Green party deputy leader Mothin Ali has hit back at Israel lobby-funded Starmeroid MP David Taylor. Taylor had quoted notoriously Islamophobic, pro-Israel ‘X’ account ‘Habibi’ to attack Ali. It was part of the Israel lobby’s flailing attempt to revive the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam against the Greens for daring to debate whether to support international law on Palestinian resistance.

Taylor went for Ali after the Habibi account used an X post to try to mock the Greens. With the typical Zionist lack of self-awareness, the troll didn’t realise that what it was using to attack Ali is 100% true and aligned with the majority of Britons’ disgust with Israel’s genocide and the Labour party’s collaboration in it. Ali’s post also demonstrates the kind of plain-speaking politics most voters would welcome compared to the evasiveness of mainstream political parties:

David Taylor has form

Taylor’s own record, unsurprisingly, is scarcely any better than Habibi’s. He joined the Israel lobby’s attempts to remove anti-genocide hero Francesca Albanese from her voluntary UN post advocating for Palestinians. He promoted the Starmer regime’s unlawful ban on Palestine Action – and wants it extending to the Islamic Human Rights Commission for being ‘anti-British’ by opposing war. He opposed a report criticising Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians and pushed for war with Iran to protect Israel. He publicly called for military strikes on Iran in February 2025 to protect Mossad-controlled mobs. And he opposed the government creating an official definition of Islamophobia – one that almost exactly mirrors the ‘IHRA’ antisemitism definition he supports.

True to form, Jewish News libel-machine Lee Harpin joined in the attack on Ali, though he used a different tack, citing supposed horror at Ali’s “repeated engagement” with Muslim news site 5Pillars.

But like his party boss, Mothin Ali knows to come out fighting when the Israel lobby revs up its smear machine. He hit back in uncompromising style, telling Taylor that his post showed “exactly why you’re called the genocide party” and pointing out the racism of the ‘Habibi’ account Taylor quoted:

This is exactly why you’re called the genocide party! Labour MPs now agree with extreme racists and islamophobes, like there’s no difference between them!

Anyway how much did you get? https://t.co/nPzuc2C3pU

— Mothin Ali (@MothinAli) February 24, 2026

What a very welcome difference to the ‘apologise and apologise again’ response to pro-Israel smears that killed Corbyn’s Labour.

Featured image via the Canary

Poor celebrities. Hugh Laurie, who starred in Israeli spy thriller series Tehran for Israeli public channel Kan 11, has seemingly disavowed Zionism. As one can expect, the Zionists are throwing the dummy out of the pram over this.

Tribute pompts backlash

On 17 February, Laurie tweeted a tribute to Dana Eden, a co-creator and producer of Tehran, who recently passed away, sharing following words:

Eden died on Sunday, reportedly taking her own life. It’s a terrible thing. She was brilliant, funny, and an exceptional leader. The Canary extends love and condolences to her nearest and dearest.

Laurie’s tribute drew criticisms of his work – criticised for fictionalising the life of a Mossad agent in Iran, normalizing Israel’s infractions, and mourning a figure associated with Israel’s “propaganda arm.” And on the subject of Gaza and the plight of its people, Laurie has nothing to say.

Two days after the social media storm, which seemingly touched a nerve, he posted the following defence:

I used to hate blocking people,” but “I’m older now.” Again, he was condemned for working for the show and for his racist “blackface” in a previous series called Jeeves and Wooster.

Then came his apparent disavowal of Zionism and its army of digital trolls.

Nothing I have ever said or done could lead a sane person to believe that I am a Zionist. However. If someone exults in the death of a friend of mine, yes I will block them. If you wouldn’t do the same in my position, you can fuck off too.

— Hugh Laurie (@hughlaurie) February 20, 2026

The Zionists were loud and rattled. How dare he? How dare a public figure refuse to align himself with a settler colonial project after reaping the fame of  starring in Zionist propaganda?

GB News, Daily Mail, Spectator, the Telegraph, and Jeremy Vine contributor Angela Epstein lamented that Laurie was not a Zionist.

Not Hugh Laurie as well. I thought he was one of the decent ones…. https://t.co/45W8HKAAQN

— Angela Epstein (@adepstein1) February 20, 2026

Angela Epstein is a Gaza genocide denier, and regular critic of Corbyn, Sultana, and Polanski.

Rabbi Litvin called Laurie “pathetic” for his disassociation from Zionism.

What greater affront could @hughlaurie make to Dana Eden than using her death to disassociate from Dana, her people, and her homeland.

How utterly pathetic. https://t.co/w31uw6zAGp

— Rabbi S Litvin (@BluegrassRabbi) February 20, 2026

To which Laurie replied:

Rabbi. I did no such thing, nor would I ever. Please re-read in the morning.

Jonathan Sacerdoti’s Spectator piece was the most rambling of all – insisting that Laurie must “own the full genocidal implications” of not being a Zionist – as if opposing a settler-colonial project were the real violence.

Is @hughlaurie a Zionist? Does it really matter?

What celebrities and others really mean when they say they are ‘anti-Zionist’.https://t.co/YwbOcsdP0g

— Jonathan Sacerdoti (@jonsac) February 23, 2026

Let’s talk about Zionism baby

The question of how to talk about Zionism – the explicitly colonialist ideology of the settler-state of Israel – has frazzled many a celebrity.

Some, like Laurie, are learning the hard way that involvement in Israeli TV comes with ideological strings attached.

He didn’t expect mudslinging by the Zionists funding the series Tehran, incensed by his lack of allegiance.

So, while, Laurie figures out his allegiances, let’s take a moment to appreciate the film industry figures using their platforms to call out Israel’s genocide.

These include Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem and Brian Cox who recently signed the open letter condemning the Berlin Film Festival’s silence on Gaza. It seems that here’s hope yet, the world is taking note Israel.

Featured image via the Canary

Many see Reform UK as a toxic party which preys on people’s worries to promote division. Now, one of their MPs is talking up the idea of the most divisive outcome of all – Civil War:

🚨 NEW: Reform UK MP Danny Kruger says a British civil war is possible if they don’t win the next general election

“If we don’t win, or if we win and then make a mess of it, I do fear for our country”

[@siennamarla]

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) February 24, 2026

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Reform and civil war

Sienna Rodgers conducted the interview with Kruger for Politics Home. Noting that Kruger is good friends with Dominic Cummings, Rodgers wrote:

Cummings has warned that Britain is sliding towards civil war, claiming that we are “only random viral posts away from riots and prairie fires getting out of control”. Does Kruger agree?

“Yeah,” he replies. The left portrays Reform as “rabble-rousers” who incite division, which could become violence. “The total opposite is the case. The only chance of unity for our country is Reform,” the MP continues. “If we don’t win, or if we win and then make a mess of it, I do fear for our country.”

Let’s be real; when politicians talk up violence like this, they’re doing it to rile up the most agitated elements in their base.

People responded to Kruger as follows:

More yank nonsense but extremely dangerous language nonetheless and shocking that an MP would even think about saying this. It’s hard to be hopeful about the UK. https://t.co/LgTS2cz1rt

— cez (@cezthesocialist) February 24, 2026

Absolute disgrace this, threatening that if people don’t vote Reform UK there will be civil unrest.

Can’t win based on policies because they are so vague that they have to resort to fear. https://t.co/Fd7O8pzOMl

— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) February 24, 2026

Is his opinion of the people he represents really that low? https://t.co/edKs7lM9DT

— Frances ‘Cassandra’ Coppola (@Frances_Coppola) February 24, 2026

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Rich men’s wars

The piece from Sienna Rogers is worth a read, anyway, featuring stuff like the following:

His own attention is geared towards the Civil Service, which will see a major headcount reduction under Reform plans. Kruger sets out a private sector-style vision: more people brought in from the outside; ‘high-flyers’ better-paid, with a performance-related element; some recruited for short periods, say six months, to work on a specific task.

Reform will prioritise “people with actual domain expertise” over “these posh generalists who float about from department to department making policy at the moment”, says the Eton-educated MP some would describe as a posh generalist himself.

Why is it always the rich who talk up wars they know they won’t have to fight?

Featured image via Parliament

Russian military veterans have described the grinding horrors of war against Ukraine. The former soldiers appear in a new BBC documentary named The Zero Line: Inside Russia’s War.

They claim to have witnessed summary executions by Russian commanders as well as massed human wave attacks referred to as ‘meat storms’.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in 2021. It soon descended into stalemate with NATO countries, including the UK, arming Ukraine. Some sources put the number of total casualties at 1.8 million. A US-led peace deal is currently being thrashed out as fighting continues.

The soldiers told the BBC that the practice of executions was known as ‘zeroing’. One alleged he saw a Russian commander – later decorated valour – order the death of another soldier:

I see it – just two metres, three metres… click, clack, bang.

Another veteran from a different unit said he saw the same officer execute four men:

I knew them. I remember one of them screaming, ‘Don’t shoot, I’ll do anything!

The veterans also reported apparent mass graves:

20 bodies of fellow soldiers lying in a pit after being “zeroed” by comrades.

Meat waves

The interviewees described:

how they were tortured for refusing to take part in assaults they describe as verging on suicide missions. Russian troops call these attacks “meat storms” as waves of men are sent across the front line relentlessly to try and wear down Ukrainian forces.

One eyewitness said he refused to go to the front line and was :

tortured and urinated on.

He claimed:

Others in his unit who refused would be electrocuted, starved, and then forced into meat storms unarmed…

The Russian government told the BBC its forces operated:

with utmost restraint, as far as possible under the conditions of a high-intensity conflict, treating their personnel with maximum care.

The government said they could not verify any of the claims but insisted criminal allegations were investigated.

You can read the full testimony here. The documentary, due to air on TV on 24 February, can already be seen online here.

Pipeline strike

Ukraine is alleged to have destroyed a key section of oil pipeline with drones. The Druzbha-1 station supplied Russian crude oil to eastern Europe. Open source X accounts showed footage of explosions:

BREAKING:

The Druzhba-1 station at Kaleikino, the key node of the Druzhba oil pipeline, was blown up by Ukraine

The oil pipeline accounts for 86% of Hungary’s oil consumption

Almost 100% of Slovakia’s oil consumption

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As a response, Slovakia announced it will halt electricity… pic.twitter.com/SPu6hCZEDH

— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) February 23, 2026

Hungarian foreign affairs minister Péter Szijjártó said the country would stop supplying diesel to Ukraine unless the matter was addressed:

Despite promises and assurances, it has still not been restored due to a Ukrainian political decision even though every technical condition is at hand, according to our information.

A European Commission spokesperson told reporters:

We are in contact with Ukraine on the timeline for reparation of the Druzhba oil pipeline and how quickly this might be up and running.

The spokesperson insisted reserve oil stocks meant there were:

no short-term risks to security of supply for Hungary and Slovakia.

The war is now 5 years old. The Kremlin said on 24 February it has not achieved all its aims yet. And, in true Trumpian fashion, the US president has indicated he wants a peace deal done by 4 July – in time for the United States’ 250th birthday celebrations.

Featured image via the BBC

Oh FFS. Here we go again with the rotten core of the British establishment brazenly shielding its own from the real horrors they’ve inflicted.

In capitalist Britain, power protects predators.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — the nonce formerly known as “Prince” — gets hauled in on his 66th birthday for “misconduct in public office,” a typically slimy, bureaucratic catch-all that basically comes down to him leaking some trade secrets to his paedo pal Jeffrey Epstein back when he was playing trade envoy.

It’s a charge that might land him in a cushy cell for life in theory, but we all know it’ll end in a slap on the wrist, a quiet settlement, or some sausage-fingered royal intervention to make it vanish like those military titles did some years ago.

Call me a cynic, but this appears to be a deliberate sidestep by the police and the Crown to avoid the elephant in the room — sweaty Andrew’s well-documented alleged abuse of Epstein’s underage victims.

Think about it, the old bill has dusted off some ancient misconduct law about sharing memos with a dead sex trafficker, instead of charging him with the rape, exploitation, and paedophilic predation that’s staring them in the fucking face.

It’s class war, motherfuckers

From where I’m standing, this reeks of class warfare at its most disgustingly insidious. The ruling elite get to play by an entirely different set of rules. While poor and working class people rot in prison for something like petty theft, selling a bit of pot, or protesting against genocide, these billionaire parasites dodge accountability for systemic abuse.

At what point do we consider revolution to be a just and necessary course of action? Personally, I don’t think 99% of Britain has the balls for anything like that.

The French had the right idea, and I don’t mean tractor blockades but the guillotine blades dished up to their parasitic royals in the late 1700’s, shortly before Reform UK’s founding conference.

Okay, maybe we don’t need to see literal heads rolling into a crested wicker basket. There are still plenty of uninhabited islands where we can drop off the predatory elites, or better still, feed the Great White Shark population with some billionaire nonces.

See, I’d make a fucking great Secretary of State for Justice.

Nobody actually believes this is law enforcement, do they? Surely they also think it’s a grubby cover-up, a way to placate the public with a performative bust while ensuring the nonce never faces the full weight of his depravity?

My position on the British monarchy isn’t complicated and couldn’t be any clearer. Let’s get every single skeleton out of the closet, including the already-dead Duke of Kent, return the jewels, seize the estates and seek justice for the victims of the predatory elite. Let’s drag every single complicit aristocrat into court for their actual crimes against humanity, rather than tiptoe around naming the paedophiles and their enablers in statements, treating them like fragile glass instead of the filth that they are.

Meanwhile, let’s go after the Greens

I put the radio on in the car earlier, fully expecting to hear a heated debate between royalists and republicans. A former Prince being arrested is pretty big news, after all, even if it is no different to a serial killer being arrested for a minor assault.

Instead, they were discussing the Green Party’s position on the legalisation of drugs.

Funnily enough, I originally planned to write a thousand-word piece on why a Green victory in Gorton and Denton would be a victory for common decency, the British left, and bigger boobs for the many, but along came the misconduct distraction, and here I am, distracted.

Anyway, Gorton and Denton…

Be in no doubt, the Greens absolutely must crush it in the Gorton and Denton by-election on Thursday. This isn’t an ordinary by-election as the Green candidate, Hannah Spencer must not only smash the rotting facade of Starmer’s Labour betrayal, but also block the fascist-adjacent Reform UK from poisoning the well.

Labour and Reform must lose the Gorton and Denton by-election.

Hannah Spencer, a no-nonsense local plumber and councillor, is my kind of candidate. She’s not some polished elite, she’s from the trenches, pushing for public energy ownership to slash bills and reclaim profits from offshore fat cats.

A two-horse race

The Labour Party cannot win this election. Their best hope was with Andy Burnham, but they blocked him from standing, rigging their own NEC to protect Starmer’s cushy Westminster bubble, prioritising party machine hacks like Angeliki Stogia over actual fighters for the people.

This is a two-horse-race between the Greens and Reform UK. The Greens, under Zack Polanski, are surging as the true anti-Reform bulwark and the myth of Labour Party invincibility has been well and truly shattered.

While the emergence of the new Reform splinters such as Restore and Advance are likely to have damaging implications for the Farage party in the long term, here and now, the red part of Gorton and Denton need to do the right thing, and vote Green.

The choice really couldn’t be any clearer. Enable the far-right with a vote for a discredited, deceased Labour Party, or deliver a seismic, historic victory for the left.

Vote Green, please

On the off-chance of a Labour voter in Gorton and Denton reading this now, please, put party preference to one side and get behind the Green candidate. And if you don’t like her, you’ll have the chance to vote her out in three years.

Will you have that chance if your constituency becomes a solid base for Farage photo-ops for weeks to come? Do you really want to see that fucking horrible piece of shit in every supermarket, pub and petrol station forecourt while you’re just trying to get the school run done, just because there’s something you don’t quite like about Polanski?

If the people want to send a clear message to Keir Starmer, the only vote to consider is for Hannah Spencer and the Greens.

Any other vote is an endorsement of Reform UK and their super-rich string pullers, and that revolution I mentioned earlier — however it may look — will get buried under Reform’s boot and it will be full steam ahead for Farage’s hateful mob to metastasize nationwide, dragging us toward a dystopia of borders, bosses, and yet more bigotry.

Vote Green.

Featured image via the Canary

A police chief in charge of AI use has admitted that a new £115m national police data centre will produce biased and racist results. However, he also claims that police will try to mitigate that risk.

Which is all fine then, given that the police have done such a good job of combating their own racism so far.

Alex Murray – the National Crime Agency’s threat leadership director, and the national lead for AI – said:

Once you’ve recognised and minimised [bias], how do you train officers to deal with outputs to ensure that it is further minimised?

If you talk about live facial recognition or predictive policing, there will be bias, and you need to get in the data scientists and the data engineers to clean the data, to train the model appropriately, and then to test it.

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There is no point releasing something to policing that has bias in it that’s not recognised, and everything should be done to minimise it to a level where it can be understood and mitigated.

AI use: ‘lack of meaningful oversight’

Labour have recently called for a massive expansion in the use of AI in policing. This has already been criticised in an early day motion tabled in parliament, with signatories including Labour MP Jon Trickett. The motion voices alarm at the creation of:

a surveillance framework resembling a panopticon, with asymmetric state power exercised over the population without adequate statutory safeguards or democratic consent; recognises widespread concern from civil liberties organisations regarding misidentification, algorithmic bias and lack of meaningful oversight; and calls on the Government to halt the rollout of live facial recognition and AI policing technologies

Part of the government’s initiative includes building a new national AI data centre, which will cost the public an eye-watering £115m. The centralised data centre would replace the current system, in which individual forces make their own decisions on AI in policing. Critics argue that this framework is slow and wasteful.

AI racism: they know, they’re doing it anyway

Alex Murray claimed that the centre would try to reduce bias, and to determine which private suppliers’ products work best. However, the police have form for neglecting to reduce or act on bias in their AI policing already. On the failure of a previous police venture in facial recognition technology, the Association for Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) stated that:

System failures have been known for some time, yet these were not shared with those communities affected, nor with leading sector stakeholders.

Furthermore, Murray also argued that a human police officer will always have to make any final decisions on what to do with an AI tool’s results.

This will, of course, come as absolutely no reassurance to anybody who knows that UK police forces have known about their own systematic racism and bias for decades and completely failed to address it.

Reproducing human bias

On the use of ‘machine learning’ in policing, I previously wrote that AI decision-making is sometimes perceived as unbiased and emotionless. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather, it simply hides the – very human – biases in its training dataset behind a veneer of cold ‘fairness’.

In her report on AI biases in policing, the UN’s Ashwini K.P. – special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism – also called out predictive policing. Back in 2024, Ashwini explained that:

Predictive policing can exacerbate the historical over policing of communities along racial and ethnic lines. Because law enforcement officials have historically focused their attention on such neighbourhoods, members of communities in those neighbourhoods are overrepresented in police records. This, in turn, has an impact on where algorithms predict that future crime will occur, leading to increased police deployment in the areas in question. […]

When officers in overpoliced neighbourhoods record new offences, a feedback loop is created, whereby the algorithm generates increasingly biased predictions targeting these neighbourhoods. In short, bias from the past leads to bias in the future.

Similarly, AI algorithms have also shown deep racial bias in its ability to recognise human faces. A study by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) on the use of facial recognition technology in the national police database turned up more incorrect matches for Black and Asian people than white people.

Darryl Preston – the APCC’s forensic science lead – said:

The discovery of an in-built bias in the police national database’s retrospective facial recognition system, even if only in limited circumstances, demonstrates the need for independent oversight of these powerful tools.

It is not acceptable for technology to be used unless and until it has been thoroughly tested to eliminate bias. That clearly was not the case in this instance.

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Both Labour and the police themselves know – and have been reminded repeatedly – that AI policing produces discriminatory results. The problem is that they just don’t care.

They’ll continue pressing forward, with weak promises to ‘mitigate’ the bias. Then, when AI policing inevitably reproduces human bigotry against real people, we’ll get the same playbook we’ve seen before. A decade-late half-apology, sworn promises to reform and do better, and then more of the same old bigotry.

Featured image via the Canary

Former Labour staffer and former Stevenage councillor Conor McGrath has been charged with “taking or making indecent images of a child”. McGrath, who used to work for Israel-funded MP Kevin Bonavia, was arrested after a ten-month probe by Herts Police.

McGrath appears to have been publicly quiet about Israel. But it’s unthinkable that Bonavia would have employed an anti-Zionist staffer. He therefore becomes the latest in a seemingly endless string of right-wing Labour figures linked to Israel who have been convicted or accused of child sex offences.

Starmer’s record as Labour leader is an appalling continuation of the impunity of celebrity paedophiles when he ran the CPS. He was hit in early February 2025 by a scandal over his peerage for former adviser Matthew Doyle despite knowing Doyle had campaigned for the election of a Scottish Labour paedophile. This in turn followed the scandal of the various appointments given to the disgraced Peter Mandelson despite his ardent fandom toward serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein — to whom he also leaked confidential state and financial information.

The iceberg

But those cases are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Starmer’s right-wing, pro-Israel faction is riddled with paedophiles:

• ‘Friend of Israel’ Liron Velleman was convicted of repeated sex crimes against a 13-year-old girl.
• In January 2025, former Blair minister Ivor Caplin was arrested in a sting operation as he allegedly attempted to meet a 15-year-old boy for sex. Local police went after local left-winger Greg Hadfield for exposing the explicit content Caplin posted on his X feed — Hadfield defeated the ‘vexatious’ charge in November 2025. However, no charges have yet been brought against Caplin and a court did not impose bail conditions after his initial bail expired.
• Hackney councillor Tom Dewey, an organiser in pro-Israel group ‘Labour First’, admitted possession of the most serious category of child rape images in 2023. The party knew of his arrest when it allowed him to stand for election. After his conviction, it blocked local women members from its systems to prevent them discussing the case.
• In March 2025 Sam Gould, another JLM activist who worked for Starmer’s health secretary Wes Streeting, quit as a Redbridge councillor after being convicted on two separate counts of indecent exposure to a 13-year-old girl.
•  The following month Dan Norris MP, an ally of Keir Starmer, was arrested over allegations of rape, child sex offences and child abduction.  Avon and Somerset Police says its investigation is still ongoing.
•  The same Dan Norris was arrested again for allegations of rape and sexual assault.

This issue is so endemic to the Zionist Labour right that it almost looks like a factional entry requirement to the party’s friends of genocide club.

Featured image via the Canary

The Royal Navy’s spokesperson has refused to confirm whether UK sailors are aboard American ships bound for Iran. This is despite one ship in the USS Gerald R. Ford’s carrier group always having a British navigator, according to the Royal Navy’s own website.

The denials persist despite previous confirmations by the Defence Secretary himself – albeit to a much more pliable media outlet than the Canary: Murdoch’s Sky News.

The USS Gerald Ford Carrier group is Iran-bound in the Mediterranean. The supercarrier and its accompanying destroyers are headed for the Suez canal. The group will join with other US warships in the Gulf as the US threatens to attack Iran.

British navigator

The Ford has been in the Caribbean for several months. The carrier took part in the kidnap of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

Star and Stripes broke down the carrier group’s composition:

The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and presumably its escorts, the destroyers USS Winston S. Churchill, USS Bainbridge and USS Mahan, transited the Strait of Gibraltar on Friday, photographs posted by local ship watchers show.

As the Royal Navy’s own website bragged in September 2025:

USS Winston S Churchill is always deployed with a British navigator as a nod to the destroyer’s name but also to the close bond between the United States and the UK.

Note: “always”.

UK personnel may have been involved in the Venezuela raid in larger numbers. We asked the Ministry of Defence (MoD) about Venezuela operations in November 2025. We couldn’t get a straight answer then either.

Multiple UK personnel aboard

In November 2025, Sky News reported:

A small number of British military personnel – single digits – are understood to be deployed on USS Gerald R Ford, a giant US aircraft carrier, and other warships that form part of the carrier strike group that has been sent towards Venezuela.

The Murdoch-owned outlet said:

The defence secretary was asked whether these British personnel would be allowed to take part in any US attack on the country.

Healy replied:

We will make sure as we always do that our British military are consistent with international humanitarian law.

In terms of military and intelligence operations and sharing with the US, they are out closest security defence and intelligence partner and they will remain so.

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Iran armada

The Canary asked the MoD if this was still the case on 23 February:

Can I confirm it is still practice/policy to have a British navigator on the USS Winston Churchill? And that there is one aboard currently?

I can only point you in the direction of a recent PQ [parliamentary question] on this topic, which is below.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether UK armed forces personnel are embedded in the US Gerald Ford carrier strike group in the Caribbean.

Defence minister Al Carns replied on 12 January:

Featured image via the Canary

Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden has called for the annulment of any trade deals arranged by disgraced Starmer adviser Peter Mandelson. The call comes after Mandelson’s arrest on suspicion of leaking UK secrets to serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein.

Mandelson’s known closeness to Epstein did not prevent Starmer appointing him as a top Downing Street adviser, and as UK ambassador to the US. That closeness – ardour is more accurate – saw Mandelson sending Epstein hugely lucrative ‘insider trading’ information in emails exposed by the latest Epstein files release.

In an ‘X’ post linking to coverage of Mandelson’s arrest yesterday, Dearden wrote:

This guy has crafted some incredibly damaging trade and investment deals in the last 12 months, opening Britain to greater domination by Big Tech and Big Pharma. Those deals now must be reopened & rescinded.

https://t.co/nzMZyQmurG

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— Nick Dearden (@nickdearden75) February 23, 2026

Mandelson had a wide reach

Dearden did not elaborate on what mechanisms could be used to rescind the deals, but he has advocated for US companies to be barred completely from European and UK contracts to rein in Trump’s global trade war. In the same article, he also correctly points out that trade has always been a weapon for the rich to use against poor people:

Trade has always been a weapon used by the rich to disadvantage the poor, and free market rules are always waived when the interests of the rich are at stake. There has never really been a distinction between geopolitics and the international economy.

But the rescinding should not just be of trade deals between states. Mandelson’s client Palantir, the US spy-software company, was awarded a massive contract to handle NHS data. The Green party has demanded an investigation into that same contract. Palantir was also awarded a £240m Ministry of Defence contract – without any competitive process. In fact, Epstein had invested in the company.

But this should not just apply to deals brokered by Mandelson. The former prince Andrew, whose appointment as trade envoy Mandelson pushed has also been arrested for leaking similar information to Epstein. Anything touched by either man is irrevocably tainted and must be undone.

Featured image via the Canary

Speaking to Zack Polanski, Green candidate Hannah Spencer has explained what’s motivating her to run in Gorton & Denton:

Green Party candidate for Gorton and Denton Hannah Spencer,

“It’s a really natural thing for anyone to assume that, oh I could never do that, I could never be a politician, I don’t know about politics, I don’t have this background”

“But all the skills you get in life, are the… pic.twitter.com/1uX9hW2HI7

— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) February 24, 2026

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Spencer also noted that the “shit about me online” comes from a vocal minority.

Hannah Spencer: “I’ve got to find a way to do this”

Explaining how she motivates herself, Spencer explained:

This is kind of what life is. A lot of us that do jobs where you’re often kind of in the unknown and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever done before but I think a lot of us have more skills than we realise for doing stuff like this.

And I think it’s a really natural thing for anyone to assume that I could never do that. I could never be a politician. I don’t know about politics. I don’t have this background. It’s like, but all the skills that you get in life are the exact skills that you need from doing this.

This is a leap into the unknown. But so was me training to be a plumber. So was when I trained to be a gas engineer. So is every time I go to a boiler that I’ve never seen before in my life. You just see what’s in front of you and you think I’ve got to find a way to do this.

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Polanski cut in to ask:

Wait, so you’re actually a plumber?

Spencer responded:

I’m going to set the record straight here and say, yes, I am a plumber.

Polanski later said:

There’s an Instagram post of where you went into the plastering college, and what had your… colleagues done for you?

Spencer explained:

Yeah, so I’d had the day off really kindly from my college tutor and they’d made a sign out of a scrap of plasterboard, and it said ‘Ministry of Plumbing and Plastering Hannah Spencer MP’. And they were all so proud of it, and I had a big picture next to me, and I was just smiling in such a cheesy way, and it’s really nice because there is a lot of shit about me online.

A lot of it’s very misogynistic, very sexist, like the idea that a woman couldn’t possibly do a job like this is still commonly held by some people, not the majority of people, but a very vocal minority. And so to go into this group of men who are really similar to me, like from a similar background, and just be accepted by them and not only accepted, but encouraged as well. And for them just to be like, you’ve got this, you’re absolutely going to smash it. Just, yeah, it just made my heart burst. I love that.

Featured image via Zack Polanski