It might astonish the uber-Reform campaigners that have camped out for the last two years in our comments section, but I’m going to say: by any measure Reform UK have had a good week.

Am I about to switch teams? No not at all but I’ve never underestimated them, I talk to them, and so far, my prediction that 2026 would be the year both they and the Tories fight it out until both realise, they aren’t going to destroy the other, is proving true.

I mean it’s also true that when the Conservatives hold this truly awful Labour government to account – the scalps of Mandelson, Rayner, McSweeney, and forcing countless Labour U-turns – Reform would rather die than give them any credit, and immediately gun for the Conservatives but the Government’s U-turn on local elections would not have been possible without Reform pressure.

Suella Braverman opined it was “only possible” because of Reform, somewhat reinforcing my point above, which isn’t true since the Conservatives were officially against delays too, as were the Lib Dems. 5 councils run by Tories opted to request a delay, which has been leapt on as overall party complicity. That is bogus, however Reform should get credit for this one, and unlike them, I’m comfortable admitting it.

In hindsight it was a mistake for the Tories not to insist those councils didn’t follow the party line, but I understand why, and actually the issue back then now lies in Reform. When the delays were first contemplated, the Conservative expectation was May 2026 local elections could be as brutal for them as 2025’s had been. They’ll still be difficult.

Since nearly everyone in the parliamentary party was aware that whilst still a Tory, Robert Jenrick would have made a move for the leadership in those circumstances and at that point, I can see why there was a political argument to let 5 councils opt out. Reduce the number of losses. But it was a mistake.

After all, the utter nonsense that Labour made the decision to do with the law, and local government restructuring rather than political necessity has now been exposed, and in keeping with their entire modus operandi since in Government: they’ve taken all the pain of trying to stop something, for ulterior motives, and ended up in a worse position than where they started.

Labour are cooked. I think we can say that without any party badge on. Doubly cooked with Starmer at the top, but with or without him they are heading further and further left, and there are no solutions to Britain’s problems there.

Reform of course want everyone to believe the Conservatives are heading left too, or rather their new line; that Kemi Badenoch may be on the ‘right’ but a cabal of secret Lib Dem leftists ‘won’t let her do anything she says’. This too is phooey, but I see why they need to say it.

So why do I think Reform had a good week, apart from the legal challenge to the local election delays?

First, they’ve used parliamentary recess well. Their Communications team, who are streets ahead of Labour’s – which of course has the logistical support of a huge Whitehall machine, and is still ineffective – saw a clear space in the news window and owned it. Having done so they then reinforced it.

Yesterday’s press conference was instructive. Not entirely in the way Reform would like it to be, but there are lessons to learn and things to accept.

So we know now who four of his shadow cabinet – that aren’t really the shadow cabinet -are.

Having long ago admitted he needed Whitehall experience he’s had to opt for former Tories to fill his key positions. The egregious Zia Yusuf started his role as home affairs spokesman saying one in twenty five people currently in the UK came here in the last five years.

It wouldn’t be hard to identify someone closely involved in that issue at the time, as she was sat not far from him. Interestingly for those Reformer’s concerned about their insurgency being diluted by ex-Tories, Suella, who won our members survey for ‘back bencher of the year 2025’ got some of the biggest cheers of the event.

I think we can safely now surmise what the price for Rob Jenrick’s defection was, and sure enough he is taking the Treasury role, that both Tice and Yusuf – both themselves former Tories – wanted. Tice postively begged for support to be a Tory London mayoral candidate, and according to Channel 4, Farage had a moment where a Tory seat was discussed. He says offered, they say requested.

I was keen to hear what Rob had to say but at a number of points, in this ‘press conference to prove he’s not a one man band’, Farage answered for them all. Farage has always been a one man band. It’s why for some what he’s so far achieved is impressive. This new line up is, as Shadow Housing and Local Government Secretary James Cleverly put it:

“Still a one man band, but now with backing singers”.

Now before Conservatives get comfortable, and that’s the last thing they should be with regards to Reform, there is a risk here – one the Tories need to avoid. Our columnist Peter Franklin wrote about it last week.

If the Tory brand is still very tarnished in the public’s eyes, they are much more positive towards Kemi Badenoch. Despite the fact that she majors on her strong team, and how they all work as a team, she is the one, rightly, in the spotlight. She cannot renew for 2030 on her own, but increasingly she is the focus.

Does that matter? Well, read Peter’s piece, but it is a trickier line to tread when painting Farage as a one man band.

What some may have missed was when Farage was asked a question. Not the one he could easily have answered but decided rather to patronisingly dismiss from the FT – a tactic he’s used particulalry with female reporters since 2024 and one wonder looks that great outside Reform.  No, this was when he was asked how he’d avoid any ‘psychodrama’ in his party now he had ambitious former Tories on board.

He said because ‘I won’t put up with it, simple as that’. That of course is fair enough from a leader, any leader, but he then went on to say that if there were any signs of disloyalty those who showed it ‘won’t be around for very long’.

That’s the quiet bit out loud.

No leader should put up with outright disloyalty, and it’s why Badenoch sacked Jenrick in the first place. She didn’t ‘put up with it’. But disloyalty is the biggest crime in Farage’s book. He’s said it publicly and to my face. The problem is he has a track record of seeing any political disagreement on policy as personal disloyalty, and there’s many a one-time ally that has been utterly ostracised for such a ‘crime’.

James Orr and Danny Kruger are in charge of Reform’s policy. Both very bright, and not to be underestimated, but they aren’t in charge of policy, ultimately. The old jibe within UKIP still stands: “What Nigel wants, Nigel gets”

In hinting at a new policy in the welfare arena, Farage said what he wanted to do, and added it was ‘up to Rob’ how that is achieved. That’s the very system of policy command Jenrick found so intolerable – and having been there I have some sympathy – that came from Rishi Sunak’s number ten operation.

That four people have been given a role in Reform is a step forward for them, it still leaves another sixteen to seventeen Cabinet Roles to fill, before you get to ministerial appointmentsd but they made the most of the recess quiet, to make a splash, and that is worth thinking about for the Tory’s Comms team.

Reform will be pleased with the way this week has gone, even if lingering questions are still being asked about their policy offer. Questions rightly come at all the parties about policy platforms because none of them have yet offered something comprehensive that meaningfully tackles the deep rooted problems the country faces.

The Conservatives, as I said on Sunday, should not be intimidated or cowed by a good week for Reform, just look at the lessons to be drawn, and either exploit the weaknesses – because they certainly exist – or better just keep doing what they have been doing: constantly reminding people they are very far from dead, and very much still in the game.

Of course for the right, It would be so much better if both parties could concentrate fire entirely on the Government.

Katie Lam is a shadow Home Office minister and MP for Weald of Kent.

It’s a cliché picture we all recognise: the local police officer on his bicycle, managing his beat in the countryside, comes across a young troublemaker getting up to some sort of low-level mischief. Rather than referring his case to the Crown Prosecution Service, the good-natured bobby instead takes the child to his mother. He knows, because he’s seen it all before, that a stern talking-to from a parent will be much more effective at setting him straight.

Nowadays, at a time when shoplifting or cannabis are effectively legalised in much of the country, this kind of story can seem hopelessly idealistic – but the stereotype exists for a reason. For many decades, British police were the best in the world, in large part because they were afforded discretion on how best to keep the peace in their local area.

After all, no template or set of regulations can fully capture the range of situations that a police officer might find themselves in. Local officers will know who in any given community is a real problem, and who just needs to be scared straight by their parents. They’ll know when to leave somebody in a cell overnight for having a few too many drinks, and when to escalate things further. They’ll know the pubs where trouble is caused, which events are genuine flashpoints, and which areas need extra attention on a dark winter’s night.

Unfortunately, the Police Reform White Paper produced by the Home Secretary flies in the face of this time-honoured approach. As the Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, made clear in his response to the White Paper, these proposals are wrong-headed for a number of reasons. The Government is still failing to properly enforce the law with the resources that it already has, and is actually cutting the total number of police officers.

But perhaps worst of all is the proposal to merge the 43 existing police forces down to as few as 10. These changes won’t be fully implemented until 2034, meaning that we’re set for nearly a decade of expensive, disruptive reorganisation – all to produce forces which span hundreds of miles, and which have precious little hope of cultivating the local knowledge that officers need to do their jobs properly.

If the sorry state of the Metropolitan Police teaches us anything, it’s that bigger forces are not always better. The desire for administrative efficiency at scale can often result in worse practical outcomes on the ground, particularly for institutions which can only succeed by relying on detailed local knowledge. Bigger bureaucracies will mean more time spent on administration, and less time spent on actually catching criminals.

This phenomenon is by no means unique to the police either. Wherever and whenever the state involves itself in providing services with primarily local implications, we see particularism stifled in the name of standardisation. Voluntary organisations, whether charitable or recreational, are now smothered by endless red tape, designed in Whitehall with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. The Government’s attacks on free schools are another example – the Labour Party has always been uncomfortable with particularism and local variation.

Of course, we must be realistic about the problems that police forces can face at the local level, particularly given the challenge that our country now faces with cohesion and integration. West Midlands Police’s shameful handling of Aston Villa’s recent match against Maccabi Tel Aviv is one such example; under the guise of ‘managing community tensions’, former Chief Constable Craig Guildford caved into the demands of Islamists, and banned Israeli fans in hopes of appeasing those who view the very presence of Jewish people in their community as an affront.

Even worse, it was exactly this appeal to ‘managing community relations’ which prevented the horrors of the grooming and rape gangs from being investigating for so long. A West Midlands Police report in 2010 explicitly noted that “the predominant offender profile of Pakistani Muslim males…combined with the predominant victim profile of white females has the potential to cause significant community tensions”. In the end, this focus on preventing ‘community tensions’ trumped the wellbeing of children, many of whom were subjected to horrific abuse as a result.

So as important as it is to recognise the value of particular local knowledge, ‘community policing’ must not be allowed to become a guise under which local forces are enabled to pander to particular religious or ethnic groups. Parliament should – indeed, it must – ensure that local forces do not provide favourable treatment to any particular group. Where Chief Constables are found to be doing so, they must be removed.

This will be a difficult tightrope to walk. We should never have reached a position whereby police forces feel the need to pander to certain minority communities, or to institutionalise that pandering through internal ‘support groups’ designed to manage relationships with particular groups. But now that we’re here, we must be realistic about the threat that this poses to our country; the Home Office must respond accordingly and decisively.

But while the state has a role to play in setting standards, and ensuring accountability for senior leadership, this must not be allowed to morph into an all-consuming drive for uniformity. Bigger is not always better, and the best intentions of Whitehall bureaucrats rarely deliver the best results. Our country has a long history of particularism – set a minimum standard, enforce it properly, and otherwise let people decide how best to manage their own lives, and their own communities. We will continue to oppose the Government’s police reform plans, which fly in the face of that time-honoured model.

Dr Deema Khunda is an energy rand Thatcher fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies.

“Education is not acquiring a stock of ready-made ideas, images, sentiments, beliefs and so forth; it is learning to look, to listen, to think, to feel, to imagine, to believe, to understand, to choose and to wish.”

~ Michael Oakeshott, The Voice Of Liberal Learning

Forget Labour’s tax rises, forget the malign legacy of the Covid lockdowns, forget Boomer electoral hegemony – credentialism by far the most significant barrier young people face to getting on the career ladder today.

The fact that one in eight Gen Zers in the UK right now is classified as a NEET appeared to have startled the commentariat class, but for many in my generation, it was hardly a revelation.

Getting your first job seems harder than ever. The Institute of Student Employers reported the competition for graduate roles is at a ‘record high’, with 1.2 million applications for 17,000 graduate vacancies last year. The precipitous drop in early-career hiring has been blamed on the rise of AI, but that explanation doesn’t provide the complete picture of the forces at work here.

An anaemic economy and the implementation of government policies that penalise new hiring undoubtedly worsen the crisis of youth unemployment. Still, they are not what sits at the heart of it.

The average new hire in 2025 was 42 years old – up from 40 in 2016. This suggests that when hiring does occur in a stagnant economy, it disproportionately favours older, established workers. Britain’s modern work culture’s near-religious reverence for “credentials” & ‘experience’ is driving youth unemployment.

A large-scale analysis by StandOut CV found that 37 per cent of entry-level job adverts on LinkedIn required around 2.5 years of prior work experience. Another 2025 report from recruitment firm CV Genius estimates that four in five entry-level roles now require “relevant experience”.

Furthermore, obtaining a master’s degree or an ever‑expanding alphabet of external accreditations, such as the Construction Skills Certification Scheme, LSSGB, PMP certificate, or IOSH safety training,  instantly puts applicants at the top of the list. Revealing that postgraduate qualifications are treated as the new competency indicator by employers.

While a debate can certainly be had over whether these qualifications improve on-the-job performance, what is already clear is that these requirements systematically favour older candidates – simply because early‑career applicants have not yet had the time to accumulate them.

This is perhaps another fallout from the expansion of the universities. As student populations doubled over the past three decades, recruiters and employers have responded in kind, moving beyond relying on university degrees as the gold standard.

So, what are we missing out on when access to the most critical roles within the economy is made contingent upon the possession of explicit, verifiable knowledge obtained in lectures and training courses? A good question to pose, particularly when a more innovative economy did not accompany this explosion of credentials. In the same period that many professions abandoned the on-the-job learning model, i.e., nursing, policing, and engineering, the UK economy has transitioned from a post-WWII industrial powerhouse to a service-dominated, slower-growth economy, marked by a “managed” decline compared to peers like Germany and the US.

Perhaps, just as gravity interacts with things we cannot see or detect, like “anti-matter”, skills & knowledge are transferred from individual to individual through unconventional and inarticulate means. This is what the finest philosophers & economists knew as “tacit knowledge”.

Philosophers such as Hayek and Oakeshott distinguished between formal, explicit knowledge and “tacit knowledge”: the know‑how embedded in lived experience.  An Olympic swimmer does not need to know the physical laws of fluid dynamics that produce the fastest stroke to win a gold medal. The same can be said of chess players: grandmasters “see” moves before they have time to calculate each variation of a line of moves. Similar comparisons can be found across many professions, including engineering, law, finance, and fintech, where competence exists independently of formal training. Modern hiring systems, obsessed with certification, ignore this form of competency.

Modern work culture views trusting an uncertified individual as reckless. Historically, it is precisely this trust, and risk, that drove innovation. A trust in an individual’s ability to learn, to grow, to bring fresh perspectives in the workplace and to challenge conventional means of practice and propose new ones. Credentialism compounds other pressures young people already face – from housing to student debt, but it is one we can fix more easily.

So, what are the solutions that can bring Britain’s youngest adults back en masse to the workforce?

The short-term quick fixes are clear. Firstly, several of Labour’s newly introduced policies will need to be reversed urgently, such as the Employment Rights Act 2025. High business rates, which have already bankrupted many youth-heavy employers, need to be abolished, as do increases in national insurance contributions and minimum wage hikes.

In the long term, the private sector must move away from using certificates as a substitute for judgment. A cultural shift is due, one that accepts taking risks as a necessary step towards growth.

I see youth unemployment as the most critical issue facing Britain today. Its long-term impact on our society at large dwarfs the cultural wars, the pronoun skirmishes, the speculation over Trump’s purchase of Greenland, or Putin’s territorial ambitions. Youth unemployment is one of the chief drivers for political radicalisation, plummeting birth rates and economic stagnation. Fix this one, and a great many solutions follow.

Mike Newton was Conservative parliamentary candidate for Wolverhampton West, and worked for the Bank of England during his career in the financial markets. 

They say by-elections have consequences, and you are reading this article because helping in the recent Willaston and Thornton contest (we won comfortably), in deepest Wirral, persuaded me to visit the nearby Lady Lever Gallery at Port Sunlight, and then cross the Mersey to visit the Turner exhibition at the Walker. These trips re-fired my interest in art, and made me think about its relationship with conservatism, which is often complex.

I am not a high culture person, generally preferring football, railway engineering or mountaineering, but I have always been interested in painting and the decorative arts. Perhaps some of it is due to the heritage of glaze and enamel manufacture for the pottery industry in Staffordshire on my mother’s side, and it may also have been my father taking me as a kid to a Royal Academy exhibition on the Post-Impressionists.

Meeting recently with the Shadow DCMS Secretary, Nigel Huddleston MP, it was very clear that the Party has made a commitment to the arts, from a perspective of it being not only in the national interest, but with potential political benefits.

The ‘Creative Industries’ (as defined by DCMS) contribute about 5 per cent of national output, according to research from the House of Commons Library.  These things are not just ‘nice to have’: they are critical economic drivers.  And within the arts, despite its public image of a bastion of the left, there are solid pockets of cultural and political conservatism.

As Conservatives, we believe in our national story without apology.  We cannot sort it into ‘good or bad’ bits.  It is a narrative not a buffet. The transition from a feudal agrarian society to a modern, high-tech democracy has not always been smooth, but it is our story, and we are proud of it, right or wrong.

Our history must be viewed cohesively, or not at all.

Our artists have chronicled that story.  Which patriot could not be moved by the spell of the pre-Raphaelite romanticism of John Brett’s The Stonebreaker or Albert Richards’s depiction of gliders at Pegasus Bridge on D-Day?

The faces of the British speak out to us from our galleries. John Russell’s Porter of the Royal Academy or Augustus John’s portrait of Lord Leverhulme (initially banned by him) remind us of where we are from and where we are going.  They may be dressed and coiffured differently from us now, but they are still us.  We have a commonality with them that is deep and lasting.

I always like to think high performers in any field are naturally Conservative, given that to get there you must have several of our trademark values: aspiration, hard work, resilience, competitiveness and excellence.  It is lazy thinking to view artists as any different in this regard, although we have not always been able to monetize this politically.

The historic rivalry between Turner and Constable was driven by these values, and many of our greatest painters were driven by profit to new standards of achievement.  Holbein did not paint Henry VIII for free, nor did Reynolds capture high society for the love of the job.  And Wedgwood was a ferocious capitalist, often sending teaser pieces of Jasperware to the great and good of the day in the hope that they would show them to their friends.

Furthermore, great art needs great sponsorship.

The pioneers of the Industrial Revolution lined up to be painted by Joseph Wright of Derby and others.  More recently the Law Family Foundation ensured that LS Lowry’s Going to the Match could remain on public display in Salford.  The relationship between successful capitalism and the common good is often at its starkest in the context of art.

There are many further aspects we could discuss as a pleasant conclusion to what has been an agreeable tour de table so far.  But it would be intellectual and political cowardice not to discuss the issue of wokeism in art, particularly regarding the issue of slavery and what is, or isn’t considered appropriate for public view.

It is quite common these days to find paintings labelling as depicting subjects that had associations with colonialism or the slave trade, and at the Lady Lever Gallery there is an ongoing discussion about continuing to show Jean-Baptiste Santerre’s portrait of the socialite Catherine-Marie Legendre, which essentially shows a wealthy white woman with a black slave, and opens itself to a variety of allegorical and other interpretations.

Personally, I am quite relaxed about labelling, as it is all part of the story of the art.  As a right-wing Conservative it is not something I especially welcome, but I understand that to many people who may have a different perspective and experience from me, it is an important point to make.

But I am queasier on the question of removal from display.

This is a very tricky area.  The portrait of Legendre has significant artistic and historical merit, but I would feel uneasy looking at it with a black friend for a variety of obvious reasons.  But is that grounds for removal? When removal starts, where does it stop?

We could all agree that the National Portrait Gallery should not display its images of Jimmy Savile, but where does that leave a gallery that wanted to display Warhol’s Mao or some Soviet propaganda featuring Stalin, who murdered tens of millions between them?  And to push the argument further, is it really right to enjoy listening to Michael Jackson?

There is not really an answer to this, but as Conservatives we need to approach the issue with thoughtfulness and principle, not the kneejerkery one might associate with our political competitors.

Governing choices are hard.  Extrapolating issues to their logical conclusion throws up many unintended consequences.  Context, commonsense and balance are key.  But as Conservatives, I do not believe we should ever be pro-censorship in art unless the situation is absolutely clear.

By implication, this means being on the side of the artist and thus the freedom to create, which I think is one of the most Conservative positions of all.

Many of the artworks described in this piece can be seen at National Museums Liverpool.

After trying desperately to dodge scrutiny of the involvement she and her husband had with child rapist Jeffrey Epstein, Hillary Clinton is now adopting a different approach. Speaking to the BBC, she told US president Donald Trump to “get the files out”, accusing him of a cover-up.

Her shift in tack comes ahead of the Clintons testifying before a congressional committee to give evidence about their association with Epstein. The pair had previously fought vigorously to avoid interrogation. Chairman of the Oversight Committee, Republican James Comer threatened the pair with contempt of Congress proceedings if they continued their refusal. This appears to have backed the two into a corner, and they will now appear before Congress in late February.

The BBC point out:

It will be the first time a former US president has testified to a congressional panel since Gerald Ford did so in 1983.

Clinton is now saying the pair have nothing to hide, declaring:

We don’t. We have been willing to say whatever we know. We’ve even done it under oath, but they want us to testify, not everyone else who’s mentioned many many times, hundreds of thousands of times in these files. So we’ve said “fine let us do it in public and we will appear in public and we’ll answer all your questions…”

Clintons can’t hide close ties to Epstein

When asked if she regretted links to the paedophile and eugenicist Epstein, Clinton conveniently answered the question in a different tense to the one in which she was asked:

You know, we have no links. We have a very clear record that we’ve been willing to talk about which my husband has said he took some rides on the aeroplane for his charitable work. I don’t recall ever meeting him.

Well, obviously you have no links now, given Epstein is either dead or perhaps spirited away to so-called ‘Israel’. Meanwhile, Ghislaine Maxwell is still locked up serving a 20 year sentence for her role in assisting mass sexual abuse of children.

However, prior links were extensive. The few “rides on the aeroplane” Clinton refers to are the at least 17 times her husband Bill flew on the revoltingly titled ‘Lolita Express’ jet owned by Epstein. The former president appears in numerous photos present in the recent US Department of Justice document release. These show him with young girls, including one seated on his lap.

The Clinton Global Initiative honoured Maxwell in 2013 with an award for advocating ocean conservation. This was years after she had been linked to Epstein’s crimes. He was convicted in 2008 for procuring a child for prostitution. Underscoring the closeness the Clintons had to Maxwell, they invited her to their daughter Chelsea’s wedding in 2010.

Former president’s history of abuse

Of course, Bill Clinton has a documented history of both dishonesty and abusive behaviour towards women. While their relationship was consensual, Monica Lewinsky has described his treatment of her as a “gross abuse of power” that left her contemplating suicide. Lewinsky was 22 years old and Clinton 49 when the White House intern and then-US president had “sexual relations”. The latter phrase was used when Clinton repeatedly lied about the affair, so there’s no reason to trust his word when it comes to his involvement with Epstein.

Bill Clinton has also been sued for sexual harassment by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones, and accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick. Broaddrick said Clinton assaulted her in a hotel room in 1978.

Of course, we don’t need court cases or congressional committees to tell us that the Clintons have been cruel and violent people. We need only look at their policies. During his presidency, Bill Clinton maintained the sanctions against Iraq that caused infant mortality to skyrocket, potentially killing 500,000 children.

He was crucial in accelerating the neoliberal order at home, with punitive welfare policies having devastating effects on women and children. Clinton’s deregulation accelerated the financialisation of the economy that benefited Epstein and other money manipulators.

Hillary is a constant warmonger who has defended ‘Israel’ throughout its genocide in Gaza. During her time as secretary of state, she helped oversee the bloodbath in Libya which has devastated that country. She was filmed psychopathically cackling after the death of Muammar Gaddafi. Disgracefully she retains prestigious positions, including her role as chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast.

Clintons helped make today’s billionaire-dominated world

The pair have helped usher in a more unpleasant world, and contributed to an era of unprecedented billionaire wealth. It is that wealth that gives predators like Epstein the power to abuse with impunity, and creates the conditions of poverty in which desperate people can be preyed upon.

Whatever the precise involvement the Clintons had with Epstein, they remain, at minimum, culpable for engineering the climate in which he and his ilk could flourish.

Featured image via the Canary

Cost of keeping vital rape crisis services in Glasgow operating: £500,000.

Amount of money wasted by the Scottish Government fighting and losing court cases to try to remove women’s rights: £1.14 million.

Angry yet?

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US Senator and professional Southern Good Ol’ Boy Lindsey Graham says the future of warfare looks like Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza. For once South Carolina’s most swivel-eyed hard-right Zionist is bang on the money. And the evidence is right under American noses…

Graham told an audience in Tel Aviv:

The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel.

He insisted that

the most clever, creative military forces on the planet are here in Israel because they have to be to survive

Adding:

So what we’re looking at is that Israel is advancing down the road to new weaponry far beyond us. And it would be nice to have a process where we could be partners.

Self-evidently, a lot of this is is garbage, including the myth of ‘poor little Israel’ fighting to survive in the midst of its enemies. The nuclear-armed settler-colonial state has been backed and armed by – and for the benefit of – Western imperial powers since the very beginning.

Lindsey Graham chats shit from Minnesota to Gaza

Graham is right though that the genocide in Gaza contain a blueprint for future warfighting. In fact, we can even see that taking place inside the US.

As +972 reported on 12 February:

ICE operations increasingly resemble Israeli occupation. That’s no coincidence.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are US president Donald Trump’s own paramilitary force. Officially their remit is to detain undocumented migrants. In reality, they are being used to discipline Trump’s enemies – using Israeli-linked tactics and AI.

Using apps like ELITE and Fortify, ICE’s occupations in places like Minnesota have mirrored Israeli methods.

The technologies supporting their operations illustrate how thoroughly ICE is following in Israel’s footsteps: both ELITE and Mobile Fortify bear a striking resemblance to mobile targeting applications Israeli forces have integrated into their policing arsenal over the last decade.

Graham may be a clown, but even the most ridiculous court jester can stumble upon profound truths.

And in a shock no nobody who has been following the news lately, Graham singled out the UAE for special praise:

Graham told his audience that butcher of Gaza ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu wanted him to tell the UAE’s leaders what a great partner the oil state had been to Israel.

I want to go there tomorrow to and acknowledge MBZ’s leadership and suggest that America improve his capability to defend the UAE and the region.

The UAE, like Israel, is currently deeply implicated in genocide. The UAE is supporting Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces in a war which has killed and displaced millions over the last three years. Here are a whole raft of articles on Sudan we’ve done lately.

Blowback

Lindsey Graham has never seen a genocide – or met a genocidaire – he didn’t like. But at the heart of his commentary there is a fundamental truth: Israel has laid the groundwork for a new scorched earth way of war powered by a deranged cocktail of old-fashioned colonial racism and new-fashioned technology.

For my first piece back at the Canary in 2025 I wrote about what Hannah Arendt would call the imperial boomerang. You can read that here.

But Arendt was merely drawing on something Aimé Césaire had developed. Césaire, a seminal anti-colonialist writer, said of Europeans that before the tactics and technologies of empire exploded back into the imperial core as 20th century fascism:

They tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, … they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples.

It’s awfully late in the day, folks. But if I was you, I’d get reading…

Featured image via the Canary