On 25 April, the Daily Mail published a piece of speculative fiction describing what the UK would be like under prime minister Zack Polanski. While much of the Mail’s regular reporting is arguably fiction, the difference between their day-to-day output and this is that the latest piece was actually pretty funny at times — intentionally or not:

The Daily Mail aren't even trying to pretend to be normal anymore.

Lower bills & invest in our communities.https://t.co/0qbagSvIYp pic.twitter.com/IWo9zCzdCe

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) April 25, 2026

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Fuel for fossils

McKinstry is a journalist, historian, and author. His body of work includes books about Winston Churchill, the 1966 national football team, some cricketer, and the Spitfire aeroplane. Given all that, it won’t surprise you to learn he has the politics of your average pub bore.

As Canary analyst William Kedjanyi said:

The actual piece itself is just phenomenal btw. Sentence after sentence that you will be the first person in your bloodline to read: https://t.co/t47lCbD8ee pic.twitter.com/bhiRJXDmw4

— William Kedjanyi (@KeejayOV3) April 25, 2026

McKinstry’s piece begins:

There was a hint of drizzle in the air on that cold April morning as the Prime Minister cycled down Greta Thunberg Way, formerly Whitehall.

This piece is described as a “nightmare vision of the future”. It works well as an opener, because it establishes the sort of things this Churchill fancier finds himself getting upset about:

1. Cycling.
2. Inconsequential changes.
3. The thought of young women.

These fears repeat again and again throughout the piece:

Having dismounted and passed through the security gates, the two men parked their bikes in the unfeasibly large, under-used cycle rack near the door of No 10 that had been repainted green on day one of Polanski’s tenure.

Does this mean the ‘unfeasibly large cycle rack’ was already there? Also, it can’t be much of a dystopia if Polanski isn’t forcing people to cycle to work. Oh, and beyond that, why is Zack Polanski cycling to work at No 10? You know the PM lives at the office, right, Leo?

This bit covers journalists being upset about a power cut:

The cause of their discontent was yet another power cut, a form of disruption that was now happening only too frequently after Polanski’s government imposed a comprehensive ban on the use of fossil fuels.

Despite the panic from guys like McKinstry, renewable energy has become incredibly cheap and effective; this is why it’s overtaking fossil fuels:

Another major milestone: renewable power generated MORE THAN coal for the first time in the modern power system.

Renewables reached over a THIRD of electricity generation in 2025, reaching 33.8% while coal fell to 33.0%.

5/11 pic.twitter.com/OyThAnfr1A

— Ember (@ember_energy) April 21, 2026

This next bit is actually worse somehow:

Nor could these angry professionals be mollified by the distribution of vegan snacks made by earnest No 10 interns. Their hostility only evaporated once the electricity supply was restored by cranking up an ancient generator in the basement, ironically powered by diesel.

You really shouldn’t be running a diesel generator inside, Leo because one of the things they generate is carbon monoxide.

Call yourself a fossil fuel fan?

Zack Polanski — Objectionable Dissidents

In a later section, McKinstry writes:

In opposition, he had caused outrage by ruminating over how to build a society without these objectionable dissidents.

From this point, the piece is mostly just whiny self-victimisation. The internal logic remains consistently inconsistent, anyway, as this section demonstrates:

oil and gas companies and electricity generators and distributors were interrogated by truth commissioners, their openness, he found, often lubricated by threats of nationalisation.

So in eco-Stalinist Britain, oil and gas companies have been allowed to remain private, have they?

McKinstry also asks the reader to think of the poor Jeremy Clarkson:

Unesco had urged in 2025 that ‘climate change denial’ should be made an international crime. Polanski’s Greens adopted this proposal for British domestic consumption, thereby creating a significant number of political prisoners, a category that had never existed before in peacetime. He recalled with relish the incarceration of ‘king of the petrolheads’ Jeremy Clarkson.

Ironically, Clarkson has spent the past few years accidentally demonstrating the impacts of climate change:

Every season of Clarkson’s Farm highlights how unprecedented rain, drought, or heat can cause massive problems. His own show reveals the real consequences of climate change. I guess it’s easy not to care though when you own a farm mainly as a tax dodge. https://t.co/iEftlCVuB1

— Dan De'Ath (@DeAthCardiff) March 9, 2026

Hard to follow

Skipping to the end, McKinstry writes:

Polanski’s much vaunted wealth tax – levied at 1 per cent on people with assets worth than £10million and 2 per cent on wealth over £1billion – had been a predictable disaster, causing a vast exodus of investors.

If it was us, we probably would have used higher percentages to better sell the con — something we’d have full leeway to do given that this is a work of fiction. This is especially true given that a lot of the Green’s policies around wealth distribution are actually broadly popular:

NEW: 65% of Brits support the Green Party's policy of capping CEO pay at ten times the pay of the lowest paid employee pic.twitter.com/Ld2VbpzaqW

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) April 17, 2026

There’s far more to the piece than we’ve covered, but it’s poorly written, repetitive, non-sensical, and dull — i.e. we want to stop reading it now. It’s also quite long, so if you’re a fan of the worst shit you’ve ever read, there’s a lot to not enjoy here.

Featured image via Barold

By Willem Moore

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Today’s newsletter comes to you live from New York City, where I’ve spent a couple of days before heading down to Washington DC on an Amtrak train a little later to cover the King’s State visit for LBC. My shows on Monday and Tuesday will be coming from Simon Marks’s FSN studios. Washington has always been one of my favourite cities in the world. It knocks spots of New York, which I have to admit I don’t really like. Anyone who thinks New York is superior to London in any way has a screw loose. The congestion is far worse. It’s dirtier. The architecture is awful. Admittedly, I didn’t feel unsake, but then again, I don’t in London. I guess it didn’t help that it rained the whole day yesterday.

We arrived on Friday lunchtime and things did not get off to a good start which the friend who I am traveling with was apprehended at immigration. He was marched off to be interrogated with people who were sitting there in handcuffs, some in tears. It turned out to be over an unpaid speeding ticket from 2019 and was informed that if he didn’t pay the outstanding $192 he would be arrested and detained. His credit card came our quicker than you can say Jack Daniels. He was then nearly sick in the yellow cab driving us from the airport to our hotel on Times Square.

We went out for an insanely expensive dinner at a steakhouse called Frankie and Johnnie’s, just off Times Square. It was a bit empty, but given the prices, I could understand why, even though the menu was superb and the food excellent. I had a steak so big, I couldn’t finish it.

To be honest we were both so knackered we just went back to the hotel and went to sleep.

Yesterday we went to Smithfield’s bar to watch West Ham v Everton with NYC Hammers, and was reunited with my friend of 34 years, Daniel Forrester. We met in 1992 when he was interning with Patrick Thompson, the Norwich North MP I worked for in 1980s. And we’ve been best friends ever since. I got a bit emotional! All was well, as West Ham scraped a valuable three points.

He then took us to Thomas Jefferson’s birthplace, which is a now a museum and we ended up in a store/restaurant called ‘Eately’ which sold all sorts of Italian food, and we wiled away the afternoon with some great conversation. We hadn’t seen each other for 14 years, so there was a lot of catching up to do, but we picked up as if the fourteen years hadn’t happened. That’s what true friends can do.

In the evening we went to see CHESS at the Imperial Theatre. It’s about the 12th time I’ve seen it, and I will do a review of it on there when I’ve got time during the week.

When we got back to the hotel I found out about the events at the White House Correspondents Dinner, an event which had I not gone to New York first, I might have been at! I did a love hit on LBC at 3.45am UK time with James Hansen.

I’m really looking forward to being back in Washington this evening and meeting up with my former Total Politics colleague and friend, TV’s Shane Greer tomorrow evening after the show.

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Israel has destroyed solar panels which supply electricity to Debel, Lebanon, and power its water station.

Israel: A nation of remorseless parasites.

Here they are destroying solar panels that power Debel, Lebanon, and its water station. For fun. https://t.co/t81xo2V5nJ

— Zionism Exposed (@ZionismExposedx) April 25, 2026

Debel is the same Christian village where an Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldier destroyed a statue of Jesus, only last week.

After a completely manufactured display of ‘remorse’ over the desecration of a cross in the southern Lebanese village of Debel, Israeli forces are demolishing parts of the border town, bulldozing solar panels that supply electricity and power its water station. pic.twitter.com/q82UXaYgNd

— roqayah chamseddine (@roqchams) April 25, 2026

Once again, the IOF claims it is investigating — but we all know what it means when Israel ‘investigates’ its own war crimes.

It’s also worth pointing out that the IOF wouldn’t even be pretending to investigate if it were a Muslim village.

There are people out there who are fine with the Israelis demolishing south Lebanon as long as they spare the Christian villages.

Well guess what guys, they’re not sparing the Christian villages https://t.co/ciJ00kCDrv

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) April 25, 2026

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No doubt that Israel is about to tell us that the solar panels were Hezbollah infrastructure. Were they using them to charge their phones and play Club Penguin?

Israel — the ethnic cleansing continues

Israel has repeatedly claimed that it does not target civilian infrastructure. Despite this, there is a clear and documented pattern of the IOF flattening railways, schools, hospitals, water desalination plants and electric supplies. Clearly, the IOF is attempting to make it impossible for the people of Gaza, and now Lebanon, to survive.

And there’s a word for that.

Now, Israel is systematically destroying parts of Southern Lebanon, no doubt as part of its goal to create a ‘Greater Israel’.

If you didn’t know, Israel is carrying out Nakba 3.0 in Lebanon. It is *self-admittedly* genocide, permanent land theft and ethnic cleansing to create Greater Israel. The Zionists intend to keep this land forever and massacre or displace everyone on it in the process. https://t.co/vlBmkYJFVe

— Kit Klarenberg (@KitKlarenberg) April 25, 2026

Israel’s ‘Greater Israel project’ was formally established in 1967. This was only one month after Israel illegally annexed the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War.

According to Middle East Eye:

It is often understood as a vision of territorial expansion to encompass Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan, along with significant parts of Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

This tells us that the current attacks on Lebanon are not some new attempt to disarm Hezbollah. They are part of a prolonged and systematic colonial attempt to invade and steal the land.

Ecocide

The IOF has already destroyed 90% of all solar panels in Gaza, leaving the power system in ruins and the people of Gaza with no stable supply of electricity. Now, it is committing similar crimes in Lebanon.

We are already in the middle of a global climate catastrophe; meanwhile, ‘God’s chosen people’ are destroying solar panels?

Israel claims to be a leader in environmental technology, but environmentalism without anti-zionism is simply gardening.

Environmentalism without anti-Zionism and anti-imperialism is just gardening. https://t.co/hfTZlTnPo8

— Ted Rutland (@TedRutland) April 25, 2026

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Additionally, what’s the good in claiming to be a leader in environmentalism whilst dropping 200,000 tonnes of explosives filled with toxic fumes on civilians? That’s the equivalent of six Hiroshimas.

Not to mention the continuous use of white phosphorus which unlawful under international law and the huge and lingering environmental impact of it.

By early 2024, Israel had already destroyed a huge part of Gaza’s farmland, wiping out orchards, greenhouses, and crops, which are all vital for survival in Gaza. It had decimated the majority of farms and orchards, with munitions and toxins now contaminating Gaza’s soil and groundwater.

Similarly, seawater is full of sewage and waste because Israel cut off electricity and destroyed water treatment plants.

It is clear that from the start, Israel has used environmental harm as a weapon of control and erasure. Now, it is a core feature of its settler-colonial terrorism.

Demolishing solar panels, all part and parcel of the ecocidal tendencies of a colonial power. https://t.co/dheCkDIDpW

— nell | 累 (@nellodee) April 25, 2026

Systematic destruction

It has become clear that destruction is so deeply embedded in the minds of Israeli’s that they didn’t even think to make use of the solar panels on the land they will no doubt attempt to occupy. So much for an ‘environmental leader’.

We have watched Israel systematically destroy electricity and water supplies throughout Gaza. Now, it’s doing the same in Southern Lebanon. People cannot survive without clean water or power, and that is exactly what the terrorists in Israel are counting on.

The fight for Palestinian and Lebanese freedom is inherently tied to the survival of the Earth and humanity. There cannot be one without the other.

Feature image via Heidi Pett/X

By HG

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Today, 25 April 2026, pro-Palestine protesters demonstrated outside the British Museum in London against the museum’s decision to remove reference to Palestine from some of its exhibits. The move came as the museum capitulated to notorious Israel lobby group ‘UK Lawyers for Israel’ (UKLFI).

Despite heavy-handed policing and attempts at incitement by a small pro-Israel counter-demonstration, the protest was peaceful and good-natured. Activist photographer ‘BetterThanReal’ captured some moments from the demonstration for Skwawkbox and the Canary:

He also spoke to well-known Palestinian academic, author and activist Ghada Kharmi, who was born in Palestine before the ‘Israeli’ occupation ever existed. Karmi said that the museum had become an “enemy” of the Palestinian people:

Demonstrators see the museum’s capitulation to Zionist lobbying as a discriminatory erasure of Palestinian history and culture that mirrors Israeli policy of eradicating Palestine on the ground. Placards and speeches referred to the museum’s censorship and cultural imperialism and its discarding of many centuries of established practice and tradition of referring to the region as ‘Palestine’.

Despite amplified heckling by a small contingent of far-right Zionist ‘auditors’ — including former Met officer Gill Levy, who was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a Muslim woman at the first protest outside the British Museum in February — the humanitarian demonstrators refused to respond to provocations and ignored the agitators.

As the weather warms, the British Museum and its surrounds are increasingly busy thousands of tourists. Unless the museum ends its cowardice, Londoners and tourists alike will continue to receive an education from the protesters.

Featured image via Andrea Domeniconi

By Skwawkbox

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Anticipating heavy losses in the upcoming local elections, some Labour politicians are now calling for Keir Starmer to do another screeching u-turn.

NEW: Labour MPs are urging Keir Starmer to shelve his plans to lower the voting age to 16 because it’ll help the Greens

One senior MP said “With the way opinion polls are going, it would be total madness to bring this in before 2029”

[@DailyMail]

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— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) April 26, 2026

What these MPs don’t seem to appreciate is that it’s the constant u-turns which tanked Labour’s popularity in the first place.

‘Unbelievable stuff’

As the Mail on Sunday reported:

One senior MP told The Mail on Sunday: ‘With the way opinion polls are going, it would be total madness to bring this in before 2029.’

He appealed to Local Government Secretary Steve Reed, who is overseeing the reform, to realise that ‘otherwise, we’re just giving Zack Polanski and the Greens more votes’.

What’s a ‘senior MP’ when they’re at home?

Sounds to us like this person is a minister, and they don’t want to admit that. Our suspicion is it’s Steve Reed himself, and he provided the quote to create a narrative for his future actions.

If you’re unfamiliar with Reed, he’s the unconvincing minister with zero posture who the Labour Party saw fit to sic on the Green Party:

Labour's Steve Reed – who himself has been accused of antisemitism – is re-running the antisemitism smear against the Green Party and the Jewish Zack Polanski

by @willem_moore_uk https://t.co/6R7NXdon0E

— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) April 21, 2026

Reed also oversees electoral matters, as Green Party deputy leader Mothin Ali noted:

This is unbelievable stuff. First Steve Reed tried to cancel elections he thought Labour would lose, now Labour MPs want to remove voting rights from young people because they’re scared they’ll vote Green. Instead of trying to cancel the voters, why doesn’t Labour start to focus on what really matters, the cost of living crisis, more affordable homes, and rent controls.

The Mail on Sunday added:

When the plans were first set out last year, Labour faced claims of trying to rig future elections on the grounds that younger people tended to vote for them over the Tories. But one survey appeared to show that the Greens, a threat in some Labour-held constituencies, could benefit even more.

An ITV Youth Tracker poll by Savanta published last November showed support for Labour among 18 to 25-year-olds had collapsed from 43 per cent in March last year to just 25 per cent. Backing for the Greens had soared from 16 to 32 per cent.

So, we’ve got bad news for Labour about demographics:

NEW | Greens lead with all voters under 65, reveals latest YouGov survey:

— 18-64s —
Grn: 26%
Ref: 20%
Lab: 17%
Con: 13%
Lib: 14%

— Over 65s —
Ref: 33%
Con: 26%
Lab: 15%
Lib: 14%
Grn: 6%

Poll: @YouGov, 1-2 March pic.twitter.com/Kaa1pBYBJ3

— Stats for Lefties (@LeftieStats) March 3, 2026

Labour — Dead end

At this point, if Labour wants to stand any chance of winning, it will have to ban everyone under 65 from voting. Additionally, it will have to ban everyone over 65, because those people have all turned to Reform UK.

This will mean the only people allowed to vote are Keir Starmer, Steve Reed, and that Sky News editor who’s still taking the PM at face value despite overwhelming evidence he’s a serial liar:

WATCH: Starmer on ‘beating himself up’ over Mandelson is worth watching because I really think it’s a very rare & believable moment where Starmer reveals how he’s really feeling; showing some vulnerability and anger with himself over the decision he took
pic.twitter.com/JZIgWCrZUt

— Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) March 27, 2026

Featured image via Hugo Harvey (YouTube)

By Willem Moore

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In a new interview with Politics JOE, Green Party’s Hannah Spencer has spoken out against the drinking culture among British MPs:

"You can smell the alcohol when people are in between votes."

Green MP Hannah Spencer tells us what Westminster is REALLY like.

The full interview is live on YouTube, and as a podcast here: https://t.co/s4mKAc0xku pic.twitter.com/RcikszDxwQ

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— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) April 26, 2026

As Spencer notes, the way things are in Westminster is not “how the world works”.

Green Party vs Booze Britain

Hannah Spencer is the Green Party MP who won the Gorton & Denton by-election. As we reported at the time, Spencer didn’t just win; she massively exceeded the most favourable predictions:

Gorton and Denton by-election result:

GRN: 40.7% (+27.5)
REF: 28.7% (+14.7)
LAB: 25.4% (-25.3)
CON: 1.9% (-6.0)
LDEM: 1.8% (-2.1)

Green GAIN from Labour.

— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) February 27, 2026

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This is what Spencer said in her victory speech:

I didn’t grow up wanting to be a politician. I’m a plumber. And two weeks ago, during all this, I also qualified as a plasterer. Because even in chaos, even under pressure, I get things done.

I am no different to every single person here in this constituency. I work hard. That is what we do.

For most people outside the Westminster bubble, ‘working hard’ means ‘working sober’. This is obviously why Spencer finds the vibes in Parliament so hard to gel with.

In the interview with Politics JOE, Spencer said:

I’m really uneasy about – and I noticed this the other day – when you can smell the alcohol, when people are in between votes and everyone’s going in to vote. Some people have been drinking in between.

There’s a room where I walk past and I’ve doubled my back and looked in because people are just sat having a drink.

But again, that’s a job. I can’t imagine if a cleaner did that or someone working in a bank had a few drinks and then went back to work a bit smelling of alcohol – that wouldn’t happen.

Funnily enough, I’m well placed to comment on this. Many years ago, I worked as a cleaner at the Stretford Jobcentre. One day, a lady who I worked with turned up shitfaced. Several of the Jobcentre staff noticed, and told our boss to send her home. So basically, exactly what you’d expect to happen happened.

While I’ve never been a banker, I have worked in multiple offices, including a stint at a defence contractor when I was much younger and didn’t know any better. While people weren’t just walking around pissed, it was definitely the case that you could have a boozy lunch every so often without turning any heads (with all of it charged to your American Express card, no questions asked).

So yeah, Spencer is half right.

It’s definitely the case that most jobs are sober by demand, but the closer you get to the heart of capital, the more leeway you get to disobey the rules.

Dangers

Spencer also said:

And I think there’s been so many cases recently of questionable and dangerous behaviour… allegedly from MPs, with staff, because this culture… of a really unprofessional and worrying setting where people can just drink alcohol… while they’re in work; it’s like life doesn’t work like that.

And when I say that that is what I find very out of touch about that place, it’s things like that that I mean, because I just think the vast majority of us that have come from backgrounds of like normal jobs – like that’s not how the world works, so why does it work in somewhere where arguably the most important decisions are getting made.

Labour List spokesperson Stella Tsantekidou took offence to what Spencer said, complaining:

Yeah no, sorry, MPs are often cooped up in Parliament for 15 hours a day, they will have a drink with journalists or colleagues and will still be discussing politics -their job, as Hannah says.

Tesco workers are “cooped up” — you wouldn’t be okay with them getting on the lash, would you? Although I suppose they’re actually doing important work; they’re not just running some silly, little country.

Tsantekidou also said:

I don’t like the blanket demonisation of MPs and Hannah should know better after she had already been accused of not taking the job seriously because she took part in that dancing event in Portcullis house.

Spencer didn’t demonise all MPs; she demonised the ones who were drinking. Unless of course every MP besides her is drinking, in which case this is a bigger problem than we realised.

Tsantekidou added:

I hate people getting too drunk in Westminster too and am sad I see so many people seemingly with alcoholic addiction or otherwise, but just like all other professions socialise so do we in politics and it is an absolute necessity that you do.

People are responsible for their own actions, of course, but they’re less in control of themselves once they start drinking – i.e. having a bar at work is a recipe for trouble. Also, note that Tsantekidou is using ‘socialising’ as a synonym for ‘drinking’. This is increasingly not how people think, with people of all ages now drinking less to one degree or another.

Tsantekidou additionally said:

Politics is based on human relationships, not on some machine button being pushed. What should MPs do take journalists to sit and chat for hours in an empty room?

If the thought of chatting with colleagues drives you to drink, you might actually have a problem. Saying that, we do appreciate some of the ‘colleagues’ in this instance may be Jess Phillips or Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Professionalism

Tsantekidou finished:

Of anything there should be MORE socialising in politics so that people can understand each other better.

If she’s using ‘socialising’ to mean ‘drinking’ again, then no — we don’t need more politicians getting pissed with journalists. Clearly, we need both professions to start acting like professionals and to literally just do the jobs they’re paid to do.

Featured image via UK House of Commons

By Willem Moore

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Millennials and Generation Z are often dubbed the “therapy generations,” known for prioritising mental health and seeking counselling when they need it.

Where does that leave Gen X? Is the demographic known for its independent streak and “whatever” attitude similarly blasé about getting a therapist?

Many Gen Xers – those born between about 1965 and 1980 – came of age in a time when seeking help wasn’t as normalised. For some, a “shadow of a stigma” still lingers, said Tracy Douglas, a therapist in Wisconsin who specialises in supporting Gen X clients.

Mental health wasn’t exactly a dinner table topic in the ’70s and ’80s, she said. Apart from a Woody Allen film – or the kind of urbane circles those movies depicted – it wasn’t really talked about at all.

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“Therapy wasn’t seen as a proactive tool for healing and growth so much as it was an absolute last resort to turn to,” Douglas, who was born in 1970 herself, told HuffPost. “Because of that, many Gen Xers can still have a sense that they should be able to muscle through troubles on their own.”

For some Gen Xers, off-putting experiences with quirky ’70s- and ’80s-era therapists – or ones who felt overly performative – have made them hesitant to go back.

“I had one client tell me about a family session from his teens where a therapist forced the entire family to hold hands, look each other in the eye, and recite ‘I love you’ to each family member,” Douglas said. “It was so forced, awkward and profoundly disconnected from their actual family dynamic that they never went back.”

Comstock via Getty Images

Still, more members of the latchkey generation are starting to try therapy. In 2018, about 26% of Gen Xers said they’d sought therapy at some point, according to the American Psychological Association – and that number has only climbed since the Covid-19 pandemic kicked off a full-blown therapy boom, fuelled in part by the rise of telehealth.

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“Once they’re actually in the room, Gen Xers are often some of the most committed clients I work with,” said Jennifer Chappell Marsh, a marriage and family therapist in San Diego, California.

Her Gen X clients are adaptable and genuinely want to understand what’s happening in their lives and what makes them tick.

“They respond really well when the work makes sense to them,” she told HuffPost. “When I can help a Gen X client see that the way they’ve been coping was a completely logical response to what they lived through, something shifts.”

What exactly are they discussing on therapists’ couches? Below, Marsh, Douglas and other therapists share the top issues they hear from Gen Xers.

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Johner Images via Getty Images

They have chronic stress with no blueprint for asking for help.

Raised to be self-reliant, many Gen Xers take a DIY approach to their personal problems. Marsh said a lot of her Gen X clients grew up in homes with divorced or two working parents, where emotional attunement was often lacking. The lesson they absorbed, she said, was simple: You get through things by handling them yourself.

“In attachment terms, we’d call this a dismissing style – self-reliant, uncomfortable with dependence, skilled at managing their own distress without letting anyone in,” she said. “When midlife hits and everything gets heavy, they don’t reach out, they just keep going.”

When they do seek help with a mental health professional, it’s often a massive relief, though it can feel foreign or scary at first.

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“Therapy is often the first time a Gen X client has genuinely been invited to slow down and feel what’s been building for decades,” she said.

They’re questioning long-term marriages and relationships.

Douglas said there’s a “massive un-mooring” happening in Gen X partnerships today, especially among long-term straight couples. After decades of carrying the lion’s share of the mental and emotional load for their families, many Gen X women are looking at their marriages and realising they might actually prefer being alone, she said.

“They are choosing peace and ease by casting off the responsibilities of mental and emotional labour that has long been taken for granted,” she said. “Meanwhile, I see men are hitting a wall where being stoic and staying at a remove doesn’t work anymore.”

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“Husbands are realising that to survive and thrive in this stage of life with their partners, they need to understand their and their partners’ emotional lives so they can connect on deep, meaningful levels,” Douglas said.

After decades of just getting by, many of these partners are either finding the courage to leave or finally speaking up about their emotions and needs in hopes of carving out the lives they actually want.

MoMo Productions via Getty Images

They’re burnt out.

Gen X has collective strength and grit, but without self-care and community care, burnout sets in, said Jessika Fruchter, a marriage and family therapist in Oakland, California. When clients show up in her office, “they’re often exhausted from white-knuckling through it all.”

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“At this point in midlife, many of them are both caregivers to kids and to ageing parents,” she said. “They also have careers, relationships and a long list of other responsibilities.”

Many in Gen X were latchkey kids, and Fruchter said it’s not uncommon to hear boasts like, “I basically raised myself.”

“Over time, though, that hyper-independence becomes a liability,” she said. “Much of the work here is about learning to ask for help and prioritise caring for ourselves, as we do others.”

They’re waiting for their adult children to grow up.

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Many Gen Xers struggle with moving out of the parenting stage of their lives, said Kurt Smith, a therapist in Roseville, California, who specialises in counselling men. It’s not uncommon for adult children in their 30s and 40s to be living back at home.

“This can occur for understandable reasons, but some adult children never leave when they come back or even have a plan or desire to do so,” Smith said. “Their Gen X parents end up struggling to distinguish between whether they’re loving or enabling them. This is a problem that much fewer of their parents had.”

Gen X women are going through menopause.

When it comes to being transparent about perimenopause or menopause, Gen X women are pattern breakers, Fruchter said.

“Earlier generations rarely spoke out about how challenging this developmental stage actually is, and what a toll it can take on mental health,” she said. “Between hormonal shifts, identity shifts and difficult physical symptoms, Gen X women seek out a space for support. ”

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They’re anxious over money.

Gen X is currently being flattened by an unprecedented “sandwich squeeze,” having to deal with the financial and emotional burden of supporting their aging parents and children who haven’t yet taken flight, financially speaking.

“A lot of Gen Xers find themselves worried about how to fund the launch of young adult children, who are facing a world way more expensive than the one they entered, while also realising that many of their aging parents didn’t have a Plan B for their long-term care,” Douglas said.

She said it’s a “financial and emotional pincer move” that’s left many Gen Xers feeling anxious about how they’re going to make ends meet, plus depressed from feeling like they just aren’t measuring up or doing enough.

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They have unprocessed early childhood wounds showing up in midlife.

As a collective, many Gen Xers grew up amid high divorce rates, latchkey childhoods, and a culture that prized toughness over tenderness, Marsh said. Decades later, her clients in this age group are often grappling with the long-term effects of early attachment wounds, especially emotional unavailability or loss that was never named or fully processed.

“Those things don’t just disappear; they’re stuffed down and resurface later in relationships, in parenting, in how someone responds when their partner gets upset or criticizes them,” she said.

“A lot of my Gen X clients are genuinely surprised to realize that what they’re dealing with in their 40s or 50s has roots in something that happened in childhood,” she added.

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That’s where trauma-informed work like EMDR therapy can be game-changing, Marsh said. EMDR, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, therapy is a mental health treatment technique that involves moving your eyes a specific way while you process traumatic memories.

“When we do that, many clients find that they’re healing things they didn’t even know they were still carrying,” she said.

What Marsh most wants people to understand about Gen X in therapy is that beneath all that self-sufficiency is a generation that was never really given permission to need.

“For people who’ve spent their whole lives keeping it together with very little support, it’s pretty profound to feel safe enough to be known by another person,” she said.

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Reform UK has been forced to expel three local election candidates. This time, it’s done so after investigators revealed that the three men were once part of the British National Party:

EXCLUSIVE: A joint investigation by HOPE not hate and @DailyMirror has found that three Reform UK candidates were once affiliated with the fascist British National Party (BNP).https://t.co/8DiI7ktpHx

— HOPE not hate (@hopenothate) April 25, 2026

It’s good to see that the party has taken action — or that it’s done so in this case, at least. Because as we’ve reported, there are plenty of candidates with BNP-identical views that Reform has not expelled.

Reform and the BNP

Hope not Hate and the Mirror are responsible for this latest exposé. As Hope not Hate reported:

While now a shadow of its former self, the BNP was once Britain’s largest and most successful far-right party. Formed in 1982, the party was most successful under the leadership of Nick Griffin, but went into sharp decline following the 2010 general election. While it limps on, it is standing no candidates at the forthcoming elections.

The BNP’s membership peaked at 14,500 and since its collapse, activists and members have gravitated towards a range of radical and far right parties. Unsurprisingly, some have washed up in Reform UK, including as candidates.

The men Hope not Hate exposed are David Prior, George Parnell, and John Black:

George Martin Parnell is standing in Hampshire (Fleet Town) and Hart (Fleet Central).

Tells voters he "manages risk in critical environments."

One of his now-dissolved companies was registered at the same address listed next to his name on the leaked BNP list. pic.twitter.com/Rh5SYLm6mU

— HOPE not hate (@hopenothate) April 25, 2026

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John Black is running in Little Harwood & Whitebirk (Blackburn with Darwen) and also appears on the leaked BNP list.

In an election statement posted by the local Reform branch Black wrote that Great Britain is “on the verge of collapse.” pic.twitter.com/UUL8zBtwJP

— HOPE not hate (@hopenothate) April 25, 2026

Hope not Hate added:

Farage says ex-BNP activists “aren’t welcome” presumably because the BNP is seen as toxic and racist.

Farage has long walked a tightrope between far-right views and centre-right electability. This is now causing problems for him, because many of the far-right individuals who were drawn to Reform are abandoning the party for Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain.

It’s also causing problems for the ethnic minority Reform candidates who take Farage at his word when he says he’s not a racist:

NEW: Nigel Farage says X is now becoming “a very unpleasant place” due to a rise racist accounts and content

Reform leader says that many of his ethnic minority candidates are experiencing huge levels of abuse

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— Noa Hoffman (@hoffman_noa) April 20, 2026

Farage himself will tell you he doesn’t want BNP types in his party, but as we’ve reported, he’s clearly comfortable with far-right candidates as long as they can tow the line:

• Another Reform candidate praises Oswald Moseley — A rite of party initiation?
• Reform have put a suspended racist in charge of campaign finances.
• Reform candidate wants to ‘tear down’ the NHS.
• Reform welcomes ‘shoot the p*kis’ scandal ex-Tory.
• Reform UK accused of ‘nil vetting’ as another racist candidate exposed.
• Video emerges of Reform’s ‘Nazi salute’ candidate drink driving.

BNP membership is seen as a red line for Farage, but we’re not confident that will always be the case. There is no real difference between an ex-BNP member and an ex-Tory who called for minority groups to be shot — no difference beyond the optics Farage currently considers important, anyway.

Should Reform become the party of government, we’ve no doubt PM Farage will stop pretending to care about many of these things.

The British far right

Britain First leader Paul Golding is another ex-BNP guy. As we recently reported, Golding wants the UK to descend into chaos for the benefit of his political platform:

Far right extremist Paul Golding exposed in a secret recording:

"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

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— smile2jannah (@smile2jannah) April 12, 2026

Tommy Robinson is also an ex-BNP member. As we’ve reported, Reform candidate James Bembridge defended Robinson:

Heres a video of Reform UK’s candidate in Soho, Westminster, James Bembridge (@TheBembridge) glibly defending Tommy Robinson against racism allegations.

He was a member of the BNP and EDL, and in the video Bembridge states he’s looked everywhere and not found any racism by him… pic.twitter.com/qE4Q59CMB1

— Reform Party UK Exposed (@reformexposed) April 13, 2026

Make no mistake — despite their public disagreements, these people are all part of the same movement. And if you vote Reform UK, you might as well be voting for the BNP.

This is why the ex-BNP guys were drawn to it in the first place.

Featured image via Gage Skidmore (Flickr)

By Willem Moore

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Tzachi Braverman, a confidant of Benjamin Netanyahu and the wanted war criminal’s designated new ambassador to the UK, faces a sexual offences case in Israel. His alleged victim has notified Israeli police, supported by evidence and witness accounts. Braverman denies any wrongdoing and has claimed he was being blackmailed, though what he claims the blackmail was about if the allegations are untrue is unclear.

According to Haaretz, the accusations are “horrifying”:

The woman didn’t file a formal complaint and asked investigators not to open an investigation or use the information just yet for fear of retribution, according to police sources.

“She’s afraid,” a person who knows her told Haaretz, adding, “Her descriptions are horrifying, and they are apparently backed up by evidence and things that people heard about the incident shortly after it happened.”

A police official said that officers met with the woman at her home on the same day Braverman was being questioned over possible obstruction of justice in the BibiLeaks case. However, they couldn’t convince her to change her mind.

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In March 2026, the Green party demanded that the UK government block Braverman’s appointment. Despite his protestations of blackmail, Braverman has not filed a complaint with Israeli police.

The allegations are the latest in a long list of cases of Israeli sex offence and paedophilia scandals, including at the highest levels of government.

Israeli scandals

In April 2025 Shoshana Strook, the daughter of Israel’s far-right settlements minister fled to police and asked them to protect her, accusing both her parents and one of her brothers of raping her as a child, over a period of years, and filming the rapes.

Also in 2025, Israeli cyber-spy boss Tom Alexandrovich was allowed to escape to Israel after meetings with US federal agencies. He had been caught in a paedophile sting. The Netanyahu regime is currently ignoring well over 2,000 extradition requests for alleged and convicted paedophiles.

UK too

The issue also crosses into Labour party pro-Israel ranks in the UK. Former Hackney councillor Thomas Dewey received 150 hours of ‘community service’ for possession of sadistic child rape images. Sam Gould, a former aide to Starmer’s health secretary Wes Streeting, received a suspended sentence for flashing a child.

Former councillor Liron Velleman also escaped jail, despite committing sex offences with what he thought was a 13-year-old girl. Another former councillor, Conor McGrath, received only a suspended sentence even though he was convicted of possessing the most appalling categories of child-rape images.

Others are awaiting trial. Starmeroid MP Dan Norris has been arrested — twice — for sex offences involving rape and child-sex offences, including abduction. And some Zionist alleged paedophiles seem to escape altogether. Ivor Caplin is no longer even on bail after being caught — on camera — turning up to meet what he thought was a child for sex.

Israeli psychotherapist and trauma expert Dr. Anat Gur, head of the Bar-Ilan University trauma therapy program, has said that she believes organised child rape in Israel is widespread:

Organized child rape is one of the most horrific things I’ve encountered. It’s likely much more widespread than we think. It’s happening in places we least expect.

Israel is a sick society.

Featured image via MiddleEastEye

By Skwawkbox

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The rattled media’s campaign of attacks on Green party candidates has continued this week with a smear against a Cornwall council candidate who refused to shake hands with a far-right opponent.

Abigail Hubbucks lost the local election by just over a hundred votes to Reform UK’s Lyndon Harrison. After the results were announced, she told Harrison she wouldn’t be shaking hands with him. This was immediately spun up by the press and the far right as ‘woke leftie is a bad loser’. This spin was, of course, quickly pounced on by her far-right opponent, who called it “divisive and unprofessional”.

Yeah, right. Reform’s whole reason for existing is to incite division and hate. Harrison himself has posted a ‘call-sign’ acronym used by white-supremacist ‘QAnon’ supporters:

Lyndon Harrison is Reform UK’s candidate in Newquay.

Harrison posted on his Facebook: “My kind of people! WWG1WGA”, the call sign of far-right conspiracy theory movement QAnon that were instrumental in the US Capitol attack in January 2021.

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How many of their conspiracy theories… pic.twitter.com/AZEl9ndXps

— Reform Party UK Exposed (@reformexposed) April 21, 2026

As a source close to Hubbucks said:

Not shaking hands with a fascist is just correct for someone with Abigail’s politics.

Green Party surge

In fact, the real story of the night was how close the Greens came to taking the seat, which was held by Reform until its incumbent died, triggering the by-election. When Kevin Towill won the seat for Reform in 2025, he received considerably more votes that Harrison did in the by-election to replace him. Not just in absolute numbers despite a considerably higher turnout in 2026, but in percentage terms too. The Green Party didn’t even feature in the results.

Harrison won only 30% of the vote compared to Towill’s 38% in 2025 — despite riding on the wave of sentiment generated by Towill’s untimely death from a brain tumour. From zero just a year ago, the Greens’ Hubbucks won 25%. This was yet another example of the Green surge — at Reform’s expense as well as Labour’s — that has rattled Farage and co.

The other big story of the night was another utter failure by Keir Starmer’s ‘Labour’. His hollowed-out shell of a party managed just six percent, despite all four of Labour’s Cornwall MPs campaigning intensively. It gets clearer by the day that the Greens are currently the only prospect for stopping the march of the fascists — and are increasingly showing how it’s done.

Featured image via CornwallGreenParty

By Skwawkbox

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