Politics
Polanski explains how Greens would deal with fly-tipping
“I think more than anything it’s making sure that the big polluters are also being taxed properly.”
Zack Polanski tells @TrevorPTweets how the Green Party would deal with fly-tipping.#TrevorPhillips
— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 15, 2026
With new “miracle” skin care ingredients flooding store shelves (and your FYP), it can be hard to know if that gold-tinted endangered snail mucus is really going to do much for your epidermis. If you’re wondering about ingredients that might be worth a try, you might want to focus on one letter: C.
That’s because the four hottest ingredients in skin care right now are collagen, creatine, vitamin C and ceramides. Each one has a unique role in stimulating and supporting healthy skin, which is why you so often see them as a key ingredient in your favorite products.
This powerful foursome should be a top priority when you’re shopping for skin care, said dermatologist Dr. Regine J. Mathieu. “These ingredients are often talked about together because each one supports a core pillar of skin health,” she said. Each one of the C’s brings something beneficial to your skin, said nurse practitioner Mariana Vergara, owner of Beverly Hills medspa Beauty Villa Vergara. “They maintain skin structure, repair mechanisms and protect barrier integrity.”
We talked to experts to find more about how these ingredients work, and followed up with advice on how and when to use them.
Collagen (the topical kind)
Some background: Dermatologist Dr. Geeta Yadav noted that people often get confused about topical collagen vs. collagen supplements. “Topical collagen does not meaningfully increase your skin’s own collagen levels, because the molecules are too large to penetrate the skin barrier,” she said. “Applying collagen to the skin doesn’t replace or rebuild dermal collagen. But it’s still popular for a reason, since skin can look plumper and softer, even though deeper collagen levels are unchanged.”
What it is: “I tell my patients that collagen is the skin’s structural backbone,” said oculoplastic surgeon Dr. Kami Parsa. “It gives skin strength, thickness and resilience.” But starting at around age 30, he said, we lose about 1% of our total collagen every year, making skin thinner, looser and more prone to wrinkles.
Why it works: “Topical collagen provides an immediate cosmetic benefit,” Parsa said. “It helps hold moisture, smooth the skin’s surface and temporarily soften the appearance of fine lines.” Most topical collagen is made from animal sources like cows, pigs and fish, so read labels carefully if you have concerns about non-vegan products. There are also plant-based alternative collagen products that use seaweed or plant protein hydrolysates, which are mixtures created by breaking down plant proteins like soy or wheat. As you’re reading labels, you may also find other ingredients that support collagen production, such as amino acids, vitamin E or botanical extracts.
Who it’s for: “People with dry, sensitive or compromised skin tend to benefit most from topical collagen applications,” Parsa said. “Also, after procedures such as lasers, microneedling or chemical peels, the skin barrier is stressed. Topical collagen can help reduce moisture loss and support the recovery phase.”
Try it in: Olay Regenerist Collagen Peptide Moisturizer, which provides the benefits of collagen peptide and 24 hours of intense hydration.
Creatine
What it is: You may know it as a bodybuilding supplement, but its benefits go beyond building muscle. “This compound helps regenerate ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which cells use as their main energy source,” Yadav said. “It’s starting to appear in skin care formulas because it’s thought that boosting cellular energy might help skin cells function more efficiently, especially under stress. Some brands also suggest it may support firmness or slow visible aging by helping cells maintain normal metabolic activity.”
How it works: “Creatine helps skin cells better withstand stress from UV exposure and inflammation, Vergara said. “By improving energy availability at the cellular level, it helps promote collagen stimulation, skin renewal and overall resilience,” Mathieu added.
Organic Media via Getty Images
Who it’s for: “If anyone might benefit, it would likely be people with stressed or environmentally exposed skin,” Yadav said. She noted that it can be used both preventatively and as a treatment for existing issues.
Cautions: “The upside appears to be that it’s low risk when used topically,” Yadav said. “It’s generally well-tolerated and not known to cause irritation or sensitization. The main downside is not safety, but expectations. In reality, its benefits are unproven and are likely subtle at best.”
Try it in: Nivea’s Q10 products combine creatine with the antioxidant Q10 to boost skin cell energy, reduce wrinkles and smooth skin.
Vitamin C
What it is: “Vitamin C helps stimulate the skin’s own collagen production, helping collagen fibers form and stay strong,” Mathieu said. “When applied topically, it helps improve overall tone and supports long-term firmness.”
How it works: “It’s considered a ‘gold standard ingredient’ because it does more than one important job at once, helping you make new collagen and protecting the collagen you already have,” Yadav said. “It’s best known for its antioxidant properties, helping to brighten the skin’s appearance and minimizing signs of skin aging like fine lines, wrinkles and uneven skin tone,” said dermatologist Dr. Corey L. Hartman.
Who it’s for: “In my practice, vitamin C is the antioxidant I recommend to patients 99% of the time,” Hartman said. “It has so many benefits with little risk of side effects, so really everyone can use it. Serums made with vitamin C are ideal for anyone with sun-damaged skin, anyone with mature skin who is looking to reduce fine lines and wrinkles or those wishing to reduce the appearance of hyperpigmentation.”
Cautions: “Anyone with active eczema or rosacea flare-ups may not be able to use vitamin C, as it can further irritate the skin — but talk to your dermatologist about your interest, as there may be options when you don’t have active flare-ups,” Hartman said. In addition, Vergara noted that you should “avoid pairing strong acids like glycolic or salicylic acid with vitamin C, as these might cause irritation. When pairing vitamin C and niacinamide, the concentration of vitamin C can be reduced.”
Hartman suggested that the best way to use vitamin C serum is as part of your morning routine. “Apply it to clean, dry skin. Five minutes after application, apply a moisturizer and then finish with sunscreen,” he said.
Try it in: Dr. Loretta Anti-Aging Repair Serum, which contains vitamin C, lilac stem cells and marine algae extracts to boost hydration, reduce the appearance of fine lines and protect against the formation of future fine lines. Check out this list of vitamin C serums that dermatologists recommend.
Ceramides
What they are: “These are essential lipids that make up the skin’s barrier, crucial because without a healthy barrier, none of the other ingredients can perform optimally,” Vergara said. Mathieu added, “If skin cells are the bricks, ceramides are the mortar that holds everything together.”
How they work: “They help create a healthy barrier and work to retain moisture in the skin,” said dermatologist Dr. Nada Elbuluk, professor of clinical dermatology at the University of Southern California. “They also keep out irritants like pollution, bacteria, allergens and chemicals.”
Who they’re for: “Everyone can benefit from using them, but ceramides are especially helpful for people with dry, sensitive and eczema-prone skin,” Elbuluk said.
“Most people benefit from using them daily, not just when skin is flaring,” Yadav added. “Because they’re constantly lost through normal skin shedding and cleansing, replenishing them regularly helps maintain barrier health and prevent problems before they start. Using ceramides only when skin feels dry is like only drinking water once you’re already dehydrated.”
Cautions: None. “They can safely be used routinely, and shouldn’t cause any issues even with overuse,” Elbuluk said.
Try them in: All CeraVe products contain a signature blend of three essential, skin-identical ceramides: ceramide 1 (EOS/EOP), which prevents water loss, ceramide 3 (NP), which promotes water retention, and ceramide 6-II (AP), which improves skin suppleness and strengthens the barrier.
How to apply these four ingredients together
As a good rule of thumb, consider applying skin care ingredients based on their consistency, Mathieu said, “Apply products from thinner to thickest. And never forget to finish with sunscreen.”
When it comes to specific ingredients, Vergara said, “Actives like vitamin C and creatine should be applied first, then apply ceramides to seal in hydration and barrier support. Collagen sometimes comes as a serum or moisturizer, and it can go on last.”
And as fun as it is to try the hottest, coolest new products and ingredients, you need to see what works for you and stay with it, Mathieu concluded. “Skin care is most effective when it’s consistent and tailored to the individual. These ingredients are not quick fixes, so they work best as part of a long-term routine that supports skin health over time.”
The real Keir Starmer. That, we’re told, is what we’re in for, now that the embattled PM is embarking upon what feels like the 47th ‘reset’ of his 19-month rule.
Starmer is the Windows 95 prime minister, requiring endless reboots just to stay functioning. But it certainly feels different this time around. His last, juddering stand while Labour MPs ponder when, not if, to oust him.
With the departure of chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and chief mandarin Chris Wormald, No10 spinners insist Starmer is now free to be true to his values and deliver for Britain. The problem is that Starmer seems to have few principles to speak of and no idea what he’s doing.
At a pseudo-event in Welwyn Garden City this week, Starmer tried to paint his government as Proper Labour, focussed on the ‘cost of living’ and led by the ‘most working-class cabinet in the history of this country’.
The working classes still haven’t got the memo. Labour now polls in third place among blue-collar Brits, with Reform UK commanding a double-digit lead and the Tories clinging on in second. Labour is, however, the most popular party among the privately educated.
Indeed, one of the few historic achievements of this generation of Labourites is severing the long-fraying link between their party and the working classes. Starmer, in his role as shadow (anti-)Brexit secretary during the Jeremy Corbyn years, is more culpable than most.
And if this is the most ‘working class’ cabinet in history, it doesn’t reflect the longer, historical trend of plummeting worker representation in the Commons, driven almost entirely by the colonisation of the Parliamentary Labour Party by lawyers, think-tankers and the Third Sector.
This is a clue as to why Labour not only routinely scorns and ignores the concerns of working-class people, but also embraces policies diametrically opposed to their interests – such as paying vast sums of money to keep people locked out of work on welfare or making energy more expensive to give Ed Miliband a warm feeling. Best of luck on tackling the cost of living, Keir.
Starmer’s pitch for power was all about technocratic delivery – hence, those interminable speeches setting out his ‘missions’, to be measured against ‘milestones’, all anchored by the ‘foundation stones’ of ‘economic security, national defence and secure borders’.
We can now see how that turned out. Housebuilding is in its deepest downturn since Covid, defence chiefs are near-mutinous over insufficient spending, and those gangs remain stubbornly unsmashed. Last year, small-boats crossings hit a near-record high.
Whether or not Labour actually wants to smash them is far from clear. Still, for a man who prides himself on process, Starmer appears to be across all the wrong details, even fussing about the dress code for meetings, if the insider accounts are to be believed. ‘You’d get a note the night before a meeting telling everyone to make sure they’re wearing smart casual’, one Downing Street source recently told Tim Shipman of the Spectator.
If it isn’t the working class, or managerial prowess, what does this Labour Party stand for? On current evidence, the only thing that unites the Labourites is their glee in calling critics of mass immigration racist – be they Nigel Farage or Manchester United part-owner Jim Ratcliffe. Apparently, more than a decade of this tactic backfiring spectacularly – sending former Labour areas into the arms of the pro-Brexit right – hasn’t killed their buzz.
It’s not that Starmer’s Labour doesn’t have its views on the world. Like much of the liberal left, it is wedded to all of the worst orthodoxies of the age. But even so, it all feels reflexive, inherited, vibes-based. And so their shibboleths crumble under even modest scrutiny, as seen in their comical responses to any hack who asks if a woman can have a penis. They cling to greenism or wokism or whatever not out of any deep thinking, but a desperation to appear purposeful and virtuous.
That Keir Starmer ever became leader of the Labour Party is a damning indictment of the Labour Party. But the current challengers vying to replace him remind us he is hardly a pygmy among giants. Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting, Andy Burnham – they may, unlike Starmer, appear to have a pulse. But they have no answers to the crises confronting us, offering up either New Labour nostalgia or the warm bath of soft-leftism.
The Keir Starmer premiership has shown you cannot ‘deliver’ in politics if you have no politics in the first place, and you cannot empower the working classes if you consider them to be either bigots or charity cases or both. Starmer has proven to be a truly woeful prime minister. On that front alone, he has surpassed expectations. But he is the leader that Labour – a party that no longer knows who or what it is for – deserves.
Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater_.
Outside the City of Hebron is the largest Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. It is called Kiryat Arba, and is thought to house more than 10,000 illegal settlers, although exact numbers are unknown. These large settlements have everything that settlers might need, including schools, health centres and shops. They also have their own roads and buses, which Palestinians are obviously not permitted to use.
But Hebron is unique in Palestine, as it is also the only occupied West Bank city with settlements inside its centre – within Palestinian neighbourhoods. Five settlements, which are all illegal under international law, are within the Old City. Known as H2, this area makes up around 20 per cent of the Hebron centre. It is under full ‘Israeli’ military control, as opposed to H1, which is under Palestinian Authority administration:
A total of about 500 settlers live in the Old City settlements and are protected by around 1500 Israeli occupation soldiers. Both settlers and the military have made life extremely difficult and dangerous for the 33,000 Palestinians living in H2.
Hebron: increasing the Jewish presence
The Old City of Hebron used to be the commercial centre for the Southern West Bank, but the economy has now collapsed in the area. While the occupation is attempting to drive Palestinians away and erase the Islamic identity of Hebron, it aims to increase Jewish presence in the city. And while Palestinians endure severe military restrictions and daily violence, settlers travel to Hebron every Saturday for a tour of the Old City. They are, of course, protected by large numbers of Israeli occupation soldiers.
The tours, which are surveilled using US-made MQ-9 Reaper drones, start at the al-Ibrahimi Mosque, and allow these settlers to walk around the city and maintain their presence in the area:
The aim is to intimidate Palestinians and show them these Zionist colonisers are in control. It also sends a message to these settlers that Palestinian land and property are there to be taken. Young settlers are encouraged to take back their homes and land that was supposedly promised to them by God thousands of years ago.
In these photos, the settlers can be seen concluding their tour by passing through the gate onto Shuhada Street. This street, once the main commercial centre in the whole of Hebron, is now closed to Palestinians. The building these settlers enter used to be a Palestinian school, until the occupation turned it into a Jewish one.
Ethnic cleansing
Hebron is a significant religious place for both Muslims and Jews. It is one of the four holy cities in Judaism, and Jews consider the city the birthplace of the Jewish people.
In Arabic, Hebron is known as Al Khalil, meaning ‘the friend,’ referring to Abraham, who is considered a prophet in Islam and whose remains are believed to be buried in the Ibrahimi Mosque. Muslims also believe Hebron was a stopping point during the Prophet Muhammad’s night journey to Jerusalem.
Settlers have a five-star lifestyle for free. They are paid a salary, do not need to work and have everything provided to them by the Israeli occupation government, including weapons. They work with the Israeli occupation’s government, military and police, making life as difficult as possible for Palestinians.
The aim of the Zionist project is displacement and ethnic cleansing in occupied Palestine, and Jewish supremacy in occupied Palestine. These ambitions are enabled by the unconditional support governments around the world give to the criminal state of ‘Israel’.
Featured image via the Canary
The exhaustion of Keir Starmer’s Labour government has certainly been far quicker than that of the New Labour administrations of the 1990s and 2000s. But the parallels are unmistakable.
Both New Labour and its Starmer-fronted retread pitched themselves to voters as virtue incarnate, making almost identical pledges to restore trust in politics after years of Tory ‘sleaze’ – a catch-all pejorative for a whole range of misbehaviour, from financial impropriety to marital infidelity. And yet almost no sooner had they both entered Downing Street, than they found themselves up to their necks in their own lakes of sleaze.
For the fast-forwarded descent of Starmer’s Labour to so closely mirror the years-long fall of Blair’s New Labour is no quirk of history. Nor is it solely attributable to the central role played in both administrations by New Labour figures, especially the now disgraced Labour bigwig and certified sleaze magnet, Peter Mandelson. It’s more significant than that. It is a testament to modern Labour’s fundamental problem with sleaze.
The Labour Party we know today emerged during the 1990s as a very different beast to its earlier 20th-century versions. Under Tony Blair’s leadership, it had set about ‘modernising’ itself – a process of jettisoning the last remaining vestiges of Labour’s ‘old left’ past in order to bring it bang up to date with the post-Cold War world. This was to be a party free, as Tony Blair put it in 1997, of ‘out-dated ideology or doctrine’. A post-political party committed to managerialism rather than socialism. A party determined to administer businesses and society alike, to regulate and audit through quangos and other unaccountable, expert-stuffed bodies. It was a technocratic ‘Third Way’ project entirely of a piece with the ethos of globalism then emerging, in which decision-making was being shifted away from national electorates and towards those who knew best in transnational institutions, such as the EU and the World Trade Organisation.
But there was another key aspect of New Labour, which is of particular relevance right now. Namely, that at the same time as it was ‘modernising’ and embracing managerialism, it was also constructing itself as the ‘anti-sleaze’ party, the Party of the Virtuous.
Within months of John Major’s Conservative Party winning the 1992 General Election, his government’s popularity plummeted after the collapse of the pound following Britain’s withdrawal from the European exchange-rate mechanism – a process that was meant to pave the way for Britain’s adoption of what would become the Euro. The following year, Major attempted to resurrect his party’s fortunes by calling for a return to a ‘conservatism of a traditional kind’: ‘We must go back to basics and the Conservative Party will lead the country back to those basics right across the board: sound money, free trade, traditional teaching, respect for the family and the law.’
‘Back to basics’, as this vision came to be known, wasn’t meant to be a reference to personal or private morality. But that is how the press eagerly interpreted it. This provided the tabloids with an excuse to reveal all the sordid affairs and sexual shenanigans that had long been gathering dust in journalists’ files. At the time, it seemed barely a week passed without a red-top tale of bed-hopping Tories, from David Mellor to Tim Yeo, failing to live up to their own party’s supposedly puritanical values.
By 1994, the respectable broadsheet press was getting in on the act, focussing less on sex-capades and more on dodgy financial dealings. The most notorious of which was the cash-for-questions affair, in which the Guardian alleged (rightly as it eventually turned out) that Tory MPs Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith had received money from Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed in return for asking questions on his behalf in the Commons.
The respectable media, staffed by many who long harboured a distaste for the Tories, feasted on their myriad personal failings, tarring it all with the broad brush of ‘sleaze’. As a 1994 piece for the high-brow London Review of Books had it, ‘The Tories are of course the party of sleazeocracy’.
It was perhaps not fully grasped at the time, but British political culture was undergoing a profound shift. It was effectively being re-oriented around personal conduct, rather than political ideas. It mattered less what a politician stood for, than how personally virtuous they could appear.
This was captured best by what happened in the Cheshire constituency of Tatton at the 1997 General Election. The incumbent MP Neil Hamilton, the Tory junior minister at the centre of the cash-for-questions affair, refused to stand down. And so both Labour and the Lib Dems agreed to withdraw their own candidates to allow an independent candidate to face off against Hamilton. This independent candidate in question was BBC war correspondent Martin Bell, who had pledged at a press conference to remove the ‘poison in the democratic system’.
Bell wasn’t a traditional politician at all – he had no party and no policies. He was a pompous, moralistic gesture stuffed into a tellingly white suit – the crass symbolism of which he had made famous while reporting on the war in Bosnia, before bringing it to the streets of Tatton. He effectively set up the General Election for Tatton voters not as political choice, but as a moral one. A chance to side with good over evil, the pure over the tainted, the white-suited man from the BBC over the wicked Tory.
While Bell may have become the poster boy of the anti-sleaze crusade, it was Labour that became its party-political wing. As a complement to its post-political managerialism, its leading figures adopted an intensely personal, moralistic style – think of it as ‘high sanctimonious’. Shadow foreign secretary Robin Cook would be condemning the Tories as a ‘government that knows no shame’ one week, before Blair himself would be talking of being ‘tough on sleaze and tough on the causes of sleaze’ the next. As The Economist said of the 1997 General Election, ‘the word [“sleaze”] was on the lips of every Labour candidate’.
New Labourites, immersed in managerialism, no longer bothered promoting a vision of the good life; they pushed themselves forward as good people instead. They were the virtuous ones, the Elliot Nesses of the British political scene – ‘purer than pure’, as Blair once put it. And, in turn, the Tories were cast as perpetual wrongdoers, the vice-ridden ones.
Through the idea of ‘sleaze’ pushed and promoted by the media, Labour was refashioning itself for the post-political, post-class age – and reframing party politics in the process. It was no longer a contest over the economy, a battle between two still relatively distinct visions of the future, grounded on relatively clear social constituencies. It was now a contest between good people and bad people, a battle between clean and the dirty, a fight to restore public standards, integrity etc, etc.
This wasn’t just a moral performance. Labour were also determined to institutionalise this anti-sleaze crusade. ‘We will change the law to make the Tories clean up their act’, Blair pledged in 1996. And that’s what New Labour did when it finally won power in 1997, promising, as the new prime minister did on that sunny day in May nearly three decades ago, ‘to restore trust in politics in this country… [to] clean it up [and give] people hope once again that politics is and always should be about the service of the public’.
To this end, Labour set about installing the ethos of anti-sleaze within the state. Building on the new ‘code of conduct’, introduced in 1996 by the equally new Committee on Standards in Public Life, Labour also strengthened the ministerial code in 1997, even creating the role of ‘independent adviser on ministerial standards’ to advise on said code in 2006. It also enacted various anti-sleaze measures under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.
This was New Labour. A combination of managerialism and personal moralism. A party that positioned itself beyond politics, as an almost ethical force full of Good People. A government that was determined to create new rules and procedures, overseen by unelected experts, to hold the bad, ‘sleazy’ Tories to account.
And almost from the moment Blair stepped across the threshold of No10 on 2 May 1997, it all backfired. Labour found itself hoist by its own moralistic petard. By the autumn of 1997, Labour was already facing several allegations of sleazy conduct. Mohammed Sarwar, MP for Glasgow Central (and father of current Scottish Labour leader Anas) had been suspended from parliament over bribery allegations. Liverpool West Derby MP Bob Wareing was found guilty of failing to register financial interests. And Robin Cook, a particularly self-righteous New-ish Labourite, was caught having an affair with his personal assistant. More troubling still, it also emerged that Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone had given Labour a £1million donation and, seemingly in return, Labour exempted Formula One from its ban on tobacco advertising.
As the years passed, New Labour continued to wrack up the sleaze allegations. Alongside countless marital infidelities and the usual sexual shenanigans, there were significant donations from porn baron Richard Desmond and eccentric businessman Richard Abrahams, all seemingly made in an attempt to influence government policy in some unspecified way.
Then there were ‘Tony’s cronies’, the press’s epithet for those supporters and donors Labour attempted to reward for their loyalty and cash with peerages. Indeed, it was Labour’s ultimately thwarted attempt to grant access to the upper house for those willing to cough up that led to the cash-for-honours scandal, complete with a police investigation and a two-time interview under caution for Blair. This, lest one forget, serenaded Blair’s exit from government in 2007. As the Observer’s Andrew Rawnsley put it at the time: ‘[Blair] will be seen with John Major as a prime minister whose time in office was punctuated, despoiled and diminished by scandal.’
On top of all this, there was Peter Mandelson, sacked twice during the New Labour years. First in 1998, for failing to declare a £373,000 loan from his wealthy friend and then paymaster general, Geoffrey Robinson. Then in 2001, after he’d been exposed helping out millionaire Labour donor Srichand Hinduja with a passport application.
The shady financial transactions, the cash for influence and the attempts on the part of the wealthy to curry favour seemed far in excess of anything that happened during the Tory years of so-called sleaze. As John Major pointed out in 2007, the Tory scandals of the mid-1990s were characterised by individual misbehaviour, be it sexual or financial. Labour’s scandals of the 2000s were of an altogether different order, he said. ‘The sleaze has seemed to be systemic since 1997.’
Major wasn’t wrong. The party of the Good People, the political wing of the anti-sleaze crusade, appeared to be just as sleazy, if not more so, than its opponents.
Partly this was because New Labour, supported by the respectable media, had politicised ‘individual misbehaviour’, as Major had it, in ways it never had been before. New Labour had spent the 1990s personalising and moralising politics, foregrounding the putative good character of its own, while demonising the character of its opponents. They were presented not just as people with whom Labourites disagreed, but as bad, immoral people. Then, once in power, it had started creating an anti-sleaze regime within the state itself – a system of rules and procedures, adjudicated on by unelected, unaccountable advisers and bodies. This undermined elected politicians, empowering and authorising non-democratic, quasi-judicial actors at their expense. It effectively institutionalised distrust of elected politicians, by suggesting that they were not capable of acting responsibly without the threat of external sanction. In this way, it created a rod for Labour’s own back.
Perhaps Blair et al might have gotten away with it if their back wasn’t so seemingly crooked. But that was never going to be the case. Firstly, because as James Heartfield insightfully argued at the time, politics and the market are always inextricably intertwined. To do just about anything – from building and maintaining infrastructure to procuring supplies for schools and hospitals – the government needs to work with the market, contracting and outsourcing to private-sector actors. What’s more, this was the New Labour era of private-finance initiatives (PFIs), countless business forums and an ever-expanding quangocracy. The increasingly complex relationship between politics and business meant that there was, and still is, always space for a ‘favour’ or two, or a deal between ‘friends’.
More importantly perhaps, the Labour Party itself needed cash. New Labour was not just a post-political, post-class party in theory, it was also increasingly one in practice. By the late 1990s, Labour, like the Tories, had ceased to be a mass-membership movement. Having numbered some one million members (even excluding affiliated trade-union members) in the mid-20th century, Labour’s membership had shrunk to just 300,000 by 2001. Facing a funding shortfall (modern parties need a lot of capital for campaigning and staff), New Labour was always going to be increasingly reliant on large donations. As the governing party, it was also attractive to those seeking to exert a bit of influence. It’s worth bearing in mind that part of the reason for Peter Mandelson’s unflushability rested with his talent for ‘networking’ – in other words, bringing in the cash.
New Labour may have been a party forged in the crusade against Tory ‘sleaze’. But by the end of its time in government, crowned with the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal, the stench of its own sleaze became unbearable.
What’s remarkable about Starmer’s Labour is the extent to which that same party, re-purposed during the 1990s for a post-political age, has lived on. It remains managerialist in ideology and globalist in outlook. And if anything, it is more intensely, performatively moralistic than its New Labour predecessor.
During its time in opposition, Starmer’s party was suffused with that same, high-sanctimonious style that typified the early New Labour years. Starmer himself often spoke as if it was still 1995, declaring in 2021 that ‘sleaze is at the heart of this Conservative government’ – this after the entirely forgettable ‘scandal’ involving former prime minister David Cameron’s unsuccessful attempt to get the government to help out finance firm Greensill Capital, before it duly collapsed. Time and again, Starmer struck the same pious, ‘purer than pure’ tone. Ahead of the General Election two years ago, Starmer positioned Labour just as Blair did, as anti-sleaze crusaders. ‘We need to clean up politics’, he declared, adding, ‘I will restore standards in public life’.
He even appointed as his chief of staff Sue Gray, the former head of the Propriety and Ethics team in the Cabinet Office, and the civil servant responsible for investigating prime minister Boris Johnson and the Partygate scandal. Starmer viewed her less as a politico than an incorruptible, sitting above the tawdry affairs of parliament. She was the ideal symbol of Starmer’s government of the self-righteous. As it turned out, she was less ideal for the actual art of governing, and had to quit within months of arriving in No10.
Labour’s supporting cast members have been even more inclined to see themselves as the Good People, morally superior to their opponents. Rachel Reeves, now the chancellor, would talk of ‘rebuilding fragile trust in politics as a force for good’. Angela Rayner, Starmer’s former deputy and arguably the leading contender to replace him, didn’t just regard the Tories as ‘scum’. She also spent much of her time in opposition poring over the tax affairs of her ‘sleazy’ Tory opponents, looking for further signs of their bad, scummy character.
Labour’s 2024 election manifesto declared that ‘Labour will end the chaos of sleaze’. It even promised to build on the existing New Labour-era anti-sleaze regime through the creation of an independent Ethics and Integrity Commission to further hold parliamentarians to account. And on 5 July that year, Starmer entered Downing Street, much as Blair did nearly three decades before, pledging to restore trust in politics.
At points Starmer et al’s rhetoric sounds like a Blair-era rip off. The talk of Labourites’ ‘integrity’, their ‘decency’, their commitment to ‘public service’, could have come from 1997. But it is not 1997 anymore. This version of Labour was forged at the dawn of an era that is now fast drawing to a close. Its managerialism, its technocratic impulses, its globalist tendencies, are no longer fit for the new world now emerging. And the contradictions between its moralism and its money-grubbing reality, between its high-horse-riding and the party’s need for cash, are far more intense now than they were then. So it’s no wonder we’ve seen Starmer’s Labour government consumed by its preening hypocrisy far faster than perhaps anyone expected.
The ‘freebies’ scandal, in which Labour frontbenchers were revealed to have accepted some £200,000 in free gifts, broke almost as soon as the Starmers had moved into Downing Street. It’s been downhill ever since. Labour MPs arrested. A chancellor accused of fibbing on her CV. Cronyism seemingly rife among civil-service appointments. Angela Rayner forced to resign over a seeming tax dodge on a second property. Huge multi-million donations coming into Labour coffers from dubious sources. And of course, the obligatory Peter Mandelson scandal, in which it is alleged the now ex-British ambassador to the US was passing on market-sensitive information to financier and world-famous sex offender Jeffrey Epstein some 17 years ago.
Modern Labour’s ‘sleaze’ problem is not a bug, but a feature. Which is a big problem for a party that, for the past three decades, has grounded its authority, indeed its electoral appeal, on being morally superior to its right-wing opponents. That’s why with every scandal, every misplaced hire, Labour’s authority depletes further.
Washed into power on a wave Tory sleaze nearly three decades ago, Labour is now itself being washed out again on a sleazy wave of its own making.
Tim Black is associate editor of spiked.
Umm al Kheir is in the South Hebron Hills. It is one of 12 communities that make up Masafer Yatta, in the Israeli-controlled area of the West Bank known as Area C. The village is home to 37 Bedouin families, approximately 300 people. These Palestinians were originally herders in the Negev, but were forcibly displaced from their land by the Israeli occupation during the Nakba of 1948. The community then settled in Masafer Yatta, and has written documents proving ownership of their land.
Illegal colonial settlers are stealing more and more of Umm al Kheir
But since 1981, with the arrival of the first illegal Jewish settlers to the area, the community has suffered immense hardship, which has intensified today. The settlers stole a large area of village land to build the illegal Carmel settlement, where they live today. They regularly terrorise the community and have blocked all entrances to the village for Palestinians, except for one.
Last year, seven settler families stole yet more land, close to the community centre in Umm al Kheir. They are currently living in mobile homes on this land, have fenced off any available grazing, and have recently erected Israeli flags along the whole of its perimeter.
Khalil Hathaleen is Head of the village Council in Umm al Kheir. He tells the Canary about some of the problems the village has been facing.
Last year, Khalil’s much-loved brother, Awdah, was fatally shot by an illegal settler, Yinon Levi.
Levi had driven through Umm al Kheir in a bulldozer to carry out infrastructure work at what is now the illegal outpost, next to the community. The killing, which happened in broad daylight, resulted in the occupation arresting Palestinians from Umm al Kheir on stone-throwing charges, while Levi walked free.
Levi, who is sanctioned by the UK, owns a company called Eyal Hari Yehuda Company Ltd, or Eyal Judaean Mountains Company Ltd, which is known for its work demolishing Palestinian homes in both the West Bank and Gaza.
The loss of Awdah was a huge blow to the community, but it was intentional
Awdah was father to three young children, one of whom is still severely traumatised by the killing of his father and is unable to sleep at night. His wife, Hanady, tells us that Awdah is irreplaceable.
She says:
It’s really hard to see the settlers getting on with their daily lives, while here they have destroyed a whole community. They destroyed a family; they destroyed my sons. I don’t see any life for me now that they have killed my husband. All the happiness and goodness have gone with him. Awdah was loved by everyone, and he made everything easy when he was here.
You thought there were no problems when he was with us. He would solve all the problems and show the world what life was like in Masafer Yatta. They killed him on purpose.
More than 100 structures have been demolished in the village over the years. In October 2025, more homes, the community centre, and the children’s playground were all issued final demolition orders. The Israeli occupation is expected to come at any time, to flatten these structures, make families homeless and further destroy the fabric of this community.
Khalil says:
Before 7 October, our community had around 5000 goats and sheep. Now there are around 800, and they are kept inside all the time. The animals are now in jail, and this has destroyed the families here. Now there is no source of income for them.
The Israelis have made them very poor. Some cannot afford basic food, let alone milk, for their kids. Any money from the goats and sheep is now used to cover the food, as they cannot go out to graze at all. This is all happening because of the occupation and the violence from the settlers. The settlers killed my brother. Where is the justice in the world?
The occupation’s government, military and police all work together with the settlers, to forcibly displace Palestinians in Umm al Kheir
Recently, a settler went into Umm al Kheir with his sheep. This action was obviously an attempt to intimidate residents of the village and show them that settlers are in control. When activists- who were from the Centre of Jewish Non-Violence, objected to his presence, the police were called out and arrested them, instead of the settler.
There has also been nighttime activity on the stolen land of the outpost, with armed Jewish settlers and their children digging along to music. The occupation’s military and police see these actions but do nothing to stop these Zionist colonisers. Instead, they attempt to stop and arrest those who witness and document the occupation’s many crimes.
Bedouins are herders and traditionally moved with the seasons to the best grazing areas. Due to the Israeli occupation, this is no longer possible, but their livestock are still an extremely important part of their life and an essential source of income.
But in Umm al Kheir, as in other communities in Masafer Yatta and elsewhere in the West Bank, they have been unable to graze their sheep and goats because of the presence of settlers and the theft of their land.
There are now only 800 animals in Umm al Kheir, down from 4000 several years ago, and they are costing money to keep because they can no longer graze outside. As a result, the community has lost their only source of income and has been left with nothing.
“What’s happening in the West Bank is a slow genocide”
Mahmoud Hathaleen, a resident of Umm al Kheir, and a cousin of Awdah, tells the Canary:
Settlers claim that we exist illegally here, and have asked the Israeli government to make more pressure on us, so we leave. They are confiscating our land, demolishing our homes and attacking us in the night, to make pressure on us to leave this land. The outpost built last year has a new road across our land, to connect it to all the settlements.
They made this road in the night, and was supported by the IDF ( Israeli occupying forces), the civil administration and the police. Sometimes these settlers also work in the IDF.There is no light at the end of the tunnel for us. All Palestinian people have lost hope, We all feel there is no solution, no future.
Nobody cares for Palestinian life – not the Arab league, not Europe or the US. What’s happening in the West Bank is a slow genocide, killing Palestinians slowly.
The international presence is welcome in Umm al Kheir. This not only plays an essential role in non-violent resistance against the Israeli occupation but is urgently needed. Do not be put off from visiting the West Bank. Palestinians in communities across the territory are extremely welcoming and need our help, right now.
The occupation has only one aim – to colonise and drive Palestinians from their land. This forcible displacement is implemented through violence and land theft by illegal settlers and is happening throughout Area C of the West Bank. These settlers have the full support and backing of the ‘Israeli’ government, work together with the occupation’s military and police, and are protected by them.
Occupation’s Security Cabinet has now approved measures to tighten ‘Israeli’ control over West Bank and make it easier for settlers to purchase Palestinian land
They receive a salary, have no living expenses, and pay no tax. They are all armed by the occupation and given vehicles. In the case of Umm al Kheir, the settlers have also been given sheep and goats. Pylons have also been erected on the village land to provide the settlements with electricity. Whilst Umm al Kheir are not permitted to be connected to the grid, the settlers’ chicken factory has electricity 24 hours a day.
Settlers all over the West Bank use “security” issues as an excuse to push the government and the army to expel Palestinians and declare their land a closed military zone. Palestinians are unable to access this land, but settlers are still allowed to move freely in these areas. Several years later, it becomes their own property.
After the signing of the Oslo Accords, in the 1990s, the West Bank was divided into Area A, B and C. Area C makes up more than 60 per cent of the entire West Bank, and is the most fertile, resource-rich land in the occupied territory. But ‘Israel’ controls everything in area C, including ‘security’ and planning.
On 8 February 2026, the “Security Cabinet” also approved measures pushed by Ministers Katz and Smotrich, to deepen the de facto annexation of the West Bank. The ‘Israeli” government has described these as steps towards the “normalisation ” of Jewish life in the West Bank.
These approved decisions will bring far-reaching changes to land registration and will make it much easier for settlers to acquire Palestinian land and build settlements.
According to the Jerusalem Post, a Jordanian-era law has also been repealed, which barred the sale of land to Jews. The approved decisions also allow the Israeli occupation to demolish buildings owned by Palestinian families in Area A.
Despite constant fear and uncertainty, the people of Umm al Kheir remain steadfast. Every demolished home is rebuilt; every fenced-off patch of land becomes a reminder of what they refuse to relinquish — their right to exist on their own ancestral soil. Each act of resistance is a refusal to disappear. Despite everything, the community of Umm al Kheir still believes in freedom.
Featured image and additional images via the Canary
Imagine if you will, for just one moment, having the fucking brass neck to (falsely) boast that you booted Jeremy Corbyn out of the Labour Party while that utterly vile specimen, Epstein’s best pal, Mandelson, was up to his eyeballs in nonce-worshipping.
Corbyn’s Labour certainly had its faults, but it never recruited Peter Mandelson. No shadow cabinet appointments, no diplomatic roles, Crony Mandelson was persona non grata.
Keir Starmer’s government is a gutless, corporate-kowtowing betrayal of everything the Labour Party was supposed to stand for under Jeremy Corbyn. A Corbyn premiership would have been a revolutionary upgrade, not this tepid, right-leaning bullshit we’re stuck with.
I guess it’s easy to think about what could’ve been.
What could have been
Corbyn’s Labour would have built solidarity with global struggles rather than bowed to NATO warmongers and US hegemony. Starmer’s Labour is a whitewashed, Zionist-appeasing machine that silences dissent and props up imperialism.
Corbyn’s Labour would have prioritised aid over arms and cooperation over conquest, turning the UK into a force for global equity, not another lapdog for empire. Starmer’s Labour has escalated tensions with Russia and China to please the Atlanticist overlords and ramped up military spending to 2.5% of GDP while nurses line up at food banks.
Corbyn’s Labour would have ended the failed neoliberal austerity policies that have hollowed out Britain for decades. Rail, mail, water, and energy would’ve been back in public hands where they belong, rather than lining the pockets of fat cat shareholders. Starmer’s Labour ruthlessly ditched those Corbyn-lite pledges faster than a rat fleeing a sinking ship. His “fiscal responsibility” rhetoric is simply code for continuing Tory-lite cuts, cosying up to big business with tax breaks for the filthy rich while public services crumble to the fucking ground.
Starmer’s Britain
Starmer’s Britain is still a playground for billionaires, while Corbyn would have taxed them into oblivion to fund the NHS properly, not this half-arsed patching-up.
Starmer’s “growth” is a euphemism for gangrenous decay. NHS waiting lists are stagnating, schools are falling apart and councils are on the brink of bankruptcy, all while he funnels your billions into private health vultures and arms dealers.
Keir Starmer isn’t building Britain, he’s burying it alive, six-feet-deep in austerity’s grave, like a gravedigger with a knighthood.
You see, Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t just a better option, he was the perfect antidote to the poisonous, soul-sucking capitalist rot that Keir Starmer is peddling as “change”.
So next time you hear or see the oligarchs plaything taking a swipe at his predecessor, just remember the Labour Party didn’t have a place for an honourable, decent man like Jeremy Corbyn, but it has plenty of room for paedo-enablers, Tel Aviv bootlickers, corporate shills and Blairite zombies.
And that’s just Peter Mandelson.
Decency???
To be honest, I am absolutely sick of hearing the liberal media tell us that Keir Starmer is a beacon of decency, a steady hand rescuing Britain from Tory chaos. In reality, the BBC and Guardian’s insistence on Starmer’s decency is just cover for their own complicity in propping up a system that chews up poor and working class people.
Starmer is anything but decent. If you have read the last five hundred words you might even agree with me, wherever you place yourself on the Overton Window.
Starmer’s entire rise reeks of deceit and opportunism.
Starmer won the Labour leadership in 2020 by pledging a raft of left-wing Corbyn-lite policies such as scrapping tuition fees, nationalising utilities, and defending migrants rights. But once in power, they were abandoned faster than a bad date.
That isn’t decent, it’s calculated betrayal.
What about the freebies? I haven’t forgotten about that, and I doubt you have either. More than £100,000 of freebies from the elite — more than every other Labour leader combined — while pensioners freeze and children go hungry under Labour’s austerity-lite regime.
If that’s decent, I’m a devoted Faragist.
Authoritarian thuggery
Then there’s Starmer’s vicious purge of the Labour left, which the liberal media whitewashes as “professionalising” the party. Starmer and his former enforcer, Morgan McSweeney, have systematically expelled or marginalised anyone with a whiff of socialism under the guise of rooting out antisemitism, but really to crush dissent and drag the party to the right to the delight of their elitist paymasters.
Decency? No. Authoritarian thuggery? Yes.
On Gaza, his slow-footed, mealy-mouthed response to Israel’s actions has been a national embarrassment and a fucking disgrace and has truly exposed his lack of moral spine.
Complicit Keir Starmer is a jellyfish, drifting with the tides of power rather than boldly standing against injustice.
Even the ultra-Blairite, Wes Streeting privately thinks Israel is a “rogue state” committing “war crimes” and “calculated brutality”, yet publicly it’s business as usual for this dreadful, callous government.
Remember, “decent” Starmer rolled out the red carpet for Israel’s war criminals, licensed the tools of their barbaric, criminal slaughter, and suppressed the movement demanding accountability, only to be told it was unlawful.
Maybe someone in the liberal media can explain to me how supplying military equipment to a baby-killing regime is in any way, “decent”?
Haven’t the actions of this vile, discredited Prime Minister caused enough harm to children already? Their blood is on your grubby hands, Keir Starmer.
Starmer: a gutless fraud
Less than two years into the age of beige, Starmer is the most unpopular PM on record, with polls tanking and chants calling him a “wanker” echoing from football grounds to darts halls across the country.
We are not fooled. Keir Starmer isn’t a fighter for the people, he is a doormat for the establishment.
Keir Starmer isn’t decent, he is a man without conviction and the embodiment of everything that is so very wrong with centrist politics — hollow, elitist, and utterly treacherous.
Starmer’s diabolical legacy was secured some time before the latest Peter Mandelson scandal.
History will not remember Keir Starmer as a decent Prime Minister, it will remember him for the gutless fraud that he is.
Featured image via the Canary
Labour has called on Reform’s by-election candidate to reject members of his campaign team who have been accused of posting racist content online.
Matt Goodwin is standing to be Reform’s ninth MP in the Gorton and Denton by-election, which will take place on February 26, in the three-horse race against the Greens and Labour.
Mancunian newspaper The Mill reported on Saturday that multiple members of Goodwin’s team have posted problematic content on social media.
It alleged that Adam Mitula – Reform’s interim campaign manager in Tameside – had alleged “60-70%” of transgender people are paedophiles, claimed he would “never touch a Jewish woman” and used of the n-word.
In one post he reportedly downplayed the impact of the Holocaust, writing: “6 million polish [sic] people including some Jews. They always use Poles to make up the number. And on top of it they claim Poles were killing. Just sick.”
The investigation also claimed three other figures joining Goodwin on the campaign trail – Kelly Cooling, Alanna Vine and Jacqui Harris – had all shared extreme content online, too.
Labour’s deputy leader and Manchester Central MP Lucy Powell wrote a letter to Goodwin urging him to reject their support.
She wrote: “You may not have been aware of this when they offered to help your campaign, but you are aware of it now.
“You can ensure that they are not part of your campaign in the future, make clear that you disagree with their vile views and state clearly that racism and conspiracism like this is not welcome in Reform and not compatible with campaigning for you.”
She then pointed out that far-right leader Tommy Robinson had already endorsed Goodwin’s campaign and claimed: “It is not surprising that people with disgusting racist views think that you represent them.”
“If you do not now distance yourself from the views of these supporters, and take action to remove them from your campaign, people will conclude that you and Reform UK are happy to be associated with them,” she added.
The Mill was unable to approach Goodwin for comment, but he replied to Powell’s post on X.
“Hi Lucy I’d reply but your replies are off [clown emoji],” he said.
“I reject all extremism,” he wrote. “Can I also ask: Why has your Labour Party promoted so many people with links to paedophiles and turned a blind eye to the abuse of children? Come back to me when you have your own house in order.”
Goodwin is alluding to the scandal surrounding Peter Mandelson, who was briefly appointed as ambassador to the US despite his close ties with dead paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Keir Starmer also appointed Matthew Doyle to be a Labour peer earlier this year, his former communications chief who campaigned for ex-Labour councillor after he admitted to indecent child image offences in 2017.
Both Mandelson and Doyle no longer have the Labour whip.
When you come home after doing The Big Shop, the temptation is to shove everything into the fridge and deal with it later. Or not at-all. It doesn’t matter, right? As long as it’s not too cramped and it’s all in there, fair is fair?
Well, no. It turns out that actually, the way that you organise your fridge could be putting your health at risk and the positioning of foods contributes to their longevity and how safe they may be to eat.
Who knew it was all so complex?
How to organise your fridge properly
Meat
According to Essential Food Hygiene, you should always place raw meat at the lowest possible level to avoid drips contaminating other food that’s beneath the meat and potentially causing illness once consumed.
It should be kept in leak-proof packaging and if they’re packed in clingfilm, particularly if they’re thawing, meats should also be on a plate.
Fruit and vegetables
Before putting fruit and vegetables in the fridge, be sure to check that they’re best refridgerated and not kept at room temperature. Then, Electrolux advises: “Don’t cut them before putting them in the refrigerator, since cut-up vegetables and fruits will rot more quickly. Only remove roots and stems, but keep the remainder of the cutting for when you’re cooking.
“If you’re planning to use the vegetables very soon, you can cut them first and keep them in a container inside your refrigerator’s crisper. However, you should be aware that they will not keep as long.”
Cheese
Cheshire Cheese Company advises: “As a rule of thumb, once you’ve cut into a wheel of cheese or unwrapped a block of cheese from its packaging, the best way to preserve opened cheese is to store it in the refrigerator.
“You can wrap it in plastic or wax paper. If it’s got a strong smell or will be in the fridge with other foods with strong odours, it can be a good idea to put it in an airtight container with a lid.”
Cheese is often best stored in the centre of the fridge or the crisper drawer but for softer cheeses, be aware that they go bad quite quickly and check for mould before eating from an open soft cheese packet.
Sauces
Tefal advises: “It’s generally a good rule to follow that creamy dressings deserve some shelf space in your fridge as they can contain eggs, cheese and other ingredients that need to be chilled. In comparison, oil and vinegar-based dressings are safe to hang out in your cupboard.”
Eggs
While many of us have a handy egg tray in our fridge door, the egg experts at Geldard Farm Eggs advise: “Many refrigerators have an egg tray in the door, but this isn’t the best place for storage. The temperature in the fridge door fluctuates due to frequent opening and closing, which can reduce egg freshness.
For optimal storage, keep eggs:
-
In their original carton to protect them from absorbing odours and moisture
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On a middle or lower shelf where the temperature is most stable
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Away from strong-smelling foods like onions and garlic – eggshells have tiny pores that strong smells can seep into over time
Zack Polanski has appeared on the 15 February edition of Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips. If you’re unfamiliar with Phillips, he has a decades’ long history in Labour Party politics. As such, it wasn’t surprising to see him denying the creeping authoritarianism which is happening under Keir Starmer’s government:
Phillips “This is not a country where people get thrown in jail for things they say”@ZackPolanski: 2,700 people have been arrested for holding up signs
And well done to Zack for challenging Phillips smear that ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ is antisemitic pic.twitter.com/fuEDYQJa9K
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) February 15, 2026
Labour liar, pants on fire
In the clip above, Phillips says:
In the press release today, you talk about a ‘Big Brother Britain’. I’m assuming that you’re talking about George Orwell’s oppressive state rather than the telly programme. Isn’t this going over the top a bit? I mean, this is not a country where people get thrown in jail for things… they say, at least not very often.
If you’re a regular reader of the Canary, you’ll know this is complete horseshit from Phillips. Thankfully, Polanski explained why for us:
Well, I think we’re spiralling down that road. First of all, we saw 2,700 people potentially imprisoned, some of them waiting trials, a lot of them for holding up signs saying, I oppose a genocide. We have seen a genocide happen in Israel now for the last couple of years.
To add some specificity, the signs in question said this:
I oppose #GenocideInGaza I support #PalestineAction https://t.co/6j08nAMQNS
— Steve Mackie (@1SteveMackie) February 14, 2026
The government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, which allowed them to arrest those who support the group. The people who held these signs got arrested for speech, albeit in written form.
As we reported on 13 February, a court has now overturned the proscription. Polanski also touched on this:
“The govt have been completely shamed in court & I’m proud the entire Green MP group all voted against proscription of Palestine Action”@ZackPolanski on the high court declaring the proscription unlawful pic.twitter.com/XUqaelUN8o
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) February 15, 2026
Back to the interview, Phillips responded:
No, that’s not the signs that they’re being arrested for. It is signs which say things like, from the river to the sea, a sign which imply elimination of the State of Israel, which are at some sense antisemitic and intimidating.
This simply isn’t true; Trevor Phillips is a fucking liar.
He’s not just any liar, either; he’s a liar who picked Peter Mandelson of all people to be the best man at his wedding.
The 2,700 in question relates to those arrested for supporting Palestine Action. Additionally, the ‘River to the Sea‘ chant is a call for the Palestinians to no longer be contained in an open air prison — not anything else.
Polanski responded:
Well, as a Jewish person, I don’t find that antisemitic. And in fact, Benjamin Netanyahu himself has used that phrase.
I’m one of only five people in British history who have been Jewish and lead a political party. So antisemitism needs to be taken really seriously in the same way that Islamophobia or any form of racism or hate crime needs to be taken seriously.
But criticism of the Israeli government, I would say, is a moral responsibility when we’re seeing what they are doing to innocent people day in, day out. And our government is not just complicit in that. They are actively enabling it.
So for people who are protesting against the genocide, I would say those people are actual patriots of this country who are saying, let’s have a world where we make sure we’re standing for human rights.
It’s not just Palestine action, though, by the way. We’ve seen authoritarianism over the prime minister wanting mandatory ID cards. We’ve seen the authoritarianism of scrapping jury trials. Pattern over pattern shows that Keir Starmer is a deeply desperate caretaker prime minister who is clinging on to power by trying to crush dissent.
Things took a turn for the ridiculous later on, by the way:
So Phillips moved from talking about thousands of people arrested under terrorism legislation for holding up signs to criticising the idea that the UK is becoming an oppressive police state & then declaring the solution to fly tipping is more surveillance. He really is woeful.
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) February 15, 2026
In bed
As Novara’s Aaron Bastani highlighted, the New Labour types have a lot of support in broadcast media:
The press broadly backs the Tories. But why does the Labour right get such easy treatment from broadcast media?
The answer is political sympathies. Just look at who is married to who. TV news, and New Labour, until recently, went together like sun and shadow. pic.twitter.com/zwPZJOkUNl
— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) February 5, 2026
Haven’t seen many/any videos of the broadcast media harassing Mandelson outside his house. Was constant during Corbyn leadership – and indeed for some time after.
I’d say ‘curious’, but it’s because basically the whole of broadcast media (except GB News) swings New Labour.
— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) February 10, 2026
Phillips perverting reality as he did above is a clear example of this.
Featured image via the Canary
If you’re wondering how Reform plan to tackle poverty, we now have an answer to that. The plan is to deny it even exists
Zia Yusuf claims that “real poverty does exist in this country.”
@TrevorPTweets challenges Reform UK’s head of policy on his comments ⬇️#TrevorPhillipshttps://t.co/LFPXoeri6h pic.twitter.com/lqN76RkQ1q— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 15, 2026
Denial
In the clip above, Zia Yusuf says:
So firstly, it’s really important people understand when the term poverty is used primarily by left-wing politicians, let’s define that term. It is… a relative term, which means that you could literally – this is a mathematical fact – you could increase everybody’s incomes tenfold and that statistic would stay the same.
Oh my god, shut the fuck up, you oily, little nerd.
‘I can tell you mathematically what poverty is‘.
You sound like a Star Trek android, and not the good one.
We can tell you what poverty is, Zia, because most of us here at the Canary have experienced it.
Poverty is not having enough to get by.
Poverty is watching your outgoings outpace your incomings.
Poverty is spending hours a week figuring out how to make the money go around.
Poverty is constantly worrying about bills and life choices.
Poverty is fear and anxiety.
Poverty is the feeling that things will only get worse.
Yusuf thinks it’s a mathematical equation, because he has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about; he’s just another ex-Tory, ex-Goldman Sachs rich boy who wants to gut the welfare state to give his billionaire mates handouts.
Too much will never be enough for these people.
They will take more than they can ever spend, and they will shit, and piss, and moan as they bite the hand that feeds them.
Yusuf continued:
But the most important thing is that Reform, we are fiscally prudent, and we wanted to make sure anything we announced was going to be fiscally neutral.
“Fiscally prudent”, is it?
If you’re familiar with Curb Your Enthusiasm, start imagining the end credits now as you read the following headlines:
Reform have totally let the cat out of the bag about who they are.
Zia Yusuf lecturing that poverty and peoples everyday struggles with rising bills and rent is exaggerated.
A party of the failed status quo, funded and representing big corporate interests. https://t.co/G000aCvbLl
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) February 15, 2026
Social bullshittery
Phillips asked Yusuf if poverty measures are all made up, to which Yusuf responded:
No, it’s worse than that, because real poverty does exist in this country, Trevor. And absolute poverty does exist in very, very small pockets. If you actually want to do the right thing for as many people as possible in this country, then you need to create social mobility. That has been crushed by the Tory government and now this Labour government.
To be clear, ‘social mobility’ is not the phenomenon in which everyone becomes more affluent. It’s the phenomenon in which some working class people land middle class jobs. This is great for sly politicians like Yusuf, because it allows them to point at the fortunate few and say:
See – it is possible for you layabouts to earn more — anyone on poverty wages is just lazy.
If you’re old enough, you will remember the UK’s middle class did indeed expand in the 90s. Social mobility was happening on a larger scale, and we got the ‘lower middle class’ — i.e. working class families who could afford to alternate between taking their kids on holiday to Menorca and Butlin’s Pwllheli (if that seems oddly specific, I’m talking from experience).
This phenomenon happened because we took advantage of the cheap labour of countries like China, allowing us to live beyond our previous means. We could have locked in that progress, and ensured the country’s wealth was evenly distributed. We didn’t do that; instead we got runaway capitalism, with the rich claiming more wealth and authority, and the rest of us losing our rights and purchasing power.
Now, we’re at a point where social mobility can’t happen because even the middle class are fucking struggling. Tinkering around the edges or making savings here or there won’t cut it; we need to hobble the billionaire class, and we need to rob them of their power and influence.
Only then can we have a society in which people can live day to day without dreading tomorrow.
Bootstrapping
You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps‘, but did you know where it comes from? As Useless Etymology report:
The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” originated shortly before the turn of the 20th century. It’s attributed to a late-1800s physics schoolbook that contained the example question “Why can not a man lift himself by pulling up on his bootstraps?”
So when it became a colloquial phrase referring to socioeconomic advancement shortly thereafter, it was meant to be sarcastic, or to suggest that it was an impossible accomplishment.
It’s literally impossible for everyone in a capitalist system to be well off and content, because it’s a tornado designed to pull everything up to the top.
In other words, beware of geeks bearing false grifts.
Featured image via the Canary
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![Heathrow has said passenger numbers were 60% lower in November than before the coronavirus pandemic and there were “high cancellations” among business travellers concerned about being trapped overseas for Christmas as Omicron spreads. The UK’s largest airport said the government’s travel restrictions had dealt a fresh blow to travel confidence and predicted it was likely to take several years for passenger numbers to return to pre-pandemic levels. This week ministers said passengers arriving in the UK would have to take a pre-departure Covid test, as well as a post-flight test, because of fears about the spread of the new variant. “[The] high level of cancellations by business travellers concerned about being trapped overseas because of pre-departure testing shows the potential harm to the economy of travel restrictions,” the airport said in an update. Heathrow said the drop in traveller confidence owing to the new travel restrictions had negated the benefit of reopening the all-important corridor to North America for business and holiday travel last month. Eleven African countries have been added to the government’s red list, requiring travellers to quarantine before reuniting with families. “By allowing Brits to isolate at home, ministers can make sure they are reunited with their loved ones this Christmas,” said John Holland-Kaye, the chief executive of Heathrow. “It would send a strong signal that restrictions on travel will be removed as soon as safely possible to give passengers the confidence to book for 2022, opening up thousands of new jobs for local people at Heathrow. Let’s reunite families for Christmas.” Heathrow said that if the government could safely signal that restrictions would be lifted soon, then employers at Heathrow would have the confidence to hire thousands of staff in anticipation of a boost in business next summer. The airport is expecting a slow start to 2022, finishing next year with about 45 million passengers – just over half of pre-pandemic levels. This week Tui, Europe’s largest package holiday operator, said it expected bookings for next summer to bounce back to 2019 levels. However, Heathrow said on Friday not to expect the aviation industry to recover for several years. “We do not expect that international travel will recover to 2019 levels until at least all travel restrictions (including testing) are removed from all the markets that we serve, at both ends of the route, and there is no risk of new restrictions, such as quarantine, being imposed,” the airport said.](https://wordupnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/shutterstock_1100012546-scaled-400x240.jpg)
![Heathrow has said passenger numbers were 60% lower in November than before the coronavirus pandemic and there were “high cancellations” among business travellers concerned about being trapped overseas for Christmas as Omicron spreads. The UK’s largest airport said the government’s travel restrictions had dealt a fresh blow to travel confidence and predicted it was likely to take several years for passenger numbers to return to pre-pandemic levels. This week ministers said passengers arriving in the UK would have to take a pre-departure Covid test, as well as a post-flight test, because of fears about the spread of the new variant. “[The] high level of cancellations by business travellers concerned about being trapped overseas because of pre-departure testing shows the potential harm to the economy of travel restrictions,” the airport said in an update. Heathrow said the drop in traveller confidence owing to the new travel restrictions had negated the benefit of reopening the all-important corridor to North America for business and holiday travel last month. Eleven African countries have been added to the government’s red list, requiring travellers to quarantine before reuniting with families. “By allowing Brits to isolate at home, ministers can make sure they are reunited with their loved ones this Christmas,” said John Holland-Kaye, the chief executive of Heathrow. “It would send a strong signal that restrictions on travel will be removed as soon as safely possible to give passengers the confidence to book for 2022, opening up thousands of new jobs for local people at Heathrow. Let’s reunite families for Christmas.” Heathrow said that if the government could safely signal that restrictions would be lifted soon, then employers at Heathrow would have the confidence to hire thousands of staff in anticipation of a boost in business next summer. The airport is expecting a slow start to 2022, finishing next year with about 45 million passengers – just over half of pre-pandemic levels. This week Tui, Europe’s largest package holiday operator, said it expected bookings for next summer to bounce back to 2019 levels. However, Heathrow said on Friday not to expect the aviation industry to recover for several years. “We do not expect that international travel will recover to 2019 levels until at least all travel restrictions (including testing) are removed from all the markets that we serve, at both ends of the route, and there is no risk of new restrictions, such as quarantine, being imposed,” the airport said.](https://wordupnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/shutterstock_1100012546-scaled-80x80.jpg)
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