The Polanski-led Green Party will soon be voting on whether they should embed support for Palestinian resistance in their politics.

While Palestine is a distant country, it’s suffering is the direct result of actions taken by a close UK ally. Never mind Balfour, Britain’s ongoing involvement – from arms deals, bilateral trade, and media endorsements of Israel – means it’s responsible for the violence Palestinians experience daily.

Now, Israel has responded to the Green Party’s vocal opposition to its genocide in Gaza, condemning its leader. And its leader Zack Polanski has now let them know exactly what he thinks:

For years we’ve seen an ongoing genocide.

It’s been backed by right wing papers, the US President and by this Labour Government. pic.twitter.com/ESynwd21Ct

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— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) February 23, 2026

Anti-Zionism

As we reported on 28 January:

Pressure group Greens for Palestine is urging the Green Party to declare itself “an anti-Zionist party”. The group has issued a statement in support of a motion which it calls “groundbreaking”. The motion also supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and calls for the de-proscription of Palestine Action.

The Green Party motion is ‘Motion A105: Zionism is Racism’, which calls for:

– The Green Party to declare itself an Anti-Zionist Party
– The Green Party rejects attempts to normalise the racist subjugation and oppression of Palestinians; to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism; to deny or minimise Palestinian human rights; to create hierarchies of racism; and to normalise or attempt to justify apartheid, ethnic cleansing or genocide.
– To reject the IHRA and JDA definitions which have been weaponized to silence legitimate criticism of the state of Israel.
– Full Boycott and Divestment from Israel.
– The Green Party calls for the release of all Palestinian prisoners of conscience (including Marwan Barghouti)
– The Green Party to declare support for a single democratic Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital.
– The Green Party calls for the de-proscription of Palestine Action.
– The Green Party calls for the release of all political prisoners detained for non-violent direct action in support of Palestinian rights.

Independent journalist Matt Kennard has endorsed the motion:

Lubna Speitan—Palestinian Green Party member and a member of the Greens For Palestine Steering Group—has proposed this important motion for the Spring Conference.

I endorse all of it. It should all be Green Party policy. Basic stuff for a progressive party.

Motion A105:…

— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) January 26, 2026

The Zionist response

As reported by the Telegraph, Israeli foreign minister Sharren Haskel described the Greens’ proposal as “horrific”. They also called the Greens “a racist and hateful political party”, stating:

This Green Party motion is one of the most hateful and racist documents I’ve ever read. It calls for the destruction of Israel and seeks to justify terrorism against Israel.

Its intent is to justify the destruction of the Jewish homeland and deny the right of Jews to a national home. The double standards are extraordinary as they demand a national home for Palestinians but not Jews.

The other way to look at this is that the Greens aren’t calling for an end to Israel; they’re calling for an end to the Israel caging the Palestinians in an open air prison.

And as Polanski himself said, it’s hard to take the Israeli government seriously when we just watched them commit a genocide.

Featured image via the Canary

Conor Boyle is a young conservative and unionist from Northern Ireland, an Oxford graduate, and now works in the financial services sector.

How many items in Britain’s current economic policy, tax system, regulatory framework, and so-on, exist almost entirely for domestic short-term political consumption?

Of that, how many items are actually harming our economic performance?

You would have to conclude that the answer to both is: a lot.

What’s worse is that the short-term popularity of certain measures is derived from a belief that we are going to make the rich and successful pay more and atone for their greed and general ‘evilness.’

Of course, this view of the world runs contrary to basic economic literacy.

Money is mobile, and it goes where it’s best treated.

The ‘tax the rich’ mentality that this failing Labour government – and I’m afraid to say the previous Conservative governments also had in large part – is based on the fallacy that we’re going to phase out excessive wealth.

A realistic government should accept that wealth – including levels of which we may find excessive or distasteful – are always going to exist, and we should play our cards better to be a welcoming destination for it.

Creating economic conditions which are hostile to investment, business, finance and the likes is just a gift to the exchequers of our competitors. Countless examples, from Ireland’s low corporation tax regime to cutting the higher rates of Income Tax here in Britain, show beyond doubt, that creating a pro-wealth environment attracts more tax revenues.

To some, it’s counter-intuitive; you increase taxes to increase your revenue. But the most basic understandings of anything to do with economics or tax shows that’s very rarely the case, especially when dealing with the most mobile demographics of people. Thus, the basic political driver inherent in so much of our political discourse; love of the NHS; is improperly framed. Public services, the National Health Service, benefit most from making Britain a place to come and part with your money. It’s not a choice between the nurses and the rich, if we punish rich, they sod off to Dubai and the nurse becomes relatively “richer” in the eyes of the taxman, expected to contribute more as a result.

It struck me a few years ago that policies like the cap on bankers’ bonuses, the high rates of Income Tax, tax on second homes and landlords, the energy windfall tax, the surcharge paid by banks on top of their Corporation Tax, Corporation Tax itself being hiked to 25 per-cent, and other measures, not only don’t serve their stated purpose of financing our beloved public services, but they could be a barrier to a well-financed exchequer.

Take that bankers’ bonuses cap.

A typically populist move enacted after the 2008 recession. The political intuition is clear; banks bad, bankers bad, be seen to “make them pay”. But, as Kwasi Kwarteng pointed out as Chancellor, the cap didn’t cap the amount that bankers were being paid. They were simply paid more in basic salary to avoid is being counted as a bonus. Useless.

Worse than useless though. It’s fair to speculate that such a measure, while totally ineffective, sends out the message to any bank or financial firm around the world that Britain is a place that begrudges your financial success, and sees wealth as a dirty concept. Faced with the choice of New York, Dubai, Frankfurt, Doha, Dublin, even Paris, and very soon potentially Riyadh, many of whom are actively trying to woo new businesses to onshore, we are chasing them away.

Every business that doesn’t move jobs or activity to Britain is lost earnings to young British graduates and school-leavers, lost revenue to our retail and hospitality sector, and of course, lost revenue to the Exchequer, and added pressure on our saintly nurses, teachers and other public servants as a result.

At some level, you can’t blame politicians for their intentions. Many, you assume, mean well. That is, however, no substitute, and no excuse for implementing, cheering on and defending policies which make Britain poorer in the long run.

The same goes for the 45p rate of Income Tax. Part of the “pay their fair share narrative”, but when both Nigel Lawson and Gordon Brown – yes him – actually cut the higher rates, rather than losing money as was predicted, the Treasury received more in tax take. The truth is that the wealthy and successful are wealthy and successful for a reason. They’re smart enough to stay wealthy even when governments are hounding them. But they can be turned-off Britain as a destination for their capital with these envy-driven policies.

And without wanting to sound like a certain former Prime Minister, much of this is based on the fundamentally flawed way that our institutions forecast tax revenue. It’s assumed – seemingly – that tax cuts cannot be revenue-raising measures. As such, Chancellors appear to be cornered by their officials into these spiteful measures designed to squeeze more out of the productive actors in the economy in order to satiate a growing public sector and welfare state. It doesn’t, as we conservatives know well, work. So, the people are not, on average becoming better-off, and those who are; they’re upping sticks and leaving.

In-turn then, with people not being able to get ahead financially, and the feeling of stagnation setting in, the public animosity towards the rich increases. Rather than a virtuous cycle, we get more anti-wealth policies which just create a circle of doom, and the nation is as far away from prosperity as ever.

The state of Britain’s economy necessitates a pro-growth mentality now from government.

It’s easy to say – and has been now by both parties for a few years now – but the action (the bit that matters) is much more difficult. It requires a political spine of lead, and a sort of immunity from immediate bad headlines and the condemnation of a Question Time audience.

The reward will be success.

Success felt in the pockets of the British worker, the tills of the British shopkeeper and restaurateur, the efficiency and improvements in the British hospital ward and classroom and increasing sense of aspiration that comes with it all. Over a four- or five-year electoral cycle, we know which is more pertinent for voters in the long-run. And politics aside, the country needs to be more prosperous. Somebody needs to have the will to stand up and deliver it.

(Alamy)

2 min read20 min

The Prime Minister is considering whether to ask Sir Laurie Magnus to assess whether rules have been breached by Cabinet Office minister Simons, who is currently the subject of an internal investigation by his department, PoliticsHome understands.

Simons, elected at the 2024 general election, is accused of asking a public affairs firm to investigate journalists writing about Labour Together while he was head of the Labour-aligned think tank.

Simons has said APCO Worldwide had “gone beyond” what it had been asked to do when it pursued “unnecessary” personal information about Sunday Times journalist Gabriel Pogrund.

The PR company had agreed to look at “the sourcing, funding and origins” of reporting by the newspaper about the think tank’s failure to declare political donations.

The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Reform UK have all called for Simons to resign from his ministerial position while he is being investigated.

Kevin Hollinrake, chair of the Tories, has said a Cabinet Office investigation into Simons is not sufficient because the department “cannot be left to mark its own homework”.

A group of Labour backbenchers had called on Downing Street to launch an independent investigation into the allegations.

When he ordered the Cabinet Office investigation, which is being led by the government’s propriety and ethics team, Starmer said he “didn’t know anything” about the APCO Worldwide report.

The Guardian later reported that Simons named Pogrund and fellow journalist Paul Holden to British security officials and falsely linked them to pro-Russia propaganda. 

More follows…

Ruth Deyermond looks at Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference and argues that the US is now an unreliable partner and that Europe must develop its own defence capabilities and architecture.

A seemingly unbridgeable gap now exists between the US and Europe on matters of security and politics; as a result, there is an urgent need to develop a European security architecture that does not depend on Washington. Ironically, what has made this gap impossible to ignore is US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s attempt at the Munich Security Conference to repair some of the damage done a year ago.

Rubio’s remarks were notably different in tone from Vice President JD Vance’s hostile and inflammatory speech in 2025. This was greeted with relief by some; and many European diplomats claimed to be reassured by it. But while the tone was clearly intended to calm tensions, the content remained largely unchanged  from Vance’s tirade.

The vision outlined in Rubio’s speech is one in which the US is not bound to NATO allies by shared liberal values like democracy and human rights or respect for the rule of law. Instead, what ties Europe and the US together is culture and heritage, Christianity, “ancestry”, and the superiority of what he calls Western civilisation, described by Rubio as “the greatest civilisation in human history”. These things, he claimed, are menaced by European weakness and by “the forces of civilisational erasure”.

European Commission Vice President Kaja Kallas was the clearest in pushing back against this vision, noting acerbically that “woke, decadent Europe is not facing civilisational erasure” and asserting that “European enlargement is vital for securing democracy and overcoming Europe’s own imperial history”.

Rubio’s speech confirmed the radical ideological gap that has now opened between the US and Europe. To a worrying extent, the US now represents precisely the things that post-1945 Europe organised to prevent: authoritarianism; aggression; might-makes-right; and the glorification of imperialism, driven by civilisational mythologising. It increasingly resembles not the ally that helped to foster liberal democracy in the aftermath of authoritarian destruction, but the dark Other of Europe’s past against which contemporary European identity has been built. In the medium- and long-term Europe – both the European Union as an institution and the democratic states inside and outside it – cannot maintain a close alliance with a state dominated by this ideology while preserving its identity and values.

The speech highlighted another point of rupture: the rejection of “the rules-based international order”. This seems to refer to what is often called “the International Liberal Order” that emerged in the moment of post-Cold War US dominance, and in which democracy, human rights, non-aggression, respect for international law, and economic liberalism were core principles (even if not always adhered to in practice). This is clearly an order that the Trump administration rejects – as does Russia.

But the term more properly describes another order, the one that is not shaped by shared values but by the rules: respect (in theory) for the primacy of state sovereignty; territorial integrity; and international law as embodied by the UN Security Council. These rules were an attempt to learn the lessons of World War Two, which made the consequences of rejecting these devastatingly clear.

Worryingly this order, too, is rejected by the Trump administration. Although Rubio advocated reform of the UN in his speech, he also criticised the “abstractions of international law” and praised lawless acts such as the targeted killings of alleged drug runners in the Caribbean. From the start, the current Trump administration has made it clear that it does not consider itself to be constrained by law or by the principles of state sovereignty and territorial integrity. These are the building blocks of a world without major war; if the world’s most powerful state knocks them down, it is creating a world in which disputes have to be resolved by force.

This rejection of the rules-based order is being directed, among many other targets, towards the US’s supposed allies in NATO, Denmark and Canada. A collective security alliance cannot survive as a meaningful organisation when the major threat to some of those inside it comes from its most powerful member.

Attempts to paper over Trump’s determination to seize Greenland were badly damaged by the insulting public comments of Senator Lindsay Graham, who asked the audience “who gives a s**t who owns Greenland?”, and his even more insulting comments in private to the Danish and Greenland prime ministers.

A third point of rupture is Ukraine and Russia. The Trump administration has split from its former allies in Europe in abandoning support for Ukraine and pressuring Kyiv to agree to a peace settlement that would mean capitulation. That, and the desire to develop economic ties with Russia and to rehabilitate it diplomatically – clear, for example, in the late 2025 US peace plan – stand in sharp contrast to European assessments of the growing threat from Russia and the importance of Ukraine to European security. Rubio made almost no mention of this in his speech but it was central to those of key European leaders.

The consequences of this split between Europe and the US are enormous, and will only grow. Behind the diplomatic affirmations of continued alliance, and despite their own deep reluctance, many Europeans are moving to greater security independence from the US. This will carry huge economic – and therefore probably, political – costs, but there is no realistic alternative.

The Trump administration, which seems to have assumed that Europe has no choice but to bend to Washington’s will, are angry to discover that disregard for international law and untrustworthiness as an alliance partner carries penalites. They were forced into a humiliating climbdown on Greenland by European pushback, and they have been unable to successfully pressure Ukraine in part because Europe has stepped up support. They are reportedly trying to stop the EU prioritising European arms manufacturers in defence procurement. And concerns about illegality appear to have led the UK government to block the use of UK air bases in an attack on Iran. The US is losing influence and money.

Marco Rubio’s Munich speech seemed designed to reassure while reasserting an ideology and a rejection of a rules-based order that leave the US and its former European allies further apart than at any point since the 1940s. It has not been enough to reverse the move towards some form of divorce, which is now necessary for European security and its political integrity. Both Europe and the US will be poorer and more insecure as a result.

By Dr. Ruth Deyermond, Senior Lecturer in Post-Soviet Security at King’s College London.

On Good Morning Britain, money saving expert Martin Lewis pushed back firmly against Kemi Badenoch. Pointing out her blatant oversight, Lewis confronted her misguided approach to the student loan crisis affecting workers across the country. In doing so, Lewis gave a master class in how politicians should be rigorously challenged on policies that impact working people’s everyday lives.

Rather than accepting the Tories headline-grabbing promises, he instead pressed for meaningful solutions. In fact, his challenge was so robust that he managed to get Kemi’s commitment to a direct discussion focused on reforms that would genuinely benefit students.

As opposed to attractive soundbites designed to win votes, as politicians often do.

🚨 WATCH: Kemi Badenoch clashes with Martin Lewis on her plans for student loanspic.twitter.com/pSNrUi8PkR

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) February 23, 2026

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Martin Lewis: “I’m not saying nothing can be done. I’m saying what you should do”

Martin Lewis: If you want to help the middle-earning students, the most important thing is the repayment threshold should have been increased. When the Tories brought this in, it was a graduate contribution system.

Kemi Badenoch: This is exactly why young people are suffering. You’ve got lots of people who finished university where they didn’t have to pay fees. You didn’t have to take out loans. And now you’re all saying, “oh, nothing can be done. Don’t do this.”

Lewis: I’m not saying nothing can be done. I’m saying what you should do.

Here Badenoch deploys some pretty effective rhetorical word play to distract from the actual value of the policy, because apparently that’s not the point

Badenoch: Well, I’m the first person who’s even trying to solve this problem.

Lewis: Wonderful. Shall we have a chat about it? Because I think you’ve got the right idea that this is not a solution that will help middle and young students.

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Badenoch: Martin, if you want us to have a debate, I’m very happy for us to have a debate.

GMB: Does a middle student benefit from a cut in the interest rate?

Badenoch: I think people need to even know what it is I’m talking about. You’re both talking over me. Excuse me. Let me explain what my policy is. I want to make sure that those young people who are paying and paying and their debt is not going down get a relief.

If you think that there’s a better offer, let’s look at it. But what’s made the difference now is that in her budget, Rachel Reeves raised the threshold. So it’s dragging more people into it.

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Lewis: Freezing the threshold.

Badenoch: Well, sorry, increase the number of people getting in because the threshold has been frozen. I don’t think this is fair.

Lewis: Agreed.

Badenoch: The whole student loan system is not working properly. Someone has to do something. And the thing that shocks me is that the minute I say, well, let’s do something, everyone says, “oh, no, no, no, no, no, this is not the right thing”. We’re going round in circles.

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GMB: Cutting the interest rate doesn’t help them. That’s the trouble.

Badenoch: We should not be making money off graduate student loans. That is not right.

Lewis: I 100% agree with you in principle. And I’ve objected to it since when the Conservative government brought it in 2012. I said we shouldn’t have above inflation interest rates on plan two student loans.

i love the idea that if you’re being interviewed on the telly, there is a chance that you get Martin Lewis’d. lets have it happen a few times and then watch people start to limit their exaggerated claims in case he’s behind the sofa waiting to jump out https://t.co/nqjWombVwN

— Graham (@____Graham_) February 23, 2026

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Lewis: ‘But the practical solution, it won’t actually help’

Appearing to take a shit on the Conservatives that came before her tenure, Badenoch insisting she represents a ‘new generation’ of Tories. You know, the Tories that made this issue exponentially worse:

Badenoch: I’m glad you agree. That was five years before I became an MP. A new generation of Conservatives.

Lewis: But where we are now, as the interest has already been added to so many students’ loans, lowering the interest rate now will only help those who can clear within the 30 years, which means lower and middle earning graduates won’t benefit from that change. If you have a billion pounds to help students, the most direct thing that would help all students would be not freezing the repayment threshold, it would be increasing the repayment threshold. While the interest rate is psychologically damaging, I absolutely… I absolutely agree with you. It is really damaging for many people watching.

Badenoch: I just don’t think this is fair on young people. I just don’t think this is fair.

Lewis: But the practical solution, it won’t actually help.

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Badenoch: I strongly disagree.

Lewis: But it won’t help the pounding people’s pockets.

Badenoch: But the other thing that is a problem is that many of these young people have gone to university and taken out courses that were not worth the money. That’s why we’re also talking about apprenticeships. I also did an apprenticeship. I remember more about the apprenticeship than the two degrees. So I’m speaking from experience. I did an apprenticeship, I had two degrees, I paid off student loans, I know what it’s like. And I think that this is the best thing. We have got to start reforming the system and making it better. We can have an argument about the technical details, but this is about the principle. What is happening right now is wrong and someone needs to fix it. Conservatives are the only party who have an answer.

Lewis: Just to say, we’re now on plan five, We’re talking about Plan 2, which is always for past students. So I think we have to be very careful. The debate about going forward is Plan 5 student loans, which are even more expensive because the last Tory government put the cost up even more. But we’re talking about Plan 2 loans, the one with above inflation interest.

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Badenoch: I believe that the Plan 2 is where the real problem is. Those people who started their degrees between 2012 and 2023.

Lewis: Plan 5’s worse

Badenoch: Let’s have a debate about Plan 5 then. But what is the problem now is that any time someone says, well, let’s look at this, there’s always someone sometimes, it’s Martin, oh, this is a terrible idea, and then nothing happens. Nothing is happening. No one is helping these people.

Lewis: Shall we have a chat?

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Badenoch: Yes.

Lewis: Shall we have a chat about it? With some ideas and with some solutions.

I fucking love Martin Lewis. You can see the frustration in his eyes as politicians utilise policy buzzwords just to garner support rather than actually helping people…. https://t.co/GhJ4ctp0l6

— Aymen Retibi (@aymenretibi) February 23, 2026

People want substance and value, not style

Here, Badenoch pretty successfully leans on slick rhetorical wordplay. Nevertheless, Lewis refuses to allow her to shift attention away from the actual substance – and value – of the student loan policy championed by the Conservatives. Kemi’s focus instead becomes the framing, not the facts, with presentation takes priority over practical impact.

Despite her attempts to distance herself, this interview suggests Kemi is just like the Tories before her. All the while, hard-working people juggle rising costs and student loan repayments, feeling their finances tighten day by day.

Featured image via the Canary

Matt Goodwin is Reform UK’s candidate in the Gorton & Denton by-election. On 20 February, we reported that a GB News employee had accused him of sexual harassment. Now, it’s starting to look like Reform have backed away from their candidate.

Oh, and the sexual harassment story wasn’t the only big revelation about Goodwin last week:

Last week, LBC ran this headline after Matt Goodwin’s misogynistic ramblings with Jordan Peterson were disclosed.

Yesterday, Nigel Farage turned up in the middle of the Indian Ocean. 🤦‍♂️

I think it’s fair to say that he has cut Goodwin adrift for next week’s by-election. pic.twitter.com/vaKYheaRkL

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— Don McGowan (@donmcgowan) February 22, 2026

It’s not going Goodwin

When Reform first announced him as their candidate, we reported that Matt Goodwin is an academic and a longtime establishment insider. Despite this, he’s tried to portray himself as an outsider who offers something different to the status quo.

To be fair, there is a notable difference between him and Green candidate Hannah Spencer. As far as we know, Spencer has never attracted allegations like the following:

Reform parachuted-in Gorton and Denton candidate Matthew Goodwin has been accused by a female GB News staffer of sexually harassing her. And Reform boss Nigel Farage is thought to have known about the allegation before he named Goodwin as the party’s candidate in the by-election.

Here’s what LBC reported following Goodwin’s ‘no-child tax’ scandal:

Nigel Farage has distanced himself from comments made by the Reform UK’s Gorton and Denton candidate after he suggested those without children should be taxed in a bid to tackle falling birth rates.

Here what our own Rachel Charlton-Dailey wrote about said scandal:

I can’t imagine the pain that this would cause to those who are struggling with fertility. On top of the emotional and physical toll this puts on you will be financial pressures. For those of us who are infertile, it sends one message. You are not good enough and deserve to be punished for failing as a woman.

I had an elective hysterectomy in 2017 after over a decade of pain. I chose my own health over a condition that was making me want to die, for the sake of one day having a baby. Many would call my decision selfish, but I frankly don’t give a fuck what people who would rather I were in pain think of me.

As much as I loathe a Handmaid’s Tale comparison, this is very apt here. In the novel, working-class women who are infertile are cast out of society. As they have no purpose in a society that values families over all else.

Obviously this is a very emotive issue for people, and you can see why Farage didn’t want to defend the idea of taxing people’s suffering.

Where on Earth is Nigel Farage?

People are talking about the Gorton & Denton race as a pivotal moment which could predict which party wins the 2029 national election. Given that, you’d think Farage would be at the heart and centre of it.

Instead, he’s literally on the other side of the planet:

Chagos is a restricted UK territory. Access is tightly controlled through permits because of the strategic military base on Diego Garcia. This isn’t a tourist island it’s a high-security defence asset.

So did Farage request a permit ?

Or is it another day another stunt https://t.co/ac0sWSJsGf

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— Charlie (@CheckCharlieB) February 21, 2026

One person noted the following:

There’s something off about @Nigel_Farage‘s claim, as he watches the boat sail from Maldives to Chagos.
A round trip to Chagos takes between 6-7 days, covering around 600 miles. He would not have been able to do this trip and be back in UK for the #GortonandDenton by-election. pic.twitter.com/bXgeHlnhHV

— The Crane Report  (@TheCraneReport) February 22, 2026

So, did Farage simply fly to the Chagos Islands for a photo opportunity?

Or was he just looking for an excuse to get away from Goodwin?

We’ll let you decide that one.

Oh, and if Farage has abandoned Goodwin, he’s not the only Reform-linked person to do so:

Isabel Oakeshott is dating Richard Tice, a Reform MP.

Here she is roasting Matt Goodwin, a prospective Reform MP.

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Is the end coming a little bit quicker than everyone imagined it would? pic.twitter.com/dW7icM8fbP

— Landeur 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@Landeur) February 22, 2026

Featured image via The Canary