Donald Trump has described Britain’s two aircraft carriers as “toys” in another swipe at the UK over the Iran war.

The US president insisted America “doesn’t need” the UK’s help in the conflict, despite repeatedly criticising Keir Starmer’s reluctance to get involved.

Trump has been angry with the prime minister ever since he refused America permission to launch its initial strikes on Iran from RAF bases.

Starmer has also rejected the president’s request for warships to help re-open the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane.

He made his latest comments during a cabinet meeting in the White House.

Trump said: “We had the UK say that we’ll send our aircraft carriers – which aren’t the best aircraft carriers, by the way. They’re toys compared to what we have.

“We’ll send our aircraft carrier when the war is over. I said ‘oh that’s wonderful, thank you very much’. Don’t bother, we don’t need it. And we don’t need them.”

The UK’s two aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, cost around £6 billion each to build and weigh 65,000 tonnes. They are the largest warships ever built for the Royal Navy.

Senior UK government sources have previously insisted that America has never requested aircraft carriers, and that the government has never offered to send any either.

On the morning of 26 March in Filton, Bristolians immobilised a weapons factory of Israeli arms contractor Elbit Systems. The building, used for the production of “battle-tested” drones used for strike missions on men, women and children in Gaza, was forced to a halt by a chain of around 60 people.

The picket line formed at 6.50am, prior to workers arriving, and remained firm for at least 90 minutes. Actionists chanted “Shut Elbit Down!” and “Free Palestine!”, and held Palestinian flags and banners demanding ” STOP ARMING GENOCIDE”.

The protest indicated a clear message: Bristol’s people want to drive contractors like Elbit Systems out of their city. Protesters pushed past barriers blocking access to the main gate, which has 24/7 security guards. And they stood with their arms linked, blocking any workers or vehicles entering the site.

Elbit Systems fuelling and profiting from genocide

Elbit Systems is Israel’s main weapons provider and self-proclaimed “backbone” of the Israeli Defense Fleet through supply of drones, armoured vehicles, and munitions. The company’s UK subsidiary UAV Engines Ltd manufactures the engine of the Hermes 450 drone. Israel used such a drone to murder UK aid workers in Gaza in 2024.

As the actionists’ banner stating “ELBIT PROFITS FROM MURDER” highlights, in 2024, at the height of the ongoing genocidal campaign in Palestine by Israel, Elbit announced revenues of US$ 6.8bn.

Like other Elbit Systems facilities, activists have targeted this site several times since October 2023. Its sister site in Aztec West closed down last September, years before its lease expiry. It’s likely that direct action had rendered it financially unviable.

The recent US-israeli strike on Iran has further lined Elbit’s pockets. According to the company’s chief exec, Bezhalel Machlis, Elbit Systems supplies Israel with long-range guided munitions and equipment for electronic warfare.

A spokesperson for the actionists said:

In January, Elbit was denied a £2 billion contract with the MoD. In February, the high court ruled the proscription of Palestine Action unlawful on two grounds.

Most of our brothers and sisters, imprisoned for resisting genocide, have been granted bail and able to return to their loved ones.

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These victories are symptoms of a bigger shift. Thousands have signed up to a direct action training to resist companies like Elbit. Its doors in Bristol will shut for good, not because of the government, but because of the people

Another protester said:

Bristol, through hosting military contractors such as this one we’re outside the gates of, is covering itself in the blood of Palestinian men, women and children. I am horrified to see my city again and again on the wrong side of history. Complicity is no longer an option.

It is our duty as workers with pension pots, payers of tuition fees, parents of children at schools. Where companies like Elbit get free entry to careers fairs, by the way. It is our duty as people of Bristol to disturb the workings of this factory yesterday, today, and tomorrow, until it is forced to shut down.

Featured image via Barold / the Canary

Many American bases across the Gulf states are uninhabitable due to extensive damage caused by Iranian counter strikes against us colonial infrastructure in the region.

In a rare divergence from the official imperial line, the New York Times (NYT) reported that various US military installations had been all but destroyed.

The US-Israel attacked Iran first on 28 February without provocation. Iran was offering unprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.

A month into the war, the NYT finally reported the extent of the damage to a key theatre of US imperial power projection.

Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, with the ones in Kuwait, which is next door to Iran, suffering perhaps the most damage.

Adding:

Six U.S. service members were killed in a strike on Port Shuaiba that destroyed an Army tactical operations center. Iranian drones and missiles also targeted Ali Al Salem Air Base, damaging aircraft structures and injuring personnel, and Camp Buehring, damaging maintenance and fuel facilities.

US bases in Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia also took serious damage:

In Qatar, Iran struck Al Udeid Air Base, the regional air headquarters of U.S. Central Command, damaging an early-warning radar system. In Bahrain, a one-way Iranian attack drone struck communications equipment at the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. At Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, Iranian missiles and drones damaged communications equipment and several refueling tankers.

A complete lack of planning

Historically speaking, the bases America maintains in the Gulf were built to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But their proximity to Iran left them exposed when Trump, under Israeli influence, pulled the trigger on a new war. In one telling line, the NYT captures the shortsightedness of US foreign policy planning.

Part of the problem for the Pentagon is that two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan — war zones where the United States quickly established air superiority — left the military with facilities and headquarters close to the current front lines.

This has forced the US to relocate personnel and equipment—in some cases to Europe—leading to serious questions about its lack of planning:

The lack of better planning, some military officials said, also reflects a miscalculation on the part of the administration about how Iran would respond.

Censoring the war

The levels of destruction might also explain why spy satellite firms have restricted access to imagery, as we previously reported. On 11 March several firms insisted they had not be told to do so “by any government”.

This claim has since turned out to be false.

Military sources told journalist Ken Klippenstein that the Pentagon had threatened to withdraw lucrative contracts to ensure satellite imagery providers played ball.

🚨 US military document leaked to me shows how the Pentagon is working with private companies to manipulate the information you see about the Iran warhttps://t.co/w9G5bz8QZy

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) March 24, 2026

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It may not have been an order, but the Pentagon’s ‘guidance’—paired with the reported threat—had the same end effect.

As Klippenstein explained:

While the Pentagon “guidance” to the commercial companies is framed as an advisory, the companies comply because their contracting relationships with the government make them afraid to bite the hand that feeds them.

The failures of the past are making America’s latest war fantasies untenable. And, as the US empire implodes from within, and across the Arabian gulf, the Pentagon is no longer able to mop up the mess.

Now even the NYT, the paper of the liberal wing of US empire, is reporting critically on the misplanning and poorly executed was trump claims to be winning.

Featured image via the Canary

The League is encouraging the public to take part in the hunting consultation and use it to back the government’s pledge to ban so-called trail hunting, but also to demand new measures to outlaw reckless and ‘accidental’ hunting, to remove loopholes in the existing Hunting Act 2004, and to introduce custodial sentences to act as a deterrent for lawbreaking.

New figures released by the League today to coincide with the consultation show suspected illegal fox hunting is rife. During the last fox and cub hunting seasons, from August 2025 to March 25 this year, the charity recorded 488 reports of foxes seen being pursued, along with 1,220 reports of anti-social behaviour and havoc inflicted on rural communities by fox hunts. Pre-laid trails were recorded being laid at only four per cent of hunt meets attended by monitors.

The consultation will be open for 12 weeks from today and invites respondents not only to give their opinions on trail, drag and clean boot hunting, but also “whether any other legislative changes are needed to ensure that a ban is effective”.

Emma Slawinski, chief executive of the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “This consultation is the very welcome start of a process which should lead to more effective legislation allowing the courts and police to tackle persistent and prolific illegal hunting, something the League has been lobbying many different governments for over many years.

“The time for change is now – 21 years after the original hunting ban came into force, we are now finally on the brink of consigning this old-fashioned blood sport to history

“So-called trail hunting must be banned, the exemptions in the Hunting Act removed, the end of so-called accidental hunting, and jail sentences introduced to act as a deterrent for those who would break new stronger fox hunting laws.”

The charity has public backing. In February 2025, on the twentieth anniversary of the Hunting Act coming into force, the League handed a 104,000-signature petition into Number 10 calling for stronger laws on hunting, followed this year by a 36,000-signature open letter to the government urging it to stand by its promises to do just that.

The League’s fox hunting data was collected from reports into the League’s Animal Crimewatch service, the League’s professional investigators, and other monitor and saboteur groups in the field.

The hunt havoc includes reports of trespass in people’s gardens, attacks on family pets, reports of other wildlife such as deer being chased, hounds running amok on busy roads and causing road traffic accidents or on a railway line – all activities inconsistent with the idea of following a trail, which is what hunts claim to be doing.

However, the League says the figures are just the tip of the iceberg, showing only those hunts being monitored, with hunt behaviour in many remote rural areas and incidents of animals being chased and torn apart going unreported.

Emma added: “For more than 20 years, hunts have carried on breaking the law and ignoring the ban on chasing and killing wild animals with dogs.

“This is a pivotal moment for animal welfare and, as well intentioned as the original ban was, this time around we need to get it right with stronger measures to stop the cruelty and killing.”

More about how to take part in the consultation, and how people can make their voice heard, is available here: https://www.league.org.uk/hunting_consultation

The Israel lobby’s frantic attacks on the Green party continue, this time from the Spectator. The colony’s UK mouthpieces have been targeting the Greens and their leadership intensively since members tabled a motion to declare the party explicitly anti-Zionist.

The front page of the latest issue of the Spectator – edited by ultra-Zionist Islamophobe Michael Gove – is a naked attack on the party for, supposedly, ‘abandoning its roots’.

Spectator push slop

The cover image shows Green party leader, Zack Polanski, deputy leader Mothin Ali and new Green MP Hannah Spencer hacking away at trees as if they are now anti-nature. But in reality, the attack is all about Israel – the Greens’ environmental policies haven’t changed. And of course, it’s not long before the article’s author Angus Colwell gives that away.

Colwell’s support for Israel has long been on show, including in previous Spectator spew like the “The Ultras: meet Britain’s new Islamo-socialist alliance‘. But on the Greens’ “environmental” “betrayal” he soon exposes his real agenda, ranting about “Palestinian activism” and courageous pro-Palestinian author Sally Rooney [emphases added]:

Climate activism begets trans activism begets Palestinian activism. The author Sally Rooney gave a speech at a progressive conference this month that’s a good example of the sentiment. ‘The adversaries we confront in the Palestinian solidarity movement… are the same forces driving catastrophic climate change and destroying the very basis for our shared survival,’ she said. Each issue is yet more proof of a permanent crisis.

At this weekend’s online-only conference, party members will have an opportunity to vote on a motion declaring that ‘Zionism is racism’. Two similarly named splinter groups – Greens Anti-Zionist Alliance and Greens for Palestine – have been leading the effort, and Polanski (himself Jewish) hasn’t really condemned it: ‘If we’re talking about the definition [of Zionism] that this Israeli government are clearly perpetrating through a genocide in Gaza, then yes, absolutely. That’s racist.’

Backing the motion more vehemently is Mothin Ali, Polanski’s deputy. He’s a keen gardener, has been on a BBC show with Marcus Wareing and has a ‘My Family Garden’ YouTube page with 56,700 subscribers. The most recent video opens with him taking a chainsaw to a tree, then removing his headgear to reveal a Palestine beanie. ‘As-salamu alaykum,’ he says. ‘So today, what I’m going to do, is I’m going to show you how to cut down trees for profit’ – which is an interesting thing for a Green deputy leader to say. He then shows everyone how to prune fruit trees. He is genuinely liked on a personal level in the party: one senior figure tells me he’s a ‘gentle soul’.

A Palestine beanie. The horror. But clearly the motion is what has Colwell and the Israel lobby so rattled. Good. Polanski, for his part, showed his trademark lack of you-know-what-giving and used the whole nonsense as a vehicle to invite people to join the Greens, wondering aloud what was wrong with the poor souls at the Spectator:

The motion must pass. No political party that thinks building an apartheid ethno-state on land stolen from its people isn’t racist has any place in British politics – and you can tell from their pearl-clutching panic that the Israel lobby knows the British public is catching on.

Featured image via the Canary

Palestinian doctor Mohammed Hammad is looking for help to get from Gaza to Scotland to complete a research project at Edinburgh University.

The people’s doctor

Hammad completed his medical training in late 2025, during a brief lull in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Since then, living in a tent in the Mawasi concentration camp, he has been treating sick and wounded Palestinians under Israel’s illegal blockade of food, fuel and medicines.

Now he has secured a year-long neuroscience research fellowship under consultant neurologist Prof Rustam al-Shahi Salman. The project will evaluate stroke care in Gaza to find improvements that can be implemented despite Israel’s occupation and genocide. However, the placement and travel costs are not funded. Hammad, who is from Rafah but was displaced to Mawasi in May 2024, is seeking financial support and has set up a crowdfund to raise cash for the placement.

Defying the odds

He told Edinburgh Live:

During the war, I volunteered for six months in the Neurology Department at Nasser Medical Complex – the only operating hospital in southern Gaza, serving 1.2 million Gazans. During my final year of medical school, I supported patient care, documentation, neurological emergency management, and CT interpretation under extremely high-pressure conditions.

Hospitals faced severe shortages of electricity, medications, imaging access, and basic medical supplies. There were periods of overcrowding, limited diagnostic capacity, and constant uncertainty.

Some of the most difficult situations involved managing acute stroke cases without access to thrombolysis or advanced stroke unit care, treating prolonged seizures with limited medication availability, and assessing traumatic brain injuries with restricted imaging capacity. There is currently no MRI available in Gaza, and in the south there has effectively been only one functioning CT scanner serving a population of around 1.2 million people.

Working under siege

On his experience working as a doctor under siege, he said:

The difficulty was not only the medical complexity, but having to make critical decisions in severely resource-constrained and high-pressure conditions. Despite this, healthcare workers continued to provide care with remarkable resilience.

My immediate family is safe at the moment, but we live under very difficult humanitarian conditions, displacement, limited access to consistent electricity, clean water, and stable infrastructure. For the wider population, daily life is defined by uncertainty and rebuilding from repeated disruption.

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This opportunity to come to Edinburgh represents more than academic progression. It is a chance to gain structured research training, international mentorship, and exposure to advanced stroke systems of care — knowledge that I hope to bring back to strengthen neurological services and medical education in Gaza.

Featured image via the Canary

4 min read28 min

For the first time since the UK government announced its drastic aid cuts – the steepest of any G7 country – we’ve heard how it plans to spend what’s left of the overseas aid budget. Amid sweeping changes, we’re hearing that the flagship global health and water programme, WASH FOR Health (HS4H), has been axed, cancelling work across multiple countries with only 3 months’ notice.

Last week, I had the privilege of being elected as the new Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in parliament. Water runs through every priority area in international development, from prioritising women and girls, to building resilience to the climate crisis, and reducing the spread of deadly diseases, yet we’re seeing critical programmes like WASH4Health being cut.

This sidelines one of the public’s top issues, with new polling showing that clean water tops the public’s priority for UK aid spending for the third year in a row. In a new More in Common poll, almost half of respondents (48 per cent) say access to clean water and sanitation is the most important area for investment in foreign aid, with health the second most selected option (35 per cent). Regardless of voting preferences, of geography or gender, across different viewpoints and core beliefs, water comes out on top.

Furthermore, the data shows that the public believes clean water to be the area which receives the most money from UK aid spend, second only to disaster relief, when in reality it’s one of the lowest areas of spend. Funding for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) has been reduced by over 60 per cent since 2018. With nearly three-quarters of the public supporting increased investment into WASH in healthcare centres to support maternal and newborn health, cuts like WASH4Health clearly fly directly in the face of public support.

Looking at conflicts around the world, we’re increasingly seeing that water security is global security, elevating the risk of instability, the spread of diseases that don’t respect borders, and climate pressures that make us all more vulnerable, at home and abroad.

The sweep of global aid cuts calls for much sharper thinking on how to make the most of a scarce resource. If the UK wants to be an investor, it should be prioritising water – an overlooked tool that saves lives, creates long-term change and underpins global health, food, energy and national security. 

And the public agrees. WASH is ranked as the best value for money intervention and the best way to build self-sufficiency in developing countries. If the government is serious about moving from paternalism to partnership, the answer is clear: change starts with water. 

It’s not just about smart investment. It’s also about the lives of millions around the world.

Every two seconds, a mother gives birth in a health centre without clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene. That means wards or delivery rooms which are unclean, where midwives are unable to deliver babies with clean hands and new mothers are unable to clean themselves after giving birth. Over three-quarters of births in Sub-Saharan Africa take place in unsafe delivery rooms like this, contributing to 1 in 9 mothers developing sepsis each year.

WaterAid’s new Time to Deliver campaign joins the demands of women around the world, calling for every health centre to have clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene.

At the campaign launch in Parliament last week, I had the privilege of hearing from Patience Emmanuel, a former midwife now working as a WASH Manager for WaterAid Nigeria. When asked what having funding for water would mean for women giving birth in health centres right now, she became emotional. She told us that if governments took action this year, the difference that mothers would feel first is dignity. Their child would be born into a place that is safe.

It’s testimony like Patience’s that should be in the minds of decision makers at the moment. Water, sanitation and hygiene are simple, inexpensive tools that have the power to create long-term change for low- and middle-income countries, while transforming the lives of women and girls, protecting global health, and boosting economies.

Lee Pitcher is Labour MP for Doncaster East & the Isle of Axholme and Chair of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene All-Party Parliamentary Group