Israel has struck the Dahiya area of Beirut, after Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, called for the IOF to flatten the suburb.

Israeli terrorists just attacked southern suburb of Beirut.
As usual, before any ceasefire gakes place, they do their worst to sabotage it, as it is a main goal for them to continue this genocide agaisnt our people.
No details abiut casualties yet.
Last strike on Dahiyeh 2 weeks… pic.twitter.com/rzjkLEa8qq

— Hadi Hoteit | هادي حطيط (@HadiHtt) June 14, 2026

This was in response to Hezbollah drones striking an illegal Israeli military zone in the Northern occupied Palestinian territories early on Sunday.

Israel’s Dahiya Doctrine

Smotrich called for the IOF to use the ‘Dahiya Doctrine’ — an explicitly genocidal doctrine. This is Israel’s policy of using overwhelming and disproportionate force against civilian areas to “deter attacks”. It was named after a suburb of Beirut, which the IOF flattened in 2006.

Smotrich called on Netanyahu to:

implement it with determination and force and to demolish buildings in Dahiya today as well.

We are in critical days of shaping the space for many years to come.

As the Canary previously reported, Paul Rogers, emeritus professor of peace studies, explained Dahiya in the context of Gaza in December 2023. When looking at the early devastation, he described the horrors as:

a specific Israeli way of war that has evolved since 1948, through to its current Dahiya doctrine, which is said to have originated in the 2006 war in Lebanon.

Rogers said:

In July of that year, facing salvoes of rockets fired from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah militias, the IDF fought an intense air and ground war.

However:

Neither succeeded, and the ground troops took heavy casualties; but the significance of the war lies in the nature of the air attacks. It was directed at centres of Hezbollah power in the Dahiya area, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, but also on the Lebanese economic infrastructure.

It was there in Dahiya that Israel’s genocidal impulses mutated into a new policy of annihilation.

Disproportionate force

Rogers explained:

This was the deliberate application of “disproportionate force”, such as the destruction of an entire village, if deemed to be the source of rocket fire.

One graphic description of the result was that “around a thousand Lebanese civilians were killed, a third of them children. Towns and villages were reduced to rubble; bridges, sewage treatment plants, port facilities and electric power plants were crippled or destroyed.

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In short, Israeli policy goes far beyond fighting ‘terrorists’ and aims to destroy the very means of life.

Israel jeopardising the ceasefire

Iran had warned that any attack on Beirut would trigger an Iranian response, which could reignite full-scale war across the region. Importantly, though, this is what Israel does. Whenever Iran and the US are close to a ceasefire agreement, Israel drops more bombs and screws it up.

Ahead of a potential U.S.-Iran deal, the Israelis do exactly what everyone expects them to do. Bomb Beirut’s southern suburbs. https://t.co/ejkRiNe3kb

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) June 14, 2026

Israel knows that its goal of a ‘Greater Israel‘ cannot be achieved if it actually adheres to a ceasefire, so why would it?

Iran has emphasised that the ceasefire must include Israel’s illegal attacks on Lebanon. This means a strike on Dahiyeh could complicate Trump’s efforts to finalise the ceasefire.

‘Self defence’

Two Israeli fighter jets struck a residential building in Beirut at least four times.

Footage of today’s Israeli strike on a residential building in Beirut, Lebanon.

2 fighter jets were involved, 4 munitions dropped. pic.twitter.com/4cyCaSPDxQ

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) June 14, 2026

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Of course, Israel claims the strike on Dahiya is self-defence. But no such thing under international law.

Once again lsrael claims to have bombed Beirut in “self-defense” following Hezbollah rockets/drones launches towards invading Israeli forces & northern settlements.

*Hezbollah has been responding to Israel violations of the ceasefire & invasion by firing rockets/drones towards… https://t.co/yfTtuf0mxa pic.twitter.com/Ve9enDdvsD

— MenchOsint (@MenchOsint) June 14, 2026

On the other hand, anyone living under illegal occupation has the legal right to armed resistance and self-defence, under international law.

You cannot invade and illegally occupy sovereign territory and expect the native population to just roll over.

Israelis are living in an alternate reality. One in which Arab lives don’t matter, and actions don’t have consequences.

Feature image via Ryan Murphy/Getty Images

By HG

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Today, 14 June 2026, the Jewish Anti-Zionist Action (JAZA) group and others protested outside the so-called “Great Israeli Real Estate” event at Edgware United Synagogue. The event is selling off yet more stolen Palestinian land to would-be colonisers.

JAZA has joined hundreds of protestors from a variety of justice groups, including the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), in peaceful protest outside Edgware United Synagogue in London. The event was moved to the synagogue after a first venue pulled out.

Protesters held a prayer service in the street and held a banner stating ‘war crimes out of our synagogues’. Despite the peaceful, even sacred, nature of the demonstration, protesters were still attacked and violently arrested by the Met Police.

The event has generated widespread public opposition, along with condemnation even among MPs. Human rights organisations, legal experts, community groups and elected representatives called for its cancellation and for authorities to immediately investigate the legality of the event and those associated with the event under UK domestic law.

The group said, before beginning its protest, that it was “proud” to participate:

Alongside the more than 100 civil society organisations and the more than 100 MPs that have publicly opposed this event, we are proud to join the peaceful and public protest against the event this Sunday.

Jewish Anti-Zionists reject any attempt to provide a Jewish pretext or justification for these activities and refuse the use of our synagogues to legitimise them. JAZA are appalled that Edgware United Synagogue is hosting this event in the midst of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. That a synagogue would openly engage in enabling the further colonisation of Palestine by giving the event religious and cultural credence is unconscionable. We refuse to allow support for settlement expansion and land theft to be presented as a Jewish communal interest and we reject the conflation of Judaism with a political project built upon the dispossession of another people.

UN figures show that since October 2023, over 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, 213 of whom were children, have been killed by Israeli settlers and military forces. Settler violence and access restrictions have also led to the displacement of over 1,750 Palestinians this year alone.

JAZA — Starmer targeting Jews

Following the usual pattern of the Starmer regime and its Israel lobbyists, anti-Zionist Jews were disproportionately targeted for arrest. Their prominent presence at anti-genocide and anti-apartheid protests disrupts the Israel lobby’s narrative that all Jews support Israel and its colonisation of Palestine.

Settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law, and have been found by the ICJ to be in breach of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its civilian population into occupied territory, constituting a war crime.

JAZA’s Talia Woodin said:

As Jews, we are disgusted that companies involved in marketing and developing properties in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are hosted by a synagogue. These settlements are outposts of extreme violence and exist to terrorise Palestinians and eliminate the possibility of a future Palestinian state.

We are here to fight the false narrative that dangerously conflates Judaism and Zionism, and seeks to weaponise antisemitism to suppress peaceful protests.

We stand in a long tradition of Jewish anti-Zionists who refuse to stand idly by as stolen Palestinian land is occupied, sold and promoted, from protests against settlement-linked property fairs in New York and Toronto to campaigns here in Britain. We are proud to uphold that tradition by joining the protest against the Great Israeli Real Estate Event.

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Jewish Anti-Zionist Action is a group of UK-based anti-Zionist Jews acting in solidarity with the wider Palestinian liberation movement by taking direct action to dismantle Zionism.

Featured image via Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

By Skwawkbox

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According to one Labour politician, a Reform MP said the following about Makerfield candidate Rob Kenyon:

Chatting to a loose lipped Reform MP today who tells me that they've given up on Makerfield.

"An absolute sh*t candidate and no real understanding of how to tackle a by-election".

— Mike Reader MP (@mike_reader) June 13, 2026

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On the one hand, Mike Reader would have every reason to lie about this. On the other, Reform MPs would have every reason to call Kenyon a “sh*t candidate”, because he is.

“No real understanding”

What is it that makes Kenyon such a bad candidate?

Firstly, there are the many controversial statements he’s made in the past that he’s refused to apologise for. As Reform Party UK Exposed summarised:

Rob Kenyon has still not apologised for his homophobic or sexist comments.#Makerfield pic.twitter.com/zg91qJf7eT

— Reform Party UK Exposed (@reformexposed) June 9, 2026

When they say he’s a “sexist”, they say that because Kenyon referred to himself as a “sexist”. He also speculated that:

the majority [of abortions] are for vanity purposes like unwanted pregnancies.

The second problem Kenyon has is that he’s not very good at speaking about or even understanding Reform’s policies:

This might be the worst performance from a political candidate I have ever seen in my life. pic.twitter.com/Kku1RecFJ0

— Ali Milani (@AliMilaniUK) June 2, 2026

This is a problem, because the worse your policies are, the better you need to be at selling them.

The third problem for Kenyon is that he seems to be clueless in general:

Hi @RobKenyonReform, Ashton Library was already saved thanks to the Labour MP Josh Simons (you might of heard of him) and Councillors.

Being that you’ve not bothered to even sign the paperwork for being a councillor, let alone attending your first meeting, it’s no surprise you… pic.twitter.com/kHFkM7zaNi

— Reform Party UK Exposed (@reformexposed) June 2, 2026

Hands and knees

Kenyon’s sexism seems to be a particular problem for voters. As it turns out, many women don’t want to vote for a guy who is prejudiced against women. And in an attempt to counter that, Reform is now begging female voters to get behind Mr Patriarchy:

An important letter to the women of Makerfield. pic.twitter.com/F9ohFne2uT

— Sarah Pochin MP (@SarahForRuncorn) June 13, 2026

Pochin’s post has provided an opportunity to share more of Kenyon’s past comments:

These are the statements you would get if you asked Chat GPT: ‘please provide the top 5 misogynistic comments spoken by dull men who have nothing to offer besides repeating the comments of other dull men‘. His opinions are so stereotypical, in fact, that it reads like he’s playing sexism bingo.

In the final push for Makerfield, Kenyon has also given voters new reasons to suspect him of sexism. Here he is with his “hero” Ant Middleton:

Great to have the endorsement of one of my heroes @antmiddleton pic.twitter.com/zoEq5gU90c

— Cllr Rob Kenyon (@RobKenyonReform) June 12, 2026

This is besides the point, but if you’re a 40-year-old man, your hero shouldn’t be another 40-year-old man; it should be someone you grew up admiring like Keanu Reeves or Mr Motivator.

Middleton is famous for spreading online misinformation — either on purpose or because he’s easily fooled:

Ant Middleton, who wants to be the next mayor of London, shared this AI slops. It's incredible how thick he is. pic.twitter.com/SKguHZy4xw

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) December 5, 2025

Ant Middleton is spreading misinformation and claimed that a church in Yorkshire was attacked.

What actually happened is that, during marches held in March in Mexico to mark International Women’s Day, three churches were vandalised because protesters opposed the Catholic…

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) May 20, 2026

To be fair to him, he has also spread facts; the problem is they were facts he wasn’t supposed to be spreading:

The Ministry of Defence is suing Ant Middleton for spilling secrets about the special forces on a series of social media posts. pic.twitter.com/N8JVqYGszY

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) October 10, 2025

The reason we’re bringing up Middleton in a conversation about sexism is because of his conviction for assaulting a female police officer:

.@UKLabour I would STRONGLY suggest that you remove this post immediately as your statement of myself ‘assaulting’ a female officer is highly misleading and completely false as I’ve never laid a finger on a woman let alone a female Police officer! However doesn’t Labour allow for… https://t.co/FVp4j9MHkZ

— Ant Middleton (@antmiddleton) June 12, 2026

Providing further context on the above, retired solicitor Clive Wismayer explained:

Learn some law. Common assault does not require contact. As I just saved you about £200,000 I’ll invoice you for half.

Also, I read that you later secured employment without disclosing your criminal convictions. If true, you may have committed the offence of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception. I suggest you surrender to the police & make a full confession. I’m only charging fifty quid for that.

Providing more detail on common assault, the Sentencing Council wrote:

A person is guilty of common assault if they either inflict violence on another person – however slight this might be – or make that person think they are about to be attacked.

They do not have to be physically violent – for example, threatening words or a raised fist could lead the victim to believe they are going to be attacked – and that is enough for the crime to have been committed. Other acts like spitting at someone may also classed as common assault.

So Middleton may not have ‘lain a finger’ on a female police officer, but he did do something akin to the above, and this was considered ‘assault’.

Reform — Not what they say they are

Reform wants you to believe that it’s pro-:

• Women.
• Defence.
• Policing.

The fact that they’re hanging out with Middleton shows the party is none of those things.

The fact that Kenyon is the candidate, meanwhile, shows Reform especially doesn’t care about women.

Featured image via Ryan Jenkinson (Getty Images)

By Willem Moore

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13 min read14 min

May’s local elections meant more councils than ever ruled by more than one party. Zoe Crowther investigates what might be a sign of things to come for Westminster. Illustration by Tracy Worrall

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In the election for Birmingham City Council, no party came close to the 51 seats needed for a majority. Reform UK ended up with 23 seats, while the Greens have 19, Labour 17, the Conservatives 16, the Liberal Democrats 12, and a group of independents under the umbrella of ‘Better Birmingham’ has seven councillors. And yet, while Reform emerged as the largest party on the council, every other party ruled out working with them – leaving them effectively unable to govern. Labour, meanwhile, decided not to seek to form an administration, with the group leader ruling out joining a governing coalition.

That left the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Better Birmingham to strike a deal, forming a coalition-style administration made up of 38 councillors – but still short of a majority. Lib Dem councillor Roger Harmer has become council leader, but the Greens will take over the leadership in 2028 under a rotation agreement. All three groups will be represented on the council’s cabinet.

Birmingham is the prime example of a phenomenon being seen across the country, with 23 councils of the 136 up for election this year pushed into no overall political control. Where rainbow coalitions have emerged to lead these councils, the trend is clear: rather than share power with Reform, almost every other political group would prefer to co-operate with one another.

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You can broadly split the multi-party arrangements on English councils into different categories: the ‘anyone but Reform’ coalitions; the ‘anyone but Labour’ coalitions; and the ‘necessary to govern’ coalitions, where parties have been forced to accept the support of other parties or independents to govern effectively.

With the national polling looking as fractured as it does on a local level, political parties are scratching their heads over what the implications of these forms of local co-operation might have for the political picture in Westminster.

According to Green and Lib Dem councillors, the directives coming from their national parties on striking arrangements with other parties have been relaxed. Sources in both camps describe themselves as “bottom-up” and “democratic”, meaning local party groups have widely been allowed to organise their own negotiations without input from the national parties. And both the Greens and Lib Dems see blocking Reform from local power as a key priority.

In Newcastle, the Labour vote collapsed but the Liberal Democrats and Greens formed a confidence-and-supply arrangement that locked out Reform, despite it being the second-largest party. Lib Dem council leader Colin Ferguson and Green councillor Nick Hartley claim the reaction from Newcastle residents to the arrangement has been “overwhelmingly positive”. They insist that people want more “grown-up politics” that crosses political divides.

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Hartley says they want the arrangement to show a way of “doing things differently” and suggests there could be “lessons learned for parliamentarians” going into a future general election.

The Greens appear more open to multi-party arrangements than any of the other parties. Green MP Siân Berry says increasing numbers of councils are demonstrating that parties can work together when no one commands a majority. She tells The House she plans to keep in contact with Green leaders who have made power-sharing arrangements on councils to learn from their experiences working with other parties.

Berry rejects the idea that such arrangements are “back-room deals”. Still, she admits the party would have to consider the extent to which Green voters would tolerate further arrangements between the Greens and other parties, including Labour.

The Local Government Association Green Group has just been established, which plans to put together a set of principles to guide Green-led councils around the country to ensure national cohesion on policy and negotiations with other parties.

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Both the Greens and Lib Dems want to see a voting system with proportional representation introduced before the next general election, with Berry saying that under first-past-the-post, the “risk of Reform getting a majority on a tiny percentage of the vote at Westminster is very, very high”. She adds: “And then there is no possible way that making arrangements between the other parties can help us.”

The Lib Dems have benefited from the fragmented two-party system in local elections. The Lib Dem identity is partly built around being anti-Labour in some areas and anti-Tory in others. This dual identity plays out in the sort of multi-party deals that it does across the country.

The flexibility helps explain why the Lib Dems are leading councils where they do not have the most seats. In the case of Birmingham, where a Lib Dem councillor is leading the council, the party is in fact the fifth-largest group.

And yet deputy Lib Dem leader Daisy Cooper tells The House that these local-level coalitions and arrangements cannot be considered as a predictor of how a national coalition in Westminster might take place.

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“It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how these things work,” she says. “Different political parties have been in different coalitions in local government for decades, and it’s the nature of local politics, because local authorities are less partisan because they have fewer powers… That’s really quite different from the cut and thrust of what happens in Westminster.”

But she did admit that “people are desperate to try and stop Reform”.

“But I genuinely think that if you look back in just recent years, and historically, voters hate it when they think there is a stitch-up,” Cooper says.

This is a sign of things to come

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Asked whether the Lib Dems have to start being more transparent about a potential future coalition, Cooper says: “It’s going to be incumbent on political parties to be really transparent with the public about what they themselves are offering and about what their priorities are.

“But the idea that we should be wasting our time and our energy right now, you know, indulging in that kind of naval gazing about who we might work with and what deals we might do, and what the red lines might be… We’ve got no idea where the country is going to be in six months, let alone in another three years.”

Increasingly, councils are also seeing the rise of organised independent groups, community alliances, resident associations, and former Labour and Conservative councillors who left their parties or were suspended – all sitting under the independent banner.

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In many cases, they have slotted in to provide the numbers for multi-party arrangements headed up by other parties. The seven-member Better Birmingham group, which has formed part of the Birmingham coalition, includes councillors such as Harris Khaliq and Nosheen Khalid, who were backed by Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party.

In other areas, smaller parties have joined together to block Labour from staying in power, for example, in the London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth.

In Southwark, the Greens and Lib Dems joined together to form an administration, with Green Party councillor James McAsh (formerly the council’s Labour leader), now leader of the council, with Lib Dem councillor Victor Chamberlain serving as deputy.

They claim Southwark Labour was uncooperative in the run-up to the elections when they were approached to discuss the possibility of making an arrangement.

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Both McAsh and Chamberlain tell The House they want to push their national parties to continue to support these arrangements happening more often, and be more transparent about preparing for a national coalition.

“This is a sign of things to come,” Chamberlain says. “We are very firmly in multi-party politics in London. This is something that we can hopefully push our national parties to be more aware of and more inclusive… It’s in the interest of residents that parties should work together.”

For Labour and the Conservatives, approaching multi-party arrangements, even on a council level, has proven more complicated. Both the Tories and Labour are very wary of any perception of backroom deal-making, and see formal arrangements with the smaller parties as potentially detrimental if the mainstream parties begin to be seen as the minor players.

Labour blocked its councillors in Brent from making a deal with the Green Party, and the Labour minority administration has therefore had to make a deal with the Conservatives in order to stay in power.

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However, elsewhere, Labour councillors have been permitted to enter rainbow coalitions, like in West Sussex, where the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, Labour and an independent councillor agreed a partnership to run the council.

The House understands, from speaking to multiple Labour sources, that the Labour leadership is generally hostile to the idea of any pacts or deals with other parties, not least because they believe the majority of Labour MPs would also be hostile to the idea. A senior source who worked for Starmer in opposition, confirms to The House there was an informal, unspoken accommodation with the Lib Dems in some areas ahead of the 2024 general election, but only where the Lib Dems were not directly contesting Labour for seats.

The political landscape looks very different today, with the Greens, independents, and sometimes the Lib Dems fighting Labour in areas they considered ‘safe’ just two years ago.

For Labour, advocating for multi-party deals to stop Reform makes little electoral sense when the other parties are often trying to win seats from the Labour Party. As Prime Minister Keir Starmer set out at Labour conference in the autumn, the Labour strategy will continue to set out the next general election as a Labour vs Reform fight.

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For the Conservatives, their red lines have started to become clear. CCHQ has accepted a broad range of multi-party deals between Tory councillors and other parties, including Reform and Labour. According to multiple Tory sources, the one party that CCHQ will not accept deals with under any circumstances is the Green Party.

In Worcestershire, this caused tensions between the national party and its local councillors. Although Worcestershire County Council was not up for election this year, the council has been embroiled in a row over the emergence of a new four-way arrangement involving Conservatives, Greens, Liberal Democrats and independents to keep Reform out of power, after some Reform councillors quit and left their group short of a majority on the council.

The Conservative Party, with direct intervention by leader Kemi Badenoch, suspended the Tory group leader Adam Kent for attempting to form this arrangement, with Badenoch’s team arguing they had made clear that a deal of this kind was not authorised. Kent is now threatening legal action against the party.

The remaining Conservative councillors have withdrawn from the power-sharing arrangement, though The House understands they did so reluctantly. Many local Conservatives felt the deal was justified because Reform’s administration had become unstable and difficult to work with. This hints at a growing divide between the national Conservative position and what some Tory councillors are actually doing on the ground.

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Nigel Farage is a realist, and he will know that the only way the left is going to be gone is if the right actually works together

In the remaining coalition, Green councillor Matt Jenkins is serving as council leader. He believes the larger national parties are “just living in the past” where they used to have clearer-cut majorities on councils.

“I don’t think people really understand that two-party politics went a few years ago, and now it is really multi-party politics,” he says.

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According to Jenkins, the feedback from Worcestershire residents so far has been that they are glad that the Greens are working with any party, “as long as it’s to stop Reform”.

While Reform made huge gains in these elections, the fractured vote and strong anti-Reform turnout meant many councils were pushed into no overall control, leaving Reform unable to govern by itself.

In some councils, like Hartlepool, Reform has had to enlist the support of independent councillors to run an administration. In other areas, such as Redditch, Reform has had to enter informal arrangements with the Conservatives.

After the May elections, Labour was left short of a majority on Redditch Borough Council. Despite the Conservatives only holding four of the council seats, compared to Reform’s eight, the right-wing parties agreed on a confidence and supply arrangement where Conservative councillor Matthew Dormer has been appointed as leader and Reform councillors have been given largely ceremonial roles. The deal was directly approved by CCHQ.

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Dormer tells The House that Reform reluctantly agreed to work with the Tories as they were “just hell-bent on getting Labour out”.

He says that while some voters backed his party to keep Reform out, he believes that Conservative supporters are broadly tolerant of such an arrangement, while many in Reform are less pleased.

“Nigel Farage is a realist, and he will know that the only way the left is going to be gone is if the right actually works together,” he says. “That has to happen, whether they want it or not.”

Reform sources see this confidence-and-supply arrangement as a necessary one to give the town a stable budget, though one senior party insider says they are aware that Reform’s supporters are “wary” of such deals.

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“Many left the Tories because they felt let down,” one senior Reform insider says. “They elected us to govern, not to posture. Value for money, an end to non-jobs, and lower waste. Deliver that, and the arrangement vindicates itself.”

Reform voters and Tory voters are generally very hostile to the other party, and the national parties are acutely aware of this.

“No pacts, no deals,” a Reform spokesperson says. “Reform UK is focused on delivering for voters, not propping up the broken establishment parties.

“As we’ve previously seen in places like Bradford and Worcestershire, where ideologically different Tories and Greens have colluded, other parties will go to desperate lengths to block Reform. We will focus on delivering for the British people instead of betraying voters for the sake of political convenience.”

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A Reform insider says the party’s focus in local government will be on delivery rather than “setting the world alight”. They agree there is “plainly” an establishment effort to block Farage’s party.

“Every other party is now prepared to run a rainbow coalition against us, combining for one purpose: keeping the largest party out,” they say.

They add that agreements made on local councils amounted to “working relations” between parties rather than “pacts”. “A pact is a carve-up. A working relationship is the ordinary business of passing a budget and running services.”

They believe that Reform will not work with the Greens or the Liberal Democrats under any circumstances: “I cannot conceive how we could; there is no common ground. Otherwise, the test is good faith and delivery, not the rosette.” 

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Where is the World Cup being played again?

In the northeastern United States, eight World Cup games, including the final, will be played in what FIFA calls “New York New Jersey.” But elected leaders from this portmanteau place are jostling over where exactly it is.

The state of New Jersey and New York City bid for and won the right to be a host city, but New York state officials have become increasingly involved. So politicians on both sides of the river are just bursting with border-state rivalry that can be lighthearted and serious all at once.

The matches, for the record, are at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. But that hasn’t stopped New York Gov. Kathy Hochul from repeatedly declaring that “New York is not just hosting the World Cup, New York is the World Cup.”

There’s some truth to it — most of the fans are expected to stay in and visit New York between matches. But New Jersey doesn’t shrug off such slights because they reinforce long-running dynamics of New York as the bigger sibling and the Garden State’s struggle for recognition.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) made avenging this wrong a dayslong cause célèbre and taunted Hochul with social media posts such as: “If you’re planning to watch a FIFA match in New York, you’ll be SOL.”

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill pushed to get one of the temporary signs hung at MetLife changed to read “New Jersey New York” instead of “New York New Jersey.” On Friday, she posted a six-second video from outside the sign. “For those keeping score at home, the World Cup is in New Jersey. And now the sign reflects that.”

The New York-New Jersey combo isn’t new.

“I never liked it,” said former U.S. national team goalkeeper Tony Meola, a native of nearby Kearny, New Jersey, who was subjected to the indignity of playing under a neighboring state’s banner during his years with the New York/New Jersey Metrostars, since renamed Red Bull New York.

“I grew up there, I played there — it’s New Jersey,” said Meola. “That’s just my opinion.”

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FIFA President Gianni Infantino is working on his third World Cup, which spreads across North America this weekend. His first tournaments were held in autocratic countries with governments willing to splash cash and use the games to sportswash their tarnished image on the global stage.

In America, where 78 of the 104 matches will be played, he’s dealing with something dramatically different — democratically elected leaders spread across 11 host communities.

Infantino at first seemed to approach North America largely the same way he did Russia and Qatar: Win over the head of state and go from there. He went so far as to court President Donald Trump by giving him a peace prize before he started a war with Iran.

State and local politicians, however, had their own priorities.

In America, Infantino has found himself foiled not only by democracy but the country’s federalism — the separation of national and state power that gives local officials unique power. He can blame Thomas Jefferson for that.

“I think that’s just a big difference, even compared to other western democracies, our federalism is a huge difference,” said Alex Lasry, the CEO of the New York New Jersey Host Committee.

As a result, FIFA’s national partners in Mexico and Canada have more say over how the World Cup is playing out in their countries than the White House does in America, a country that does not even have a sports minister.

In practice, this has meant that even as FIFA presented itself as the world government of the globe’s most beloved sport, local officials in America started standing in its way.

A senior FIFA official earlier this year said it was exaggerated to say one person in Qatar or Russia snapped their fingers and things got done, but the official did describe America as more decentralized.

Back in 2023, one of Infantino’s longtime advisers spoke at length about the FIFA president’s public image. “This whole idea of shoulder-rubbing with dictators? It’s not real. Sometimes the U.S. president is Joe Biden, sometimes it’s Donald Trump. Gianni can’t change that,” the adviser told Tim Röhn of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which includes POLITICO. “He’s not interested in politics — only in football.”

But those politics have been creating roadblocks for months, leading up to the first American game on Friday in Los Angeles.

There was a five-member special board in Massachusetts that had to sign off on a license to allow FIFA to play seven matches there, a power it used to extract concessions from the local host committee.

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill — one of the newly elected politicians who didn’t bid for the World Cup but now has to pay to put it on, despite having other priorities — got in a public scrape with FIFA over transportation costs. FIFA didn’t budge, but the fight was ugly.

When it tried to ban water bottles from stadiums, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani attacked and FIFA backed down.

On the legal front, a quartet of attorneys general — three from blue states and one from red Texas — are now investigating the soccer body’s ticketing practices.

Alas, there isn’t one person Infantino can call to smooth things over. He isn’t the first European to puzzle over America’s decentralized governance, but this 21st-century Alexis de Tocqueville seems to be learning the hard way.

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President Donald Trump’s name was removed from the facade of the Kennedy Center on Saturday, capping off the president’s longtime effort to assert control over the institution, one of Washington’s most iconic cultural landmarks.

In a Saturday court filing to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Matthew Floca, the Kennedy Center’s chief operating officer and executive director, confirmed work crews had removed “all physical signage” from the building and grounds “that purports to rename the Kennedy Center after President Trump or any individual besides President Kennedy.”

Workers, hidden behind a large white tarp, removed Trump’s name from the building’s white exterior early Saturday morning, after blowing past a Friday deadline due to what Floca cited as “weather-related delays.” The tarp remained in place on Saturday afternoon.

The removal comes after U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled in late May that Trump’s rebranding of the performing arts center in his own name was illegal, contravening federal law that the center could only honor Kennedy and usurping authority from Congress.

In the weeks since, officials have removed references to Trump on the Kennedy Center’s website, issued new identification cards, edited employee email signatures and rescinded any trademark applications adding Trump to the institution’s name, Floca wrote in his filing. The restoration of the building’s original name followed denials Friday by both Cooper and an appeals court of last-ditch attempts by the administration and Department of Justice to stay Cooper’s May ruling.

It’s a stinging blow to the president, whose ambitious plans for the Kennedy Center included packing its board with loyalists and shutting it down for two years to conduct major renovations.

Cooper, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, also nixed the Kennedy Center’s closure in his May ruling, prompting Trump to angrily announce plans to transfer the institution back to Congress in a Truth Social post shortly after.

“Judge Cooper should be ashamed of himself!” he wrote. “Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into “NEVER NEVER LAND.”

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The England national team suffered an unexpected setback before the start of their 2026 World Cup campaign after a portion of their training equipment was stolen following the squad’s arrival in Kansas City, USA.

According to a report by The Guardian, special boots belonging to several players, along with official balls and other training equipment, were lost during the transport of the team’s gear to their designated headquarters in the city.

Kansas City police have launched an investigation into the incident, while the authorities supervising England’s national team have initiated urgent measures to provide replacements for the missing equipment and ensure the team’s preparatory schedule is not affected before the start of the tournament.

Kansas City police opened an investigation into the incident, and the newspaper reported that authorities detained two individuals suspected of involvement in the event, with investigations continuing to determine the full circumstances of the case and the extent of the losses.

The incident occurs at a time when the area surrounding the team’s training camp is experiencing heightened security attention, following a shooting incident near the team’s residence a few days prior. Authorities confirmed at the time that the shooting did not target the England delegation and did not result in injuries among its members, as reported by Reuters.

Although there are no indications linking the two incidents, the repetition of security events during the first few days of the team’s stay in Kansas City highlights the challenges faced by participating teams off the field, coinciding with the kick-off of the 2026 World Cup.

Featured image via Richard Pelham/Getty Images

By Alaa Shamali

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Ghana have suffered a major setback ahead of their 2026 World Cup campaign after it was confirmed that midfielder Thomas Partey will miss their opening match against Panama in Toronto following a decision by Canadian authorities to deny him entry to the country.

According to Reuters, the ruling will deprive Ghana of one of their most influential players for their first fixture of the tournament.

FIFA confirmed that Partey, who is currently with the Ghana squad in the United States, will not be permitted to travel to Canada for the match against Panama. The governing body stressed that visa decisions fall solely within the jurisdiction of the Canadian government and that FIFA has no authority to intervene or overturn the decision.

The organisation added that Partey will remain available for Ghana’s other group-stage matches taking place in the United States, including upcoming fixtures against England and Croatia.

The issue comes at a crucial moment for Ghana, who were expected to rely heavily on Partey’s experience during the tournament. The decision has also renewed questions about the impact of immigration and visa policies on a World Cup being jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Reuters reported that the visa refusal is linked to legal proceedings involving the player in the United Kingdom, where he is awaiting trial over criminal allegations that he has categorically denied.

Featured image via Ryan Hiscott/Getty Images

By Alaa Shamali

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