Responding to an article from Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph has publicly described Israel’s genocide as a “lie”. It comes as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK launched an attack on rivals Restore Britain over accusations of ‘antisemitism’:

Restore Britain has endorsed the monstrous lie that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza – the opposite of the truth. The horseshoe theory of politics is being proved correct – a right-wing party has aligned itself with the far Left and extreme Islamists on this issue. It is…

— Allister Heath (@AllisterHeath) August 10, 2026

Israel’s Gaza genocide

Heath’s post finishes:

It is vital that retired actors, pro-Israel conservatives or observers of UK politics in Europe or America, including [Elon Musk] understand the truth about this party.

Restore’s talk of Gaza ‘genocide’ is as ridiculous as the Left’s

The issue for Heath and Pollard is that Restore politician Charlie Downes posted the following:

We’ve been heavily critical of Restore Britain, but Downes isn’t wrong to describe the situation as a genocide. He’s also not wrong to highlight the complicity of the British media.

Pollard’s piece opens with the following:

Genocide requires state intent. Instead, Israel deserves praise for the humanitarian care it has taken in its fight against terrorists

On the topic of “state intent”, Law for Palestine meticulously documented 500+ instances of “Israeli Incitement to Genocide”. They described this work in 2024 as follows:

Since the commencement of our investigative efforts on October 7th, 2023, Law for Palestine has meticulously amassed a compelling body of evidence exposing the proliferation of incitement to violence and genocidal intent perpetrated by Israeli officials and public figures, against Palestinians. Our documentation encompasses over 500 incitements of violence and genocidal incitement, appearing in the forms of social media posts, television interviews, and official statements from Israeli politicians, army personnel, journalists, and other influential personalities.

These reprehensible incitements have been categorized into significant thematic areas, including genocidal intent, forced displacement, and collective punishment. What makes this evidence all the more disconcerting is its origin, emanating from the upper echelons of the Israeli government, including the President, Prime Minister, Knesset members, military personnel, and law enforcement.

Nothing Pollard writes in his piece does anything to undo this reality. And speaking of reality, the Telegraph seems to exist on an entirely different plane of it than the rest of us:

Britain can’t stop climate change. Scrap net zero and embrace Mediterranean life https://t.co/AjtkLDpMsS

— Allister Heath (@AllisterHeath) July 29, 2026

Right VS Right

The Telegraph isn’t the only organisation attacking Restore Britain over alleged antisemitism. In an announcement given on Monday 10 August, Farage said that for Reform to work with Restore, his rivals would have to shed members like Downes. As GB Politics reported:

BREAKING: Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has ruled out any deal with Restore Britain unless Rupert Lowe expels Charlie Downes from the party

Nigel Farage has accused Charlie Downes of antisemitism after the Restore Britain spokesperson insinuated that Farage had been bought by Jewish supporters

These comments from Downes are less defensible, obviously. While it’s true that many people in the Zionist movement fund UK politicians, there are reasons why we highlight that they’re Zionists rather than Jews:

1. Not all Jewish people are Zionists.
2. Not all Zionists are Jewish.

Many non-Jewish American politicians are Zionists; the same is true of many non-Jewish European and British politicians. Many Western journalists are Zionists too, including the non-Jewish Allister Heath.

To be especially clear on what we’re talking about, Zionism is the ideology which dictates that Israel must exist as an expansionist colonial project in the Middle East. Both colonialism and expansionism are bad, which is why we oppose the ideology. When someone talks about opposing ‘Jews’, though, it seems like there’s something else at play.

Collaboration

With both Reform and the Telegraph attacking Restore, it does seem like there’s some degree of coordination. We’re not going to throw our support behind Downes, but we will acknowledge he was right about the genocide. And we’re far from the only people who hold that opinion:

'far left and extreme islamists' or as they're otherwise known, half the fucking country https://t.co/zXjQ7maymn pic.twitter.com/aurvI5hBII

— NJ (@NoJusticeMTG) August 10, 2026

Featured image via the Canary

By Willem Moore

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At approximately 3am on Sunday 9 August, a 2-person People Against Genocide (PAG) team broke into the Aberdeen facility of leading military tech and cyber warfare company, Ultra Intelligence & Communications (Ultra I&C).

Having entered the building, they barricaded themselves inside. The activists then set about dismantling equipment and computer equipment, in order to make it inoperable.

From inside the building, they also spray painted “For the dead children of Gaza” on the wall. And they obtained masses of documents from the weapons firm.

PAG has repeatedly targeted Ultra I&C facilities because it’s a key supplier to UAV Tactical Systems. UAV is a Leicester subsidiary of Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest weapons maker. Elbit produces 85% of the Israeli military’s killer drone fleet, and 80% of its other weaponry and equipment.

Job listings for Ultra I&C’s Aberdeen site show that its work includes the manufacturing and maintenance of equipment. As well as working with Elbit, a data breach in 2024 confirmed that Ultra I&C, one of the main weapons companies operating in the UK, is also working directly with the Israeli military.

Previous actions against Ultra I&C

In June, PAG took action against the Ultra I&C Maidenhead facility. Four activists used modified suitcases, with lock-on devices, to barricade the plant, and shut it down.

Then, just a few weeks later, in July, PAG activists managed to get inside the Ultra I&C Tring plant. After barricading themselves inside, they destroyed satellites worth £3m. The Crown Prosecution Service claims these were about to be shipped to the Israeli military.

At the end of July, PAG visited the company’s Cambridge site, spray-painting slogans all over the walls in blood-red paint, telling it to “Drop Elbit”.

On 8 August, PAG targeted the Loudwater facility of Ultra Maritime, (also part of the Ultra group), at Knaves Beech Business Centre, Loudwater, High Wycombe. Activists smashed windows at the plant and covered the exterior walls in symbolic blood-red paint and graffiti.

The Aberdeen action coincided with the 20th anniversary of the action against Raytheon in Derry. Nine people broke into the facility to disrupt the supply of weapons for Israel to use against the Lebanese people in 2006. That action was part of a concerted local campaign in Derry against the factory. It resulted in Raytheon permanently shutting down in the area.

A spokesperson for People Against Genocide said:

Companies like Ultra I&C, which operate in our towns and cities, fuel and profit from the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Not only does Ultra I&C supply Israel’s biggest weapons firm, Elbit Systems, the firm also supplies the Israeli military directly. Previous actions have destroyed satellites made by the company, which were headed to Israel.

Since being appointed prime minister, the only message Andy Burnham has sent to the Israeli war machine is that it’s business as usual. His cabinet is full of Israeli stooges, and Britain is directly involved in the genocide in Gaza, which along with the pogroms on the West Bank, and the devastation of Southern Lebanon, is pushing the indigenous Palestinian people to the brink of annihilation.

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That’s why we can’t expect anything from the government, and must take direct action in order to intervene and disrupt the genocidal supply chain ourselves.

By working for Elbit, and for the Israeli military directly, Ultra I&C are up to their necks in bloodshed. By occupying their Aberdeen factory today, we aim to intercede in their production of deadly weapons to prevent further Palestinian bloodshed.

We have to shut these weapons firms down. Free Palestine!

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By The Canary

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Montana’s Democratic Senate nominee on Monday refused to drop her campaign to clear the way for an independent candidate, setting up a crowded race that is likely to help Republicans win in November.

Alani Bankhead made certain with hours to go before Monday’s deadline that she would not step aside to give independent Seth Bodnar — who is backed by former Sen. John Tester (D-Mont.) — a clearer run at Republican Kurt Alme.

“I’ll never bow down,” Bankhead said during a press conference ahead of the 7 p.m. Eastern Time deadline to drop out. “I am in this race to win it and I am staying through Nov. 3.”

Bankhead accused her opponents of being “hand picked” by the establishment while she won the Democratic Primary.

Her refusal to drop is no surprise. She told POLITICO earlier this month that it would take “a lighting bolt from God” to convince her to exit, and she’s cast Bodnar’s backing from Tester as proof that he’s more aligned with the establishment than she is.

It’s caused a significant headache for Democrats, who have had some success getting their candidates to drop out for independents in other deep-red states carried by President Donald Trump by wide margins in 2024. Democrats in Idaho, South Dakota and Nebraska have all dropped their bids, though legal challenges could still complicate some of those efforts.

But Montana is Democrats’ best shot of actually flipping a seat with an independent candidacy, and Bankhead remaining on the ballot is likely to complicate that path exponentially.

Polling has shown Bodnar in a competitive head-to-head position against Alme and closer than if Bankhead had a one-on-one contest. But with both on the ballot, Alme leads by more than 20 points. Democrats like Tester and former Gov. Steve Bullock have found success in the red-leaning state, but a split ticket all but cedes the race to the GOP and narrows Democrats’ path to a majority in the upper chamber.

Bodnar and his allies have upped their focus on Bankhead in recent days. A super PAC backing Bodnar has been hammering her on television while another group is posting signs around the state calling for her to drop out.

More than 20 local Democratic lawmakers recently called on Bankhead to drop out, as well as former Democratic Party leaders. But in the end, their argument wasn’t enough to change Bankhead’s mind.

Bodnar recently told reporters ahead of the Monday deadline that he, too, had no plans to drop — while publicly bashing Bankhead for the first time.

“On the Democratic side, millions of dollars of outside dark money poured into a primary to determine an outcome,” Bodnar said at a press conference. “Now they have a candidate who’s unvetted.”

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Months of unusually dry weather have killed the grass that British farmer John Franklin’s sheep would normally graze on. Like other farmers, Franklin’s only contingency is to dip into the winter feed. He had been saving this feed for colder months, he told CGTN.

His 200-acre farm, which also runs a shop and cafe selling local produce, has lost a third of its income this year as crops fail to meet market specifications and yields drop.

He is not the only one. Research from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) suggests that the 2026 harvest is now likely to be one of the five worst since 1984

Climate-sceptical farmers can no longer ignore realities

In its latest study, latest, World Weather Attribution has reported that the June heatwave (where temperatures climbed to 37.7 degrees celsius) would have been unimaginable 50 years ago, adding that climate change is “unequivocally to blame.”

Martin Lines, CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network and a farmer from Cambridgeshire, said that even climate-sceptical farmers were facing the brutalities of climate change:

I’ve never known it this dry and hot on our farm. Even farmers I know who were sceptical of climate change are now saying they’re really worried about the future of their businesses and production, it’s just been completely brutal for our industry. And with high input costs because of the Iran war, planning crops for next year is a total nightmare. The nature-friendly practices we’ve deployed on the farm have helped our soils hold on to water for longer, but there’s only so much you can do to adapt to these sorts of extremes.

Consequences even for Clarkson

Jeremy Clarkson who has made a career out of dismissing climate worries as the preserve of “soup-throwing” activists and “Elton John-taxing” do-gooders, has found himself in an awkward position. His own Diddly Squat farm in Oxfordshire has not been immune to the same brutal conditions.

In his typical fashion, Clarkson wrote in the Times earlier this year:

I fully understand that a great many people are extremely worried about climate change and believe that unless we immediately give Israel to the Palestinians and throw soup over a few more paintings, the whole world will quickly become a blazing inferno. So understandably they fully support the concept of net zero and argue that the £7 zillion to implement it should be met by vigorously taxing Elton John and the nation’s bankers.

But even Clarkson might struggle to joke his way out of a parched field and shrivelled crop. 

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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4 min read9 min

I have spent a year trying to find out why political trust in Whitehall has deteriorated. The problems can be fixed – but first we need to be honest about them.

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“I am concerned at what I see as a slow deterioration over time in the trust between ministers and civil servants”. So wrote David Normington, previously the top civil servant at the Home Office and, at the time, the first civil service commissioner.

That was almost a decade ago.

And yet we are still grappling – or rather failing to grapple – with the question of political trust in the civil service. Soon after Normington wrote the above in 2017, we saw a sharp deterioration in relations: see for reference anything from the antagonistic approach of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Cummings to Liz Truss’s attacks on the “Treasury orthodoxy”.

Recent attempts to improve the relationship have at best managed to stabilise it.

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Rishi Sunak refused to condone his colleagues’ characterisation of Whitehall as “the blob”, and Keir Starmer began his premiership with a private note to civil servants assuring them, “you have my confidence, my support, and my respect.” Both are welcome. But five months later, Starmer was so frustrated with that same civil service that he accused too many of them of being “too comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”. It’s a phrase that has stuck around. I am sure that is in part because it is too clunky to ignore. But also in part because it was Starmer – the civil servant’s prime minister, as a former civil servant himself – who felt compelled to make the accusation. The much-hyped Labour reset of relations with the civil service had failed.

I have spent the past year trying to find out what is going wrong – why have the resets failed, and why do ministers not trust the civil service? To understand this, we’ve spoken to ministers, civil servants and special advisers to help us build a picture of how trust in the civil service is lost.

The vague, hand-wavey language we use around this relationship has to end

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It is not the prettiest of pictures.

There are problems with underlying capability – both in policy advice and delivery.

But far more salient to politicians is how that capability is applied. We heard about a culture of overwhelming inertia and status quo bias where it feels impossible to get things done. We were told about a sense that the civil service lacks the professional curiosity it needs to address first-order questions and escape the trap of formulaic answers, compounded by the stifling of junior civil servants by their seniors. We heard about conflict aversion practiced to the extent that trade-offs don’t get surfaced at all, and about a civil service that leans back rather than leaning in to working alongside politicians. And we heard about a civil service that draws the line around what is ‘political’ so widely that it lacks the political judgement and understanding to properly advise ministers.

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If all of that sounds very one-sided, it is. Trust is a two-way street. But in our system of elected politicians and a permanent civil service, it is the civil service that must earn the trust of the ministers they serve – or at least show themselves to be trustworthy.

It also sounds very negative. That is – again – intentional.

The vague, hand-wavey language we use around this relationship has to end. We all (ministers, officials, and anyone who has ever used the term “the blob”) need a proper way to describe what is going wrong. Otherwise we end up with either jibes about an amorphous mess of unelected bureaucrats, or meaningless platitudes about the need for ‘respect’. As we have seen, neither approach works. This mushy language means we are not pinpointing the real problems in the relationship, and so can’t do anything about them.

If you disagree with the above – great. Let me know, and let’s build a better picture together.

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Hannah Keenan is an associate director at the Institute for Government

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On 7 August, streamer Asmongold received a temporary ban after he made comments about the need to murder migrant children. Since then, Asmongold has actually doubled down on his initial comments:

asmongolds response to being banned for advocating to murder migrant children was to double down and then talk about other kinds of children that should also be murdered. i am not even joking. https://t.co/EruJRhwXuh

— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) August 10, 2026

Grim

Asmongold — real name Zack Hoyt — is one of the most popular right-wing streamers in the world. He’s also notorious for his personal hygiene, including his use of the infamous ‘rat alarm clock’. In his own words:

I’ve had many dead rats in the house, but there was a dead rat in the house… I use the dead rat as an alarm clock, because basically I live in Texas. It gets really hot in Texas, and whenever it would get really hot… the house would get hotter, and it would like cook the corpse of the rat, and it would make it smell worse.

So like I would wake up every morning at like 7:30 or 8:00 am.

Like I was ready to fucking go because the first thing that happened is I’d smell that goddamn rat. You know what the fuck? Yeah, this is a, that’s what, it’s a natural alarm. Yeah, free alarm clock.

In his latest controversy, Asmongold was commenting on a video which covered the recent incident in Ceuta. Said incident saw thousands of Moroccans making their way into a Spanish territory that’s situated on the African continent; it also involved Moroccan authorities assisting in the process. As Skwawkbox previously reported for the Canary:

Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente has suggested Israel is behind the ‘immigration crisis’ in Spain’s Ceuta enclave in Morocco.

Puente said:

The Moroccan government is widely considered a US client state and is heavily dependent on Israeli weapons supply. Israel and the US have been accused of coordinating the Ceuta crisis, in which thousands of Moroccans poured into the enclave and at least 67 people have died, to punish Spain. Spain’s resistance to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its refusal to allow US warplanes to use Spanish bases and airspace to attack Iran and Spain’s condemnation of Israel’s racist attack on footballer Lamine Yamal have infuriated the imperialist regimes.

Witnessing footage of these scenes, Asmongold said:

I’d shoot whoever

He further specified:

kids, women, men, anybody.

Asmongold says undocumented children need to get shot if they cross the border with their parents.

"If you don't do that, they'll use women and children as shields to get themselves over." "These people are animals, they're savages" pic.twitter.com/eox5pZzl8D

— Hasanabi Productions (fan account) (@HasanabiProd) August 4, 2026

Asmongold isn’t sorry

Speaking after the ban, the streamer said said:

So, this is the funniest thing, by the way. I actually don’t even know this is why I got banned. Twitch has never communicated to me what the thing is that I did wrong that got me banned. I’m just guessing it’s probably the thing that everybody was mad about, right?

Asmongold also clarified how he feels about the comments now:

I apologize for absolutely nothing.

He added:

People can say I’m mean, they can say I’m evil, they can say everything, but they’re not saying I’m wrong.

Contrary to this, many people are in fact saying that he’s wrong:

Kyle Kulinski on Asmongold saying he thinks women and children crossing the border illegally are fair game to sh**t:

“He’s calling others animals and savages as he’s advocating for sh**ting children”

“YOU’RE the animal, YOU’RE the savage” pic.twitter.com/GZ86kXMC5J

— Substance (@SimplySubstance) August 7, 2026

Hey @Twitch, here’s Asmongold saying he’s not sorry and the behavior that got him suspended won’t stop because he believes he did nothing wrong. He then goes on to say he will submit an appeal. I sincerely hope you deny that appeal and consider an indefinite suspension. https://t.co/evnhej3EFA pic.twitter.com/faEAVk4Fik

— sus ಠ_ಠ (@susravioli) August 9, 2026

Hoyt continued:

And I think that ultimately we should look at a lot of these uncomfortable truths with a lot more of a clear mind rather than allowing it to be polluted by people that I think want to hurt us. People that want to put us in a position that is not advantageous.

And that’s the reason why I communicate the way that I do. It is hopefully to normalize this type of language and for people to see things for what they are rather than what they want them to be. And I think that’s for better and for worse. So that’s the reason why I talk the way that I do.

I’m not sorry.

Moving forwards

While he did vow to ‘tone down his language’, it wasn’t due to any moral concerns:

I’m going to try to obviously tone it down a little bit because I don’t want to get suspended all the time.

If Hoyt is allowed to continue on the platform despite his clarifying comments, it’s a pretty clear sign that Twitch is okay with the promotion of child murder — just so long as it’s tactfully done. And this shouldn’t be that surprising. After all, this stance is no different than that of all the governments and organisations that continued to support Israel despite its ongoing genocide in Gaza.

We live in an increasingly inhuman world, and Asmongold is the poster boy for that.

Featured image via Dexerto

By Willem Moore

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Labour Defence Secretary Wes Streeting accepted a £30,000 donation from a think tank linked to convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

David Lawrence

David Lawrence was the co-founder and treasurer of Labour for the Long Term (LLT). But just days before setting up the think tank, Lawrence received a £500,000 “gift” from Bankman-Fried. In 2024, the “crypto king” was jailed for 25 years in an $11 billion fraud case.

Lawrence previously worked as a parliamentary assistant to former Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy. Last February, Lammy held an “off the books” meeting with serial lobbyist Trevor Chinn, who has also made cash donations to Streeting in recent months.

In November 2023, Lawrence stepped down as the Labour parliamentary candidate for Basingstoke, officially citing personal reasons. But I’ve been told that a source close to his campaign claimed the real reason was the impending release of court documents linking him to convicted fraudster Bankman-Fried.

When questioned in December 2022, LLT refused to disclose the identities of its funders, describing donors simply as:

UK citizens who support the Labour Party.

American entrepreneur Bankman-Fried was not mentioned in their response.

‘Entirely plausible’ Labour knew

On an archived version of LLT’s website, Wes Streeting is listed first amongst their parliamentary supporters. Also listed were former party chair Anneliese Dodds; Labour Friends of Israel supporter Fleur Anderson; Andy Burnham’s Trade Envoy to Ukraine, Alex Sobel; and a smattering of Labour Party peers.

In August 2022, just over a month after Bankman-Fried’s £500,000 payment to Lawrence, Streeting accepted a £30,000 donation from LLT. He used it to hire Thomas Gardiner as a policy adviser. Gardiner went on to become a key member of Streeting’s team.

According to a Labour source I spoke to, it is “entirely plausible” that the party knew about the Bankman-Fried connection to LLT. This seems to be backed up by further claims this week that, at the time of the donation to Streeting, other Labour shadow ministers had been advised against accepting money from the think tank.

Who owns Streeting?

After being appointed by Burnham as Labour’s Defence Secretary, Streeting is now responsible for national security and armed forces operations, but new revelations about the donations he has been willing to accept throw his judgement into doubt.

This year has been particularly lucrative for Streeting. On June 19th, he accepted a £20,000 donation from Daniel Luhde-Thompson, a strategic adviser at Quadrature. Quadrature now hold one million shares in IOF-linked surveillance firm Palantir, a holding currently worth over £86 million, and Palantir now has a £330 million contract with the NHS.

On that very same day in June, Streeting accepted £12,000 from Trevor Chinn. Burnham’s new Defence Secretary claims to be an opponent of Israeli settlements, but Chinn, one of his most consistent donors, is President of the United Jewish Israel Appeal, which acts as the sole British organiser of so-called “Birthright Israel” trips and regularly promotes “excursions” into illegally-occupied lands.

This year, Streeting has also accepted two payments from Mike Craven, a former adviser to Tony Blair: £5000 on July 10th and another £5000 on May 16th. Craven has also funded Hamish Falconer, Burnham’s current Minister for Europe, and Josh Simons, the Labour MP who “gave up” his seat for Keir Starmer’s successor.

In 2024, Streeting held onto his own parliamentary seat by just 528 votes after an insurgent campaign by British-Palestinian independent candidate Leanne Mohamad. Now, with growing scrutiny into who funded his own campaign, it is unclear how long Streeting will be able to hold on to his seat in the cabinet.

Featured image via the Canary

By Jody McIntyre

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