Politics
For Belgium's Beltway fans, a rout was the best revenge
Belgium’s sports authorities do not appear to have fully moved past the controversy that shrouded their Round of 16 matchup against the United States, but Belgian fans in Washington have.
Folarin Balogun, the American striker whose red-card punishment was suspended by FIFA just before that game, is now barely top of mind.
“I don’t think it had any impact on the game,” Michael McCusker, a Brussels native, said of FIFA’s decision. “Did it give us the extra push? I don’t know. The USA were terrible.”
The White House lobbied hard for Balogun to play against Belgium. And President Donald Trump took all the credit when FIFA lifted his suspension. The Royal Belgian Football Association, in turn, formally challenged the decision. Fans blasted FIFA’s reversal as politically motivated, arguing the organization had bowed to Trump.
But even with Balogun lining up on Monday, the Belgians made mincemeat of the U.S., never trailing in the match. For Belgium’s Beltway fans, winning seems to have taken care of everything.
“I woke up that morning feeling really good,” Margo Vandenbroucke, a Leuven native who works at the International Monetary Fund. “I walked into work that morning and everyone was clapping for me, for Belgium. I think that was the best way of showing that it didn’t matter.”
But if Belgian supporters abroad have moved on, the Balogun scandal is still alive and well in Brussels. In a letter Wednesday, 72 members of the European Parliament called for an investigation into FIFA President Gianni Infantino — and whether his relationship with Trump played a role in the decision to reverse an on-field disciplinary action.
At 9.31 on the morning of Yom Kippur last year, a man named Jihad Al-Shamie drove his Kia Picanto into the security gates of the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Crumpsall, Manchester. He then got out and resumed the attack with a knife. He was wearing what looked to everyone present like a suicide belt. The first 999 call came from witnesses at the scene; it was only after firearms officers were already making their way to the synagogue that Al-Shamie himself rang emergency services to claim responsibility and pledge allegiance to Islamic State – a gesture that resolved any ambiguity about his motivation with an efficiency the subsequent police communications would struggle to match. Armed officers shot him dead within seven minutes. Melvin Cravitz, aged 66, and Adrian Daulby, 53, were killed; Daulby, it later emerged, by a round from one of the responding officers, a tragedy Greater Manchester Police handled with considerably more transparency than they managed with their characterisation of the attack itself.
Al-Shamie, we were subsequently told, was not known to Counter Terrorism Policing. He had never been referred to Prevent, the government’s counter-radicalisation programme. He was, in the preferred official formulation, ‘not on our radar’. He was, it later transpired, on bail for rape. The name Jihad, meaning ‘holy war’, had not apparently exercised the relevant agencies, and one accepts that the bar for a counter-terrorism referral cannot rest on nominative determinism alone. Still, here was a man on bail for rape, living two miles from a synagogue, with a forename whose sole denotative content is religiously motivated violence. And? Nothing. The radar, it seems, is calibrated for certain frequencies and not for others. Assistant chief constable Rob Potts told a press conference his force was ‘more confident’ that Al-Shamie had been influenced by ‘extreme Islamist ideology’, and added that ‘there may be further drivers and motivations identified’. One wonders what further drivers might complicate the picture of a man who rammed a car into a synagogue on the holiest day of the Jewish year, wearing a fake bomb, while telephoning police to pledge allegiance to a terrorist organisation.
Now enter, stage left, the Bradford Hate Crime Scrutiny Panel. The panel had been convened, in the aftermath of Al-Shamie’s attack, for West Yorkshire Police to discuss their response. A neighbouring force, sharing geography, personnel pipelines and, as it turns out, certain institutional reflexes. Among those attending via Teams was a retired academic in her sixties named Elaine. She had served on the panel since 2022 and had, the previous December, finally been confirmed as its chair. Yet, having won the vote, Elaine spent months in administrative purgatory while the incumbent, a Muslim man, remained in post and nobody thought to mention that the vote had happened. Her understanding was that Bradford’s was the only hate-crime scrutiny panel in West Yorkshire not chaired by a Muslim man.
This was not the first time Elaine had given the force cause to resent her. Six months before the Manchester attack, the panel had reviewed the case of a man charged with a hate crime after ringing a police helpline and telling the Muslim call handler that the Prophet Muhammad was a paedophile. Citing the historical accounts, disputed but ancient and widely recorded, of Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha and its consummation when she was nine. Elaine argued that however disagreeable the caller’s manner, the statement did not constitute a criminal offence – one does not commit a crime by making a historical claim about a religious figure, however crudely expressed. A panel of lawyers agreed. The case was downgraded to a non-crime hate incident. West Yorkshire Police, upon receiving this news, began calling for her removal.
She had won. The lawyers had sided with her. The law was on her side. And the consequence was a campaign for her dismissal. Which tells you rather more about the force’s governing priorities, than any official statement could. What she had demonstrated was not merely that one man had not committed a crime. She had also revealed that the force’s instinct, to treat criticism of Islamic doctrine as functionally equivalent to incitement against Muslims, had no legal foundation. Blasphemy law was abolished as a criminal offence in England and Wales in 2008. Its ghost, it turned out, had taken up quiet residence in the hate-crime framework, sustained by institutional habit rather than legal warrant. The ghost’s custodians did not forgive her.
The Teams meeting, she later told the Telegraph, was chaired by a white female inspector who ran it fairly and with some firmness, and who was under what Elaine describes as constant pressure from the Muslim men participating. The meeting’s governing concern, within hours of two Jews being murdered at their synagogue by an Islamist, was the potential threat to mosques. The inspector repeated, several times, that there was no intelligence of danger to any Islamic place of worship. One is not sure quite what to say about the decision to frame an emergency meeting about an attempted Yom Kippur massacre around the anxieties of the community whose ideology had produced it. Except that, when Elaine finally said something, the response was instructive. She told the meeting they had to address the elephant in the room:
‘We know who the attacker is and what community he comes from. We’ve got to be able to address this openly, and if we can’t do it here, there’s no hope.’
The chair immediately talked over her. The following morning the meeting reconvened, the female inspector replaced, without explanation, by a Muslim male inspector.
Shortly after, Bradford District Commander Richard Padwell wrote to inform Elaine of her removal. Her comments had been ‘divisive and inflammatory’; legal advice supported the view that she had failed to demonstrate the impartiality required of a chair. The letter also noted, and this is the detail that repays the most careful attention, that her comments were not being recorded as a hate crime, and that he would not be providing her personal details to the community members who had expressed concerns about what she had said.
She described the letter as sounding like a threat. She does not, she noted, frighten easily, having spent a career navigating the biosecurity structures of the UN, the Ministry of Defence and the US State Department, in rooms where the consequences of error were considerably graver than a Bradford advisory meeting. But she was frightened by Padwell’s letter. It would seem the letter was designed to frighten her. Not legally. No charge was ever brought, nor could have been. But through the inquisitor’s technique, ensuring the accused understands that the machinery of accusation has been set in motion. You have not committed a hate crime. Your personal details have been sought by your accusers. The apparatus of hate-crime law, created to protect the vulnerable from persecution, had been deployed to persecute the person charged with scrutinising the police.
West Yorkshire Police did not produce this situation in isolation. They are the concentrated expression of a doctrine that has spread through British policing like damp through plaster over the course of three decades: not dramatic, not conspiratorial, but pervasive and progressive. What has been absorbed is not quite an ideology and not quite a religion, though it has the fervour of both. The institutional belief is that an allegation of racial animus, once made, supersedes all competing evidence and all other moral claims, and that the primary function of police in a culturally complex situation is to ensure that no accusation of Islamophobia or racism attaches to the force. Everything else: truth, safety, justice, the obligations of a constabulary to the public it polices, is secondary to the management of that risk.
The record in West Yorkshire alone is long enough to constitute a pattern. The systematic sexual exploitation of predominantly white working-class girls, by networks of men predominantly of Pakistani heritage, has unfolded for decades across Bradford, Keighley, Huddersfield and Dewsbury, while the force collected intelligence it did not act on and recorded data it was careful not to examine too closely. Baroness Casey’s 2025 national audit found that ethnicity data was not recorded for two-thirds of grooming-gang perpetrators across the relevant force areas. She described this as the product of organisations ‘avoiding the topic altogether for fear’ of its racial dimension. She confirmed on Sky News that she had personally seen the word ‘Pakistani’ Tippexed out of one child’s case file. In West Yorkshire specifically, a quarter of suspects had no ethnicity recorded at all.
A former detective, John Piekos, who worked for an anti-trafficking charity in 2010, surveilled a Bradford children’s home for three months, watching the exploitation take place. He took his evidence to a West Yorkshire officer he had previously dealt with, and was told: ‘Don’t you see how much effort we’ve put in to build racial harmony in this city and the problems we’ve gone through? Your actions are likely to cause it all to burn to the ground.’ He was told to go away and leave them alone. It was the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, who eventually reported the officer to the National Crime Agency, armed with Piekos’s evidence and the officer’s name.
A Conservative MP’s dossier claims at least 7,975 children in the Bradford district alone were at risk between 1996 and 2025. Bradford has largely escaped the scrutiny that fell on Rotherham, whose inquiry found officers had arrested the fathers of abused girls trying to remove their daughters from the houses where they were being raped, and had attended a derelict property, found an intoxicated child surrounded by her abusers, and arrested the child. Bradford, some investigators believe, may yet prove to have been worse.
The governing principle, in the case of the Manchester synagogue attack and the grooming-gangs scandal, is identical: the comfort of one community constitutes a policing problem; the rights and safety of everyone else constitute someone else’s. And it operates with equal consistency at the level of the catastrophic, in this instance thousands of children, and at the level of the mundane. In 2021, a teacher at Batley Grammar School showed a class a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson on blasphemy and free expression. He received threats. West Yorkshire Police provided protection, and when the protection ended the teacher simply disappeared into hiding, where he remains today: his career destroyed, his name unusable, his liberty permanently curtailed for the commission of an entirely legal act. The force protected his body and surrendered the principle. Every teacher in the country read the message. The police will not protect your basic freedoms.
Nor is the pathology confined to policing. Valdo Calocane, who murdered three people in Nottingham in 2023, was free to do so in part because psychiatric professionals had been reluctant to detain him, conscious of the ‘over-representation of young black males in detention’. Axel Rudakubana, who in 2024 stabbed three young girls to death at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport, had been reported by his headteacher to mental-health services for his sinister behaviour with knives. She was subsequently accused of racial profiling. ‘I was told my attitude towards risk was because I perceived him to be a black boy with a knife’, she told the subsequent inquiry. The machinery doesn’t only fail the victim of the racism accusation. It fails everyone, including, ultimately, the communities it claims to protect, too.
The doctrine’s most recent product can be stated in a sentence. On the third of December 2025, an 18-year-old Southampton student named Henry Nowak bled to death in handcuffs on a pavement, having told the attending officers he had been stabbed. They told him that he had not been stabbed, while the man who had in fact stabbed him, and who, through his brother, had telephoned in a false accusation of racism before the police arrived, stood unrestrained nearby. For the present purpose it is enough to note that the officers who handcuffed the dying boy were not rogues. They were trained, in a force that had spent close to a million pounds ensuring they would respond to a racism accusation exactly as they did.
The doctrine that produced all of this is not anti-racism. To call it anti-racism is to misidentify it. Anti-racism, properly understood, is the application of consistent standards. The same evidentiary threshold, the same presumption of innocence, the same obligation to see what is in front of one’s nose. This is to be applied without discrimination to all parties regardless of their community of origin. What has been installed in British institutional life over the past 30 years, is something categorically different. Call it, if you want a precise name, a theocracy of grievance: a system in which the claim of victimhood by a designated community functions as revelation. Self-authenticating, requiring no verification, and overriding all competing moral claims, including the testimony of a dying boy about the state of his own body.
Every theocracy requires its clergy, the class of interpreters authorised to explain doctrine to the laity, to identify heresy and to redirect the faithful when they risk asking the wrong questions. British policing has produced some of its own. Dal Babu is a former chief superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, one of the most senior Muslim officers the force has ever produced, and the former chairman of the National Association of Muslim Police. A regular presence on Sky News, he told Talk TV in August 2024, while grooming-gang inquiries were still active and the Batley teacher remained in hiding, that two-tier policing was ‘a phrase that’s become very common but I’ve not seen any evidence of it’. After Nowak’s murderer was sentenced, he appeared again to offer his analysis. What we are seeing, he explained, is ‘some people trying to cause division and hatred from this incident. It’s the exact opposite of what Henry’s family have said.’
There it is. A human statement of grief, made in the aftermath of a conviction, and saying nothing whatever about whether the institutional failures that produced that death should be examined. And yet in Dal Babu’s hands, and in the hands of a Labour MP deploying identical words on the floor of the Commons, the statement became an instrument of foreclosure. Disagree with me about the institutional culture, and you are doing the exact opposite of what Henry’s family asked. You are causing division. You should stop.
Christopher Hitchens identified this technique. The deployment of sacred authority to shut down secular inquiry is the defining characteristic of clerical thinking in all its forms, religious and secular alike. In Letters to a Young Contrarian he described it as the wish to have a last word – the desire not to win an argument but to end it. By establishing a category of statement so morally charged that its introduction silences rather than persuades. The racism accusation, in the culture this doctrine has built, is exactly that category. It does not need to be true. It does not need to be investigated. It needs only to be made.
Not everyone who operates the instrument is a villain. Speaking in late May, Martin Gallagher, a former police superintendent, said what the institutions will not:
‘We’ve conditioned our officers not to be wise and not to be circumspect. They prioritise certain behaviours above others, probably to the detriment of the public. Decision-making has been grossly affected by the constant messaging of the police being racist.’
This is not a right-wing formulation. It is the description of a conditioning process by a man who watched it happen from inside.
Who guards the guards has a long history in liberal political philosophy, from Juvenal’s original complaint onward. The answer is supposed to be: accountability, transparency, independent scrutiny, the press, bodies like the Bradford Hate Crime Scrutiny Panel. Elaine was the Bradford Hate Crime Scrutiny Panel. She was sacked, by letter, for asking a question.
Orwell observed that one does not need to be a genius to see what is directly in front of one’s nose, but that there are powerful social pressures against seeing it and saying so. What is in front of every nose in this country, arranged in a sequence of cases spanning 30 years, is a system that has learned to treat the accusation of racism as a fact requiring no verification, and whose victims are the collateral of that learning: the raped girls, the vanished teacher, the sacked panel chair, the boy dying on a Southampton pavement. The system has its theologians, its clergy, its instruments of foreclosure. It also has a roadside sign in Shipley, of the kind usually reserved for speed limits and accident warnings, which asks the commuters of West Yorkshire whether they have been the victim of a hate crime. The answer, across 30 years and several thousand cases, is yes. The institution that poses the question knows this, and has known it for a very long time.
Owen Shapell is a PhD researcher in social sciences.
The British Army has field tested a range of new AI drone equipment. The military wants to shorten so-called ‘kill chains’ using technology from AI war firm Anduril among others. An entire infantry unit was re-purposed to train in drone warfare.
The regiment did so on UK terrain chosen to “closely resemble the heavily forested landscape of Finland”. The army’s website said:
Unlike traditional infantry units, these battalions won’t just rely on soldiers moving across the ground. Instead, they will specialise in drones and other unmanned systems to find and defeat enemies in the air and across the electronic spectrum — an area known as the “drone zone.”
Key information was collected using Anduril’s Ghost X drone — equipped with cameras and infrared sensors — as well as ARX’s Gereon ground vehicles, which can operate far forward without putting soldiers at risk.
Major Nick Machniki said:
This shortens the kill chain. We go from finding and detecting using drones to targeting and striking in a matter of minutes. We understand the battlefield more now than we ever did.
Anduril UK boss Rick Drake bragged in April 2026 that his firm would massively speed up the British Army’s ‘kill chain’.
A kill chain is the process by which targets are identified, prioritised, and hit, which you can read all about here. The UK has signed up to use an Anduril technology called Lattice.
Drake said:
The beauty of software like Lattice means we can integrate those natively and speeding up decision cycles in what we call kill chains, again, to help the Army become more lethal.
Anduril is currently working for a foothold in the lucrative Israeli market. The Jerusalem Post reported on 2 July 2026 that the firm was keen to invest in Traysar, an Israeli firm which:
produces engineering components and digging machines for use against terrorist tunnels and underground military bases.
The firm announced in 2025 it would be working on a joint US and United Arab Emirates (UAE) drone project for Omen drones:
a hover-to-cruise Autonomous Air Vehicle (AAV) that will combine the endurance, payload, and autonomy of larger systems with the flexibility of a compact, runway-independent airframe.
Anduril claims Omen will deliver:
persistent maritime domain awareness, long-range overland surveillance, and contested logistics support from ship, shore, or austere sites – extending sensor reach and mission flexibility without the runway burden of traditional airplanes.
The UK has signed a £62m war contract with Anduril. London-based NGO Action on Armed Violence warned in March 2025:
The integration of AI into warfare is moving faster than our ability to regulate it. When machines are given the power to make life-and-death decisions, we risk eroding the very principles of humanitarian law.
The UAE is currently bankrolling a genocidal war in Sudan. Israel’s excesses in Gaza and Lebanon are no secret. The UK, which has increasingly shaped its economy around warfare, finds itself in terrible company once again.
Featured image via DefensePost
By Joe Glenton
Disabled people’s charities and advocacy organisations have been swift to respond following the publication of the interim Timms Review into the Department of Work and Pensions’ (DWP) Personal Independence Payment (PIP) system.
The preliminary findings recognised the benefit as vitally important, but also criticised the “degrading” and “dehumanising” assessment process. Ultimately, it determined that PIP was “not fit for purpose”.
Almost universally, the response from advocacy organisations was something along the lines of ‘That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you for years’. Likewise, most also welcomed the review’s initial findings, and echoed the vital necessity of PIP.
In this article, the Canary takes a closer look at those reactions — focusing, of course, on the parts that aren’t ‘we told you so’.
Timms Review — A rare opportunity
Many of the responses took the interim report as an opportunity to create a better, more just system. For example, the Royal National Institute for the Blind’s Sophie Dodgeon, head of public affairs for the non-profit organisation, said:
PIP is a vital lifeline that helps people meet the significant extra costs of sight loss, but too many people face assessments that fail to properly understand the realities blind and partially sighted people face. Too many are then forced to challenge decisions that are later overturned.
Sarah Hughes, CEO of mental health charity Mind, stated that:
PIP is a lifeline for people who, through no fault of their own, live with the additional costs of mental illness.
So as this work progresses, it’s vital that, alongside improving the process, we also recognise that in a decent society we must support those facing additional need. This is a line-in-the-sand moment for how we treat people, that improves lives for those who are unwell and reduces the impacts on families and communities.
Likewise, Charlotte Gill — the MS Society’s head of campaigns — said:
Over 150,000 people live with MS in the UK, with most diagnosed in their 30s and 40s. This is our chance to build a PIP system that acknowledges invisible and fluctuating symptoms, ends unnecessary reassessments, and works for everyone. But the next steps are crucial – and must continue involving and listening to disabled people. That’s the only way to make PIP fair and fit for the future.
The society also called for people to sign its petition to fix PIP for people with multiple sclerosis.
Ongoing reservations
Alongside the positives and calls for change, some of the disability campaigners voiced necessary criticisms of some aspects of the review.
Learning disability charity MENCAP stated both its recognition of the report’s value and ongoing qualms:
We’re particularly pleased the report recognises that people with a learning disability often face more barriers when claiming PIP and many people question the need for reassessments where there is no real reason that a person’s condition will change.
However, we want to know more about:
- what future PIP assessments will look like
- why the review believes PIP can create barriers to work, social activities and community life
- how they think the experience of claiming PIP can be improved.
As the review works on what it thinks the government should do to make PIP better, we urge the review team to focus on changes that genuinely improve the lives of people with a learning disability.
Likewise, in its press release, Parkinson’s UK praised the review’s recognition that PIP often failed people with fluctuating conditions. However, the support charity also articulated misgivings around one aspect of the interim report’s framing:
We’re concerned by the report’s suggestion that there should be a greater emphasis on participation in society. This includes volunteering, work or social and cultural activities.
The decision to grant PIP should be based on the impact a condition has on someone’s daily life, not on their ability to take part in these activities.
Kristine McGregor, a PIP Review Reference Group member who lives with young-onset Parkinson’s, added:
Parkinson’s can change from hour to hour. On one day I may be able to volunteer or speak at an event; on another, I may be unable to get out of bed safely. My disability has not changed, only my symptoms have. PIP must assess the real impact of disability, not what someone manages to achieve on their best days.
Parkinson’s UK also urged the reviewers and ministers to end the punishing reassessment process for people with lifelong and degenerative conditions.
A long road ahead
Still other organisations chose to focus on the road ahead for the Timms Review, which will publish its full report later in the autumn.
Sense is a charity which focuses on supporting people with complex needs. Its director of influencing, Harriet Edwards, reacted to the interim report:
Sense research found that nearly half of disabled people with complex needs on benefits said that the application process made their conditions worse; this is clearly a system that needs to urgently change. […]
As the Timms review moves into its next phase, we urge the review team to ensure its recommendations are driven by the goal of improving disabled people’s lives, not reducing public spending.
Changes to welfare must remove barriers, strengthen support and build a system that treats disabled people with dignity, respect and trust.
Charity organisation Scope aims to change negative attitudes towards disability in society. Strategy director James Taylor emphasised both the necessity of PIP, and the work that the government has ahead of it:
Life costs more if you are disabled. And PIP exists to help with the extra costs disabled people face, whether they are in work, out of work, or unable to work.
The government has started to listen. Now it must build a person-centred system that is easier to deal with and fit for disabled people’s lives.
As disabled people across the country await the publication of the full Timms Review — and the consequences it could have for vital independence payments — we at the Canary will rest a little easier knowing that these charities and advocates will be watching the government’s next moves very, very closely.
Featured image via Twitter
By Grace
Considering just how much joy she’s brought to us over the years, we’re not taking it lightly when we say that Alison Hammond’s latest interview with Prince Harry may be one of the finest TV moments she’s ever been responsible for.
On Friday morning, the This Morning host interviewed King Charles’ youngest son on location in her hometown of Birmingham, where the Duke of Sussex was launching the Invictus Games ahead of their arrival in the city next year.
To kick off the live broadcast, she and Prince Harry took part in a round of “laser run” that was every bit as chaotic as it sounds, but it end with Alison grabbing a hug from the Duke and jumping up and down with him to celebrate his win (chucking royal protocol out the window in a way only a select few besides the Bake Off host could get away with).
As the broadcast continued, Alison declared that she’d “tracked down” Prince Harry and was also able to grab an extended interview with him live on air.
“I am excited,” he said of the Invictus Games’ impending arrival in Birmingham. “Not as excited as you were – and still are. It’s alright! You’re very excitable, and I love that. Everyone loves that about you.”
“He just touched my neck!” she then whispered to viewers, getting a laugh out of the sporting event’s founding patron.
“By the way,” he confessed. “My kids love you on Bake Off. Absolutely love it. And I love it as well.”
Alison and Prince Harry’s paths first crossed way back in 2018, during his and his then-fiancée Meghan Markle’s first public engagement.
“I don’t know if I’m going to go down the whole royal journalist route,” she admitted to HuffPost UK shortly afterwards, claiming: “I just don’t know the protocol. I called her Megs and I don’t think I even called him Prince Harry. I should have said ‘Prince’ but I forgot. He’s just ‘Harry’ to me!”
More recently, Prince Harry surprised everyone when he lip synced to one of Alison’s iconic quotes in a viral social media skit for Stephen Colbert’s now-defunct US talk show.
“They found out that I was one of your secret admirers,” Harry told Alison on Friday.
“And I follow your every move. They said, ‘who do you want to imitate?’, and I said, ‘obviously Alison’. So we did that! And by the way, it was a huge hit!”
This Morning airs every weekday from 10am on ITV1.
This is probably as good as it gets for Andy Burnham.
The PM-in-waiting is currently basking in the glory of near-universal acclaim from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).
An astonishing 322 Labour MPs – 80% of the total – gave their public support to Burnham to be the party’s new leader on the opening day of nominations.
More of them will do so when the PLP office re-opens on Monday morning.
It means that, barring a meteor strike precipitating the end of civilisation in the next week-and-a-half, the former mayor of Greater Manchester will become Labour leader at the third time of asking on July 17.
Three days later, he will take over from Keir Starmer as prime minister, thereby realising an ambition he has worked towards his entire adult life.
After losing out to Ed Miliband in 2010 and Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, Burnham will finally become Labour leader and, with it, be handed the keys to 10 Downing Street.
He will have every right to feel pride and satisfaction at becoming only the eighth leader of his party to assume the highest office in the land.
But it will all be downhill from there.
Here, HuffPost UK looks at the biggest problems facing the Makerfield MP as he prepares to take on the biggest challenge of his life.
1) Holding The PLP Together
A quick glance at the list of MPs who have so far nominated Burnham to be Labour leader shows the biggest problem he faces, namely keeping them all happy – something Starmer spectacularly failed to do.
Arch-Blairites like Pat McFadden and Wes Streeting joined left-wingers such as Ian Lavery and Clive Lewis in giving Burnham their backing.
At the moment, they are all united in the acceptance that Burnham gives them the best chance of being returned to power at the next general election. But something, clearly, will have to give.
The incoming leader set out his strategy for keeping his MPs sweet in an email to them on Wednesday in which he said he was committed to “changing culture through valuing and respecting every member of the PLP”.
MPs will be encouraged to raise problems and contribute policy ideas, something which was not encouraged under Starmer.
“I want to create a different culture where MPs are happy and fulfilled doing their jobs, where everyone has a part to play, and where opinions and approaches are respected, even where there’s difference,” Burnham said.
That all sounds lovely in principle. The challenge for the new prime minister will be in ensuring that his warm words are matched by reality when the going inevitably gets tough.
2) What To Do On Immigration
Helpfully, an early test of the new approach has already arrived in the form of a letter signed by more than 80 Labour MPs urging Burnham to water down home secretary Shabana Mahmood’s tough new immigration reforms.
The Immigration and Asylum Bill will, among other things, make it much harder for those fleeing to the UK to be granted indefinite leave to remain.
The MPs say in the letter: “Targeting a group of migrants that followed the rules, and applying this retrospectively, does not pass the fairness test for a compassionate but firm system.”
Other Labour MPs, however, fully support Mahmood’s reforms, arguing that being tough on immigration is essential if the party is to see off the threat from Reform UK.
Burnham himself has signalled a tougher approach by saying last month that he wanted to see “greater use” of detention centres for those whose asylum claims are rejected.
The Commons will vote on the immigration bill on Monday. As yet, it is unclear whether Burnham will show up and, if he does, how he will vote.
What he does will say a lot about how he plans to do the job.
3) Making Welfare Work
The seeds of Keir Starmer’s downfall were sown a year ago, when a backbench rebellion forced the government to abandon its plans to cut £5 billion from the benefits bill.
McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, has wisely opted not to re-litigate that particular battle, focusing instead on attempts to reduce the record number of young people classed as NEETS (not in education, employment or training).
Burnham is also signed up to this approach, arguing that greater employment support and “in-work” help for those with mental ill health can bring about a “fair and lasting” reduction to the overall welfare bill without the need for “crude cuts”.
How successful his government is in getting significant numbers of people off benefits and into work, something which has eluded both Labour and Tory administrations in the past, will go a long way to determining his longevity in No.10.
4) Filling The Defence Black Hole
Bringing down the £333 billion welfare bill could be one way of filling the defence spending black hole Burnham has been left by Starmer.
The outgoing PM finally unveiled his long-delayed Defence Investment Plan (DIP) last week, hailing the extra £15bn that will be spent on Britain’s armed forces over the next four years.
However, that is predicated on £4.7bn of savings being found in the next Budget – something which will be the responsibility of Burnham’s pick to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.
5) How Do You Solve A Problem Like Ed Miliband?
The current energy secretary – a key ally of Burnham – remains the favourite to move into 11 Downing Street when the new PM announces his first cabinet.
It would be seen as a reward for someone who did more than most to get Burnham to this point.
Miliband was one of the cabinet ministers who told Starmer to his face that he needed to go after Labour’s humbling in the May 7 elections, and has worked closely with Burnham’s team on his preparations for power.
Making him chancellor would not be a risk-free choice, however.
A significant number of Labour MPs are vehemently opposed to the appointment, as are the leaders of the powerful Unite and GMB unions, who believe his opposition to fresh drilling in the North Sea will cost their members their jobs.
Failing to promote Miliband would, however, be seen as a huge snub to such a strong supporter.
6) Dealing With The Donald
Starmer’s biggest – and what some would say only – success as prime minister was his performance on the global stage.
He won plaudits for his staunch support for Ukraine and for keeping the UK out of America and Israel’s war with Iran.
That did, however, seal the complete deterioration of his relationship with Donald Trump, something which he had initially managed to cultivate to surprisingly good effect.
We know that Burnham wants to focus more on the domestic scene, leaving the international stage to his foreign secretary, who may or may not be David Miliband.
But like it or not, he will have to deal with the US president. We know precisely nothing on how he plans to approach it.
As we have seen on numerous occasions in the last two years, the man in the Oval Office has a habit of ruining the best laid plans of any prime minister.
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
BRUSSELS — President Donald Trump’s interference with FIFA’s disciplinary measures ahead of the U.S.-Belgium match had unintended consequences: He fired up the Belgians.
After limping through the group stage and first knockout round, Belgium cleaned the floor with the U.S. in the round of 16, after Trump intervened to help overturn a suspension for America’s key attacker, Folarin Balogun.
The Belgian squad wasted no time in trolling Trump after the match, as a viral clip from the team dressing room showed the players jiving like the U.S. president to his favorite campaign rally anthem: Y.M.C.A. by the Village People.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, a notorious soccerphobe, was then asked about Trump and the suspension saga during a key NATO military summit in Ankara.
“We didn’t speak about football,” De Wever said. “Football is, as they say, the most important of the non-important subjects, but it is still non-important, so I didn’t raise it,” he added, paraphrasing a remark widely attributed to soccer nut Pope John Paul II.
The Belgian national soccer team social media crew was blunter in its victorious post-match summary: “Overturn this,” it noted pointedly.
Devon and Cornwall Police have confirmed this evening that they have arrested a suspect in relation to the murder of former MP Ann Widdecombe.
They say that a 26-year-old man was arrested on Friday afternoon (10 July) at an address in Newton Abbot.
The suspect has been described by Assistant Chief Constable Matt Longman (who is currently leading a police conference in relation to the crime at time of writing) as a white British national, who is being held in police custody while enquires continue.
The ex-prisons minister, who was 78, was found dead at her home in Devon.
Officers were called to Widdecombe’s home at around 11:40 BST yesterday, Thursday 9 July, and she was found deceased in the property with “serious injuries”.
Police have said that the incident is not being treated as terrorism and that it is “too early” to comment on whether the suspect was known to Widdecombe.
In response to a question from the media, Longman stated police have currently “got no information to believe that that is a politically motivated crime.”
They added: “A cordon remains in place at the property while specialist officers continue forensic examinations. There are road closures in place around the scene.”
Detective Chief Inspector Ilona Rosson said: “I would appeal to anyone who may have information about this incident, however insignificant it may seem, to come forward and speak with us.
“We are particularly keen to hear from anyone who may have seen anything suspicious in the vicinity of Haytor Vale, Haytor, or anyone with CCTV, doorbell or dashcam footage which could assist with our investigation.”
A dedicated portal can now be found on the Devon and Cornwall Police website where members of the public can submit footage, images and information they may have in relation to the investigation.
This is a developing story, please check back for updates.
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Politics
Ann Widdecombe: ghouls gloss over bigotry to praise “fun, feisty” politician as suspect arrested
A 26-year-old white male suspect has been arrested after former Tory minister and Reform UK politician Ann Widdecombe was found dead. She was an MP for over two decades and was known for her far-right and homophobic views.
UK PM Keir Starmer skipped over her grotesque views to praise her “dedication” to “public service”:
The whole country will be utterly shocked by the awful news about the circumstances of Ann Widdecombe’s death.
Today we come together across the political divide and I pay tribute to Ann’s dedication during her many years of public service. My thoughts and deepest condolences… pic.twitter.com/hXps6A9s78
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) July 10, 2026
Widdecombe reportedly died at her home in Dartmoor, Devon. Few details have been released so far.
The Politics UK X account reported:
Police attended her home yesterday morning and spoke to a carer who worked for the former MP and is believed to have found her body. Officers are also investigating whether she died from an accidental fall.
Devon and Cornwall police said in a statement:
Police officers were called to an address at Haytor by the ambulance service at around 11.40am on Thursday 9 July.
Sadly, 78-year-old Miss Widdecombe was located deceased within the property. She had sustained serious injuries.
Her next-of-kin have been informed and are being supported by specially trained officers.
Major Crimes Investigation Team deployed
The force added:
Detectives from the Force Major Crime Investigation Team have launched a murder investigation and are conducting extensive enquiries into the circumstances surrounding Miss Widdecombe’s death.
A cordon remains in place at the property while specialist officers continue forensic examinations. There are road closures in place around the scene.
The public will see a significant police presence in the area today while detectives and officers conduct house-to-house and CCTV enquiries.
Detective Chief Inspector Ilona Rosson said:
This is an extremely tragic incident and our thoughts are very much with the family and friends of Ann Widdecombe at this difficult time.
Our murder enquiry is in its early stages but moving at a significant pace. We are deploying all of the necessary resources to find out exactly what has happened and to locate the person responsible who we believe to be a white male.
I would appeal to anyone who may have information about this incident, however insignificant it may seem, to come forward and speak with us.
We are particularly keen to hear from anyone who may have seen anything suspicious in the vicinity of Haytor Vale, Haytor, or anyone with CCTV, doorbell or dashcam footage which could assist with our investigation.
Rosson said the uniformed police presence had been increased in the locality and urged against speculation.
Ann Widdecombe — A career built on bigotry
Widdecombe built a political career on bigotry and a post-parliament brand on clownish reality TV antics. She served as a Tory MP for over two decades, including as a minister under John Major. She later campaigned for Brexit and served as a member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party (now Reform UK).
Naturally, Britain’s ghouls lined up to paper over Widdecombe’s prejudices. Farage was quick to praise her decisive role in the UK leaving the EU:
When Ann Widdecombe decided to stand for The Brexit Party in the snap 2019 European Elections, it was a big moment and huge boost. The voters loved her.
She played a decisive role in getting Brexit over the line and will be missed by us all. https://t.co/9C0xiqDvqV — Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) July 10, 2026
Pink News unpacked her appalling record on LGBTQ+ issues:
Widdecombe has repeatedly used her platform to oppose same-sex marriage equality. During her time as an MP from 1987 until 2010, she took every opportunity to block gay rights, including the repeal of Section 28.
According to vote monitoring website Public Whip, Widdecombe opposed every single equality measure for LGBT people during her 23 years in the corridors of power.
Widdecombe was also a supporter of discredited so-called ‘gay cure’ therapy:
Widdecombe has backed ‘gay cure’ therapists throughout her public career. In 2012, she questioned the lack of available therapy for “gays who do not want to be gay”.
While Tory leader Kemi Badenoch praised Widdecombe’s “values”:
My deepest condolences and those of the Conservative Party to the family and friends of Ann Widdecombe. She was a formidable politician who was never afraid to speak her mind and fought hard for what she believed. Always true to herself, her politics were strongly guided by her… https://t.co/eBdMXRQKGG
— Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) July 10, 2026
Piers Morgan said Widdecombe was “feisty”, “fun” and “a gem”:
RIP Ann Widdecombe, 78. — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) July 10, 2026
A wonderfully no-nonsense, straight-talking, highly-opinionated British battle-axe. Ann was always a very feisty, combative interviewee, but always great fun too. Amid so many dreary politicians, she was a charismatic, combative gem. pic.twitter.com/QdMIlJu89g
Legacy press and mainstream politicians will likely celebrate Ann Widdecombe in the coming days, while obscuring the contempt and bigotry she whipped up under the guise of Christian values. The Canary, as our readers would expect, won’t be running static for a politician who once described trans-inclusive policies as a “prevailing lunacy”.
Featured image via the Canary
By Joe Glenton
Sam Fender has spoken out following the news that his duet with Olivia Dean is now the joint longest-running number one in UK chart history.
The pair unveiled their collaboration Rein Me In more than a year ago in June 2025.
Around eight months later, it reached number one in the UK singles chart for the first time back in February, and managed the feat a whopping 15 more times in the months that followed.
On Friday evening, it was announced that Rein Me In was number one for the 16th week, with the Official Charts Company meaning that Sam and Olivia had officially smashed a record previously held by Wet Wet Wet for more than 30 years, for their 1994 chart-topper Love Is All Around.
“It’s been ridiculous!” the People Watching singer said when his achievement was made official. “Every Friday, it’s been an excuse to party. Take that, Marti Pellow!”
Sam enthused: “Olivia putting the alternative narrative on it made the song really universal – that opened the floodgates. There’s two sides to the story.
“And, it’s a toe tapper! It’s officially a banger! I’m buzzing that Rein Me In is the longest-running British single at number one of all time!”
While Sam and Olivia’s feat means that theirs is the song by a British act that has held the most weeks at number one, they’ll have to hang on one more round to break the all-time record, which they currently share with Bryan Adams for his seminal hit (Everything I Do) I Do It For You.
However, the Canadian star will still hold the record for the most consecutive weeks at number one in the UK, even if Sam and Olivia do hold onto the top spot next week.
So far, 2026 has been another huge year for both Sam and Olivia.
As well as their chart success, they both celebrated big wins at the Brit Awards back in February.
Olivia swept the board with four wins, including Best British Single for Rein Me In, while Sam also scooped a solo award in the Alternative/Rock Act category.
The Israel lobby has gone into yet another Mamdani-related meltdown. This time, though, the emphasis is on ‘related’. Mamdani’s wife Rama Duwaji dared to co-host a retreat in Corsica that honoured the Virgin Mary as “a Palestinian woman who gave birth under occupation”. The event also included prayers for Palestinian mothers giving birth and trying to protect their children during Israel’s genocide.
Israel meltdown
The Murdoch-owned New York Post claimed Duwaji dodged US Independence Day celebrations, liked posts praising resistance to occupation and created artwork that criticised Israel. It also attacked attendees for wearing keffiyeh scarves and raising funds for Palestinian humanitarian groups.
Fox News ranted that the retreat took place on the ‘swank island of Corsica’. It also quoted pro-Israel Republican Joann Ariola saying that by attending the retreat, Duwaji was showing her “hatred for America”. Wonder what Jesus would make of that attitude towards his mum.
The Times accused Duwaji of ‘skipping’ US independence celebrations and quoted critics slamming her “controversial” views on Palestine and her lack of interest in chatting to a ‘Miss Israel’. Yup, opposing mass murder and ethnic cleansing is just so provocative and why would anyone snub a beauty contestant who made a video justifying Israel’s slaughter in Gaza? The very thought.
The Jewish News Syndicate devoted its space to the cost of the Corsican resort — less than €3,000 for the week, not paid from public funds. It also quoted the embassy of Israel huffing about Jesus and Mary’s Jewishness — kind of a cheek when Israel attacks and murders Palestinian and Lebanese Christians.
Liberal Zionist outlet JFeed gave space to Israel propagandist Hen Mazzig and his chorus, who:
argued the framing distorts the historical record that Jesus and his mother were Jewish, living in Judea under Roman rule at the time. Critics online echoed that point, arguing that recasting a Jewish woman living in her people’s ancestral homeland as a symbol of Palestinian occupation amounts to a rewriting of both scripture and history.
Absolutely. How dare anyone — let alone the wife of a Muslim mayor — compare the brutal Roman occupation of Palestine with the brutal and just as murderous Zionist occupation of Palestine? The nerve of it!
‘Times of trouble’
Jesus’s mother Mary is venerated by Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox Christians — and by Muslims. Muslims consider her the mother of ‘Isa al-Masih’, or Jesus the Messiah, whom they regard as a great prophet.
Zionists — Jewish and gentile — typically do not. Except when they can use Mary’s Jewishness to attack a Muslim mayor’s wife, apparently.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
The ‘anti-racist’ rot at the heart of Britain’s police
Felix Auger-Aliassime ends 10-Year Partnership With Coach
Orbital datacenter gold rush needs an environmental review, FCC told
-
NewsBeat6 days agoTaylor Swift and Travis Kelce wedding staffer hilariously struggles to keep her cool while checking in megastars
-
Fashion4 days agoOpen Thread: What Great Books Have You Read Recently?
-
News Videos4 days agoWhats Hidden Inside This Cash Register? #treasure #reselling #money
-
Fashion2 days agoLoro Piana Fall 2026 Enters Houston’s Art Scene
-
Tech4 days agoAnthropic’s new “J-lens” reveals a silent workspace inside Claude that mirrors a leading theory of consciousness
-
Business4 days agoAXT Shares Jump Nearly 14% as Semiconductor Materials Maker Rebounds on AI-Linked Indium Phosphide Demand
-
Sports3 days agoJoshua Pacio ‘more complete’ ahead of ONE rematch vs Malachiev
-
Crypto World5 days agoSouth Africa proposes crypto tax guidance under existing rules
-
Crypto World4 days agoSK hynix (000660.KS) Stock Dips as $28B Nasdaq ADR Offering Drives AI Memory Expansion
-
News Videos4 days agoBest Time to Enter Small Caps Right Now? Another Bull Run? | Financially Free
-
Tech6 days agoLenovo laptops are now shipping with YMTC SSDs, a sign of Chinese NAND entering the mainstream
-
Crypto World4 days ago$1,000 Credit Alert! BlockDAG X Exchange Pre-Registration Now Officially Open, Polkadot Dips & Zcash Rebounds
-
Sports3 days ago
We have punished the disrespect
-
Tech3 days agoAnthropic brings Claude Cowork to mobile and web as usage data shows most users aren’t coding
-
News Videos5 days agoAvoid entering in FOMO #bitcoin #cryptocurrency #trading #scalping
-
Tech6 days agoNeuralink Threads Its Way Straight Through the Brain’s Armor
-
Crypto World4 days agoBinance lists Strategy’s STRC stock as company expands Bitcoin funding
-
Crypto World6 days agoBitcoin Miner IREN Falls After $700 Million CEO Stock Award
-
Tech4 days ago9 Best Keyboards (2025), Tested and Reviewed
-
Tech1 day agoCharacter.AI enters the microdrama arena with its own productions, but there’s a twist
You must be logged in to post a comment Login