Prominent lobby group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has been pushing hard to stifle criticism of the Zionist settler-colonial state’s crimes. And this has included trying to get the Open University (OU) to erase the term “ancient Palestine” for potentially triggering supporters of Israel. But academics have been fighting back.

Open University management flip-flops over Israel lobby campaign

The OU quickly folded under pressure from UKLFI. The university’s Palestine Solidarity Group exposed via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request that Adrienne Scullion, head of the Arts and Social Science faculty, had promised the lobby group:

We will not use the term ‘ancient Palestine’ in any future course materials, and we will explain and contextualise its use in existing materials for current learners

Following reports and UKLFI boasting, however, hundreds of academics signed an open letter challenging the OU’s pledge. And the controversy attracted greater public scrutiny of the institution:

#AcademicFreedom | We have written to The @OpenUniversity to express our profound concern about the university’s response to a letter from the UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) regarding the use of the term ‘#ancientPalestine.’
Read our letter: https://t.co/nr2AHIbjDu 1/3 pic.twitter.com/RA7GFdcjju

— BRISMES (@OfficialBrismes) February 26, 2026

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I imagine @owenjonesjourno‘s recent Guardian column went some way to effecting that U-turn pic.twitter.com/hG1jCSm6o6

— Rivkah Brown (@rivkahbrown) March 3, 2026

‘@OpenUniversity lecturer @LuxMea said the idea this is “a late-coming or illegitimate term” is a “Zionist lie, aimed at the erasure of Palestinians”@jeremycorbyn told @novaramedia an agreement to stop using the term amounted to “anti-Palestinian racism”’https://t.co/AK4CDsFDMD

— OU Palestine Solidarity Group (@OUPalestine) March 3, 2026

Censorship

As Novara Media reported, this seems to have had an impact. A spokesperson for the OU told the outlet that academics can use their professional judgement and:

are free to use the term ‘ancient Palestine’ where scholarly appropriate in teaching and learning materials.

Novara said Scullion’s “contextual note”, according to the OU, only referred to “one current module within Arts and Social Sciences”. This wouldn’t explain the “broad wording” of the pledge to UKLFI, though. For one staff member, there’s a “clear contradiction” with the OU’s new claims, which:

do not constitute a reasonable interpretation of the letter from 18 December

Indeed, according to legal experts, the OU’s apparent commitments to UKLFI could represent a breach of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 (HEFSA). This binds universities to prevent “undue pressures” on staff and students that could threaten academic freedom and freedom of speech.

UK institutions and pro-Israel groups have been systematically targeting supporters of Palestine with different types of repression, with a particular focus on “students, academics and teachers”. The new Index of Repression outlines almost a thousand such cases between 2019 and 2025. And UKLFI has played a prominent role:

UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) appears 128 times in our database leading to institutional action against Palestine solidarity in schools, workplaces, universities and beyond. And this is only what we were able to verify.

Anti-Palestinian repression in Britain is not accidental.… pic.twitter.com/2agZuqG4Ff

— European Legal Support Center (ELSC) (@elsclegal) February 24, 2026

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Defend academic freedom

The OU branch of the University and College Union (UCU) has insisted that the institution’s actions have made it:

complicit in a politically motivated attempt to erase Palestine from history.

It has also argued that it sets a precedent for more future attacks on academic freedom.

✉️FOI request exposed commitments to UK Lawyers for Israel to caveat & limit use of the term ‘ancient Palestine’ in learning materials

Makes OU complicit in a politically motivated attempt to erase Palestine from history

+ sets precedent for further attacks on ac freedom

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3/6

— Open University UCU (@oubucu) March 3, 2026

It wants the OU to launch an independent inquiry into what happened, and for the university to:

retract all commitments made to UKLFI.

And our @UCU branch encourages academic and academic-related colleagues to sign this open letter

The @OpenUniversity must defend academic freedom

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5/6https://t.co/HdCFn7a12y

— Open University UCU (@oubucu) March 3, 2026

This is not the first time UKLFI has tried to shut down solidarity with Palestine. And it won’t be the last. But if enough people raise their voices in defence of academic freedom, we can at the very least make the group’s mission a hell of a lot harder.

Featured image via the Canary

The following is a statement from the women’s strike assembly:

Statement

London, UK – Sunday 8 March – We, the women’s strike assembly – an independent collective comprised of various migrant, socialist, decolonial, abolitionist and autonomous activists and organisations – will be taking to the streets once more this year on 8 March 2026.

As a collective, we have been taking action on 8 March annually since 2018 to celebrate, grieve and struggle against patriarchy, imperialism and fascism as they manifest in the form of further militarisation, attacks on our trans and migrant siblings and silence in the face of the global drive to war.

As a collective who rejects liberal and reactionary feminisms, we learn from and laud all those who have taken action alongside us and in the same spirit of liberation around the world, from the global women’s strike in 2000, the women’s revolution in Rojava to the various anti-femicide movements across Abya Yala.

The threat of fascism

In 2026, the biggest enemy for women’s liberation is the threat of fascism and the rise of the far-right on our streets, as well as the neoliberal Labour Party stooping to racist politics in order to appeal to the ruling class who benefit from dividing the working classes in the first place. Additionally, the Labour government are actively harming immigrants through furthering earned settlement policies and building a hostile environment which harms women by exacerbating crises in care, housing, cost of living, and childcare.

With regards to the dimension of fascism on the street: in the last year, we have witnessed fascists advancing their movements into local communities in the name of ‘women’s rights and safety’. Alongside this, imperial feminisms upholding racist narratives that migrants come to the country to ‘rape and abuse’ *our* women and children have been strengthened by reactionary groups like the Pink Ladies to give the impression that the fascist movement has found legitimacy amongst women.

As anti-fascist feminists, we say fuck this colonialist nationalist agenda. NO to borders. Migration is life and NO one is illegal.

Details of the demonstration

Date and Time: 3pm, Sunday 8 March

Route: The march will commence at Russell Square and end at Soho Square, London

Why we strike

We are striking as a feminist wing of a working-class movement, that is to say a movement which represents poor and disenfranchised people and takes action in line with their liberation against the system which defines politics as committees of the rich few against the many. We are striking as the Epstein files expose the threads of a corrupt global elite that enjoys total impunity, showing the complicity between the British Monarchy, the billionaires club, the financiers, politicians from all parties, with an international ring of p*dophiles, sexual traffickers and abusers.

Furthermore, we are striking as in British society, around 4 million children are living in poverty and 382,000 people are homeless in England alone- with black women and single mothers affected disproportionately. We strike because these contradictions are not matters of bad administration or policy but rather a result of a system that is unequal by design. So we strike as conscious objectors to such a bloodthirsty system, which has been vying for the approval of women for years through ‘girlboss’ rhetoric, demanding that women be involved in this cycle of oppression.

We reject the currents of reactionary feminism which seek to divide our experiences of gender and womanhood to biology. We are striking alongside our trans siblings, because their lives are under constant attack. The UK Supreme Court ruling saying “sex” is exclusive to biological / assigned at birth sex is nothing but another colonial heritage perpetuated and in the name of “women’s rights and safety”. We reject terfism and mandatory cisness, we define who we are.

We strike in transnational solidarity with the people of Palestine, Rojava, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Haiti and Congo. We strike against the femi-genocide in Palestine which is deliberately targeting mothers who give birth to, feed and raise children, and are the primary carers of families and communities. Imperialism continues to kill people en masse for power and profit. This is a global system, not a set of policies. As a result, we are a global network of anti-colonial feminists. ALL EMPIRES MUST FALL!

We strike because we don’t just want rights. We understand they can be useful, but they are CRUMBS in a system based on exploitation, extraction and colonisation of our bodies, our labour, our lands, our nature, and the planet. We want justice and we want liberation – because feminist justice is incomplete without land justice, disability justice, housing justice, food justice, and care justice.

We strike because we want to create communities that enact ways of organising life and relating to one another that are not based on abuse, oppression, accumulation, or punitivism. We’re seeking worlds otherwise, we want to abolish the systems that enable oppression and create freedom through new systems of care and the leadership of the oppressed. Justice does not call for reform, but for feminist projects of total collective transformations. Justice is about imagining and working towards worlds of interconnectedness and care as foundational principles for organising life. It is about sharing the labour of sustaining life – human and non-human. Justice is about a life beyond individual choices within a broken system, and instead about collective care.

All in all, our demands this year, just like every year, we seek to take action as the general crisis of imperialism affects women and marginalised communities the most. We shall take the streets in order to expose and raise awareness of this fact.

When women stop, the world stops.

Featured image via Instagram / falatinamericans

UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) mouthpiece Natasha Hausdorff is one of the Israel lobby lawfare group‘s better known faces. She has been accused by a Jewish critic of defending “pure freaking evil” for her insistence that Israel is not committing genocide and war crimes in Gaza. And she is suing right-wing host Piers Morgan for a 2025 interview in which he gave her a torrid time for it.

Piers Morgan announcement

Morgan has announced the suit, though the “particulars of claim” detailing what grounds she thinks she has for legal action have not yet been released. Morgan said he is looking forward to testing his words in court:

BREAKING: I am being sued by @Hausdorffmedia from ⁦@UKLFI⁩ . I welcome the opportunity for an open court test of Ms Hausdorff’s defence of the Israeli Govt’s claims about its actions in Gaza, not least because it continues to bar journalists from reporting freely there. pic.twitter.com/sC5otInAEk

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 4, 2026

The suit relates to a June 2025 interview in which Morgan – who at first refused to accept Israel’s genocide but eventually woke up – called “bullshit” on Hausdorff’s relentless and cold-eyed denialism. The interview lasts an hour, but a short taster is available for those who want it.

Ironically – and no doubt tellingly of the Israel lobby’s inability to understand how it comes across – the clip was posted by Hausdorff herself. It seems she felt it made her look good – and the victim, as Israel always must be. But Piers Morgan himself picked it up in a repost, saying he had had “more convivial chats with serial killers” than with the Israel apologist:

UPDATE: I bumped into Natasha at a party last night, and she wasn’t in the mood for hearing anything, let alone the truth. In fact, I’ve had more convivial chats with serial killers, before she stomped off.
Stop playing the victim, Ms Hausdorff, it’s very silly for any lawyer. https://t.co/Z70Pzb6mwL

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) June 20, 2025

Hausdorff, a barrister, filed her defamation on 23 February. As an interesting aside, she has been accused of “screaming” at far-right campaigner Charlie Kirk in a fraught Israel lobby meeting that attempted to bring Kirk back into the pro-Israel fold shortly before he was publicly murdered. Kirk had told friends he was ending his support for Israel. Hausdorff blocked Jewish journalist Max Blumenthal after he reported the allegation:

Natasha doesn’t want to discuss this pic.twitter.com/B9DGiqJFyp

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) September 16, 2025

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McCarthyite foreign interest group

UKLFI, whose name makes clear it serves the interests of a foreign power, has attacked everything from a display of plates painted by Palestinian children to Netflix — is well known for its attempts to suppress pro-Palestinian speech and solidarity, particularly in the NHS and in the media-cultural sector.

It recently intimidated a gallery owner into ending a smash-hit art show and browbeat the resignation of a university museum director for daring to host a display by technical experts who exposed Israeli lies during the genocide.

Despite being thoroughly discredited, the genocide-shielding group UK Lawyers for Israel still managed to persuade the General Medical Council to pursue a lawfare-style antisemitism complaint against Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah.

The surgeon has incensed Israel’s apologists by…

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) March 2, 2026

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Along with its fellow apartheid apologist group, the so-called ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’ (CAA), UKLFI has fallen foul of regulators. CAA has been subjected to regulatory action for its political smears and was humiliated in court for false accusations against comedian Reginald D. Hunter. UKLFI is currently being investigated for vexatious threats.

Forced apology

Hausdorff is represented by the notorious Mark Lewis, who has been censured for wishing death on a Corbyn supporter. Lewis’s advice played a major role in the decision of Pete Newbon, a director of the misnamed ‘Labour against Antisemitism’, to sue Jewish national treasure Michael Rosen for Rosen’s condemnation of Newbon’s bastardisation of a Rosen book to attack then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Lewis also advised Newbon and two other Israel supporters in their ruinous defence against James Wilson, whom they had endangered with vile public lies. Newbon died by suicide before the case concluded; his co-defendants were ordered to pay massive damages to Wilson. Newbon’s widow has said that he had kept the legal actions “secret” and recently said he had lied to her about dropping the cases. She subsequently sacked Lewis.

Lewis was heavily criticised by a judge, and subsequently forced to apologise, for misleading the court in the case. Emails between him and barrister Gavin Millar showed Lewis discussing how much money he hoped to squeeze out of Wilson by keeping the case going.

Featured image via the Canary

(Alamy)

3 min read9 min

In his first public intervention since Labour lost the Greater Manchester contest to the Greens last week, Burnham said the result ought to be a “code red for Westminster politics”.

Labour had controlled the constituency for over 100 years before falling to third place behind the Greens and Reform UK last week. 

Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, wanted to be Labour’s candidate and was widely seen as the party’s most likely chance of keeping hold of the seat, but was blocked by senior Labour officials, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer. 

As well as being a bruising result for Labour, it was another blow to Westminster’s historic, two-party system, with neither of the top two parties being Labour or the Conservatives.

Speaking at an event in London hosted by the Centre for Cities think tank on Wednesday, Burnham said: “What I want to say today is that the time has most definitely come for a serious conversation about our political system and its pervading culture, particularly so in the aftermath of the Gorton and Denton by-election.

“It revealed the full depth of the chasm between people and Westminster politics. I don’t think anybody can seriously dispute that statement.”

The Labour defeat has triggered a debate within the party about what direction the party should go in to rebuild its public support. 

Many Labour MPs believe their campaign strategy was misguided, focusing too much on attacking Zack Polanski’s Greens instead of setting out a positive case for what the Starmer government had achieved in office.

Burnham warned that the country was falling into an “extremely dangerous” place and argued Westminster needed fundamental change. He cited recent research by the think tank More in Common, which found almost three in five voters believe the cost of living crisis will never end.

The Greater Manchester Mayor criticised Whitehall for failing devolve further powers to the UK regions and said it looks like the centre of government doesn’t “actually want growth” outside of London.

“I’m getting to the point where I just refuse to spend any more of my working week making the case to Whitehall for more devolved powers, because I spend way too much of my time doing that.

“Why aren’t they just looking at the evidence, getting behind us, and getting on with it? It just makes you think they don’t actually want growth everywhere.

“They actually care more about holding on to something down here in their silos than actually getting the whole of the country growing. So, we need Whitehall reform, most definitely. But we also need Westminster reform if we are to bring Manchesterism to life everywhere.”

Burnham renewed his call for major constitutional reform, including a proportional voting system and replacing the House of Lords with an elected senate of regions and nations.

Nigel Farage is clearly struggling to accept Reform’s defeat in Gorton and Denton. So much so that the racist little fuckwit is now proposing an end to Commonwealth voting, and scaling back postal votes.

And, as the Canary reported yesterday, Farage’s swerve to a Trump-style denial of an entirely legal process is a worrying sign for democracy.

Farage: Scary, scary Commonwealth

In his Mail article, Farage laid the groundwork for his call to end Commonwealth voting:

Yes, I know Britain has a historic association with the Commonwealth.

But if we do not, then I fear that what we have seen in Gorton and Denton will play itself out in many areas where local electoral elections are taking place in May.

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I’m sorry, but surely it is only right that British citizens should be able to vote in British elections on British issues – not have international problems that are taking place thousands of miles away brought into campaigning.

Ok, so there’s a few things here – just for accuracy, you understand. That ‘historic association’ is ‘hundreds of years of violent colonial subjugation’. ‘What we have seen’ in Gorton and Denton is ‘Reform losing’. However, what he means is ‘electoral theft’, which is something he made up.

And yes, candidates campaign on foreign issues. It’s part of an MP’s job. That’s why we have a fucking foreign secretary, for Christ’s sake.

Farage also wrote regarding Commonwealth voting:

in my opinion this is having a terrifying effect on the British electoral process.

I am well aware many people will find this to be shattering news.

Some will even find it difficult to believe. But I have checked this out legally and I am right.

Now, suspicious cunt that I am, I’d point out that Farage is being very ambiguous about what exactly he’s checked out legally.

Is it that Commonwealth voting has a terrifying effect on British elections? No, it can’t be that – he stated that the terrifying effect was his opinion. Rather, is it merely that people from the Commonwealth who have leave to enter the UK can vote?

Because one of those things would be very scary to Daily Mail readers, and would get them all wound up. The other would be, you know, actually true.

Commonwealth voting

So, Farage now has a new attack line on UK democracy. He’s running around spouting lines like:

I do believe for national elections they should be voted in by British voters only… otherwise we get a really very, very perverse influence on our politics.

That ‘only Brits should vote in British elections’ might be very convincing if his audience is only half paying attention (or racist). ‘Yeah, why would we let foreign nationals vote in our elections?’ kind of thing.

So, let’s take a look. When exactly can one of those scary foreigners vote in a UK election?

First up, background information. The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 56 countries, including some 2.7 billion people. The vast majority of the countries were former victims of violent British colonialism, including Kenya, Rwanda, Pakistan, and Barbados.

As to which Commonwealth citizens can vote in the UK, the rules differ slightly depending on which UK country we’re talking about. Let’s use England as our example, given that the by-election in question was English.

The Electoral Commission explains that:

Qualifying Commonwealth citizens are entitled to register as Parliamentary and as local government electors provided that on the relevant date they also fulfil the age and residence requirements for registration and are not subject to any other legal incapacity.

And further:

A person is a qualifying Commonwealth citizen if they do not require permission to enter or stay in the UK, Channel Islands or Isle of Man or they do require permission to enter or stay in the UK but have been granted such permission, or are treated as having been granted such permission.

Ok, so a Commonwealth citizen can vote here if they live here. They can live here because they’re a citizen of a country Britain once ransacked to claim as its own. And again – they now live here.

A vote seems like less than the bare minimum the UK can offer.

Restricting democracy for definitely non-evil reasons

So, in response to this dire threat to our democracy, what is Reform planning to do?

Speaking at a press conference in London, Farage stated that his party would ban Commonwealth citizens from voting in UK elections. He later remembered that Ireland exists, and clarified that Irish citizens could still vote in the UK under his plans.

He also announced his intention to massively restrict postal voting. Postal votes, he claimed, should only be granted to people with a “good reason”, because postal voting is:

massively open to fraud and intimidation.

In his opinion, those good reasons included working abroad, being disabled, or being an older person.

The Electoral Commision website explains that:

In-person voters were more likely to say that they voted using their preferred method (96%) compared to postal voters (91%), suggesting that some did choose to vote by post out of necessity.

We asked postal voters why they chose to vote by post and most (32%) said it was because they did not want to vote in person. However, some said it was because they did not have time to go to their polling station on 4 July (13%), were away on holiday (14%) or found it difficult to access or travel to their polling station (18%).

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So, most postal voters would already vote in person if they actually could. However, travelling to a polling station can be difficult, either because of time or distance.

In other words, Farage’s plans would massively disenfranchise busy working people and those in remote rural areas. You know, those people Reform keeps lying through their teeth about caring for.

As I wrote previously, Farage’s false claims of electoral fraud are a method of voter suppression. Once you can make the public doubt the democratic process, you can throw out any election result that doesn’t suit you.

And of course, the elections that don’t suit Farage are the elections that Farage doesn’t win. Don’t just take my word for it though – Georgie Laming, Hope Not Hate’s campaign director, pointed out that Farage has a:

track record of seeking to undermine elections and the wider democratic process.

Like his close ally Donald Trump, Farage has regularly disputed election defeats, including in Oldham in 2015, Peterborough in 2019 and Rochdale in 2024.

The fact that the mainstream UK media are suddenly taking Farage’s claims even vaguely seriously is proof of just how open to fascism our country has become.

Featured image via the Canary

Lambeth Green Party has slammed “disgraceful” Labour austerity. And it’s going to mobilise members for a UNISON-backed protest outside the council’s budget-setting meeting at 6pm on 4 March.

The Greens added that, if they were to form an administration in May, they would put Lambeth at the centre of a network of “anti-cuts councils”, mobilising against central government austerity.

Labour- cuts, cuts, cuts

Changes to local government funding that Labour introduced this year have cut funding for Lambeth. And this has left the council with a budget shortfall projection of £130m by 2029.

Due to the government cuts and years of local financial mismanagement, the Lambeth Labour administration is looking to save £46.58m for the 2026/27 budget. And it’s proposing £100m in cuts by 2029/30.

While aiming to raise some cash from revenue-raising measures, the local administration will rely primarily on restructures and cuts to frontline services.

Lambeth’s own equalities impact assessment of the cuts has concluded that 24 of the 78 agreed savings will have ‘negative impacts’ on Lambeth residents. Labour has refused to publish this analysis.

The council has also put in a request for Exceptional Financial Support of £116m over three years from central government.

This Exceptional Financial Support comes on top of £40m of support received last year to balance the housing revenue account. It isn’t a grant and Lambeth council will need to pay it back through the sale of more public assets.

Greens fighting back against Austerity

Scott Ainslie, Green Party councillor for Streatham St Leonard’s ward, said:

Lambeth Greens have been proud to stand alongside our community, and local unions, to fight against cuts for the past 16 years. On 4 March, we will join the protests outside the town hall.

By many measures, the cuts being we’re facing now are worse than they were under the Tories. These cuts have been made even worse by the years of financial mismanagement by the local Labour administration. That means more jobs lost, more services cut back, residents let down and vulnerable people left to fend for themselves.

Lambeth Labour have finally run out of people to blame. This is Labour austerity, at every level. Austerity is a political choice – we need to make different choices.

Nicole Griffiths, Green Party councillor for Streatham St Leonard’s ward, said:

There is no public support for this agenda of endless cuts – and there is a clear alternative: tax the super rich and big business, and invest in our communities.

On 4 March, we will again be tabling amendments to Labour’s budget. But Lambeth Labour can simply vote them down, and they barely scratch the surface of the disgraceful austerity being imposed by Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.

We need a political earthquake – and that begins on 7 May when Lambeth can elect its first Green administration. In office, the Greens will put Lambeth at the heart of a nationwide network of anti-cuts councils, mobilising and empowering communities to fight austerity.

Featured image via the Canary