A series of attacks targeting Jewish communities across Europe has been widely attributed to a group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI). The Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh seems to have been overcome by a rush to the head of certainty that HAYI is backed by Iran.

Given how long it took for the Guardian to start describing the genocide in Gaza as a genocide, we are intrigued by how quickly he and his editor have come to this conclusion. We’d like to check with Dan if he has verified these claims and that they are from an unbiased source that is not part of an agenda to gain advantage from the fallout.

The so-called ‘mainstream’ media is now consistently describing HAYI as having “Iranian state links” or being an “Iran-backed network.” However, we’ve been looking at the evidence, the language used in the group’s statements, and the reliability of sources, and we have to say that not only is there no reliable evidence we can find to support this narrative, but the circumstantial evidence all points the other way.

The Guardian’s reporting on HAYI and its gaps

In its recent article following the Golders Green knife attack, the Guardian reported that HAYI claimed responsibility within an hour of the incident. While the article correctly notes that investigators found “no initial evidence of Iranian state direction” and described the group’s claims as “most likely opportunistic,” it still maintains the narrative of potential Iranian involvement. Where did this come from?

Sabbagh’s reporting suggests that HAYI “is considered not to exist in its own right” and the “working assumption” is that it is “a cutout, a front for an Iranian state agency.” Whose working assumption, Dan? Yours? The police haven’t said that. The conclusion appears to rest on speculation rather than concrete evidence.

Linguistic analysis casts doubt on authenticity

One of the biggest puzzles here comes from reading the group’s statements. As detailed in an investigation by Younes Saramifar, a political anthropologist at VU University Amsterdam, the Arabic language used in HAYI communications shows clear signs of artificial generation.

“The language of announcements shows a clear lack of fluency in Arabic,” Saramifar noted, explaining that “the language is generated by an AI tool” and that technical details like punctuation placement indicate “the group is neither native Arabic nor English speakers.”

Perhaps most telling is the group’s inconsistent terminology. HAYI refers to Palestine as “the Land of Israel”, with a capital “L” – a phrase overwhelmingly associated with Israeli state ideology rather than Palestinian resistance.

Call us suspicious, but when the IRA released statements during the Northern Irish troubles, they had to have a code word in them to be taken seriously by the RUC Special Branch, or anyone else. If they’d been spelling Irish words wrong and talking about ‘our wee Ulster’, there would have been some adults in the room to pour cold water on the whole thing.

Questionable sources and unverified incidents

A MintPress News investigation revealed that mainstream reporting on HAYI has relied heavily on sources which we would not regard as unbiased.

The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) report, frequently cited by journalists, receives core subsidies from the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and maintains partnerships with NATO, USAID, and other Western governmental institutions. The report itself states that “there is no unequivocal proof of Iranian involvement”, while at the same time not addressing any of the reasons to doubt the Iran-linked narrative, such as the lack of motive, or rather that Iran has a very strong motive to avoid association with such attacks.

It makes no reference to the fact that there are other states and state actors with a strong motive to frame Iran as being behind attacks on Jews in the West, and that any other group or intelligence agency could easily set up a Telegram channel at short notice that appears to be within the Iranian information ecosystem, leading to the same conclusions that the report comes to.

The fact that this report gives no cursory consideration to these obvious alternative possibilities does not give us much confidence in it.

When examining the actual incidents attributed to HAYI, the evidence becomes even more problematic. Of the ten incidents claimed by HAYI between March 9-23, at least five appear to have never occurred:

• Greece (March 11-12, 2026)
• France (March 23, 2026)
• Haarlem, Netherlands (March 23, 2026)
• Antwerp, Belgium (March 23, 2026)
• Chabad Hebrew School in Heemstede, Netherlands (March 23, 2026)

The Antwerp incident, initially reported as an arson attack targeting a Jewish neighbourhood, was later revealed to involve a car owned by a Moroccan woman, not a Jewish resident.

Who benefits? The political context

The timing of HAYI’s emergence – coinciding with the US-Israeli war against Iran and growing European calls to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation – cannot be ignored. The same media outlets and commentators amplifying the HAYI narrative have also been prominent voices in the push for IRGC proscription.

History also strongly suggests caution. As documented by Skwawkbox and many others, there have been multiple instances where violent attacks against Jewish people have been used to serve pro-Israeli political agendas, from the Lavon Affair to recent attacks in Australia, which were so obviously cooked up that even the Guardian reported them as fake. The use of violence in attacks on Jewish people or organisations is often traced back not to Israel’s enemies but to Israel itself, but we generally find this out only many years later. Prof Avi Shlaim is one impeccable source of information on the bombings in Baghdad in the 1950s, which he exposed in his book, Memoirs of an Arab Jew as being mostly carried out by Israeli Zionists.

The need for responsible reporting on HAYI – and everything

The consequences of reporting something in haste that may later be disproven are serious, and we really think that Dan and his employer should consider them. If the Iran theory turns out to be wrong, and we think it may well do, these are the real-world effects:

• Tensions escalate during a period of international conflict
• The real instigators of violent attacks to avoid investigation
• Trust in the media is undermined
• Islamophobic sentiment and discrimination are heightened
• Government policy is hastily changed to benefit certain interest groups, such as those demonstrating at Golders Green during the Prime Minister’s visit; quoted in the Guardian on 30^th April 2026 as wanting “the Government to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation and shut down the Iranian Embassy”.

It’s clear enough that there are plenty of people in Britain’s ruling class who are determined to push forward on those last two points and really couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the first three. In their reporting of this incident, The Guardian appears to be playing to that gallery in a most obedient way. Media organisations have a responsibility to distinguish between verified facts and speculation, especially when reporting on matters of national security and international relations. We’re not seeing any of that here.

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By The Canary

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During this four-day visit to the USA, king Charles made a lot of time for American corporations.

The visit comes under the shadow of the Epstein files — which accuse both Trump and King’s brother, Andrew, of involvement with the disgraced paedophile.

The visit was also a corporate fest. A soulless symposium where virtue signalling met venture capital. In the end, the only thing royalty and corporations truly share is an immunity to shame.

On Tuesday, Charles attended a state banquet alongside Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman, Fox News’ Jesse Watters, Oracle’s David Ellison, Goldman Sachs’s John Rogers, and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff.

Before the banquet, he also met with Benioff, Cook, Google President Ruth Porat, and Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su. According to Reuters, Charles did almost call out their predatory behaviour gently — showing he is aware of the ruthlessness behind American capital.

According to Reuters, Charles noted the “terrible valley of death” for university startups. NVIDIA’s Huang said they need “a vibrant VC ecosystem.” Charles joked, “You’re all deadly competitors.” Huang replied, “No one has to die.” Charles replied, “Really?”

On Wednesday, he met with king Charles — along with senior executives from Bank of America, Blackstone, Comcast, Google, JPMorgan, and OpenAI during a gathering at Rockefeller Center.

His Majesty King Charles III attended a UK/US Trade & Business event at the iconic @rockcenternyc, meeting with business leaders representing the breadth of the economic relationship that drives prosperity in the UK and the US.

The UK and US economies power one another. In New… pic.twitter.com/RZrkJwyNr6

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— British Embassy Washington (@UKinUSA) April 30, 2026

King Charles and Labour’s loyalty to American tech giants

Labour’s loyalty to the same US tech giants has already done real damage at home.

According to former CMA chair Marcus Bokkerink, Starmer’s Labour government prefers US tech giants over homegrown competition, warning that the government appears committed to “entrenching the dominance of a small number of tech giants.”

Bokkerink wrote recently,

Under new leadership and government direction, enforcement involving the so-called Big Tech firms has slowed significantly. The Google and Apple investigations concluded without substantive remedies.

The planned investigation into Amazon and Microsoft cloud services was cancelled. The result has been to reinforce the status quo rather than inject fresh competitive dynamism.

As economist Angus Hanton put it in a recent interview with Novara Media, the UK is a “vassal state.”

They own the platforms British people trade on, such as Amazon; the social media the UK uses, like Meta; and the search engines people in Britain use, like Google.

Hanton told Novara:

So our town square is controlled mostly from California.

American corporations employ 2 million British people, he said. Most Britons are uninterested in finding out the true level of American influence on Britain, and most of the data in his research came from American companies themselves.

As Hanton also notes in the interview, 10,000 American military personnel are already stationed in the UK.

Hanton doesn’t believe Britain has a truly independent nuclear deterrent either.

He said:

No politician in the last 20 years has used the phrase ‘independent nuclear deterrent’.

The transatlantic ruling elite are linked by the Epstein files and their worship of capital, centralised in New York and California.

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By The Canary

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It’s not just fossil fuel giant BP, which doubled its profits in the first quarter of 2026. The war on Iran has meant interest rate rises. These have increased Lloyds Bank profits by more than 30% over the same period.

War on Iran is inflationary – and Lloyds is making a killing

The US-Israel war on Iran has led to higher inflation. When that happens, the Bank of England raises interest rates, meaning private banks make more money from their loans.

The thing is, loans should be interest-free in order to stimulate the economy and facilitate small and medium-sized businesses. Private banks have long been absolutely failing such enterprises. As 50 economists and experts warned in a letter to Reeves in 2024:

Lending to the real economy has consistently made up around just 10% of bank lending in recent decades. The vast majority – around 80% – of bank lending goes towards inflating the price of pre-existing property and other assets.

Unprecedented economic disparity means the super-rich are simply trading assets between each other, inflating the price each time. An example of this is the housing bubble, where necessary shelter is treated as an asset that keeps rising in price.

Where’s Labour?

Nonetheless, Labour has refused to even reinstate a cap on bankers’ bonuses, aligning with Liz Truss who scrapped the cap during her brief stint as prime minister. The cap itself was already minimal – at 100% of a bankers’ entire annual salary.

openDemocracy had already revealed that bankers and city-linked firms handed Labour £2m in donations in the two years up until they refused to introduce a bankers’ bonus cap.

It gets worse. The public purse subsidises commercial banks through the Bank of England paying interest on reserves it holds for them. From 2023-2028, public funds will have forked out £180bn to private banks in order to pay the interest on the reserves they hold with the central bank. As a public entity the Bank of England shouldn’t be paying such interest.

Fran Boait, former Co-Executive Director at Positive Money, has said:

The good times just keep on rolling for banks. Not only are they still profiting off the public thanks to higher borrowing costs, but their share prices are soaring off the back of those profits. But the size of bank profits will wane as rates start to come down, and so the longer the government waits to place a windfall tax on banks, the less money it will be able to claw back for the public.

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By James Wright

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Independent party Arise has chosen candidates with “a track record of activism” to stand in Harrow’s local election. And they’re hoping to hold the council to account in particular for its housing and financial failures.

Arise — ‘We’ve never stopped campaigning’

Pamela Fitzpatrick, who’s running for Arise in the Marlborough ward, told the Canary that:

People are so disillusioned with politicians. When you first knock, it’s ‘no, no, no, no, no’ or ‘I never vote, you’re all corrupt’.

But she and others in Arise have stressed how different they are:

by talking about the campaigns we’ve been involved in. So once people hear that and they remember, ‘oh yeah, you were involved in that, you’re not just turning up out of nowhere’…

a lot of us are known for what we do.

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After standing in the 2024 general election as an independent, Fitzpatrick said:

we’ve never stopped campaigning, and on a whole range of things.

Since registering Arise last year, though, they focused on what wards they would stand council candidates in. And Fitzpatrick explained that:

There had to be evidence of being a socialist, and they ought to have a track record of activism.

Despite being a largely Conservative borough, she added:

In some parts, you would not believe the level of poverty that people are living in, and they’re desperate. They’ve heard it all before, you know, ‘Labour will make things better’. When we knock at the door, they are so angry at things, that their lives haven’t been made better – they’ve been made a lot worse, generally.

Housing specifically is a big issue, she insisted.

Harrow’s housing crisis and local activism

Saying that most parties only reach out to residents at election time and are “not rooted in the community”, Fitzpatrick asserted that:

We are there all the time. We had a housing campaign. Harrow’s got such a housing crisis, because it’s got the lowest level of council homes or social housing of any London borough. So people who are on poor and middle incomes are in the private sector, and it’s too expensive. But lots of the housing is of really poor quality, you know, damp, toxic mould and everything.

They keep building more and more tower blocks that nobody can afford to live in, and they say they justify it on the basis this is to meet the housing crisis and they say it will have X amount percentage affordable, but of course the affordable’s not affordable…

Lots of these tower blocks are lying empty because they’ve been marketed abroad as foreign investments… Despite everybody saying the Council is broke, it does have considerable borrowing power, so they could buy these blocks and actually turn them into council housing, which would then generate income for them and, again, solve some problems.

And Fitzpatrick was part of community efforts to deal with this situation. She continued by saying:

We started a campaign about 4 years ago that became known as Tesco Towers, and that brought together loads of residents, all different political colours and everything, who didn’t want this…

And by the end of that 3 years, we’d stopped that development going through, through a mixture of petitions, going to council meetings, knocking on doors, talking to people protests outside Tesco’s… Tesco’s threatened to arrest us, we got a lot of publicity about that. We never saw sight nor sound of a councillor or MP, ever. Nobody there.

The opposition to the Tesco Towers development centred around issues like lack of affordable housing, potential health risks, and the impact on local infrastructure due to the large scale of the project.

Another “really easily achievable” step the council could take, Fitzpatrick highlighted, is to “prosecute rogue landlords”. This very rarely happens, but:

If they prosecute rogue landlords, that makes them money, probably between £7,000 and £10,000 each time they prosecute a rogue landlord. When a rogue landlord illegally evicts somebody, the council has to pick up the bill, usually, and house the family. They never then go for damages against that landlord, which they could…

This would send a message to landlords to actually do something about the quality of their accommodation, and make money for the council.

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Stop putting people’s tax money into private pockets

Fitzpatrick also talked about the money the council wastes unnecessarily in order to line private pockets. On the topic of housing, for example:

When people are homeless and they go to the council, they are placed in hotels or nightly accommodation which is paid at a higher rate than normal rents, for example. It’s people making such a lot of money out of homelessness and misery.

With social care, meanwhile, she said:

Most of the council’s budget, like other councils, it goes on social care. Most of that is because of the privatisation of care homes, where people are charging a fortune and not necessarily getting particularly good care.

So we want care homes to be brought in-house, to be re-nationalised basically. And that would then give people good jobs, secure jobs, better-paid jobs than the people who are working in these care homes and being paid minimum wage, often from agencies.

And what we also want is free home care, which they’ve done in Tower Hamlets, so it is possible, and that would prevent a lot of people actually entering into residential care.

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There’s also an issue with permanent exclusions from school, many of which involve children with special education needs. Academies, she stressed, “don’t want those children in their schools”. However:

local authorities still bear the responsibility for special education needs. So again, they could be looking at, ‘this is a discrimination issue, where schools are just getting rid of children’.

And there’s another expenditure here, she claimed, as the council uses a lot of agency staff for special education needs, where it could save money by keeping costs in-house.

Arise is ‘an openly socialist party’

In terms of where Arise is standing, Fitzpatrick explained:

We are an openly socialist party, so we are not standing in the traditional conservative areas of Harrow. We are standing in the center, really, so in the poorer parts of Harrow, the central part of Harrow, but one of the key things is that we’ve tried, as far as possible, to get people who have roots in that ward.

Without the money or recognition of national parties, she said:

Help is always welcome, and we’d love anybody in Harrow who wants to get involved in left-wing politics to contact us.

Your Party has given Arise its endorsement.

Arise has also been in contact with the Green Party, even deciding not to stand in the Greens’ strongest wards. For now, Greens have decided to stand in every ward. But there are hopes for future cooperation.

You can see more about Arise’s candidates here, and Arise’s key policies here.

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By Ed Sykes

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UK telecoms corporations Vodafone, Virgin Media, and BT have said they may start rationing mobile data in the UK. That’s because of rising energy costs due to the war with Iran.

This is another instance of privatised utilities proving to be less efficient than public ownership. And it’s another instance of how a Green New Deal would lower costs and end the nation’s reliance on volatile international fossil fuel markets.

Huge losses for UK telecoms

The losses these firms are experiencing are partly due to market competition over an essential service. Telecommunications companies Vodafone and Virgin Media reported significant losses in 2025. Vodafone had a net loss of £3.6 billion. Virgin Media had losses of over £3 billion.

This demonstrates that telecommunications should be brought in-house. Virgin Media’s losses were partly due to debt from investment costs. The thing is, if telecommunications were publicly owned, the government could use debt-free fiat currency to finance infrastructure projects. Then, progressive tax rises could tackle any inflation.

Failing that, public sector borrowing is cheaper than private sector borrowing, meaning lower interest rates for telecommunications investment.

A publicly owned telecommunications provider could offer the cheapest products and services for an essential. It could also provide revenue for the government to allocate to education and healthcare. There would be no need to ration mobile data.

Energy costs

The rise in energy costs also demonstrates the failure of the marketisation of an essential. Following the war on Iran, BP doubled its profit on fossil fuels compared to the first quarter of 2025. That was largely because its production is mainly in North America, which has been less impacted by the war on Iran. At the same time, the market price of oil has skyrocketed. So BP made huge profits instead of delivering oil at much lower than the market rate. In turn, this raises costs for every individual and business in the UK.

That said, looming climate catastrophe means we need to stop all oil production and fossil fuel use. A Green New Deal is the fastest and most equitable way to do so, because although the market is moving towards renewables, it’s not happening fast enough.

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By James Wright

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The number of children living in temporary accommodation in England has risen again to around 176,130, setting a new record and deepening the UK’s housing emergency.

That is the equivalent of the entire population of Oxford.

With local elections taking place on 7 May, campaigners say the figures should be a wake-up call for voters and candidates alike, warning that housing and homelessness must become a defining political issue.

Just Fair, a UK charity working to defend and promote economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to housing, says the figures reflect a failure to treat housing as a basic human right.

Alex Firth, advocacy and communications officer at Just Fair, said:

These figures show a clear failure to protect children’s rights. Every child has the right to a safe, secure home, but across the UK that right is being denied on a huge scale. Housing is not a privilege, it is a human right recognised in international law. When that right is not protected, it affects everything: children’s health, education, stability and sense of security.

The crisis is particularly acute in London, where the relationship between housing costs and child poverty is stark. Housing costs in London are significantly higher than the rest of the UK and continue to rise. In the private rented sector, the average rent is now £1,957 per month, accounting for 41.6 per cent of household income (ONS, August 2025).

As a result, child poverty rates in London almost double when taking housing costs into account. They rise from 16 per cent before housing costs to 31 per cent after (HBAI, 2026), a much larger increase than in any other region.

The rise comes despite historic progress in the past. In 2010, the number of children experiencing homelessness nationally fell to under 70,000, showing that government action can reverse the trend.

Councils under pressure on housing

Campaigners warn that the crisis is most acute at the local level, with councils under growing pressure to house families in temporary and often unsuitable accommodation. New analysis from the Local Government Association reveals that councils in England are facing a cumulative £3bn shortfall in temporary accommodation funding between 2017/18 and 2029/30.

Research shows the daily realities families face are severe. Parents are forced to prepare food for young children without access to kitchens. Children with special educational needs may face journeys of up to two hours to school when placed out of borough. Young people preparing for exams have to study in overcrowded, noisy spaces without reliable internet access.

The United Nations has repeatedly raised concerns about housing in the UK. In its latest review, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights called on the UK government to increase the supply of affordable housing, strengthen renters’ rights, and address the root causes of homelessness.

Firth added:

Local authorities are on the frontline, but they need the powers, funding and national leadership to act. These elections are a moment for accountability. People should be asking: will those seeking election commit to making the right to housing real in our communities?

After years of rising homelessness, we need more than short-term fixes. We need a rights-based approach that guarantees everyone a safe and secure place to live.

While recent UK government strategies, including the Child Poverty Strategy and National Plan to End Homelessness, have rightly identified the need to tackle the temporary accommodation crisis, action must go further.

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By The Canary

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Access to Work failures rumble on, and now the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has all but outright admitted it has no idea why reconsiderations for awards have been surging.

However, a campaign group has put forward one idea. Unsurprisingly, it has pointed the finger at the DWP’s sneaky cuts by stealth to the disability employment grant.

What’s more, the high level of reconsiderations makes a mockery out of the DWP’s sham excuse for what’s driving the cuts.

Access to Work cuts: reconsiderations surging

The government-funded disability employment scheme provides grants to pay for support that enables disabled people to enter or stay in work.

It covers a broad range of support that can include aids and equipment, costs for taxis or adaptations to vehicles, interpreters, support workers, and job aides.

The level of support the DWP awards is meant to be according to an individual’s needs.

When an individual doesn’t agree with the results of their award for Access to Work, they can request the DWP get a different case manager to review the decision.

According to the National Audit Office (NAO), these ‘reconsiderations’ have shot up in the past five years.

Notably, reconsideration requests rose from 194 in 2021/22 to 385 in 2023/24. By 2024/25, these had surged eight-fold on 2021/22 figures, hitting 1,575 requests.

The DWP’s doesn’t have a clue

In February, Labour MP Johanna Baxter grilled the government on this. It was during a Work and Pensions inquiry session on employment support for disabled people.

DWP minister Diana Johnson’s answer suggested the recent cuts to awards might have something to do with it.

Notably, Johnson referred to the DWP’s excuse that case managers are applying guidance “in a more consistent way”. Department ministers and officials have been offering this up to defend the sudden wave of cuts to disabled peoples Access to Work awards.

In May 2025, Decode – an organisation which supports thousands of disabled creatives in navigating Access to Work applications – found that the DWP had reduced Access to Work for nine in 10 people renewing their awards. On average, it identified how the DWP had reduced awards by 53%. Similarly, the DWP was granting 86.5% of new applicants less than they had requested. And disabled people reporting devastating cuts to their awards has only continued apace.

So in that context, Johnson’s answer would only make sense. Of course, the minister was reticent to admit that this meant the department was wrongly slashing awards through its supposed new case manager ‘consistency’.

But significantly, Johnson ultimately hedged on the cause of the increase in reconsiderations. She promised to send the committee further information.

Now, the minister has indeed written to the committee again. However, she has all but admitted that the department doesn’t actually have a clue why reconsiderations are surging.

Still no answers over Access to Work

Notably, in a letter the committee published in April, Johnson told the inquiry that:

Applications to the Access to Work scheme more than doubled between 2018/19 and 2024/25 (from 76,100 to 157,000), We also saw an increase in the volume of reconsiderations in 2024/25 however cannot say with certainty that the increase in reconsiderations is solely linked to the increase in applications. We have been working to improve the decision making throughout the scheme, and as the guidance is applied with greater consistency, we would expect the numbers to reduce.

That Johnson pointed to applications little over doubling – over a longer time period – to explain Access to Work reconsiderations rising more than eight-fold shows that the DWP is still grasping at straws to explain the drastic increase.

In other words, it made clear that the department hasn’t even attempted to investigate the reasons behind the sudden rise.

As DWP continues to feign ignorance – a disabled-led campaign group has put forward one obvious answer. And crucially, it meant turning the spotlight back on the department’s sweeping cuts to Access to Work awards.

DWP excuse doesn’t add up

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has been separately carrying out an inquiry on Access to Work scheme failures.

In a letter to the committee, the Access to Work Collective highlighted that:

A reported 72% of reconsiderations result in decisions being revised, indicating that a substantial proportion of initial decisions may be incorrect.

Our own evidence reflects this pattern. We have received consistent reports of awards being
reduced at renewal despite no change in need, leading to challenges and reconsideration requests.

As such, the collective challenged the idea that the DWP is in fact applying awards with greater consistency. Rather, it instead suggested it’s “inconsistent initial decisions” that’s driving the spiralling numbers of reconsiderations.

So far from case managers awarding Access to Work according to the guidance, the high proportion of revised awards showed the DWP’s justification for the cuts isn’t adding up.

What’s more the group pointed out the fact that maybe, just maybe, the high levels of reconsiderations were also compounding the scheme’s appalling delays.

In particular, it argued that the cuts were creating a “self-reinforcing cycle”, describing how:

inconsistent initial decisions increase reconsiderations; reconsiderations consume disproportionate resource; and reduced capacity contributes directly to backlog growth. Delays therefore appear to be driven not only by external demand, but by avoidable rework within the system.

In March, the DWP told the PAC that the department was making applicants wait 37 weeks for a decision. For self-employed people, it was even worse – at 80 weeks. And even since then, wait times have climbed further. They now sit at 38 weeks and 86 respectively.

Labour doesn’t care about disabled people

Of course, none of what the Access to Work Collective highlighted fits the DWP’s convenient narrative. This is of course that it’s improving the service for disabled people with better application of the guidance. It’s clear that’s not what’s actually happening.

At the end of the day, the scheme’s atrocious delays and cuts to awards speak for themselves.

If Access to Work isn’t actually helping disabled people enter or stay in work, then it’s not doing what it’s there for.

Labour continues to target disabled claimants – cutting their benefits and coercing them into unproven work programmes – all as it fails to provide the Access to Work support they actually need.

Because ultimately, this Labour government cares less about actually supporting disabled people than they do about making ‘savings’ from them. No amount of nonsense around ‘consistent’ decision-making can hide that shameful reality.

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By Hannah Sharland

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The Metropolitan Police have arrested two Green Party candidates over deleted social media posts.

Green Party candidates arrested

On Thursday, April 30, the Met detained Saiqa Ali, who is standing in Streatham, in the borough of Lambeth, and Sabine Mairey, the candidate for Clapham Town, also in Lambeth.

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The Met arrested both on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred for allegedly posting antisemitic comments online.

As LBC reported, the posts by Mairey include a:

picture of a man holding a placard that reads “ramming a synagogue isn’t anti-Semitism, it’s revenge” above a picture of two children that the post claims were “murdered by Israel”.

She also claimed 9/11 was an Israeli “false-flag attack”.

We, of course, do not condone her antisemitic comments.

However, some of her other points have merit behind them.

She claimed the government is over-represented with “Zionist Jews”.

It is, of course, important to state that not all Jewish people are Zionists, and not all Zionists are Jewish people. However, around 180 British MPs have accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups or individuals during their careers. This includes around 130 Conservative MPs and 41 Labour MPs. Why are foreign agents funding our government?

Some of Mairey’s other posts include mentioning that Nazi Germany had to “hide what they were doing”, and stating that Israel has not.

We cannot argue with that latter point.

The whole world has watched Israel livestream a genocide, blowing babies up and double-tapping health workers and journalists.

She also claimed that Israel uses the Holocaust to justify genocide in Gaza. Again, she has a point. It is well recorded among genocide scholars that Israelis use the Holocaust to justify mass violence against Palestinians.

Once again, we do not condone her antisemitic comments, but she has a fucking point.

As reported in the Telegraph, one of the social media posts by Ali depicts an image of an armed man in a Hamas headband. On the image, is the slogan “resistance is freedom”.

Ali has previously apologised for her social media comments.

Armed resistance

Of course, the UK government has proscribed Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

However, armed resistance is not illegal under international law.

Hamas was founded in Gaza in 1987, shortly after the start of the first Intifada, an uprising against Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Hamas’s goal is to:

liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project.

The group holds armed resistance to occupation as one of its founding principles, with its 2017 Document stating:

Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws.

And Hamas is correct in its interpretation of international law.

Armed resistance is not illegal under international law. A United Nations General Assembly resolution states:

The General Assembly,

Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle;

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Israel and the West have labelled Hamas as a ‘terrorist group’ and called for their disarmament, when they’re only defending the land they are native to.

Now, Westerners, like these Green Party candidates, are being labelled as antisemitic – purely for upholding the same standards as international law.

Permanent annexation of a territory, as Israel has done to Gaza, is illegal under international law. But armed resistance is not.

Antizionism ≠ antisemitism

Additionally, anti-Zionism – that is, opposing the Jewish ethnostate of Israel- is not the same as antisemitism, which is dangerous and totally incompatible with any movement for collective liberation.

Zionism is the equivalent of white supremacy. It has resulted in the expulsion of 750,000 Indigenous Palestinians from their land and homes. Being anti-Zionist means standing against a system of apartheid, in which one group of people have exclusive rights above another.

It is more important than ever that we stamp out actual antisemitism, while also remembering that Zionism is the equivalent of white supremacy and has no place in society.

But we can already see it playing out – Jeremy Corbyn 2.0.

As we head into local elections, where the Green Party could gain as many as 555 seats, of course, the media are mixing real antisemitic comments with anti-Zionist ones. They are muddying the waters on purpose, and it’s important that the Green Party and Zack Polanski stand firm. Anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not the same thing.

Feature image via Barold/The Canary

By The Canary

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Centrist politicians in the UK and US are going to increasingly extreme lengths to protect the reputation of Israel. The latest example of this is a US Democrat prioritising the public condemnation of Hasan Piker — a streamer and Israel critic — over measures to stop the illegal US war on Iran:

we’re hitting a state of genuine psychosis https://t.co/ZW8wIWL5MY

— onion person (@CantEverDie) April 29, 2026

Priorities

Much like the Canary, Turkish-American Piker is a longtime critic of the state of Israel. There’s a lot to criticise, too, whether it’s the recent genocide, the years of apartheid, or whatever the fuck this is:

There is no dispute that dogs can be trained to rape people.

In Pinochet's Chile, a German Shepherd named Volodia was trained to rape inmates.

In the case of Israel, we have multiple testimonies from Palestinian detainees, as well as Israeli guards. https://t.co/S9OZuq9UFN pic.twitter.com/uEHRQtG080

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— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) April 25, 2026

Israel has made itself a Jewish ethnostate, and it claims to represent the international Jewish community. This is used by Israel and its defenders to label critics of the violent and expansionist nation as ‘antisemites’. It is not antisemitic to criticise a rogue foreign state, though, and increasingly the people of the world are wise to this.

This shift in public opinion means Israel’s defenders have to conduct themselves in desperate and unhinged ways. That’s why US politicians are moving Hell and Earth to bring the power of the state down upon one of the nation’s most prominent advocates for Palestine:

When was the last time Congress voted to condemn a private citizen? McCarthy era? https://t.co/1RtPf7AnZq

— Kate Willett (@katewillett) April 29, 2026

The stated reasons for condemning Piker include a long list of selective quotes which paint Piker in an unflattering light (all of which he’s explained many times over). In the past, it was right-wing streamers sharing these selective quotes — now its supposedly serious politicians.

As Piker himself noted:

This is a Democrat doing this [Gottheimer]. The same Democrat that is supposed to be advancing the war powers resolution that is already two months late on Iran. And instead of that, this is the bill that they advanced this morning. Think about that. What a joke of a country we’re in,

Speaking on Gottheimer, Piker added:

Representative Josh Gottheimer famously, after October 7, blamed Islam straight up with an earshot of Muslim congressional representatives – a racist monster, a ginormous piece of shit. …

Okay, here is the silver lining. If you want to know what the silver lining in this madness actually is, Josh Gottheimer knows that the information environment is uncontrollable. So, they’re testing out the boundaries of how much disciplining they can do with congressional resolutions like this.

That’s it. They’re trying to see if if social media companies will bite on this nonsense.

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They know that they can’t win this conversation back, but the very least they can do is, you know, buy and sell Tik Tok with the hopes that people stop saying mean things about Netanyahu in Israel with the hopes that they can enforce this action upon Amazon and Twitch so that other content creators will think twice.

For a further idea of how terrified the establishment is of Israel’s critics, this is how Fox News has been behaving recently:

Fox News has now covered Hasan Piker for 25 days straight. More than any politician in the Democratic Party. pic.twitter.com/RlV22rSYDx

— Hasanabi productions (meme account) (@HasanabiProd) April 29, 2026

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Hasan Piker — Never back down

Piker has also said:

Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D) and Mike Lawler (R) have just introduced a resolution to condemn Hasan Piker.

Earlier this month, Piker had this to say to his critics:

"Their boos mean nothing when I’ve seen what makes them cheer."https://t.co/VqwJsEjyxh

— Zeteo (@zeteo_news) April 29, 2026

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At this point, Israel is a weight around the neck of every establishment politician. While those attacking Hasan Piker may never back down, they will eventually be replaced. Just be prepared for things to get worse before they get better.

Featured image via The Canary

By Willem Moore

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Last night, Israeli forces illegally attacked and intercepted vessels participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters, damaging boats, stranding hundreds on board, and detaining activists at gunpoint. The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) calls on the UK government to take urgent action to protect UK citizens and other global humanitarian civilians who are under attack.

UK Green Party member Zak Khan is among the flotilla seafarers that Israel has detained. An emergency rally will take place at 6pm on 30 April outside the Greek embassy in London. This is because, although Israel attacked the flotilla in international waters, the Greek island of Crete was the nearest land.

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A post shared by UK_globalsumud (@uk_globalsumud)

The flotilla had sought to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza at a time when Palestinian people continue to face malnutrition and starvation, due to Israel’s intentional restriction of humanitarian aid, as part of its genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Israeli forces smashed vessels and forcibly intercepted the flotilla, preventing it from continuing its mission to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. Activists were detained following the assault, in a deliberate effort to disrupt and punish attempts to stop the Israeli blockade.

This is a clear example of Israel’s continued disregard for international law. The targeting of civilian vessels and detention of unarmed activists, including British citizens, raises further concerns in the context of the enforcement of the Gaza blockade.

UK silence over flotilla equals complicity

ICJP says the UK government must unequivocally condemn Israel’s latest aggression, following the suit of countries such as Italy. Inaction would put at risk the international rules-based order and all other vessels sailing at international waters. Norms of Law of the sea are mostly customary ones by which states have abided by for years now.

ICJP calls for Israel return all seized vessels and to immediately release the reported 175 people from 55 countries who have been detained. Reportedly, at least 22 boats were intercepted, and approximately 36 boats are still sailing.

In April 2025, ICJP also wrote to the Foreign Office, highlighting how Israel’s conduct targeting the previous Gaza Freedom Flotilla was in stark violation of international legal norms. In that case, Israel targeted the Madleen, a UK-flagged ship, amounting to an attack against the territorial jurisdiction and sovereignty of the UK.

ICJP also asked the Foreign Office what measures the UK would put in place to ensure the protection of future UK vessels undertaking humanitarian missions operating in international water nearby occupied Palestinian waters. It is clear that its inaction on that matter has directly led to Israel’s continued impunity, meaning the UK government must be held responsible for its role in failing to protect UK citizens.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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