Politics
A year since the EU-UK summit: where are we now?
One year on from the inaugural UK-EU summit, Hussein Kassim reflects on what has (or has not) been acheived since and what this means for the UK-EU relationship.
A year after EU leaders met Keir Starmer at Lancaster House on 19 May 2025, the optimism that accompanied the conclusion of the talks has faded. The first summit since the UK’s departure from the EU followed the Labour Party’s much vaunted manifesto pledge to reset relations with the EU. The signing of three texts looked set to open a new era of constructive and cooperative relations, with EU leaders welcoming a roadmap towards wider cooperation, while in the UK hopes were high about the possibility of moving towards to an even closer relationship with the EU in pharmaceuticals, chemicals and electric vehicles.
From one point of view, much was achieved at the summit and in its follow up. An agreement on fisheries has been signed, the UK will return to Erasmus+ from 2027, and negotiations continue between the two sides on an agrifood and trade agreement, energy cooperation, linking their two emissions trading schemes, and a Youth Experience Scheme – YES. More broadly, a comprehensive draft treaty on Gibraltar has been finalised and the Commission renewed its data adequacy decisions concerning the UK.
But so far there has also been at least one notable casualty. In security, where the two sides had signed a Security and Defence Partnership, the UK’s attempt to join SAFE (Security Action for Europe) – the EU’s flagship €150bn defence fund – collapsed when the two sides found themselves wide apart on the level of the UK’s financial contribution.
Add to that the several areas where negotiations have been stumbling and the picture is somewhat less promising. On agrifood and trade, for example, although the fundamentals, such as dynamic alignment with EU rules, have been agreed, the UK continues to seek exemptions. On electricity, the UK has been refusing to accept that, in return for access to the EU single market, it should like Norway and Switzerland contribute to the EU cohesion fund – a policy aimed at reducing regional economic disparities within the EU. Meanwhile, on YES, which is the EU’s main ask, the UK is refusing to allow EU students to pay tuition fees at the same level as domestic students and wants to cap the number of young Europeans coming into the UK. In neither electricity nor youth experience, London argues, were the concessions that the EU is demanding prefigured by the May 2025 agreement. Since the EU considers that agreement on SPS and emissions trading will benefit the UK more than the EU, it may yet decide that the UK will need to meet EU demands on YES to make the overall package acceptable.
More broadly, the UK finds it hard to understand why the EU will not agree on measures that in London’s mind would produce benefits for both parties. It sees the EU as backward looking and wonders why the EU cannot show more flexibility given the wider interests it shares with the UK.
The EU, for its part, has been baffled by elements of the UK’s approach. Since member states consider the UK to be in a better economic condition than some EU countries, they are not persuaded when the UK claims the state of the British economy prevents it from paying more. Similarly, the EU has limited sympathy when the UK invokes domestic debates about immigration when the issue is also sensitive in parts of the EU. More generally, the EU finds it difficult to reconcile the UK’s expressed desire for closer relations with what it perceives as the UK’s hypertransactionalist approach to the negotiations. Although much has changed since the days of Boris Johnson, the EU remains unsatisfied with some aspects of the UK’s implementation of rules under the Windsor Agreement. The monitoring and inspection of goods between GB and Northern Ireland, where the EU is concerned about products from the UK finding their way into the single market, is a particular issue. The view on the EU side is that if a party cannot implement an existing agreement, there little ground on which to trust it to comply with a new agreement.
What room there is for manoeuvre remains to be seen. Although it has shown signs of flexibility in its approach to the UK, the EU is not about to abandon its existential principles in regard to the single market. Nor is it likely to offer concessions to the UK that could trigger requests from other third countries to amend their agreements with the EU. Moreover, since the EU is largely satisfied with the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, it needs to be persuaded of the benefits of further add-ons. As member states have differing perspectives on the desirability of a closer relationship, often based on geographical proximity, there is also a question of whether the overall gains to the EU from an agreement with the UK will be substantial enough and whether all member states will see the benefit. Further, the EU side is wary of what happens next in British politics. UK domestic uncertainty has led the EU to pay particular attention to crafting safeguard provisions and conflict resolution clauses.
On the UK side, government rhetoric has changed noticeably over the past few months. Pointing to the costs of Brexit and the economic damage it has caused the UK, both the PM and the Chancellor have called for a closer relationship with the EU. Most recently, in the wake of Labour Party losses in the May local elections, Starmer declared that the UK should be ‘at the heart of Europe’. How this can be reconciled with Labour’s red lines or translated into an impetus to successfully conclude the current negotiations remains uncertain. The impact of a possible leadership contest on the government’s position is also unclear.
In short, the signs twelve months after the summit are mixed at best. The absence of the announcement of a date for a second summit bears eloquent testimony to the distance between the two sides that remains. In addition, unanticipated legal complexities and controversies concerning the mechanisms the government will need to adopt to make parts of an agreement work appear themselves to have opened a pandora’s box.
By Professor Hussein Kassim, Professor of European Public Policy and Administration, University of Warwick.
Humans are built in a way that is linked with a desire to peer beyond the curtain of the future. It can be anything – political campaigns, economic fluctuations, or monumental sporting events- people try to predict the outcome. The most famous example of this passion is World cup betting odds, which millions of fans and experts begin studying months before the referee blows the starting whistle. Why does our brain crave certainty in a place where randomness reigns? Where does this deep-seated need to transform the unknown future into a comprehensible framework even before it becomes the present come from? The answer lies at the intersection of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, sociology, and the psychology of mass behavior.
The Brain as a Prediction Machine
To understand people’s obsession with predictions, you need to look at how our main processing center functions. Modern cognitive science, particularly predictive coding theory, posits that the human brain does not passively absorb information from the surrounding world. Instead, it operates as a powerful prediction machine, continuously generating hypotheses about what will happen in the next millisecond, second, or year.
For our distant ancestors, the ability to anticipate the behavior of a predator, weather changes, or animal migrations was a matter of life and death. Evolution rewarded those who could see patterns in chaos. This evolutionary mechanism means that when faced with a frightening or exciting unknown, our consciousness automatically initiates a complex adaptive process, including:
- Scanning our memory for similar historical experiences.
- Constructing probability models based on even the most fragmentary data.
- Searching for any confirming or refuting signals in the external social environment, which together allow us to create a stable illusion of control over the future and reduce stress levels.
This list is not only a set of cognitive reactions but a unified defense mechanism that protects our psyche from the paralyzing fear of the unknown. When people predict the outcome of an event, they «experience» it in advance, preparing their nervous system for possible shocks.
The Dopamine Trap – The Joy of Being Right
It is not about avoiding stress. A powerful reward system is in play. Research showed that dopamine releases have a «reward prediction error». Dopamine is released not only when people receive something pleasant, but also when their expectations are met.
When you watch football and guess that a specific player is about to score, or when you predict the outcome of your city’s mayoral election, your brain is washed over by a wave of chemical pleasure. It is a triumph of intelligence over entropy. People love guessing about the outcome because every correct prediction makes us feel smarter, more insightful, and more successful.
This feeling of being right is one of the most powerful legal drugs available to humans. That is why analysis shows that before major matches, audiences are comparable to the broadcasts themselves. People want to compare their predictions with the experts’ opinions and enjoy the anticipation of being right.
Politics – How Polls Shape Reality
Opinion polls in politics are widespread examples of people’s addiction to prediction. Long before election day, polling agencies begin publishing candidate rankings. Citizens follow these figures with as much fervor as they do sports scores.
Interestingly, in politics, forecasts do not reflect a possible reality – they actively shape it. This is where the so-called «bandwagon effect» comes into play. When people see a certain candidate leading in the polls, many of them subconsciously shift their preferences in their favor. No one wants to be associated with the losing side; the frontrunner’s victory seems inevitable, and voters want to be part of that victory.
There is also the opposite phenomenon – the «underdog effect», when voters, sympathizing with a candidate they like but who is trailing, mobilize and go to the polls to disrupt the predicted scenario. In both cases, polls, which were intended as a tool for measurement, become a tool for influence. People read political forecasts not only to learn about the future, but also to understand what kind of society people live in right now, what values dominate, and where people fit into this social hierarchy.
Sports – The Perfect Canvas for Predictions
While politics is laden with ideology and economic implications, sport represents a form of unpredictability. Sports competitions are closed ecosystems with clear rules, limited time, and uncertain outcomes. This makes them the ideal training ground for the internal «prediction machine».
Football, basketball, and tennis – all these disciplines generate colossal amounts of statistics. Today, fans have access to expected goals metrics, heat maps of player movements, possession statistics, and head-to-head histories spanning the last hundred years. This illusion of measurability fuels our analytical apparatus. People believe that if they account for all the variables, they can mathematically predict the winner.
But the beauty of sport is that it defies these mathematical models. A human error, a momentary lapse in concentration, an accidental rebound, and suddenly the clear favorite is defeated by a team from a lower division. This duality creates incredible emotional tension. People love guessing the outcome of sports matches precisely because the chance of being right, thanks to our knowledge, collides with the romance of a miracle. When people predict the outcome, they are not simply analyzing data – they are telling themselves a story about how the plot should unfold.
The Spoiler Paradox – Why Do People Want to Know the Future, But Not Completely?
An interesting psychological paradox arises. If people crave to know how things will end, what World Cup betting odds are going to be, then why do they hate spoilers for movies or books so much? Why would someone spend hours studying analysis before a boxing match, be enraged if they were told the ending of a detective series?
The difference lies in the nature of the event itself and people’s role in it. A book or film is a complete, static narrative. The author has decided everything for you. Once people know the ending, they are deprived of the process of independently unraveling the mystery; they lose the ability to empathize with the characters in a moment of uncertainty. Our brains are deprived of the «work» of constructing hypotheses, producing a ready-made answer, which blocks the release of dopamine.
Sports, elections, and the living economy are open systems. The outcome is not predetermined by anyone. When people guess about the outcome in real life, they act as co-creators of reality. The forecast is an attempt to cast a meaningful net over the chaos of the future. Even if you are wrong, the process of analysis itself brings you intellectual satisfaction. A spoiler in a movie kills the suspense; a forecast in sports or politics creates that suspense.
Chief secretary to the UK prime minister, Darren Jones, probably thought he would be commended for getting on with what he and his ilk habitually call ‘the serious business of government’. While most of the Labour Party are engaging in an overexcited bout of fratricide, Jones announced last week that all government departments would be getting a new ‘delivery team’ led by a top civil servant to help them, you guessed it, ‘deliver’. For good measure, ministers would be given new ‘delivery advisers’ in their private offices to support this work. Man the desks!
The reaction from the commentariat hasn’t been as warm and fuzzy as perhaps Jones expected. Cue jibes about needing delivery units for the delivery of the delivery units. More civil servants being employed to deliver the thing that every civil servant is meant to be delivering does indeed sound like it came straight out of The Thick of It. It does raise the question: what are the rest of the civil servants doing? As shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith observed, those lanyards aren’t going to wear themselves.
The tinkering with delivery teams is illustrative of Labour’s total lack of ideas for how to fix the civil service. Instead, all this government can resort to is reheated Blairism. Adding yet another layer of bureaucracy to the bloated state and employing yet more Sir Humphreys is quite clearly not the answer to tackling an inert and ineffective civil service that has grown 35 per cent in the past 10 years. But then Darren Jones presumably needs enough civil servants working for him to justify his ever-expanding job title: after all, ‘Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations’ rather puts Jim Hacker’s ‘Ministry of Administrative Affairs’ in the shade.
Successive governments have found themselves confronting the dire problem of Whitehall’s prioritisation of process over results. This explains why the No10 Delivery Unit, first created at the start of Tony Blair’s second term, was revived by the Tories in 2021. Way back in 1999, New Labour’s Modernising Government white paper was meant to herald ‘a new focus on delivery – asking every permanent secretary to ensure that their department has the capacity to drive through achievement of the key government targets and to take personal responsibility for ensuring that this happens’. We continue to wait.
The problem is that actual delivery has become an alien concept to most civil servants. The people on the front lines of public services – nurses, teachers, prison officers, etc – do ‘delivery’ day in, day out. But the civil service in Whitehall sees itself primarily as an ideas factory. Everyone wants to work in a policy job. For that is how you get ahead and into the senior ranks. Implementing those ideas is seen as a bit of an afterthought, if it is thought about at all.
Huge amounts of paperwork are thereby produced by the machine, for the machine, and in volumes far greater than senior decision-makers even have time to read. Former No10 director of strategy Steve Hilton decried civil servants wearing down David Cameron’s government through endless paperwork.
It all comes down to incentives. Officials don’t need to be invested in results when their advancement is not based on them. In the civil service, it doesn’t matter what you’ve actually achieved in your role, so long as you can spin a good story about it or – even better – show how you ‘learned and developed’ from the experience. Those who do best in the civil service and rise to the most senior ranks are the smooth operators who master the jargon required to ace bizarre civil-service ‘behavioural’ interviews, rather than those who have demonstrated competency in their role.
What is more, in recent years, even these appraisals have been removed from the hiring and promotion process in most government departments, thanks to fears that they were discriminating against certain protected-characteristic groups. Results-based performance management has been expunged from the system.
Across the civil service, this leads to an elevation of process over delivery. In the private sector, the market will mete out natural punishment to profligate firms who fail to control costs. Not so in the public sector, where the equivalent of going bust is some stern words from Darren Jones’s private secretary.
Delivery units will not change the basic fact that the apparatus of government has grown far too vast and has become chronically unproductive. The British state is paralysed by a perverse incentive structure that rewards risk-averse proceduralism and foot-dragging over results. More civil servants steeped in the same culture will do nothing to change that. We need a total sea change in how Whitehall is run.
It is depressing but hardly surprising that this Labour government lacks the stomach to do anything truly radical to shake up the state. It is now too beholden to the lanyard class as a key bloc of its voting coalition. But if ‘delivery units’ are the best this government can come up with, the next Labour leader and prime minister will only have himself to blame when he inevitably finds delivery of his agenda runs up against the cold reality of our dysfunctional civil service.
Ameer Kotecha is CEO of the Centre for Government Reform. He was formerly a senior diplomat, serving as the head of the British consulate in Russia between 2023 and 2025.
Lawyers acting for the Global Sumud Flotilla, whose humanitarian volunteers Israel criminally abducted this week, say that Israel has subjected the captives to “extreme violence”. Some have been sexually assaulted, several have suffered broken bones and internal injuries. Israeli thugs have used ‘rubber bullet’ projectiles at close range:
View this post on Instagram
Israeli mouthpieces have boasted of the mistreatment of the flotilla activists. ‘Security’ minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted footage of himself humiliating the abductees. Ethnofascist barbarity that has been perpetrated on Palestinians for years is now being dealt out to international humanitarians.
Israel is a terror state. Will the UK government ever admit the truth? Don’t hold your breath.
Featured image via Syamsul Bahri Muhammad/Getty Images
By Skwawkbox
US VP JD Vance has encouraged the UK far-right to “keep on going” after fascist thug ‘Tommy Robinson’ told them to get ready for the “battle of Britain”. Around 40,000 racists turned out in London for a blatantly hateful rally, yet were given preferential treatment by police and politicians over the hundreds of thousands of peaceful anti-genocide marchers.
The Vance ‘Culture’
In a speech attacking immigration, Vance told White House reporters that “it’s ok to want to defend your culture” — by which he presumably means beery fat blokes shouting “Get your t**s out for the lads” and women dressing up in Muslim dresses to perform a racist strip. Is this worth ‘protecting’?:
The mob also distributed Islamophobic and other racist literature, while ignorant speakers gave speeches demanding the removal of ‘Islam’ from public institutions.
But then, Vance works for a ‘man’ who boasts of grabbing women by the genitals.
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer condemned the march for being hateful. But he and his lackeys call opposing mass murder and crimes against humanity ‘hate’, too — so nothing that comes out of his mouth is worth the foetid air it uses.
Featured image via Heather Diehl/Getty Images
By Skwawkbox
Politics
Watch: Israeli war criminal Ben-Gvir posts video of him abusing humanitarian flotilla abductees
Wanted genocidal war criminal and settler extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir’s arrogance is boundless. So much so that he has had himself filmed abusing and humiliating the 400 innocent volunteers of the humanitarian flotilla to Gaza that Israel abducted this week:
View this post on Instagram
The volunteers were trying to reach innocent Palestinians, whom Israel’s minister of national security wants dead or expelled, in Gaza where they are starving under Israel’s criminal starvation blockade.
Ben-Gvir compensating
The settler responded to the International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor’s application for a warrant for his arrest by announcing the illegal settlement of another stolen Palestinian area. The man is clearly compensating hard for something lacking in his body or soul, or most likely both.
Featured image via Amir Levy/Getty Images
By Skwawkbox
The Telegraph has argued that people not in employment shouldn’t be able to vote, including people with disabilities and those who are sick. The paper posits that the “unemployable” should not be allowed “citizen rights”. It argues that increasing welfare payments is “bribery”.
Telegraph — bit extreme?
People with disabilities certainly need to be able to vote because otherwise they have no say in a far right party getting into power. This can have tragic outcomes. The Nazis murdered at least 250,000 people with disabilities from 1939-1945.
The job fairies
It’s standard for the corporate class to go on about unemployment welfare, but it’s a denial of reality.
There aren’t enough jobs for people to become employed, so it’s unclear what the Telegraph is proposing. There are 1.8 million people not in employment in the UK. And there are 9.1 million people economically inactive (also without employment but haven’t looked for a job in three months). That’s 10.9 million people without work.
And how many job vacancies are there? 705,000. That’s over 10 million people, including those who cannot work, the Telegraph expects to become employed at jobs that don’t exist.
Anything that benefits a group could be ‘bribery’
Why are policies that benefit the less well off or people with disabilities considered ‘hand outs’ or ‘bribes’? Meanwhile, policies that benefit the super rich are considered ‘good politics’.
In the 2023/24 year, some government subsidies to corporations totaled £32 billion. And in 2024 Labour announced a further £22 billion bung to the fossil fuel sector for carbon capture projects that don’t work. These could be described as ‘bribes’ to keep corporations on side.
In the UK, 28% of people with disabilities live in poverty — 8% higher than the average. Would lifting those people who cannot work out of poverty be considered a ‘bribe’? Nope, it’s called civilisation.
Featured image via Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
By James Wright
Authors Paul Holden and Andrew Feinstein — a former Mandela minister — have issued a statement demanding Keir Starmer come clean on what he knew about ‘Labour Together’s (LT) spying on them and other journalists. LT paid PR firm APCO to snoop on them as they were investigating LT’s sabotage, rigging and undeclared funding.
The pair were commenting in response to coverage in Democracy for Sale and the Financial Times that Starmer’s closest advisers were fully briefed on what LT and APCO were doing:
The articles in today’s media on Labour Together & the Labour Party’s investigation & surveillance of journalists including myself & my colleague Paul Holden, author of @StarmertheFraud, make it imperative that Starmer reveal exactly what he knew about these dirty tricks & when;… https://t.co/v4oGcWhIqa pic.twitter.com/MfFs1UDzSc
— Andrew Feinstein (@andrewfeinstein) May 20, 2026
In a joint statement demanding a full inquiry, Feinstein and Holden said that they had received “deeply disturbing” documents showing the “utterly false and highly defamatory” allegations LT and APCO made about them. The firms targeted family members, colleagues and friends — and the operation was run by Starmer’s party as well as by them.
And they say that the new coverage also blows apart the excuses and evasion of Starmer’s ministers and handlers about the spying:
Joint Statement: Paul Holden and Andrew Feinstein Regarding Labour Together, APCO and the Labour Party
On Wednesday last week we received documents from Labour Together following Subject Access Requests that we submitted to Labour Together in February 2026. The documents provided by Labour Together are deeply disturbing.
They show that Labour Together and APCO targeted us, our colleagues, our associates and Paul’s family with utterly false and highly defamatory allegations, and that this was done with the knowledge of the highest levels of the Labour Party. Indeed, we are now of the view that the operation to investigate us, our families and associates was effectively a joint operation run by the Labour Party, Labour Together and APCO.
This highly invasive campaign was launched because of Paul’s factually accurate reporting. This reporting raised serious questions about whether Labour Together and Morgan McSweeney deliberately failed to report £730,000 in donations to the Electoral Commission in violation of the law. It is now plain that Sir Keir Starmer benefited from the work funded by these donations and that they facilitated his rise to power.
We are calling for a full inquiry into Labour Together.
We also call on Sir Keir Starmer to clarify his role in this scandal. Considering the documents that have been disclosed to date, we find it nearly inconceivable that Sir Keir Starmer did not know about this despicable project that included Labour Together reporting us to the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), a part of GCHQ, based on utterly false and highly defamatory allegations. These highly defamatory allegations were then shared with at least one major newspaper outlet.
The newly released documents reveal six important facts.
First, they show that Morgan McSweeney and Paul Ovenden were aware of the APCO and Labour Together investigation into us from at least January 2024. McSweeney was the Labour Party’s head of campaigns and subsequently Sir Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff in Number 10. Paul Ovenden was the Director of Labour Party communications and subsequently Head of Strategy in Number 10.
The emails show Simons arranging a meeting between himself, Ovenden, McSweeney and Tom Harper, a senior APCO employee, to discuss the investigation into us. A third Labour employee was copied into the email, but, because of redactions, we do not know who this is. We ask the Labour Party to confirm who else was copied into this correspondence.
The excellent @PeterKGeoghegan and Democracy for Sale have confirmed with a Labour Party source that the intended meeting did take place.
Second, they show that APCO’s Tom Harper actively coached Josh Simons and Labour Together on how to submit a ‘crime complaint’ about us to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of GCHQ. Harper provided text for Simons to submit to the NCSC. The decision to complain about us to the NCSC was made only days after Simons had emailed McSweeney, Ovenden and Harper about APCO’s upcoming report into us, asking for a meeting to discuss its contents.
Third, Josh Simons has repeatedly claimed in public that he appointed APCO to investigate a ‘hack’ of Labour Together materials. But the new documents show that Labour Together and Simons did not conduct any meaningful cybersecurity review to establish whether materials had been hacked from Labour Together, or where else they may have been sourced from.
Labour Together did, however, appoint a cybersecurity expert to review a potential hack in late 2025. This review, a summary of which has now been disclosed to us, shows that there was no ‘hack’ of Labour Together. This is obviously true, as we have repeatedly explained that the investigation into Labour Together was based on documents legally leaked from the Labour Party by whistleblowers concerned about misconduct by the Party’s most senior officials, open-source materials, and Freedom of Information requests.
Fourth, they show that Josh Simons and Labour Together told the NCSC that they were reporting us because they were concerned that Paul’s reporting ‘may be a co-ordinated effort to discredit Labour Together in order to undermine Mr McSweeney and by extension, Mr. Starmer in the run-up to next year’s general election.’ It is our view that this joint Labour Together, Labour Party and APCO operation was launched because Paul’s factually accurate reporting would have shed light on the highly problematic and unlawful aspects of Sir Keir Starmer’s rise to power.
Fifth, they show that APCO had sent a ‘case summary’ to Josh Simons of Labour Together on the 20th of November 2020, on the basis of which APCO were contracted by Labour Together two days later. The ‘case summary’, setting out a proposed scope of work, clearly identified us as journalists. From the very beginning, therefore, APCO and Labour Together knew that they were looking to investigate journalists – the very journalists who were reporting accurately on Labour Together, Morgan McSweeney and undeclared donations.
Sixth, they show that Simons wrote to an unknown person at the Labour Party in November 2023 asking for ‘intel’ on us. This shows that Simons’ immediate response to announcement of Paul’s book was to seek the assistance of the Labour Party. At the time, we were both Labour Party members. The reply to Simons’ request has been redacted in our documents. We call on the Labour Party to release all documents to us relevant to this scandal, and to confirm whether Josh Simons, Labour Together or APCO were provided with any of our private, personal information.
It appears there are only three possibilities remaining. Starmer was either elbow-deep in Labour Together’s activities, or a complete puppet of those who were. Or, of course, both.
Featured image via Brook Mitchell — WPA Pool/Getty Images
By Skwawkbox
In April, the Green Party’s Hannah Spencer attracted controversy when she suggested MPs shouldn’t be drunk at work. To be clear, said ‘controversy’ came from MPs and journalists; the public mostly all agreed with her. These MPs haven’t wised up to that fact, however, which is why they’re still carrying on like this:
MP's groaning and jeering as Hannah Spencer points out her constituents have to pay the full price for a pint whereas MP's get their alcohol subsidised #PMQs pic.twitter.com/Hc9PAN7Hyj
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 20, 2026
Let the MPs jeer
In the clip above, Spencer says:
In Gorton and Denton, we have to pay full price for a pint, but here, for some reason, it is cheaper. Some MPs drink before voting, and that really shocked me when I came to Parliament, because this is our workplace.
The choir began jeering at this point and continued throughout her question. Spencer continued:
Does the Prime Minister agree with his own MPs who have defended their right to drink cheap alcohol at work, or does he agree with me that MPs should not be drinking on the job, given that we vote on huge things like the climate crisis, disabled people’s rights, housing and child poverty?
We’ve reported on such MPs before, including this specimen:
Four years ago he got drunk, sexually harassed a woman and was racially abusive to a journalist. And got away with it. Coyle should have maybe kept out of this one. https://t.co/mE7nBXomLi
— Dr Iain Darcy
(@doctoriaindarcy) April 28, 2026
Starmer responded to Spencer by not responding to Spencer:
First, can I welcome the hon. Lady to her place, because I think this is her first question in PMQs? There will be different views on whether people should be able to enjoy a drink here or not, but I think we can agree that the majority of people in this country want an economy that works for them, public services that are there when they need them, and every child going as far as their talent or ability will take them.
The only way to deliver that is through a Labour Government, as we are doing. The Greens think that their leader walks on water. It turns out that he just lives on water and does not pay his council tax!
Starmer’s career, meanwhile, is drowning in a shallow puddle.
The people have spoken
Regardless of what our soon-to-be-ex PM thinks, the public agrees with Spencer:
With Green MP Hannah Spencer criticising fellow MPs for drinking alcohol ahead of evening votes in Parliament, the British public likewise disapprove – 76% brand this unacceptable, including 52% "completely unacceptable"
Link in replies pic.twitter.com/Dd09whJnzB
— YouGov (@YouGov) April 27, 2026
Maybe if Labour had spent more time listening to the public and less time sinking pints, we wouldn’t be in the twilight of the Starmer government.
Featured image via Parliament
By Willem Moore
Convicted fraudster Donald Trump just “forever barred and precluded” the US Inland Revenue Service (IRS) from investigating his tax returns to date.
The news comes as part of a $10bn lawsuit the US president levelled against the IRS as retribution for leaking his tax records between 2018 and 2020. The edict also applies to Trump’s family and his businesses.
Billionaire tax leaks
Back in 2023, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn was convicted of illegally distributing the tax returns of many of America’s wealthiest individuals to two news outlets. Along with Trump, the documents also included returns for Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
In 2020, the New York Times published reports stating that US president paid between $0 and $750 in taxes over his first term.
The following year, ProPublica likewise reported that America’s 25 richest often paid less in tax that many of the working public. The outlet also published notable irregularities in Trump’s own taxes.
This leak violated the confidentiality clauses of IRS Code 6103, which are among the most stringent in US law.
As such, in January 2026, Trump filed a federal lawsuit to sue the IRS and Treasury Department for $10bn in damages. He included the Trump organization as a plaintiff, along with his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
The suit alleged that the leak:
caused reputational and financial harm to Plaintiffs and adversely impacted President Trump’s support among voters in the 2020 presidential election.
‘Anti-weaponization fund’
On Monday 18 May, judge Kathleen Williams dismissed the case. That the same day, the Justice Department posted a settlement agreement for the lawsuit to its website.
Williams admonished the Justice Department, along with the other government departments, for their lack of transparency in the run-up to the settlement. She stated that none of the agencies involved:
submitted any settlement documents nor filed any documents ensuring that settlement was appropriate where there was an outstanding question as to whether an actual case or controversy existed.
Monday’s settlement included an agreement for the US government to make a formal apology to Trump. It also included a provision to create a $1.776bn “Anti-Weaponization Fund”. This would apply to individuals who believe they have been targeted by the US government for political ends, i.e. Trump’s allies.
Acting attorney general Todd Blanche refused to rule out the possibility that it could extend to payouts for the 6 January rioters. He called the fund:
a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.
Trump, meanwhile, stated that it was for “reimbursing people who were horribly treated.”
‘Slush fund’ for Trump allies
Predictably, swathes of the US political system have already called out the move. As AP reported:
Democratic lawmakers and ethics watchdogs slammed the creation of the fund, saying it was corrupt, opaque and had the potential to become a “slush fund” for the president and his allies. Even Republican lawmakers have expressed signs of discomfort about the fund’s creation, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who told reporters that he’s “not a big fan.”
Now, Monday’s settlement does state that Trump himself:
will not receive any monetary payment or damages of any kind
However, Trump appeared unsatisfied with this lack of a personal payout. On Tuesday 19 May, the Justice Department posted a single-page ‘addendum’ to the settlement. It effectively granted Trump immunity from tax investigations.
The document stated that United States are “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from “prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims” relating to tax returns submitted by the plaintiffs — Trump, his sons and their businesses — before 18 May 2026.
Likewise, the addendum — signed by Blanche — protects Trump from claims relating to “Lawfare and/or Weaponisation”.
Corruption and contempt — the Trump style
It seems superfluous, at this point, to highlight the extraordinary level of corruption on display here. Trump, who for all intents and purposes is the American government, has cut a deal with himself to grant himself immunity from investigations into his tax returns.
As a reminder, the US courts already convicted Trump of 34 counts of falsifying his business records. Now, as part of an opaque addendum to an already-bogus lawsuit, he’s blocked any further charges relating to his tax returns to date.
Glibly, we often state that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. However, given enough power, enough money, and enough corruption, the latter can be avoided completely. Those three traits are embodied in the disgusting slime Donald Trump.
Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images
Politics
UN intends ‘to make sure that all legal obligations are honoured’ after Israel demolished UNRWA headquarters
On 17 May, the Israeli occupation approved a plan to establish what it calls a defence compound on the site of the former United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem.
Site of demolished UNRWA headquarters will now become a millitary base for Israeli occupation forces
The proposal for the site in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of the city was put forward by the occupation’s defence minister Israel Katz. It will see the construction of an Israeli occupation forces (IOF) museum, a recruitment centre, and an office for the “Defence” Minister.
In January, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) stormed UNRWA’s headquarters, ordered staff to leave, and then used heavy machinery to raze it to the ground.
What was left was then set alight. Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, called the burning of UNRWA’s headquarters an unprecedented attack on the United Nations.
But, according to the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN, the UN, its property, and its assets are immune from every form of legal process. UN premises, archives, and documents are “inviolable”, meaning they are legally off-limits to local authorities and protected from interference. And as a party to this treaty, “Israel” is obliged to honour and respect the inviolability of all UN premises. This includes those belonging to UNRWA.
Will the UN take legal action against Israeli occupation over actions against its headquarters?
Following the Knesset’s approval of the plans for the UNRWA site, the UN Secretary-General’s deputy spokesperson, Farhan Haq, said at his daily press briefing:
We are considering, with our legal office, what the next steps are, but we intend to make sure that all legal obligations are honoured. UNRWA sites are UN premises, and they are meant to be inviolable. We have raised concerns about exactly what’s happened to the site, the way it was invaded, the way it was taken over. And these concerns still apply.
UNRWA was formed in 1949. Its mandate is to provide aid and services to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forcibly displaced by the occupation during the formation of “Israel”, in 1948, until the implementation of Resolution 194. This resolution calls for the right of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons to return to their homes. There are currently almost six million registered with UNRWA.
But the Israeli occupation’s political goal is to forcibly displace Palestinians from the occupied territory, and ethnically cleanse Palestine. So there are ongoing attempts by the regime to dismantle UNRWA, and erase the status and history of Palestinian refugees both in the occupied territory and abroad.
This is why the zionist regime’s relationship with UNRWA has been hostile for many years. And this relationship has deteriorated further since the start of the genocide in Gaza. The agency has been relentlessly targeted by the occupation, with the aim of disrupting UNRWA’s work and permanently close it down.
Baseless accusations from the occupation — which have been heeded by the West, include claims the agency’s activities are used by Hamas as a cover for “terrorist” acts. The curriculum UNRWA uses in its education system has been accused of encouraging violence. And, according to the lies of the occupation, UNRWA employees also took part in Operation Al Aqsa Flood against “Israel” on 7 October, 2023.
UNRWA Legislation passed by Israeli occupation has a political motive
In October 2024, the Knesset passed legislation to ban UNRWA from providing any services whatsoever in so-called Israel. State authorities were also banned from having contact with UNRWA in both the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank. This has seriously curtailed UNRWA’s activities there.
Then, in December 2025, a law was passed that required Israeli providers to disconnect or withhold water and electricity from UNRWA facilities. The provision of banking or financial services was also blocked to the agency. The Knesset also passed legislation that revokes diplomatic immunities, and also allows the Israel Land Authority to seize UNRWA-controlled land and offices, transferring UNRWA’s assets to the “state of Israel”.
Taking to X to boast of his proposal’s approval, Katz posted:
We outlawed this terror-supporting UN organisation and took the land, and now on its ruins we are building and strengthening Jerusalem—the eternal capital of the Jewish people.
As the international community debates statements of concern and legal obligations, crimes continue to be committed every hour of every day across occupied Palestine.
Absence of accountability ensures the occupation’s crimes continue
The terrorist state of Israel needs to be stopped. If international law means anything, then its violations cannot continue to be met with impunity, diplomatic cover, and empty statements of concern. The destruction of UN institutions, the targeting of refugees, and the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians demand urgent and concrete action from the international community.
But our governments continue to illegally arm, fund, and politically shield the Israeli occupation. They are enabling these crimes and undermining the human rights and democracy they continue to claim they defend. Until meaningful pressure is applied on “Israel” and it is isolated on the world stage, it will continue attacking Palestinians, their institutions and their rights with absolutely no fear of any consequences.
Featured image via Amir Levy/Getty Images
By Charlie Jaay
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