Politics
DWP Milburn Report is another excuse to throw disabled kids under the bus
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) released the interim report for the Milburn Review on Youth Unemployment yesterday. The report was an exercise in how the DWP has a compliant corporate media at its beck and call. But as always, we need to look at the parts of the report the DWP didn’t want shouted from the rooftops.
Corporate shills marching to the DWP’s beat
The corporate media, of course, had a field day yesterday getting to crow about the ‘lost generation’, especially those with mental health conditions. At one point, both the BBC and Guardian were running live rolling coverage. Yes, of an interim report into youth unemployment.
But what was missing is that the report is, in places, quite nuanced on disability. It actually acknowledges that there are many different reasons why the level of disability or poor health has increased in the last decade. This includes socioeconomic factors such as the cost of living, growing up in poverty, and lack of support.
It also mentions inadequate support in schools and that Covid had a huge part to play in both creating and exacerbating underlying conditions.
However, by only relating these factors back to how it stops kids from getting into work, Milburn ignores that disabled people deserve to be supported to have a good life regardless of whether they can work.
Milburn presents opinion as fact
Despite him actually setting out the logical reasons why disabled young people are much more likely to be unemployed, this is Alan Milburn, so he still has to blame them.
There are many examples of Milburn adding his own opinion disguised as fact, and by doing so, completely rubbishing the actual evidence provided.
After including a report on young people’s psychological distress, he says:
It confirms that what we are seeing is not simply a change in how young people talk about their mental health. It is a change in their capacity to participate. There is a difference between a generation that is more willing to name its struggles and a generation that is functionally less able to engage with education and work.
Basically, talk about it all you want, but do it at work or shut up.
Implying depression and ADHD aren’t real disabilities
What’s most interesting is that disability and health are split into separate sections. Disability is basically classed as something which does need support, and he accepts that many disabled people will never be able to work.
However, he then includes mental health and neurodivergent (which he calls neurodevelopmental) conditions in the health section. This states clearly that he thinks these aren’t real disabilities and shouldn’t be seen as an excuse not to work.
He also shows what he thinks about anxiety and depression by saying:
This explosion has primarily been in mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, rather than in serious mental illnesses
Milburn also essentially blames the rise in ADHD and diagnosis for the strain on the NHS. Coincidentally, this is also what Wes Streeting is trying (and failing) to do with his review into overdiagnosis.
After giving the evidence of why more young people (especially girls) are being diagnosed with neurodivergent conditions now, he can’t resist contradicting the evidence again:
If the rise in diagnoses were simply the correction of historic under-recognition, the response would be straightforward: more assessment capacity and more clinical treatment.
If, as the evidence increasingly suggests, the current patterns are shaped as much by the design of systems as by underlying need, including the incentives those systems create and the tendency to medicalise forms of distress that may have broader social or developmental roots, then the response must be broader.
Basically, our systems weren’t designed for you to realise you’re not the problem. But instead of solutions to make the system better, he, of course, relates it back to kids just not getting off their bums and working.
He is so close to getting it, but can’t resist:
It must include earlier, more accessible forms of support that do not depend on long waits for specialist diagnosis. And it must address the social determinants producing the distress in the first place: poverty, family instability, social media.
Critically, as there seems to have been a widening of what is recognised as disability within the system – and with it an expansion of the range of diagnoses and conditions that legitimise non-participation – the key issue is not the label itself but the functional impact. Until the health – and wider – system gets to grips with that key distinction, too many young people will be categorised as unfit to work when, with help, support and earlier intervention, they would be able to do so.
Review isn’t proving Milburns foregone conclusion
Despite all this bluster about wanting to support young disabled people into work, Access to Work is mentioned just three times in this almost 68,000-word report. Once as part of a support package, then in the annex explaining what it is and then again as a footnote.
It’s a tale as old as time, the DWP pretends to care about getting disabled people into work, but wants as little attention brought to the support they’re trying to cut as possible.
Essentially, this is exactly the same problem Wesley had with trying to prove ADHD is overdiagnosed. Despite Milburn already deciding that kids are faking disability not to work, the evidence very much says that disabled young people need support. And no amount of his snide comments and DWP-induced media hysteria will change that.
Featured image via Getty/Carl Court
New-ish GB Energy has wasted no time siphoning off public money to private companies. Scottish paper the National has revealed that up to £20m of taxpayer money is going straight to consultancy firms.
GB Energy: corporate capture
Under energy secretary Ed Miliband’s guidance, London-based firms Deloitte and Baringa Partners are gaining lucrative contracts. They’re to handle day-to-day operations of Labour’s flagship — supposedly publicly-owned — corporation GB Energy.
The National has revealed that these contracts, signed on 1 May, awarded the two firms a shared programme — worth up to £10m each — in which they will:
be responsible for “organisational set up support”, “operational design and delivery”, market strategy and “technical support”.
Deloitte is expected to handle the bulk of the contract. Baringa will be expected to step in wherever conflicts of interest arise or where there’s a resourcing issue. The extendable contracts will run for two years.
Under pressure from corporateering Gulf State agent and AI-tech lobbyist Tony Blair, Labour government ministers this week debated scrapping “net zero” altogether. This came amid the UK’s worst May heatwave and a subsequent drought across parts of Britain leaving thousands without water.
Keir Starmer’s Great British Energy is in a sorry state of affairs
More broken Labour promises?
The National didn’t hold back, highlighting that GB Energy was supposed to be headquartered in Aberdeen, which Labour announced but not have yet seen through. (Although the region is notoriously controlled by Europe’s largest oil cartel, so this could be a net-negative, carbon-positive.)
They also underscore that GB Energy was supposed to create 1000 jobs, mainly in the far-north. The National previously revealed that only 30 staff are employed on permanent contracts. The remainder are on temporary or contingent, ergo more insecure, government-sponsored contracts.
Most scathingly, the National reminds us that Labour previously pledged to halve government spending on consultancy contractors. Yet now Labour emphasise “knowledge sharing”, which insiders suggest shows that GB Energy is still building its internal capability from zero. This could signal “limited in-house expertise“.
Consultancy costs ballooned under the Johnson-Truss-Sunak parliament, with £-billions squandered on the non-entity ‘Rwanda Plan’ and punitive anti-migrant small boat measures. They have now dropped by 14% across government departments, with in-housing savings mainly in healthcare and the Home Office.
However, it’s a matter of public record that Labour, especially under its Starmer/McSweeney/Labour Together/Think Labour leadership pivoted hard towards large corporate and private donors. It now takes less from unions combined than it does from corporations.
The ‘Big Four’ revolving door
It’s well documented that the so-called ‘Big Four’ frequently flirts with politics and regularly imbricates its swanky corporate structures and methods into political process.
Between 2009–2012, for example, the Big Four — Deloitte, EY, PwC and KPMG — offered, or donated, almost £2m worth of free labour to the UK’s then-Big Three political parties. This corporate ‘secondment’ comes in the form of unrequited “staff costs,” offering free “expertise” to political parties and government alike.
The Rusbridger-era Guardian reported that Big Four employees regularly worked with MPs, party offices, and the government, often for months. HM Treasury had 15 secondees from the Big Four on loan in 2012.
Given that these same corporate staff regularly consult for FTSE 100 or FTSE 250 companies simultaneously with government, many argue that this alone constitutes conflict. At the time, Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation think-tank said:
Conflicts of interest are built into the very DNA of the big professional services firms.
Former Labour MP Austin Mitchell described these firms being “more powerful than government“. These companies’ financial successes grant them privileged access to government big-wigs and policymakers.
This is by no means unique to British politics. It was reported in 2024 that the New York government paid McKinsey $4m for a 95-page deck on waste management. Its revolutionary suggestion was: to adopt wheelie bins. This came at a whopping cost of some $42,000 per presentation slide!
NYC paid McKinsey $4m for a 95 page deck on putting trash in containers, not bags
That’s $42k per slide.
So McKinsey made $42k for this slide explaining the concept of a trash bin https://t.co/QgWPWt7fXJ pic.twitter.com/4S8jqit0aD
— Andrew Lynch (@andrewglynch) July 10, 2024
Australian journalists have also clearly documented the “revolving door” between Big Four firms and their mainstream politicians. Subsequently, Australian government contracts awarded more than quadrupled to over £1.4b in the decade to 2023.
ABC similarly produced a damning investigative article titled:
How the big four accounting firms infiltrated governments, earning more than $10b over a decade while taxpayers are in the dark
Likewise, one New South Wales university researcher extolled an in-depth article titled:
How reliance on consultancy firms like PwC undermines the capacity of governments
It’s time that Britain’s political and media class wake up to this problem like Australians have.
It’s not renewables putting up your energy bills, it’s billionaires
Featured image via Getty/Carl Court
So this is where wokeness has dragged us. Into a moral abyss where a boy is handcuffed by cops as he bleeds to death. Into a wasteland of virtue where an 18-year-old lad, stabbed five times, is treated as a speechcriminal as he gasps his final breaths. Into a sorry, dystopic excuse for a society where the last words a youngster hears are the defamatory cries of the man who killed him. ‘He was racist’, his murderer said. ‘I can’t breathe’, the boy begged.
The case of Henry Nowak has shocked the nation. He was a Polish-Briton in his first year at university. During a night out in Southampton in England in December last year, he had a fatal encounter with a Sikh man named Vickrum Digwa. Some kind of altercation took place. Digwa then stabbed Nowak five times with his kirpan, the ceremonial curved sword that Sikhs carry. Nowak was gored in his chest, his face and his legs. He scrambled over a fence, leaving a blood trail in his wake. ‘I’m dying’, local residents heard him say. He was right.
As savage as the knifing was, it was what happened next that has shaken Britain’s soul. Digwa’s mother arrived and spirited away the murder weapon – it was later found hidden in the family home with 20 other Sikh swords and knives. Digwa then accused Nowak of having racially abused him. He said Nowak used a racist slur against him, punched him and knocked off his turban. These were ‘wicked lies’, the court heard during his murder trial. Yet there was a group of people on the scene of this atrocity who believed Digwa’s vile libels against the youth he had just fatally lacerated: the police.
The police’s behaviour that night defies all logic and humanity. They bowed to Digwa’s defamatory slurs and arrested and handcuffed young Henry. The Telegraph’s report captures the barbarism of the police’s credulous ineptitude that grim evening: ‘As the teenager lay there, unable to breathe as his lungs filled with blood, begging officers for help, they ignored his pleas and placed him under arrest. He died less than an hour later.’ If anything will cause decent Britons to lose faith in the police, it’s this: the haunting vision of a boy being manhandled by the state as he drowned in his own blood.
This week Digwa was found guilty of murder. His mother was found guilty of assisting an offender. And the police have apologised for the fact that Nowak was ‘arrested in the moments before he lost consciousness’. But this isn’t the end of this story. It can’t be. This cruellest of deaths, this humiliation by the state of a boy who was dying, will surely force a reckoning with the social poison of political correctness. For it exposes the extent to which the cult of wokeness has chased truth and virtue from our societies.
We all know why Digwa’s evil lie was believed and why wounded, gasping Henry’s pleas for help went unheeded – it’s because the word ‘racism’ acts like a magic spell on our ruling class. It’s like a rhetorical narcotic. The minute they hear it, they morph, like woke Manchurian candidates, into wide-eyed searchers for the merest hint of that greatest sin in our morally deracinated times: white privilege, and prejudicial speech. Their aim becomes not the discovery of truth but the demonstration of virtue. On that street in Southampton, once the word ‘racism’ had been uttered, the role of the state’s representatives suddenly and radically changed: it was no longer to investigate a potential crime but to obsequiously act out a moral script.
Having prostrated themselves so fully before the new regime religion that falsely calls itself ‘anti-racism’, the police were virtually programmed to believe the ‘brown man’ and be sceptical of the ‘white man’. No doubt the critical race theory that pumps like a toxin in the veins of the establishment kicked in, meaning that the Sikh who had so ruthlessly wielded his sword instantly became the victim, while the target of his red-mist knifing – the white boy – became the oppressor. The state’s intoxication with the hyper-racialised politics of victimhood has driven it ever further into a quagmire of dogma where cool moral judgment is all but impossible.
It’s important to say that this handcuffing of a dying boy was not ‘a failing’ by individual police officers. The police forces of the United Kingdom are expressly instructed to believe, without question, every accusation of hate crime. They are told that even things perceived to be racist are probably racist. They are trained to see ‘racism’ everywhere – in every slight, in every tussle between whites and non-whites. The police’s cruel subduing of a stabbed teen was not an aberration – it was the horrific logical conclusion of the new ruling-class ideology that sees us less as citizens with rights than as racial creatures in need of micro-management. The demeaning of young Henry was the woke state in action.
The state turned a blind eye to the rape of vulnerable girls by mostly Muslim gangs out of a fear of being thought ‘Islamophobic’. The very same wilful blindness born of cowardice led those officers to see a stabbed boy as a tyrant and his stabber as a victim. The questions pile up. For how much longer can we suffer under such a two-tier ideology that allows Sikhs to do what the rest of us are forbidden from doing: carry lethal weapons? Why did Keir Starmer take the knee for George Floyd when he died 4,000 miles away but not for young Henry murdered and failed down in Southampton? And most pressingly, what are we going to do about a state that arrests a boy as he chokes on his own blood and as his killer gloats and maligns him? We have to do something.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.
Green leader Zack Polanski has published a letter calling out ex-Labour leader Tony Blair’s links to the atificial intelligence (AI) industry and government. The news comes after war criminal Blair published an essay, via his Tony Blair Institute (TBI) think tank, calling for Labour to essentially shape all future policy around AI.
Of course, this policy recommendation has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Larry Ellison gave £250m to the TBI. Ellison just happens to be the CEO of AI-specialist company Oracle. He’s also a good buddy of Donald Trump, at whose feet Blair all but worshipped in his essay.
The Canary already covered Blair’s piece on 27 May. It’s truly terrifying example of anti-immigrant, anti-worker fascist pandering dressed up as ‘radical centrism’.
We could pull it apart all week. However, Blair does a great job himself – criticising the left and right for lacking vision, then pulling an about-face to praise Trump, Georgia Meloni, and Javier Milei. Here, however, we’re going to take a look at Polanski’s critique, focusing on Blair’s obvious shilling for the AI industry.
Polanski spots Blair’s cartoon evil
Polanski addressed his letter to Labour’s Chris Ward MP, the parliamentary secretary in the cabinet office.
Tony Blair’s essay published by the Tony Blair Institute yesterday contained some important points, notably, a call to switch to an AI focused economy with more government investment in AI, which he argued would be facilitated by cuts to welfare spending, reductions in the minimum wage and reduced workers’ rights.
You might be forgiven for thinking this was hyperbole. ‘Fund AI by cutting welfare, wages and rights’ seems that bit too cartoonishly evil, even for Blair.
However, because the ex-Labour leader is apparently a parody of himself, it’s perfectly accurate. Blair listed the commitments of the current government:
the new workers’-rights laws; the net-zero acceleration and phasing out of the British oil and gas industry; the uplift in the minimum wage beyond inflation; and the non-dom changes.
He then states that they should be abandoned in favour of growing the private sector:
The prime minister and the chancellor should have said right at the outset: these are commitments which economic circumstances have rendered unwise to proceed with. The priority is growth. That comes with a vibrant private sector which has suffered years of economic instability, and we are going to go all out for making business feel respected and supported.
So long as the businesses feel respected, the voters can do one – fantastic plan there. Blair is also very specific about the businesses he’s talking about primarily: an AI-led “technology revolution”. He then writes:
There is no point in debating whether this technological revolution is a good or bad thing. Just know it is a ‘thing’. In fact, it is ‘the thing’. It will displace jobs, though creating new ones, but no one yet knows the full consequence. Companies and countries will rise or fall on the back of it. It will revolutionise the private sector and should in time revolutionise public services and government.
Just ignore the ethics – spoken like a true war criminal.
The Ellison connection
In his letter, Polanski then moved on to the heart of the matter – the reason why Blair is shilling for the AI industry:
It has been widely reported that Larry Ellison the owner of Oracle, which specialises in AI, funded the Tony Blair Institute with over £250m, and also that the Tony Blair Institute has significant contacts and influence within the government.
All of that is, again, completely true. The Ellison Foundation has funded the TBI with over £250m. In turn, just two months ago, the Treasury called on the help of the TBI and several private companies, specifically to guide AI policy. Treasury secretary James Murray said that:
These people are exactly who can help us create change across the public sector – giving us the hard truths on our approach to AI and advising where we need to prioritise our investment to support real efficiencies.
At the time, Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at tech equity campaign group Foxglove – described the move as:
yet more evidence of the government’s excessively cosy relationship with Big Tech.
Giving tech giants privileged access to decision-making around buying the very products they supply is clearly a risk.
It’s hard to understand how ministers seem to be unable to spot a potential conflict of interest which is blindingly obvious to everyone else.
Hint: they see the conflict of interest – they just don’t care.
‘The challenge of democracy’
Speaking of obvious conflicts of interest, Polanski rounded out his letter by writing:
We are sure you will agree that it’s important for the public to know whether there is a link between Larry Ellison’s donations and Tony Blair’s public advocacy for more government funding for AI. We therefore request that all formal and informal contacts between representatives of the Tony Blair Institute and government departments (officials and ministers) are disclosed.
It would be bad for public confidence if there was a suspicion that large corporate interests are buying access to the government via the Tony Blair Institute.
And he’s damn right there, too. Blair’s (further) corruption by the AI industry is as plain as day – and his arguments to fund it by slashing worker’s rights and pay (along with removing environmental protections) is a clear breach of public interest.
If this Labour government had any shame, they’d make clear the exact links between Ellison’s millions, Blair and their doggedly pro-AI policies. Then again, if they had any shame, they wouldn’t have called in Blair in the first place.
In his essay, the ex-Labour leader stated that:
The challenge of democracy is not transparency, honesty or conspiracy theories about the hidden power of elites.
This is, of course, precisely what a deeply dishonest champion of the (barely) hidden power of billionaires would say. If you listen closely, you can hear the £250m talking.
Featured image via Getty/Ryan Jenkinson
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A campaign by fuel poverty and climate campaign groups to “Make Green Fair” is gaining traction. The campaign is aiming for fairer pricing by making sure the cheaper production cost of renewable energy gets passed on to consumers.
Petitions by Fuel Poverty Action and 350.org in support of the campaign have now reached a combined total of over 10,000 signatures.
Ofgem’s new price cap will see bill rises of 13% from 1 July. To mark the day, Fuel Poverty Action and a coalition of allies will be protesting outside the Department of Energy.
Fuel Poverty Action campaigner Stu Bretherton said:
Today’s price hikes show that yet again the government has failed to protect us from energy sector profiteering.
That’s why we’re calling for the government to expand cheap-to-produce renewables, and put in place guarantees so that we’ll all feel the benefits in the form of bill savings.
On 1 July, we need as many campaigners and organisations to join our demonstration as we take our #MakeGreenFair demands directly to the Department of Energy.
Intelligent use of renewables can deliver fairer pricing
In this heatwave, people could be getting free cooling powered by solar, campaigners say.
Energy expert Jonathan Bean argues that the wind and sun can now deliver cheap electricity, but that most people are missing out:
Government and Ofgem must act urgently to make solar, batteries, and cheap tariffs available to everyone.
The Make Green Fair campaign launched with an open letter backed by more than 60 organisations, including Greenpeace and the Climate Justice Coalition.
Since receiving the open letter, the government has announced measures that address some of the issues highlighted in campaigners’ demands.
These include:
- An increase in the windfall tax.
- Steps towards breaking the link between electricity and gas.
- A pilot of free solar panels for people living in flats.
Bretherton calls this “a step in the right direction” but says the government could do more to deliver fairer pricing:
These concessions wouldn’t have been won without campaigners calling out government inaction, and they’re a step in the right direction.
But these measures don’t go far enough. We’re still facing a £221 bill hike in July. Energy companies are still getting away with blatant profiteering. And we’re still not seeing the benefits of cheap-to-produce renewable energy being passed back to us.
Government needs to ramp up renewables, and guarantee that the benefit will be reflected in lower bills for us, not hijacked by shareholders and energy firm CEOs.
Featured image via Getty Images
By The Canary
The Benn vs Garcia world title fight is still being finalised for September in Las Vegas, with contracts and sanctioning yet to be agreed. Momentum is building towards a WBC title clash with Ryan Garcia. He named 12 September as his expected defence date in a TV appearance.
The claim — yet to be confirmed by promoters and sanctioning bodies — has sparked a wave of media speculation. Addressing this, Conor Benn’s trainer, Tony Sims, told Sky Sports:
What I’m being told is that negotiations are still going on for the fight, so the date or the venue hasn’t been done yet, but I think we’re heading in that direction […] Conor’s WBC mandatory, so Ryan’s got to defend against him at some stage. I think the fight is getting closer to being made now.
Career-defining stakes
Benn is the WBC mandatory challenger after a run that restored his status as a top welterweight, while Garcia holds the belt and US marketability that guarantees major paydays.
The stakes are high for both men whose fighting styles noticeably differ. Benn fights on the front foot, throwing plenty of punches and looking to overwhelm. Garcia is quicker, measured, and capable of punishing openings.
After turbulent times out of the ring, the upcoming match for Benn will be career-defining moment and a Benn victory would be seismic for British boxing. As for Garcia, the fight is a chance to validate his championship reign against a heavy-hitter.
If Benn can close distance he has a chance. If Garcia controls range and counters cleanly, he retains his belt.
Ring talk before ring walk
The fighters are ready to get in the ring as matchday details remain underwraps. More posturing is expected until a formal announcement is made.
Benn is aligned with Zuffa Boxing, while Garcia fights under Golden Boy, meaning any cross-promotional deal must bridge significant business differences. Benn’s mandatory status gives him leverage, but the WBC must still approve terms and purse splits.
Benn’s camp believe a full training camp could narrow the gap with Garcia.
If made for September in Las Vegas, this would be one of the biggest welterweight fights in recent years. It would also be a defining night for both fighters.
Featured image via Boxing News Online
By Faz Ali
CMAT has powerfully taken aim at online trolls by showing how people direct disproportionate levels of abuse at artists who are not “thin” compared with other performers, such as Zara Larsson and Olivia Dean.
This is in response to attacks the singer received online following her performance last week at BBC’s Radio 1 Big Weekend.
As a result of this unwarranted torrent of abuse, CMAT – whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson – took to Instagram as she felt:
compelled to wade in and speak for myself.
Her disgust isn’t hers alone – with fans having also shared their disgust and dismay at the way in which women’s bodies are objectified.
Moreover, one fan’s Substack outlined how:
If a woman exists outside conventional beauty standards, she becomes subject to outright cruelty. If her appearance changes, she is accused of betrayal.
If she appears too strong, too thin, too sexual, too visible, too unapologetic, the internet collectively decides her body has become public discourse.
Adding that Larson and Dean:
were granted a level of grace and basic humanity that was completely denied to CMAT.
Wrote about the bizarre way female artists are still treated as public property online.
CMAT literally wrote Take a Sexy Picture of Me about this exact abuse & then returned to Big Weekend and I’m seeing very similar patterns on social media…https://t.co/D2RCdXQS3Q pic.twitter.com/EpfUG6sy0c
— Em (@emsocialcalpol) May 28, 2026
CMAT – too much of a gorgeous genius for this shit
In the music industry, this particular issue becomes even more heightened than it is across wider society, as emphasised by this push back against a continuation of this toxic hierarchy of value dependent on Western values of ‘beauty’.
Nevertheless, these attacks – and CMAT’s refusal to take this abuse quietly – will resonate with many across the country who feel this same pressure to conform.
CMAT wrote on Instagram:
It is literally so boring for me, a gorgeous genius, to keep having to yap on about how horribly I am treated because of my body.
I would love to stop but I cannot because it keeps happening, at an accelerating and worsening pace as I become more famous.
Adding that her being able to enjoy her growing success is:
increasingly becoming tarnished by the fact that I would be allowed to enjoy it so much more if I was thin.
Like many other ‘controversial’ issues, to be silent in the face of it is to consent to it.
CMAT makes it inspiringly clear that she will never allow anyone to make her feel “lesser” than other artists and musicians simply because she breaks the mould that, frankly, pervy men have set for us. And, she made it clear that her weight is not a ‘statement’:
I am not being defiant. I am not choosing to look like this or weigh this much as some kind of punk rock act of liberty. I simply have a body, one that I would of course like to change in order to fit in and avoid all of this abuse, but I have had extreme difficulty in doing so. I don’t get a say in whether or not I want to be brave, I simply have to sit here and take it.
Dehumanisation
Her fan, Front Row Feels, also pointed out how little attention people apparently pay to the actual substance of her music, considering that Take a Sexy Picture of Me directly addresses this very same toxic abuse.
In a Substack, she aptly pointed out how we insist on treating women in music as public property, saying:
If music culture genuinely values vulnerability, honesty and emotional truth from women, then audiences need to fundamentally rethink the way we engage with the women creating it. Female artists are not morality tests, branding exercises or public property disguised as discourse. They are human beings that are allowed to change, age, fluctuate, strengthen, soften and simply exist without public consultation.
The least we can do is listen to what they are actually saying instead of immediately evaluating the body saying it.
View this post on Instagram
Looks fade – our value as human beings does not
As a woman who once weighed five stone more, but who has since become “thin” because of the cost-of-living crisis affecting my single-parent family, I find this issue particularly poignant. Since losing weight, people have generally seemed more receptive to what I have to say and more willing to give me space to be heard.
But that creates another doubt entirely: whether people value your contributions for their substance, or simply because they find you more aesthetically acceptable.
And when people dislike what I say, they immediately weaponise my appearance – whether by mocking my supposedly receding hairline or accusing me of having “too many teeth”. People constantly use women’s appearances as a way to manufacture a sense of dominance and control.
At the same time, being “thin” has also brought a notable increase in sexualised abuse and harassment, to the point that I now avoid dating or going out.
Therefore, the reality is that women cannot win – regardless of what we do, people still treat us as public property and subject us to abuse in one form or another.
We will face abuse in some form or other, no matter what we do. So, as CMAT is modelling herself, the most important thing is to learn to accept ourselves regardless of how our bodies change.
Featured image via Getty/Emma McIntyre
Politics
Politics Home | Ex-Energy Minister And Burnham Ally Says Tony Blair Is Wrong About Net Zero
Miatta Fahnbulleh was appointed energy minister in 2024 and then devolution minister in 2025, before resigning from government in May 2026 (Alamy)
4 min read
Former energy minister Miatta Fahnbulleh has said former Labour prime minister Tony Blair was “wrong” about the need for the UK to deprioritise net zero commitments.
On Tuesday, Blair published a highly critical essay setting out where he believes the Labour government has made mistakes in its policy agenda, including its net zero drive and phasing out of the British oil and gas industry.
In the essay, Blair wrote that the government “should try to limit the effect of the changes made and remove those parts of the net-zero agenda which prioritise clean energy over cheaper energy”.
Fahnbulleh, who served as minister for energy consumers between 2024 and 2025, told PoliticsHome that Blair’s views on net zero were “wrong”. She said that while her own children “won’t forgive me if I duck our responsibility to respond to climate change”, it was also important that the UK make the most of the “massive opportunity” around a clean energy transition.
“There is a global industry that is building up around the green transition around renewables,” she said.
“China is at the absolute forefront of that. Why the hell would we not want a piece of that? Why would we not want to be on the front foot?”
She added it would be “strategically mad” not to focus on this as a way to reindustrialise and revive parts of the country.
Blair said that the government needed to focus on cheaper energy over clean energy, with the public continuing to struggle with rising costs of living and energy bills.
However, Fahnbulleh said that while the cost of energy is a “genuine problem”, it is “clearly a function of our dependence on global fossil fuel markets”.
“The way you solve that problem isn’t by pretending it doesn’t exist or burying your head in the sand,” she said.
“It’s by doing what we’re doing and making the push to clean power.”
Fahnbulleh stepped down as minister for devolution, faith and communities earlier this month, having previously served as an energy minister after being elected as the MP for Peckham in 2024.
In her resignation letter, she called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to set a timetable for his departure from No 10, following heavy Labour losses at the 7 May local elections.
“Whilst progress has been made, we have not acted with the vision, pace and ambition that our mandate for change demands of us,” she wrote.
“Nor have we governed as a Labour Party clear about our values and strong in our convictions.”
Fahnbulleh is an ally of Greater Manchester Mayor Burnham and is helping develop his policy platform as he campaigns to win the Makerfield by-election with the hope of returning to Parliament and potentially challenging Starmer for the leadership.
“There’s one thing that Andy has to do, and that is win that by-election, and that’s not for any kind of leadership thing,” Fahnbulleh told PoliticsHome.
“It’s because this is a battle between Labour and Reform. The politics and the psychology of whether we win this are far more important. It’s a straight-up fight.”
She said that if Labour can win in Makerfield with a campaign based on “a set of progressive ideas”, then it will be able to do so “in constituency after constituency”.
She said that Labour needed to make strong arguments around the “economic model failing”.
“If we win in Makerfield, it changes the political weather,” Fahnbulleh continued. “And it gives us a formula about how we win back those traditional Labour seats that we have lost to Reform that we’ve got to get back.”
Asked whether she thinks the Green Party should step aside in the by-election to allow Labour a clearer path to victory against Nigel Farage’s Reform, Fahnbulleh said they “can do what they like” but suggested that it would be in the political interests of Zack Polanski’s party to do so.
“I would have thought it’s not in their interest to have a resurgent Reform party, but ultimately that is their call,” she said.
“Some of their leaders, like Caroline Lucas, have said so, and I often think that when we’ve got experienced political leaders opining, whether we agree with it or not, it’s often worth reflecting on. And I say that with a reference back to Tony Blair.”
In his essay, Blair said Labour had gone too far to the left and accused his party of having an “almost infinite capacity for self-delusion”. As well as calling for a rethink on net zero, the former prime minister argued that the government must significantly reduce welfare spending and improve relationships with US President Donald Trump.
Both Burnham and former health secretary Wes Streeting, who is expected to enter a future Labour leadership contest, accused Blair of ignoring the issue of inequality in his analysis.
In his own response to Blair, Starmer said that NHS waiting times and net migration coming down were vindications of the government’s policy choices, and argued that his administration had inherited the worst economic situation in nearly 50 years.
Labour’s Defence Universities Alliance (DUA) would be a “a dangerous militarisation of higher education“, according to the campaign group Demilitarise Education (dED), which is calling on universities, students, staff, trade unions, and local communities to oppose the initiative.
Defence Industrial Strategy 2025
The DUA was initially announced in September 2025 in the Defence Industrial Strategy, which said:
We will establish a Defence Universities Alliance (DUA) to form a more strategic relationship between defence and the higher education sector.
The DUA will build on existing connections between the sectors to support careers in the defence sector and encourage ethical defence and security research.
We will work closely with Universities UK and universities across the UK to establish the DUA, recognising that the relationship between the sectors is critical in supporting the UK’s national security and economic growth.
Further details about the DUA were revealed in the government’s call for applications, which was published on 20 April 2026. The call included a DUA Application Form, guidance, the DUA Charter and answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ).
The DUA Charter said:
There is a need to look beyond traditional Defence companies to redefine the industrial base, reflecting the deep range of partnerships and expertise within institutions throughout society and reorientate them towards UK Defence and National Security.
The Defence Universities Alliance will proactively bring the UK’s world class academic institutions and research centres into the new defence industrial base to support a whole of society approach to solving national security challenges, driving growth and supporting a thriving network of Defence expertise and debate.
While helping to cohere and provide strategic direction to the relationship between Defence and academia.
It also said that, by signing the charter, members would:
commit to actively growing research and development activity and capacity in defence and national security relevant fields and technologies to support defence aims and objectives.
dED responded to the charter commitment, saying:
This means institutions would dedicate resources, research capacity, and career services to advancing military technology and encouraging students into militarised industries, effectively becoming formal partners in the UK’s war machine.
Open statement
The campaign group’s criticism of the DUA was explained in an open statement published on 26 May 2026, which was co-signed by World Beyond War, Action on Armed Violence, Loughborough Action for Palestine, Stop the War, Boycott, Divest, Sanction Group – UCL, CND, People & Planet, University & College Workers for Palestine, Quakers in Britain, and Campaign Against Arms Trade.
The statement said:
The DUA represents a dangerous militarisation of higher education that fundamentally undermines the core purpose of universities.
By officially defining institutions as part of the “Defence Industrial Base,”[4] the government is treating campuses as extensions of military infrastructure rather than spaces for independent inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge that serves humanity.
It added that the alliance “threatens academic freedoms” by:
Redirecting research priorities away from addressing pressing social, environmental, and humanitarian challenges toward military applications.
And by:
Compromising institutional independence by making universities dependent on arms/military funding and strategic alignment.
Funding pressures
In a section of the DUA FAQ on whether universities would receive funding by joining the alliance, it said:
Currently there is no funding attached to the DUA, and it is not intended at this stage to be a primary mechanism through which funding for research or skills is allocated.
There is however the possibility that the future development of the DUA may involve the development of dedicated exclusive, or advantaged, funding opportunities and / or mechanisms for members.
The dED statement added that the alliance threatens academic freedoms by promoting:
military career pathways prioritised through UCAS-linked partnerships and £182M for Defence Technical Excellence Colleges, creating institutional pressure to align with military priorities.
And by:
creating ethical conflicts for researchers and students whose values oppose war and militarisation.
dED also said:
At a time when devastating conflicts continue across Congo, Sudan, Ukraine, Palestine and beyond, universities should not deepen their entanglement with industries that profit from violence, displacement, occupation and human suffering.
Campus protests
In February 2026, activists stopped a presentation from defence firm Thales, which has been linked to Israel’s attacks on Palestinians, at a Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) conference. Organisers ushered attendees out, leaving activists free to hang up Palestine flags and plaster the place with ‘boycott Israeli apartheid’ stickers.
Later in March, activists disrupted the North West Apprenticeship and Careers Expo, which was held at the University of Central Lancashire (Uclan). They were targeting the presence of BAE Systems, the largest arms manufacturer in Europe.
The statement from dED issued a call to action aimed at those who share the view that higher education should not become part of the military-industrial complex. It said:
We call on universities, students, staff, trade unions, and local communities to oppose this initiative and defend education as a space for democratic inquiry, critical thought, and collective liberation.
This statement calls on universities not to become founding members and not to sign the charter to join this harmful alliance.
It recommended that supporters of the statement form cross-sector coalitions, demand democratic processes inside higher education institutions to oppose militarisation, organisation educational campaign, develop ethical alternatives, use institutional power to oppose DUA membership, and to document expose partnerships between universities and the military.
The MOD and Department for Education were approached for comment.
Defence Investment Plan
With the government widely expected to publish its long-awaited Defence Investment Plan next week, and universities creaking under financial strain, it is likely that higher education leaders will be even more tempted to exploit potential opportunities for funding from the military-industrial complex, setting them on a collision course with academics and students who oppose war.
Featured image via Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
By Tom Pashby
Under Phase One of Trump’s 20 Point ‘Peace Plan’ for Gaza, Israeli occupation forces withdrew to a pre-designated line, the ‘yellow line’.
Gaza ‘yellow line’
The yellow line separates Gaza into two zones, and has crammed more than two million Palestinians into a narrow coastal strip of land. The land to the West of the yellow line is controlled by Hamas. The land to the East is under the direct control of the Israel occupation’s military and, in October 2025, this area made up approximately 53 percent of the Gaza Strip.
The area occupied by the military is a no go area for Palestinians, who run the risk of being shot dead – and many have been – if they are found there.
But even now, the marking of the yellow line with physical markers has not been completed. Satellite imagery has also shown some of the marker blocks were moved more than half a kilometre outside the yellow line, to expand the area the military controls.
According to the UN human rights office, since the October ‘ceasefire’ around one third of all Palestinians killed by the occupation were in areas near the yellow line. The office warned the incidents could amount to unlawful killings and possible war crimes by ‘Israel.’
As part of its genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza, the Israeli occupation continues to dismantle the civilian infrastructure essential for the survival of the population. Throughout the ‘ceasefire’, everything left standing East of the yellow line has become a target of the Israeli occupation. Homes, shops, and other buildings continue to be flattened.
Occupation has no intention of leaving the Strip
The Israeli occupation has no intention of leaving Gaza and instead has been constructing a “multi-layered barrier” along the yellow line. When finished it will be composed of a deep trench, embankments, and earth mounds, along with 32 army outposts. There is no mechanism to inform Palestinians of changes to the route of the constantly shifting yellow line. Many residents wake up to find the position of the yellow line has changed while they slept. They are then on ‘the wrong side’, and risk being shot and killed.
In March 2025, aid organisations working in Gaza were given a map of the “orange line”. They were told this line marks the area where the movement of international organizations is prohibited without prior coordination with Israeli occupation authorities.
In January 2025, the UN stated that more than 14,000 households were located in the area between the Orange and yellow lines- now a no go area for Palestinians. According to UNRWA, 126 of its facilities are also in areas controlled by the Israeli occupation’s military.
The occupation sent aid agencies an updated map of the orange line, in March 2026. It deviates from the yellow line by an estimated 11 percent, and, as the map shows, the Israeli occupation’s military now controls two thirds of Gaza.
Netanyahu has now ordered the occupation’s military to seize 70 percent of Gaza
But the Israeli occupation wants to continue stealing as such land in Gaza as possible, while the opportunity is still there. On 28 May, 2026, Netanyahu spoke at a conference in an occupied West Bank settlement. He claimed he had ordered the occupation’s military to now seize 70 percent of the Gaza Strip. “We now control 60 percent of the territory in the strip…..My directive is to move to 70 percent,” he said.
In 2025, ‘defence’ minister Israel Katz announced the Israeli occupation’s Security Cabinet had approved the “Bureau of Voluntary Migration.” This would facilitate travel for those Palestinians wanting to take a one way journey out of Gaza.
On 27 May, 2026 Katz posted on X:
“The voluntary emigration plan from Gaza will be implemented-everything at the right timing and in the right manner.”
‘Voluntary emigration’ is ethnic cleansing
Human rights organisations warn the move is not voluntary migration. Instead, it is intended “to expel Gaza residents to third countries without the possibility of returning to their homeland in the future.”
Gaza’s population of over two million are squeezed into a narrow, overcrowded zone. The unsanitary conditions, and inadequate access to shelter, clean water, and nutritious food means disease is spreading and so are rats. Almost all of the population have been displaced. But many are unable to return to the area where their homes were, because they are to the East of the yellow line. Most of Gaza’s agricultural land is also in this area, so is controlled by the Israeli occupation.
Meanwhile the orange line continues to create problems for humanitarian access and delivery of aid, at a time when conditions remain desperate for the majority of Palestinians.
These conditions were intentionally created by the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip, and they undermine the possibility of sustaining life. They are aimed at ethnically cleansing Gaza by forcibly transferring the population out of the enclave, and would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
What began as a temporary military line has become something much more permanent. With more land seized, more neighbourhoods erased, and more of the population forced into shrinking spaces, it is now becoming obvious to many that the yellow line is not about security at all, but about redrawing Gaza itself.
Featured image via Getty/David Silverman
By Charlie Jaay
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