#BREAKING Israeli jets struck around 10 railway segments and bridges in Iran, Army Radio says pic.twitter.com/hYeI5VfOPR

— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) April 7, 2026

Israel seems to believe warnings negate war crimes

The IOF tweeted an urgent warning in Farsi earlier Tuesday, telling people across Iran to avoid trains and railway lines until 9 pm local time.

‼️ هشدار فوری به استفاده‌کنندگان و مسافران قطارها در کشور ایران.

⭕️ شهروندان گرامی، به منظور امنیت شما، خواهشمندیم از این لحظه تا ساعت ۲۱:۰۰ به وقت ایران، از استفاده و سفر با قطار در سراسر ایران خودداری نمایید.

⭕️ حضور شما در قطارها و در مجاورت خطوط راه‌آهن جانتان را به خطر می… pic.twitter.com/Fm3BAAEFra

Advertisement

— ارتش دفاعی اسرائیل | IDF Farsi (@IDFFarsi) April 7, 2026

Iran’s cultural heritage minister, Reza Salehi Amiri, wrote to UNESCO on Tuesday following the IOF’s war crimes.

Following the Zionist regime’s threat to attack the Iranian railway, which is registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts sent an official letter to the Director-General of UNESCO. pic.twitter.com/MElfmaBKjk

— Tehran Times (@TehranTimes79) April 7, 2026

He called IOF’s actions a clear attack on the common heritage of humanity, calling for a clear, immediate, and deterrent stance from UNESCO, as the Tehran Times reported.

Trump has called for further escalation. In his latest bizarre rant on Tuesday, Trump said he would wipe out the country unless it opened the straits of Hormuz ahead of a deadline he’d set for 8 pm on 7 April 2026. Trump said on Truth Social:

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?

The whole US administration is either too ignorant to understand the nuclear threat behind Trump’s rant or is just going along with it. JD Vance, seemingly, endorsed Trump’s policies, whatever they may be,  after the expiration of the deadline.

“I hope they make the right response,” says @VP on Iran.

“They’ve got to know, we’ve got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven’t decided to use. @POTUS can decide to use them, and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don’t change their course of conduct.” pic.twitter.com/UUiQ5SdEO5

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 7, 2026

Advertisement

The IOF and the US are operating without any restraint in their war against Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran, using similar tactics of total war, with no distinction between military and civilian targets.

A petition started by Zack Polanski to kick Palantir out of UK public services has nearly 160,000 signatures.

At nearly 160,000 signatures – my petition to stop Palantir.https://t.co/oqsZdtN3pZ

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) April 6, 2026

Palantir is a secretive US tech firm. It’s embedding itself in UK public services, including running a huge patient database for the NHS.

Essentially, the company helps government spy agencies collect huge amounts of private data about citizens – including ICE in the US and the Israeli military.

But it also provides terrifying AI-powered military tools to the Israeli government, which it uses to carry out its Genocide in Gaza, along with its recent attacks in Iran and Lebanon.

Peter Thiel co-founded the company. Unsurprisingly, he is a billionaire Trump donor and close friend of Jeffrey Epstein.

However, the UK CEO is Louis Mosley, grandson of British fascist, Oswald Mosley.

Palantir infiltrating Britain

The company has slowly made its way into British infrastructure. During the pandemic, the government suspiciously handed Palantir a huge contract – supposedly worth only £1. This was to create a COVID-19 data store that would provide ministers with real-time information on health services and the pandemic.

Now, it has contracts worth over £500m with the UK government alone. This includes software which NHS doctors and nurses are flat-out refusing to use because of ‘privacy’ and ‘human rights concerns.

🚨 We must kick this dangerous company OUT of our national infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/KKmgR0WFKe

— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) April 5, 2026

Palantir also has a £240m deal with the UK military. Again, there was no competitive tender process, and the government just handed Palantir the deal.

Stopping “Palantir” is the most vital campaign there is for the UK at the moment. Please support it. https://t.co/tMAuhEn3Tl

— Leo (@hanwayplace) April 6, 2026

Advertisement

The Petition to kick Palantir out of UK public services, started by Zack Polanski, has close to 160,000 signatures. It emphasises:

But right now we’ve got a major chance to get their NHS deal scrapped – and kick start a domino effect that sees ALL their contracts ended.

How? Ministers actually have the option to cancel the NHS deal early. But with these contracts flying under the radar, it’ll take all of us speaking up to make that happen. If you agree that our NHS and other public services shouldn’t be cutting deals with a private company that helps armies kill people, sign the petition now!

Featured image via 38Degrees

The US president’s latest deranged Truth Social post came just hours before the deadline he imposed for Tehran to start allowing traffic to pass through the key waterway.

Around one-fifth of the global oil supply is transported through the strait, but it has been effectively closed since America and Israel began bombing Iran at the end of February.

Trump announced over the weekend that Tehran had until 1am tomorrow UK time to confirm they were ceasing attacks on ships trying to use the strait or else “all hell will reign down” on them.

In a follow-up post on Truth Social on Sunday, he said: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!”

Posting on Tuesday morning, Trump said: “A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalised minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”

His comments were widely condemned online, with leading Republican and former White House official Bill Kristol calling for Trump to be impeached.

Veteran journalist and broadcast Andrew Neil said: “Is there anybody, any group, capable of staging an intervention in the White House?”

Piers Morgan, a former Trump supporter, described the president’s statement as “a brazen pre-admission of genocide … which would obviously be a war crime”.

Other responses on X were equally critical of the president’s comments.

Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

First of all, what is a concussion exactly?

What signs or symptoms should you watch for after you hit your head, even hours or days later?

Fiordaliso via Getty Images

Why can symptoms appear delayed?

What should you do if you experience delayed symptoms?

Carolyn Rowe, Ed Turner, Tobias Hofelich and Jannike Wachowiak consider what a more ambitious UK-EU relationship could look like and the key challenges and opportunities it would present.

In May 2025, EU and UK leaders agreed a roadmap to soften the edges of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). At the time, the summit agenda was widely considered a pragmatic way forward, evidencing a new era of UK-EU relations under Keir Starmer, and part of a wider ambition to ‘reset’ that framework. But the world has not stood still. With Trump upending the global order and threatening European allies, the incrementalism that has characterised the rapprochement so far, looks a little like ‘fiddling while Rome burns’. How can the two sides be more ambitious in recalibrating this relationship?

While the stakes are certainly higher, it is far from certain whether the EU and the UK will be able to use the second proposed summit this summer to add new substance to their existing agreements. One key issue is bandwidth (or the lack thereof). Officials on both sides are mainly focused on implementing the Common Understanding agreed at last year’s summit. Following a slow start in the second half of last year, EU and UK officials are now getting into the meat of talks on a food and drinks deal and work towards the linking of their emission trading systems. These talks are deeply technical and, whilst there has been some squabbling over the finer detail, agreement should be possible. But on the much-touted youth experience scheme, particularly regarding university tuition fees, the negotiating partners remain far apart. Unless a landing zone can be found, the whole ‘reset’ could still come tumbling down: the EU has linked a solution on youth mobility to other areas where the UK is demandeur.

Another issue is around who takes initiative. The EU sees the ball as being in the UK’s court: i.e. if the UK wants a different relationship, it is up to them to make a clear ‘ask’. As the Commission’s chief spokesperson put it as recently as February, the forthcoming 2026 summit will be ‘the occasion to discuss with UK what, exactly, they have in mind, and how they propose to go about it’.

It is far from clear, however, that UK’s proposals would fly in Brussels. While the Chancellor’s Mais lecture identified deeper UK-EU relations as one of the UK’s biggest opportunities for economic growth, the government’s desire to pick and choose access to some areas of the single market (while rejecting the free movement of people and regular financial contributions à la Switzerland) is likely to be met with little enthusiasm in Brussels.

One way forward would be for the UK to present proposals which align directly with the EU’s stated ambition to strengthen relations with the UK on issues such as energy, people-to-people contacts, resilience and security. This is most likely in the deepening of UK-EU defence cooperation. Of all of the many challenges facing the EU at present it is on defence, primarily, where the UK is seen as part of the solution.

This could mean negotiating an agreement on the Ukraine loan which will be open to purchases from third countries who either have a SAFE agreement or are ‘providing significant financial and military support to Ukraine’ and agree to share ‘fair and proportionate financial contribution to the costs arising from borrowing’. A successful agreement would restore confidence and prepare the ground for a resumption of the collapsed SAFE talks.

On resilience, there is much more that could be done to coordinate policies and approaches in areas like supply chain security, investment screenings, and critical infrastructure. The UK could work with the EU towards greater ‘resilience’ as a wider European project, in which a broad alliance of like-minded EU partners such as the UK, Canada, Australia and Norway are incorporated into these new frameworks on a structured basis. A more ambitious agenda could focus on enhanced coordination in areas such as supply chain security, investment screening, and critical infrastructure. The people-to-people dimension of the relationship could also be strengthened. EU officials have indicated an interest in seeing UK participation in Creative Europe, an EU programme that supports cultural projects and the mobility of creatives.

Timing is crucial. Partly because of the rapidly evolving global context and partly because of domestic factors which, otherwise, might block progress. On the EU side, the negotiations on the next Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) will take up EU bandwidth throughout 2026 and into 2027. So, too, will the 2027 French Presidential Elections. What is more, EU member states are currently debating policies with potentially far-reaching consequences for the UK: ‘Made in EU’ targets could, in the future, shut out certain British products and technologies from European supply chains. There is never a perfect time to move forward on UK-EU relations, but these externalities create urgency from the British perspective.

On the UK side, no significant advance in the UK-EU relationship will happen unless the Prime Minister decides to throw his political weight behind it and make the case at home and in Brussels. Currently, Keir Starmer’s government is cautious, but worries about fragmentation to the left, or even a leadership contest with candidates outbidding each other to appeal to a pro-European party membership, may change the dynamic.

No matter who leads Labour, forging a genuinely strategic partnership that matches the geopolitical challenges of the moment will require political direction and courage, as well as a willingness to take the conversation to Brussels and member states. With this in mind, the months leading up to the next summit will be a stress test for the seriousness of the Prime Minister’s EU ‘reset’ ambitions.

By Carolyn Rowe, Head of Department, Society & Politics at Aston University and Co-Director of the Aston Centre for Europe; Ed Turner, Reader in Politics at Aston University and Co-Director of the Aston Centre for Europe and acting chair of the International Association for the Study of German Politics; Tobias Hofelich, Research Associate, Aston University; and Jannike Wachowiak, Research Associate, UK in a Changing Europe.

This blog draws on a series of roundtables organised by the Aston Centre for Europe and UK in a Changing Europe in March 2026. The discussions were supported by funding from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

A recent poll of the London region suggests the Green Party could make significant gains in the May 7 local elections. It predicts a serious blow to incumbent Labour councillors who have long held a majority. In fact, well over a third of wards are projected to turn green as voters are set to abandon Starmer’s Labour Party.

Likewise, the poll reveals that far-right Reform UK’s chances in the region are thankfully much lower than previously feared. The map shows Reform UK appear to be contenders in roughly 10% of seats in the region. This is particularly likely in eastern and southeastern areas of London.

However, the party set to have the biggest defeat with likely hundreds of councillors unseated is the Labour Party. If the polling is indeed accurate, Labour would be lucky to win even a quarter of the seats in the UK’s capital.

Oh, how the corrupted are falling – and what a beautiful sight it is!

Green Party set to inflict a huge loss on Labour

Labour currently has 1,046 elected councillors in the London region with more sitting councillors than all other parties combined. Nonetheless, in a clear show that the British public have lost hope in establishment parties, they appear likely to make huge losses both to the Green Party and Reform UK.

In fact, the Labour Party’s poor performance has allowed the Tories to gain ground—despite over a decade of harmful austerity policies and their disastrous showing in the 2024 general election. Essentially, Labour’s authoritarian and Orwellian policies make even a pile of shit like the Conservatives seem more appealing by comparison.

Thankfully, the Green Party have leaned further into socialism and are likely to be rewarded for their principled efforts.

Needless to say, the battle is a close one with recent polls for seats across the UK show the Green Party with a marginal lead but Reform closely behind. Nevertheless, a trend is appearing to show Reform losing support whilst the Greens are seen to gain, which highlights how hate can only be defeated by solidarity and compassion:

‼️BREAKING | Greens surge into LEAD (1st!!)

🟢 Grn: 21.4% (+2.1)
➡️ Ref: 20.9% (-1.4)
🔵 Con: 20.5% (+0.2)
🔴 Lab: 17.0% (-0.4)
🟠 Lib: 9.2% (-1.9)

Advertisement

Poll: @LordAPolls, 26-30 Mar (+/- vs 19-23 Feb) pic.twitter.com/oDVw4cDaFC

— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️‍⚧️ (@LeftieStats) April 5, 2026

2024 saw huge gains for billionaire-owned, far-right Reform UK which escalated fears that the far-right were likely to take power in 2029. Thankfully, those fears seem exaggerated, as UK voters make a clear choice between love and hate – and love appears to be winning.

‼️POLL | Who would you rather have in power?

🟢 Green Party – 57%
➡️ Reform UK – 43%

Advertisement

Overwhelming majorities of Labour (81%) and Lib Dem voters (79%) would pick Greens over Reform.

Source: @LordAshcroft, 26-30 March pic.twitter.com/9PYhJBobIU

— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️‍⚧️ (@LeftieStats) April 5, 2026

Green leader Zack Polanski has recently posted on X following a “remarkable poll” from Lord Ashcroft, stating that the Greens are clearly replacing Labour:

Remarkable poll this evening from Lord Ashcroft. The Greens in joint 1st place.

We are replacing Labour and ready to take on Reform in the local elections on 7th May.https://t.co/0qbagSvIYp pic.twitter.com/9leBG92kPd

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) April 5, 2026

Vote splitting on the far-right – few to split with on the left

Undoubtedly, far-right competition from Restore Britain is driving Reform UK’s declining support, with Restore Britain projected to capture 8% of the vote. Even more disheartening, voters find Restore Britain more appealing than Your Party, which is only expected to secure a measly 1% of seats.

No surprise really, given Corbyn and his team’s inability to figure out what they actually are as a party whilst they stand deselected Tories:

🚨 NEW: A new poll shows Restore Britain would get 8% of the vote

➡ Reform UK: 25%
🟢 Green Party: 19%
🔵 Conservatives: 16%
🌹 Labour: 16%
🔶 Lib Dems: 10%
🇬🇧 Restore Britain: 8%
🟣 Your Party: 1%

Via @FindoutnowUK, 2948 sample, 25th March

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) March 26, 2026

These polls show that hate can be defeated through positive policies that put people above power and profit. In turn, this will undoubtedly see a sigh of relief from socialists across the country. They have long insisted that the real cure for the harms we see in our communities and across the UK is for unapologetic, unbending socialist policy. 

It’s clear the left faces little competition: Labour abandoned left-wing voters long ago, and the Greens are offering them a political home. In fact, their gains are likely to come whilst engaging with working agreements with progressive candidates in the London region. These include both in Camden and in Southwark.

Therefore, if these arrangements succeed, this election will see solidarity push back against the malicious bile of the far-right.

Even better, it might even win.

Featured image via the Canary

4 min read4 hr

As a keen swimmer all my life, I am deeply concerned about the state of school swimming and water safety in this country. For an island nation, surrounded by rivers, lakes and 11,000 miles of coastline, the ability to swim is not optional. It is a vital life skill, as fundamental as learning to read or write. Yet every year, far too many children leave primary school unable to stay safe in the water.

Recent figures paint a stark picture. National data from Sport England shows that around one in four children finishes year 6 unable to swim 25m, and around one in five children can’t demonstrate basic water safety competence.

In some areas – particularly those with higher deprivation – the proportion rises far higher, with less than 40 per cent meeting the national curriculum standard. This inequality matters and it is completely unacceptable. 

Children from lower‑income families, who are less likely to access private lessons, are disproportionately represented in drowning statistics.

It is a societal failure when the children who most need these life‑saving skills are the least likely to acquire them.

The challenges that schools face are well known. The closure of hundreds of local pools has made accessing lessons increasingly difficult. Transport costs for schools are rising, swimming teachers are in short supply and the timetable pressures on headteachers are immense. 

Many schools simply do not have a suitable pool within a practical travel distance. For others, the nearest facility is over‑subscribed, ageing, or not designed with school groups in mind.

These barriers have real consequences. When a child misses out on swimming in primary school, the opportunity rarely comes back. And when a generation of children loses vital water safety skills, we collectively carry the risk.

We are seeing the impact already: too many drowning incidents, widening health inequalities, and increased inactivity among young people. If we do not act now, the long‑term social and health costs will be severe.

So, first and foremost, £400m has been pledged for grassroots sport – and it’s essential that this goes to swimming pools.

Next, the current review of the national curriculum must elevate the importance of swimming and water safety. School swimming has been part of the PE curriculum for over 30 years, but too often it is treated as an afterthought.

At the APPG, we believe school swimming should be treated with the seriousness it deserves. Ensuring every child learns to swim must be a shared responsibility between government, local authorities, schools and the wider aquatics sector. But government must set the tone by embedding swimming firmly in statutory expectations and providing the means for schools to comply.

The introduction of the government’s new online reporting tool for school swimming is a welcome step. For the first time, schools have provided their swimming results directly to the Department for Education. This tool promises to give us a clearer picture of where children are falling behind, where provision is strong, and where targeted support is urgently needed.

I urge the government not only to continue this work, but to publish the findings so that councils and schools can work together with experts such as Swim England and the Swimming Alliance to direct support most effectively using accurate, up-to-date data. Good policy requires good evidence.

The future of school swimming and water safety depends on decisions made now. We face a widening gap between children who can swim and those who cannot; between communities with modern, accessible pools and those where facilities have disappeared; between schools equipped to deliver high‑quality lessons and those struggling even to secure pool time.

We cannot allow postcode or income to determine a child’s chance of staying safe in the water. With the right investment, clear expectations and open reporting, we can reverse the decline. 

The curriculum review is an opportunity – perhaps the most important in a decade – to ensure every child has the chance to learn this life-saving skill. It is an opportunity we must seize. 

Phil Brownlie is senior head of public affairs for Swim England

Reform – the UK media’s darling – is currently being given a platform to air cruel statements about slavery and reparation demands on most UK news channels and platforms.

A resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly declared the transatlantic slave trade and the associated system of racialised chattel enslavement to be the gravest crime against humanity, a text that saw the UK and Ukraine abstain, as the measure passed with 123 votes in favour and only three countries, Argentina, Israel, and the United States, voting against.

Reform have corporate media in the palm of their hand

Zia Yusuf’s face has been on various videos this morning, expressing how aghast he is!

‘For countries to be turning up and demanding reparations now is a racket’

Reform UK Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf slams the ‘insane’ demands of nations requesting reparations from the slave trade.

‘We will not allow this country to be slapped around on the world stage’… pic.twitter.com/BDnhXRbowQ

— Talk (@TalkTV) April 7, 2026

‘We’re not going to allow Britain to be slapped around. British taxpayers will no longer be an ATM for ethnic grievances around the world.’

Reform UK’s Home Affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf discusses Reform UK’s plan to ban visas from countries demanding reparations from Britain. pic.twitter.com/Cj3P5MQ5XH

Advertisement

— GB News (@GBNEWS) April 7, 2026

🔴 Zia Yusuf says ‘enough is enough’ after Britain paid £6.6bn in foreign aid over two decades to countries demanding compensation

🔗: https://t.co/ecHX1keSjM pic.twitter.com/ySgyr5KlvW

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) April 6, 2026

Darren Grimes is also at hand to indulge Yusuf’s xenophobia.

Reform will reject the global grifters pic.twitter.com/EM8yOH6hIe

— Darren Grimes (@darrengrimes) April 7, 2026

What opposition?

The mainstream media is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing. It is lending credence to voices talking about a symbolic vote by the UN General Assembly, to channel the indignation that people are feeling at the state of the world.

For fuck sake, Trump is literally threatening nuclear armageddon – but let’s please give a mic to Farage and his fan boys, Yusuf and Grimes, to see how they feel about the UN’s PR.

As Professor Kehinde Andrews pointed out on his podcast Make It Plain, the UN resolution is useless. It is not legally binding. The General Assembly has no power. The Security Council – with its five permanent members who have veto power, including the UK and US – is where real decisions are made. This resolution changes nothing.

Andrews notes that when Britain abolished slavery, it gave the largest payment in history, about 5% of GDP, to slave owners. The enslaved got nothing.

Britain’s industrial revolution was because of slavery. As Professor Kehinde Andrews put it: gold, silver, indigo, tobacco, sugar, cotton.

Those six commodities make the industrial revolution happen. Without those commodities, there is no Industrial Revolution. It is that simple.

Outright lie

So when Reform UK talks about the “bank being closed” and threatens to ban visas over a UN press release, they are defending a lie. Full stop. The lie that Britain’s wealth is clean.

The media run Reform’s theatre of indignation because that is their job.

As Professor Michael Parenti documented in Inventing Reality, the media treat mass atrocity as if the victims were just unfortunate figures in a “tragedy ordained by destiny”, never naming the perpetrators, never counting the debt, never asking who still profits.

Parenti wrote:

The most effective propaganda is that which relies on framing rather than on falsehood. By bending the truth rather than breaking it,using emphasis, nuance, innuendo, and peripheral embellishments,communicators can create a desired impression without resorting to explicit advocacy and without departing too far from the appearance of objectivity.

How apt is this analysis to the Gaza genocide, slavery, austerity deaths – the list is long and bloody.

Featured image via the Canary