Politics
Human rights group calls out Israel: ‘if everyone’s lying, open Gaza’
Human rights group Euro-Med Monitor has called Israel’s bluff on its genocide denialism. The murderous apartheid colony is again lashing out and calling the whole world liars for condemning its crimes. Euro-Med kept it simple and to the point: “if everyone’s lying, open Gaza”:
Israel, if everyone is lying, open Gaza.
If the ICC, the UN, international human rights organisations, Israeli rights groups, journalists, doctors, humanitarian workers, aid agencies, witnesses, and survivors are all lying, then open Gaza.
Let independent investigators,… pic.twitter.com/Uk8m1Pt8vL
— Euro-Med Monitor (@EuroMedHR) May 12, 2026
‘Every accusation is a confession’
Israel refuses to allow foreign journalists into Gaza, except for a few tame, ’embedded’ pro-Israel hacks who see and report what Israel wants. The colonisers have murdered hundreds of journalists – along with their families – for reporting on its crimes. It does the same in Lebanon. It attacks everyone who calls the genocidal spade a spade. None of that would be necessary if the accusations were lies.
No, the only lies are those Israel tells in its “every accusation is a confession” mode. Brutal murders, weaponised rape, torture, targeting of innocents. None of those are the acts of Palestinians or their supporters. All of them are documented atrocities of the apartheid occupation.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
The ‘chaos with Ed Miliband’ that David Cameron once warned about could soon become a political reality in Britain. As far-fetched as it sounds, the Net Zero secretary and failed Labour leader is seriously being touted as a potential successor to Keir Starmer.
The Times reported last week that Miliband would be prepared to run for leader should health secretary Wes Streeting move to trigger an imminent leadership contest. If Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester mayor and the soft left’s king over the water, cannot get himself in parliament and on the ballot in time, then Miliband might be prepared to throw his own hat in the ring. Well, Wes Streeting’s big moment now appears to be imminent. Patrick Maguire and Aubrey Allegretti report in The Times that Streeting has told his allies he is preparing to resign as soon as tomorrow.
You might still think Miliband is a long shot, given how forcefully the public rejected him in the 2015 General Election. But this is the Labour Party we’re talking about – a party that has long ceased to have any connection with the masses or feel for public opinion. And so, as incredible as it may sound to those outside the Labour tribe, polls show that Miliband is the most popular minister in the current cabinet among Labour’s rank-and-file members, the very folk who may yet have the decisive say over who to anoint as our next prime minister. The liberal-left Independent sees Miliband as the top contender for the job. The New Statesman, Labour’s in-house magazine, has urged Ed to be installed in Downing Street, at least as a caretaker leader, while Burnham plots his way back to the Commons.
For those of us not in Labour la-la-land, a Miliband premiership is a terrifying prospect. After all, he is not merely a dreadful energy secretary. He is one of the main architects of Britain’s sky-high energy prices. And this makes him one of the leading causes of Britain’s industrial decline. Indeed, Miliband’s economic vandalism stretches right back to his time under Gordon Brown, as energy and climate change secretary between 2008 and 2010.
The Climate Change Act 2008, which Miliband stewarded through parliament, locked Britain into legally binding carbon-reduction targets with almost no democratic debate about what this would mean in practice – namely, higher energy bills for both consumers and industry, with catastrophic consequences.
The climate agenda initiated by Miliband led to an ever-growing dependence on intermittent renewable energy, which cannot keep the lights on when the wind stops blowing or the Sun stops shining. The more renewables in the energy system, the harder and costlier it becomes to match supply with demand. When turbines sit idle on still days, gas has to be procured at short notice and at inflated prices. When the wind is too strong, operators are paid – handsomely, at the consumer’s expense – to switch off.
By the time Miliband returned to government in 2024, the link between Net Zero and rising energy costs could no longer credibly be denied. But that hasn’t stopped him or given him pause for thought. In fact, not even the war in Iran, which has prompted one of the largest energy-supply shocks in modern history, has been able to dislodge Miliband’s dogmatic pursuit of energy austerity. His response to sky-high prices has been, characteristically, to push for more of what caused them.
Although Miliband talks a good game about ‘energy security’ and abundance through renewables, what decarbonising the grid means in practice is shrinking the supply of available energy. As one analysis by researchers at Peel Hunt found, the total electricity available in Britain has declined by roughly a fifth since the New Labour government first made climate change the organising principle of energy policy in the 2000s.
In the context of today’s Iran crisis, Miliband’s policies border on the suicidal. The North Sea still holds billions of barrels of extractable oil and gas. Lincolnshire sits atop a shale gas field large enough to supply the country for years. Yet the energy secretary has continued the punishing windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas, and – in an act of almost theatrical self-destruction – ordered concrete poured into Britain’s last fracking wells. Meanwhile, his so-called Energy Independence Bill, trailed in today’s King’s Speech, would formally ban any energy secretary from issuing new drilling licences. In other words, Miliband wants to make his energy transition – from cheap, reliable fossil fuels to expensive and unreliable renewables – permanent and irreversible.
The car industry, the steel industry, the chemicals industry – all are being crushed under the weight of Miliband’s diktats. The result is factory closures, job losses and hollowed-out communities. The green agenda is built on the suffering of the working class – the very people whom the Labour Party was set up to fight for.
Adam Smith once memorably reassured us that there is ‘a lot of ruin in a nation’ – that a nation as resilient as Britain can withstand years of mismanagement and crisis before reaching total collapse. I dare say, he failed to anticipate the phrase, ‘Prime Minister Ed Miliband’.
This is a graph of how many seats each party won in last week’s supposedly “proportional” Scottish Parliament election, compared to how many they would have won if the electoral system had been actually proportional.
The SNP and Greens are now over-represented by 37% and 50% respectively, while the Unionist parties are all under-represented compared to their vote share by (left to right) 26%, 19%, 20% and 23%.
“Pro-indy” parties have 73 seats (57%) rather than the 52 seats that their 40.8% vote share should have earned, while Unionist parties have 56 seats (or 43%) when they should have 69 for their 56% of the vote.
(The other 4% of the vote was scattered among 24 other parties or independents, with 1.8% going to identifiably pro-independence candidates, increasing the total “pro-indy” vote to 42.6%, fully 10 points short of current polling for independence itself.)
It is, therefore, a little bit of a stretch to present the refusal of the UK government to grant a second independence referendum on the basis of the results as an outrage against “democracy”. If an outrage against democracy has taken place, it happened last Thursday.
The over-representation of the indy side is a combination of the unbalanced First Past The Post system that elects more than half of MSPs, and of pro-indy voters splitting their votes, mostly between the SNP and Greens, despite the SNP urging its voters to cast both votes for the SNP.
The differences between each party’s constituency and list votes are instructive.
SNP LIST VOTE
29% lower than constituency vote
LABOUR LIST VOTE
16% lower
REFORM LIST VOTE
6% higher
CONSERVATIVE LIST VOTE
0.001% lower
LIB DEM LIST VOTE
17% lower
GREEN LIST VOTE
612% higher
That’s not a typo at the end – the Green list vote was more than six times their constituency vote, because they’re not really a proper party like the others and only ran in half-a-dozen constituency seats.
Had each party’s list vote share matched its constituency one, the results would have come out like this, according to the Devolved Elections seat projector.
The “pro-indy” parties would have fallen one short of a majority. The other way round (constituencies adjusted to the same as the list vote), the result would have been very different.
Tilting in favour of the list vote would have produced 81 seats for the “pro-indy” parties, an increase of 17. Which is a stark illustration of what was already blindingly obvious to everyone even within touching distance of sanity or arithmetical competence – “both votes SNP” is an absolutely cretinous strategy if what you want is a majority of pro-indy MSPs.
The reason such a majority was achieved this year was because of the 250,000 SNP voters who didn’t also vote SNP on the list, not the 625,000 who did.
Now, that’s a purely statistical argument, not a political one, because a “pro-indy” majority of MSPs will make absolutely no difference to anything in terms of securing independence. We know that for a fact because there’s been one for every single day since the indyref, but it has achieved nothing whatsoever.
But don’t worry! The same imbeciles who came up with that plainly demonstrable proven serial failure of a plan have another one for you!
Hooooooooo boy. Let’s just assess that one for a moment, shall we?
Firstly, as this site explained three and a half years ago, using a Westminster election rather than a Holyrood one as a plebiscite is monstrously stupid for a whole raft of reasons. The media coverage will treat Scotland as an afterthought because it’s only 8% of the country, and you’ll lose the heavily indy-favouring 16/17-year-olds and EU citizens who can vote in the latter but not the former.
(In fact, treating any single election as the plebiscite is dumb. It should simply be standing SNP policy that ANY time a majority of Scottish voters vote for parties whose manifesto says that a vote for them will be taken as a vote for independence, a clear and indisputable democratic mandate has been achieved. Of course it never will be, because the SNP is pathologically jealous of other indy parties’ votes.)
Using a UK election also prevents voters from separating the issues of the plebiscite and normal politics (because they only have one vote), whereas in a Holyrood vote you can say that the constituency vote is for independence and the list vote is for the actual election.
But secondly, you really do have to be an Olympic-class moron to imagine that the SNP are likely to be MORE popular in 2029 than they are now.
They’ve been in power for 19 years already, have record low approval ratings and have been haemorrhaging members and voters for the last half-decade. They won because the opposition was divided four ways, not because anybody likes them. Their vote share at this election dropped from 44% in 2021 to less than 33%. They’ve just elected loads of hopelessly inexperienced new MSPs. There’s a huge budget crisis thundering down the line towards them.
We’ve just had an election in which the SNP swore blind voting SNP would lead to a “100% guaranteed” referendum, and offered the electorate all manner of ludicrous bribes, yet over a third of independence supporters still refused to vote for the party.
In three years time the SNP can only conceivably be less popular than it is now, and the Greens are a pretend party who won’t be running candidates in the vast bulk of Scottish seats. The chances of achieving 50% of the Scottish vote in that election are less than zero. (They’d be doing miraculously well to get 35%.)
The infantile idea that the bogeyman of Nigel Farage as PM would be enough to boost that vote by half again is embarrassing. We were told the same about Boris Johnson, and about Liz Truss, and about Brexit, and about COVID and about Theresa May’s refusal to grant a Section 30 order, and etc etc etc. It never transpired. The dial never moved an inch.
The prospect of a Reform government in Westminster was baked into THIS election, Swinney never shut up about Reform, and it still only got the SNP constituency vote to 38%. There is NO chance, not a ghost of a crumb of an atom of a hope, that the SNP can secure 50% of the Scottish vote in the 2029 UK election. Even the indy movement’s very thickest dungwits know that in their hearts.
So why they’re urging us to rush headlong to what would be an utterly catastrophic defeat, well, you’d have to ask them, because we can’t unhinge our minds far enough to put ourselves in their shoes.
There is no pot of gold waiting for us in three years’ time, only the sort of pot you used to find under the bed, full of the stuff they’re talking.
Jess Phillips resigned yesterday from her role as the UK safeguarding minister, citing prime minister Keir Starmer’s poor leadership.
In her resignation letter, she described Starmer as a ‘good man fundamentally, who cares about the right things’, while warning that this is ‘not enough’ to get results. Ironically, that it is not simply enough to say you care about an issue is something Phillips herself could have been reminded of. Safeguarding children from sexual abuse, as well as fulfilling Labour’s promise of halving violence towards women and girls, would have required, at times, a willingness to stick one’s neck out for those at risk. Phillips repeatedly proved that she was unwilling to do this.
‘Do you think there are people in this country who have, culturally, a very, very different view of women, and therefore are more likely to be engaged in these kinds of activities?’, LBC host Tom Swarbrick asked Phillips in an interview last year, in the wake of several incidents of sexual assault perpetrated by illegal migrants. Phillips was unable to give him a straight answer. ‘Which culture doesn’t have patriarchy and misogyny in it?’, she tried. When Swarbrick brought up crime data regarding migrants from Afghanistan, indicated as 20 times more likely to be convicted of sexual assault than the average Brit, Phillips still refused to engage. ‘I’ve seen victims and perpetrators from every single walk of life’, she stressed. She skirted further questions surrounding culture and misogyny by concluding: ‘I’ll tell you the group of people who are most likely to abuse – that is men.’
It was a disappointing show. When given the opportunity to stand in solidarity with Afghan women living under genuine patriarchal oppression, not to mention with those British women who have suffered as a result of the government importing those norms, Phillips’s self-professed ‘gobby’ feminism seemed to lose its bite. The fear of being labelled as problematic was simply too much. Hence why she, and so many others, continue to pretend that men socialised in countries where women can be legally beaten, raped and imprisoned in their own homes would never dream of doing the same things in Britain.
This is also why Phillips managed to resign from her post as safeguarding minister without a single word about the biggest safeguarding scandal in British history. For decades, grooming gangs made up predominantly of Pakistani Muslims raped thousands of vulnerable, working-class English girls as the establishment looked the other way. And yet, Phillips had been among those most resistant to holding a statutory national inquiry into these appalling crimes. When she was later made responsible for organising and overseeing such an inquiry, several survivors urged her to quit. They cited tight controls on what they could say publicly, as well as attempts to widen the topic of discussion beyond grooming gangs – a not-so-subtle attempt to dilute the inquiry’s focus. If such accusations are true, Phillips’ actions read more as narrative preservation than an attempt to seek justice for the industrial-scale rape of women she had vowed to protect.
One recalls a Question Time appearance back in 2016, when Phillips was asked about a spate of sex attacks that had taken place on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, Germany. In a single night, there had been 509 sexual offences reported to local police, including 22 rapes, the majority of which had been committed by men who appeared ‘north African’. In true Jess fashion, she responded with evasion: ‘A very similar situation happens on Broad Street in Birmingham every week, where women are baited and heckled.’ In other words, ‘Stop looking over there, and look instead at this safer, less polarising thing that won’t get me cancelled’.
‘Politics is as much about feelings as policy’, Phillips concluded her resignation letter. If that’s the case, then let’s hope – for the sake of thousands of vulnerable women and girls who have been thrown on the scrapheap over the past few years – that our next safeguarding minister actually ‘feels’ like doing their job this time.
Georgina Mumford is a content producer at spiked.
Diane Abbott just responded perfectly to media fear-mongering about a possible contest to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister.
Diane Abbott: The markets are no reason to keep Starmer
Speaking to Sky‘s Cathy Newman about replacing Starmer, Abbott said:
I want there to be a proper, properly organised selection process and we’ll see who emerges.
Newman then injected a hint of fear, claiming:
And that will take weeks and weeks. And meanwhile the bond markets will go into a hissy fit.
But Abbott replied that:
British politics and British parliament can’t be run at the behest of the bond markets.
Newman, however, wasn’t going to leave it there. And she added:
We’re all going to be pretty poor if we don’t pay heed to the markets, though, aren’t we?
Abbott answered with the mic drop:
If the British government is gonna be completely dominated by the bond market, MPs might as well go home.
She also suggested that there are different ways to deal with economic change. Rather than continuing with welfare cuts, for example, she argued that Labour could always stabilise finances by putting less money into the pockets of the arms industry.
The corporate media always backed Starmer. We need to dump both of them!
The exchange on Sky certainly looked like an attempt by a corporate media outlet to take some heat off Starmer when he’s at his weakest point. And that’s hardly surprising. Because elite propagandists in the media got firmly behind Starmer early on. Then, despite his obvious awfulness, many of them endorsed him in the 2024 election.
Starmer’s predecessor Jeremy Corbyn had been a threat to establishment interests. That’s why the corporate media waged a brutal propaganda war against Corbyn and his supporters. And it’s why Starmer – the fraud representing the millionaire-funded campaign to replace Corbyn – brought elite propagandists a sigh of relief.
Much like Newman, Starmer loyalists are now trying to convince us all to avoid ‘playing games’ by pushing for Starmer’s removal. But that is the height of hypocrisy considering all of their efforts to sabotage Labour’s electoral chances under Corbyn.
Oh…*now* 'it's not a game'? — Mrs Gee
https://t.co/VEpVmJakP5 pic.twitter.com/TIVJASTnnT
(@earthygirl011) May 12, 2026
Right-wingers in the media and Labour led a long campaign to defeat Corbyn. First, there was the 2016 chicken coup, trying to blame Corbyn for Brexit. Then, there was the sabotage (via strategic diversion of funds, for example) of the 2017 election to stop Corbyn’s Labour winning.
All throughout, meanwhile, was endless bullying from the media.
Today, Starmer is the least popular prime minister ever, and almost no one thinks he’s been doing a good job:
While the Labour Party is divided over his future, just 11% of Britons believe Keir Starmer has been a great or even good prime minister so far
Great/good PM: 11% 2024 Labour voters — YouGov (@YouGov) May 12, 2026
Average PM: 25%
Poor/terrible PM: 58%
Great/good PM: 22%
Average PM: 36%
Poor/terrible PM: 36% pic.twitter.com/E1QW2XrIqg
And as Abbott told Newman, he’s now coming out of:
the most disastrous local authority election result in living memory
Nonetheless, some in the media still want you to think it’s best to just let Starmer continue.
As Abbott rightly said on Sky, though, we need to ignore media fear-mongering about replacing Starmer.
If the profits of obscenely wealthy individuals are the only thing that matters, they could just openly set up a corporate dictatorship already. But that’s not yet (fully) the case. So when people like Starmer don’t serve their constituents or country, we absolutely should hold them to account. And they absolutely should lose their jobs.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
Well, well, well. It looks like Zarah Sultana has forced an apology out of celebrity bigmouth Katie Hopkins:
Please retweet. https://t.co/CMpwjVpJhn
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) May 13, 2026
Didn’t Hopkins once say she would never apologise for anything?
How the whitey has fallen
Hopkins apology reads in full:
On behalf of their client, Zara Sultana, Bindmans Media and Information Law Practise Group requires that I publish the following statement on X, and that such statement must be clearly visible and pinned to my profile for a continuous period of no less than 24 hours:
“On 30 March 2026, I published a post on my X account addressed to Zarah Sultana in which I stated that she encourages and incites violence and is friends with terrorists.
Those statements are false. I was wrong and offer my sincere apologies to Ms Sultana for the harm and distress caused to her.”
It is my very great pleasure to do this, and I reiterate my sincere and repeated offer to meet with Miss Zara Sultana in person to resolve our differences.
Why did Hopkins accuse of Sultana of being “friends with terrorists”? Because Sultana is a British Muslim and supported this country’s political prisoners, whereas Hopkins has repeatedly expressed white-supremacist beliefs, including:
- Referring to refugees and migrants as “cockroaches”;
- Promoting the ‘white genocide’ conspiracy;
- Calling for a “final solution” to the UK’s Muslim population (mirroring Hitler’s ‘final solution’ to Germany’s Jewish population);
- Working with other white supremacists.
Apologetics
As noted, this is what Hopkins said in the past:
I have never apologised for anything I’ve said. I find it very disappointing when people apologise. You should have the positive moral attitude to stand by what you say,
We’d suggest Hopkins must be very disappointed in herself, but let’s face it, she probably doesn’t give a shit. This Z-list grifter will say and do anything to get attention, and finally that’s caught up with her.
Well done, Zarah Sultana, for not taking any shit from this pathetic racist.
Featured image via Si Chun Lam (Wikimedia)
By Willem Moore
Politics
The House | Two decades on from the original, can ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ still impress? Rosie Wrighting says yes
Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly and Stanley Tucci as Nigel | Image by: FlixPix / Alamy
3 min read
Capturing an industry reshaped by AI and social media, I was wrong to doubt the wisdom of making a sequel – this love letter to fashion is as compelling as ever
I was nine when the first The Devil Wears Prada film came out and – having spent most of my teenage years dreaming of and working towards a place in the fashion industry – to this day one of the first things people outside fashion ask me is: “Is it really like The Devil Wears Prada?” And honestly, while it’s an early 2000s film made for entertainment, parts of it do show the industry in a very real light. That real light being that the fashion industry is very tough yet brilliant.
It’s an industry that encapsulates you. You have to not just work in it but live it – because its consumers, readers and followers do. The people I worked alongside are some of the most resilient, commercially minded and driven people I know, and in fashion there is no path to success without teamwork, leaning on others’ talents and hard work to create an end product.
I developed a level of resilience working in fashion that I need every single day in Westminster. The first film conveyed that – yes, as an exaggerated, watchable version – but the speed at which you need to make decisions, the competitiveness and the absolute love of the art you are creating: that is real.
Almost two decades have passed since that first film. By the time I went to study fashion, technology was already profoundly changing the industry. When I graduated during Covid, the world of the runway and the head office felt distant and uncertain. So, when I heard a sequel was coming, I was sceptical. Could it capture a fashion industry reshaped by social media, one where print media is no longer the primary source of fashion news, where AI informs buying decisions and Gen Z dictates the trends?
Andy has a love story in the film. But she didn’t need one
I am glad to say I was wrong to doubt it. The second film is honest about the changes the industry has faced rather than retreating into the romanticised version of fashion that exists in the public’s imagination.
It shows fashion as it is today and, crucially, it shows that fashion is quick to adapt. The world has changed, but the passion has not. The film carries a raw affection for the industry – an affection and protectiveness I recognise, and that I bring with me when I advocate for it in Parliament.
Andy has a love story in the film, but she didn’t need one. The real love story is the relationships you build when you are working with people to create something you love, and hoping others will love it too. That is what keeps people in this industry through the hard years. That is what the sequel chooses to celebrate.
The clothes are beautiful. The characters are as compelling now as they were then. But what makes this film worth your time is that it shows the industry the way those of us inside it have always known it: demanding, commercial, creative and brilliant. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is, more than anything, a love letter to fashion. And it’s one the industry deserves.
Rosie Wrighting is Labour MP for Kettering
The Devil Wears Prada 2
Directed by: David Frankel
Venue: General cinema release
31 March 2026 Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester outside Downing Street, London (Alamy)
4 min read
Senior members of the influential Tribune group of MPs will push Labour’s ruling body to allow for Andy Burnham’s inclusion in a leadership race if one is triggered imminently, PoliticsHome understands.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has reportedly told allies that he is preparing to resign from government and announce his leadership challenge on Thursday.
As a mayor and not an MP, Burnham would not be eligible to participate in a leadership race held so quickly. But PoliticsHome understands that senior soft left figures would nonetheless stick with their priority of allowing Burnham to run, instead of turning to Angela Rayner as their candidate.
For it to unfold in this way, a sitting Labour MP would have to stand down, triggering a by-election, then Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) would have to allow Burnham to seek selection as the parliamentary candidate, and he would have to win the seat – all before MP nominations opened.
“The NEC decides the timetable so Wes triggering doesn’t stop Andy contesting. It would be outrageous for them to try and block the most popular politician in the country from standing,” a senior Burnham-backing Labour MP said.
Rayner was forced to resign as deputy prime minister last year over a tax scandal, and the HMRC investigation into her unpaid stamp duty has still not concluded, to the knowledge of reporters. Her favourability as a leadership contender has declined dramatically over recent months.
“I don’t think there are many Ange fans around now,” one Labour MP concluded.
With all 11 of Labour’s affiliated trade unions signing a joint statement that agreed Keir Starmer would “not lead Labour into the next election” and that backed a leadership election “at some stage”, some Burnham supporters hope the NEC would be more likely to allow Burnham to stand for Parliament.
The mayor was blocked in January from running as the Labour candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, after a core group NEC officers refused to give him permission to stand.
A government source told PoliticsHome: “There has been a noticeable shift in the attitudes of the officers of the NEC towards Andy. There is no complacency – the work has been done – but the current political situation has fundamentally changed since January.”
A well-placed source has told PoliticsHome that Ellie Reeves, the solicitor general and an NEC officer, was in favour last time of the decision going to a meeting of the full NEC – a body of almost 40 members, rather than the smaller officers group of 10.
Burnham supporters hope the full NEC would be more supportive of accommodating his inclusion in any Labour leadership contest.
“The pressure to take this out of officers and to full NEC would be quite significant now, and that’s where I could see it going the other way,” said one NEC member, who does not plan to back Burnham.
Allies of Burnham have also been floating the acronym ABC – “Andy By Conference” – as a potential timetable. This would be too slow for many Labour MPs who want a race concluded as quickly as possible, however.
Burnham supporters have claimed repeatedly that he has found a winnable seat and is preparing to run for Parliament.
MPs in the North West who have denied they are willing to step aside for Burnham include Afzal Khan in Manchester Rusholme; Peter Dowd in Bootle; Marie Rimmer in St Helens; Dan Carden in Liverpool Walton; and Paula Barker in Liverpool Wavertree.
One soft left MP told PoliticsHome: “Regardless of whether Keir stays or goes right now, I think the case for Andy to be allowed to return is now undeniable.”
Another MP from the Tribune group said: “It would be a very odd scenario holding a by-election in these circumstances but I feel momentum is with him.”
Almost 100 Labour MPs have now called on the Prime Minister to set out a timetable for his departure after last week’s local election results, with four ministers resigning.
Rupert Lowe is the MP who left Reform UK following several run-ins with Nigel Farage. Lowe has since formed his own party, and because he doesn’t have much in the way of imagination, his party is called ‘Restore Britain’. The party sells itself as a further-right alternative to the already-far-right Reform. In aid of this, Lowe has come out to defend the foreign hate speakers that Britain has now banned from attending Tommy Robinson’s racism festival:
Rupert Lowe suddenly likes ‘foreigners’ https://t.co/FQ7QZNdqmx
— Curtis Daly (@CurtisDaly_) May 12, 2026
How Lowe can he go?
The “foreign commentators” in question are those who were set to attend Tommy Robinson’s ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally, which takes place on 16 May.
Lowe’s message reads in full:
This Government is entirely wrong to ban foreign commentators from speaking at Robinson’s rally on Saturday
I will be formally challenging the Home Office, again, on the decision to prevent these individuals from entering.
I won’t be there myself, but many patriots will be and they deserve to hear lawful views in order to decide for themselves if they agree or not.
That is free speech.
Islamist extremists are personally welcomed by the Prime Minister, yet this group is banned.
It stinks.
Barrister Jane Heybroek responded to Lowe’s post with the following:
“lawful views” being the operative term.
Is incitement to racial hatred lawful?— CrémantCommunarde
(@0Calamity) May 12, 2026
So, are these people inciting racial hatred?
In our opinion, there’s an incredibly straightforward argument that: yes, they are.
Hate mongers
On 12 May, Rose Cocker reported the following for the Canary:
During a speech on 11 May, Keir Starmer (PM-for-now) boasted about blocking “far right agitators” from entering the country. Labour has in fact blocked the visas of seven individuals who were planning to attend ‘Unite the Kingdom,’ a far-right rally happening on 16 May. Among them are two prominent MAGA figures.
Cocker suggested that Starmer only made this move because his party lost so many voters to the left-wing Green Party in the local elections. Regardless, it was the right move given the actions of these people.
Speaking on the banned Joey Mannarino, Cocker wrote:
At a Britain First ‘March for Remigration’ in 2025, Mannario gave a rambling speech in front of a backdrop image of himself and Donald Trump. When he later tweeted a recording, he urged viewers to:
“deport the parasites who are raping their way through America, Europe and the United Kingdom.”
For those who don’t know, ‘remigration‘ is the plan to deport non-white people from European countries, regardless of whether or not they were born here.
Starmer also banned Valentina Gomez, who is one of the most virulent Islamophobes in American politics:
The Home Office and Shabana Mahmood need to be consistent.
They revoked Kanye West’s visa. Why not revoke Valentina Gomez’s for her bigotry? pic.twitter.com/SKe5mAtIwE
— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) April 9, 2026
Gomez spoke at last year’s rally, as can be seen here:
England, see you SOON May 16th.
England will be ENGLISH again. pic.twitter.com/JvCgXQilr0 — Valentina Gomez (@ValentinaForUSA) April 17, 2026
These people want a civil war
One of the speakers at the last Unite the Kingdom rally was the Dutch racist Eva Vlaardingerbroek. Vlaardingerbroek was blocked from entering the UK earlier this year, as we reported on 15 January:
Vlaardingerbroek is part of Generation Remigration, which is a group that advocates for – you guessed it – ‘remigration’.
Additionally:
Remigration is built on the idea that people of different ethnicities cannot live peacefully together. This is quite obviously what you would describe as ‘racist’. In years gone by, people on the far right would try to provide some sort of cover to claim ‘we’re not racist‘. Clearly, there is no such cover here.
The fact that people are happy to openly support remigration shows that racists are once more back out in the open. People with more than two brain cells, however, understand what remigration would look like in practice.
According to the last Census, the number of people who aren’t ‘white’ is over 10 million – many of whom were born here. Indeed, many may be second, third, or fourth generation. How many of those people would oppose being deported? How many white people do you think would join them? Going off the global George Floyd protests, we can assume ‘a shit tonne’.
What do you call a situation in which one section of the country goes to war with the other?
Public good
The government has blocked all these speakers because their presence isn’t “conducive to the public good”. Once you understand what remigration is, it’s hard to deny that fact.
Remember we said that Joey Mannarino spoke at a Britain First remigration rally? Well, this is Britain First’s leader:
"I want this country to become a shithole. I want this country to descend into a fucking nightmare"
They don't care about the country. They thrive off discord. pic.twitter.com/N0Sb9yvq33 — smile2jannah (@smile2jannah) April 12, 2026
Far right extremist Paul Golding exposed in a secret recording:
Rupert Lowe is a hair’s width away from this guy, and that’s concerning, because he’s an actual MP.
Featured image via The Canary
By Willem Moore
In a letter leaked to the Guardian, the General Secretaries of 11 Labour-affiliated unions are putting their case to PM Keir Starmer today, saying:
It’s clear that the prime minister will not lead Labour into the next election, and at some stage a plan will have to be put in place for the election of a new Leader.
Adding that the Labour Party:
cannot continue on its current path.
Long-Labour allies GMB, Unite and Unison are among the rebelling unions. This damning letter follows resounding calls from over 80 Labour MPs, and the British public generally, for Starmer to step down
Increasing that pressure, union leaders and a number of socialist Labour MPs have also reportedly formed a new pressure group called Socialism26. As a result, despite the right-wing Wes Streeting eyeing up the leadership, it appears that Labour MPs and affiliates increasingly recognise that abandoning progressive, socialist policies has driven many of the Labour Party’s problems since the election of the UK prime minister.
Well, it took them long enough – but at least they’re standing up now.
EXCL: Keir Starmer will not lead his party into the next general election, Labour-supporting unions have predicted, in an intervention that threatens to further destabilise PM after damaging few days.
The 11 Labour-affiliated unions – including Unite, Unison and GMB – are…
— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) May 13, 2026
Unions: “Govern in the interests of workers”
The statement penned by the unions is said to be announced later today, but the Guardian were able to obtain a leaked copy in advance.
In the letter, the general secretaries write:
Labour’s affiliated unions have been clear that Labour cannot continue on its current path.
Whilst we recognise progress has been made, such as aspects of the Employment Rights Act and the increase in the minimum wage, the results at the election last week were devastating.
Labour is not doing enough to deliver the change that working people voted for at the general election. Our focus is on the fundamental change of direction on economic policy and political strategy that unions have been clear is needed, and not on the personalities and unfolding political drama in Westminster.
It’s clear that the prime minister will not lead Labour into the next election, and at some stage a plan will have to be put in place for the election of a new Leader.
This is a point where the future of the party we founded will be debated and determined – and we are working closely as unions to shape a shared vision on policy, political strategy and economic policy that will reorient Labour back to working people, so Labour do what it was elected to do: govern in the interests of workers.
Keir Starmer is facing an increasingly destabilised leadership as a rebellion grows among long-quiet Labour MPs, many of whom now fear for their own positions after the abysmal – though hardly unexpected – performance at the recent local elections. In a desperate attempt to save face with the electorate, MPs are increasingly distancing themselves from Starmer, leaving the prime minister’s days in power looking clearly numbered.
Moreover, some specific demands are making their way through from the newly formed Socialism26 initiative group, making clear the areas in which they insist the Labour Party must do better:
NEW: A group of Labour MPs and general secretaries of Labour-affiliated trade unions are launching a new political initiative called Socialism26
They have the following immediate demands: — Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) May 12, 2026
– New Deal for Working People in full
– Recognise the genocide in Gaza, support rebuilding…
Socialism26: “Recognise the genocide in Gaza… Introduce sanctions”
The ‘immediate demands’ of this mix of socialists who still believe the Labour Party have a chance of regaining trust with the public are:
– New Deal for Working People in full
– Recognise the genocide in Gaza, support rebuilding efforts, introduce sanctions
– WASPI compensation
– Drop jury trials policy, lift restrictions on the right to protest, stop changes to indefinite leave to remain
– Measures to cut energy bills
It must be said – these demands do indeed expose exactly why Labour drove away its traditional voter base and destroyed the trust and respect the British public once had for the party. Nevertheless, it’s been decades since we’ve had a Labour administration that wasn’t moving towards the right, suggesting it will be a lot harder to get this (former) party of the working class to actually remember where its priorities, and loyalties, should actually lie.
The Guardian have reported that the group has been founded, and backed, by the following:
The founders are:
Unison’s Andrea Egan
FBU’s Steve Wright
CWU’s Dave Ward
TSSA’s Maryam Eslamdoust
+
Neil Duncan-Jordan
Chris Hinchliff
Cat Eccles
Terry Jermy
Peter Lamb
Brian Leishman
Simon Opher
Richard Quigley
Lee Barron
Lorraine Beavers
Chris Bloore
Steve WitherdenAlso backed by lots of Socialist Campaign Group MPs
Will right-wing Labour listen?
The Labour right have their claws deep into the party infrastructure. Thanks to persistent purges of socialist anti-Zionists, the party is beholden to the Zionist state of Israel. Conducting a genocide hasn’t swayed their allegiances, so it is hard to see them suddenly take heed of the repeated demands from the left of Labour.
After all, they’ve taken a huge sum in donations from pro-Israel groups and, whilst forgetting it is the British public who pay their lofty and privileged salaries, they have chosen to guide their policies to suit right-wing, hostile interests.
Moreover, we have already written about the more than 100 MPs in the Tribune Group who are likewise pressuring Labour to shift leftward with their own set of demands. However, the emergence of two separate socialist groups issuing their own demands reinforces the perception that socialists remain disorganised, as they scramble to retain influence within a party machine that continues to favour right-wing politics.
Therefore, whilst this letter is a welcome sight and a refreshing reminder that socialism is not completely extinct in Labour, it is hard to imagine it would lead to any real, genuine socialist change.
When people widely accept and recognise that socialist policy offers the only real way to heal the harms of neo-liberal capitalism, we cannot afford to waste time on a hoodwinking political elite.
Featured image via the Canary
Since the local elections, the key political question in the UK has been, ‘When will the Labour leader go?’. Notably, that’s when, not if, because let’s face it, the writing has been on the wall for Keir Starmer for some time now.
While Labour has obsessed over itself, the Green Party has been working to get things done. In aid of this, the Green’s new mayors and MP Carla Denyer have put the following to the government:
Our mayoral, council and Senedd campaigns were rooted in fighting to end the housing affordability crisis, and voters have spoken. We need action to end rip-off rents now.
So newly elected Green Mayors @ZoeGarbett and @LiamShrivastava alongside Carla Denyer MP have written to… pic.twitter.com/B7l9WF7YVu — The Green Party (@TheGreenParty) May 12, 2026
Labour, ‘This scandal has to end’
The above letter is addressed to Steve Reed. Although Reed is the housing minister, you may be more familiar with his campaign to smear Green Party activists and politicians.
In their letter, they ask Reed to actually get on with his job and deliver for ordinary renters. It reads (emphasis added):
We are writing to you as newly elected Green Mayors, alongside Carla Denyer MP and on behalf of every newly elected and sitting Green Councillor, to request that you take urgent action to end rip-off rents, and include a Rent Controls Bill in the King’s Speech this week.
Spiralling rents are ripping the heart out of our communities. People are being forced to cut back on essentials just to afford a roof over their heads. Young people are being priced out of the areas they grew up in, with schools in London closing as families are pushed out of the city. Teachers, nurses and careworkers cannot afford to live in the boroughs they work in. Renters across the UK now pay on average a third of their wages on rent, the highest level on record.
But whilst renters get poorer, wealth is being funnelled straight into landlords’ pockets. As you will be aware, the government is set to transfer £70 billion to private landlords through housing support between 2024-28. That is six times the amount of money that was spent on affordable homes over the past five years. Housing has become a way to make money, rather than a universal right.
This scandal has to end. If we had frozen rents four years ago, households in Britain would now be saving over £3,300 per year on average.
It’s time to get serious
The letter continues:
The Green Party’s success last week shows that the country is desperate for an urgent and transformative programme to end rip-off Britain, and are angry that your government has failed to deliver. Our mayoral, council and Senedd campaigns were rooted in fighting to end the housing affordability crisis, and voters have spoken.
Keir Starmer has said that a break with the status quo is needed. The King’s Speech is your opportunity to do this by getting behind the Green Party’s longstanding demands for crucial measures to make life affordable for all, starting with rent controls. With food and energy costs set to sky-rocket as a result of the illegal war on Iran, it has never been more critical.
If your government is in any way serious about improving the lives of the 11 million private renters in England, you must commit to introducing rent controls now.
Keir Starmer himself said the status quo cannot stand in his make-or-break speech on Monday, but at this point, we’ve heard it all before.
Starmer in 2020: "We cannot go back to business as usual after this"
Starmer now: ".. every single time in the past we've simply tried to get back to a status quo that didn't work, we can't do the same again"
The same line, 6 years apart. He wants to fool us twice. https://t.co/aieAKqyj4B pic.twitter.com/MsRDJfakyS
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 11, 2026
Is change on the horizon?
In the lead up to the local elections, Labour made it clear that the party wouldn’t introduce rent controls. The question is whether the local elections have taught Starmer’s government anything, or whether status quo policies remain the politics of choice.
Featured image via the Canary
By Willem Moore
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