Politics
Removing Starmer won’t change the Labour Party
If you lose every football match because your goalkeeper keeps booting the ball into their own net, shouting at the other team is pointless. Inventing new tactics to get past the other keeper is pointless, because the ball will always go past yours. That was true about Jeremy Corbyn. It is true about Keir Starmer. And it’s time for progressive voters to accept that it’s true about the Labour Party in general. Removing Keir Starmer as leader won’t change Labour enough to prevent Nigel Farage from becoming Reform prime minister.
A confession
Don’t get me wrong. I was still holding out hope that Labour might save us – until last month.
I even got major egg on my face, suggesting that the Greens should stand aside in the Gorton and Denton by-election. I wanted a clear path for Andy Burnham to become an MP and then replace Keir Starmer as prime minister.
Burnham has always campaigned to ensure that all votes count equally. So, if he became prime minister and gave us a proportional voting system, the UK would genuinely be saved from fascism. Reform, who are polling around 30%, therefore wouldn’t be able to gain a majority in parliament. Furthermore, parties to the left of the Tories (Labour, Lib Dems, SNP, Greens) have received more than 50% of the vote in almost every election since WW2.
So, if all votes counted equally, the future of the UK would be almost permanently progressive. But Labour blocking Andy Burnham didn’t just make me look foolish; it killed the Labour Party.
Labour is dead and buried
Why? Because Keir Starmer was already on borrowed time, even before he knowingly hired a child rape-trafficker’s fan as our US ambassador. He already had the lowest popularity rating of any prime minister in UK history. So the Labour machine knew that Starmer was on his way out. So the decision to rule out Andy Burnham as a potential challenger was about the politics he would bring to the table.
This is a long-standing problem.
In 2020, Labour kicked me out of the party for saying that I joined the Labour Party to get them to support proportional representation. Labour members have supported proportional voting for several years and made it the party’s official conference policy, yet the leadership has rejected it. Labour just published its Representation of the People Bill.
This is their flagship law to reform our democracy, yet it makes no mention of proportional representation. So Labour is committed to ensuring that most British votes don’t count, because a minority-voted party always get a majority of seats in Parliament.
Wes Streeting, Starmer’s most likely successor, even explicitly confirmed this when I interviewed him at the party conference. When I accused Labour of supporting a system where most votes don’t count, he said, “In the grand scheme of things, I’m more worried about the NHS”.
To which I replied: “So democracy doesn’t matter?”.
Streeting: “Democracy does matter”
Me: “So you want the majority of votes to count, then?”
Streeting “No. We’re focusing on our manifesto.”
No allegiance
So, we are dealing with a Labour Party that is institutionally committed to a voting system that has consistently given us governments that are more right-wing than what the majority of people voted for. Logically, our voting system is the most right-wing policy the UK has ever invented, and yet it is being supported by the party some people still call “the Left”.
If you can’t tell, I have no allegiance to any politician or any party. I backed Corbyn when he campaigned for Remain, opposed him for the three years where he backed Brexit, then campaigned for his Labour Party when he backed a 2nd referendum in late 2019.
I backed Starmer when he called for a referendum on the Brexit deal in early 2019, then opposed him once he became a genocidal Thatcher tribute act, so I voted Green in 2024.
So, having entered politics in 2016, I’ve only ever really seen Labour copy the biggest right-wing policies of the day. Whether that’s Brexit under Corbyn, or austerity, bigotry and genocide under Starmer. As I said, if your keeper keeps booting the ball into your own net, complaining about the opposing team is pointless. And if you care about protecting people from what happens next (see America), then your allegiance shouldn’t be to any player, whether that player is in green, red or yellow. Besides, this isn’t a game.
Labour is finished
I joined the Green Party in October because they actually want to stop this car from driving to the far right, not simply say slightly nicer things from the passenger seat. Labour has become part of the problem and can’t beat Nigel Farage.
What’s tragic is… on balance, even Reform voters believe Brexit has made us poorer, and they don’t like the Tories. But the Brexit Party changed their name to Reform UK and has populated itself almost exclusively with former Tories.
Yet somehow that’s enough to convince them that they’re not voting for the same Tories who already made them poorer… If simply changing Labour’s leader is enough to convince you that it’s become a whole new party, then stop pretending you’re smarter than a Reform voter.
Featured image via the Canary
Rep. Andy Barr maintained his cash advantage over his GOP rivals in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.
Barr raised nearly $1.5 million over the first three months of the year and started April with almost $4.2 million in his war chest — more than five times that of his next-closest rival, according to filings from the Federal Election Commission.
Businessman Nate Morris reported raising $1 million and had roughly $580,000 in his campaign coffers to start the second quarter. But nearly half of that — $450,000 — was a personal loan, per his filing. Morris has now loaned himself $4.9 million over the course of the campaign.
Former state Attorney General Daniel Cameron posted another modest haul; he raised $456,000 and had roughly $765,000 in cash on hand.
Barr holds a slim lead in public polling of the contentious primary for McConnell’s seat that has seen all three major candidates scramble to distance themselves from their former boss and embrace Donald Trump. The president has not endorsed in the race.
Former Rep. Mary Peltola’s (D-Alaska) staggering first-quarter haul comes with a caveat: She spent a lot to raise a lot.
Peltola hauled in nearly $8.7 million directly to her campaign account over the first quarter of the year in her quest to unseat Alaska GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan. She raised four times as much cash as the incumbent, according to filings from the Federal Election Commission. But she spent nearly $3 million, leaving her with $5.7 million in cash on hand.
Sullivan, meanwhile, raised $1.7 million directly to his campaign account and kicked off April with more than $7 million in his war chest.
Both campaigns have argued they’re in strong financial positions in what is already shaping up to be an expensive race by Alaska standards — one that could help decide control of the Senate. Peltola has an early polling advantage and led Sullivan by 5 percentage points in a mid-March Alaska Survey Research poll.
The candidates are getting a boost from outside groups. Democratic-aligned groups have already put more than $3 million into backing Peltola, per the tracking firm AdImpact. The Senate Leadership Fund, a top GOP super PAC, has pledged to put $15 million into defending Sullivan’s seat and has already placed millions of dollars in ad buys.
Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) holds an edge over Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in fundraising, well ahead of the state’s Democratic primary in August.
Craig raised $2.5 million in the first quarter of the year, according to Federal Elections Commission filings, besting Flanagan’s haul of $1.3 million. That sets up Craig with $4.8 million in cash on hand, more than the $1.1 million Flanagan has in the bank.
Flanagan’s filing also shows her burning money at a rapid rate: Her campaign spent more than $1 million in the first quarter, nearly as much as it raised.
Campaign contributions are poised to become a wedge issue in the competitive Democratic primary. Flanagan has attacked Craig for accepting contributions from corporate PACs and has pledged not to take their money.
Former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s fundraising haul is dwarfing his opponent’s, keeping Democrats’ hopes of flipping the Ohio Senate seat alive.
Brown raised $10.1 million in the first quarter of the year compared with GOP Sen. Jon Husted’s $2.9 million, according to Federal Elections Commission filings. Brown carries $16.5 million in cash on hand, more than doubling Husted’s $8.2 million in cash reserves heading into both parties’ uncontested primaries in May.
Senate Republicans are planning major investments to help Husted win his first election after he was appointed to Vice President JD Vance’s former seat last year. Senate Leadership Fund, the top Senate GOP super PAC, pledged to spend $79 million in Ohio.
Democrats are hoping Brown, who served in Congress for over 30 years before he lost reelection to Sen. Bernie Moreno in 2024, can put the red-leaning state back within reach.
Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn boasts a significantly larger war chest than his primary opponent, putting the embattled incumbent in a stronger financial position ahead of the May runoff.
Cornyn ended the first quarter of the year with more than $8 million in cash on hand, compared with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s $2.6 million in the bank, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.
The Cornyn-Paxton face-off has grown nasty and highly personal as Republicans grow uneasy about beating James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee who raised an extraordinary $27 million last quarter and has about $9.9 million cash on hand. President Donald Trump has so far declined to endorse in the race, despite teasing a pick for several weeks.
Cornyn’s joint fundraising committees comprised the vast majority of his roughly $9 million fundraising haul. Paxton reported raising $2.2 million.
I was in the courtroom when the UK Supreme Court judgment on gender was handed down a year ago today. It felt like witnessing a pivotal moment in history.
After years of politicians, institutions and a vocal minority of the public insisting we go along with the pretence that men could be women, the judges stated something that should never have been in doubt: that in equality law, the term ‘sex’ means biological sex.
Like many people, I assumed that the ruling would settle things – that people would stop pretending not to know what a woman is, and that sanity would return to public life. I imagined the NHS would quietly drop its talk of ‘chest feeding’ and ‘cervix havers’, and that women could object to the intrusion of a bearded man in a dress into their changing room without fear of being labelled a bigot. Having lost my own livelihood for taking issue with the phrase ‘pregnant people’, I also hoped the ruling might mark the end of language policing. Soon, I thought, we’d all be laughing about those absurd times when ‘misgendering’ could get you into trouble at work. Families and friends might even stop falling out over whether humans can or cannot change sex. When some of my own relationships had fractured due to my gender-critical views, it had been a painful affair.
But I was naive. A year on, very little seems to have changed. Britain might have achieved legal clarity on sex, but what it doesn’t yet have is the will to enforce it.
Don’t get me wrong, there have been a few positive developments: puberty blockers have been restricted. The International Olympic Committee has moved to protect female sporting categories. Further to that, a number of high-profile women’s rights violations have cut through. The stories of Sandie Peggie and the Darlington Nurses, who were forced to take legal action over a man using their workplace changing rooms, have appeared in the press and on TV. The experience of nurse Jennifer Melle, who was suspended for ‘misgendering’ a male patient (a convicted paedophile who had racially abused her, no less), went viral. But the pattern has been depressingly similar in every case: the women who raise concerns are routinely accused of being unkind, exclusionary and treated as the problem. All in an era when we’re told we ought to ‘believe women’.
I was reminded of how little the ruling actually registered on a freezing January morning, when I covered a protest outside a gym in Southwark. A woman had been banned from the premises for raising complaints about a man in the women’s changing room. A counter-protest of masked trans activists was present, who shouted and swore at us female journalists for having the audacity to cover the event.
Even some apparent victories have not felt as such. When Girlguiding and the Women’s Institute announced last December, just one day apart, that they would no longer accept males into their ranks, it seemed like progress. But having covered what happened next for the Telegraph, it soon became clear that both organisations were more focussed on managing their own public image than in implementing the ruling – or protecting the girls and women they exist to serve.
Astonishingly, Girlguiding set up a 500-strong ‘taskforce’ to support the biological men and boys who were no longer able to take part. At the same time, dissatisfied activists within its own ranks have created a splinter group, Guiders Against Trans Exclusion (GATE), and have encouraged children to attend its protests. Several such protests took place across the UK at the weekend, with photos emerging of very young children holding political placards and chalking ‘Trans girls are girls’ on pavements.
The Women’s Institute is not much different. It continues to push ‘sisterhood’ groups – open to biological men as well as women – while CEO Melissa Green openly insists that ‘transwomen are women’. This position, of course, sits rather awkwardly with the organisation’s own constitution.
But what exactly is holding these institutions back from implementing what is now the law? Officially, it’s a lack of guidance. The long-awaited update from the Equality and Human Rights Commission has left organisations in a convenient holding pattern. Though the equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson, is on record saying the government intends to uphold the Supreme Court ruling (including that organisations need not wait for the updated guidance to do so), many continue to take their sweet time.
It seems that admitting gender ideology went too far is profoundly difficult for those who played along. More than just a policy shift, this is a reckoning. It will mean acknowledging ideas once presented as ‘progressive’ now seem confused at best, and deeply harmful at worst.
For individuals – parents, friends, family – it means holding their hands up and saying they got it wrong. For institutions, the road will be far more difficult. Hence the stalemate we now find ourselves in. While we may have legal clarity on the surface, denial still pervades everywhere else.
Janet Murray is a journalist writing on women, culture and public policy. Follow her on X: @jan_murray.
In North Carolina, former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper continues to far outraise Republican Michael Whatley, growing a massive cash disparity in one of the most closely watched Senate races this year.
Cooper raised $13.8 million to Whatley’s $5 million in the first quarter of the year, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission. That encompasses both the run-up to and aftermath of their effectively uncontested primaries in early March.
Cooper entered the second quarter with $18.5 million in cash on hand while Whatley reported having more than $2.5 million in the bank.
North Carolina is a top target for Democrats. Cooper, the swing state’s most recent governor, draws on his broad name ID to pull in a sizable fundraising haul. Most polling shows him with a double-digit lead over Whatley.
National Republicans are planning to give Whatley, the former RNC chair, a major boost. Senate Leadership Fund has pledged $71 million to the Senate race.
Protestors have blocked numerous major roads across the north of Ireland in response to fuel price increases resulting from the illegal US-Israeli led war on Iran. The highly effective disruptive actions mirror those that have taken place in the south of the island over the past week. Slow moving tractors held up traffic on the Sydenham bypass and West Link in the Belfast area. The Belfast Telegraph reported protests still ongoing in County Tyrone well into Tuesday evening. There were at least eight sites of protest in total.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) responded by issuing fines. In a statement, they said:
…a number of other persons were cautioned for public order offences.
People Before Profit (PBP) MLA Gerry Carroll said the police had behaved “disgracefully”. The West Belfast Assembly member also highlighted how the:
Irish Government’s majority has been shrunk by the cost of living protests.
Taoiseach Martin hit by backlash on cost of living failures
This is in reference to the fallout following a confidence vote on Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s regime that resulted in two TDs leaving the government for the opposition benches. Leading licker-of-the-US boot Martin now has 92 TDs backing him. 87 are needed for a majority in the Dáil. The government ultimately won the confidence vote by a margin of 92 to 78.
The Irish government responded in brutish fashion at the weekend to fuel protests. They brought in the army, while the Garda needlessly deployed pepper spray, including against a 14 year old boy.
Martin has faced intense criticism, both for the response to the blockades, and for allowing things to escalate to that point. Sinn Féin’s leader Mary Lou McDonald described the government as:
Arrogant and incompetent. Half measures don’t cut it. We need to see the maximum reduction in fuel prices at the pumps. The people have no confidence in this useless government. They should back their bags and go.
Martin ultimately said the government would provide €505 million in funds to tackle the fuel price crisis his government helped to generate.
Carroll concluded his X post by saying all the above showed:
…a simple truth: a cost of living movement can rattle our failed status-quo. Workers & unions can lead the charge!
In a longer statement, People Before Profit called on those groups to step forward:
We must demand that our unions enter the fight. Workers did not cause this crisis. Energy companies, war-makers and a government that serves corporate interests did. The unions have the membership, the resources and the leverage to force real change on the cost of living. It is time to use them. Every trade union branch, every shop steward, every community organisation should be discussing what action can be taken and building for it now.
Belfast — Far right hijacking protests fuel protests
They criticised unions for failing to lead thus far on the cost of living crisis, leaving a vacuum for the far right to exploit::
Some of the loudest figures attaching themselves to these protests are cheerleaders for Trump, for racism, and in some cases for Israel. They want to blame migrants, LGBT people or whoever else is convenient, instead of the profiteers, war-makers and politicians actually responsible.
Failed presidential aspirant Conor McGregor is one such clown. The washed-up ex-MMA fighter has previously voiced anti-immigrant ‘Ireland for the Irish’ views. In an X post, McGregor gave his support to protestors, while attempting to push immigration as a central woe alongside the cost of living. He railed against:
[The government’s] complete failure on housing, their refusal to ease the crushing cost of living crisis, the disastrous handling of immigration that has overwhelmed their communities and services and the shocking way that they have treated ordinary Irish people in recent days.
A farmer protesting near Belfast was quoted by the BBC offering a similar formulation:
We have money for everything else – we can spend overseas, we can help people coming to this country, we can’t help our own people.
As we’ve recognised before, the class configuration of the protests is complex. PBP suggest that the movement is currently:
…led by people who own companies, employ workers and have access to expensive machinery.
Nonetheless, they correctly point to:
…a real mix of people in and around this movement, including many working class people looking on sympathetically.
The imperfect politics of those involved shouldn’t be a reason for the left not to seize low hanging fruit for progressive organisers – the cost of living crisis exacerbated by illegal wars abroad.
Pro-Palestine group BDS Belfast had an idea along those lines, showing the similar treatment Palestine protestors and fuel protestors received, even if the latter were granted slightly more leeway by the state. In an Instagram post, they said:
We’re all bearing the costs of illegal US and Israeli violence. The Irish government must end its support for these crimes NOW!
One struggle, against those in power harming us all.
Solidarity
Featured image via the BelfastTelegraph
A file released by the ‘Israeli’ government shows the notorious Zionist terror group Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang, attempted to partner with the Nazis to fight Britain during World War 2.
The Haganah, a larger and more organised Zionist terror force, created the documents in 1941 while spying on Lehi. The Haganah largely cooperated with Britain during the war against the Axis powers. They were later involved a series of murderous attacks against British forces in Palestine, and gave their approval for the bombing of the King David Hotel.
Haaretz say the file was:
…kept in the IDF [sic] archives and later transferred to the State Archives. About three years ago, Haaretz requested that it be declassified. It was recently scanned and uploaded.
In it, the Haganah’s founder Eliyahu Golomb reports discovering that Lehi leader Avraham Stern had connections with the Nazi regime. A document in the file lays out Stern’s strategy:
With the outbreak of World War II… Stern argued that there is no better time for a war of independence than during wartime. Britain’s forces are tied down… and it would be possible to overcome them. The question of orientation seemed simple to him.The Jews are a party in the war and therefore cannot be neutral. Britain betrayed the Jewish people and will never allow the establishment of a Jewish state. On the other hand, Germany has no special interest in Palestine, and since the Nazis want to cleanse Europe of Jews, nothing is simpler than transferring them to their own state.
Stern: attempted Nazi pact to counter British conniving
Stern’s notion of British betrayal likely relates to the switch in stance Britain adopted towards Jewish groups in Palestine in the late 1930s. Concerned that Arab support was ebbing away due to their backing of a Jewish homeland in this part of West Asia, Britain began to change its policies.
Most notably, the then-hegemon produced the White Paper of 1939, which restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine and made it harder to sell land to non-Arab peoples. This callous imperial manoeuvring that varyingly produced resentment on all sides was key to Palestine’s grim fate that worsens to this day.
Stern’s views were far from novel. Years earlier in 1933, Zionists had signed the Transfer or Haavara Agreement. This was a deal with:
…the Nazi government that allowed some wealthy German Jews to immigrate to Palestine in exchange for purchasing German goods that were then exported to the Jewish community in Palestine.
At the time, Jewish groups worldwide had set up a boycott of German goods in response to the Nazis’ racist policies. The agreement suited both signatories. The Nazis would take a step towards the ethnic cleansing of Germany and gain much needed capital. The Zionists would get equipment to aid the development of their proto-state, and an influx of new people who could assist in their ultimate goal of ethnically cleansing Palestine.
To this day, the Zionist settler-colony is happy to partner with anti-semites if it suits the narrow interests of its fanatical, expansionist land theft project. Stern’s wartime plans were along much the same lines, looking to “reach a practical agreement with the Germans” in a belief that the:
…Jews of Europe should be recruited into a special army that would fight its way to Palestine and conquer it from the British.
Lehi foresaw:
…shared interests between German policy and Jewish national aspirations.
However, Haaretz claim:
Lehi’s contacts with the Nazis ultimately came to nothing.
Vicious Zionist terror legacy continues
Post-war, the Stern Gang played an infamous role in the Nakba. This was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in which Zionist terrorists killed 15,000 Palestinians and drove around 750,000 from their homes. The Gang helped carry out the Deir Yassin massacre, where Zionist murderers slaughtered over 100 Palestinians. Those killed “were tied to trees and burned to death”. Others were “lined up against a wall and shot by submachine guns” including “women, children and the elderly”. Ex-Lehi member Yitzhak Shamir went on to serve twice as prime minister of so-called ‘Israel’.
The terror group dissolved after World War 2, but its vicious, racist mentality lives on in contemporary ‘Israel’. Stern may not have got his wish to partner with the Nazis, but the Zionist entity has gone one better — it has become the closest modern equivalent to the Third Reich, as it continues its holocaust in Gaza.
Featured image via the Canary
A group of three anti-genocide protesters have been imprisoned without bail until at least 1 May, after appearing at Westminster magistrates’ court on the morning of 14 April. The three, members of People Against Genocide, have been charged over a direct action protest against Keysight Technologies. A supporter explained why they took the action:
View this post on Instagram
People Against Genocide reports that the US-owned company makes radar and electronic systems that it supplies to Israeli murder-drone makers Elbit Systems. The group shared footage of the action, which was featured on Channel 4 News:
People Against Action has targeted other locations belonging to Keysight Technologies have been targeted in the UK over the past year.
The three people charged are Steven Davies, 57 (pictured above), Ian Roberts, 51, and Dolores Gnapi, 34. The firm claims that they caused more than £2m of damage to its facility during the protest.
The refusal of bail fits the Starmer government’s pattern of attempting to “make the process itself the punishment.” This is part of the government’s ‘lawfare’ war on anti-genocide and pro-Palestine journalism, speech and protest.
Featured image via Barold
By Skwawkbox
Revisiting Kelly Cutrone’s Insane Memoir 15 Years Later
Jury to be sent out in Macaulay Branighan murder trial
Barr keeps his cash lead in Kentucky Senate GOP primary
-
Politics5 days agoUS brings back mandatory military draft registration
-
Sports5 days agoMan United discover Nico Schlotterbeck transfer fee as defender reaches Dortmund agreement
-
Fashion5 days agoWeekend Open Thread: Veronica Beard
-
Politics6 days agoMalcolm In The Middle OG Turned Down ‘Buckets Of Money’ To Appear In Reboot
-
Politics4 days agoWorld Cup exit makes Italy enter crisis mode
-
Crypto World7 days agoCanary Capital Files SEC Registration for PEPE ETF
-
Business5 days agoTesla Model Y Tops China Auto Sales in March 2026 With 39,827 Registrations, Beating Cheaper EVs and Gas Cars
-
Crypto World2 days agoThe SEC Conditionalises DeFi Platforms to Be Avoided for Broker Registration
-
Crypto World2 days agoSEC Signals Exemption for Crypto Interfaces From Broker Registration
-
News Videos20 hours agoSecure crypto trading starts with an FIU-registered
-
NewsBeat3 days agoPep Guardiola and Gary Neville agree over Arsenal title problem that benefits Man City
-
Business6 days agoOpenAI Halts Stargate UK Data Centre Project Over Energy Costs and Copyright Row
-
Business4 days agoIreland Fuel Protests Enter Day 5 as Blockades Spark Shortages and Government Prepares Support Package
-
Crypto World5 days agoFederal judge blocks Arizona from bringing criminal charges against Kalshi
-
Politics6 days agoLBC Presenter Mocks Trump Over Iran War Failures
-
NewsBeat4 days agoJD Vance announces ‘no agreement’ with Iran over nuclear weapons fear
-
Crypto World2 days agoSEC Proposes Certain Crypto Interfaces Don’t Need to Register as Brokers
-
NewsBeat2 days agoTrump and Pope Leo: Behind their disagreement over Iran war
-
Tech6 days agoA version of Windows 10 released a decade ago is now eligible for additional security patches
-
Business5 days agoIMF retains floor for precautionary balances at SDR 20 billion
You must be logged in to post a comment Login