Politics
Evasive, indecisive and inconstant: Starmer shows how not to be Prime Minister
Sir Keir Starmer’s propensity to blame anyone else but himself shows no sign of diminishing. It does not seem to occur to him that as Prime Minister one of his duties is to take responsibility.
At yesterday’s PMQs, he as usual evaded most of the questions, and instead launched irrelevant counter-attacks on Reform, the Greens and the Conservatives.
The PM remains addicted to the excuse that anything which goes wrong is the fault of the wicked Conservatives.
But various of the appointments which have gone wrong were made by Starmer himself, including those of Sue Gray, Morgan McSweeney, Chris Wormald and Peter Mandelson.
And most of the policy decisions which have later been reversed were likewise made by Starmer and his colleagues.
It would be wearisome to go through a complete list of the Government’s U-turns, but the scrapping of the Winter Fuel Allowance, followed by its reinstatement, is an egregious example.
There is a case for abolishing this allowance, and a case for keeping it, but no case for what actually occurred.
So too the insistence, at first, that the two-child benefit cap must stay, followed by the decision, under pressure from Labour MPs, to abandon it.
Who now relies on Starmer’s word? Under pressure he crumbles. This appears to be the case with the Chagos deal, though as usual it is difficult to tell what is really going on, and what weight should be attached to the use yesterday by Hamish Falconer, a junior Foreign Office minister, of the word “pausing”.
Who now would wish without ambiguity to defend any controversial Starmer appointment or policy?
In a recent cover piece for The Spectator about where it all went wrong for Starmer, Tim Shipman quotes a Labour insider who has struggled in vain to define Starmerism, and has come to realise,
“Keir has never met a policy that he had a natural view on. That’s why he’s capable of thinking that ID cards are terrible and then ID cards are wonderful and must be compulsory and then that they mustn’t be compulsory.”
Shipman recounts the story of Starmer’s speech in May 2025 warning that mass immigration would lead Britain to become an “island of strangers“.
Starmer and his aides did not realise this would be seen as an echo of Enoch Powell. Without telling his staff what he was about to do, Starmer admitted to Tom Baldwin that he was uncomfortable with “island of strangers”.
Baldwin hastened to publish the interview containing this repudiation in The Observer, cutting across a Sunday Times profile which had been in the works for weeks.
One of Starmer’s staff told Shipman about the effect this episode had on them:
“Keir basically threw everyone under the bus. That really turned things in terms of the internal dynamics. Even people who didn’t like the speech were stunned that he would wash his hands of it and hang people out to dry. It also undermined those people with civil servants, who see that the boss won’t back them up.”
All PMs make mistakes, but few have so frequently put their own staff in such a difficult position. Margaret Thatcher treated some of her Cabinet colleagues, notably towards the end Sir Geoffrey Howe, with appalling rudeness, but was known for her consideration towards her own staff.
Shipman quotes “a senior figure close to No. 10” who says:
“Fundamentally, the Prime Minister cannot make a decision, stick to a decision, implement a decision, defend that decision when it gets tough, or explain that decision, ever.”
In opposition, Starmer had a campaign team, run by McSweeney, but no policy team working out how to turn the promised “change” into a programme for government.
Thatcher, Howe, in the early years a key ally, and others in her team knew where, amid appalling difficulties, they were trying to go, and had mapped at least some of the route to get there.
Starmer has brought back senior Blairites, including Jonathan Powell and Peter Mandelson, presumably in the hope that they would supply the experience of high office he himself lacked.
But Mandelson has not merely resigned, he has been arrested, and we do not yet know what warnings of future trouble the PM received before appointing him.
Powell remains in post as National Security Adviser, but seems to have sought, on the dubious plea of necessity, to apply in the Indian Ocean the concessionary strategy which in Northern Ireland led to the Good Friday Agreement.
At yesterday’s PMQs, Kemi Badenoch asked whether the PM would cut the interest rate paid on student loans. He gave no reply, but claimed instead to be cutting energy prices, and at one point instanced, as he likes to do, the introduction of “free breakfast clubs”.
Badenoch was right to stick yesterday to student loans. By doing so, she demonstrated Starmer’s evasiveness, and the Conservative Party’s new-found determination to think about the needs of younger voters.
But one trusts that one day soon she will point out there is no such thing as a free breakfast club. These clubs have to be paid for by taxpayers.
Starmer evinces week by week his indecisiveness, his inability to think things through, and his inclination to abandon any policy which is unpopular with Labour MPs.
For Badenoch, this opens a wide field of action, as the leader who does the hard thinking, takes the hard decisions and sticks to them.
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday tore into some of President Donald Trump’s biggest allies, calling them “frauds” and “phonies” for recognising the danger of Trump and still cosying up to him.
But he saved some of his harshest criticism for Vice President JD Vance.
“Vance, for whatever reason, scares me almost more than Trump,” Newsom told MS NOW’s Jen Psaki. “Talk about a guy who put a mask on and his face grew into it.”
Vance was once a major Trump critic, describing him as an “idiot,” warning that he could become “America’s Hitler,” and declaring himself a “never Trump guy.”
Newsom noted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio ― who called Trump a “con artist” and implied he had a small penis ― and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham were, along with Vance, once among Trump’s “most effective critics.” Now, they’re all part of his inner circle.
“What frauds! What phonies!” Newsom said. “But JD’s a unique fraud and phony, and he’s a little more dangerous.”
Check out the full interview below:
Peter Ainsworth is Managing Director of CAMROW and the author of Setting Universities Free, How to deliver a sustainable student funding system.
Kemi Badenoch is right that young people are not prospering. Too many struggle to gain a foothold in the labour market, and too many have been encouraged into university courses that do not lead to strong employment outcomes.
But her proposed student-loan reforms have the moral issue the wrong way round.
The central injustice facing this generation is not the interest rate on Plan 2 loans. It is the difficulty of getting that vital first job – with the chance to do real work, develop capability and build confidence.
Employment matters not only economically but psychologically and socially. It teaches reliability, responsibility and judgement in ways classroom learning cannot. When young people cannot get started in work, the damage is not just financial. It is fundamental and life changing.
That is the moral issue Conservatives should focus on.
The misplaced “exploitation” narrative
Badenoch, writing in The Telegraph, describes student loans as a “scam” and says government is “making money off the backs of graduates”. That framing suggests exploitation.
But the reality is more nuanced.
The student-loan system involves substantial taxpayer subsidy through debt forgiveness. Some analysts suggest close to half of lending may ultimately be written off. With around 50 per cent of young people attending university and typical borrowing near £60,000, the arithmetic implies a subsidy cost of roughly £15,000 per young person – i.e. a burden on all, including those who did not go to university.
Before describing graduates as victims, Conservatives should acknowledge that the system already asks those who did not benefit from higher education to help finance those who did. In this context, those who attended university are the relatively privileged group. Expanding the subsidies from which they benefit even further risks exacerbating rather than correcting an injustice.
Badenoch’s proposed interest rate cut would mainly benefit middle earners – those on roughly £50,000 to £70,000. This makes it even harder to justify around £2 billion of additional subsidy to this group when nearly a million young people, including many graduates, are NEET: not in employment, education or training.
Taxes fall most heavily on those priced out of work
There is also a misconception about who bears tax burdens.
Policies that raise the cost of hiring – higher employer National Insurance, elevated minimum wages and regulatory risk – fall most heavily on those priced out of employment altogether. On paper they pay no tax. In reality they bear the heaviest burden of all: exclusion from work itself.
Even “safe” degrees cannot eliminate uncertainty
In both the United States and the United Kingdom, entry-level hiring in technology roles has weakened recently. Computer science graduates in particular have reported unusually high unemployment rates relative to other disciplines. The lesson is not that STEM lacks value. It is that no field of study can guarantee outcomes in a dynamic economy.
This has important implications for policy. Farage’s Reform proposes a greater focus on STEM while Badenoch endorses college-sponsored “apprenticeships”. Both assume politicians can reliably predict which courses will deliver the best outcomes.
Experience shows they cannot.
A Conservative reform: align incentives
If Conservatives want to address low-value courses, the solution is not to change interest rates or for politicians to anticipate the labour market. It is to change who carries the risk associated with career outcomes.
The state should no longer issue student loans. The current system insulates institutions from responsibility for what they deliver. Universities should instead provide the financing, alongside regulated financial partners, so that they have a meaningful financial stake in the employment outcomes of their students.
When incentives align, behaviour changes rapidly. Courses would be designed around employability, work experience and real demand because institutional survival would depend on it.
The real priority: open the labour market
The most urgent reform for young people – graduates and non-graduates alike – is access to the first step on the employment ladder. Without it, later progression becomes far harder.
Ending state student loans would reduce government borrowing by around £10 billion a year. Those resources could be used more effectively to reduce the National Insurance burden on young employees and their employers. Many businesses are willing to take chances on inexperienced workers, to teach and mentor them. But successive increases in employment taxes and regulatory costs have made those opportunities too expensive to provide.
Cutting these employment taxes is the most reliable way to complete the education of young people – through a real job opportunity.
The unfairness facing young people today is not student-loan interest.
It is being locked out of the first rung of the ladder of a fulfilled life.
Fixing that should be the moral priority of Conservative policy.
Former TOWIE star Chloe Lewis has shared more about the ice skating injury her son Beau, six, suffered on New Year’s Eve.
The youngster was ice skating in the afternoon when he fell over and someone ran over his finger with bladed skates, which the mum said “took his finger off”.
He underwent three-hour surgery to try and reattach the finger, which seemed to go well, but weeks later it became clear that it “didn’t take”.
Chloe is now petitioning for a change to the law that would see it become compulsory for children to wear safety gloves when ice skating to protect their hands.
The reality star, 35, who shares Beau with her ex partner Danny Flasher, told HuffPost UK: “After Beau lost his finger on New Year’s Eve, our world changed in an instant.
“The trauma of that day will stay with me forever, and watching him being put to sleep for surgery is something no parent should ever have to go through.
“It was absolutely heartbreaking.”
Last week she shared details of the family’s ordeal with her social media followers, as well as a link to the petition, which at the time of writing had almost 20,000 signatures.
The post prompted a wave of support, including from former TOWIE co-stars.
Ferne McCann commented: “Gosh I’m so sorry this happened. Brave Beau. I’ll be signing the petition.”
Lauren Goodger added: “Wow I’ve signed and sending you both so much love! Well done in this but I do hope your [sic] both ok and can’t imagine how hard this has been.”
Chloe said she is “asking for everyone’s support” in signing the petition. She hopes to garner 100,000 signatures so the issue will be considered for debate in parliament.
“Making gloves compulsory for children while ice skating is such a simple, practical step, but it could prevent devastating injuries and stop other families from experiencing the pain and trauma we have,” she told us.
“I want to turn our experience into something positive. I truly hope that one day I can tell my little boy that his bravery and strength helped bring about change and protected other children from suffering the same fate.”
As for Beau, Chloe said her son is “doing so well” and is now back at school.
In her social media post last week, Chloe explained that because his finger didn’t take, they are now waiting for it to “fall away naturally”. If it doesn’t, he’ll need another small operation to remove it.
In the meantime, the family is having weekly hospital check-ups. Chloe ended: “At the moment, it’s just a waiting game to see how everything heals, but we’re staying positive and hopeful.”
You can find Chloe’s petition here.
President Donald Trump couldn’t walk away from his State of the Union address without letting his critics get under his skin.
Though the speech was ripe with overblown boasts and self-congratulations about the first year of his second term in office, Trump sounded rather defensive as he addressed an indignant Truth Social post to his haters on Wednesday afternoon.
Taking aim at foes in Washington DC and beyond in the testy tirade, he proposed deporting Democrat Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, and Oscar-winning Robert De Niro for daring to defy him.
“When you watch Low IQ Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, as they screamed uncontrollably last night at the very elegant State of the Union, such an important and beautiful event, they had the bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people, LUNATICS, mentally deranged and sick who, frankly, look like they should be institutionalized,” he said of the squad members, both of whom left the Capitol building early after shouting down the president during his speech.
“When people can behave like that, and knowing that they are Crooked and Corrupt Politicians, so bad for our Country, we should send them back from where they came — as fast as possible,” Trump’s post continued. “They can only damage the United States of America, they can do nothing to help it.”
While Omar is a Somalia-born American citizen, Tlaib was born in Detroit, Michigan, making it unclear where the president was hoping to ship her off to.
Trump also lashed out at American-born actor De Niro, who called the commander in chief “failing, flailing and desperate” during the rival “State of the Swamp” event at the National Press Club in Washington DC on Tuesday night.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
Raging, the president wrote, “They should actually get on a boat with Trump Deranged Robert De Niro, another sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely Low IQ, who has absolutely no idea what he is doing or saying — some of which is seriously CRIMINAL!”
“When I watched him break down in tears last night, much like a child would do, I realized that he may be even sicker than Crazy Rosie O’Donnell, who is right now in Ireland trying to figure out how to come back into our beautiful United States,” he went on, taking a shot at his longtime nemesis and fresh expat, O’Donnell.
“The only difference between De Niro and Rosie is that she is probably somewhat smarter than him, which isn’t saying much,” Trump’s post continued. “The good news is that America is now Bigger, Better, Richer, and Stronger than ever before, and it’s driving them absolutely crazy!”
Omar and Tlaib tried to shame Trump while he went after sanctuary cities during his Tuesday night speech.
“You have killed Americans,” both shouted, referring to two US citizens shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last month.
Politics
John Oxley: The NHS is there to make you better, but is it there to get you back into work?
John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.
Anyone with a sub-optimal approach to home maintenance will know of the WD-40/Gaffa tape heuristic.
If something should move, but won’t, give it the spray. If it shouldn’t move, but is, tape it down. The whole concept is a bodge: it neither fully fixes the problem nor uses these products as intended. But it gets it off your “To do” list for a few months, until it eventually breaks down again.
For the government, it appears a similar approach is emerging, giving problems to the NHS. While you might assume the Health Service is focused on fixing injuries and curing illnesses, that would be naïve. Instead, various governments have expanded their remit to include aspects of ill-health, becoming catch-all social programmes. In some parts of the country, the NHS will, in certain circumstances, deep-clean your house, pay your bus fare to appointments, or even wash your clothes.
Now, ministers are looking to add to this burden by setting NHS Trusts targets around getting people back to work. Under plans announced this week, Trusts will take some of the responsibility for reducing out-of-work benefit claims. Measures will include not just treating conditions that keep people out of work but also providing external support and job coaching. As an initiative, it will place additional responsibilities on the Health Service that should really be picked up elsewhere.
Now, there is some logic here. The NHS should know who is unwell and should be able to have a proper understanding of how their disabilities impact their ability to work. It is sensible to join up elements of government that interact, rather than them becoming siloed and contradictory. Yet the scheme risks further diluting the NHS’s performance, introducing a new layer of bureaucracy, and undermining our democratic choices about how money is spent.
After all, it is hard to ignore the role that funding plays in all of this. NHS funding occupies a special place in our political consciousness. It is almost sacrosanct. Few governments would dare to impose real-term cuts in it. Even during austerity, spending on health was ringfenced, though it increased less than during previous governments. It makes it tempting to stretch the definitions of where that money can be used.
We all know that governments are fiscally constrained. Raising new money through taxation, or reallocating it to different departments, is fraught. Stretching the edges of the NHS budget is politically easier. As a result, more responsibilities that would have fallen to other departments are lumped into the NHS. As local authorities have seen their budgets consumed by social care, other service gaps have been taken on by health.
This starts to feel like a bait-and-switch for voters. People voting for greater health spending envisage it going on, well, health, not a broadening backstop for the rest of the state. It seems especially galling when frontline services are still stretched, with long waiting times and struggling A&E departments. When people say the NHS is important to them, they are thinking about addressing these issues, not using its expanding budget as a catch-all. Voters waiting for a GP appointment or operations might reasonably wonder why the service is being asked to become an employment agency.
There are also questions of accountability. These sums are relatively small in NHS terms and can easily get lost in the overall budget picture. They may not receive the same scrutiny if they were being spent by other arms of the state, with a clearer focus on the objective at hand. Should the NHS fall short in getting people back into work, it is unclear who will bear the blame. It becomes easier to shift it between the DWP, the Treasury, and now health bodies, which have expanded their remit.
This mission creep also risks undermining the competence of public services. Organisations tend to work best when their objectives are clear and stable. The health service already juggles prevention, acute care, chronic disease management and mental health support. Each of these domains is complex and resource-intensive. Loading on extra pastoral responsibilities will draw away both resources and attention. Rather than doing a few things well, the expanding health state is likely to do many things badly.
Every extra thing we ask the health service to do detracts from its core mission. It adds in extra functions, extra people, and new levels of bureaucracy. Often, this ends up duplicating what happens elsewhere in public services, or something that was cut as part of a broader strategic review. Instead of reducing silos, it just increases the number of state functions trying haphazard solutions to a problem, rather than an integrated approach.
It is the sort of thing the Conservatives should be resisting if we are serious about delivering a smaller state. Often, our attempts to reduce government spending have been hampered by a lack of honesty about what “doing less” entails. The result is a state that tries to carry out ever-growing functions, but with less funding and less effectively. Indeed, many of these additional duties for the health service were introduced during our time in government. If we genuinely want the state to be leaner, we should have better ideas about providing limited but more effective interventions.
Like with WD-40 and tape, it is easy to reach for the convenient solution. For politicians, lumping more things into the NHS is a bodge. It allows them to skirt some of the tightness in public spending and shift more things onto the part of the state allowed to expand. If continued, the NHS becomes a catch-all solution for every problem. Rather than properly deploying other bits of the public sector and working out how to have them operate effectively, we shoehorn extra things into health. To butcher a famous phrase, we cannot successfully roll back the frontiers of the state to see them reimposed through the health service.
A system that routes every difficult question through the NHS is not integrating government; it is shirking harder decisions about how the rest of it should function. If employment support is underpowered, it should be strengthened. If local authorities are overwhelmed, that should be confronted openly. Continually expanding the health service’s remit may be politically convenient, but convenience is not reform. WD-40 quietens the hinge for a while. It does not fix the door. And sooner or later, the door still needs to be repaired.
The government is right to be concerned about worklessness.
Equally, there is nothing wrong with thinking about how health impacts the economy. Making the health service the actor of last resort for every social problem, however, is a misuse of its political capital.
Services are best when they are focused – not when they are trying to do everything.
With a background in cooking and TV (I’ve cooked for the Royal family, and worked alongside Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver), feeding my child was something I thought I’d find easy.
But it was nothing like I’d imagined as an idealistic new parent. It ended up becoming a daily test of courage and survival.
Our child has ADHD with what I would call an anxiety profile, and they were born with a rare allergy condition called food protein-induced enterocolitis syndrome (FPIES).
It’s not like the allergies you read about in pregnancy books or parenting blogs. It’s severe, silent, and terrifying.
From the very start, we faced impossible choices. As a newborn, they had horrendous silent reflux, sometimes turning blue in their sleep. One professor told me there was nothing more to do, dismissing my concerns with flippant advice about ‘needing a large glass of champagne to relax’. It was crushing.
When we began weaning at four months, hoping for joy and curiosity, it turned into a nightmare. By six months, vomiting could leave them unconscious, cold, and in shock. Every new food became a potential danger.
We had to go back to single-ingredient weaning until we found the trigger: bean protein, which is in nearly everything.
That early trauma shaped our child’s relationship with food. What began as survival became avoidance. They became a “fussy eater”, not because of preference, but because their nervous system was wired to protect them. They were learning that food could kill and every meal carried a memory of that danger and trauma.
As they grew, ADHD and anxiety added another layer. The brain seeks dopamine, and often finds it in sugar, fat, salt, and carbohydrates.
Patterns emerge: repeated textures, colours, or shapes are comforting. Anything unpredictable can feel unsafe. This isn’t picky eating. This is a nervous system regulation issue.
The same is true for many neurodiverse children. Our child may be ‘picky’ and have preferred foods, especially when dysregulated, but for others there is a diagnosis called avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) which is being diagnosed more frequently, but is still misunderstood.
ARFID is an eating disorder characterised by very limited food choices, either by volume or variety. But it’s not just about a child liking just chips, it goes as far as a specific brand of chips, cooked in a specific way, served on a specific plate, etc. The results of AFRID can be devastating, with nutritional deficiencies, weight loss and psychosocial impairment.
Where the driving force of anorexia is image, ARFID is about sensory sensitivities to taste, texture and looks. It is based on fear or a complete lack of interest in food or low appetite, which often goes hand-in-hand with weak interoception seen in children with autism.
It is about predictability – the same packet of crisps is always the same packet of crisps. But a strawberry one day may be hard and crunchy, big and juicy; the next it might be small, squashy, and not so red. That takes a huge amount of decoding in the brain to check if it is safe to eat.
There is now an official route to diagnosis, but getting a diagnosis can be hard and time consuming, let alone treatment. The latter is a slow process too, as there is no quick fix and it often involves a multidisciplinary team of paediatricians and therapists.
As a parent whose child does not eat how I imagined they would, it all comes with a level of disappointment, if I am honest, and social shame when they won’t eat this and that. There’s also a level of stress when the decision comes down to crisps for breakfast, or nothing.
While I don’t have the answers to solving eating issues, I can share some of the things that have helped us:
1. A fed child is a fed child
Calories first, “the socially acceptable” choices second. Whether it’s crisps for breakfast or eggs on toast, it’s better than nothing.
2. Remove pressure
The job of a parent is to provide food (mainly safe foods with the opportunity to try it). The child’s job is to eat it or not. No rewards, no punishments, no coercion.
3. Predictable portions of joy
Most (75-95%) of the plate should be familiar, safe foods. A small portion of something new is enough for exploration, but with no pressure.
4. Family-style meals
Even if they eat separately, leaving a variety of food on the table helps them engage at their own pace.
5. Reduce cognitive load
Sit in a calm environment, avoid screens, follow simple mealtime routines. Screens sometimes have to be used, but if your child is able to eat without one then it’s a good habit to get into because it stops unconscious eating (which means the learning around food is not happening).
6. Low-key praise
Often when our children achieve something, like trying a new food, we lay the praise on thick. When our children are neurodiverse this adds pressure and expectation for the next time.
One single, low-key, specific praise point will be enough, and remember to praise the behaviour you want to see more of, not the end results. You could say something like: “You overcame your worries about picking up that food, great job for giving it ago.”
At the parental support platform I developed, twigged, we’ve even created food tasting boards to help families navigate new food tries without pressure, while reminding them that progress takes time. According to Connections In Mind, a child with neurodivergence may need 250 exposures to feel safe with trying new foods.
For families navigating eating struggles such as ARFID; caregivers might want to aim for safety, removing pressure and celebrating the small wins quietly.
I always recommend seeking out parental support networks like ARFID groups on Facebook, or other SEN parenting groups.
Food is about fuel, connection, and learning to feel safe in your body. And above all, know this: your child’s eating challenges are not your fault. They are part of their unique profile.
Gee Eltringham is a SEN psychotherapist and founder of parental support platform for ADHD, twigged.
Help and support:
Terri Bloore is the Conservative candidate for Mayor of Newham.
I like a challenge, I always have. I work hard and am ambitious in my plans – my career to date proves that. So, I have thrown my hat in the ring for Mayor of Newham, despite the odds. Yes, the odds are really stacked against me, but I, like most of the British, like the underdog. I also truly believe the time is right in Newham for change.
Newham is one of the capital’s most culturally diverse and rapidly growing communities and grappling with its fair share of social, economic, and administrative challenges. These issues range from deep-rooted housing crises and ballooning public expenditure to strains on public services and living standards. For many residents, these challenges are not abstract statistics but lived realities that shape everyday life.
Just as a reminder for those of you who are less au fait with the East London borough stats, Labour has controlled Newham Council and all its predecessors since at least 1930, with the party has won 90 per cent of seats or more in every local
election since 1978. Yet recently Labour has faced significant by-election losses, leading to discussions about potential vulnerability ahead of the May 2026 election.
Indeed, Newham narrowly escaped bankruptcy, having to resort to drawing up a crisis strategy that includes asking the government for extra help and permission to increase Council Tax by nine per cent – one of the highest in the country. This has hugely affected the services and necessary support that the Borough can offer residents. Under Labour’s watch, Newham now holds the dubious title of Littering Capital of the UK, one of the highest rates of knife crime in London and is one of the most deprived boroughs.
The current Mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz, has rightly announced she is stepping down, yet it has not stopped Labour flouting “Leadership you can rely on” in a pamphlet I had through the door of my Newham flat. You couldn’t make it up!
Labour, as we know, has never been strong on the economy, but this financial mismanagement takes the biscuit. So, what do I plan to do about it, you may ask?
My campaign will be driven to bring back financial trust in Newham Council. I believe a thriving local economy and resilient neighbourhoods go hand in hand — with successful businesses creating jobs, investment and opportunity, while strong communities. I believe we need to bring investment into Newham, which will bring back pride and as a result cleaner, safer streets.
I want to rebuild financial trust and transparency through efficient management and reducing wasteful spending. Just one example of how I would do this is by selling of Newham Dockside, the Council Building that Labour spent £111 million on, yet stands practically empty. A business that doesn’t take regular inventory, of course, will go bust and we need to look at all efficiencies large and small to make these savings. Services will need to be evaluated and front-line services will be prioritised to reducing the financial burden on residents.
Once such vital service that has been woefully under supported is our police. We need more police on our streets to deal with anti-social behaviour and crime. More police presence, will ensure criminals are prosecuted and fined and residents feel safe. We can also deal with fare dodgers too who seemingly go scott-free when our stations are left unmanned.
I truly believe that by improving street cleanliness through quicker response times and tougher penalties for repeat offenders of fly tipping, we can quickly bring back pride onto our streets, and again bring money back into the borough.
We need to be prioritising the development of housing for residents, addressing the high number of households in temporary accommodation, and support for leaseholders who are held over a barrel by management fees.
Finally, I believe in my heart that we must support local businesses in Newham and boost the economy. We can only do this by abolishing business rates.
The challenges are not easy overcome, it will require some uncomfortable moments assessing what we really need and what is nice to have. Newham has extraordinary potential but has never witnessed the opportunities that a Conservative led council could bring. It is a shame and we have seen this in the mishandling of the Borough in the past decades. With the right leadership, we can support local businesses, restore trust in local government, and build communities where people feel safe, listened to and proud to live.
I know we can do this, I know the Conservative values of fairness, equality and good work ethic will make Newham a place businesses and residents are proud of again.
US Congressman Al Green was kicked out of Trump’s ‘State of the Union’ last night for holding up a banner that read “Black people aren’t apes”. It was a protest against Trump’s recent video depicting the Obamas as apes, for which he has never apologised. Other Democrats refused to stand for the man unfit to be a janitor, let alone president.
Green’s stand triggered admiration for him, disgust at Trump — and a flood of racist support from what remains of Trump’s ‘MAGA’ base.
BREAKING: Al Green was just kicked out of the SOTU for the second year in a row to chants of USA.
He carried a sign that read “black people aren’t apes”.
Man I love this guy. pic.twitter.com/KBTT4HmzE8
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) February 25, 2026
The admiration was mixed with horror that in 2026 anyone needs to point this out to a US ‘president’:
BREAKING at the State of the Union:
Al Green stood in the crowd holding a sign that read “Black people are not apes” as Donald Trump entered and was removed from the chamber.
Let that sink in.
In 2026, a member of Congress is escorted out for defending Black people’s humanity.… pic.twitter.com/Jd7iDDYjwE
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) February 25, 2026
I want to live in the timeline where the president of the United States doesn’t need to be told this.
Thank you, Rep. Al Green. pic.twitter.com/SUg0XeBUrV
— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) February 25, 2026
HERO 🔥
And I don’t want to hear shit about a censure vote against this man.
Rep. Al Greene was ejected from the State of the Union for the sign — “Black People Aren’t Apes.” pic.twitter.com/ZlJv9P1Vmb
— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) February 25, 2026
Al Green racially targeted
Tragically, Trump is far from alone. Thousands of MAGA racists — and no doubt many bots — popped up to defend Trump and use horrific racial slurs against Al Green and other Black people. Thankfully, they were usually taken down emphatically by right-minded respondents, who capitalise on the opportunity to point out what the racists/bots were defending:
Lose it?
Ya mean like Trump in his dementia?
Like Republicans being #PedophileProtectors?
Like Trump posting his racist ape tweet?Keep trying. You’ll get there someday.
— Jeff Voting w Fear For Democracy (@Jeff67318761) February 25, 2026
The pedo president affects us hard here too traitor.
And I love how you have “America first” on your bio while you cuck for Israel LMAO. You know Trump thinks you’re an ape right?
— Sydney Centrist (@SydneyCentrist) February 25, 2026
Only a shit bag like you would laugh at that. Trump posted a picture of a president as an ape.
— PLGC (@PL67712441) February 25, 2026
Rep. Al Green holding A sign staying Black People aren’t Ape . But he forgot to write Trump is a POS on the other side .
— Ivan3k0 💙🇺🇲💙 Proud American 💙🇺🇲💙 (@KingIvan) February 25, 2026
Many of those defending Trump were Israel mouthpieces taking a short break from genocide denial and anti-Muslim hate. Or in some cases, combining defending Trump with anti-Muslim hate. While they got plenty of racist/bot support, they also didn’t — and those responses ranged from the politically eloquent to the pithy:
— Eddie A (@EddieAnastasia) February 25, 2026
The amount of insults from this administration and trump himself who divides everybody and post ape Obama videos ? But yeah let me cry, bill you have been sucking trumps cock for way too long, wake tf up, but guess that dick must be tasty
— abrakadabra0x.eth (@abrakadabra0x) February 25, 2026
— Prison Mike (@PrisonM56457462) February 25, 2026
— Carmine Fields (@CarmineWilding) February 25, 2026
Shamefully, even a handful of Black politicians and influencers were prepared to simp for Trump. It didn’t go well:
And less than a month ago you were rightly saying Trump is a racist over the Obamas’ Ape saga. Changed your tune quick.
— FREEDOM FIGHTER (@Co26S79222) February 25, 2026
Hockey???
How easily yall get blinded..
I guess you’re ok with someone who is racist against your own race.
But sure we can go with hochey. pic.twitter.com/4oJUTgaLGx— Chosen1pr (@chosen1pr70637) February 25, 2026
Tim, you are a disgrace. They hate you and you continue to toe the line for pedos and pedo protectors. It’s gross. What does it feel like to sell your soul? Hope you got a good deal.
— Naptowncrabby (@feelingcrabby1) February 25, 2026
And many pointed out that the ‘ape’ in the room last night was Trump himself — though comparing Trump to an orangutan is deeply unfair – to orangutans, who are a lot more human:
Trumpanzees and Trump the piggy ape love orange bananas and go around in Washington Zoo! https://t.co/ywMBPaXd3c
— Johnny Bray (@MexCaliFLResist) February 25, 2026
I agree with Rep. Al Green; however, I do believe we have one ape in that room. Orangutan Trump with his VP Vance. pic.twitter.com/2uVLICAF4k
— 🌈Marty Weiss TFTI📕🏳️🌈🧟✨🧢💪🏻🔱 (@TFTInfamy) February 25, 2026
Trump, is an ape. pic.twitter.com/XP9Nlu2Lps
— 46theud (@46theud38257) February 25, 2026
Overall, though, analysing the feedback to Trump’s speech and Green’s stand was a depressing reminder of the fact that, despite the stubbornly human response of many, the US is a dangerous, racist-riddled basket case run by a dangerous, racist basket-case.
Featured image via the Canary
There is one thing we can say for Zack Polanski, the ‘eco-populist’ leader of the Green Party. He stands out. And not entirely for the right reasons.
How Zack must regret that, in his former career as a hypnotherapist, he agreed to go along with Sun journalist Kasie Davies when she rocked up at his swanky Harley Street consulting room back in 2013, and asked him to use his mesmeric powers to increase the size of her bosom. How much better, he must reflect, it would’ve been to say, ‘Don’t be ridiculous’, slam down the phone and get back to the serious work of helping people with more money than sense to hand him some of that money. But he’s stuck forever now, whatever he says or does, with his reputation as the Boob Whisperer, Hypnotits, Derren Bra-on, the Mammary Master, etc.
It’s quite unfair, really. It’s not as if he made a habit of offering this unusual service. This was a one-off, a bit of fun. Unfortunately for him, it’ll make him a living Benny Hill Show sketch – Playtex Polanski, the Gazonga Guru, a politician who certainly has his knockers, etc – in the eyes of the public for the rest of his days. What bad form it would be to linger on the incident here. So let’s linger.
‘Hypnosis essentially involves taking a person’s fixed attention’, reported Davies, ‘and moving it from one place to another’. Polanski explains it as follows:
‘Take, for example, the last time you were engrossed in a book or TV show and didn’t hear someone say your name. Right then, you were under a form of hypnosis…The unconscious mind also controls our bodily functions.’
In this instance, he was speaking to the part of the brain that controls the release of growth hormones needed for breast enlargement, as well as stimulating tissue growth and blood flow to that area.
And amazingly, this experiment was a success! Davies was cock-a-hoop with the development of her décolletage. ‘I measure my bust after three days. I’ve grown from a 32 inch chest to 34 inches’, she writes. ‘Three days later, my chest measures 35 inches. Another three days and I’m 36 inches. I’m still wearing a B-cup but it is a lot more snug and I realise I should have been wearing an A-cup before.’ But then, panic sets in. ‘What if my breasts don’t stop growing?’, she wondered. (I’m seeing that Kenny-Everett-as-Rod-Stewart sketch).
‘But after 10 days the growth grinds to a halt… After two weeks, I email Zack to ask him why. He says that, during our session, it emerged my unconscious wasn’t happy for this experiment to occur for an indefinite amount of time, so he asked it whether it was okay to happen for 10 days. It apparently agreed.’
Thank goodness. Imagine if Zack hadn’t done this deal with the poor woman’s unconscious – forget the climate crisis, the exponential growth of her fulminating funbags would by now have threatened all life on Earth. Zack was certainly happy with the results: ‘This is an extremely new approach, but I can see it becoming popular very quickly, because it’s so safe and a lot cheaper than a boob job.’
Away from the pun potential, what does this great experiment tell us about Zack? That he’ll say anything that’s expedient, in the moment, without much thought. That he’ll gladly play the role of the person who tells the gullible what they want to hear.
It’s quite funny that nowadays, when reminded of the incident, he takes great pains to say, very seriously, how he apologised to the world for it the very next day after publication, as if it were some terrible crime. All that he did was to play along with a tabloid journo for a bit of daft fun. And yet, he must – grandly and dramatically – atone. Which just makes the whole affair even funnier, and much harder to shake off.
But then, he has the look of someone who’s about to add the words ‘disgraced former’ to every line on his disparate CV. He’s an insult to the noble profession of tit-nosis.
For Zack Polanski is actually David Paulden, a waster of our time and his own, bouncing from one nonsense activity to the next – actor, hypnotist and now politician. His background has been thoroughly excavated by Guy Adams in the Daily Mail. Suffice to say, there’s a disparity between his claim of a humble background and the enterprising vim of the family Polanski – sorry, Paulden.
Zack was privately educated at Stockport Grammar School on a scholarship, but was ‘kicked out’ for being ‘a bit too cheeky’ and went to a state sixth-form college. ‘I remember absolutely loving it and thriving, and suddenly going: Oh, this is what diversity feels like. This is what it feels like when everyone’s not homogeneous.’ This would be 1998, when almost nobody gave a monkeys about ‘diversity’. But then Zack has a curious talent for throwing the modern into the past. He regularly tells us how awful the anti-homosexual piece of legislation, Section 28, was, despite being just six years old when it became law.
Adams reveals the hilarious diatribe dropped by Polanski in 2019 when he got arrested for stopping traffic crossing Westminster Bridge for Extinction Rebellion, and spent a night in the nick. ‘I’m a vegan and they were pretty bad about getting me some vegan food’, said Polanski. ‘If you are going to arrest 300 activists, you have got to think about getting some vegan food ready. There was no soy milk, either, so I had to have my tea black.’ The horror!
Zack spent some time as an actor in the mid-to-late 2000s, but seems never to have got very far on the stage except for appearing in ‘immersive theatre’. This is the lowest of a very low profession, chivvying people about pretending to be in a crashing spaceship or whatever. Then he jumped to hypnotism. Then, in 2015, to the Liberal Democrats. And then, in 2017, to eco-activism and the Greens, where he has at last found his métier.
But who is Zack Polanski? What’s in a name? Quite a lot, actually. Names have a strange power, I find. Name changing is an acceptable activity for pop stars, actors, spies and criminals. There’s something about real names that tells the truth – Harry Webb (Cliff Richard), Reg Dwight (Elton John), David Jones (David Bowie), Marie Lawrie (Lulu). They reveal something about that person.
But when people switch their appellation and have no showbiz reason, or pressing need to disambiguate themselves from another person with the same name, I find it a bit suspect. I had a couple of dalliances with exotically monikered chaps in my salad-tossing days; when I stumbled on the prosaic truth, their real names clicked around them, like a protective case snaps around a phone. ‘Oh yes, that’s you’, I thought. This holds true for Zack. There’s never been anybody who looks more like a ‘Dave Paulden’, who became ‘Zack Polanski’ aged 18.
The surname Polanski certainly sounds exotic and memorable, even if it also brings a certain child-raping film director to mind; a bit like redubbing yourself Savile or Glitter. Polanski was the original name of Paulden’s Jewish ancestors, but not used for generations. I’m not sure Zack would have switched it if the ancestral name had been Winkle, Blum or boring old Goldberg. Polanski adds something spicy. And Zack? This was the name of a character in a favourite book of our Dave’s – thank goodness it wasn’t Mr Bump.
The changing of your name is something you do as a teenager, running from yourself, trying out new looks and new identities every five minutes; practising your quirky signature and dyeing your hair. Eighteen is leaving this a bit late. When I was 14, I decided to rename myself Harvey for some peculiar reason – I think because of Harvey Keitel, who I thought was super-cool. Everyone laughed in my face, and thank the stars they did.
What can we say of Zack’s acting career? It may seem a bit too obvious to point out that he is acting at politics, but I think it could be the case. A friend of mine worked for a kids’ pop mag many years ago, and he discovered that at least one of the members of a fleetingly hyper-celebrated teeny bop group viewed music not as a career, but as a role. He was, in effect, playing the part of someone with his name, like doing a long run in a musical. I think Zack the politician could well be another example of this – another part.
In one of his super-popular promo videos for the Greens, released in October last year, we follow Zack as he stalks mournfully through the twilit streets ranting – in a caring way, natch – about billionaires and calling for that lefty panacea, a wealth tax.
Now, I failed Maths O-level three times, and even I understand that wealth taxes are always a disaster. Polanski’s video apparently made Owen Jones, among others, weep. This is because they are simple-minded, resentful zealots with no understanding of economics, or indeed of life. The likes of Polanski live in the most peaceful, prosperous and indeed most equal civilisation there has ever been. And yet, in the name of the planet or the patronised ‘poor’, they rail against it all, against industry, against prosperity, against growth. They want to overthrow it – out of nothing much more than boredom and self-flagellating, self-aggrandising guilt, the most luxurious of all the emotions. This is the tantrum of a child smashing up a toy for something to do. There are indeed serious challenges facing British society right now, but they are entirely different ones to those Polanski campaigns on.
It’s an obvious shot but I’m taking it anyway – the boob-whispering is more sane than the Green Party programme. Where does Zack think money goes, what profits actually are, what growth means? The irony is that it’s precisely the tinkering of politicians – something the Greens want to do more of – that has made the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in recent years. It is progressives, technocratic to their core, who have brought stagnation and hopelessness down upon us.
Oh, and needless to say, Zack is all in on gender, the whole trans shebang swallowed whole. He applauded the arrest of Graham Linehan last September, and has stood bravely against women’s sports, safety and dignity.
Whenever challenged in the media, he responds with a set of stock replies – billionaires, Section 28, ‘inclusive’ feminism (which means including men), etc. And of course you’re never far away from a reference to the ‘genocidal state of Israel’ – another Polanski staple. You pull the string and you get one of his 11 set phrases, like a progressive activist Chatty Cathy, new from Mattel. He is, after all, just saying what he is expected to say, as he did all those years ago in his consulting rooms with Kasie Davies.
I don’t think this is calculated. I think he thinks he believes it all. But as you can see in almost every interview, he is hopelessly out of his depth, and cannot follow the logic in even very simple questions. Last September, he told the i newspaper, ‘I believe that racism… probably comes from poverty. I think if you don’t have scarcity in your life, and if you feel safe and secure, why would you hate another person?’ This could well be the very dumbest thing I’ve ever heard a politician come out with.
The central issue is that he is clearly very, very thick. This is, after all, a homosexual who rants on about Section 28 and at the same time is happy to indulge Mothin Ali, an Islamic sectarian, as his deputy leader – a man who, on 7 October 2023, in response to Hamas’s rape and slaughter of Israeli Jews, tweeted ‘White supremacist European settler colonialism must end!’. You can read Zack’s hopeless attempts to excuse that here.
Now, finally, Dave Paulden has the attention he always wanted. He is an eco-populist for the foreseeable, until the wheels come off and / or he tires of it. On the evidence so far, I predict an eventual Third Act as a television presenter, back at the fluff-level. Stay tuned for The Great British Boob-Off, 2035.
Gareth Roberts is a screenwriter, author and novelist, best known for his work on Doctor Who. This is an edited extract from his ‘Middle Class Holes’ series on Substack.
In October 2025, the UN found that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza. The UN wasn’t the first body to come to this conclusion, but it was one of the most significant. On 24 February, Labour MP David Taylor seemed to describe the ‘genocide’ label as a ‘baseless antisemitic conspiracy theory’.
This is genocide denial:
Do you remember when the Green Party used to profess to care about environmental issues, rather than spout baseless antisemitic conspiracy theories? https://t.co/nGv0zFdB8k
— David Taylor MP (@DavidTaylor85) February 24, 2026
If Taylor wasn’t referring to the genocide, he needs to hire a social media person pronto, because how else is a person supposed to read the above?
Disgusting
The exchange began with the following:
Absolutely vile. This person shouldn’t be a member of any political party, yet alone it’s deputy leader. https://t.co/TQ11164qLC
— David Taylor MP (@DavidTaylor85) February 23, 2026
Someone needs to explain to us why it’s “vile” to highlight that an unusual number of politicians have taken an unusual amount of money from a foreign power and its supporters — a foreign power responsible for a genocide — a foreign power which subjected Palestinians to decades of apartheid before that.
The above donations all come from notorious Israel-backing lobbyist Trevor Chinn.
Many Labour politicians have taken money from Israel and Israel-linked donors, and the term ‘Israel lobby’ is entirely in line with how we describe other donation sources (e.g. ‘the oil lobby’).
If the same politicians had taken the same sums from Russia, the above diagram would still exist, but it would say ‘the Russia lobby’.
Oh, and we assume the Trevor Chinn donations can’t be the ‘baseless antisemitic conspiracy theory’ Taylor responded to, because they were all declared. ‘Declared’ does not mean ‘ethical’, however.
Legalised bribery is still just bribery.
Ali responded to Taylor as follows:
This is exactly why you’re called the genocide party! Labour MPs now agree with extreme racists and islamophobes, like there’s no difference between them!
Anyway how much did you get? https://t.co/nPzuc2C3pU
— Mothin Ali (@MothinAli) February 24, 2026
The National reported the following on Taylor:
According to his register of interests, Taylor does not appear to have received money from Chinn, who has been the chair of a number of motoring companies such as the AA, the RAC and Kwikfit.
He is currently vice president of the Jewish Leadership Council, which lashed out at the Labour Government’s recognition of a Palestinian state last year saying it was a “reward for terrorism”.
Chinn has funded both Labour Friends of Israel and its Conservative equivalent, according to Declassified UK. Between 1973 and 1993, he was chair of the Joint Israel Appeal, a major fundraising organisation for Israel.
Education
Ali responded as follows to Taylor on 24 February:
It looks like you need me to continue your education. The Green Party has never been a single issue party, people and the planet first, right from its inception! Not big business, not billionaires and not genocide! Which is exactly why people are ditching labour! You still haven’t told us how much?
Taylor responded:
“You still haven’t told us how much?”
Words that show what a party of hate & division they’ve become. Just like Reform. Two sides of same coin, cynically pitting communities against each other to gain votes.
Hoping folks in Gorton & Denton reject them, and vote Labour on Thurs
Yes, we’re sorry Taylor; we want to know how much money you Labour ghouls are taking from foreign powers and billionaires. We also want to know the same about Reform, which is why we publish stuff like this:
🚨 Chris Packham destroys Reform over its dodgy donors, live on the BBC
Laura Kuenssberg did her best job of defending @reformparty_uk in the face of @ChrisGPackham… shockingly… telling the truth about its donors… https://t.co/o8k3CYbIsB
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) November 9, 2025
Labour — End of the crime
The era of ‘if you point out what we’re doing, you’re an antisemite‘ is over, and this is where it led:
🗳️ Voting intention | ft. Restore / Your Party
➡️ Ref: 25% (+10)
🟢 Grn: 18% (+11)
🔴 Lab: 16% (-19)
🔵 Con: 16% (-8)
🟠 Lib: 11% (-2)
⚫️ Res: 7% (+7)
🟥 YP: 1% (+1)Poll: @FindoutnowUK, 18 Feb (+/- vs GE2024) pic.twitter.com/Ww3DB4Q4Jg
— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️ (@LeftieStats) February 24, 2026
Oh, and this is where it’s heading in Gorton & Denton:
🚨 BREAKING | Data tables for Opinium poll of Gorton and Denton show Greens are actually FIRST!
🟢 Grn: 28.0% (+14.8)
🔴 Lab: 27.7% (-23.1)
➡️ Ref: 27.4% (+13.3)Source: @OpiniumResearch, 16-24 Feb
+/- vs GE2024 pic.twitter.com/nfuLytrWYW— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️ (@LeftieStats) February 25, 2026
Do you remember when the Labour Party at least used to care about electability?
Because it seems like they’ve thrown it all away to defend the indefensible.
No wonder people think it’s all about the donations.
Featured image via Parliament
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