The Trump administration has returned $500 million in oil money from previous oil transactions with Venezuela. A US official said it was to keep the country’s services running. The US kidnapped Venezuela president Nicolas Maduro on 3 January. In his place, former oil minister deputy Delcy Rodriguez is running the oil-rich nation.

A US official told The New Arab on 4 February:

Venezuela has officially received all $500 million from the first Venezuelan oil sale.

The unnamed individual said the money would be:

disbursed for the benefit of the Venezuelan people at the discretion of the US government.

The cash seems to have been from an oil deal struck in January:

So in essence, we allowed Venezuela to use their own oil to generate revenue to pay teachers and firefighters and police officers and keep the function of government operating so we didn’t have systemic collapse.

The official said the money, which had been held in Qatar, was a:

temporary, short-term account to ensure Venezuela received the funds needed to operate.

Venezuela: agreed-upon procedures

The official even explained there were plans to move money from future oil sales:

into a fund located in the US and to authorise expenditures for any obligation or expense of the government of Venezuela or its agencies and instrumentalities upon instructions that are consistent with agreed-upon procedures. 

The New Arab also reported pro-Maduro street protests. Maduro’s son Nicolasito was in attendance. He told reporters of the demonstrators:

These people are not American.  We have achieved a profound anti-imperialist consciousness.

Maduro is in a New York jail. He claims he is a prisoner of war. The US has indicted him for drugs and weapon possession charges Yet whatever the balance of power in Venezuela is now – and whatever the anti-imperialist rhetoric on display – this seems to suggest that the Venezuelan government is not calling the shots any more.

Trump’s massive military build-up and eventual special forces raid on Venezuela seems to have done the job. The US seeks to dominate the Western hemisphere entirely. Trump has now moved onto bullying Iran. The Venezuelan revolution, whatever its merits and shortcomings, seems to have stalled for now.

Time will tell if it becomes another footnote in US imperial history.

Featured image via the Canary

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At a press conference on Thursday, Farage unveiled former Conservative councillor Dan Thomas as Reform’s new leader in Wales, making him the latest Tory to make the switch.

Fellow defectors Laura Anne Jones and James Evans were in the audience in Newport’s International Convention Centre. The recent flow of defections, which includes former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and ex-shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, is seen by Reform figures as helping maintain the party’s momentum heading into the May elections.

Reform is expected to make significant gains at the Senedd elections, with recent polling putting the party far ahead of Labour, which has dominated politics in Wales since its devolved institutions were established at the turn of the century, as well as the Tories. The contest to lead Wales is seen as a two-horse race between Reform and Plaid Cymru.

Thomas, a former council leader in north London, said he had “fond memories” of growing up in south Wales, where his grandfather and great-grandfather were miners.

It is not the first time that Farage has been on the cusp of an electoral breakthrough in Wales, though.

In 2016, his former party, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), won 13 per cent of the popular vote to return seven Senedd seats. By the end of that parliament in 2021, however, after a period of splits and infighting, just one of those seven sought re-election.

Last year, UKIP’s former leader in Wales, who went on to lead Reform in Cardiff, Nathan Gill, was sentenced to prison for taking pro-Russia bribes.

Asked by PoliticsHome how his current party would avoid the mistakes of UKIP in Wales, Farage said that candidate vetting would be “absolutely key”. The party, which continues to lead UK-wide opinion polls, though there are some signs that its support has dipped in recent weeks, is asking candidates to go through media training led by TV personality Jeremy Kyle and ex-LBC presenter Colin Brazier in Reform HQ.

“The choice of candidates in some cases that were picked to stand for UKIP at that moment in time were completely against my [vision] as leader of the party,” Farage told PoliticsHome.

Farage added: “Two or three of them were wholly unsuitable in every way. But leaders don’t always get their way… and quite shortly thereafter, after [a] quarter of a century, I left [UKIP] believing it was going in the wrong direction.”

Llyr Powell, who was the Reform candidate at last year’s Caerphilly by-election and who worked in the UKIP press team during the 2016 Senedd election, suggested that her former party was destined to fall away in Wales, having achieved its aim of successfully campaigning for Brexit.

“Nigel’s goal in UKIP was always to win an in-out referendum,” she said.

“We’re all united behind the fact we want to see Nigel Farage in Number 10 now.”

While Farage said he wants tighter control of candidate selection, he also conceded that Thomas and any newly elected Reform Senedd members must be given space by Reform’s Westminster operation to make their own decisions.

“When it comes to devolved matters, it’s up to Reform UK in Wales to make those decisions,” he told PoliticsHome.

He added: “I wouldn’t even pretend that I knew what needs to happen within the failing NHS in Wales.”

US President Donald Trump said it “bothers” him that former President Bill Clinton is facing scrutiny and an order to testify about his past ties to the late child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, who Trump infamously also had a relationship with.

“It bothers me that somebody is going after Bill Clinton. See, I like Bill Clinton. I still like Bill Clinton,” Trump told NBC News in a White House interview Wednesday.

Asked what he likes about the former president, Trump answered: “I liked his behaviour towards me. I thought he got me, he understood me.”

This expressed support came one day after Trump called it “a shame” that Clinton and his wife, Hillary, have been subpoenaed to testify about their ties to Epstein.

Bill Clinton’s relationship with Epstein was documented in investigative files released by the Justice Department last week. The files include a shirtless photo of Clinton in a hot tub with someone that a DOJ official described as a “victim” of Epstein’s sexual abuse. He has denied wrongdoing and having any knowledge that Epstein was abusing underage girls.

Trump, who also faces unverified allegations of sexual misconduct involving minors in the documents and has denied wrongdoing, said it’s time to “move on” from the Epstein files and expressed support for the Clintons. This about-face follows Trump infamously calling for the former secretary of state to be locked up during and long after their vitriolic 2016 presidential campaign battle.

“I think it’s a shame, to be honest. I always liked him. Her? Yeah, she’s a very capable woman. She was better in debating than some of the other people, I will tell you that,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “She was smarter. She’s a smart woman. I hate to see it in many ways. I hate to see it, but then look at me, they went after me like — you know, they wanted me to go to jail for the rest of my life. Then it turned out I was innocent.”

Former MP Rory Stewart has no idea what a low income is. The posh boy podcaster beloved of centrist dads put forward a rousing defence of impoverished – checks notes – Members of Parliament in an interview during which he wore a frankly troubling polo neck jumper.

In a hand-wavey waffle about poor MPs being easily manipulated by the wealthy (what?), Stewart told LBC:

We’ve got hundred of MPs on very low incomes, some of them very insecure, struggling to get jobs when they leave, they are perfect prey for wealthy well-connected men who can offer them board positions, invite them to parties, put them on private planes.

Here’s Rory Stewart describing MPs as being on “low incomes”.

Their basic annual salary is £93,904, putting them in the top 5% of earners.

There’s a nuanced debate to be had about MPs’ pay, but describing them as “low income” is an insult to those who really are. pic.twitter.com/2qE8fYn1sJ

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— James Hanson (@jhansonradio) February 4, 2026

Okay, mate. For the record the basic MPs wage is £93,904 per year. That’s after their 2.8% pay rise from April 2025.

The average wage in the UK seems to be about £30,000. The mathematical geniuses among us will notice that that is…. quite a lot less than what MPs get paid.

It’s almost like Roderick James Nugent “Rory” Stewart – a humble Oxford educated one-time tutor to the future king of England, former army officer, and imperial governor of a province of Iraq – hasn’t got a fucking clue what he is talking about.

Roderick rides again

Stewart, born in Hong Kong to a diplomat who is said to have been a top candidate to head MI6, spent a number of years as a Tory MP.

For the 4287th time, I find myself going back to his *drum roll* voting record from those heady days.

Admittedly, I usually reach for these receipts when some centrist dad fuckwit in the pub tries to claim Stewart is a sort of sensible, moral conservative….

But any excuse to get Roderick’s voting record out is good enough for me. I have actually had it tattooed on my body so people can just read it now.

Let’s have a little look at Rory’s votes on benefits:

• Almost always voted for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits

• Generally voted for reducing housing benefit for social tenants deemed to have excess bedrooms (which Labour describe as the “bedroom tax”)

• Consistently voted against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability

• Consistently voted against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices

Sounds like man who really understands the value of money on these benighted islands, doesn’t he?

How about tuition fees?:

• Consistently voted for university tuition fees

Oof…

Corporate tax?

• Almost always voted for reducing the rate of corporation tax

Oh Rory…

Climate change?

• Generally voted against measures to prevent climate change

Bloody hell, Roderick. If only the melts knew how to Google, you’d lose half the listenership on your shit podcast with war criminal Alastair Campbell.

Speaking of which, where are you on war – a very expensive and wasteful business that…

• Consistently voted for replacing Trident with a new nuclear weapons system

• Consistently voted for use of UK military forces in combat operations overseas

Immigration? Come on Rozzer, you can pull this back from the brink.

• Tended to vote for a stricter asylum system

• Consistently voted for stronger laws and enforcement of immigration rules

Well, shit. It turns out Rory is just a bog-standard Tory. Nothing more, nothing less. Rory is simply defending the well-off. Which includes MPs. And he isn’t convincing anybody otherwise. With the sole exception of your tedious Rest is Politics-obsessed Blairite uncle who likes to play devil’s advocate over things he knows nothing about in the pub.

Featured image via the Canary

Readers will probably be aware that literally as you read this, the Scottish Government is in court trying to defend its policy of letting male murderers be housed in women’s prisons by arguing that the Equality Act 2010 (as ruled on by the Supreme Court in the For Women Scotland case) is incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998, implementing the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (commonly referred to as the ECHR).

But this article isn’t about that case.

Because today the Court Of Session issued an unrelated judgment that an entirely different piece of Scottish law is incompatible with the ECHR.

Wings readers have been following the deeply troubling case of Mark Hirst since 2021. Mark was arrested in 2020 on ludicrous charges involving a tweet constituting an alleged “breach of the peace” against the anonymous complainers who’d made false allegations of sexual assault against Alex Salmond, who’d been cleared on all counts at the High Court earlier the same year.

Seven months later Mark’s trial collapsed at Jedburgh Sheriff Court with the sheriff ruling there was no case to answer. Later that year he commenced proceedings to sue the Lord Advocate for malicious prosecution, and today – a disgraceful four years and seven months later – those proceedings reached their conclusion.

Put simply, judge Lord Lake concluded that Mark DID have grounds for a claim of malicious prosecution against the Lord Advocate – Scotland’s most senior law official, head of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service but controversially also a minister in the Scottish Government – but that he was obliged to dismiss the claim because the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, (section 170) grants prosecutors total immunity, because Mark had not been imprisoned.

Lord Lake found that this conflict in law breached Mark’s right to fair treatment.

This might seem like an arcane technical point, but is in fact incredibly serious. Scots law has been ruled flatly incompatible with international human rights law, a situation which cannot possibly be allowed to continue. The CPSA will have to be changed urgently to avoid such grave injustices from happening again, yet it would take a bold gambler to bet on the Scottish Government doing so before May’s general election, or any time soon afterwards.

(It claimed to have no time to support Ash Regan’s bill on prostitution this week, despite it mirroring official SNP policy, but the Parliament did manage to debate a ban on greyhound racing despite there being absolutely no greyhound racing in existence anywhere in Scotland.)

The irony of this extremely rare legal scenario (declarations of incompatibility are vanishingly uncommon, for the obvious reason that most laws are carefully written to avoid them) coming up twice under the same administration, and in connection with the two most shameful episodes in Scottish Government history – the conspiracy, persecution and cover-up against Alex Salmond, and the imposition of violent male criminals on vulnerable women – is hard not to appreciate.

But in a country where nobody – least of all the Crown Office – is accountable for anything, irony appreciation is just about the only thing people have left to hold on to, as Scotland’s justice system dies slowly of shame.

What does “going low-contact” mean?

Why might someone go low-contact?

What should I do if someone has gone low-contact with me?

An inquiry into the deaths of at least 30 people who drowned while trying to cross the English Channel in 2021 has found that emergency services could have prevented the deaths.

On November 24, 2021, the dinghy they were travelling on started to fill with water and capsized. To date, it is the deadliest small boat disaster on record in the English Channel.

Only two of the people on board survived. Emergency services found them nearly 12 hours after they called for help.

In total, authorities found 27 bodies and confirmed another four people were missing.

Channel crossing: a damning inquiry.

The inquiry found that staff numbers across the national network at HM Coastguard were “above what was required”. However, the recommended seasonal staffing at MRCC Dover is three operational staff for search and rescue. Importantly, this number “was not satisfied”. The inquiry found:

 The only fully qualified staff member working in the search and rescue team at MRCC Dover that night was the Search and Rescue Mission Co-ordinator (SMC). The two others in the SMC’s team that night were trainees: one was partially qualified but deemed to be operational, and the other was non operational.

Shockingly, these staffing pressures meant that the SMC was unable to take a break. This:

unsurprisingly left him feeling overwhelmed and fatigued. The short staffing also resulted in an absence of appropriate supervision for the non-operational trainee, who was called on to undertake operational tasks.

Moreover, both Border Force Maritime and the RNLI lacked sufficient resources to deal with the situation.

Despite a seemingly healthy number of surface assets available on the night of 23 to 24 November 2021, HM Coastguard and Border Force were reluctant to deploy more than one, as this would have reduced the availability of an already insufficient number of assets on the following day.

A surveillance aircraft that should have provided “critical intelligence” also did not launch due to poor weather. Of course, there was no contingency plan.

Additionally, authorities missed calls and texts from the boat, or did not follow them up. This, combined with the widely held belief that the people on the boat were exaggerating their distress, meant that the coastguard underestimated the urgency of the situation.

To make matters worse, HM Coastguard did not inform the helicopter searching the area to look for people in the water. The report states:

There were problems with the search undertaken by the helicopter R163. Based on the drift analyses commissioned by the MAIB, it is likely that the area covered by R163’s search contained the swamped small boat. However, its search was not effective for locating a swamped small boat or people in the water. R163 was not tasked to incident ‘Charlie’ specifically and was not informed by HM Coastguard that it was to locate a sinking small boat or people in the water. The captain of R163 told the Inquiry that if he had been informed that there were people in the water, “that does change things”. Instead, R163 was tasked to look for the multiple small boats that were believed to be in a similar area.

Ultimately, authorities and emergency services could have prevented all of the deaths. The inquiry report concludes:

As the analysis makes clear, the flaws in HM Coastguard’s decision-making were systemic. In particular they are attributable to the inordinate pressure on HM Coastguard staff at MRCC Dover handling search and rescue for small boats, the absence of effective supervision of those staff, the limitations of the remote working model to assist them, and the belief which had developed among HM Coastguard personnel that callers from small boats regularly exaggerated their level of distress.

Featured image via Channel 4 News/ YouTube