Defence secretary John Healey has announced a major increase in troops and anti-aircraft weaponry to Saudi Arabia. The deployment entangles the UK even more deeply into the Donald Trump/US and Israel-led war. And it presents new targets for Iran.

Trump’s war

The US under Trump and Israel attacked Iran first on 28 February without provocation. Iran was offering unprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.

The main achievement of the war so far has been to cause a global energy crisis after Iran predictably closed the straits of Hormuz, a vital oil channel.

Healey was visiting Saudi Arabia on 31 March when the announcement was made:

The deployment follows a successful recce by a UK team, and the equipment and teams will deploy this week including radars, control node, and missile launchers and a Royal Artillery battery and battle space managers to operate the system. The system will be integrated into wider Saudi and regional air defences.

The new uplift includes the Sky Sabre air defence system. The press release also confirmed that:

Rapid Sentry – a ground-based air defence missile system – has arrived in Kuwait and the RAF’s ORCUS system is operating in the country, allowing personnel to detect drones early and take action.

Adding:

The system will be integrated into wider Saudi and regional air defences.

The UK’s multirole missile launcher is already in Bahrain.

UK pushes same dubious denials

Healey said:

Iran’s aggressive attacks continue to threaten our allies and interests in the Middle East. That’s why the UK has been flying defensive missions since day one of this conflict to protect British interests and allies – and today we’re delivering further support by extending our UK jets in Qatar and deploying extra air defence teams and systems to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait.

I am proud of the courage and professionalism our Armed Forces have shown since the start of the war and my message to Gulf partners is: Britain’s best will help you defend your skies. I pay tribute to the heroic efforts of our partners across the Gulf in protecting their nations. We will stand by our long-term partners in the Middle East and continue to push for a swift resolution to this conflict.

The press release repeated the same inaccurate government talking point about the degree of UK involvement which has been pushed since the war began:

The Prime Minister has been clear that the UK will not be drawn into the wider war.

Contrary to Keir Starmer’s claims that the UK role is only defensive, the government has allowed US bombers to use its airbases at home and on the colonised Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia. The UK, whatever the government claims, is becoming more deeply entangled in this runaway war.

And regardless of what Keir Starmer and John Healey say, Iran will view new British military assets in the Gulf the same way that it views current ones: as legitimate targets in an existential war for survival.

Featured image via the Canary

Banking giant JP Morgan has gone on a capital strike (withholding investment). Following this, Labour has been quick to offer an 100% discount on the bank’s business rates, spread out over “a period of years”.

At the same time, doctors have been on a workers’ strike for pay restoration and job security. It appears that, when it comes to workers, Labour suddenly find the will to say no.

The Capital party?

If ‘Labour’ rebranded as ‘Capital’, we probably wouldn’t consider it an April Fool’s Day joke. As well as JP Morgan, pharmaceutical giants have been demanding that the NHS pay them more, or they will withhold investment. Labour agreed to a 25% increase in payments for essential drugs in December 2025.

Meanwhile, resident doctors are asking for real-terms pay restoration to 2008 levels, at 21%. The government is offering a 7.1% increase partly because it disputes the doctors’ use of the Retail Price Index (RPI) to calculate inflation. Apparently, RPI is good enough for calculating increases in student debt, rent and corporate pricing. However, it isn’t sufficient for a doctor’s pay.

Another part of the dispute is specialist doctor posts in the NHS. The government is proposing to increase them from 1,000 to around 4,000. The thing is, the number of specialist applications is projected to exceed 40,000 this year.

Overall, the UK is low on doctors per 1,000 people at 3.2. Some of the highest per capita doctor levels are in Austria (5.48) and Germany (4.53).

48-hour deadline (not for JP Morgan, of course)

Labour has given resident doctors 48 hours to accept the deal. The British Medical Association (BMA) rejected the offer without putting it to a member vote.

The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, Dr Jack Fletcher, has said:

We’ve been willing and have been talking constructively for the last two months and at the very last minute the government has shifted the goalposts of the pay offer. I am very happy and willing to sit down and talk constructively once again.

He further responded to withholding a members vote on the pay and jobs offer:

We discussed this with our committee who are elected to represent our members. Their representatives have considered this offer. We don’t think it goes far enough on pay so we decided not to put this to our members.​

While members should decide if they accept the offer, the government goes far too easy on capital like JP Morgan compared to workers. That’s an affront to how the Labour party was founded.

Featured image via the Canary

When talking about ‘gooning’ is a red flag

Talk to your kids if they mention gooning

What did the research show?

It could have benefits for bone quality, too

A government report has raised concerns about people being referred to the ‘Prevent’ counter-terrorism program, not because of genuine concerns about radicalisation, but to speed up access to the UK’s crumbling mental health services.

However, given the biases and bigotries rife in both the program and mental health services themselves, this tactic is likely to be extremely risky for any Muslim, Black, and Brown people it affects.

‘Badly twisted approach’ ends up with Prevent

Whilst the government’s report was internal and never intended for public scrutiny, the Financial Times stated that it has seen the document. It was submitted in evidence for an inquiry into teenager Axel Rudakubana’s murder of three children in Southport in 2024.

However, the Financial Times doesn’t go far enough in its article.

We’ve known for a long time now about the use of health professionals to surveil patients for Prevent. We know Prevent has a massive bias against Muslim, Black, and Brown people. And, of course, we know mental health services themselves have a bias against Black and Brown individuals and Muslims.

As such, this referral tactic is likely to have severe consequences for many of the people it was ostensibly intended to help. As highlighted by Sarah St Vincent of campaign group Rights and Security International, health professionals are:

so desperate to get help for their patients that they’re referring them to a secretive policing programme that could impact them for the rest of their lives.

If that’s not a sign of a badly twisted approach in Westminster to people’s welfare, I don’t know what is.

Crumbling system

This desperation, if not the approach, is fully understandable. The waiting list for mental health services in England includes more than half a million young people. According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, over half of them have been waiting over a year. For over a third, the wait has lasted two years or more.

For childhood autism diagnoses alone, NHS data places the median waiting time as 19 months. However, guidance states that people who are referred to mental health services through Prevent should be seen within a week.

Psychologists working within counter-terrorism programs like Prevent have previously suggested that autistic people make up around 13% of their caseloads. For comparison, autistic people make up around 1% of the population.

The leaked Home Office report states that:

sometimes practitioners made referrals to Prevent to try to expedite mental health and neurodiversity support and diagnosis.

Similarly, it also claimed that evidence suggests:

that the limited capacity of mental health resources has a notable impact on Prevent thresholds. Separately, waiting lists for neurodivergence assessments reportedly impact the support available to them.

Racism within mental health support

However, once referred to Prevent – with its accompanying stigma – outcomes are likely to be far from positive for Muslim or Black and Brown people.

Prevent itself is well-known for disregarding the mental health needs of the individuals referred to it. Research from health work campaign group Medact highlighted the intertwined biases of Prevent and mental health ‘support’:

Racism is highly significant to both mental health and policing, especially ‘pre-crime’ areas such as Prevent, and the hubs stand at the intersection of these two fields.

A racialised Muslim is at least 23 times more likely to be referred to a mental health hub for ‘Islamism’ than a white British individual is for ‘Far Right extremism’

Likewise, with regard to combined policing/mental health ‘support hubs’, Medact highlighted the reciprocity between the two sectors:

A high proportion of patients referred to each hub were already in contact with NHS mental health services and many were actually referred into Prevent from the health sector, underlining the circularity and duplication the
hubs create

Even regardless of the Prevent element, racist treatment is rife within mental health and neurodiversity services themselves. For example, Black children face 3-year delays for autism diagnoses.

Black people are also  four times more likely to be restrained or sectioned by mental health services than their white counterparts, and are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia.

The disconnect

A Home Office spokesperson told the Financial Times that there was no link between radicalisation and neurodivergence or mental health needs. They stated that:

We understand that people referred to Prevent may have a range of vulnerabilities, and we take our safeguarding responsibilities extremely seriously. That is why we continue to strengthen Prevent’s approach to mental health and neurodiversity.

However, this somebody apparently forget to tell Prevent itself. 2025 Prevent Duty guidance from Ofsted states that:

Children and young people with Autism are at increased risk of being susceptible to extremism. This is because they are more likely to develop special interests. […C]hildren with autism are more likely to experience social isolation and so use the internet to find friends. They trust the information they read and the “friends” that they find online and so can be drawn into extremism.

Lasting consequences of Prevent referrals

The massive underfunding of mental health support by the UK government is making some health workers reliant on Prevent as a workaround for referral and diagnosis.

However, contact with Prevent can have a lasting impact and stigma attached to it – particularly for Muslims and Black and Brown individuals. Research, like Medact’s landmark study, has shown the level of reciprocity within mental health ‘care’ and Prevent – with both serving to create a web of surveillance.

Meanwhile, neurodivergence is being targeted by Prevent as a cause and indicator of radicalisation. Making Prevent referals in order to expedite diagnosis can only serve to entrench this view.

Whatever the intentions of the clinicians passing kids off to Prevent, their actions could have severe and lasting consequences for the vulnerable children they purport to protect.

Featured image via the Canary