It’s hard to know where to start with the Sunday Mail’s lead story today.

Especially if one doesn’t want sent to prison.

So we hope you’ll forgive us if we’re extra-careful.

The article contains things even we’d never read before.

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The Mail has redacted some of the names, but – well, we’re not going to say any more about that. The anonymity order protecting the complainers who made the false allegations about Salmond operates in such a way that a judge can essentially imprison anyone on a whim, with no proper legal process.

(Contempt of court is not technically a criminal offence, so all the legal protections that normally apply to those accused of a crime are thrown in the bin.)

But what leaps out from the document is how much the people in the WhatsApp group loathed the greatest leader in the SNP’s history, to the point where they wanted to see him die in prison for crimes he didn’t commit.

So much so that they were willing to completely make things up.

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Once again, readers, we ask you to bear in mind what we can’t tell you. While some of these messages are shocking in their own right, if we were allowed to reveal who was saying them and what those people went on to become, the idea that there WASN’T a conspiracy against Salmond, led from the very top of the SNP, would be instantly obviously farcical.

The messages published by the Mail – and the paper holds several damning ones that it has chosen, or been advised by its lawyers, NOT to publish – show a group of people who explicitly say that they DON’T think they were victims of any crime, but who nevertheless were willing to act in concert with each other in order to have Salmond imprisoned anyway.

(There must be a shorter way to say that last sentence, you’d think.)

Three of the people whose names AREN’T redacted in the Mail’s piece and which feature prominently are Peter Murrell (then CEO of the SNP), Sue Ruddick (then Chief Operating Officer of the SNP) and Ian McCann (then Compliance Officer of the SNP). Apart from Nicola Sturgeon, they were the party’s three most senior executives at the time.

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It speaks volumes for the total corruption of the Scottish establishment that Nicola Sturgeon feels sufficient impunity to continue to insist, absurdly, that the three top officers of the party she led – one of whom she also shared a home and a camper van with – would for even the briefest moment have countenanced embarking on such a momentous endeavour without, at the very least, her full knowledge and backing.

And yet nor has she spoken a single word in criticism or condemnation of any of them. Not once has she suggested any of them might have “gone rogue” or exceeded their remit, even after Salmond was cleared of every single charge the WhatsApp group managed to concoct.

On the contrary, everyone associated with the conspiracy has been defended and/or rewarded by her, even when found to have acted with the most appalling incompetence and/or malice.

Nor even would revulsion at Salmond’s (imaginary) crimes serve as an explanation for the depth of animus. Because remarkably, this week Wings was contacted by a former SNP activist with this story:

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“The plot against Alex Salmond had been going on since at least 2013. I was a mature student and just prior to graduation I campaigned in the Mark McDonald by-election. I’d responded to a call from Alex stating that we needed campaigners to go to Aberdeen as the seat was crucial to maintaining the majority.

I lived in Broughty Ferry at the time and was part of that branch, and told them I was available to assist in Aberdeen for a few days if needed.

I was told that Shona Robison would pick me up. She arrived in a smallish silver 4×4 and we headed off to Aberdeen. I’d never met her before, or anyone official in the SNP. We talked about a local Labour issue that had involved my university, and we talked about the people that we both knew.

Before we had got to Tealing, she said to me “What do you think about Alex Salmond?”

It was Alex Salmond that drew me in to the SNP – I hung off his every word. Then she turned around to me and said “He’s not very well liked within the party”.

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I was stunned, he’d just brought the SNP to a huge victory, I remember thinking at the time “I’ve never met you before, I could be anybody”. He was First Minister, she was Minister for Sport. I remember thinking the exchange was bizarre.

Then we got to Aberdeen, Sturgeon was there. I only saw her for about 2 mins and I think she went off with Shona to campaign. I remember we arrived at a Spar opposite some tall flats in Mastrick and met up with Shona and maybe about 8-10 other campaigners having lunch. I remember Shona ate a long egg baguette.

I’m a heavy smoker but I’m conscious of the smoke, so I stood a few metres back, they were sat on some benches opposite these flats, and then she does it again to those that were sitting with her – “What do you think of Alex Salmond?”, and then the exact same line repeated that “he’s not very well liked within the party”.

I nearly choked on that cigarette, but what I noticed was that this was obviously a well-rehearsed routine.

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When Alex he talked about conspiracy, this strange encounter always comes to mind, this was 2013, the SNP were on a crest of a wave, I remember thinking that Shona was a block of wood, and did she really think that she was responsible for the SNP’s current success. I’ve always seen her as glaikit and a hanger-on that was in the right position at the right time.”

[PLEASE NOTE: To the limit of Wings’ knowledge, Shona Robison had no involvement in the criminal allegations against Alex Salmond.]

It’s an astonishing story. At the time Alex Salmond had led the SNP to its first ever election victory, then to an unprecedented Holyrood majority, and then to an independence referendum, and yet one of his own ministers – a close ally and longstanding personal friend of Salmond’s deputy, who would succeed him if he fell – was touring the country dripping poison in the ears of groups of activists even as the party tried to defend its fragile Parliamentary majority.

If that was how senior SNP figures (Robison would go on to become Deputy FM after Sturgeon’s resignation, having thrown her “dear friend” under the bus when it was politically expedient) were treating Salmond when he and the SNP were the undisputed masters of all they surveyed in Scotland, it doesn’t take a massive leap to imagine how gleefully they would seize on the opportunity to stick the knife in him a few years later.

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We’re not allowed to tell you all the things that are missing from the Sunday Mail story, readers. But if you’ve got any wits about you at all, it already tells you everything you need to know about how Alex Salmond was utterly betrayed and then driven into the grave not by his political enemies, but by the people around him.

And perhaps even more painfully, so was the cause of Scottish independence.

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Starmer — On 17 April, it emerged that Peter Mandelson had failed vetting for the ambassador to the US position.

In one sense, this was unsurprising, because he was Peter Mandelson, and he literally should have failed the vetting process as soon as he entered his name.

On the other, it was really quite shocking, because it meant Starmer’s government was seemingly more lazy and corrupt than the Tories.

Since then, Starmer and his few remaining allies have tried to convince us that actually Number 10 knew nothing, and this whole affair is merely the grossest incompetence imaginable.

The problem is that this line of defence has failed to hold up to scrutiny, and now ministers are squirming on the telly when asked about it:

Liz Kendall is asked about David Maddox asking Number 10 about Mandelson failing the vetting months ago, despite the PM saying he only found out last week.

Kendall refuses to comment, saying she can't speak on behalf of number tens director of communications. https://t.co/DzX9KJxMMW pic.twitter.com/pDW1k0ytsc

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 19, 2026

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Truth economics

In the clip above, host Trevor Phillips says to Kendall:

All right, on September the 11th last year, a journalist called David Maddox wrote to the director of communications at Number 10, Tim Allan, saying that he’d been told by two sources that Mandelson had not cleared vetting, asking for a comment. Here’s Allan’s reply. Basically, he says, vetting was done by the Foreign Office in a normal way. Was Allan being, as they say, economical with the truth, or did he just not know that there had been a problem with the vetting?

Kendall responded:

You will have to ask those questions to Tim Allan yourself. I’m not going to speak on behalf of him and I don’t think that’s fair that I do.

She’s literally doing the media round on the week of what may be Starmer’s biggest scandal; surely she could have come prepared? This is especially true given that Allan isn’t even in government anymore, so he probably won’t be answering any questions himself.

Phillips continued:

He was responding for the Prime Minister to a journalist. The Prime Minister is now saying he didn’t know anything about this vetting.

A somewhat panicked Kendall responded:

Let me go back to what I said. All ministers were told that he had got developed vetting status. We were not told… that the Foreign Office took that decision, whereas the UK security… advised against. We were not told that. We’re just coming back to the same issue here, Trevor.

And if we had known that, he wouldn’t have been appointed in the first place.

The problem, Liz, is that Starmer saw fit to appoint Mandelson before the vetting was even complete. So he would have been appointed. And this makes it look like Starmer wanted him in the role regardless of how the vetting process shook out.

It’s a problem other ministers have struggled to explain:

So we're being asked to believe that Starmer announced the appointment of Mandelson before the security vetting had been completed and didn't then enquire about the vetting at any point subsequently, and according to Darren Jones this means due process was followed at all times pic.twitter.com/WckCGE8rbC

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 17, 2026

It’s also a problem we knew before now, begging the question: why didn’t Starmer confirm if Mandelson was even vetted?

NEW: Peter Mandelson was given access to highly-classified Government briefings before he had completed formal vetting pic.twitter.com/M11hCPrjpm

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) March 11, 2026

Starmer in deeper

This problem goes back further than Maddox too:

Starmer's team were warned in 2023 that Peter Mandelson was a major security and vetting risk.https://t.co/4Ztk2ue5Tp

— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) April 19, 2026

Starmer had every reason to suspect that Mandelson wouldn’t pass vetting.

Now, we’re supposed to believe Mandelson was vetted, and no one even bothered to confirm if he’d passed?

As Paul Holden, author of The Fraud, wrote:

So Starmer’s team were briefed by ACTUAL security services about Mandelson risks in 2023/24, which they ignore. Simultaneously, Labour Together, (“provisional wing of Starmerism”) got private firms to investigate journalists and treat THOSE lunatic conspiracies seriously?

If accurate, looks like sec services pointed out potential concerns about Russia and Mandelson. That are ignored. But the mad inventions linking me and other legit investigate journalists to “pro-Kremlin” networks are treated to so seriously they’re reported to GCHQ.

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So we know Starmer’s people were spying on journalists and also that they did a piss poor job vetting Mandelson (at the very least).

As such, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that the Starmer operation is a recklessly criminal enterprise.

We’re sure no one will face consequences, but clearly these things must be crimes, or the rule of law is a joke.

And this is how ridiculous the government looks when it tries to defend all this:

Liz Kendall denies that giving a top govt job to a man sacked from the cabinet twice, who was best pal with a billionaire paedophile, in any way put the UKs national security at risk. pic.twitter.com/U8zYjZ1bhQ

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 19, 2026

There’s more

As Saul Staniforth documented, Kendall had more shameless moments too:

Liz Kendall says Epsteins victims are being ignored in all of this

So #trevorphillips calls out Starmers hypocrisy – if the victims should be front & centre why did the PM appoint Mandelson originally?

Kendall tells us Starmer cares so much about violence against women & girls pic.twitter.com/HRsxTIoLN7

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 19, 2026

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This is like saying we need to think about Jerry as you’re feeding him to Tom.

To end with some levity, Kendall also said:

Liz Kendall says Keir Starmer is a man of honesty and integrity. https://t.co/10b0kEIKss pic.twitter.com/sULBhDjaxO

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 19, 2026

What do you mean she wasn’t joking?

Featured image via BBC

By Willem Moore

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Content Note: this article contains an account of sexual assault

Like others on the far right, Tommy Robinson has tried to depict himself as a great defender of British women. As we’ve reported, Robinson’s credentials on this front don’t hold up to scrutiny. This is especially true now that Robinson is throwing his weight behind Conor McGregor, who was found to have raped Nikita Hand in a civil case:

Tommy Robinson has never cared about protecting women and girls. He uses their trauma to push a racist agenda. He doesn’t truly care about rapists. Otherwise, he wouldn’t support rapist like Conor McGregor.

He was ordered to pay £206,000 plus costs to Nikita Hand. pic.twitter.com/Fkq7WkpLGU

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— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) April 18, 2026

Grim

The rape that McGregor subjected Hand to was incredibly violent. As the BBC reported:

Ms Hand, a mother-of-one, told the court how McGregor had pinned her to a bed before assaulting her.

She was left with extensive bruises and abrasions over her body, including on her hands and wrists.

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There was a bloodied scratch on her breast and tenderness on her neck after she said she was placed in a “chokehold” by McGregor.

He denied causing the bruising, saying it could have happened after she “swan dived” into the bath in the hotel room.

Ms Hand was taken in an ambulance to the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin the next day where she was assessed in the sexual assault treatment unit.

A paramedic who examined Ms Hand told the court that she had not seen “someone so bruised” in a long time.

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The BBC also reported that:

Dr Daniel Kane, a gynaecologist and forensic examiner, told the court how he had to use forceps to remove a tampon Ms Hand said she had been wearing on the night of the assault, which had been “wedged inside”. A paramedic who examined Ms Hand on the day after the alleged attacks said she had not seen a patient as bruised as Ms Hand was in a long time.

As can be seen in his tweet, Robinson is urging McGregor to “lead” Ireland. This isn’t a random request, as McGregor did launch a failed presidential bid in 2025. It’s certainly grim, however, given McGregor’s past. And it makes it abundantly clear that Robinson has zero respect for women.

This isn’t Robinson’s only ongoing controversy either.

Tommy Robinson — at war with his followers

On 16 May, Robinson is throwing another racism festival in the UK. His ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in 2025 saw over 100,000 pissed up gobshites descend on the streets of London. Among the groups speaking were Generation Remigration, who argue that Britain should deport its entire non-white population.

This is the meaning of ‘remigration’, by the way, and it’s something Robinson supports:

He’s 100% correct, the time is now . REMIGRATION https://t.co/jGwMGkz8dF

— Tommy Robinson (@TRobinsonNewEra) January 23, 2026

There would be no way to enact remigration without violence. The victims of this policy would oppose it, and so would many white British people — namely the ones who are normal about this stuff.

Given this, you can understand why Robinson’s supporters would think violence is the answer to the problems he’s presenting. Robinson, however, is now falling out with those who are demanding that the movement take the next logical step:

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING!

THE FASH BROMANCE OF THE CENTURY IS ON THE ROCKS!

Remember I said after Danny ‘Temu Tommy’ Thomas tried to confront me (& ended up confessing to sexual exploitation), he was getting flack for being an embarrassment?

Well tragically it’s got worse pic.twitter.com/jIRRB2EmPT

— . (@LouiseRawAuthor) April 18, 2026

We guess the moral of the story is you shouldn’t talk up violent revolution if you don’t want your revolting supporters to violently revolt.

Summer of scam

If you’re wondering why Tommy Robinson won’t go all the way, it’s because doing so would make it harder for him to constantly rinse his supporters for donations:

Tommy Robinson tells his email list they are "desperately short of funds" for his next event.

A reminder that last time he did this, in the coming weeks his son was bragging on Instagram about flying in private jets and staying in mansions and luxury resorts. pic.twitter.com/ksvQcMMBd0

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— Gadget (@Gadget440) April 18, 2026

Robinson has attached himself to more than one scam. The greatest scam of all, however, is the idea that he gives a shit about anyone besides himself.

This is especially true when it comes to women.

Featured image via Russian Presidential Press Office (Wikimedia)

By Willem Moore

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Nigel Farage has been on something of a journey over the past few decades. To begin with, he was widely perceived as a joke — one which the BBC couldn’t stop telling. Even after Farage was successful in pushing the public towards Brexit, he wasn’t able to convert that momentum into electoral success. Since 2024, however, things have changed.

The public now see the Tories and Labour as two sides of the same coin, and they want an alternative. Given the media attention he’s received, many decided that Farage was the alternative in waiting, if only because he was the only outsider politician they were aware of.

Since then, however, Farage has squandered much of that energy by inviting Tories into his party. Now, Farage and Reform’s polling are starting to reflect this:

NEW: Nigel Farage has recorded his worst approval rating since becoming an MP pic.twitter.com/Nbm1WwuFKu

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) April 18, 2026

Approval

Of course, leader approval ratings aren’t the best indicator of how well a party might do. Voters largely didn’t like Jeremy Corbyn at the beginning of the 2017 election, but when they saw what Labour were offering compared to the Tories, he managed to close the gap. As Ed Sykes reported for the Canary in 2017:

But while his critics talked him down, Corbyn himself was out campaigning. And it turned out, as the table suggests, that the more voters actually got to see him free of the distorting prism of a hostile media, the more they liked him.

In the end, Corbyn’s Labour gained 30 seats, reversed decades of Labour decline, and won the biggest increase in the party’s share of the vote since 1945. And the evidence suggests that Labour did well because of Corbyn – and in spite of his critics. That’s something they would do well to remember whenever the next election is called.

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As Sykes notes, the media face increased restrictions during an election. This benefitted Corbyn and Labour in 2017: the question is will it benefit Reform?

Perhaps not, because Reform have struggled to land on a coherent message when it comes to policy and candidates.

They claim to be a party of everyday people, and yet they’re running candidates who want to dismantle the NHS.

They claim to be anti-waste, and yet one Reform council spent tens of thousands of pounds on unnecessary flags.

They began as an alternative to the Tories, and yet they’re stuffed full of — you guessed it — Tories.

Reform are already struggling to answer these questions, and things will only get worse in a general election:

"If the Tories are so bad, why is Reform UK filling themselves full of them?"

Laila Cunningham: I can't answer that. pic.twitter.com/fxdPli1XKY

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— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) January 10, 2026

As we’ve reported, it’s already getting pretty bad in the local election campaign — especially when it comes to candidate selection:

• Reform activist said ‘Hitler was right’.
• Scottish Reform nosedive following candidate chaos.
• Reform welcomes ‘shoot the p*kis’ scandal ex-Tory.
• Reform UK accused of ‘nil vetting’ as another racist candidate exposed.
• Farage heckled at Reform’s Jimmy Saville-aping London launch.

Farage — Bad to worse

As London Economic have reported, three polls this week showed that Reform have slumped from their 2025 highs of 30%:

Reform drops to 25% in this weeks voting intention their lowest since April 2025. They lead the Tories by 3 & Labour by 4

REF UK 25% (-5)
CON 22% (+3)
LAB 21% (+1)
GREEN 13% (+1)
LIB DEM 12% (nc)
OTH 3% (nc)
SNP 2% (nc)

N = 2,011 | 10-13/4 | Change w/ 8/4 pic.twitter.com/DNZVf9Incv

— Luke Tryl (@LukeTryl) April 15, 2026

Westminster Voting Intention:

RFM: 26% (-4)
LAB: 22% (+4)
CON: 19% (+1)
GRN: 15% (=)
LDM: 13% (=)

Via @tweetfreshwater, 10-12 Apr.
Changes w/ 27 Feb – 1 Mar.

— Election Maps UK (@ElectionMapsUK) April 16, 2026

Westminster Voting Intention (Prompts for Restore):

RFM: 21% (-4)
CON: 18% (+2)
GRN: 18% (-1)
LAB: 17% (+1)
LDM: 11% (+1)
RES: 9% (+1)
SNP: 3% (=)

Via @FindoutnowUK, 15-16 Apr.
Changes w/ 25 Mar.

— Election Maps UK (@ElectionMapsUK) April 16, 2026

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Regarding the above, London Economic said:

a poll from Find Out Now also found a four-point drop for Farage’s gang. Whilst this one didn’t show any significant boost for Labour, the kicker here was further down, where Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain were on 9%. This gives credence to the idea Restore could leech support from Reform, opening the door for Labour, the Tories and the Greens.

This certainly could be how things shake out. The other option would be that Restore Britain stand down for Reform UK like how Farage’s Brexit Party stood down for the Tories in 2019.

It’s hard to tell which might happen, because the politicians drawn to Restore are the ones who are too right-wing and anti-social for Reform. In other words, they may be incapable of backing down, even if doing so would secure an electoral victory for the British far right.

Back to what’s causing Reform’s decline, it doesn’t help that people are becoming increasingly aware of who funds Farage and Reform:

EXCLUSIVE: Reform chief Nigel Farage's half a million pounds from foreign sources since becoming MP

Of Farage’s 28 benefactors, 20 are based abroad – or 71%https://t.co/zvye6Pk8I8

— dave lawrence (@dave43law) April 18, 2026

This isn’t a good look for a supposedly patriotic nationalist, is it?

There are also outside forces dragging down Farage’s reputation — among them the unpopularity of Donald Trump and the fall of global allies like Viktor Orban:

A combination of a Badenoch comeback and the Trump impact on Farage

This coupled with people hearing Reform policy and the unfunded chaos based on fantasy data it always is. https://t.co/5wNBANlItL

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— dave lawrence (@dave43law) April 18, 2026

What goes up

For a while, it seemed like Reform could have risen to the same 40% highs that Labour and the Tories achieved in the past. Thankfully, it looks like 30% was the ceiling. Even more thankfully, it seems like a sizeable proportion of that 30% simply supported an alternative to the status quo — not Reform specifically.

Given Reform’s many contradictions, it seems like they’ll struggle to do anything besides bleed support at this point. We just hope they lose as much as possible before the local elections to limit how much damage they can cause.

For an idea of what Reform councils look like in practice, please read the following:

• Reform councillor reposts that Labour MP ‘should be shot’.
• Reform councillor dramatically quits over council tax betrayal.
• What a surprise – Reform councillor attends just one meeting and sends two emails in six months.
• Reform councillor fined £40,000 for hiring ‘illegal’ workers.
• Reform councillor would like to see wage cuts to fund his pay rise.

Featured image via Opinium

By Willem Moore

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On 18 April, the renters of London took to the streets to fight for their rights. Among their demands were calls for rent controls and council homes. One politicians who agrees with this message is the Green Party’s Zack Polanski:

Yes!

This is exactly it!

Council homes – not the luxury flats sold off to foreign investors.

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And it's beyond time for rent controls! https://t.co/qiSS2M15nN

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) April 18, 2026

Zack Polanski — Get organised

Speaking on the issues capital-dwellers face, the London Renters Union have said:

Is your rent too high? You’re not alone. Londoners face the highest rents in Europe. Many of us live with the threat of eviction or in unsafe housing.

The housing market is stacked in favour of landlords and investors who profit at our expense. Our rigged housing system is making our city more unequal.

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Unless we make big changes, many of us will be stuck renting overpriced and poorly maintained housing for the rest of our life.

As we reported, Polanski has spoken out on these issues before. Specifically, he took issue with housing minister Matthew Pennycook siding with landlords over the everyday people they’re lording it over:

Labour's housing minister's opposition to rent controls welcomed by the country's largest private landlord.

Who's side are Labour on? Renters or landlords. The answer is here. pic.twitter.com/olVzEIVTki

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— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) April 15, 2026

He’s also on message when it comes to the key demands of London’s renters:

Build council homes.

Bring in rent controls.

Time to end Rip off Britain.https://t.co/9SpVlVBrsV

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) April 10, 2026

Demands

The call for better conditions goes beyond council homes and rent controls, with the London Renters Union listing the following additional demands:

Decent standards in housing
Good standards for all rented properties, with full monitoring of property conditions and redress processes that have the needs of renters at their heart.

. …

Indefinite tenancies
Government should implement promised end to no fault (Section 21) evictions immediately, remove end dates from tenancies, place limits on rent rises.

Housing justice for people living in temporary accommodation
All temporary accommodation must be safe, secure, within peoples home borough and be part of a quick, clear path to a permanent home. All landlords providing temporary accommodation must be held accountable.

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No discrimination in access to housing
End DSS discrimination by landlords and letting agents against people receiving benefits and renters with children, stop racist discrimination in housing and any discrimination on grounds of identity.

No borders in housing
End right to rent and nationality requirements for social housing, no border checks in licensing or enforcement regimes

Public housing available to all
End right to buy, fund councils to build and renovate good quality housing for their waiting lists, prioritising anyone vulnerable and in need

Housing for people not profit
End the politics and culture of property as investment rather than to house people and bring homes into democratic public ownership.

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Alternatives

Much like Zack Polanski said, Labour have sided with landlords on the issue of rent controls. Somehow, however, the other parties are worse.

As we reported, a Reform housing spokesperson argued that the UK had introduced too many regulations after the Grenfell disaster. He additionally dismissed what happened to the victims, saying flippantly that “everyone dies”. The Tories, meanwhile, are the ones who oversaw Grenfell and then dithered on taking action.

In the future, then, renters will have a choice between:

• More of the same.
• More of the bad old days.
• More money in their pockets because they’re not being tipped upside down and shaken for change by their landlords.

Featured image via Barold

By Willem Moore

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3 min read1 hr

A pressure group focused on who Muslims should support at the ballot box has held hustings events in Scotland and Wales ahead of nationwide elections on 7 May.

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The Muslim Vote, set up in late 2023, endorsed four independent candidates who were elected at the 2024 general election on campaigns centred on the war in Gaza. They were Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan and Iqbal Mohammed.

The group, which encourages people to vote on religious lines, endorsed the successful Green candidate Hannah Spencer in the Gorton and Denton by-election in February, and is planning to declare support for a host of candidates in the run-up to next month’s elections.

At the time of the writing, the Muslim Vote had held several hustings in Scotland and Wales, which members of the Conservatives, Greens, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Scottish National Party and George Galloway’s Workers Party have all attended. Labour and Reform UK have so far not participated, PoliticsHome understands.

“Our broad strategy is to push the needle on the Labour Party and try to get people to vote against them,” the Muslim Vote’s Abubakr Nanabawa Nanabawa told PoliticsHome.

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“I really see this as an opportunity to send a message to Labour Party, to reaffirm that message, that they’re not just losing votes to Reform, that they are losing votes to the left and the historic base of ethnic minority voters.”

The group is in the process of compiling a list of specific candidates to endorse across the local elections and devolved parliaments, which will be released in the coming days.

PoliticsHome understands that the majority of endorsements will be for Zack Polanski’s Greens, as well as a host of independent candidates, particularly in east London.

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Activists are confident that independent candidates backed by Muslim Vote will win council seats in London areas with significant Muslim populations like Redbridge, where Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s parliamentary constituency is located, and Newham.

At the same time, the Greens, which have surged in the opinion polls since Polanski became leader in September, are expected to make significant gains in the capital at next month’s elections, largely at the expense of Keir Starmer’s Labour.

Next month’s elections, which take place in Scotland, Wales and council areas across England, will be a test of the Muslim Vote group’s ability to organise on a national scale as it prepares for the next general election.

Away from London, cities like Birmingham, Leicester and Bradford are seen as places where independent candidates with campaigns focused on Gaza pose a particular threat to Labour.

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Nanabawa said that many Muslim voters have still not forgiven Labour over its response to the war in Gaza, describing the issue as “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.

He told PoliticsHome: “You have to remember that working-class Brits across the whole country have abandoned Labour en masse, not just Muslims. And what you’ll see is predominantly in the areas where the Labour Party have suffered most from disaffected Muslim voters is in these working-class Muslim communities.

“Unlike a lot of the working class communities, which have moved towards Reform, Muslim communities have found their voices within the Green Party or independent movements. They’re just looking for alternatives.”

 

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In some other year, Analilia Mejia’s 20-point win in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District might have been a stunning result.

But the progressive organizer’s romp on Thursday elicited little shock, despite the margin in a district former Vice President Kamala Harris had carried by just 8 points.

It was the latest in a long string of Democratic overperformances in elections since President Donald Trump took office last year, and nowhere near the biggest.

A POLITICO analysis of 229 state and federal elections since Trump’s inauguration shows Democratic candidates outperformed Harris in 193 of them. On average, Democratic candidates overperformed Harris by 5 points. In a handful of special elections, they have pulled more than 20 points to the left.

It is a warning sign for Republicans that has continued to flash across the country every few weeks. Consistent overperformances in special elections have been an indicator of midterm shifts in the past, and the trend over the last 15 months is particularly strong. In the two-year cycle of special elections heading into 2018, margins shifted to the left in about two-thirds of special elections, according to The Downballot. In November of that year, Democrats netted 40 seats.

This cycle, Democrats have shifted races left in close to 85 percent of special elections.

“The overperformance across the country in special election after special election is a trend that can’t be ignored and proof that the American people are souring on Republicans’ broken promises,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Aidan Johnson said in a statement.

Of course, eye-popping double-digit shifts in some special elections don’t mean every seat that Trump won by 10 points is going to be in play in November. And part of the strong numbers comes from comparing candidates to Harris, who did worse in 2024 than down-ballot Democrats on the same ballot. For example, in New Jersey’s 11st District, then-Rep. Mike Sherrill won by just shy of 15 points while Harris won by 8. Mejia, in the special election, won by 20.

“Outperforming the most unpopular Democratic presidential nominee in history is an abysmally low bar, and touting it as an achievement is embarrassing,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Bernadette Breslin said.

And turnout in the special elections is generally much lower than in a midterm or presidential election. National Republicans argue the midterms will be different when turnout is higher.

“Democrats are cherry-picking low-turnout special elections to spin a narrative that falls apart the second you look at the full picture,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement. “Republicans have the money, the message, and the momentum heading into 2026, and we are outpacing Democrats where it counts in the battlegrounds that will decide the majority.”

But Democrats’ improvements compared to 2024 extend across races and districts that are very different from one another, including special elections for the House and state legislative seats, as well as regular gubernatorial and legislative elections in Virginia and New Jersey last year. The consistent progress for Democrats has come across red and blue districts, swing and safe states — and is a signal going into the midterms that the political environment has shifted since 2024.

Morgan Bonwell, an Iowa-based Republican strategist, said Trump’s victory catalyzed Democratic voters to turn out.

“That fired Democrats up. They had a big loss,” she said. “They had an opportunity right there again to come out and turn out.”

The data reveals that Democrats’ improvements are not just a product of partisan voters in deep-blue areas: Most were in districts where Trump beat Harris. The largest gain was in a Trump-won Brooklyn state Senate district where the Democratic candidate improved on Harris’ vote share by 45 percentage points, followed by state legislative races in Rhode Island and Oklahoma that swung 28 and 27 points, respectively.

Republicans’ largest gain was in a February special election for an Alabama state legislative seat, where the GOP candidate ran 13 points ahead of Trump.

Democratic strategist Fred Hicks said he’s encouraged by voters reengaging with the party after an uninspiring 2024 that saw former President Joe Biden drop out from the presidential race and Harris’ abbreviated campaign fail to prevent Trump’s reelection.

“Trump’s decisions and his announcements sobered up Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters right away, so that people realized they didn’t have the luxury of sitting in their feelings,” Hicks said.

Another encouraging sign for Democrats is that some of the state legislative elections have overlapped with congressional battlegrounds. Three state legislative special elections in Iowa, for example, occurred within the bounds of the state’s 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts — top Democratic targets held by GOP Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn. In each of those special elections, the Democratic candidate outperformed Harris’ 2024 margin by between 12 and 13 percentage points.

Bonwell, the Iowa-based Republican strategist, warned that Miller-Meeks, Nunn and the rest of the GOP slate in Iowa will need to coordinate closely to match Democrats’ turnout in November, especially with strong candidates like Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand, who she says “has the ability to drive turnout.”

“They need to be a united front, and they need to pool resources, in my opinion, to bring them all up,” she said. “I think it’ll be challenging for sure.”

Other special elections have occurred in some of the biggest Senate battlegrounds. Since last year, there have been six state legislative special elections in Georgia, and all shifted between 2 and 10 points toward Democrats. The congressional special election for former Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat saw a Democrat surpass Harris’ margin in the district by 13 points. Two other special elections were in Maine — one swung 6 points toward Democrats, and the other moved by less than a point toward the GOP.

Democrats’ overperformance comes despite consistently low favorability for the party since 2025. North Carolina-based Democratic strategist Doug Wilson credited that to a focus on kitchen-table issues — the blueprint of the “affordability” playbook used by successful Democratic campaigns over the past year.

“I know that the party’s brand is still not where it once was, but at the same time, I think the Democrats have done a good job of getting back to what I call Democratic roots,” Wilson said. “Remembering what it was like to be that man or that woman that’s keeping themselves up at night worrying about how they’re going to feed their families, how they’re going to put gas in the car, how they’re even going to save for retirement.”

There are still unknown factors that could shape the midterm environment. In the 2022 election cycle, Democrats struggled in special elections until the Dobbs decision brought abortion rights to the forefront, then went on a winning streak, culminating in a midterm that had mixed results for both parties.

But for now, the trend has Democrats raising their expectations for November. Democratic strategist Alex Kellner said they could be heading for a massive wave of victories reminiscent of Republicans’ huge win in the 2010 midterms.

“The ceiling is higher for Democrats than it has been in a long time for a big pickup,” Kellner said.

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