After trying desperately to dodge scrutiny of the involvement she and her husband had with child rapist Jeffrey Epstein, Hillary Clinton is now adopting a different approach. Speaking to the BBC, she told US president Donald Trump to “get the files out”, accusing him of a cover-up.

Her shift in tack comes ahead of the Clintons testifying before a congressional committee to give evidence about their association with Epstein. The pair had previously fought vigorously to avoid interrogation. Chairman of the Oversight Committee, Republican James Comer threatened the pair with contempt of Congress proceedings if they continued their refusal. This appears to have backed the two into a corner, and they will now appear before Congress in late February.

The BBC point out:

It will be the first time a former US president has testified to a congressional panel since Gerald Ford did so in 1983.

Clinton is now saying the pair have nothing to hide, declaring:

We don’t. We have been willing to say whatever we know. We’ve even done it under oath, but they want us to testify, not everyone else who’s mentioned many many times, hundreds of thousands of times in these files. So we’ve said “fine let us do it in public and we will appear in public and we’ll answer all your questions…”

Clintons can’t hide close ties to Epstein

When asked if she regretted links to the paedophile and eugenicist Epstein, Clinton conveniently answered the question in a different tense to the one in which she was asked:

You know, we have no links. We have a very clear record that we’ve been willing to talk about which my husband has said he took some rides on the aeroplane for his charitable work. I don’t recall ever meeting him.

Well, obviously you have no links now, given Epstein is either dead or perhaps spirited away to so-called ‘Israel’. Meanwhile, Ghislaine Maxwell is still locked up serving a 20 year sentence for her role in assisting mass sexual abuse of children.

However, prior links were extensive. The few “rides on the aeroplane” Clinton refers to are the at least 17 times her husband Bill flew on the revoltingly titled ‘Lolita Express’ jet owned by Epstein. The former president appears in numerous photos present in the recent US Department of Justice document release. These show him with young girls, including one seated on his lap.

The Clinton Global Initiative honoured Maxwell in 2013 with an award for advocating ocean conservation. This was years after she had been linked to Epstein’s crimes. He was convicted in 2008 for procuring a child for prostitution. Underscoring the closeness the Clintons had to Maxwell, they invited her to their daughter Chelsea’s wedding in 2010.

Former president’s history of abuse

Of course, Bill Clinton has a documented history of both dishonesty and abusive behaviour towards women. While their relationship was consensual, Monica Lewinsky has described his treatment of her as a “gross abuse of power” that left her contemplating suicide. Lewinsky was 22 years old and Clinton 49 when the White House intern and then-US president had “sexual relations”. The latter phrase was used when Clinton repeatedly lied about the affair, so there’s no reason to trust his word when it comes to his involvement with Epstein.

Bill Clinton has also been sued for sexual harassment by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones, and accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick. Broaddrick said Clinton assaulted her in a hotel room in 1978.

Of course, we don’t need court cases or congressional committees to tell us that the Clintons have been cruel and violent people. We need only look at their policies. During his presidency, Bill Clinton maintained the sanctions against Iraq that caused infant mortality to skyrocket, potentially killing 500,000 children.

He was crucial in accelerating the neoliberal order at home, with punitive welfare policies having devastating effects on women and children. Clinton’s deregulation accelerated the financialisation of the economy that benefited Epstein and other money manipulators.

Hillary is a constant warmonger who has defended ‘Israel’ throughout its genocide in Gaza. During her time as secretary of state, she helped oversee the bloodbath in Libya which has devastated that country. She was filmed psychopathically cackling after the death of Muammar Gaddafi. Disgracefully she retains prestigious positions, including her role as chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast.

Clintons helped make today’s billionaire-dominated world

The pair have helped usher in a more unpleasant world, and contributed to an era of unprecedented billionaire wealth. It is that wealth that gives predators like Epstein the power to abuse with impunity, and creates the conditions of poverty in which desperate people can be preyed upon.

Whatever the precise involvement the Clintons had with Epstein, they remain, at minimum, culpable for engineering the climate in which he and his ilk could flourish.

Featured image via the Canary

Cost of keeping vital rape crisis services in Glasgow operating: £500,000.

Amount of money wasted by the Scottish Government fighting and losing court cases to try to remove women’s rights: £1.14 million.

Angry yet?

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US Senator and professional Southern Good Ol’ Boy Lindsey Graham says the future of warfare looks like Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza. For once South Carolina’s most swivel-eyed hard-right Zionist is bang on the money. And the evidence is right under American noses…

Graham told an audience in Tel Aviv:

The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel.

He insisted that

the most clever, creative military forces on the planet are here in Israel because they have to be to survive

Adding:

So what we’re looking at is that Israel is advancing down the road to new weaponry far beyond us. And it would be nice to have a process where we could be partners.

Self-evidently, a lot of this is is garbage, including the myth of ‘poor little Israel’ fighting to survive in the midst of its enemies. The nuclear-armed settler-colonial state has been backed and armed by – and for the benefit of – Western imperial powers since the very beginning.

Lindsey Graham chats shit from Minnesota to Gaza

Graham is right though that the genocide in Gaza contain a blueprint for future warfighting. In fact, we can even see that taking place inside the US.

As +972 reported on 12 February:

ICE operations increasingly resemble Israeli occupation. That’s no coincidence.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are US president Donald Trump’s own paramilitary force. Officially their remit is to detain undocumented migrants. In reality, they are being used to discipline Trump’s enemies – using Israeli-linked tactics and AI.

Using apps like ELITE and Fortify, ICE’s occupations in places like Minnesota have mirrored Israeli methods.

The technologies supporting their operations illustrate how thoroughly ICE is following in Israel’s footsteps: both ELITE and Mobile Fortify bear a striking resemblance to mobile targeting applications Israeli forces have integrated into their policing arsenal over the last decade.

Graham may be a clown, but even the most ridiculous court jester can stumble upon profound truths.

And in a shock no nobody who has been following the news lately, Graham singled out the UAE for special praise:

Graham told his audience that butcher of Gaza ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu wanted him to tell the UAE’s leaders what a great partner the oil state had been to Israel.

I want to go there tomorrow to and acknowledge MBZ’s leadership and suggest that America improve his capability to defend the UAE and the region.

The UAE, like Israel, is currently deeply implicated in genocide. The UAE is supporting Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces in a war which has killed and displaced millions over the last three years. Here are a whole raft of articles on Sudan we’ve done lately.

Blowback

Lindsey Graham has never seen a genocide – or met a genocidaire – he didn’t like. But at the heart of his commentary there is a fundamental truth: Israel has laid the groundwork for a new scorched earth way of war powered by a deranged cocktail of old-fashioned colonial racism and new-fashioned technology.

For my first piece back at the Canary in 2025 I wrote about what Hannah Arendt would call the imperial boomerang. You can read that here.

But Arendt was merely drawing on something Aimé Césaire had developed. Césaire, a seminal anti-colonialist writer, said of Europeans that before the tactics and technologies of empire exploded back into the imperial core as 20th century fascism:

They tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, … they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples.

It’s awfully late in the day, folks. But if I was you, I’d get reading…

Featured image via the Canary

An employment tribunal has reaffirmed that anti-Zionism is a “protected characteristic” under equality legislation in relation to the workplace. It then denied protection to two Muslim women disciplined by an Israel-supporting bank for opposing its genocide-friendly investments.

The finding reconfirms the landmark decision of a 2024 tribunal that sacked Bristol professor David Miller’s anti-Zionism is protected by anti-discrimination workplace law. It also notably rejected the claim of the Israel lobby’s so-called ‘IHRA definition of antisemitism’, which Lloyds Bank tried to invoke.

Anti-Zionism is a principled stance

However, the tribunal judges decided that the two women’s anti-Zionism had not yet reached the level of a “philosophical belief” at the time they sent messages to colleagues demanding that Lloyds stop investing in companies profiting from Israel’s genocide. Instead, they said that at that point it was “political opinion” not protected by legislation. They hold it as philosophical belief now, the judges ruled, so they would have upheld their claim if the disciplinary action happened now. The judges strongly criticised Lloyds Bank’s actions but rejected the women’s claim.

Under equality legislation, according to mediator Acas, a “philosophical belief” must be “all of the following”:

• genuinely held
• not just an opinion or point of view based on current information
• about a significant aspect of human life and behaviour
• clear, consistent, serious and important
• acceptable in a democratic society – it must respect other people’s fundamental rights

The European Legal Support Centre, which supported the two women’s case, said that in spite of the adverse outcome the judgment was positive:

This judgment adds to the growing body of cases confirming that anti-Zionism is capable of amounting to a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010. While the claims did not succeed on the particular facts, the Tribunal made clear that beliefs supporting Palestinian rights can be worthy of respect in a democratic society, and that weaponisation of disciplinary action may give rise to unlawful discrimination.

Ms Sohail and Mrs Khalid should be recognised for their principled decision to pursue this case, which has helped clarify the law and strengthen protections for workers who seek to express deeply held beliefs in the workplace.

The so-called ‘IHRA working definition of antisemitism’ has been rejected even by its author as unfit for purpose. It has been rejected by legal experts, including Jewish experts, as legally useless for anything but attacking critics of Israel. It is frequently presented as the gold standard and used to protect Israel from criticism.

Featured image via the Canary

The UK have signed a deal with California to collaborate on green energy initiatives and boost investment.

However, US president Trump has been vocal in his opposition to the agreement. As such, the move is an unusual tactic for Starmer’s Labour, which has so far sucked up to the far-right dictator like its life depends on it.

The UK government announced that the California deal will connect the UK’s clean energy sector with the Californian market. Beyond this, the agreement will also see the two governments share expertise on issues like protecting biodiversity and resilience in the face of extreme weather.

Energy secretary Ed Miliband signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the deal with Californian governor Gavin Newsom on 16 February in London. The MoU itself affirmed that both governments:

support the goals of the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, recognize the urgency of addressing global climate change, and aim to strengthen bilateral cooperation to decarbonize their economies, protect residents from the worst effects of climate change, promote sustainable growth, secure the resources needed for the energy transition, enable research exchange and technology advancement, and develop skilled and modern workforces

Trump tantrum

The UK-California MoU is one of 12 similar agreements with other US states. These include the Democrat-led Washington and Republican-led Florida.

However, the deal has immediately enraged Donald Trump. He stated that it was “inappropriate” for the UK “to be dealing with him (Newsom).” Governor Newsom has been a notable opponent of Trump’s rule within the Senate, particularly regarding both climate policy and immigration.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration backed the US out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, Newsom has used his recent transatlantic tour to assure European leaders that Trump’s climate hostility is “temporary” in the grand scheme of US politics.

Notably, the UK-California deal specifically commits the US state to follow the UN Framework Convention, in spite of Trump’s withdrawal.

‘Gavin is a loser’

In an interview with Politico, Trump displayed his typically childish displeasure:

The UK’s got enough trouble without getting involved with Gavin Newscum. Gavin is a loser. Everything he’s touched turns to garbage. His state has gone to hell, and his environmental work is a disaster.

The US dictator continued:

The worst thing that the U.K. can do is get involved in Gavin. If they did to the U.K. what he did to California, this will not be a very successful venture.

Devastating wildfires recently ravaged California, with Trump accusing Newsom of mismanaging the state’s response. A spokesperson for the Californian governor, meanwhile, highlighted that the Trump administration was withholding disaster funding, stating that:

The Trump Administration refused a routine wildfire recovery meeting — a rejection we’ve never seen before — even as LA families near a year without long-term federal financial help. The message to survivors is unmistakable: Donald Trump doesn’t care about them.

Starmer the suck-up

The move to anger Trump is an unusual one for the Labour Party, which has thus-far been a keen ally of the US far-right.

Recently, Starmer dutifully deployed aircraft carriers to the Arctic Circle. The move seen by some commentators as an act of deference to Trump’s ‘defence gap’ narrative, with which he tried to justify the annexation of Greenland.

Last month, Starmer failed even to condemn Trump’s blatantly illegal attack on Venezuela and kidnap of president Maduro. Beyond this, Labour have repeatedly claimed that the USA “keeps us safe” under the Trump regime.

In September 2025, the Labour government celebrated a £150bn deal with Trump. Meanwhile, commentators described the agreement as a thinly veiled mechanism for US firms to asset-strip UK wealth. The list goes on and on.  

However, regarding the UK-California climate agreement, we at the Canary aren’t exactly convinced that Starmer is finally growing a backbone. If he thinks this one small move to ruffle Trump’s feathers will make up for a litany of fawning in the face of the far right, he’s got another think coming.

Then again, there’s always the possibility that Labour didn’t consider that dealing with a vocal Trump opponent might piss off America’s fascist-in-chief. You’d think that kind of thing might be obvious to anyone with an ounce of political wherewithal, but this is Starmer’s Labour we’re talking about.

Featured image via the Canary

In July 2023, Richard Hermer KC, a “close confidante” of Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer, proudly declared that he had “dear family members” serving in the Israeli military. One year later, he was appointed Attorney General for England and Wales, the “chief legal adviser to the Crown”. But incredibly, he is not the only senior British political figure with relatives in the IDF.

Labour officials and the IDF

Last week, John McEvoy and Alex Morris reported on a Freedom of Information request which revealed that over 50,000 foreign fighters have served in the Israeli military during the Gaza genocide. Britain ranked sixth on the list, with more than 2,000 British dual and multinational citizens confirmed to have participated.

In April 2024, Conservative peer Lord Ahmad defended the “right” of such citizens to enlist in the Israeli military on the basis that occupied Palestinian territories were not recognised as an independent entity by the British government, and that the genocide in Gaza would therefore be classified as “a foreign government’s forces… engaged in a civil war or combating terrorism or internal uprisings”.

However, since Britain officially recognised the State of Palestine in September, it would seem that the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870, which explicitly prohibited “engagement in the military or naval service of any foreign state at war with any foreign state at peace with Her Majesty”, must now apply; something that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, with her responsibility for “protecting our borders”, will surely take a keen interest in!

Shabana Mahmood has gone to great lengths to mirror the anti-migrant rhetoric of Reform UK in recent months, declaring that Britain has “become the destination of choice in Europe, clearly visible to every people smuggler and would-be illegal migrant across the world.”, and rehashing popular tropes of a “golden ticket asylum system” and “illegal migration tearing the UK apart”.

On the subject of returning IDF militants, however, she has been silent. We do not know the names or ages of the list of 2,000+, or whether or not they intend to or already have returned to the UK. Even more shockingly, my research suggests that the list could include associates and/or relatives of Labour government ministers.

Richard Hermer

In 2023, when Conservative Party MPs accused Richard Hermer, then advising the Labour Party on a BDS Bill being brought before Parliament, of taking “political positions” on the question of Palestine, Hermer was quick to burnish his Zionist credentials, reassuring Michael Gove and co. that he was not “influenced by some form of malign intent towards Israel”.

As proof of this, Hermer pointed towards growing up in “a ‘Blue-Box’ Jewish family”, a reference to blue collection boxes that were commonly used to raise money for the Jewish National Fund, the largest builder of illegal settlements in occupied Palestine.

The JNF’s UK branch states on its official website: “every Zionist home has a Blue Box.” Coincidentally, the UK branch counts well-known war criminals Tony Blair and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Marvis, amongst its “honorary patrons”.

Between 2015-18, JNF UK remains a registered British charity, funnelled £1 million to HaShomer HaChadash (HH), an Israeli militia that operates in the occupied West Bank. Despite this, the Charity Commission refused to take action, saying that “there was no evidence to support the allegations that the charity acted outside of its objects.”

The JNF specifies that only Jewish parties can buy or lease its land. Palestinians, even if they hold Israeli citizenship, are explicitly excluded on the basis of their ethnicity. In response to a 2004 legal challenge, the “charity” said: “The loyalty of the JNF is given to the Jewish people and only to them is the JNF obligated. The JNF…does not have a duty to practice equality towards all citizens of the state.”

The IDF

Hermer also emphasised (as a way of defending his impartiality, no less!): “I have dear family members currently serving in the IDF.” Even when he followed this with a caveat about opposing the “unlawful” occupation of the West Bank, Hermer’s reasoning was that it was “deeply damaging to the interests of Israel.”

This is the same IDF decapitating children and babies in Gaza. The same IDF who put on Palestinian women’s dresses after destroying their homes and dance for TikTok videos. The same IDF that included over 2,000 British citizens as they committed a genocide.

Were Hermer’s “dear family members” amongst them? Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, apparently so keen to clamp down on dangerous criminals entering the UK, seemingly doesn’t know and/or doesn’t care.

Labour’s Attorney General added: “I actively support a range of… Israeli organisations.” Hermer mentioned previously serving as an officer for the Union of Jewish Students (UJS).

Speaking to an undercover journalist, a former UJS activist named Adam Schapira confirmed that the group receives funding from the Israeli embassy in London and the powerful American lobby group AIPAC. Yair Zivan, a campaigns officer for UJS, later became a press officer for the Israeli military and adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister.

“Love being in Israel”

At the Jewish Labour Movement’s annual conference in January 2025, Hermer said that he wished to see a world where you can “love being in Israel”, and lamented that “somehow you have to pick one-side or the other.” He revealed that he had visited the Israeli state in his youth, and as a member of Starmer’s government “on more occasions than he could count”.

Hermer and Starmer served in the same law chambers, and he donated to Starmer’s 2020 Labour leadership campaign.

After leaving Doughty Street, Hermer worked alongside current Labour MP and former vice-chair of the Jewish Labour Movement Sarah Sackman at Matrix Chambers. As Hermer was made Attorney General, Sackman was appointed Solicitor General. Since 2024, Sackman has received tens of thousands of pounds from lobbyists Jonathan Mendelsohn, Stephen Grabiner, Michael Sternberg, Jonathan Kestenbaum and Trevor Chinn.

Sackman was also funded by Labour Together. Kestenbaum just happens to sit on the board of Labour Together, and Chinn was a major funder and co-director of the think tank in the “McSweeney era”, but we can rest assured that these are further minor details Starmer knows nothing about.

Another former director of Labour Together is current Labour MP and cabinet member Josh Simons.

The Labour Together scandal

During his spell at the “think tank”, Simons hired private investigators to gather information on journalists researching the corruption of Morgan McSweeney, who had used Labour Together as a private vehicle for toppling Jeremy Corbyn and propelling Keir Starmer into power.

Kate Forrester, the wife of Keir Starmer’s then head of communications Paul Ovenden, ran APCO’s London office when it was hired by Labour Together, and she has since confirmed that she knew about the investigation, codenamed “Operation Cannon”.

One year later, the “public relations firm” hired a new member of staff, Mark Simpson. Simpson just happened to be a former adviser to Keir Starmer. Josh Simons has branded the claims that he spied on journalists “nonsense”, but the contract between Labour Together and APCO tells a different story.

The contract instructed APCO to “provide a body of evidence that could be packaged up…in order to create narratives that would proactively undermine any future attacks on Labour Together.” Josh Simons ordered the investigation. Morgan McSweeney was aware of the investigation. Is it even remotely conceivable that once again, just like with Epstein-informant Peter Mandelson, Starmer “didn’t know”?

At university, Simons called himself a “Marxist” and told a friend that the Israeli state “should not have been founded”. Now, he’s a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Israel. Simons has mentioned having “friends and family in Israel”, a state with compulsory military service, and in a parliamentary debate with Conservative MP Kit Malthouse last June asserted his “right to claim citizenship in Israel”.

Two months later, Simons and Sackman were amongst a group of “Labour Friends of Israel-affiliated MPs” who confronted National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell in a “testy and emotionally charged conversation” regarding the government’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

Israel has infiltrated the entire system

In an October 2023 LBC interview with Sangita Myska, Richard Hermer KC emphasised the Israeli state’s “right to self-defence” in Gaza. In fact, occupying powers have no such right within territories they occupy, as confirmed in Article 51 of the UN Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Myska was fired by LBC after a heated exchange with Israeli government spokesperson Avi Hyman in April 2024. LBC instead hired Vanessa Feltz, who has also declared that she has “very close family members, lots of them”, living in occupied Palestine. Myska later revealed that a LBC producer once told her: “there’s no such thing as Palestine.” LBC is owned by Global Media, which is chaired by Labour peer Charles Allen.

Hermer is not the only current Labour figure with links to the Israeli military. Labour MP Damian Egan’s partner Yossi Felberbaum is a former Israeli spy recruiter from “Unit 8200”. Are his relatives on the list of 2,000+? Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood apparently doesn’t know, and doesn’t care.

Hermer is not even the first British Attorney General to have relatives fighting with the Israeli army. Suella Braverman, who Boris Johnson appointed Attorney General once in February 2020 and then again in September 2021, also claimed to have “close family members who serve in the IDF”. Are her relatives on the list of 2000+? Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood apparently doesn’t know, and doesn’t care.

Featured image via the Canary

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani faces a further test of his resolve and principles after the city’s police department (NYPD) disclosed that it spies on the city’s residents’ online.

NYPD fesses up

On 4 February 2026, the NYPD finally admitted that it uses ‘sockpuppet’ fake accounts – technically ‘managed attribution’ infrastructure — to covertly monitor New Yorkers’ online activity.

Or, as the department dressed it up, to:

allow its personnel to safely, securely and covertly conduct investigations and detect possible criminal activity on the internet.

Mamdani’s resolve

As a former state assembly member, Mamdani had supported proposed legislation to outlaw such tactics — the “Stop Fakes Act”. The legislation never passed. Now his supporters and opponents alike are waiting to see whether he is willing to face down the police. Will he use his power as mayor to halt these underhand practices.

The test comes after Mamdani chose to endorse Kathy Hochul — “one of the most pro-Israel governors in the country” — as the Democratic party’s candidate for the position.

Hochul, a right-winger who allocated massive police funding to attacks on university anti-genocide campuses, also sabotaged a nurses’ strike by making it easier for hospitals to hire scab labour.

After a positive start to his tenure, the endorsement led to accusations from appalled left-wingers that Mamdani was betraying the socialist, anti-genocide positions that formed the centre of his mayoral election campaign.

If he now chooses not to confront the city’s police, his credibility is likely to collapse.

Featured image via the Canary

Martin Lewis has accused the Labour Party of turning student loans into a tax on young people.

At the Autumn budget, Labour froze the student loan repayment thresholds for Plan 2 loans at £29,385 from April 2026.

Lewis pointed out that this was either a targeted tax rise on young people, or a:

retrospective rewriting of the terms of a private contract.

Student loans are being turned into a tax

Either way, Rachel Reeves claimed the freeze was “fair and reasonable” – which is, of course, bullshit.

Mainly because rich kids who had the bank of mummy and daddy to pay their tuition fees up front are now exempt from this additional tax.

There are five student loan plans in operation. These cover most postgraduate courses, Scotland and three mainly English student cohorts. Namely, entrants pre-2012, those between 2012 and 2023, and those post-2023.

The current student loan controversy refers to plan 2 loans. Around 6m people took these out in England and Wales between 2012 and 2023.

According to the Guardian:

For a plan 2 graduate, every pound earned between £30,000 and £50,000 already faces 20% income tax, 8% national insurance and 9% loan repayment – a 37% marginal rate. Freezing the plan 2 threshold, as Ms Reeves proposes from 2027, penalises these graduates by holding down the point at which repayments begin (roughly £30,000), so that as wages rise, a growing share of their income faces the 9% charge. This ensures more income is taxed at 37% for longer as incomes go up.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, this is equivalent to a tax rise.

£53k of debt per student

Graduates now have an average debt of £53,000. For some doctors, that figure is over £100,000. Which is messed up, considering Rachel Reeves said that the Government will use the repayment freeze to fund the NHS and keep prescription charges under £10.

As the Guardian points out:

If someone earns £60,000, they should be taxed because they earn £60,000 – not because they went to university in 2014 rather than 2009.

Campaign platforms, Organise and Rethink Repayment, previously accused the Government of acting “like a loan shark”.

Roxy Khan-William, head of campaigns at Organise, told LBC:

The evidence increasingly points to the hallmarks of mis-selling: complex terms, optimistic assurances, underplayed risks, and later rule changes that materially worsen outcomes.

In effect, the Government is acting like a loan shark.

Most banks would not approve a £50k high-interest loan for the average 18-year-old. Yet that is exactly how the Government is treating the student loans system.

Except there is no contract, no fixed terms, and no interest rate, and most graduates never recall seeing the terms and conditions.

Shitting on young people

On my previous point about Rachel Reeves talking shit – when she finished her undergraduate degree in 2000, the average student loan debt was £3,000.

The government only announced tuition fee rises in 2004. So when Reeves finished her postgraduate degree that year, they were still capped at £1,125 per year.

Both of her loans were Plan 1. This means the interest rate is linked to inflation, so there is no real cost to borrowing.

Reeves benefited from low tuition fees and not having tens of thousands of pounds in debt when she left university. Yet now she wants to take a shit on young people?

Another rule for the rich

Wealthy families can essentially buy their kids out of this ridiculous tax. From the vast connections that come with money, to private school, not having to work through education, to the mental health benefits of growing up in financial stability, it’s fair to say that kids born into rich families already have enough of a leg up.

And whilst there’s no doubt that many rich kids turn out to be massive pricks, why should they be exempt from taxes?

Reeves may as well start handing out step ladders at graduation.

How many other ways does Labour want to say “we hate poor people”? Gone are the days when Labour was the party of the working class. 

And let’s face it, yes, they hate poor people – but the only reason anyone is poor in the first place is because of the incompetence of consecutive governments.

Featured image via the Canary

In amongst Reform’s patently ridiculous announcement of its new ‘shadow cabinet’, the far-right party has announced Suella Braverman as its education, skills and equalities spokesperson.

In her first move as part of the new role, Braverman announced that Reform would rip up the Equality Act on day one. You’d think an equalities spokesperson would be less zealously committed to legalising discrimination, but that’s par for the course for the far-right party.

Braverman whines about diversity

As the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey noted, Reform aren’t the official opposition, and thus have no right to be running around announcing shadow cabinets anyway. The whole thing is a PR exercise for egomaniac Nigel Farage.

In a continuation of the bizarre, shortly after being awarded this imaginary role Braverman announced that her party would eliminate the role of equalities minister altogether. She then set off on a rant about the UK being:

ripped apart by diversity, equality and inclusion policies.

Braverman also stated that her (new) party would repeal the Equality Act on its first day of office. By way of reasoning, the ex-Tory minister claimed that she wanted to get rid of the:

divisive notion of protected characteristics.

As a quick reminder, those divisive protected characteristics are age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.

‘A sledgehammer to hard-won rights’

Parliament instituted the Equality Act back in 2010. It prohibits the victimisation of individuals on the basis of those seven protected characteristics. It forms the basis of anti-discrimination law in the UK, preventing – for example – an employer from sacking somebody upon finding out the employee is gay.

As such, it’s not exactly hard to see why a party founded on the idea of bashing immigrants wouldn’t be a fan. However, Braverman also claimed that she didn’t want to eliminate workplace protections altogether.

In spite of that flimsy reassurance, the Trades Union Congress was quick to call Reform out on its game. TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said:

It’s official – Reform UK think discrimination should be legal.

Scrapping the Equality Act would be a sledgehammer to hard-won rights working people fought for over generations.

If you’re discriminated against because you’re a woman, black, disabled, pregnant or gay – that’s fine with them.

This is a blank cheque for bad employers to mistreat their staff.

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And it wouldn’t stop there. Scrapping the Equality Act would just be the start.

From ripping up equality protections, to backing fire-and-rehire, to opposing a ban on zero-hours contracts, Reform UK have made it clear whose side they’re on – and it’s not working people.

Hypocrisy and lies

Braverman herself is hardly a stranger to trampling over human rights. As the Tory home secretary, she was a vocal promoter of the infamous Illegal Migration Act. In a clear breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, the act would have enabled the government to transport unlawful migrants to Rwanda.

In spite of her own parents’ status as immigrants, Braverman named immigrants an:

existential challenge for the political and cultural institutions of the West.

Of course, the ex-Tory is no stranger to rank hypocrisy either. She once insisted that the Conservative Party needed to do “everything we can” to win Tory voters back from Reform, before slipping off to join the far-right party instead.

Then again, Farage himself previously vowed that his retirement home for washed-up Tories would never take in Suella Braverman.

So, to recap, Reform didn’t want to take in Braverman, and Braverman wanted to win votes back from Reform. Then she joined the far-right party after all.

Following that, Reform appointed her to the post of equalities spokesperson, so Braverman promptly announced that she’d abolish her own job – and the public’s protection against discrimination into the bargain.

Is anybody else’s head spinning here?

Featured image via the Canary