The Metropolitan Police have arrested Peter Mandelson on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

Police escorted Mandelson from his home in Camden at around 5pm on Monday, 23 February.

He has been under investigation over allegations of his links to – and insider trading with – paedophile and child rape trafficker Jeffrey Epstein whilst he was a serving government minister.

This comes after the Met Police confirmed earlier this month that it had launched an investigation into Mandelson. This was for allegations of misconduct in public office.

He then resigned from the House of Lords.

In a statement shortly after his arrest, the Met Police said:

Officers have arrested a 72-year-old man on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

He was arrested at an address in Camden on Monday, 23 February and has been taken to a London police station for interview.

This follows search warrants at two addresses in the Wiltshire and Camden areas.

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For more coverage of the Epstein files that centres victims and survivors please click here.

Featured image via Sky News/YouTube

The term ‘woke’ is sometimes hard to define, and that’s become more true over time. Initially, the term was used to describe things like equality laws, charity, and activism. Now, right-wingers have overused it to the point that ‘woke’ is basically anything which doesn’t reflect them personally:

Can you guess their band name? pic.twitter.com/V0AvEtUHqA

— Anti Woke Memes (@AntiWokeMemes) February 20, 2026

The right will also describe anything to the left of their current position as ‘woke’. And this is a big problem for Reform UK, because the new party Restore is to their right.

In other words, Farage & co are the woke mob now.

And the right are gunning for London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham in particular:

Difficult to see the difference between Laila and a typical leftist.

-Attacks the right
-Attacks Christianity
-Gets basic facts wrong
-Shouts a lot

It’s all there.pic.twitter.com/hCoEuq6j2F

— Nick Dixon (@NickDixon) February 22, 2026

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Reform go woke

Firstly, we should point out that we don’t agree with any of the people we’re going to be referencing in this article. We’re enjoying watching them fight, though.

We should also say that we do think there’s a big difference between Cunningham and a “typical leftist”. In fact, we covered her debate with arch leftist Lowkey just yesterday – a debate in which Cunningham literally fled the scene. And if there’s any doubt if that was to do with her debating skills, here’s a quote from her argument:

And!?

And!?

Has he done any wrongdoing!?

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And!?

And!?

Feel free to read the article, but the additional context doesn’t make her look better.

Getting into it, the right are mad at Cunningham because she said this:

Laila Cunningham slams Rupert Lowe: “British people will not vote for a party that believes you can only be British if you are WHITE and CHRISTIAN.”

Kevin O’Sullivan: “Rupert Lowe did NOT say that.”

🚨 PLANK OF THE WEEK: https://t.co/LceoDsDbgt@TVKev @policylaila @PCBarnes123 pic.twitter.com/6pFbRNWiU2

— Talk (@TalkTV) February 22, 2026

Regardless of the finer details, when Reform politicians like Cunningham attack Restore for being too far right, what they’re saying is Rupert Lowe & .co need to be more woke.

Her accusation comes from a point made by Restore spokesperson Charlie Downes:

Bad news if you’re white, British, and of no faith – according to this new political party, not even you are actually British. pic.twitter.com/C5vQCifgpU

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) February 17, 2026

Although you can read what Downes said above, he has claimed he didn’t say it (or didn’t mean it?):

I actually can’t believe she’s doubling down on all this.

[Cunningham] has once again asserted that I said you have to be “white and Christian” in order to be British.

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I have never said this, on TalkTV or elsewhere, and this is not Restore Britain’s position. If you want to know where we stand on these matters, look at our page.

Reform have again shown themselves to be incapable of engaging in good-faith debate, instead resorting to name-calling. Truly pathetic.

They should sack whoever is briefing Cunningham to stay these things. Dreadful messaging strategy.

There’s a problem for the Reform lot, though, and it’s that lots of people on the right agree that only white people can be British. Take weirdo Jess Gill for instance:

Charlie Downes said if you don’t have British ancestry then you’re not British.

I’m sorry but if I go to Japan and get really into Japanese culture, I’ll never be Japanese. That isn’t an insult. It’s just reality.

What do Reform actually believe in?

pic.twitter.com/1KQLWym5De

— Jess (@jessgill03) February 18, 2026

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Carl ‘milkshake’ Benjamin described Reform as “fake meat”, which must burn if you’re a carvery warrior like Farage:

Reform YooKay is just a tepid, watered-down, weak sauce version of Restore Britain. They know what needs to be done, hence this containment policy, but lack the guts to actually do it.

Why would I choose fake meat when steak is on the menu? https://t.co/DH5WrFE074

— Carl Benjamin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@Sargon_of_Akkad) February 22, 2026

Cunningham also labelled Restore ‘neo-Nazis’, which led to GB News apologising on her behalf:

I will not tolerate such vile lies about my team.

GB News did the right thing clarifying.

— Rupert Lowe MP (@RupertLowe10) February 22, 2026

It’s going to keep on kicking off too, because Farage is also calling these people ‘extremists’:

🧵Let me explain what is really going on:

Nigel Farage’s selective criticism of ethno nationalism is the stick with which he hopes to beat Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain. It threatens to split the Reform UK vote – esp following Elon Musk’s endorsement of Restore/Lowe. 1/ https://t.co/FWCbgUn0yi

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— Sangita Myska (@SangitaMyska) February 23, 2026

The following account is not someone we trust, but what they’re suggesting does feel like what’s happening. GB News have avoided talking about Restore, and the right wing host in the video below is clearly terrified she’ll be called ‘woke’ next:

I’m told GB News is in a bit of a panic about what to do with Restore Britain.

Many of their viewers support Restore but their cash cow @Nigel_Farage has previously all but banned coverage and platforming of @RupertLowe10 at GBN.

GBN are caught in a mess of their own making. https://t.co/6yFL1lPnEe

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— Wolf 🐺 (@WorldByWolf) February 22, 2026

Making problems for Nigel

Gobshite Tommy Robinson has also spoken out against Reform, and what he’s pointing out isn’t wrong:

You see what happens when there is a party on Nigel’s arse, he’s forced to change . But I don’t believe a word reform say pic.twitter.com/FGnbsodIki

— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) February 22, 2026

Reform can’t stand the thought of being the woke party, so they’re copying Restore. Restore will respond by moving even further right, and eventually Reform will have to accept that they’re woke now, or they’ll have to go so far right they become unelectable.

In the meantime, pass the popcorn.

Featured image via The Canary

What are the benefits of incline walking?

What about running?

So, which is best for me?

Reform UK have unveiled their new multi-pronged pledge to ‘restore Britain’s Christian heritage’. The far-right party plans to introduce a ‘patriotic’ Christian curriculum, as well as attaching listed status to church buildings to prevent them being turned into mosques.

Quite apart from this pointless reactionary nostalgia, the plans would spell the death of those same churches that Reform claims to value. Which is unsurprising really, given that the pack of liars and conmen that make up the party couldn’t actually give a fig about Christianity – beyond its usefulness in stirring up Islamophobia, of course.

‘More things to take pride in’

Reform presented its plans through newly appointed home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf, as his first speech in the new role. In an interview with the Times beforehand, Yusuf – himself a Muslim born to Sri Lankan immigrants – called Christianity:

core to the history and the DNA of the country.

However, he went on to complain of the UK losing its Christian values:

What we’ve seen is that sense of high-trust society eroded quite rapidly, actually, and that’s in no small part because of the vast numbers of people who have arrived over a short period of time from low-trust societies. Some people might wince at that phrase, but it’s just obviously true.

To counter this perceived issue, Yusuf declared that his party would institute a “patriotic curriculum” centered on Christianity. This, he argued, would give children “more things to take pride in again”:

I think if politicians play their part, then I’m optimistic that over time … they will have more things to take pride in as they are made to feel proud of their history again, rather than being taught that they should be ashamed of [it].

As such, this curriculum would presumably be incredibly restricted. If children are meant to take pride in patriotic Christianity, they’ll presumably have to skip over the litany of atrocities committed by the British church.

This includes, but is by no means limited to, the witch hunts, the forced indoctrination of colonised peoples (and the legacy of homophobia it left behind), numerous pogroms against Jewish people in the UK, and, of course, all those crusades against Muslim nations in the Middle East?

Actually, who am I kidding? Reform would probably think all of that shit was something to be proud of.

Listed status

Along with this festering lump of a policy proposal, Yusuf also stated that Reform would thrust automatic listed status onto church buildings. This would both require their upkeep and prevent changes in their use.

The home affairs spokesman explained that this would prevent churches from being turned into mosques. Yusuf claimed he’d received emails from “anxious residents” complaining about this very phenomenon, and said that:

Regardless of whether somebody is of faith or not, or which faith they follow, I think the Christian heritage of this country is very important and protecting our heritage and our culture is important, otherwise the country is not a country, it’s just an economic zone.

And so, as one step in pursuit of that, we will end the incendiary practice of converting churches into mosques or any other places of worship by granting listed status automatically to all churches and prohibiting that.

The problem here (or one problem at least) is that it’s a policy designed to whip up the idea of Muslims rocking up and turfing out a bunch of active Christians from an in-use church. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

In the last decade alone, over 3500 churches have closed their doors. In turn, they’ve become pubs, clubs, gyms, apartments, and yes – other places of worship. The reasons behind the closures include declining attendance, falling income, and, in particular, the high cost of building maintenance.

In the 2021 census, the number of self-described Christians in England and Wales fell by 13% compared to the previous decade. This meant that Christians made up less than half of the population for the first time in the history of the census.

Empty, expensive and unused

However, for anyone who has attended church regularly in the last few decades, that decline has already been plainly visible. Whilst just under half of the population identify as Christian, only around 5% actually attend church.

Churches are closing, not because of Muslims immigrating to the UK, but because the buildings are old, expensive, and empty. What’s more, I think any representative of the church could have told Reform that, if they’d bothered to ask

Instead, the far-right party plans to burden an already-failing institution with the financial costs of maintaining listed churches. All the while, the buildings still sit idle, when they could instead gain new life and new use in the community – as places of worship or otherwise.

The move marks another step in Reform’s descent into a grim imitation of US-style Christofascism, nakedly motivated by Islamophobia. It’s a vain attempt to appeal to an imaginary, idealised, bygone era of a more homogeneously (white) Christian UK.

Oh, and it would be utterly ruinous to the very institution that Reform is paying lip-service to, to boot.

Featured image via the Canary

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…