On Sunday, Nicola Sturgeon told Laura Kuenssberg that the SNP’s accounts “went up and down” as her excuse for not noticing that hundreds of pounds had suddenly vanished from them.

Several things leap out immediately from that clip.

One, there very much WAS “something glaringly suspicious in the accounts that I should have seen” – the party had raised almost £700,000 in two “ring-fenced” fundraisers that wasn’t there any more, which ought to have made its leader at least mildly curious.

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And two, attempting to fob responsibility off onto the independent auditors simply won’t wash. It’s not their job to determine whether the SNP has kept its political promises or not, their job is simply to match up money coming in against money going out and produce a set of numbers to show what it all adds up to. It makes no odds to them if it was spent on a party conference, a fancy motorhome or a 50-foot golden statue of Danny La Rue. All they can see is numbers.

(In any event the party’s longstanding auditors resigned in 2023 rather than risk being caught up in any more dodginess. It took months for the SNP to find anyone else willing to take the job on.)

But even leaving those things aside, if we’re going to learn anything about how The Great Indyref Swindle got to this calamitous point unchecked we need to examine just how hard Nicola Sturgeon had to look the other way to fail to see what was going on literally under her nose and literally in her own back yard.

(You’ll have to forgive us a bit of repetition in this piece, readers, because this is the full story of Operation Branchform with all the dots joined up for the first time ever anywhere. If some of it is a little familiar, just bear with us.)

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Let’s start with 2015, the first year that Sturgeon started as SNP leader. Since we’re mainly concerned with events from 2017 onwards, we’ll just skip through the first couple quickly for background.

2015 ACCOUNTS

Sturgeon inherited a very healthy party from Alex Salmond. Even after fighting the 2015 election the SNP had over £400,000 in the bank, and a recently-quadrupled membership that would bring it millions of pounds in additional funding every year.

(For perspective, 2013 – Salmond’s last full year – saw the party receive £585,691 in membership income. For Sturgeon’s first full year the figure was £2,743,413 – almost five times as much. She was in charge of a golden goose.)

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2016 ACCOUNTS

2016 was also an election year, and having spend a colossal £2.4m on the election campaign (£800,000 more than the previous Scottish election, and £600,000 more than on the 2015 Westminster campaign), only to lose Salmond’s groundbreaking majority at Holyrood, the bank balance plunged accordingly.

2017 ACCOUNTS

And here’s where we really come in. With Theresa May’s snap UK election meaning that the SNP had had to run four big national campaigns in four years, the coffers were understandably almost depleted.

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But just a minute. 2017 was also the year of the “ref.scot” fundraiser, which made £482,000 and which the SNP angrily swore had NOT been spent on the election.

So where was it?

Readers may note that the accounts list “Fundraising income” and general “Donations” to the party separately, and the amounts are such that the ref.scot cash must be in the latter category. But it’s fairly academic anyway, as the money was all just dumped in the same pot – the SNP only has one bank account.

The 2017 accounts make clear that there’d also been a large debt repayment.

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And we know exactly what it was – £500,000 had been returned to Chris and Colin Weir, specifically £250,000 each. (The other £100K was another separate loan from the Weirs, and would be repaid in March 2018.)

The Weirs had loaned the party £1 million in March 2016 to fight the forthcoming Holyrood election, the day after the SNP had launched the “ref.scot” fundraiser to create a “ring-fenced” independence referendum campaign fund.

Half of it had been paid back in 2016. The £1m of total loans from the Weirs is shown in the 2016 accounts, as is the £500,000 first half of the repayments (plus another £8,126 of other loans).

And the December 2017 repayment was the outstanding balance.

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(The Electoral Commission website lists the repayment date of each loan as 1 December 2017 because that’s when each was fully repaid. It makes matters seem more complicated than they really are – in 2016 the party paid each of the two Weirs HALF of their loan back, rather than paying back, say, Chris’s in 2016 and Colin’s in 2017. They did the same the following year. So each loan – Chris’s £500,000 and Colin’s £500,000 – wasn’t considered as cleared until the second halves were paid back in 2017.)

So while you could argue the toss about whether the money had been spent on the election campaign or on paying back the Weirs, it was a pretty moot point since it all came from the same bank account – what matters is that it definitely HAD been spent.

2018 ACCOUNTS

2018 was the first year in five when there hadn’t been a referendum or a general election to spend money on, so the SNP’s funds got a hefty boost. It should be noted that this WASN’T fundraiser money, though, because there was no fundraiser in 2018, and in any case it wasn’t enough – it was £71,000 short of the amount the ref.scot appeal had collected. It was simply the bounty from the huge membership.

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Still, if you were the SNP leadership there now seemed a very good chance that the difference could be made up next year, in which there was also no scheduled election, so that all the missing money would be back in the bank before anyone noticed and they’d have gotten away with it all.

2019 ACCOUNTS

But at that moment Boris Johnson – with, astonishingly, the enthusiastic help of the SNP – threw a whacking great spanner right into the works.

Strangely, when it came to the vote no SNP MPs actually voted for the second snap election in two and a half years. Angus MacNeil voted against and the rest abstained or were absent. Perhaps the leadership had realised the ramifications and panicked, but by then it was too late and the vote carried by 439 to 22, effectively sealing the party’s financial fate there and then.

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Because 2019 was the year things got really murky.

You’ll remember from 2017 that the ref.scot fundraiser income was actually listed on the accounts under “Donations” rather than “Fundraising income, and the same appears to apply in 2019, because receipts from the latter are only £35,000 higher than in 2018 (when there was no special fundraiser) even though the yes.scot one launched in April of 2019 is known to have generated around £185,000.

(We know this because Colin Beattie confirmed in 2021 that the total raised was just short of £667,000 and the ref.scot total of £482,000 was publicly visible, leaving £185,000 to have come from the yes.scot appeal.)

Yet having raised £667,000 in “ring-fenced” funds for a referendum campaign and a booklet, which it by definition wasn’t allowed to spend on anything else, and having produced neither thing, the SNP only had £97,000 left in the bank.

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Nicola Sturgeon tells us now that she did not find that fact “glaringly suspicious”, and the only reasonable explanation for that is that she already knew she’d broken her promises and spent the money, and therefore had no expectation of the money being there and wasn’t at all shocked when it wasn’t.

But even when we know that the 2017 fundraiser proceeds were actually used to pay off the Weirs, the SNP should at least have had the £185,000 from spring 2019 still in the bank at the end of the year, yet it had barely over half that sum.

Inescapably, half of the “ring-fenced” money had once again been spent on general SNP business, not the thing it was expressly and specifically solicited for. And under Scots law that is, unambiguously, a serious crime.

We’re told that the specialist fraud detectives from the Scottish Crime Campus at Gartcosh were furious from when the Crown Office declined to prosecute Sturgeon despite her refusing to answer their questions for seven hours, but we don’t know whether it was in relation to the missing fundraiser money, or suspected complicity in Murrell’s embezzlement (or both, or something else).

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We can understand their anger.

2020 ACCOUNTS

With no general election in 2020, the SNP’s bank balance recovered to the point where the £185,000 from the yes.scot campaign had effectively been replaced.

However, the “Household Guide” still failed to appear.

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(We passingly interject at this point that in Wings’ opinion, the “Household Guide” campaign was a cynical attempt to piggyback on the popularity of our own “Wee Blue Book” from 2014, which has been much-imitated since.)

The party did however purchase £615,270 of what it listed as “tangible investment assets” that year – an almost ninefold increase on the previous year.

It can be deduced from the accounts that the sum is in fact the total of the amounts spent on new office furniture and computer equipment, which tally to exactly £615,270. Let’s just keep that figure in mind for a while.

Remarkably, it’s more than the combined total spend on the same things (£496,652) during the entire other eight years of Sturgeon and Murrell’s joint reign combined.

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It may or may not be coincidence that 2020 was the peak year of Peter Murrell’s embezzlement, in which he’s now admitted to stealing over £150,000 from party funds.

Wings noted at the time that these sums seemed astronomical, and it now looks very much as though the figures may have been artifically inflated in a crude attempt to disguise how much money Murrell was stealing.

In the most recent 2024 accounts, the figure is just £3,038.

2021 ACCOUNTS

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By the time the 2021 accounts were published in August 2022, the cat was firmly out of the bag. Operation Branchform had been under way for just over a year.

(Incidentally exposing the lie of Nicola Sturgeon’s assertions to Laura Kuenssberg that she couldn’t respond to concerns about finances from the NEC because there was a live police inquiry. There simply wasn’t. Her notorious video telling the NEC to shut their faces was in March 2021, but the police didn’t open any sort of inquiry until that April, and did not escalate it into a full-scale investigation until July, by which time John Swinney had already, in May, reassured viewers of The Sunday Show that there was “a huge amount of scrutiny of party finances” within the SNP “day and daily”.)

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After paying for yet another election campaign (£1.65m this time), the party’s reserves were back down below the level of the yes.scot fundraiser, at just £145,000. The “Household Guide” had still not been published (and indeed still hasn’t).

2022 ACCOUNTS

Despite 2022 having no general election, the accounts took another £100,000 hit – in itself a significant red flag for a party still trousering £2.3m in membership fees alone – leaving just over £48,000 in the bank.

Nicola Sturgeon resigned as party leader in February 2021 and Peter Murrell followed suit as chief executive a month later, though ostensibly for misleading communications chief Murray Foote over membership figures.

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So the finances for the Sturgeon/Murrell reign look like this.

At no point during their eight full years in charge did the SNP have as much money in the bank as even the 2017 “ring-fenced” fundraiser brought in. (Though of course that’s fair enough in 2015 and 2016, as it hadn’t happened yet.)

No referendum happened and no “Household Guide” was published, so unless both of those fundraisers were deliberately and knowingly fraudulent (SPOILER: they were), the full £667,000 ought still to be there.

Yet at least £619,000 of it – 93% – has unarguably disappeared. It has never been identified or in any way accounted for in the books. It is not there, and nobody has ever answered for its absence. To this day, Nicola Sturgeon insists there is no “missing money”, as have a string of other senior SNP office-holders.

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(Though in June 2021 Colin Beattie did grudgingly admit that just under £52,000 of it had been spent on unspecified “campaigning”.)

Sturgeon even tried to deflect by telling the quite audaciously false flat-out lie that the discrepancy was explained by the fact that the SNP’s accounts were managed on a cash-flow basis rather than the alternative, less transparent “accruals” method. But the SNP’s accounts have been done on the accruals basis for decades, and still are.

Peter Murrell embezzled around £340,000 from the party from 2017-2022 inclusive. Even if we notionally attribute every single penny of it as having come from the fundraisers (which is a nonsensical idea as there was only one pot of SNP money), that still leaves an almost identical sum – £327,000 – as having been separately stolen from the “Independence Referendum Campaign Fund” (sometimes the “Referendum Appeal Fund”) that the SNP was still soliciting donations for as recently as the summer of 2020, and which can only have been deliberately and knowingly stolen by the rest of the SNP leadership, not embezzled by Murrell.

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Yet inexplicably both the Crown Office and the SNP alike appear to think this is no big deal, and not something that anyone should bother asking any more questions about – even though, as noted above, the crime has already been admitted to by the party’s former treasurer and, as recently as yesterday, by a pompous dim-witted oaf of a former MP and one-time broadcaster who’s – incredibly – being sent out to do the media rounds and blithely insist that there’s nothing to see here.

(Curiously, the Scottish media has no apparent interest in having the story explained by the only journalist who’s been on it for six and a half years.)

But you can’t steal from people and then just give them a vague IOU and pretend that makes it alright, especially when you simply don’t have the money to make good on that IOU. The SNP has only once in its entire history had £667,000 in the bank (the end of 2011, when it had slightly over £1m in cash reserves – the previous year it had just £1,241). At present it’s £619,000 short and hovering on the brink of bankruptcy.

(And in the wildly unlikely event that Keir Starmer agreed to Swinney’s demand for a second indyref tomorrow, what sort of criminally reckless organisation would lend the SNP 600 grand to refill the pot, or extend it an overdraft facility of that size? With membership in freefall and donations almost non-existent they’d have next to zero chance of ever getting it repaid.)

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Not only is the fundraiser money gone, it ain’t ever coming back – despite Ian Blackford’s assurances to the Commons in November 2021. (In which, interestingly, he made it very explicit that the stolen money hadn’t only come from SNP members, shattering the lie that John Nicolson is telling everyone in the media who’ll listen.)

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It is, however, a remarkable coincidence that that £619,000 is almost the exact same amount as the party supposedly spent on office furniture and computer equipment in 2020, Murrell’s peak year of embezzling. If those particular numbers were (as we strongly suspect is the case) mostly fiddled to try to hide his super shopping spree, they effectively kiboshed the SNP’s only chance of ever replacing the stolen fundraiser cash. One crime exposed the other.

The suicidal hubris of the SNP in demanding another snap UK election in 2019 was the other big blunder that buried them inextricably in the hole they’d dug themselves. Wings, of course, had tried to warn them.

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Fighting that election cost the SNP £1.6m, for precious little benefit.

So you can take your pick, really. The SNP’s finances do indeed go up and down, although there’s been a lot more down than up recently. But even so, long after spending the fundraiser money they still had, and squandered, multiple chances to escape the clutches of Operation Branchform. (Chance-squandering seems to be Sturgeon’s main political speciality.)

They could have stopped the 2019 election, which dealt a hammer blow to their bank balance, by doing a deal with the Tories to pass a soft Brexit – as this site repeatedly suggested – and they might well even have managed to negotiate a second indyref as part of the deal. Even if not, they’d at least have saved themselves a fortune.

(They’re very unlikely to ever get a better chance to exert some leverage rather than just fruitlessly begging for another Section 30, certainly. Johnson was on the ropes and desperate for the escape route of an election.)

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Or Nicola Sturgeon could have paid some attention to all the people warning her about the party’s finances – again prominently including this site – and thereby might have stopped Murrell splurging two thirds of a million pounds on possibly-imaginary office chairs and laptops to try to cover his tracks.

Either one would have left the coffers healthy enough to replace the missing fundraiser money long before Sean Clerkin filed his fateful complaint with the police, and none of the traumatic events of the last half-decade would have happened.

But Sturgeon couldn’t bear listening to anyone else’s advice, and now her husband’s in jail and she’s a broken figure of mockery and contempt, who’ll be looking nervously over her shoulder for years to come in fear that her sins will catch up with her one way or another.

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Her ups are over and she’s looking at nothing but slope for the rest of her life. With a fat Holyrood pension she’ll have plenty money to keep her company, of course, even after she’s had to give all Murrell’s little presents back – unless she wants to join him in prison for reset – and her house has been sold to pay his debts. (He’ll also be entitled to a fair chunk of her wealth in the divorce, assuming they ever get round to it.)

At least she won’t miss the kitchen, which she was apparently never in. But with any luck, and certainly if we’ve got any say in the matter, there’s still plenty of heat coming the way of the great betrayer.

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Credit: Farzad Mohsenvand / Unsplash

We’re just days away from co-hosts Mexico facing South Africa in the opening game of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

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There are more teams than ever before, expanding from 32 to 48 nations. There will be more matches, played across three host countries – the United States, Canada and Mexico – spanning an enormous geographical area. FIFA is expecting record-breaking audiences and record-breaking revenues.

But as millions of fans prepare to follow the tournament, there is another industry preparing for kick-off too: the illegal gambling black market.

Major sporting tournaments always attract criminal operators looking to exploit heightened public interest. But this World Cup comes at a particularly dangerous moment, with illegal gambling firms rapidly increasing their advertising presence in Britain and aggressively targeting consumers online.

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That should ring alarm bells in Westminster.

Independent analysis from global marketing intelligence firm WARC has revealed that unregulated operators now account for almost half of all UK gambling advertising spend, with that share set to become the majority within two years.

Just a few years ago, licensed operators accounted for more than 80 per cent of gambling advertising spend. That figure has now fallen to just over half and is projected to drop below 50 per cent by 2028.

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At the same time, separate analysis by H2GC forecasts that the amount staked with illegal operators in Britain will almost double from £17bn this year to more than £33bn by 2028.

That would mean almost one in every five pounds staked online could soon be flowing through the illegal gambling black market.

The direction of travel is clear: regulated firms are scaling back while the harmful black market grows rapidly.

And major sporting events like the World Cup provide the perfect opportunity for illegal operators to accelerate that growth.

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These operators are increasingly sophisticated in how they target UK consumers. Illegal sites routinely advertise “no ID checks”, “crypto betting” and “anonymous gambling” while using cloned branding and offshore networks to appear legitimate.

Many consumers will have no idea whether the operator appearing online is licensed in Britain or not.

That creates a serious risk, particularly for younger audiences who are far more likely to encounter gambling advertising through digital channels than traditional broadcast media.

The regulated betting industry in Britain operates under some of the strictest standards in the world. Licensed operators are required to carry out age verification checks, anti-money laundering controls and safer gambling interventions. They are accountable to the regulator and contribute to the economy, British sport and the new industry statutory levy, which is delivering over £100 million each year for research, prevention and treatment services.

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Illegal operators do none of those things.

They do not carry out meaningful checks. They do not contribute to sport or treatment services. They do not protect vulnerable consumers. And they do not care whether a customer is self-excluded, underage or experiencing gambling harm.

Yet while illegal operators continue expanding aggressively, the regulated sector faces growing restrictions and mounting pressure.

The industry has already committed to removing betting sponsorship from the front of Premier League shirts from next season as part of raising standards. However, while unlicensed operators will be prohibited from appearing on the front of shirts, they will still be able to advertise elsewhere around Premier League matches and broadcasts. Demand for betting does not disappear when regulated advertising reduces. It simply shifts elsewhere.

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And increasingly, that “elsewhere” is the black market.

If legitimate operators become less visible while illegal advertisers continue to grow unchecked, consumers will inevitably struggle to distinguish between regulated and unregulated gambling.

That is not a safer market.

It is a market where criminal operators gain visibility, vulnerable consumers lose protections and British sport loses funding and investment.

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The overwhelming majority of the 22.5 million adults in Britain who enjoy a bet each month do so safely and responsibly with regulated operators. The priority should always be keeping those customers within the regulated market, where protections exist and standards are enforced.

The World Cup should belong to fans and sport, not criminal gambling operators exploiting the tournament to expand the illegal black market.

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Rep. Randy Feenstra conceded the GOP primary for Iowa governor on Tuesday, a shocking upset after he earned President Donald Trump’s last-minute endorsement.

Feenstra announced in a speech to supporters that he called Zach Lahn, another Republican candidate for governor, to congratulate him. Lahn held a very slight edge in results around midnight Eastern time, but the Associated Press has still not called the race.

The three-term representative outspent Lahn, a businessperson and former GOP operative, by nearly $1 million and leaned heavily into his MAGA credentials during the primary.

Feenstra’s concession is a blow for Trump, who has seen most of his chosen candidates this cycle sail to victory or advance to runoff elections — until now. He backed Feenstra just four days before the primary, a last-ditch attempt to bolster his loyal GOP ally in a race that became increasingly competitive in the final stretch. Feenstra had asked for Trump’s endorsement earlier this year and began calling himself a “Trump conservative” in ads even before receiving the president’s backing.

The race kicked off when Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds decided against running for reelection, with Feenstra, Lahn and three other candidates competing for the GOP nomination. Feenstra, who boasts a long record in the state and in Congress, was widely viewed as the front-runner, though the latest primary polling revealed he was on shaky standing.

Lahn has never held public office, but spent years working in Republican politics and running campaigns in Montana and Colorado. In this race, he positioned himself as a political outsider. “I’m my own biggest donor and I cannot be bought,” he said in one face-to-camera ad. “I’m running because career politicians, special interests and corporate giants have betrayed Iowans.”Lahn is a native Iowan but spent many years out of the state, most recently opening a private school in Wichita, and reportedly voted in Kansas from 2018 through 2022.

The face-off with Democrat Rob Sand in November will be a marquee race, with Iowa Democrats eager to win a governor’s race in the state for the first time since 2006. Sand, the Iowa state auditor, is the lone Iowa Democrat to hold statewide office.

Andrew Howard contributed to this report.

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Iowa state Rep. Josh Turek won his Senate primary Tuesday, a victory for national Democrats who helped boost him as they seek to flip the critical seat.

He will face Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP nominee, to compete in what has become one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races, as both parties battle for control of the upper chamber.

Turek, a wheelchair basketball player who was on teams that won two Paralympic gold medals, defeated state Sen. Zach Wahls in a chaotic primary election that turned into a proxy war between the Democratic Party’s leaders and its anti-establishment wing. Wahls frequently accused Turek of being beholden to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — who didn’t formally endorse in the race but whose leadership PAC maxed out to Turek’s campaign — and outside groups like VoteVets, which spent more than $10 million on advertising for Turek. That figure is more than three times the combined spending from Turek’s and Wahls’ campaigns.

In the end, that money — in cohort with Turek’s “prairie populism” pitch focused on building up the working class — helped him prevail.

Turek also boasted significant backing from Democrats in the state, including former Sen. Tom Harkin, the last Democrat to represent Iowa in the U.S. Senate. He enters the general election in a deadlock with Hinson, with preprimary polling showing the two in a statistical tie.

Democrats have not elected a senator to Washington since 2008, when Harkin was elected to his final term. But they view this cycle as a golden opportunity, thanks to a sagging economy and growing frustration with the Trump administration’s tariffs, which spiraled Iowa’s agriculture sector into chaos.

And Turek, who was elected to the Iowa House of Representatives in 2022, has been through tough races before: In that first election, he defeated a Republican opponent by just six votes.

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In May 2019, I sat down with my mum in her living room and watched the first episode of Years and Years. This is a dystopian BBC drama created by screenwriter Russell T Davies. He is the same man who brought back Doctor Who in the mid-noughties. Since watching it in 2019, the six-part series has become an oracle. This is because almost every fictional prediction Davies makes in the series has terrifyingly come true.

Please note this article contains spoilers.

Predictions in Years and Years that came true

Years and Years follows Mancunian family the Lyons, who gather one night in 2019 to celebrate the latest addition to their family, baby Lincoln. The drama then quickly moves into the future and spans fifteen years of political turmoil, economic instability, environmental destruction and technological advances. Meanwhile, a far-right party, headed by celebrity-turned-politician Vivienne Rook (played by the brilliant Emma Thompson), rises to power in Britain.

In the first episode alone, which covers the period of 2019 to 2024, Queen Elizabeth II dies. President Trump is re-elected for a second term. Also, a Russian-backed military government takes control of Ukraine. Then, in 2025, character Celeste loses her job to artificial intelligence. Later in the series, Rook’s far-right, anti-immigration ‘Four Star Party’ secures a majority in the next general elections. Sounds scarily familiar, right?

It’s uncanny that, when interviewed by BBC shortly after the series aired, Davies said the idea for Years and Years was hatched a decade earlier. You might argue that Queen Elizabeth II was in her 90s and would have had to die at some point. Although the year 2022 is scarily spot-on. You might also argue that he may have been inspired by the rise of far-right parties in Europe. It is true that Russia had already begun its invasion of the Ukraine in 2014. But in October 2018, when the series was being filmed, no one could have foreseen Trump getting re-elected. Likewise, no one could have predicted a far-right party actually rising to power in Britain. Back then, Nigel Farage’s Reform Party was still called the Brexit Party. No one really took Farage and his outlandish politics seriously back then.

Certainly, when I first watched the series, the idea that you could lose your job to artificial intelligence or that a far-right party would one day win a general election in the UK was far-fetched. In 2019, AI was still an emerging topic and not a mainstream conversation. Many of us still believed that our government would forever be dominated by Labour and the Conservatives. However, as Davies’s predictions have continued to come true (the latest being Reform’s local elections success in May), Years and Years has become as accurate in its prophecy-telling as The Simpsons.

Other dystopian works that have come true

Years and Years is not the first dystopian TV series, film or novel to fulfil its prophecies.

The most often-used example is George Orwell’s 1984, in which a totalitarian party implements mass surveillance of citizens via two-way screens called telescreens containing hidden cameras and microphones. 

It has been over seven decades since 1984 was published and mass surveillance is part-and-parcel of our everyday lives. For example, the CCTV cameras are everywhere, and our smartphones ‘listen’ to us.

According to Liberty, Britain has the most intrusive mass surveillance system of any democratic country. This is thanks to the Snoopers’ Charter or Investigatory Powers Act. This act grants the state the power to collect and store information on what we do and say online. 

Why dystopian fiction is not fantasy

Dystopian fiction, as a genre, is less sci-fi and fantasy than the TV, film and publishing industries would have us believe.

What the three genres have in common is the aspect of world-building, in which the writer constructs an imaginary world that is believable. However, this is the only common denominator. Dystopian fiction is really a commentary on the social conditions we are already living in. What writers do is build upon both past and current political, social, economic and environmental conditions.

Indeed, author Margaret Atwood has often said that The Handmaid’s Tale was inspired by things that have already happened to women as opposed to being complete figments of her imagination. The Christian evangelism dominating American society in her book has long been a shaping force in American politics. It continues to be, as we see so evidently in Trump’s America.

An inevitable return to totalitarianism?

Most dystopian TV, film and literature imagine a totalitarian world order, but we have lived through totalitarianism before and we continue to live through authoritarianism. The level of restriction on freedom of expression, freedom of press, the right to gather and the right to protest here in the UK is living proof of that.

Back in January of this year, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood proposed a new AI-powered mass surveillance system where:

the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.

And that’s under a supposedly ‘centre-left’ Labour government!

Thanks to Years and Years, I now watch dystopian TV and read dystopian books with a less sceptical lens. Who knows, maybe the next thing to come true from Davies’s predictions will be the ability to project phone filters onto our actual faces.

Featured image via the BBC / the Canary

By Yousra Samir Imran

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THE EMPIRE STATE STRIKES BACK: New York Democrats are moving full bore ahead with their plans to join the nationwide redistricting war.

And their efforts are more expansive than their constitutional amendment to allow mid-decade changes to congressional maps: Democrats are also moving a measure that would permanently give the Legislature the authority to decide the wording of ballot questions like the expected 2027 redistricting referendum.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said today the decision to take such an aggressive approach — the amendment would eliminate a ban on lines drawn to favor political parties — was based on the Supreme Court decision, which made redistricting “more of a wide-open process.”

“For us here in New York, we want to be able to have as much flexibility in drawing districts as other states,” Heastie said. “Asking New York to play fair while everybody else is playing ruthless, it’s not right to ask us to do that.”

Does that mean the speaker will be “ruthless” when picking up the mapmaking pen in 2028?

“I’m going to play fair based on how other people play,” he said.

Before the Empire State gets to the point where new maps are drawn, voters would need to approve the amendment next November. And the parallel ballot language effort from Democrats stands to increase the chances of that happening.

That bill would strip the bipartisan Board of Elections of its power to decide how constitutional amendments appear on the ballot and let the Legislature determine the wording seen by voters.

The move raised the specter that next year’s referendum won’t highlight its potential to legalize gerrymandering, and instead include platitudes like asking voters if they want to “protect democracy.”

“Clearly, they’re doing this with a purpose,” said state Sen. Jack Martins, a Nassau County Republican. “The last thing we should do is play politics with our state constitution.”

As it now stands, the attorney general’s office makes recommendations on ballot wording to the two Democratic and two Republican commissioners on the Board of Elections. Those commissioners have the final say over what ballot questions look like.

“Having both sides is a strength,” said Peter Kosinski, the board’s Republican co-chair. “Making sure voters see fair language — not just partisan language on the ballot — should be our goal. And I think the Board of Elections achieves that.”

Democrats counter that they’re best suited for determining this language.

“The will of the Legislature is extrapolated from what the people want, as opposed to the evenly-divided Board of Elections,” Senate Deputy Leader Mike Gianaris said. “The voters of this state have elected Democrats to overwhelming majorities in both houses. Why should the Republican party have 50 percent of the say in what legislative proposals look like on the ballot?”

“We just think it’s better to be in our hands,” Heastie said. — Bill Mahoney

From the Capitol

NON-DISCLOSURE PUSH: The advocacy group Lift Our Voices is making a last-minute push for a bill that would place new restrictions on the use of non-disclosure agreements.

The group, co-founded by Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky, is pushing to change “toxic workplace cultures.”

“New York should not be in the business of silencing workers,” Carlson and Roginsky said in a joint statement. “California, Washington, and New Jersey have already banned NDAs that keep survivors of workplace abuse from speaking out, and it’s time for New York to do the same.”

The bill, which would prohibit the use of nondisclosure agreements in workplace discrimination cases, is among the hundreds of proposals being considered in the final week of the legislative session. — Nick Reisman

REDISTRICTING RODEO: New York Democrats’ pending redistricting amendment — first reported Monday night by POLITICO — is getting a thumbs up from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

“This is just the beginning of our decisive response to the Jim Crow-like tactics unleashed by the Supreme Court when it gutted voting rights in America,” Jeffries said in a statement. “We will ensure that there are free and fair elections moving forward. The Empire State will strike back.”

The proposed changes would enable Democrats to take an aggressive approach redrawing New York’s House lines by 2028.

Jeffries has taken a keen interest in his home state’s efforts to change the redistricting process. He previously appointed Rochester Rep. Joe Morelle, a Democrat who previously served in the state Assembly, to coordinate the effort with Albany lawmakers. — Nick Reisman

PACKAGING FLOPS, DATA CENTER MORATORIUM MOVES: Democratic lawmakers plan to send Gov. Kathy Hochul an omnibus measure on data centers for artificial intelligence, including a one-year moratorium on new projects.

The governor has been hesitant about the prospect of a statewide moratorium, which would be the first in the nation if she signs it.

The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez and Assemblymember Didi Barrett, rolls in several proposals from lawmakers aimed at ensuring data centers don’t lead to higher energy bills for residents. It also includes requirements for a new rate class for data centers and labor standards.

Environmental advocates and Democratic lawmakers had initially proposed a three-year moratorium.

“Regulating hyperscale centers and also figuring out how to properly regulate artificial intelligence is an existential question,” Gonzalez said. “We’re taking a first step here as a state, but it also doesn’t mean that we are getting in the way of innovation.”

Meanwhile, in a blow to environmental advocates, Heastie told reporters today that he does not plan to bring the plastics bill up for a vote — saying it doesn’t have the support to pass.

It’s the same line he offered last session, though advocates contend the votes are there and that it’s special interest lobbyists standing in the way.

The extended producer responsibility bill aims to shift the cost of waste management and recycling away from local governments to companies that sell packaged goods. It was one of the most lobbied on pieces of legislation outside of the budget last session.

Supporters of the bill were hoping it gave the state a chance to make up for a budget that rolled back New York’s landmark climate legislation. Opponents, meanwhile, have pointed to cost concerns ahead of an election focused on affordability.

Heastie cited cost as the main reason Democrats in the Assembly are hesitant about the bill. However, the bill has 77 co-sponsors, more than the 76 votes needed to pass. Heastie himself said he was a “yes” on the bill. — Marie J. French and Mona Zhang

FROM CITY HALL

HER VIEWS THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’: Democratic socialist congressional hopeful Darializa Avila Chevalier is under fire for a spray of inflammatory social media posts about former President Joe Biden, police officers and various other individuals and issues.

But Mamdani — who endorsed Avila Chevalier’s insurgent campaign against Rep. Adriano Espaillat last week — waved off concerns about her online outbursts today.

“She said herself that a lot of these [posts] don’t reflect her views today, and I’m incredibly excited to be supporting her today and her vision for not only a New York City but frankly a United States of America that working people can afford,” Mamdani told reporters this morning at a press conference in Queens.

Most of Avila Chevalier’s eyebrow-raising social media missives that have emerged in recent days were posted in 2020, when she was 26. As first reported by Playbook, her expletive-riddled messaging included posts calling Biden “a rapist” and “a war criminal” and one in which she wrote former Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Mamdani ally, “hates Black people.”

More recent tweets have also emerged. CNN reported yesterday that Avila Chevalier posted in 2021 that the “only moral way forward” is to “literally” abolish all police, prisons and borders. She also reposted messages calling for the seizure of “all properties from landlords” and the nationalization of all utilities, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.

Avila Chevalier said in a statement that she has “grown considerably” since she thumbed out the tweets. — Chris Sommerfeldt 

FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

CHERRY PICKING: It’s been nearly a day since the debate between Rep. Dan Goldman and former city Comptroller Brad Lander — and they’re taking the fight online.

Last night, Lander’s campaign posted a debate clip on social media of Goldman saying, “I do take corporate PAC money” and “I have no problem taking money from anyone who wants to give it to me” — a collage taken from a longer Goldman remark in which he explained that he only accepts corporate PAC money in his leadership PAC in response to a question from Lander about it.

“You are right, I do not take any corporate PAC money in my own campaign account to use on my own campaign, and you also are correct that I do take corporate PAC money in my leadership PAC,” Goldman said at the debate. “That leadership PAC cannot be used for me. It cannot be used for my campaign. It is only used to help my colleagues win back the majority, and I have no problem taking money from anyone who wants to give it to me to help the Democrats take back the majority.”

Goldman responded to Lander on X, writing: “Are you seriously arguing that we shouldn’t do literally everything in our power to win back the majority?” In another post, he charged: “You cannot believe anything he says. If he will edit out the most important part to mislead voters, what else is he lying about?”

Since the beginning of last year, Goldman’s leadership PAC has taken tens of thousands of dollars from corporate PACs and disbursed more than $100,000 to Democratic candidates and organizations, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.

Lander doubled down Tuesday. “Wow, what Dan Goldman said is he’s perfectly fine taking money from anyone,” he said in a video using the clipped portion of the debate. “This is how we got here, is by a Democratic Party that is backed by billionaires and wealthy special interests … That’s why we need better Democrats, folks who don’t take all that corporate PAC money, who fight for working people.” — Madison Fernandez

IN OTHER NEWS

— PAC MENTALITY: American Priorities, a super PAC formed to counter pro-Israel groups like AIPAC, has pledged to spend $2 million for Democratic primary candidates Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez. (The New York Times)

— TAKE IT FROM ME: Former Mayor Eric Adams met with Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Blakeman to offer advice on campaigning in New York City and signaled he may be open to endorsing him. (New York Post)

— CAPITOL LOSS: New data reveals population shifts across upstate New York, with Albany losing residents while Saratoga and Warren gained them based on quality of life, housing and employment considerations. (Times Union)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

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The AUKUS war pact between the US, UK and Australia is expensive, secretive, and the “worst defence decision” since WWII. That’s according to a respected Australian expert, who says a proper inquiry is long overdue. Ian Lowe, an emeritus professor at Griffith University, Queensland, published a recent critique of the deal, saying it was:

Negotiated rapidly and in secret [and that] the AUKUS pact to produce new nuclear-powered submarines is among the most expensive, consequential and opaque deals in British and Australian military history.

Australia probes shadowy defence deal

Australians are holding a public inquiry, a move that Lowe welcomes. The scholar pulled no punches, saying:

The trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK and the USA was negotiated in secret in 2021 by the leaders of those three countries. Not one of those leaders is still in office […] given that this is by far the most costly defence project in Australian history, there has been no parliamentary scrutiny of the deal in Australia. It continues to be shrouded in secrecy, despite the high stakes and eye-watering projected cost.

He also cited a former Australian general, Michael Smith, who called the arrangement:

The worst defence decision since we relied on Britain to defend us in World War II.

AUKUS has been in the news for two days running. On 1 June, the Canary reported a joint announcement between US, UK and Australian defence chiefs unveiling an underwater drone programme. Underwater AI war drones appear at the heart of the new deal.

Lowe pointed out the public is very much out of the loop about the scale and scope of AUKUS. So much so that concerned citizens are investigating the pact themselves:

Now a group of former MPs, retired military and naval officers, leading strategists and academics, human rights lawyers and union leaders have joined together to hold a public inquiry. It is being funded by donations from unions, community organisations, faith groups and concerned citizens.

The inquiry “formally launched” on 2 June, explaining that it is:

coordinated by the Australian Peace and Security Forum (APSF) to ensure it is grounded in expertise, independence and evidence-based examination of the issues. The fundamental question being considered is: will AUKUS keep Australia safe – at what cost?

AUKUS risks, costs, and Britain’s bill

Budgets will be a major concern. 

The Australian government has budgeted for spending some A$368 billion – close to £200 billion – for eight submarines.

The boats will supposedly be delivered in the early 2030s:

Given those timescales and the fact that the submarines have not yet even been designed, there is understandable scepticism about the budgeted final costs.

And it isn’t clear that the submarines would make Australia more secure. Lowe said he’d held a workshop with submariners. The sailors were split:

While they could operate away from base for longer periods and at greater depth than conventional submarines, their size would prevent them operating in the comparatively shallow waters around Australia’s northern coastline, making them less useful for defending our territory.

And there are worries over Australia’s nuclear non-proliferation obligations and the issue of toxic waste: the subs are nuclear powered:

The AUKUS agreement makes Australia responsible for waste management. That poses a huge problem.

Previous Australian attempts to store much lower-level toxic waste than the boats would produce have failed. And Aussie First Nations people have opposed the schemes energetically.

Lowe said Brits should pay attention to the pact. Because they are picking up the UK end of the bill. The boats are being built at Barrow-in-Furness in England’s north-west:

As a former member of our parliament said, “So many questions, so few answers. The Australian public deserve more than Cold War rhetoric to justify the mind-boggling expenditure”.

He added:

British taxpayers, who will be picking up the tab for the Barrow-in-Furness part of the operation, should be watching the inquiry with interest.

Lowe is right. The UK’s role in AUKUS does need to be made public. PM Keir Starmer may not have started that particular project. But he has certainly lashed the country’s fortunes to the fantasy of military spending bringing growth. The whole militarist edifice need to be examined. And where necessary pulled down.

Featured image via Kin Cheung / Getty Images

By Joe Glenton

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A brash Trump- and Israel-aligned millionaire — Abelardo De la Espriella — has come out ahead in the first round of Colombia’s presidential election. Colombia’s left-wing government has strongly criticised Israel’s genocide and resisted Trump’s attempts to reassert US influence in Latin America. Meanwhile, De la Espriella  has vowed to reverse these results and restore ties with Israel.

Far-right candidate sides with Israel

As Latin America’s fourth–largest economy, this could be a pivotal. Colombia has stood for decades as a key US ally in Latin America. It’s also been one of Israel’s staunchest partners in the region. But its first left-wing president Gustavo Petro has severed ties with Israel over its genocidal crimes in Gaza, and criticised intensifying US crimes against Latin American governments under Donald Trump.

Far-right presidential candidate De la Espriella has pledged to:

• Renew an “alliance” with the apartheid state of Israel, putting an embassy in Jerusalem and building “a direct, firm and strategic relationship with Israel“.
• Align with Trump and his aggressive expansionism in Latin America.
• End peaceful attempts to consign Colombia’s dark history of military conflict to the past. Instead, escalate confrontation and boost military funding through a hardline ‘iron fist’ approach. He would buy military equipment from the US and Israel.
• Set up ten mega-prisons as part of an intensifying drug war — the kind that has failed consistently both in Colombia and elsewhere.
• Give police permission to shoot protesters if they deem it appropriate.
• Expand the exploitation of natural resources.
• Embrace the capitalist extremism of neoliberalism again, slashing private-sector taxes and gutting public spending.

De la Espriella lived in Miami before the election campaign, and will probably leave again if he loses. And for years, he had served as a lawyer to prominent criminals. His supporters have been flying the Israeli flag alongside campaign banners. Propagandists at United with Israel! have expressed excitement about:

the possibility of reversing one of the most dramatic diplomatic ruptures in Latin America.

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar, meanwhile, has celebrated the momentum behind his “friend“:

Congratulations to my friend El Tigre @ABDELAESPRIELLA on his victory in the first round of Colombia’s Presidential elections.
Good luck in the next round.
Firme por la patria! pic.twitter.com/u9mTAZEDCc

— Gideon Sa'ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) May 31, 2026

Another rich misogynist for the far-right

De la Espriella has modelled himself after Trump, learning how leaders can successfully exploit algorithms and public anger to amass power. While pushing ‘conservative family values,’ he has been openly misogynistic, unapologetically sadistic. And he’s come from outside politics to lead the presidential race relying on:

aggressive use of social media, support from charismatic Evangelical pastors, and backing from key conservative figures across Latin America.

The mining industry has been pushing people to back him. US politicians have been doing the same, while Ecuador’s far-right president tried to bolster his campaign with a dodgy promise to cancel tariffs.

Despite all the personal disagreements on the Colombian right, they share a common hatred of the left in the end. So it’s unsurprising that they’ve been uniting behind de la Espriella. Fellow far-right candidate Paloma Valencia, for example, wasted no time in backing him to ‘oppose communism’.

Recently, meanwhile, Colombia’s left paid particular attention to a scandal showing the Trump regime, drug traffickers, Israel, and the Latin American far right collaborating to undermine progressives in the region. So the prospect of underhand tactics is absolutely on the cards too.

The peace-building, left-wing alternative

De la Espriella got 43% of the vote in the first round. But main left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda was close behind with 40%. So the left is still very much in the race.

Cepeda and Petro’s Pacto Histórico coalition faced consistent congressional opposition to its programme. But it still managed to reduce poverty, inflation and unemployment. And its gains in congress in March’s elections suggested it remained popular.

Drug-related violence has long been a pervasive problem in Colombia, and there has been a slight increase coinciding with Trump’s second term in the US. But Cepeda believes in continuing the push for peace rather than escalation, as does his Indigenous running mate, human rights activist Aida Quilcué.

Cepeda has also been critical of Israel’s genocide and apologism for it on Colombia’s right.

In the first round of the presidential vote, de la Espriella predictably (as a colonial cheerleader) did well in largely white and conservative areas. Cepeda, meanwhile, won in majority Black and Indigenous communities.

Around 24 million Colombians voted, but there are 41 million people who are eligible to vote. And turnout is usually a lot higher in the second round, which in this case will take place on 21 June.

The Latin American election is far from over. Voters on the fence will now need to decide between the brash and divisive de la Espriella and the calmer, more pragmatic Cepeda. The Colombian left, meanwhile, will need to unite and make a strong case for peace in order to stop the far right and its sadistic colonial friends.

Featured image via XX / Getty Images

By Ed Sykes

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Geoff Shaw is one of the new crop of Reform UK councillors who were elected to office in May 2026. And like many of his new colleagues, Shaw is already attracting all the wrong sort of attention:

Reform UK’s Councillor Geoff Shaw, black face with ‘rasta wig’.

Theydon Bois, Epping Forest District Council.

Any comment @EFReform or @McIvorJaymey? pic.twitter.com/WpepSiD7Ky

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— Reform Party UK Exposed (@reformexposed) June 2, 2026

Disgraceful

Shaw is one of 11 Reform politicians who won a seat on the Epping Forest District Council. This gave Reform a majority of the 18 seats available. Given the rate at which Reform loses councillors, however, the party may struggle to hold on to that majority — especially with politicians like Reform’s Shaw in the mix.

In the offending picture, Shaw appears to have Black and White Minstrel-style face paint on:

From 1958 to 1978 the BBC here in the U.K. broadcast the Black and White Minstrel show pic.twitter.com/YjBYqh80AU

— MAGA deserves everything they voted for (@nogg_the) May 24, 2026

Reporting on the history of the show, David Hendy wrote for the BBC website:

What’s harder to fathom is why, in an era in which tens of thousands of black people had long been settled in Britain or were trying to make it their home, a BBC which had already managed to reflect something of the reality of black British life… took so little account of the offence caused by white performers blacking-up their faces on a peak-time TV show.

Hendy added:

For the best part of the next twenty years it didn’t seem to occur to anyone in a position of authority at the BBC that the series really was offensive to more than just a few “killjoys”. This failure to even see any racism was a measure of the BBC’s real problem: the archival record of its behind-the-scenes thinking during this period is far from flattering.

On that record, one BBC executive wrote at the time of the show’s airing:

The best advice that could be given to coloured people by their friends would be: “on this issue, we can see your point, by [SIC] in your own best interests, for Heaven’s sake shut up. You are wasting valuable ammunition on a comparatively insignificant target”.”

While it’s obvious to most why it’s offensive to portray Black people as cartoonish caricatures, people like Shaw still aren’t getting it. To make it completely clear, then, we need to go back to the start.

The history of minstrelry

The tradition of Black minstrelry began in the US, and it emerged at a time when Black people lacked the rights of white American citizens. As the National Museum of African American History & Culture reported:

The first minstrel shows were performed in 1830s New York by white performers with blackened faces (most used burnt cork or shoe polish) and tattered clothing who imitated and mimicked enslaved Africans on Southern plantations. These performances characterized blacks as lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, and prone to thievery and cowardice. Thomas Dartmouth Rice, known as the “Father of Minstrelsy,” developed the first popularly known blackface character, “Jim Crow” in 1830. By 1845, the popularity of the minstrel had spawned an entertainment subindustry, manufacturing songs and sheet music, makeup, costumes, as well as a ready-set of stereotypes upon which to build new performances.

In other words, the practice emerged as a means for white Americans to ridicule and denigrate their Black countryfolk. And it persisted because enterprising racists figured out how to turn a profit from it.

You can’t separate the act of Blackface from the history of Blackface. And while you can utter phrases like ‘it’s just face paint‘ or ‘I don’t mean any offence‘, in doing so you sound like a fucking idiot.

Getting away with it

We’re not sure what Shaw’s excuse will be yet, but we’d be very surprised if it contains the word ‘sorry.’ After all, he’s a member of the party which happily tolerated the following:

• Reform activist worries growth of Jewish population could ruin UK culture.
• Media silent as antisemitic Reform activist spotted campaigning.
• Another Reform candidate praises Oswald Moseley — A rite of party initiation?
• Reform has put a suspended racist in charge of campaign finances.
• Reform candidate wants to ‘tear down’ the NHS.
• Video emerges of Reform’s ‘Nazi salute’ candidate drink driving.

Featured image via the Canary

By Willem Moore

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