Lachlan Bruce is a Conservative councillor and a policy and public affairs manager at a British health charity.

The Home Secretary’s plan to “radically reduce” the number of police forces in England and Wales is being presented as bold and modern. We are told that 43 forces are inefficient, bureaucratic and ill-equipped to face modern threats, and that consolidation will save money while improving capability.

We have heard all this before.

In Scotland, the SNP forced through the merger of eight regional forces into a single national body: Police Scotland. It was sold as a reform that would cut duplication, strengthen serious and organised crime capability, and free up resources for frontline policing.

More than a decade on, the reality is stark. Centralisation has weakened local policing, not strengthened it. Communities feel less visible police presence, not more. Decision-making has moved further away from the streets and towns officers serve. Local commanders have less autonomy and communities have less influence. The promise that scale would deliver better neighbourhood policing has proved hollow and false.

What Scotland gained in administrative uniformity, it lost in local responsiveness.

Response times have risen. Public confidence has fallen. Officers themselves speak openly about morale and overstretch; many are leaving in their droves. Rural communities feel forgotten by a system geared around priorities in the big cities and metropolitan pressures. When everything is “national”, local problems struggle to compete.

Under the old model, chief constables were rooted in place and answerable to local police authorities. Today, decisions are taken in a national headquarters hundreds of miles from the communities affected. When policing goes wrong, it is far harder for local people to know who is responsible, let alone influence change.

A single force inevitably standardises practice. But Scotland is not uniform and neither are England or Wales. What works in Glasgow or London does not always work in Skye or Ynys Môn. What suits a city centre on a Saturday night is not what a rural village needs on a weekday afternoon. Centralised systems struggle with local nuance.

The clearest verdict on Scotland’s experiment in centralised policing does not come from ministers or management consultants it comes from the public. Fewer than half of adults in Scotland now believe the police in their local area are doing an “excellent” or “good” job. Just 45 per cent hold that view in 2023–24.

A decade earlier, before eight regional forces were swept into a single national body, that figure stood at 61 per cent.

That decline is not confined to satisfaction ratings. It reflects a system that has not delivered better policing.

The force has faced high-profile operational failings, from the M9 crash in which multiple reports of a crashed vehicle went unlogged, resulting in two deaths, to thousands of arrest warrants for serious crimes standing unexecuted. Instances of evidence mishandling in murder investigations and significant overtime pressures highlight a force struggling with core duties. Independent reviews have also flagged procedural shortcomings in how complaints and investigations are handled.

Whatever the theory behind centralisation, the lived experience is plain: people feel less well served by the police today than they did before the merger. That is not modernisation. It is decline.

Large-scale structural reform absorbs time, money and leadership bandwidth. Years are spent on uniforms, logos, IT systems, command chains and governance, while the everyday work of policing is put under strain. Communities do not experience “transformation”; they experience disruption.

Labour now proposes to repeat this experiment across England and Wales.

Labour ministers argue that smaller forces cannot handle terrorism, serious organised crime or major incidents. Yet those capabilities are already delivered through collaboration, regional units and national agencies. You do not need to abolish local forces to share intelligence, pool specialist skills or co-ordinate nationally. That work already happens.

What does depend on local structures is neighbourhood policing: the trust built by familiar faces, local knowledge and visible presence. British policing rests on consent – on familiarity, trust and presence. That tradition is fragile. It depends on people recognising their officers, not seeing them as remote agents of a distant system. Centralisation erodes that bond. That is precisely what is most at risk from sweeping structural reform.

The Home Secretary says she will create new “Local Policing Areas” in every town and city. But Scotland shows the flaw in this thinking. You can draw as many boxes on an organisational chart as you like; if power, budgets and priorities are set centrally, those “local” units become branding exercises, not real centres of authority.

Real neighbourhood policing is not created by White Papers. It depends on genuine local control, stable teams, and accountability to the communities they serve.

There is a deeper problem here. Labour’s instinct is always to centralise: fewer institutions, bigger systems, more control from the centre. We see it in health, in economic policy, and now in policing. The promise is always efficiency. The outcome is usually distance between decision-makers and the people affected by those decisions.

Scotland’s experience should be a warning, not a template.

Police reform should be driven by evidence of what improves safety, confidence and community trust, not by a Treasury-led hunt for savings or a managerial belief that “bigger is better”. The Police Federation is right: any change must strengthen frontline and neighbourhood policing, not weaken it.

England and Wales do not need a centralised policing model. They need more officers on the streets, stronger local accountability, a focus on the things that really impact the public and forces empowered to serve the communities that know them best.

Conservatives should offer a different vision: one rooted in local accountability, visible neighbourhood policing and respect for policing by consent. The answer to modern crime is not to abolish local forces, but to strengthen them backing collaboration where it works, investing in frontline officers, and giving communities real influence over the policing they receive. Reform should bring the police closer to the public, not place them further away.

We tried Labour’s idea north of the border. It did not deliver. Repeating it would be an expensive mistake.

Welp, looks like Donald Trump has been caught in yet another scandal. This time, he stands accused of laundering money with Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, as political analyst Brian Allen explained:

🚨 BREAKING — Epstein Files:

Donald Trump bought a Palm Beach mansion for $41M, financed by a loan tied to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, then flipped it to the same oligarch for $95M.

Same buyer. Massive markup. No renovations. No logic.

That’s textbook money laundering.

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— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) February 10, 2026

Trump accused of flipping properties for huge profit

This is all over quite a notorious Floridian property.

Trump acquired the Maison de l’Amitie estate in Florida in 2004. The six-acre property set him back a cool $41.35m.

This is the property where he outbid the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and the feud between the two supposedly began.

But that’s not the end of the story.

Just four years later, Trump sold the property to Rybolovlev in 2008 for a whopping £95m. Over double what he paid.

Trump claims he made some renovations, installing some of the gaudy gold fittings he loves. But surely he didn’t install enough of this bullshit to double the fucking property value?

Red flags galore

The issue with this comes down to the timing. This $95m sale occurred just as the US housing market was about to crash. And at the time Trump, was facing a $40m personal guarantee on a loan from Deutsche Bank, something he was struggling to pay.

One of the newly released emails from Jeffrey Epstein sheds more light on Donald Trump’s real estate model and gives as an example a mysterious figure referred to only as “R.”

“R” is almost certainly Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev.

Excerpt from the email… pic.twitter.com/wmKkRwT7n0

— Euan MacDonald (@Euan_MacDonald) February 9, 2026

Strange timing for a Russian billionaire to step in and buy the property, wasn’t it? And for double the cost. Especially when said billionaire’s ex-wife claimed he was using it to hide assets at the time.

Oh, and then he just tore the whole place down in 2016 anyway, having never lived in it.

Investigator Glenn Simpson testified to congress that the “extreme markup” on the property was suspicious.

Yes, it fucking is.

All coming out

Trump’s name is in the Epstein files thousands of times:

It should’ve been over when….. Can’t fit everything but what am I missing that’s a “must add”? pic.twitter.com/vorafakYSw

— Bri4Change2024 (formerly Bri4Change, Bri4Change1) (@Bri4Change2024) February 10, 2026

When this orange weasel has been through countless scandals, when is enough actually enough?

For more on the Epstein Files, please read our article on how the media circus around Trump is erasing the experience of victims and survivors.

Featured image via The Canary

Channel 4‘s Dispatches programme has looked at the UK government’s highly controversial ban of non-violent direct-action group Palestine Action. And through basic journalistic scrutiny that the rest of mainstream media have largely avoided, it laid out how central ‘corporate capture’ of our politicians was to the politically repressive decision.

Palestine Action and the corporate capture of UK government

Journalist Jonathan Cook summed up the Dispatches episode by saying:

What the programme made clear was that Starmer’s government made the unprecedented decision to declare Palestine Action a terrorist organisation not because the group is a terrorist organisation but because large corporations – arms firms like Elbit – have captured the UK government.

One parliamentary stooge Dispatches interviewed was John Woodcock (‘Lord Walney’) – who’s among the clearest examples of corporate capture in UK politics. He has long lobbied on behalf of dodgy industries and repressive foreign states. And he has a particularly close connection to the Israeli apartheid state.

As Cook explained, Woodcock clearly “struggled through his interview”:

It was only too clear that his views on the subject had nothing to do with the public good but were shaped by his ties to the arms industries and his role as an Israel lobbyist.

Having long fought to repress freedom of speech and protest on behalf of Israeli settler-colonialism, Woodcock gave a particularly revealing response when interviewer Matt Shea questioned if public outrage over Israel’s genocide in Gaza justified regular protests:

In C4’s ‘Palestine Action, The Truth behind the ban’ Israel friend & arms lobbyists Lord Walney attacks regular pro Palestine marches

The reporter points out the organisers may say opposing the slaughter of civilians on this scale demands regular protests. Watch his reaction pic.twitter.com/WUqm2YbHvv

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) February 10, 2026

The UK’s political establishment, with its deep links to the pro-Israel lobby, has long sought to repress dissent on Israel’s war crimes. From the Conservatives to Labour and Reform, protection of Israeli interests is non-negotiable.

As Cook outlined, the ban on Palestine Action was:

done at the behest of Elbit Systems – the Israeli arms firm making killer drones used in Gaza targeted by Palestine Action.

Alongside regular government meetings with Elbit before the proscription, the government had also been considering how to:

Reassure Elbit Systems UK and the wider sector affected by Palestine Action that the government cares about the harm the group is causing the private sector [arms industries].

The Palestine Action ban was “wrong”

Apart from the corporate capture of government that led to the ban, Dispatches also noted the:

widespread belief among Home Office staff that the government was “wrong” to proscribe Palestine Action, and there was “disquiet”  that the government was using Palestine Action as a way to curtail rights to protest and speech more generally.

The Labour government of Keir Starmer has been consistently intensifying the efforts of his Conservative predecessors to crack down on dissent.

The government’s own adviser, meanwhile, revealed how nonsensical the cynical attempt to link Palestine Action with Iran had been:

GOVERNMENT LIES

A clip from last night’s C4 Despatches shows that the government’s own advisor saw no evidence on claims used by Labour to proscribe Palestine Action.

Jonathan Hall KC slams the phoney accusations of an ‘Iran link’ as “nudge nudge, wink wink”.

Lift The Ban NOW pic.twitter.com/rXv5j5SScB

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— Defend Our Juries (@DefendOurJuries) February 10, 2026

Dispatches also looked at why the Palestine Action ban was so dangerous:

Lord Hain was there when the Terrorism Act was introduced, he has publicly condemned the use of this act against Palestine Action.

He fears it could be used on “all sorts of protestors” and the likes of the Suffragettes and Anti-Apartheid protesters.

“That cannot be justified”. pic.twitter.com/ZSllZPQRKV

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— Defend Our Juries (@DefendOurJuries) February 10, 2026

Even good mainstream journalism has holes, though

Perhaps Dispatches felt it had to tread very carefully around this issue, but it seemed at points to be way too deferential to government talking points, possibly to show ‘impartiality’. It also overused ominous music when interviewing people from Palestine Action, and asked them questions it didn’t ask of pro-Israel voices:

Nearly two and a half years into Israels genocide and people are still being asked, do you condemn Hamas?

The journalist asking the question is Matt Shea and the the clip is from Channel 4’s Dispatches program ‘Palestine Action, The Truth behind the ban’ pic.twitter.com/yDDJ2ylcsE

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) February 10, 2026

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‘The reason I did this was because I oppose killing innocent lives.’ @Matt_A_Shea speaks to Palestine Action activist Ellie Kamio immediately after she was granted bail and found not guilty of aggravated burglary. The jury failed to reach a verdict on her other charges. pic.twitter.com/ifBclgCcEZ

— Channel 4 Dispatches (@C4Dispatches) February 9, 2026

Asks a Palestinian “Is Hamas guilty of killing innocent civilians on oc7 & should we condemn that?”
*doesn’t get the right answer*
“it should be simple to condemn the killing of innocent Israelis.”

Never asks Falter, Hall or Walney to condemn Israel.

— Özen (@Iridescent1985) February 10, 2026

And if Dispatches was going to look at the claim of foreign links to Palestine Action, it would have seemed completely appropriate to look at the prominent role of the Israel lobby in parliament too.

Pretty good but surprisingly never mentioned the Israeli lobbying in UK which was the main reason for Palestine Action being proscribed in the first place

— Mike (@mwally_mike) February 10, 2026

Dispatches will surely have made some people think more carefully about the reasons behind the Palestine Action ban, though. And if it helped even slightly to mainstream the debate over the corporate capture of our political system, that’s something we should all be thankful for.

Featured image via the Canary

The government has released its official response to the report, Time to Deliver, which the Autism Act Committee released at the end of 2025. It’s perhaps unsurprising to see that the response avoids accountability and refuses to place any care or timelines on the recommendations given across the report.

What is the Time to Deliver report, and why does it matter?

The Autism Act 2009 specifically mandated that there must be a national strategy around autism, and produced statutory guidance. The strategy should have been updated in 2019, which was delayed until 2021. And whilst it made significant commitments, it only accounted for a single year. At this point in time, the government said it was prioritising updating the statutory guidance.

The House of Lords Autism Act Committee was appointed to consider the impact of the Act, and recommend necessary changes. To many, the report is imperfect: it doesn’t acknowledge some of the true systemic natures of ableism and neuronormativity. And arguably it doesn’t go far enough. But it does include the views of many autistic people and their advocates. And it does make extensive recommendations for the future.

Time to Deliver argues that the government must begin to develop a new all-age, cross-government strategy which can replace the current version went it expires in July 2026. The authors argue this should be based on the six themes they use in the report. These themes formed the basis of the questions the public could respond to:

• Improving acceptance.
• Identification and assessment.
• Reducing health inequalities.
• Education and transitions.
• Employment.
• Criminal justice.

They also call for the involvement of autistic people at every stage, a costed plan for implementation of the new strategy, an accountable minister, and the strategy to set out how the government will give services the support they need. These elements are particularly crucial in this austerity version of society where there’s not enough funding reaching services. You can’t make recommendations when no one can afford to make them happen.

The House of Lords Autism Act Committee said:

The Committee recommends that the government must develop the new autism strategy now, so it is ready to launch when the current one expires in July 2026. The government must identify priority outcomes, produce a costed, deliverable plan to achieve them, and make clear who is responsible and accountable for delivery.

Too often, decisions about autistic people’s lives are made for them, not by them. This must change. Autistic people and those who support them must be meaningfully involved in every stage of the development and delivery of the new strategy.

The government response is feeble

Thousands of autistic people and those supporting them took part in this inquiry. It’s apparently a record number of written submissions for any House of Lords committee. This shows how significantly issues of support and care for autistic people are having an impact across the UK. And it’s extremely disappointing that the government has effectively dismissed this in its response.

In direct contrast to the careful recommendations of the committee, the government’s response lacks any real substance at all. It commits to almost nothing, apart from the existing 10 Year Health Plan for England, which does not mention autistic people once in its entirety, and to the existing commitments of work.

This notably includes the independent review into ‘prevalence and support’ for autism, ADHD and mental health conditions. This is of course the highly problematic review into the fallacy of ‘overdiagnosis’.

The response is flimsy, and says it welcomes the recommendations without any real intention to act upon them. There is seemingly no commitment to any timelines for a new national strategy. It would be a breach of statutory process if there is no follow-up action.

On the topic of meaningful engagement, the government response says:

We recognise that meaningful engagement will take time, so a balance will need to be struck as to what level of further engagement is required, and the current strategy will remain in force while we do this.

Co-production and engaging with the community cannot function as an excuse not to produce and act on a new strategy. Although engagement is important, action needs to happen effectively, efficiently and in a timely manner. Considering how much meaningful engagement the House of Lords Committee achieved in a relatively short time, it’s not impossible.

Autism charities are not happy with the response

A collection of the UK’s autism charities (National Autistic Society, Ambitious About Autism, Autistica, Autism Action and Autism Alliance UK) released a joint statement after the official release of the response, arguing that the response is unacceptable. They argue there is no evidence that the government intends to develop a new national strategy or:

do anything meaningful in compliance with the Autism Act.

Their statement says:

Vague commitments will do nothing to address the real barriers autistic people face… Once again, autism is lost in generic strategies, despite clear evidence of the distinct risks autistic people face and the need for specific, targeted, joined-up action. The House of Lords’ report articulates these risks powerfully…

Every day the Government delays meaningful action, autistic children, young people and adults will continue to face shorter life expectancy, higher risk of suicide, mental health crisis, exclusion from education, family breakdown, long-term confinement in mental health hospitals, and one of the lowest employment rates of any group in society. These outcomes are shameful.

The charities note that harm is happening right now, in every sector of society. Advocates, charities and autistic people are disappointed by the response, but more importantly, it allows for autistic lives to continue to be placed into danger across various sectors.

Delaying a new national strategy is not just about paperwork. Although we know that things like statutory guidance and strategies do not liberate us, they are a part of how action happens. And issues of harm in systems like healthcare or psychiatric care are ongoing for thousands of autistic people.

The damage our community faces is not going anywhere. This committee report could have been a moment to commit to real change. It’s unsurprising, but disappointing, that the response to a report full of genuine views and recommendations could fall so flat.

Featured image via the Canary

Kamran Balayev is an international legal and policy expert, business leader, and former London mayoral candidate.

London’s most profitable export is not a product. It is a place.

Each year, international businesses deliberately choose English law, London courts, and London-seated arbitration to resolve disputes that can run into the hundreds of millions, sometimes billions. This is forum shopping at its most sophisticated: parties comparing legal systems as if they were infrastructure, and paying a premium for the one they trust most. For the UK, that premium is both a source of revenue and a form of quiet national influence.

The scale of this choice is striking. The Commercial Court reports that around 75 per cent of its work is international, a proportion that has remained broadly stable. But “international” understates what is happening in practice. An independent review of 262 judgments delivered by the London Commercial Courts between April 2023 and March 2024 found that 68 per cent of litigants were non-UK parties, drawn from 84 different countries; the most internationally diverse year on record.

A national court serving litigants from 84 countries is not merely domestic. It is global legal infrastructure. That global pull rests on something unusually old, and unusually modern in function.

England’s courts have institutional continuity stretching back almost 900 years, to the royal courts that emerged in the late 12th century. English common law began to crystallise in the same period, developing incrementally through judicial reasoning rather than comprehensive codes. Over time, that method produced what commercial parties value most: predictability without rigidity, adaptability without arbitrariness, and judgments that explain not just what the law is, but why.

As Lord Mansfield famously observed in the 18th century: “The law of England is the law of merchants.” That insight remains true. English law became the governing law of choice for cross-border contracts even when neither party was British – and London became the natural venue for resolving disputes arising from them.

This is reflected in the work London attracts. The Commercial Court generally handles claims valued at £8 million and above, while the London Circuit Commercial Court typically deals with disputes in the £1-8 million range. Arbitration amplifies the effect. London remains the world’s leading arbitration seat: the 2025 Queen Mary / White & Case survey ranks it first globally, with 34 per cent preference, ahead of Singapore and Hong Kong. The LCIA alone registered 362 referrals in 2024, 95 per cent international, involving parties from over 100 jurisdictions.

One heavyweight arbitration can generate extraordinary economic activity. Specialist counsel, arbitrators, expert witnesses, disclosure providers, translators, hearing venues and weeks of accommodation quickly add up. Even where the dispute value runs into the hundreds of millions, the process itself can generate many millions of pounds in legal and professional services. Across hundreds of cases, the aggregate impact is substantial – one reason legal services contribute well over £35bn annually to UK gross value added and run a persistent trade surplus.

So why worry?

Because this is no longer a monopoly. It is a contest.

Other jurisdictions have grasped that dispute resolution is not merely a public service; it is an export industry and a source of influence. Dubai (DIFC), Abu Dhabi (ADGM), Singapore, Paris and New York have all invested heavily in specialist courts and arbitration centres. None replicates London’s history or depth. But they do not need to. They are competing at the margins where decisions are now made: speed, user experience, digital process, enforcement pathways and procedural efficiency.

And London is giving them an opening.

Concerns have been raised publicly that the median time to judgment in the Commercial Court approached 786 days in 2024. Comparisons with faster forums are not always like-for-like, but the signal is clear. Courts such as Singapore’s commercial courts explicitly market speed and active case management, with suitable cases capable of reaching trial within months, as part of a strategy to attract international disputes.

If English law remains admired while English dispute resolution becomes slow or cumbersome, sophisticated users will quietly re-price their loyalty. The risk is not collapse, but gradual diversion: fewer marginal cases, fewer hearings seated in London, fewer instructions, and reduced spillover into the wider economy.

Talent mobility reinforces the point. The Law Society reports that around 11,000 UK-qualified solicitors now practise overseas, particularly in the Gulf and Asia. This exports English law – a strength – but it also indicates where growth is perceived to lie. Judicial authority, too, has become portable. Retired senior UK judges increasingly sit in overseas commercial courts and arbitration centres, especially in the Gulf. Some of this strengthens the common-law brand; some of it strengthens London’s competitors.

London therefore faces a choice: treat its legal dominance as heritage – or treat it as strategy. If the aim is to protect and grow this export, the agenda is practical.

First, speed and user-friendliness must become explicit competitiveness targets. Delay is not a constitutional abstraction; it is a commercial deterrent. Judicial capacity for heavy commercial work must be protected and modern case management pursued relentlessly.

Second, the UK must promote its legal system with the same seriousness it promotes finance or trade. Competitors do this systematically. London has relied too heavily on reputation alone. Under the current government, there has been no sustained international strategy to champion English law as an economic asset, no visible ministerial ownership of the issue, and little sense of urgency despite intensifying global competition.

Third, London must remain the preferred venue for hearings, not merely the legal seat. Visas, facilities, digital infrastructure and logistics all matter. Where hearings take place determines where value is captured.

Finally, the integrity of common law must be preserved. Judicial independence, reasoned decision-making and predictability are non-negotiable. Any perception of politicisation or erosion of standards would do lasting damage.

This is not pessimism. The fact that London’s courts served litigants from 84 countries in a single year is evidence of extraordinary strength. But it is also a reminder: the world uses London because it chooses to.

Safeguarding that choice requires seriousness, confidence and stewardship – qualities traditionally associated with a Conservative Party understanding of institutions: valuing inheritance, while accepting responsibility for its renewal. London remains a global capital of justice. Whether it remains the global capital will depend on whether Britain once again treats the rule of law not just as a constitutional principle, but as a strategic national asset worth defending.

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Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser | Image by: LANDMARK MEDIA / Alamy

4 min read51 min

Oscar-nominated Marty Supreme is not the film I thought it was going to be.

I went in expecting a film with the gratifying arc of an athlete honing his craft, overcoming adversity and reaching the summit of his ambitions.

This assumption was reinforced by the presence of Timothée Chalamet himself. An actor who treats his profession much as you imagine Cristiano Ronaldo treats football: as a vocation demanding total commitment in pursuit of lasting greatness.

That spirit certainly animates Marty Supreme, but it feels less like a portrait of a sporting champion, and more the excoriating tale of an addict.

Marty Mauser, Chalamet’s character and the film’s namesake, is willing to do anything in pursuit of the stage. And it is a stage.

What ultimately makes the film work is Chalamet’s charm

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Mauser is a supremely talented table tennis player, but his drive is not the technicalities of a fast-paced sport. The film follows his escapades as he tries to fund his way to the World Championships in Tokyo. There is no training montage. He is not pursuing the title. He is pursuing the platform.

What drives the character is the performance of a championship match. The showboating; the cheers; the electricity of being watched.

As is so often the case with life’s entertainers, it is off stage that Mauser’s real character is revealed. 

He is willing to lie, con and steal to get his fix.

Josh Safdie, the film’s director, forces the audience to sit with this behaviour, offering no warning and little relief. The result is frequently painful to watch.

Early in the film Mauser enthusiastically encourages a fellow player to recount his experience in a Nazi concentration camp, setting up one of the film’s most memorable and disturbing scenes.

That same principle governs the dialogue. Grossly offensive jokes are fired off at the speed of a table-tennis serve and never allowed to land, the conversation moving on as relentlessly as a rally.

Odessa A’zion delivers a brilliant performance as the pregnant mother of Mauser’s child. A victim of her circumstance, she mirrors Mauser’s talent for manipulation and self-preservation. Their relationship is less a refuge than a collision.

All of this reinforces the grittiness of its setting – you feel like you are living in the dirty, criminal and enterprising city of 1950s New York.

In post-war America, as in Britain today, the distribution of opportunity is not equal. The film shows that inequality often isn’t loud or obvious. It’s not about cartoon villains, although there are a few here. It’s about how some people always get the benefit of the doubt, while others are expected to work twice as hard just to be taken seriously.

What ultimately makes the film work is Chalamet’s charm. Marty Mauser should not be a likeable character, and in many ways he simply isn’t. Yet he possesses the rare quality of charisma. You find yourself wanting him to succeed. He is, above all else, a born entertainer.

If you want to be entertained this winter, you could do worse than going to see the unsettling Marty Supreme.

Gordon McKee is Labour MP for Glasgow South

Marty Supreme

Directed by: Josh Safdie

Venue: General cinema release

Rachel Brooks looks at the key trends in student mobility post-Brexit and the lessons the UK should take now that it has decided to rejoin the EU’s Erasmus programme as part of its UK-EU reset. 

We know that, as part of the UK’s ‘reset’ with the European Union, it will rejoin the European Union’s Erasmus programme in 2027. However, the future of student mobility more generally remains unclear. This has been illustrated well in recent weeks. Despite reports that the UK would no longer insist on a ‘hard cap’ on the number of participants in the UK-EU youth mobility scheme that is currently being negotiated (instead offering a reviewable ‘balancing mechanism’ which could see the cap on numbers go up or down over time), Keir Starmer has provided few details about what this scheme could look like.

A key issue for UK universities is whether EU nationals will be able to take up UK university places under the scheme and, if so, whether they will return to paying ‘home’ fees, rather than the much higher fees they have paid, post-Brexit, as ‘international’ students. Financial modelling, conducted by the Russell Group, suggests that such a change would cost the sector around £580 million. There is also uncertainty about whether the return of Erasmus will mean an end to the student mobility schemes that have grown up in its place – namely, the Turing Scheme, which covers the whole of the UK, and Wales’ Taith programme.

At this juncture, it is perhaps useful to look back at the past decade, assess the impact of Brexit on international student mobility, and identify lessons that can be learned for the future. Research I have conducted with Johanna Waters, suggests that the impact has been substantial.

First, with respect to whole-degree mobilities (i.e. where students go abroad to study for the whole of an undergraduate or postgraduate degree), the number of incoming students from the EU declined substantially (from almost 153,000 in 2020-21 to 120,140 in 2021-22) following post-Brexit changes to their status (and has fallen further since). In the 2021-22 academic year, their fee status altered from being the same as ‘home’ students, to ‘international’ – resulting in a very significant increase in costs (tuition fees for undergraduate courses currently vary between £11,400 and £38,000). Alongside this, they became liable for paying visa costs and the NHS surcharge. It is notable that the decline in numbers did not follow immediately after the Brexit vote (in 2016), or even after the UK had formally left the EU (in 2020), but only after the financial changes came into effect.

It is also notable that the efforts of UK universities had relatively little impact – many, for example, initially offered fee waivers for EU students, as well as, in some cases, displaying very pro-EU imagery on their websites (we came across a few examples of the EU flag being displayed prominently on webpages for prospective international students, for example).

The number of UK students moving abroad for the whole of a degree did not change in the same way – remaining relatively stable over the past decade. This is perhaps unsurprising given that very few UK students study abroad for the entirety of a degree anyway (particularly in Europe), and those that do so are unlikely to have been severely disadvantaged by the financial changes wrought by Brexit: although they now have to pay ‘international’ fees in Europe, these are typically less than the ‘home’ fees they would have paid in the UK.

Second, in relation to stays abroad of shorter duration, the impact of Brexit has also been significant. The Turing Scheme, introduced as the UK’s alternative to Erasmus, has facilitated short-term mobility to a wider range of locations, beyond mainland Europe. Indeed, this was a key aim of the scheme, associated with the post-Brexit discourse of ‘Global Britain’. While some of the international office staff we have interviewed for our research believed that this had had the effect of weakening relations with European partners, others valued the increased diversity of options now available to students.

The Turing Scheme and Taith have also had some success in widening participation in such mobility. This has been due to government and universities making wider access an explicit aim of the scheme, and also because of the introduction of very short-term mobilities – initially with a minimum duration of four weeks, and recently reduced to two weeks. There are important questions about whether such short-term periods abroad can bring about the same benefits as longer stays of a semester or two, traditionally associated with Erasmus. Nevertheless, those working in university international offices have typically been very supportive of this particular change.

The shift to Turing has not been entirely positive, however. Unlike Erasmus, the scheme has funded only outgoing student mobilities, not those of students coming into the UK. Taith, however, has funded such reciprocal movement. This has been to the detriment of UK classrooms, which have traditionally benefitted from the perspectives of visiting Europeans. Moreover, the lack of certainty about whether the scheme would continue year-on-year, alongside the very late notification to universities about their annual awards from the scheme, have made institutional planning very hard.

This, in turn, has affected student participation, those we interviewed explained. Those from traditionally under-represented backgrounds often need plenty of notice of such opportunities to, for example, put alternative childcare plans in place and/or make arrangements for a period of leave from part-time work. Such students are also more likely to need their grants paid in advance – which has not always been possible, given the delays in making the awards to universities.

For these reasons, as well as the broader political significance, the UK government’s decision to rejoin Erasmus has been broadly welcomed across the higher education sector. However, our research points to some important messages from the Turing/Taith experience(s) that the Erasmus programme may do well to heed. Placing the aim of widening participation centre stage, and holding institutions accountable for this, appears to have paid dividends, as does allowing institutions the freedom to try out different models of mobility, particularly those of considerably shorter duration.

By Rachel Brooks, Professor of Higher Education and Fellow of Linacre College, University of Oxford.

US members of Congress who viewed the latest Epstein files unredacted have accused the US department of justice (DOJ) of covering up for billionaires and exposing victims. US lawmakers are entitled to view the original files under US legislation on the investigation.

The same legislation says that federal officials can only redact to protect the identity of victims and explicitly excludes protecting others. However, the DOJ has obscured many names of Epstein associates and perpetrators.

Epstein cover-up

Representative Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the congressional judiciary committee, said that the DOJ is “in a cover-up mode”. He added that the chaotic and illegal nature of the redactions is either “spectacular incompetence” or, more likely, deliberate illegality:

I went over there, and I was able to determine, at least I believe, that there were tons of completely unnecessary redactions, in addition to the failure to redact the names of victims, and so that was troubling to us.

They violated that precept [of redacting only to protect victims] by releasing the names of a lot of victims, which is either spectacular incompetence and sloppiness on their part, or, as a lot of the survivors believe, a deliberate threat to other survivors who are thinking about coming forward, that they need to be careful because they can be exposed and have their personal information dragged through the mud as well.

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I saw the names of lots of people, who were redacted for mysterious or baffling or inscrutable reasons.

Lawyers have said US law is unclear whether it’s legal to reveal the redacted names. However, Raskin’s Democrat colleague Ro Khanna used his congressional privilege to read out the powerful names he had seen:

Raskin also named Victoria’s Secret founder Les Wexner, as a wealthy figure whose name had been blacked out. He added that he was going to demand that Trump’s attorney general Pam Bondi will correct the redactions when she testifies to his committee on Wednesday 11 February:

We’re going to start by posing questions directly to attorney general Bondi about the process that produced such flawed results, and that has created such mystery. But also, we want to get a commitment from the Department of Justice to clean it up as quickly as possible, and to get them to release the millions of other documents that are still out there.

The DOJ has released only about half of the Epstein files. It has admitted that it is withholding the worst, and that this includes footage of rapes, torture and murder of helpless victims.

For more on the the Epstein Files, please read the Canary’s article on how the media circus around Epstein is erasing the experiences of victims and survivors.

Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Forbes Breaking News