Green Party leader Zack Polanski has let himself down and millions of Israel’s victims, those who advocate against genocide, and the millions in this country who need the reversal of decades of Thatcherism under successive blue and red governments. The situation is not yet irredeemable after he apologised for sharing a post condemning police brutality against an unconscious, immobilised and mentally unwell man. But it is very dangerous – both for the Greens electorally and for the nation that is looking to them to halt the drive into fascism.

Polanski capitulates

Polanski has capitulated to pressure from the Israel lobby and Israel’s enablers in government, who are busy turning the UK into a police state to protect the apartheid colony, and apologised for not ‘lowering the temperature’:

Full contact bullshit

Met Police commissioner Mark Rowley tried to excuse the brutal assault on an immobilised, sick man by quipping that policing is a “full contact and messy task”. This contemptible excuse makes it sound like they went in a bit hard in a rugby match. In reality, they had the Golders Green knife attacker immobilised, and stunned after being tased and kicked.

And then they kicked him in the head. Again and again and again. After he was helpless:

The law does not say it’s ok to risk kicking a suspect to death because you don’t like what he allegedly did. Polanski sharing an X post that condemned that brutality was not ‘raising the temperature’ of a ‘both sides’ debate. It was the least that right-thinking people expect from someone who is in a position to stand up for what’s right.

The lessons of abdication

Apologising is abdicating that responsibility, in order to try to appease people who won’t be appeased – because they want Polanski gone or neutralised and this is just one step toward that goal.

If there was any lesson from the Corbyn era of Labour, it’s that. Corbyn, terminally optimistic about finding common ground, thought he could meet the Israel lobby in the middle by apologising for ‘Labour antisemitism’. There was no Labour antisemitism. It was a scam. Now, after two and a half years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the ‘Green antisemitism’ scam is even more transparent.

The people pushing the Labour scam didn’t really care about Jewish feelings, or even about antisemitism. They wanted him gone and any concession short of his resignation was going to be pocketed and then more demanded, never taking yes for an answer. And demanding more still, until the end goal was achieved. If someone wants your head, offering them an apology is only strengthening them. And Corbyn – encouraged by his advisers – strengthened his attackers until they had what they really wanted – his political head.

The Brexit Syndrome

What makes it even more dangerous for Polanski – and therefore millions of the rest of us – is the Brexit syndrome.

In 2017, Corbyn was seen by millions of voters as the genuine article – which he was – and he presented a ‘Labour Brexit’ that he genuinely believed in as an alternative to the Tories’ racist recklessness. And he stunned the establishment and came within a few thousand votes of winning a general election.

But in 2019, after allowing saboteur Keir Starmer to drag him and the party into a nonsensical ‘second referendum’ position, conman Boris Johnson was able to fool voters that he was the anti-establishment candidate, while Corbyn was one more politician who wanted to ignore their 2016 vote. It was a deadly combination and a huge scam – but it worked, and what happened to Corbyn is now history.

Now the same UK-Zionist establishment is terrified of Polanski and his party’s electoral surge. That surge is, in large part, because Polanski comes across as the real thing. Voters are impressed that he has not danced to the tune of the Labour-Reform-Tory uniparty and its Israel lobby. They like his irreverence and his refusal to lie down and take the smears against him.

So they are trying to manoeuvre him into a position where he loses that authenticity and edge; where he sounds and acts like one more politician – and if ‘they’re all the same’, what’s the point in choosing? And capitulating to attacks for doing the right thing in the face of police brutality and police-state collusion is what ‘one more politician’ does.

Polanski, please don’t fall for it

Polanski seemed to show he had understood what was done to Corbyn when he apologised to Corbyn for being fooled by it. But the lesson hasn’t gone deep enough. If Polanski wants to continue his surge, thwart the fascists, and rescue the UK, he has to learn it fast.

No, not fast. Right the hell now. No more apologies. No more falling for the scam or even flirting with it. Back to being the version of himself that scoffs at, and then wipes the floor with, his smearers.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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Meryl Streep has admitted that she came close to turning down one of her most iconic roles in The Devil Wears Prada.

Appearing on The Today Show to promote the sequel, Meryl recalled how as soon as she read the script for the original film, she knew immediately that it was “going to be a hit”, so seized an opportunity.

“I thought, it’s a great script. And they called me up and made an offer and I said, ‘No, I’m not gonna do it’,” Meryl recalled.

She continued: “I knew it was gonna be a hit, and I wanted to see if I doubled my ask, and they went right away and said, ‘Sure’.”

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Meryl went on to share that it took her a long time to “understand that I could do that” and that “you can ask for what you want”.

“I was sure it would be a hit, and they needed me,” she added. “I wanted it, but if they didn’t want to do that, I was OK because I’m old. I was ready to retire.

“But that was a lesson. That was a great way to start, so I was in a good mood when we began.”

Alongside the returning faces from the original Devil Wears Prada film, Meryl is joined in the new follow-up by the likes of Bridgerton’s Simone Ashley, Justin Theroux, Lucy Liu and a wave of celebrity cameos.

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The Devil Wears Prada 2 arrives in cinemas on Friday 1 May. Check out HuffPost UK’s review of the film here.

Correction: A previous version of this article erroneously stated that Meryl Streep initially turned down The Devil Wears Prada 2, rather than the first film. This has now been corrected.

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Comedians Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse have paid tribute to the canine companion with whom they shared the screen numerous times over the years in their hit series Gone Fishing.

The pair first encountered the Patterdale Terrier mix Ted in season three of Gone Fishing, back in 2020, and he went on to make numerous on-screen appearances alongside the presenters.

On Monday morning, the BBC announced that Ted had died, with both of Gone Fishing’s hosts sharing touching tributes.

“So very, very sad,” Bob lamented, remembering “lovely Ted” as “the best companion and the greatest little chum”.

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“Going to miss him so much.,. and away boss,” he added.

Paul agreed: “He wasn’t a dog, he was a species all of his own. He’s gone to the great briefcase emporium in the sky. We will really miss you mate.”

Louise Meager/BBC/Owl Power/Louise Meager

After his first introduction in 2020, Ted became a fan-favourite with Gone Fishing viewers, and in the 2025 Christmas special, he was awarded an honorary Lifetime Achievement Award.

The BBC explained that when Ted was around six months old, he was rescued from a dog’s home and went to live with Gone Fishing’s executive producer Lisa Clark, who was his owner until he died.

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In her own statement, the producer: “Ted was a much-loved family pet as well as a treasured companion to Paul and Bob on Gone Fishing. He took fame in his little stride and loved nothing better than messing around on the riverbanks, nicking jammy dodgers from Bob and bait from Paul.

“He will be sorely missed both at home and on screen. We’ll never forget him. He is survived at home by Bo the Briard.”

Ted is due to make one final posthumous appearance in Gone Fishing in its upcoming ninth season, which is expected to air on the BBC later this year.

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Beef creator Lee Jung Sin is weighing in about what’s next for the award-winning show.

After Beef’s inaugural series proved to be a huge success with both critics and viewers, Netflix made the decision to turn it into an anthology series, focussing on a different set of characters – and, indeed, a different central feud – each time.

Season two premiered earlier this month, with Lee previously sharing his hopes to conclude after a third run.

However, in a candid new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the three-time Emmy winner made it clear that he’s at peace if Beef were to come to an end without a third iteration.

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“I’d be perfectly happy if this were the last season,” he claimed. “I think it’s really emotionally taxing, the making of it and the rollout of it.”

He continued: “I feel like I’ve said it through two seasons of Beef. But I do remain open if the universe shows me something in the future and it feels right for Beef. I’m definitely open.”

The first season of Beef featured Ali Wong and Steven Yeun as a pair of strangers who become engrossed in each other’s lives when a chance road range encounter bubbles over into an all-encompassing vendetta.

In the follow-up, the stakes were raised even higher, with Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny playing two feuding couples on opposing sides of a generational and class divide that leads both pairs to ask big questions about their partners, and themselves.

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Back in 2023, while promoting season one, Lee told Rolling Stone that he’d always envisaged Beef telling three separate stories.

“I have one really big general idea that I can’t really say yet, but I have three seasons mapped out in my head currently,” he claimed.

Seasons one and two of Beef are now streaming on Netflix.

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Donald Trump has never been bothered about maintaining tradition.

Despite decades of work on both sides of the Atlantic to build and maintain the so-called “special relationship” between the UK and America, the president’s second term has put it under almost unbearable strain.

Prime minister Keir Starmer initially bent over backwards to woo Trump in a bid to secure a trade deal and keep the maverick Republic on side.

But then Trump began threatening to annex Greenland, undermining Nato, withdrawing support for Ukraine, tearing into British military capabilities and U-turning over the Chagos deal.

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The scandal around Starmer’s decision to appoint, then sack, Peter Mandelson – a friend of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – as the UK’s ambassador to Washington, did not help either.

But the final straw came when Trump, together with Israel, bombed Iran.

Starmer rejected the US’s requests for UK support, leading to fresh verbal abuse from the president.

Trump said Starmer was “no Winston Churchill” and compared him to Neville Chamberlain who championed the Nazi appeasement policy before World War 2.

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He’s even threatened to withdraw the US recognition of the Falkland Islands as a British overseas territory.

It’s unsurprising, then, that the UK’s ambassador to the US Christian Turner suggested the relationship between the two countries was not that special after all.

In comments dating back to February, leaked to the Financial Times this week, he said while there is a “deep history and affinity” there, the special relationship phrase was “nostalgic, it’s quite backwards-looking, and it has a lot of baggage to it”.

He’s not alone in this thinking. Less than half of Americans (43%) polled by Public First for Channel 4 News agree that the UK is one of their greatest allies.

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So why do we still call it a “special relationship”?

The phrase has been bandied around British and American politics for years.

First coined by Winston Churchill in 1944 after America joined the Allies’ efforts to defeat the Nazis during the Second World War, the term has played a pivotal role in trans-Atlantic politics for decades.

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were seen as ideological soulmates in the 1980s, while Tony Blair and George W Bush took the “special relationship” to new heights following the 9/11 terror attacks and Iraq war.

Over the decades, the lower rungs of government started working together on intelligence, defence and security too, encouraged by the bond between leaders.

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That’s not to say it’s always been plain-sailing. Lyndon Johnson and Harold Wilson, for example, repeatedly clashed over the Vietnam war.

But Trump’s recent behaviour threatens to take the “special relationship” to new lows.

So Starmer deployed one of the UK’s most powerful diplomatic weapons this week: the royal family.

King Charles III and his wife Queen Camilla headed to the US for a state visit in a bid to try to amend the fraying bond between Downing Street and the White House.

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The King definitely won over his American audience with an extraordinary speech to US Congress, and a later one at the State dinner, where he made a series of tacit digs towards Trump.

He stressed the need for “executive power” to be kept in check and subtly reminded Trump that Nato allies jumped to America’s defence after the 9/11 terror attacks.

Charles even gave the president a golden bell from a World War 2 submarine, HMS Trump (the jokes write themselves).

His trip marks a significant moment in the international relationship, especially as no British monarch has addressed Congress since 1991.

Trump, known for his infatuation with the royal family and their grandeur, told Charles this week: “Americans have no closer friends than the British.”

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He previously told the BBC that Charles could “absolutely” fix the fraying relationship.

But any hopes that this Trump vs Starmer episode was just a blip seem to be short-lived.

Just after the monarch left Washington, Trump tried to create a fresh diplomatic row with Starmer by claiming the King agrees with him on Iran – though the Palace is yet to confirm or deny that allegation.

Considering the monarch is meant to be completely apolitical representative for Britain, their private conversations are highly confidential.

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This revelation was a huge breach of diplomatic protocol.

The move suggests not only does Trump not grasp the nature of British politics, but he is clearly not be willing to “forgive” Starmer for not joining in with the Iran war.

Further tensions could come down the line, too, with so many of their initial grievances yet to be resolved.

The Ukraine war and the conflict in the Middle East rumble on, while the Trump adminstration could renew its ambitions to seize Greenland.

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The UK-US trade deal still hangs in the balance too, as does the agreement to hand over the Chagos islands to Mauritius.

Former Nato secretary-general and UK defence secretary, Lord Robertson, told Chatham House pointed out that the States no longer tells Britain about its plans ahead of time.

Trump did not warn Downing Street about his air strikes on Iran, his plan to implement widespread tariffs or his threats to launch military aggression against Greenland.

Robertson said this demonstrated a “growing divergence” between the countries.

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“All the while Washington’s diplomatic tone towards the United Kingdom has reached a historic low point,” he added.

While, acknowledging that the Trump administration does not represent the whole of the US, he warned that America is expected to become “more transactional” in its foreign policy – including in its approach to the UK.

British ministers have repeatedly claimed that frictions at the top were not too unusual, and that the lower levels of government would still continue to operate in sync.

But is that cooperation at threat if the leaders are at loggerheads?

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Listen to this week’s Commons People as we unpack the origins of the “special relationship”, why it looks more precarious than ever and what that trans-Atlantic bond could look like in the future.

Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

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The war on Iran has led to a predicted 2026 inflation rate of up to 4%, meaning rising costs for UK households. Three million households are now skipping meals, while corporations like BP and Lloyds are making much more profit from rising inflation. Moreover, this year has seen corporations increase their profitability as costs surge.

Consumer confident plummets

A survey of consumers found confidence of -62, the lowest level since 2022 where the war on Ukraine led to high inflation. This sends demand for products and services spiralling further. Demand is already low because of high economic inequality, which is a reason banks generally aren’t lending to small and medium size businesses or corporations.

This is compounded by the survey finding that -71% of adults believe the economy will get worse in a year’s time. Consequently, corporations have faced increased scrutiny for their role in the inflationary environment.

Due to the high inflation, 43% of households are buying cheaper food and one in ten (three million) are going without some meals.

The cost of food has risen by more than 37% in five years across the board. Some essentials are even up by 69% since 2022. Meanwhile, Tesco’s operating profit has leapt from £1.8 billion in 2020/21 to £3.1 billion in 2024/25 — an increase of 72%.

Labour has done little to address the cost of living. Under pressure, the administration U-turned and removed the Tory party’s two child benefit cap. But that will actually only decrease child poverty — a direct result of the affordability crisis — by 1% as of 2029.

Mitigating the crisis

Structural changes to the system would be optimal, such as public ownership of essentials and cost-price housing to address the affordability crisis. Removing rent from utilities such as water, electricity, the national grid and trains, along with housing, would do a lot to address the cost of living crisis. In summary, reforms could ensure that corporations are not cashing in while public wellbeing.

Labour has nationalised the operating services for rail, but not the actual trains themselves, which we will still rent.

Failing a robust strategy to address the cost of living, a higher windfall tax on the increased profits of oil giants, along with one for companies like banks would ease UK households’ hardship.

Further, a government should heavily invest in public research and development in order to automate the economy through common ownership of robotics. That would be progress.

Featured image via Unsplash

By James Wright

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We hope you love the products we recommend! All of them were independently selected by our editors. Just so you know, HuffPost UK may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page if you decide to shop from them. Oh, and FYI — prices are accurate and items in stock as of time of publication.

You might have noticed, but when Charli XCX married George Daniel of The 1975 last year, there was a cosmic shift in the wedding world.

Vivienne Westwood wedding dresses have had a chokehold on pop culture since Carrie Bradshaw rocked one to be stood up at the altar by Mr Big.

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But when The Brat singer paraded her own mini version through the streets of Hackney, she became instant wedding inspo for an entire generation of women.

Star-studded photos from the duo’s weddings dominate every Millennial bride-to-be’s Pinterest board (with the exception of one Actually Romantic singer).

And while you might not be able to splash out quite the same wad of cash on multiple designer dresses, shoes, and sunglasses as the creative duo, there is endless inspo to be had from their big day(s).

Just, maybe without flying hordes of A-list guests out to Sicily (but we don’t know you!).

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Whether you’re infatuated with Charli’s mini wedding dress, or want to emulate the hidden-in-plain-sight vibes of their nuptials, here’s everything you need to recreate their wedding on a budget.

Wedding dresses

While Charli’s Vivienne Westwood gown came in at a sweet £3k, this Meshki number has the same corset feel, without the insane price tag.

This Nadine Merabi dress has the same trailing hem as Charli’s VW, for around a tenth of the price.

You’ll wear this cotton mini for years, but doesn’t it double as just the sweetest wedding dress – like if you’re getting married at Hackney Town Hall, for example.

For her second wedding dress, Charli rocked a sheer Danielle Frankel. If you’re not feeling quite so bold, this Simkhai option is a happy medium between bearing all, and a little lace.

Groom’s suits

While Charli stole the show in a white mini, George donned a simple tan suit.

If you’re marrying in colder climes, this corduroy jacket and matching trousers might make for warmer cladding.

Shoes, sunglasses, and more

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Of course, Charli rocked her signature wrap around sunnies on her big day. The pair she actually wore from Port Tanger are, naturally, sold out, but this pair from Jimmy Fairly demands less cash.

This high street pair will help you channel the same levels of mystique.

Charli went for a clip-in veil moment like this one, which soared past the hem of her dress to bring the drama.

This short one won’t risk you tripping down the steps of your local town hall.

You can bet on one thing: Charli did not purchase her wedding day shoes from ASOS. But we can’t all be award-winning singers, so this pair of white pointed-heel court shoes is a cheaper alternative to her designer pair.

Not that Charli cares about daintiness, but this pair offers something more delicate to an otherwise skin-bearing look.

We can’t see Charli and George flying economy (although that is quite Brat…) but if you want to jet out to their second wedding destination – Sicily – there are Easyjet flights available for as little as £60. Romantic!

What better to serve your wedding cigarettes on than a silver platter? We mean, don’t smoke kids.

What does a dual musician couple do after they wed? Have a rave after-party of course – oh, and have personalised disposable cameras to memorialise the night with all their famous friends.

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From 1 May 2026, the law changes, giving more protection for England’s 12 million renters.

Renters union Acorn issues statement:

After more than 10 years of organising and taking action, together we have won the biggest change to renters’ rights in a generation.

From stopping evictions on our streets, to marching on rogue landlords and letting agents, to forcing councils and politicians to act, ACORN has organised at every level to win this change.

Seven years, five prime ministers and two shades of government after Theresa May promised to scrap section 21 no fault evictions, the Renters’ Rights Act is finally about to become law.

For years, too many renters have lived with the constant threat of eviction, sudden rent increases, and the fear of speaking up in case it cost them their home.

Now, section 21 ‘no fault evictions’ are being abolished, ‘bidding wars’ are being banned, rent in advance is being capped at one month, rent rises are subject to stricter rules, and renters have the right to a pet.

To read more on the headline changes, and the history of the campaign, head to our web page here, or watch the video below:

This victory belongs to every renter who organised, spoke out, took action and refused to accept ‘the way things are.’

The new law changes won’t fix everything overnight, but it’s a huge step forward: a shift in power that shows what’s possible when renters organise.

We must now make sure these rights are enforced, and make sure that rule breaking landlords and letting agents aren’t let off the hook by councils and the government.

And until everyone has a safe, secure and affordable place to call home, there’s more to fight for.

The best way of fighting for housing justice, and making sure you and your housemates are defended, is by being a member of ACORN!

Featured image via Acorn

By The Canary

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A joint Al Jazeera and Liberty Investigates report published on 20 April revealed that twelve British universities – including Oxford, Imperial, King’s College London, UCL, and the LSE – have paid a private intelligence firm called Horus Security Consultancy at least £440,000 since 2022 to monitor the social-media activity of pro-Palestine students and academics.

The firm is led by former military intelligence officers, and its directors include a co-founder of the Henry Jackson Society. As previous Canary coverage of the Horus revelations has already established, the operational facts of the investigation are not in serious dispute.

The question worth pressing is what the story discloses about what the modern British university has, by quiet stages, become.

A near-uniform defence

The implicated institutions have offered a near-uniform defence.

Sheffield calls its arrangement with Horus “horizon scanning”.

Imperial College says the work draws only on “publicly available information”.

King’s College London insists that public information cannot, by definition, constitute surveillance.

The implication shared across the statements is that what students have posted voluntarily has already been ceded to the public domain. The university’s reading of it is therefore something other than the act it appears to be.

From discipline to modulation

The defence is precise, and it is precisely the point.

The disciplinary institutions of the modern era – the school, the factory, the prison, the hospital – used to operate by enclosure. They placed the subject inside a bounded institutional space governed by its own rules, and moved her in turn through a sequence of such enclosures across the course of a life.

What the philosopher Gilles Deleuze called the “society of control” works differently. The enclosures dissolve into a continuous network of monitoring and scoring that does not stop at the institutional wall, because there is no longer a wall. Power no longer disciplines a body inside an enclosure. It modulates a profile across a network.

The Horus arrangement is a textbook instance of this shift. The student does not enter a panopticon when she opens X. The panopticon is in the network itself. The university pays £900 a month for an “encampment briefing” service that aggregates her posts, her affiliations, and her organisational ties, and feeds the resulting profile back to the institution that admitted her.

The disciplinary university used to expel transgressors. The control university scores them.

The institution as data node

What this means in practice is that the university is no longer a discrete institution purchasing a surveillance service from an external contractor. It has become a node within a wider apparatus of monitoring, scoring, and threat assessment – one which links its administrative machinery to private intelligence firms, to police forces, to counter-terror infrastructure, and, through the Henry Jackson Society pedigree of Horus’s leadership, to particular ideological currents in British foreign policy.

The University of Bristol reportedly provided Horus with a list of six student organisations on which it wished to receive bespoke alerts.

Manchester Metropolitan University commissioned a “counter-terror threat assessment” on a 70-year-old Palestinian-American scholar invited to deliver a memorial lecture for Tom Hurndall, the British student killed by an Israeli sniper in Gaza in 2003.

The LSE received daily encampment briefings during the 2024 protests, within which the social-media activity of named PhD students was collated and circulated.

Gina Romero, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of peaceful assembly, has described the cumulative effect as a “state of terror” among UK student activists. She told the investigators:

Most students I have reached out to are experiencing psychological trauma, mental exhaustion, and burnout. Many of them are leaving activism altogether.

The withdrawal Romero describes is not incidental to the surveillance regime. It is the regime working as designed.

The corrective is structural, not contractual

The institutional response to the Horus revelations has so far focused almost exclusively on the contracts. Cancel them, the argument runs, and the problem is resolved. The University and College Union has called the arrangements “shameful”. Petitions are circulating. The contracts will, in some cases, be reviewed.

This response treats the surveillance as an aberration grafted onto an institution whose underlying purpose remains intact. The harder reading is structural; the surveillance is not a contract but a tendency.

A university that regards its own students’ political organising as a security risk requiring private-intelligence assessment is no longer the institution the word used to denote. It is a continuous-monitoring environment in which the activity called “study” is one variable among many being scored, and within which dissent persists formally while becoming an item that registers on a threat-assessment dashboard. Cancelling the Horus contract removes one supplier. It does not change what the institution has become.

What the revelations have made visible is the shape of that transformation. The freedom to dissent has not been withdrawn. The infrastructure that records, scores, and modulates the cost of dissent is now the institution itself.

By Rares Cocilnau

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