservatives was further compounded at the launch of its Welsh manifesto earlier this month – a blatant rip-off of the Welsh Conservative programme of the last decade. Seriously, there was little difference in its contents – other than Reform’s suggestion to put tolls on the M4 relief road. Not sure how much traffic that will relieve.
With less than seven weeks to go until polling day, much remains uncertain. What we do need to know is for what does Reform actually stand and can it be trusted to protect the Union?
US president Donald Trump has begun deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to US airports to assist with security checks.
The news comes after a partial government shutdown caused major funding issues for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In turn, this has led to increasing waiting times at airport security checkpoints.
Tom Homan, Trump’s border tsar, told CNN that ICE is “helping TSA [Transportation Security Administration] do their mission and get the American public through that airport as quick as they can while adhering to all the security guidelines and the protocols”.
Homan claimed ICE agents won’t be directly involved in passenger screenings.
Meanwhile, the TSA agent’s union hit back with a statement that staff:
deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents.
ICE: untrained, armed and dangerous
Showing his characteristic degree of professionalism, Trump first threatened to deploy ICE on Truth Social. On 21 March, he posted:
I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before.
The partial shutdown has dragged on because Trump has tied re-opening the DHS to the condition that Democrats sign off on his ludicrously-named ‘SAVE America Act’. Again on Truth Social, he wrote:
I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass ‘THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.
It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate, and that includes giving these same terrible people, the Dems (who are to blame for this mess!), a Five Billion Dollar cut in ICE funding, a deal which, even when disguised as something else, is unacceptable to me and the American people – UNLESS it includes their approval of Voter I.D., (with picture!), Citizenship to Vote, No Mail-In Voting (with exceptions), All Paper Ballots, No Men In Women’s Sports, and No Transgender MUTILIZATION [sic] of our precious children … In other words, lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!!
Because shutting down government departments to force the opposition party to pass a bill removing voting rights and trans rights definitely isn’t a clear sign of fascism.
Vote rigging
This move is a transparent attempt at vote rigging, as Trump himself has admitted. At a press conference on 9 March, he boasted:
They know if we get this, they probably won’t win an election for 50 years, maybe longer.
As such, it’s unsurprising that CNN has called the chance of the act passing “near-impossible”. Meanwhile, the DHS has received no funding since mid-February, resulting in the current TSA shortage.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents TSA workers, said:
Our members at TSA have been showing up every day, without a paycheck, because they believe in the mission of keeping the flying public safe.
They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be.
Here, Everett was presumably referring to the multiple high-profile murders carried out by ICE thugs. Likewise, whilst some TSA members are currently working for free, more than 400 have quit their jobs since the shutdown began.
‘The last thing that the American people need’
Homan is in talks with the DHS to determine ICE agents’ role in airport security. Reportedly, the current plan revolves around having ICE cover entry and exit points, freeing up TSA officers to conduct screenings.
Hakeem Jeffries, minority leader of the US House of representatives, also criticised the use of Trump’s armed militiamen as airport bouncers. He told CNN:
The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalise or in some instances, kill them. We’ve already seen how ICE conducts itself.
These are untrained individuals when it comes to doing the current job that they have, for the most part, let alone deploying them in close exposure in highly sensitive situations at airports across the country.
The US House of Representatives will break for Easter on 30 March, if all goes according to schedule. With no resolution in sight for Trump’s SAVE America Act, and ICE agents already deployed in US airports, the stalemate is set to get worse before it is brought to a close.
Featured image via The Guardian/ David Grunfeld/ AP
Keir Starmer is up in front of the Liaison Committee for the next hour. Expect plenty on Iran and the economy…
I love a good TikTok-viral recipe. I’ve tried “frambled” eggs and Italian wedding soup, and have even given a version of “swamp potatoes” a go.
And recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of “dumpling lasagnes”, too.
Popularised by food influencer @april_eatz, it offers “all the flavour and texture of soup dumplings – no folding, no sealing, no stress”.
What is a dumpling lasagne?
It’s a layered version of dumplings with ground meat. Its structure goes seasoned mince, then dumpling wrapper, then mince, etc., (you can see how it got its name).
It’s a lot easier than maki traditional dumplings, which require careful folding to prevent leaks.
And it doesn’t require the hours of cooking involved in a classic Italian lasagne, either. You just mix your mince, place it between some dumpling skin layers, add sauce, and cook.
How do you make a dumpling lasagne?
There’s no set single recipe; like swamp potatoes, it’s more of a general set of rules than one exact formula.
Start with mince; this can be chicken mince or pork mince.
Add whatever combination of grated ginger, grated garlic, chopped spring onion, soy sauce, chilli crisp, sesame oil, rice vinegar, and/or pepper to the mix that you like.
Then, take your wonton wrappers and a bowl of water. Dip them briefly in the liquid before placing a layer at the bottom of your tray (unlike Italian lasagne, where mince goes in the pan first).
Next, add mince; then a dumpling skin layer – as food creator @heresyourbite puts it, “wrappers, pork, wrappers, pork, until you run out of space or ingredients”.
Make sure the top layer is a dumpling wrapper.
Once it’s assembled, add chicken stock or water to the dish to ensure it steams as it cooks.
Steam the dish, either over a large pot of water or, if you have one big enough to hold your tray, a steamer, until the mince is cooked.
Some TikTokers use a small inverted saucer in a lidded frying pan as a makeshift steamer.
The amount of time that it takes will depend on the amount of “dumpling lasagne” you’re making. The mince should be cooked thoroughly once it’s done.
After it’s cooked, add soy sauce, chilli oil, sesame seeds, or whatever other toppings you like to the dish, and you’re done.
The BBC, in a piece on Israel’s mass slaughter and displacement of civilians in Lebanon, has committed an astonishing breach of decency, let alone impartiality. The broadcaster described Israel’s Gaza genocide, and its replication of the same tactics in its war of aggression on Lebanon, as Israel’s “path to peace.”
In the segment, BBC reporter Lucy Williamson said, in reference to a Israel forcibly displacing a million Lebanese people:
A blueprint for destruction used again as a path to peace.
The BBC was found in March 2026 to have broken the law by hiding details of its executives’ calls with the Israeli embassy. Its ‘Middle East’ editor who has gushed about his relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu and the CIA is suing a journalist for describing his bias on Israel and Palestine, despite a judge ruling the comments were honest and structured opinion. Now this.
Clearly it’s ‘business as usual’ at the friends-of-Israel BBC.
Featured image via screenshot
By Skwawkbox
A stock market investor took to social media to share the vast benefits of renewable energy, namely solar panels. His electric bill dropped 71% in the week that began on 10 March compared to the same time last year. He is likely to save even more as fossil fuel prices surge because of the war on Iran, given gas largely sets the price of energy bills.
Two weeks ago we had solar panels and a battery fitted. We have just completed our first full week with the system.
Our electric bill for the week commencing 10th March 2026 compared to the same week last year has dropped by 71% from £31.71 to £9.05.We also have not received… pic.twitter.com/lqRtuI35X5
— Justin Waite (@SharePickers) March 21, 2026
Solar panel scale across the country
The issue is low income people do not have the disposable cash to install a solar panel and battery system, which can cost £8,000 to above £14,000. And the Labour government is predominantly letting the market solve the energy and climate crisis, rather than taking an active and strategic state investment approach.
In Green party leader Zack Polanski’s first economic speech, he pointed to Spain as an example of a country that has “doubled” its renewable energy capacity:
Spain… has doubled its wind and solar capacities since 2019, taking it from having some of the highest energy bills in Europe to some of the lowest. Other countries have been able to learn the lessons from previous crises and prepare – why is our response so weak when disaster strikes?
Spain’s investment in renewables means that gas set the price of electricity just 15% of time, compared to 89% in Italy and around 66% of the time in the UK. The FT further notes:
Spain’s average electricity price for the remainder of this year is forecast at about €66 per megawatt hour, or half the level of Italy’s.
Going backwards?
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry and many politicians want to take us into the past with increased fossil fuel usage. Labour MP Henry Tufnell, writing in the Sun, called for ministers to scrap the ban on new North Sea drilling – over 90% of which has already been used up. He attempted to reverse reality, saying that the move away from fossil fuels is “impoverishing our communities”.
Big Oil has long propagandised against renewable energy, despite its own reports from 70 years ago predicting the dangers of climate change.
No-brainer
While the war on Iran is a catastrophe, it is highlighting the benefits of renewable energy.
In 50 years burning fossil fuels will be looked on as being as ridiculous as burning candles for light is now.
It is stone age technology, expensive, polluting and inefficient.
— BladeoftheSun (@BladeoftheS) March 22, 2026
Quite.
Featured image via the Canary
Ambulances set on fire because they are run by a Jewish charity. The anti-Semites aren’t even trying to hide behind Gaza anymore. Truly, theirs is a movement that loathes Jews just as much as it loathes life.
Around 1.30am this morning, four ambulances were set ablaze in Golders Green, the heart of Jewish north London. They belonged to the Hatzola charity, which has been helping the ill and injured residents of the area, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, since 1979.
CCTV footage shows three suspects, clad head to toe in black, approaching the ambulances. They were parked next to a synagogue. Cylinders on the vehicles exploded, shattering the windows of nearby flats.
Right now, all we have is this grainy video footage to go on – motives are too early to establish. But I dare say we can make some educated guesses.
The Golders Green fire attacks come after a man named Jihad al-Shamie slashed at worshippers at a Heaton Park synagogue during Yom Kippur last October; after two foreign-born ISIS fanatics were locked up last month for plotting to gun down as many of Manchester’s Jews as they could; and after two Iranian men were charged a few days ago with spying on London’s Jewish communities on behalf of the Islamic Republic.
The butchers of Tehran were sending their henchmen after Jews in Britain – and across Europe – long before American and Israeli bombs began falling on the Ayatollah, his missile sites and the IRGC earlier this month. More than 20 potentially Iran-linked plots have been disrupted in Britain over the past two years.
A new Islamist group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, apparently spawned from the Islamic Republic’s terror networks, has also entered the stage. Last week, it claimed responsibility for explosives attacks on a synagogue in Belgium, a Jewish school in Amsterdam and a synagogue in Rotterdam.
Meanwhile, an ambient Jew hatred fouls the air everywhere. Anti-Semitic incidents in Britain, as recorded each month by the Community Security Trust, are double where they were before Hamas’s pogrom in 2023 emboldened the nation’s Jew-hating scumbags.
It’s in our schools, where Jewish MPs are having visits cancelled due to the fury of the ‘pro-Palestine’ mob. It’s in our universities, where ‘Put the Zios in the ground’ has replaced ‘Be Kind’ as the slogan du jour. It’s on our streets, where Islamists glorify Israel’s jihadist enemies while know-nothing progressives giggle with titillation.
There’s almost a grim division of labour. While radical Islamic mobs threaten, maim and take Jewish life, activists, students and perma-students launch Jew hunts on university campuses – targeting Israeli academics – or smash up Jewish-owned businesses, using bogus connections to Israeli defence firms as a pretext.
The sewers may have burst in Britain after October 7. But anyone who had been paying attention could see this coming. The Kent synagogue smashed up eight times in 10 years. The random attacks on doddery Jewish men. That convoy that drove around Finchley Road in north-west London in 2021, shouting ‘Fuck the Jews’ and ‘Rape their daughters’ from loud-hailers.
We’ve been told since Brexit that a new 1930s is upon us. Apparently, British voters politely asking for more democratic clout and better border control constituted a terrifying descent into Nazism. All the while, those menacing Britain’s tiny Jewish community – smaller in number than British Sikhs – were rendered invisible.
Smashed shops, firebombings, murder – purely because they are Jews. I don’t know how many echoes of history need to ring out, how much broken glass needs to rattle on the ground, before the anti-fascists rouse from their slumber. Or realise they’ve slipped on to the other side.
Muslim anti-Semitism, in particular, has been lent cover by all the usual idiots and cowards. Despite anti-Semitic attitudes being stubbornly higher among British Muslims, despite Islamic extremism being the biggest terror threat we face by a country mile, every political discussion must at some point pivot to the spectre of the ‘far right’.
Given you could now fit the actual far right in the back of an Uber XL, this requires smear tactics and spectacular mental gymnastics – like when Gary Neville responded to the Heaton Park killings by bemoaning the blokes putting Union flags on lampposts, or when Green MP Hannah Spencer blamed the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing on the ‘division’ generated by Reform UK.
The arguments are almost too stupid to rebut. Apparently, Jihad al-Shamie only decided to lunge at Jews with a knife because he was made to feel ‘unwelcome’ by the sight of our national flag, and Salman Abedi only blew up girls at a pop concert because he stumbled across one of Nigel Farage’s old speeches to the European Parliament.
These are just the more low-wattage attempts to defend the indefensible. Jew hatred is back. But our rulers cannot compute it, let alone fight it. For that would require ditching their comforting ideologies, their identitarian blinkers, their deranged Israelophobia. It would mean accepting that they are part of the problem.
Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater_.
High Court, 1998: Naz Shah and her sister Fozia protest against their mother’s conviction for murder | Image by: : PA Images / Alamy
3 min read
Confronting some uncomfortable truths about abuse, honour culture and the justice system, Naz Shah’s memoir is both painful and inspiring
A fearless memoir of survival, Honoured is both painful and inspiring. Naz Shah recounts her life with unflinching honesty, a witness to her father’s violence towards her mother, enduring his abandonment, and being taken out of school aged 12 and sent to Pakistan. She shares her experiences of living in Pakistan, including only being allowed to return after being forced into marriage at 15.
Back in the UK, as education was no longer an option, she ends up working in a factory packing nappies. Just as adulthood seemed to offer some relief, she experienced more trauma. Her mother Zoora was arrested for killing the man Naz had believed to be a trusted uncle. Convicted and sentenced to 20 years, Zoora’s imprisonment shocked Naz. She had been unaware that he had been physically and sexually abusing her mother for many years. Naz writes with raw honesty about how, as a child, she had even questioned her mother’s character, not realising that Zoora had endured so much to protect her children, even sending Naz to Pakistan to protect her from being exploited too.
Through these memories, the weight of abuse and societal shame becomes clear. Her mother carried the blame, while those responsible were often protected by silence. Shah explores how honour, or izzat, shaped their lives: how shame silenced her mother, how single mothers were judged unfairly, and how coercive control – unrecognised at the time – governed women’s lives.
Honoured is not just a story of trauma but a story of resilience, faith, activism, and triumph
She also reflects on her own lack of agency in her first marriage: “When I first went to Pakistan, there was a list of things I couldn’t do because I didn’t have a father. I was returning to the UK with the same lack of control, only now I belonged to a man who had power of veto over my life. My existence was once again defined by a man.”
Forced to grow up quickly, Naz recounts shouldering parental responsibility for her younger siblings while navigating a marriage she never wanted. She confronts her darkest moments with unflinching honesty, including her suicide attempts. Amid this turmoil, she campaigned relentlessly to reduce her mother’s prison sentence – a campaign she ultimately won. Early in her efforts, she sought support from then long-serving Labour MP Marsha Singh, never imagining that one day she would rise from hardship to occupy his seat as the MP for Bradford West.
Honoured is not just a story of trauma but a story of resilience, faith, activism, and triumph. Naz’s Islamic faith provided a quiet anchor through her hardships, and her grit propelled her to a remarkable political victory, defeating George Galloway in the 2015 general election despite his aggressive campaigning. The book begins on the eve of that election, marking the start of a new chapter in her life.
Naz’s experiences continue to fuel her politics. The same fire that helped her survive childhood drives her advocacy for vulnerable women, children, and families, especially those who, like her, feel abandoned or unheard. She confronts uncomfortable truths about abuse, honour culture, and the justice system, challenging readers to face these realities. Ultimately, Honoured is a story of transformation – showing how one life, forged in hardship, can ignite change for countless others.
Baroness Gohir is a Crossbench peer
Honoured: Survival, Strength and My Path to Politics
By: Naz Shah
Publisher: W&N
In an interview with Green Party leader Zack Polanski, BBC presenter Nick Robinson insisted on amplifying the voice of genocidaires and genocide-deniers. He even claimed it’s the BBC‘s job to do so.
With the overwhelming weight of expert opinion calling Israel’s mass murder in Gaza genocide, however, people expressed serious concern about the BBC still clinging to its longstanding efforts to downplay the genocide.
BBC wants to be “fair” to the people committing genocide
In the interview, Robinson interrupted Polanski to say:
I don’t want to have a debate about the word, but I do want it noted that no court has said it’s genocide and Israel completely rejects the idea it’s genocide.
Criticising the BBC‘s pro-Israel bias in 2025, actor Liam Cunningham asked:
Are we saying, due to impartiality, that if this was 1944 or 1945 when we discovered the horrors of Auschwitz, would we be contacting Heinrich Himmler for his take on the genocide? Because that’s what’s going on now.
Fast-forwarding to 2026, Robinson did just that. Because after emphasising the genocidaires’ denial, he insisted:
it’s only fair to point that out.
And when Polanski challenged him on X after the interview, Robinson doubled down:
Simple answer Zack. Our job is to report. We interview you & those you quote who use the word genocide. We do the same for those who disagree. We also report that no international court has yet made a judgment. Nor has the UN. That’s not me or the BBC taking sides or downplaying…
— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) March 22, 2026
Hi @bbcnickrobinson, you said “Nor has the UN made a judgment” but on the 16th of September 2025 the UN made a judgment (see below). I trust you’ll have the integrity to acknowledge your honest oversight to @ZackPolanski & BBC licence fee payers.
Source: https://t.co/yBkL6cU3VZ https://t.co/3aldaJ8H1x pic.twitter.com/uzcvSYGgK0
— Ben Goren (@BanGaoRen) March 23, 2026
As the Canary has documented in depth, UN legal expert Francesca Albanese absolutely has called Israel’s actions genocide, as has the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
Countless genocide scholars, legal professionals, human rights groups, and humanitarian organisations have joined them. Even prominent Israeli genocide scholars have reached the conclusion that Israel has committed genocide. And a Dutch media report summarised that “leading genocide researchers are surprisingly unanimous”.
This overwhelming consensus is why so many people are sick of BBC figures trying to explain away their shocking ‘both sides‘ approach to genocide:
When the overwhelming body of experts describe it as genocide, and you still disagree, this is making a judgement. The BBC would not deny climate change. Nearly every major human rights and academic experts on genocide have determined Israel has carried out genocide.
— Philip Proudfoot (@PhilipProudfoot) March 22, 2026
You’re wrong on the UN. The UN Commission concluded in their report in September 2025 that Israel has committed genocide. You should not only know this, you should state this every time the issue arises.
— Omar Baggili 💙 (@OmarBaggili) March 23, 2026
Balance, Nick. Please.
We’ve have been here before on climate change denial. pic.twitter.com/4ChWfVTFuP— Mick ☕️🍉 (@MickCoffey2) March 23, 2026
Giving genocidal allies an equal say is complicity
Genocide expert Martin Shaw has previously called media outlets avoiding the word genocide “tame“. And he highlighted that the BBC has hardly been rushing to amplify his voice, saying:
But Nick you don’t “interview those who use the word genocide”. I’m one of the most prominent British genocide scholars and I called Israel’s genocide in October 2023. I’ve had a lot of international media attention but my BBC total in 30 months is one interview on Radio Ulster.
He also suggested that the BBC probably wouldn’t jump to highlight the voices of genocidaires in other cases:
This. Even in his interview with @ZackPolanski, @bbcnickrobinson had to say ‘but Israel says’.
I don’t think he would have said ‘but the Myanmar government says’ if Zack had referred to the genocide of the Rohingya. https://t.co/isUZQCdcb0
— Martin Shaw (@martinshawx) March 23, 2026
A terrible betrayal of journalistic standards & duty of BBC @bbcnickrobinson
Genocide Convention 1948 is designed to stop genocides. Not for the world to wait for a final court judgement
The evidence of a genocide in Gaza is conclusive
BBC is protecting Israel, the… https://t.co/tRRP0mQGSm
— Tom London (@TomLondon6) March 22, 2026
And as experts have highlighted, genocidal campaigns would struggle to get off the ground without favourable media coverage:
From the Gaza Tribunal, which of course the BBC completely ignored.
Genocide denial is ALWAYS a part of genocide. https://t.co/ifRPWmxYpZ pic.twitter.com/kFGfJkHUnP
— Wokerati Marty (@WokeratiMarty) March 23, 2026
Polanski: “it feels like it’s getting a lot worse”
Polanski, meanwhile, shared a speech that he thinks is appropriate to consider:
whenever a BBC journalist denies the evidence in front of our very eyes in the name of “balance.”
The speaker was former BBC presenter Emily Maitlis, who spoke about the famous ‘boiling frog’ scenario, where a frog will jump out of already boiling water but stay in water that gradually boils around it. She said:
we have to stop normalizing the absurd.
And in a critique of the kinds of attitude that lead the BBC to both-sides genocide, she explained that:
we don’t have to be campaigners, but nor should we be complacent, complicit onlookers. Our job is to make sense of what we’re seeing and anticipate the next move. It’s the moment, in other words, that frog should be leaping out of the boiling water and phoning all its friends to warn them. But by then, we’re so far along the path of passivity, we’re cooked.
The BBC has a history too. In the past, for example, the broadcaster’s director of news and current affairs had to admit that its climate-change coverage was “wrong too often”, insisting that:
You do not need a ‘denier’ to balance the debate.
The speech from Maitlis, Polanski said, “should have been a turning point”. Instead, he stressed:
it feels like it’s getting a lot worse
And it really is hard to get much worse than constantly straining to emphasise the denial of genocidaires when experts overwhelmingly conclude they’ve been committing genocide. We know the BBC is state propaganda. But this is just nauseating.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/BBC Politics
Some research suggests that sticking to a Mediterranean diet might lower a person’s risk of dementia by as much as 23%.
That involves loads of vegetables, whole grains, and olive oil.
A new study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which followed thousands of older participants for years, has suggested that the type of oil you cook with could affect dementia risk, too.
“Replacing animal fat and saturated fat with vegetable fat and monounsaturated fats could serve as a dementia prevention strategy,” it reads.
Why might that be?
The researchers looked at the data from just under 6,000 participants who had an average age of 68 at the start of the study. None had dementia in the beginning.
The study authors asked participants to fill in surveys about the food they most regularly ate. That included the oils they cooked with, but they also counted oils already present in premade food they consumed.
Scientists split the oils they consumed into animal and vegetable fats, and also marked which were monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats and trans fats.
They tracked participants’ progress for an average of six years.
By the end of the observation period, 44% of participants had gone on to develop dementia.
Those who had the highest consumption of vegetable oils were 31% less likely to develop dementia. That accounted for about 23.5% of their diet.
But the researchers worked out that even if a person replaced 5% of their total caloric intake that would otherwise go to animal fat with vegetable and/or polyunsaturated fats, dementia risk may shrink by 15%.
What are some examples of animal and vegetable fats?
Animal fats tend to be saturated fats, while vegetable fats tend to be polyunsaturated.
Some examples of saturated animal fats include:
And though they aren’t animal-sourced, saturated fats can also include:
Some examples of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated vegetable oils include:
- Rapeseed oil
- Corn oil
- Sunflower oil
- Olive oil.
Politics
Lord Ashcroft: The records of the Conservatives, Labour and the SNP have condensed into ‘a strong need to give someone a sore face’
Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. For more information on his work, visit lordashcroft.com
Ask an SNP voter to name the Scottish government’s greatest achievements since it came to power in 2007 and you are all but guaranteed to hear the following: free university tuition, free prescriptions, free school meals, baby boxes, and free bus travel for young people. Nicola Sturgeon’s handling of the covid pandemic might also get a mention.
The trouble with these feats of civic nationalism, towering though they may be, is that they date, respectively, from 2008, 2011, 2015, 2017 and 2020. In other words, none of this passes what political scientists call (or ought to call) the Janet Jackson test: What have you done for me lately?
In my latest round of Scottish research, even some previously loyal SNP voters were starting to wonder if their party’s record over 19 years – let alone the last five – wasn’t beginning to look a bit thin. Only around half of them say it has done a good job on health, schools or the economy, or on keeping its promises. Some even dared commit the heresy of asking whether the money spent on universal free benefits might have been better directed towards those actually in need.
Among voters as a whole, the proportion saying the SNP has done well on these measures barely exceeds three in ten. Things like the ferry fiasco, the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital scandal and the police investigations into the party’s finances have done nothing for its reputation for competence or for honesty and integrity – the single measure on which it scored lowest in my survey. Energy and momentum have drained away since the intoxicating days of the referendum campaign and the subsequent election surge. Voters described John Swinney as an “interim manager” and a “wet weekend”; nobody expects him to come up with anything that could honestly be called a new idea.
So why, in common with other pollsters, do I find the SNP once again entering the election campaign in pole position?
One reason is that – not for the first time – they have been given a considerable helping hand by their opponents. I barely found even a Labour voter in Scotland who had a good word to stay about Keir Starmer’s record since 2024. Few thought his party had brought any change for the better, and Scots were more than twice as likely to say the SNP were doing a good job in Holyrood as to say the same of Labour in Westminster. Though they were much more likely than not to think Anas Sarwar had been right to call for Starmer’s resignation, most also saw it as a somewhat desperate tactical move to try and distance Scottish Labour from the London party.
Another reason for wavering SNP voters to fall into line is the rise of Reform UK, vying to become the second largest party in Holyrood after May. This phenomenon has not come out of nowhere. The effects of small-boat migration are increasingly making themselves felt in Scotland, and the records of the Conservatives and Labour in London and the SNP in Edinburgh have condensed into what one chap articulated as “a strong need to give someone a sore face”. While former Tory voters are the biggest source of Reform support, they are not the only one: I found more than one in ten 2021 Labour list voters leaning in Reform’s direction, not to mention one in sixteen of those who backed the SNP.
Even so, this gives the SNP a new purpose: that of a bulwark against the “far right” and, of course, the threat of England’s nasty political culture taking hold north of the border. (I would expect to see that message on a leaflet or two in the next few weeks).
Being the antidote to England, whether in the form of Starmer’s hopelessness or Farage’s right-wingery, is the SNP’s sweet spot. “Standing up for Scotland” was the only area in which I found most Scots – and three quarters of SNP voters – saying the Holyrood government had done a good job.
This can only be pushed so far, however. Only a quarter of Scots backed the idea that a pro-independence majority would constitute a mandate for another referendum. Indeed, only just over half of likely SNP voters agreed with the proposition. Those leaning towards the Greens – whose profile and credibility had received a boost from their success in the Gorton and Denton by-election – were divided but on balance agreed that we can’t assume someone supports independence just because they vote for a particular party. In fact, only a quarter of likely SNP voters put independence in the top three most important issues facing Scotland; for those leaning Green, the issue ranked equal eighth.
Just as the failings of the established parties – including the SNP – have opened the door to Reform, so Nigel Farage will concentrate nationalist minds. In other words, in this election, Reform and the SNP need each other. Who knows what the campaign will bring. But if, when the votes are counted, Farage and Swinney are the two big winners, both will regard that as a pretty good night’s work.
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