Sunday night’s TV Baftas ceremony featured a musical performance from the Norwegian singer Aurora, accompanying a tribute to those in the industry who have died over the course of the last year.

However, after the BBC aired its coverage of the event, some viewers were surprised to see that Catherine O’Hara was among those who were not included in Bafta’s “in memoriam” tributes.

To many fans, the Canadian star is best remembered for her performance as the incomparable Moira Rose in the sitcom Schitt’s Creek, for which she won her second Emmy back in 2020.

In response to this, a Bafta rep pointed out to HuffPost UK that Catherine had already been featured in the tributes showcased during the organisation’s movie awards show earlier this year, which is why she was not included in the TV counterpart’s.

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She is also included in a more wide-ranging section of Bafta’s website devoted to tributes.

Earlier in the ceremony, Seth Rogen took a moment to remember Catherine while accepting an award for his show The Studio, which marked one of her final on-screen appearances.

“I’d be remiss not to mention one of the key parts of this show, Catherine O’Hara. She meant so much to all of us,” Seth said during his Best International Programme acceptance speech.

He added: “I assume her work was as important to you all over here as it was to us. So this is for Catherine. Thank you all very, very much.”

Speaking to Radio Times last week, Seth admitted it had been “very hard” to return to work on The Comeback earlier this year in the wake of Catherine’s death.

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“Being with this group of people every day and getting to work with them and getting to make each other laugh has been, I think, very therapeutic, in many ways,” he noted.

“And it kind of allowed us to move through it all together.”

He added: “I think, as far as dealing with things like this go, it’s been one of the better versions of it.”

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On 11 May 2026 newly elected Reform UK councillor Stuart Prior resigned from his post after less than a week in office. Prior gained notoriety after campaign group Hope Not Hate exposed his history of deeply racist social media posts.

Voters elected 53 Reformer candidates to Essex County Council, giving the far right majority control. Among these 53, Prior beat off the Lib Dem candidate Rayleigh West with a majority of 796 votes. Likewise, he also took a seat on Rochford District Council.

Reform have a history of racist bile

As a very brief recap of his abhorrent comments, Prior:

• called white people the “master race” and stated that they have “larger brains”.
• celebrated the rape of two Sikh women in 2025, posting the comment “good, reap it”.
• described a video of a Palestinian man searching through rubble for his child as “hilarious”.
• responded “No one cares. Die” to a post about people using plastic bags instead of nappies in Gaza.
• said “Muslims are dirt”.
• claimed “There cannot be a genocide against Muslims. It’s only ever self defence against those rats”.
• stated that Black people like to ‘play the victim’ and complain about the slave trade.

A Mirror journalist confronted Prior with his own statements days before the local elections. However, he denied having any memory of them, and even had the nerve to suggest that someone had faked the comments.

In return, the Mirror highlighted that the social media account had also posted images from Prior’s own house.

Reform stated that it was “looking into these posts” several times over the last week. Now, a party spokesperson told the BBC that Prior had resigned from both council roles, and added that “he’s had his membership revoked”.

It’s now likely that both councils will need to hold by-elections for their newly vacant seats.

A ‘thorough professional job’

Back in April, BBC Essex asked Nigel Farage if his party had vetted its local election candidates. The Reform leader stated that:

I know that our candidates will be held to a higher standard than any of the other parties.

That’s because we are the challengers. We are the ones taking on the establishment. Yet we have done a good, thorough professional job.

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That “thorough professional job” raises an important question. That is, did Reform know about Prior’s disgusting comments and not care, or was Farage simply lying? As the Canary has previously reported, the far-right party doesn’t exactly lack for dodgy councillors or candidates:

• Another Reform candidate praises Oswald Moseley — A rite of party initiation?
• Reform activist said ‘Hitler was right’.
• Reform have put a suspended racist in charge of campaign finances.
• Another Reform candidate has praised Enoch Powell.
• Reform welcomes ‘shoot the p*kis’ scandal ex-Tory.
• Reform UK accused of ‘nil vetting’ as another racist candidate exposed.
• Video emerges of Reform’s ‘Nazi salute’ candidate drink driving.

Even when this information was pointed out to Reform, it still failed to suspend many of the candidates. Likewise, as in the case of Matt Goodwin’s racist campaign manager Adam Mitula, even the party’s ‘suspended’ minions sometimes go on working for it.

Reform UK know full well that it employs and stands low-down, racist scum as candidates. Obviously, the party doesn’t give a shit about that fact – it’s only exposure and negative publicity that can force it to rescind membership.

Let’s put that another way. Reform UK is happy to harbor the lowest bigots among us, provided it doesn’t believe they’ll do too much damage to the party’s brand.

Scum and chancers, the whole fucking lot of them.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alex/Rose Cocker

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In a critical speech delivered today, Keir Starmer addressed the massive losses Labour sustained in the English local, Scottish Parliament, and Welsh Senedd elections. As the PM is now facing calls to quit not just from opponents but within his own party, his response may prove critical to his political future.

Somehow, he managed more two-faced, half-truths than what we’ve come to expect. The PM kicked off with an acknowledgement that his party lost hard in the elections:

The election results last week were tough. Very tough. We lost some brilliant labour representatives. That hurts. And it should hurt. I get it. I feel it. And I take responsibility. […]

This hurts not just because Labour has done badly, but because if we don’t get this right, our country will go down a very dark path.

So just as I take responsibility for the results, I also take responsibility for delivering the change that we promised for a stronger and fairer Britain that we must build. I take responsibility for navigating through a world that is more dangerous than at any time in my life. And I take responsibility for not walking away, not plunging our country into chaos, as the Tories did, time and again, chaos, but did lasting damage to this country.

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Barrelling down a dark path

First of all, warning that the country will go “down a very dark path” is fucking rich coming from a Labour Party that’s cribbing its immigration policy from the Reform handbook. Or did Starmer think we’d forgotten about his policy to nick asylum seekers’ jewellery already?

Second, taking responsibility for delivering change is a very fancy way of saying ‘I won’t listen to leadership challenges from my own party.’

Claiming that it’s not enough merely to address the “frustration the voters feel”, he stated that:

We’re battling Reform and the Greens, but at a deeper level.

We’re battling the despair on which they prey. Despair that they exploit and amplify. And so analysis matters, but argument matters more. Evidence matters, but so, too, does emotion. Stories beat spreadsheets, people need hope.

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Ah yes, the ‘Greens are just like Reform, if you don’t think about it at all’ chestnut. We also love “stories beat spreadsheets” from the guy who famously only has one story. Also, did you know Starmer’s dad was a toolmaker?

Gaslight, gatekeep, government strikes again

Anyway, speaking of despair, the PM demonstrated exactly what “taking responsibility” means to him:

Of course, like every government, we’ve made mistakes. But we got the big political choices right. I mean, if we’d listened to the advice of other parties, right now, we’d be stuck in a stand-off with Iran.

Having been dragged into a war that is not in our interest, and I will never do that. We have invested in our public services, in people, in the pride of Britain’s communities. Difficult decisions funded that. But now, NHS waiting lists are coming down.

Child poverty is coming down. Immigration is coming down. And we are rebuilding from the ground up. They were the right course and most of all we stabilised the economy.

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‘Actually, we’re doing really well’..sure buddy…it’s the voters who are wrong. Also, while we’re on the subject, the UK is involved in Trump-Netanyahu’s war on Iran. We’re letting the pricks launch their bombers from our airbases.

Starmer then listed the 2008 financial crash, austerity, Brexit, Covid, and the Ukraine war, to say:

And the response is always the same. A desperate attempt to get back to the status quo. A status quo that failed working people time and again. Our response this time must be different.

Magnificent, and completely true. But what could Starmer’s vision of a “complete break” from the status quo look like?

Nationalise steel, but don’t mention the sewage

As an example of his bold new vision (har har), the Labour leader used the example of a steel plant in Scunthorpe that was on the verge of closure. Instead, Labour passed emergency legislation and “took control” in Starmer’s words. The government couldn’t negotiate a commercial sale of the plant, but the PM stated that:

I can announce that legislation will be brought forward this week to give the Government powers subject to that public interest test, to take full national ownership of British Steel.

Public ownership in the public interest. Urgent government on the side of working people, making Britain stronger with the hope of industrial renewal, that is a Labour choice.

That’s great news for the steel workers, and we’ll bear it in mind the next time we want to build a railway. However, maybe we could extend that same logic of nationalisation to the railway network itself?

Or, better yet, we could even talk about nationalising our environmentally ruinous water supply. But of course, that would involve Labour betraying its buddies in the water industry, wouldn’t it?

The other guy’s worse

The other example Starmer held up as a token of his ‘new politics’ is a plan to renew the country’s relationship with Europe. Of course, this quickly devolved into the standard Labour tactic of bashing political enemies:

I want to remind you what Nigel Farage said about Brexit. He said it would make us richer, wrong. It made us poorer. He said it would reduce migration, wrong. Migration went through the roof. He said it would make us more secure, wrong again. It made us weaker.

He took Britain for a ride, and unlike the Tories, who actually at least had to face up to it, he just fled the scene. And now he’ll talk about almost anything other than the consequences of the one policy he actually delivered. Because he’s not just a grifter, he is a chancer.

You know what, he can have that one…all true. No notes from us.

Coming to the end (thank God) of his speech, the PM continued in the same vein, claiming that the other parties:

want more grievance politics, more division, more pointing at Britain’s problems. Looking not for solutions but for someone to blame. Now, that’s fine, if it’s me, if it’s politicians, that’s the job. But increasingly, it’s not. It’s other people in this country. And I don’t think that’s British.

That is not the decency and respect that we are known for. But it’s here. That politics is with us now. And you’ll see it again on Saturday at a march designed to confront and intimidate this diverse city and this diverse country.

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That is why this labour government will block far right agitators from travelling to Britain for that event. Because we will not allow people to come to the UK and spread hate on our streets.

This comes from a Labour Party that actively fought to get racist, Islamophobic Maccabees fans into the country. It’s like they think the public suffers from amnesia.

He concluded his speech with the following remarks:

This is nothing less than a battle for the soul of our nation. And I want to be crystal clear about how we will win it. Because we cannot win as a weaker version of Reform or the Greens, we can only win as a stronger version of Labour, a mainstream party of power, not protest.

‘We must become the best damn Centrists we can be’ — what a fucking vision this man has. God help us all.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alex/Rose Cocker

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The civil liberties charity Statewatch has said current UK community policing strategy is just a copy-and-paste version of colonial tactics. The so-called ‘clear, hold, build’ (CHB) approach is yet another example of how methods refined in military occupations are being imposed on communities at home. And the main losers are already marginalised communities.

The colonial boomerang

The London-based Statewatch produce and promote:

critical research, policy analysis and investigative journalism to inform debates, movements and campaigns on civil liberties, human rights and democratic standards.

The group’s 11 May analysis piece seeks to explain how centuries of colonial policing have informed current tactics – often under treacly-sounding names like ‘Project Unity’, ‘Respect Rhymney’ and ‘Happy Hopeful Hindpool’!

On the face of it, the three-step approach sounds like fairly standard police work. First, it tells officers to ‘clear’ through:

interventions (arrests and relentless disruption) that target organised crime group members, their networks, business interests, criminality and spheres of influence. The police use all powers and levers to impede their ability to operate. This creates safer spaces to begin restoring community confidence.

Then it moves into the ‘hold’ phase:

interventions, counter-measures and contingency plans to consolidate and stabilise the initial clear phase. This stops remaining or other organised crime group members from capitalising on the vacuum created. It improves community confidence by ensuring spaces remain safe. Visible neighbourhood policing in hotspot areas provides continuing reassurance that police are still present.

Before finally starting to ‘build’:

a single, whole-system approach to delivering community-empowered interventions that tackle drivers of crime, exploitation of vulnerabilities and geographic places where crime occurs. This improves living, working and recreational environment in the community for residents. It empowers them to work with stakeholders to generate resilience and build a safer community.

In reality, Statewatch argues, these processes are direct products of French, British and US empire…

Mowing the lawn

Statewatch said the CHB approach was developed by a former cop-turned-Home Office official named Shane Roberts:

The brutal military origins of CHB are no secret. Official bodies acknowledge that its roots lie in “a three-phase military operating model.” In a February 2024 meeting with a Northampton community group,

Its transfer from the military to the police appears to have been facilitated by a former detective turned Home Office policymaker, Shane Roberts. Roberts describes himself as the “creator” of CHB, responsible for its design, development and implementation as a local policing scheme.

The policy draws on lessons from as far afield as Malaya and Iraq, but also from US figures like Iraq-era General David Petraeus – and there is even major crossover with Israeli tactics deployed against Palestinians:

Anyone familiar with the Israeli occupation of Palestine will likely have heard this terminology of “mowing the lawn” before.

It is therefore unsurprising that CHB has also reportedly been used as the basis of Israeli military operations against Palestinian people in Gaza, with Petraeus himself pitching his exploits in Iraq to Israeli officials.

Roberts even cites French colonial administrator General Herbert Lyautey, who helped ‘pacify’ Morocco:

Roberts describes Lyautey’s career of colonial enforcement for the French empire as “a track record of helping harmonize communities,” noting his ability to work in “challenging social conditions

Roberts adds:

…as Lyautey commented, if these follow-through steps were not taken, efforts would be in vain as simply clipping weeds results in only a temporary illusion of progress: what mattered was addressing the root.

Statewatch argued Lyautey’s words were “a little more brutal”.

and were arguably precursors to the modern-day phraseology of “mowing the lawn.” The marshal argued that “after the plough has passed, the conquered land must be isolated and enclosed so that the good seed that is resistant to the bad can be sown.”

The NGO added:

Despite this language of conquest and domination, Roberts “believed these principles had wider utility and could potentially be replicated in a community-based response to tackle SOC [serious and organised crime].”

Statewatch also noted:

The Home Office concluded that overall CHB can be an “effective approach for reducing crime.”

The ‘new spirit’ of British policing?

Statewatch said the increased mixing of colonial tactics with domestic security measures reflected a “new spirit” in British policing:

This repurposed imperial doctrine represents an introduction of colonial military methods which were originally created to dominate, rather than uplift, local communities.

It provides disturbing insight into the mindset of both government and police institutions which see these tactics as suitable for safeguarding local neighbourhoods.

The group said the policy was part of an “invisible militarisation” of local police:

UK police forces adopting the equipment and appearance of the military have long been a point of focus. However, this strategy transforms community policing into a military process in a way which is both more invasive and harder to spot.

Police have already used CHB to clear out unhoused people in London’s Tower Hamlets:

After clearing an area of tents in which people had been living, the Metropolitan Police published a statement stating that CHB “creates a space that can be used by everyone”.

Police forces across the west were always a martial force. They exist primarily to protect property and the capitalist status quo, victimising the exploited and racialised classes on behalf of the wealthy. And colonising powers like Britain have always used their vassal states as a violent laboratory, sharpening techniques and technologies of oppression for use at home.

The military honed these methods further in recent episodes of violent occupation like Iraq and Palestine. UK police are now deploying them against domestic communities. And the first victims will be the most marginalised.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

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Keir Starmer’s premiership is hanging by a thread following Labour’s disastrous performance in the local elections.

A growing body of MPs are calling for the prime minister to resign, less than two years into the role, but Starmer is digging in.

With no clear successor putting their head above the parapet for the mutinous party to rally behind, MPs are in limbo.

So what might happen next? Here’s what you need to know.

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How Did We Get To This Point?

Starmer became prime minister in July 2024 after Labour won a landslide victory in the general election.

But within weeks, his government was plunged into crisis by the decision to scrap winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners and a row over free clothes and hospitality accepted by Starmer and other senior Labour figures.

A series of messy U-turns on things like the two-child benefit cap, digital ID and the farmers’ inheritance tax also led to the prime minister’s approval rating plummeting.

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The controversy over his decision to make Peter Mandelson the UK’s ambassador to Washington also helped push the PM’s unpopularity to new depths.

In Labour’s biggest electoral test since the 2024 election last week, voters overwhelmingly rejected the party in England, Scotland and Wales – triggering further anger towards the PM from the party’s MPs.

More than 50 of then have called on Starmer to stand down following the devastating bloodbath.

What Might Happen Next?

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It’s incredibly hard to predict exactly what happens next, especially Labour Party makes it difficult to oust the party’s leader.

But here are the options MPs are considering, as of Monday…

A Labour MP Challenges Starmer

Under the party’s rules, a challenger needs the backing of at least 20% of Labour MPs to trigger a leadership contest. That currently works out to 81 MPs.

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Even then, the sitting leader would automatically be put on the ballot paper.

Former Foreign Office minister Catherine West stunned Westminster on Saturday by announcing she would challenge the PM if the cabinet did not choose someone to replace Starmer.

But by Monday she had backed down, instead calling for MPs to sign a letter urging Starmer to set out a timetable to allow him to be replaced by September.

Among others thought to be weighing up a leadership bid are former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and health secretary Wes Streeting.

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A Labour MP Stands Aside For Andy Burnham

Starmer’s other major opponent is the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.

However Burnham left Westminster in 2017 and would have to become an MP again in order to stand.

Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC), blocked him from running as the party’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election in February – at the behest of Starmer.

Burnham is believed to have approached several northern Labour MPs about standing down to trigger a by-election, but so far none have done so.

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Even if someone is willing to resign, and the NEC does not block him again, there are no guarantees Burnham would win the subsequent by-election.

His decision to stand would also trigger a mayoral contest in Greater Manchester – which could give rival parties another chance to hammer Labour at the ballot box.

Starmer Agrees To Step Down As MP Backlash Mounts

As the number of MPs calling on him to resign rises, the PM could decide he doesn’t need the hassle and announce he is quitting.

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However, he has insisted he “won’t walk away” from the job, and in an interview with The Observer insisted he still planned to be prime minister for 10 years.

Starmer Clings On

With the PM’s opponents apparently racked with indecision about what to do next, there is a world in which he rides out his latest leadership crisis.

In his make-or-break speech on Monday setting out how he plans to turn around Labour’s fortunes, Starmer said: “I know that people are frustrated by the state of Britain, frustrated by politics, and some people – frustrated with me.

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“I know I have my doubters and I know I need to prove them wrong, and I will.”

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.

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