Politics
Is a customs union worth it?
With debates about whether the UK should enter into a customs union with the EU resurfacing, Joël Reland explains what a customs union actually is and how one would, or wouldn’t, benefit the UK.
Brexit is back in political fashion. Three times last week the Prime Minister publicly bemoaned the costs of Brexit, after the Chancellor made similar remarks in the run-up to the budget. There are now even murmurs that some in No. 10 would like to pursue a customs union with the EU, to undo more of the economic damage which Brexit has created.
Many might welcome this. But a customs union is far from being a silver bullet for the UK’s economic woes, and it does have some potential downsides. A healthy dose of reflection would be welcome before any talk gathers steam.
A customs union, simply, would mean the UK charging the same tariffs on imports as the EU. If the EU slaps major tariffs on Chinese or American goods, the UK must do likewise. The main benefit is that a common ‘external tariff’ removes the need for goods traded within the customs union to prove where they come from.
This would eliminate a chunk – but by no means all – of the trade bureaucracy which Brexit has created. No longer would UK exporters have to prove that they meet complex ‘rules of origin’ to qualify for tariff-free trade with the EU, reducing administrative costs.
Proving compliance with these rules is estimated to add 2-8% to the cost of exporting goods, and some companies have stopped trading with the EU as a result, while a sizeable minority prefer to pay EU tariffs than absorb the admin costs. The burden is generally higher in heavy industry and lower for agrifoods.
A customs union does not, however, remove the need for border checks and other paperwork which stems from the UK being outside the single market. Rejoining the single market is the single-biggest lever the government could pull to boost economic growth – but a customs union is perhaps more politically viable as it does not (in principle) require accepting freedom of movement.
The precise economic benefits are hard to determine, because the UK would not – contrary to the widely-used phrasing – be rejoining the EU customs union. That club is only open to members of the single market (plus a couple of microstates and territories). The UK would instead have to follow the lead of Turkey, Andorra and San Marino by signing a customs union with the EU from scratch.
There is no off-the-shelf model to go for. Turkey, for instance, has harmonised its tariffs on most, but not all, goods (primary agricultural products, coal and steel are excluded) and aligned much of its technical goods regulation with the EU, removing most additional checks for industrial goods.
The UK would have to consider the scope of its own putative agreement. Does it want to cover all sectors? And should it also commit to regulatory alignment on goods? Which could significantly enhance the economic benefits but means more ‘rule-taking’ from Brussels.
The EU would also likely drive a hard bargain (as recent SAFE negotiations show) and could insist on conditions like budgetary payments or freedom of movement – even though they are not strictly necessary.
The one clear sacrifice is over trade policy. The government would have to review or unwind some – if not all – of the trade deals it has concluded since Brexit; as it could not offer more favourable tariff rates to partners than the EU does.
At the same time, the UK would not benefit from liberalised access to markets with which the EU signs a new trade deal – unless secures its own deal in parallel. The UK’s ability to negotiate new trade deals would largely be limited to mirroring what the EU does.
So, are those losses worth the gains? The widely–cited claim that a customs union would boost UK GDP by 2.2% should be taken with a pinch of salt, as this is in fact based on a scenario where the UK has ‘deep alignment on goods and services’ with the EU – an unrealistic option which is in effect the single market without freedom of movement.
Nevertheless, there would likely be a net economic benefit from a customs union. The new trade deals which the UK has signed since Brexit are estimated to add half a percent per year to UK GDP towards the end of the next decade. Meanwhile, pre-Brexit government analysis found that leaving the customs union would reduce long-run GDP by about 1%. So the (very rough) net customs union benefit might be 0.5% of GDP, or £15bn a year. A deal involving regulatory alignment on goods would provide a bigger boost.
For this Labour government, the key questions are whether those gains justify giving up control of its independent trade policy (of which it appears rather fond), and whether, if it is to take a political risk and breach its red lines, it should go for the relatively modest economic returns of a customs union, or for something more ambitious.
By Joël Reland, Senior Researcher, UK in a Changing Europe.
Politics
Katie Lam: Some think Britain is ‘going down the sewer’ – but those that built them have a lesson for how to avoid that fate
Katie Lam is a shadow Home Office minister and MP for Weald of Kent.
When politicians talk about building more infrastructure, it can often seem like a fairly abstract ambition. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
In January, thousands of people across Kent and Sussex, including in my constituency, lost access to running water after a “freeze and thaw event” caused pipes to burst. In other words, water infrastructure installed by the Victorians was unable to cope with predictable wintertime temperature changes after well over a century of use. Our infrastructure failed; the result was people in Britain, in 2026, forced to queue up for bottled water in order to wash themselves and cook their food.
The modern world rests on infrastructure.
The relative comfort in which we live was made possible by the building of previous generations. They created a world in which we were able to take roads, railways and reservoirs for granted. It is thanks to their work that we can travel easily around the country, heat our homes and, most of the time, rely on being able to turn on the tap to get clean, running water.
But this inheritance, impressive though it is, can’t last forever. It must be maintained and built upon. For many of my constituents last week, the consequences of failing to do that were all too real.
And what a failure it is. According to the National Audit Office, at the current rate of work and investment it would take 700 years to replace our ageing water system. In the meantime, outages like those seen in Kent and Sussex this week will, sadly, be commonplace. The promise of improvement in seven centuries’ time provides little comfort when you find yourself bathing in bottled water.
We can expect far more of this. We haven’t built a reservoir in this country since 1992, meaning that our rain-soaked island is likely to face water shortages in the decades ahead. Even if we’d built enough reservoirs, most of the country would still be relying on Victorian-era pipes, which bulge and burst as the temperature changes.
And our water system isn’t the only casualty of time and neglect. We haven’t built a new motorway since 2003, despite rising congestion. We haven’t built a new nuclear power station since 1995, helping to cause the highest industrial energy prices in the developed world. The London Underground, a marvel of Victorian ingenuity, was built so long ago that the whole system now risks overheating. The plan seems to be to encourage people to carry a bottle of water on hot days.
In his memoirs, Lee Kuan Yew, the visionary founding father of Singapore, talked of taking his island nation from third world to first. It can feel like Britain is slipping in the opposite direction, from first world to third.
Yet we should not allow our current direction to define our future destination. Things can improve, and they must, just as they have before. The blockers which have been put in place to stop us from building on our inheritance were self-imposed; they can be removed. The drive and dynamism that will be required to turn our country around is considerable but is within our grasp.
After all, we’ve done it before. By the time of the Great Stink of 1858, the Victorians were still relying on the skeleton of the Roman sewage system. London’s population had grown forty times larger, and no effort had been made to manage this growth. Much of the capital was, in effect, an open sewer.
Within just six years, an entirely new sewage system had been opened, which would go on to be expanded over the next decade. By 1875, London had 1,300 miles of new sewers, and a whole new system designed to manage the city’s water and waste. In turn, the embankments built to support the new sewage system allowed the opening of new roads, new public gardens, and the Circle Line of the London Underground.
By contrast, since the Victorians laid the modern sewage system, the country’s population has merely trebled – an enormous challenge to be sure, but a smaller proportionate increase than from the Romans to the Victorians by some margin. We can, and should, also avoid making this challenge greater by adding hundreds of thousands of people to the population each year, as we have done for the past few decades.
There are plenty of rules which will need to be changed, and regulations which will need to be slashed, if we want to achieve anything on this scale again. Yet for even these changes to be made, we’ll first need to rediscover our national sense of ambition. We will need to believe that we are a country which can solve its own problems, rather than shrugging our shoulders as we stumble from crisis to crisis. We will need to recognise that we have our own part to play in creating the world that we want future generations to enjoy.
I believe that we can, and that we will – because while many of our politicians may have failed us, the British people are still the best in the world.
Politics
Albie Amankona: If Tory moderates are serious then ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative’ must die
Albie Amankona is a broadcaster, financial analyst, vice-chair of LGBT+ Conservatives, and co-founder of Conservatives Against Racism.
Ruth Davidson and Andy Street are right: there are millions of “politically homeless” voters who feel unrepresented, disconnected and unconvinced that British politics is capable of governing competently. Their new project to win those voters back to the centre-right is therefore a necessary intervention.
But if this moderate movement is to be taken seriously, if it is about delivery rather than posture, then it must kill “socially liberal, fiscally conservative”.
That slogan no longer describes a governing philosophy. It disguises the central failure of modern One Nation conservatism: a preference for tone over outcomes.
Street and Davidson talk about competence, place, civic pride and bread-and-butter economics. All welcome. But competence without clarity is fragile. Civic pride without common culture and customs is hollow. The “politically homeless” voters Street and Davidson want to attract are not looking for atmospherics. They are looking for solutions to problems they can feel.
Nowhere is this clearer than immigration and integration. These cannot be parked in the name of civic harmony. A genuinely restrictive immigration policy and a muscular integration strategy are not optional extras. They are the foundation of any place-based conservatism. You cannot talk credibly about wages, housing, public services or social cohesion while refusing to confront the single pressure voters most clearly identify.
Here is the irony, the “wet” moderates delivered more right-wing outcomes than the faux “dry” hardliners who followed them.
Net migration was lowest this century from the actions of “moderate” home secretaries like Theresa May and James Cleverly. By contrast, the Johnson era’s self-styled culture warriors presided over record-high immigration after Brexit. The Boriswave was a direct result of policy choices made under Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, and Suella Braverman. Damian Green did more to cut migration than Robert Jenrick.
The same inversion applies on spending. The period of greatest fiscal restraint came under “moderate” chancellors and prime Ministers like David Cameron and George Osborne. With welfare cuts too deep even for veteran right-winger, Iain Duncan Smith. They weren’t perfect, but they were materially more fiscally conservative and more right-wing in outcomes than what followed.
The post-Boris Johnson Tory administrations, enthusiastically cheer-led by many of today’s Reform defectors, did not govern as dry Thatcherites. They cosplayed as them. On immigration, spending and the size of the state, the Cameron-era leadership was more right-wing on virtually every measurable metric.
Yet One Nation conservatism refuses to own its right-wing history, paralysed by a fear of sounding “mean” or “cruel”. That confusion is sustained by continued reliance on “socially liberal, fiscally conservative”, a slogan that made sense two decades ago but is now obsolete.
The culture war it was designed to defuse is over. Four female leaders. Two non-white leaders. Equal marriage settled law. The British conservative movement, Reform UK included, is now tolerant by default: multiracial, secular, gender-agnostic and gay-friendly.
Today, “social liberalism” no longer means tolerance. It denotes an institutional ideology that treats disagreement as harm, enforcement as cruelty and group identity as a substitute for merit. It is expressed through anti-meritocratic DEI bureaucracies, race and gender essentialism, the policing of language and thought, fictional net zero economics, and an intolerance of dissent dressed up as compassion. One Nation conservatism has been slow and timid in confronting this, defaulting to the defence of institutions that are now openly hostile to conservative instincts.
Voters did not defect because language was insufficiently kind. They defected because outcomes were incoherent. Rhetoric dialled up but immigration surged, bureaucracies ballooned, net zero drifted into fantasy, and the justice system forgot the “justice” part. Post-Brexit vibes politics produced delivery failure.
Davidson and Street are right to stress civic pride and cohesion. However, cohesion is not generated by reassurance. It requires rules, expectations and enforcement. Integration is not a polite request. It is a requirement.
May, hardly a populist, argued for leaving the ECHR while Lee Anderson was still a Labour councillor. Borders, law and sovereignty are not culture-war distractions – they are the preconditions for a free society.
In three consecutive leadership contests, One Nation candidates failed to reach the final two. That is not bad luck or factional bias. It is a rejection of moderation without muscle.
If Street and Davidson want their project to succeed, they must say clearly what they are prepared to abandon. Killing “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” is necessary but not sufficient. What replaces it must be more than a change in language. It has to be a set of choices.
Clear positions on the questions that decide whether a governing philosophy exists at all. What does a genuinely restrictive immigration policy look like in practice? What does enforcement mean? What institutions need shrinking rather than managing? Where does the state step back, and where does it enforce?
What does “fiscally conservative” mean in a world of debt dependency, ageing populations and rising defence costs. What gets cut, what gets reformed, and what is protected? How is planning liberalised in practice, and homes actually built? How is infrastructure delivered without chronic overspend and pointless overbuild?
What integration actually requires? What the obligations of citizenship are? What the state will no longer tolerate? Until those questions are answered, One Nation conservatism remains a temperament rather than a governing philosophy. Pleasant, well-meaning, but electorally weightless.
If Street and Davidson’s new centrist conservative clan is to be taken seriously, “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” must die. What replaces it must be pragmatic, radical and unapologetically conservative
Author Michael Wolff challenged Donald Trump to fulfill his threats to sue him, declaring on social media that if the president sparks a legal battle, it will publicly open a Pandora’s box over his unsettled ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump has repeatedly suggested he could sue Wolff in the wake of the Department of Justice releasing millions of pages of files last week related to the investigation into the late convicted sex offender.
While speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump floated the idea of taking legal action against Wolff, alleging the author and Epstein were “conspiring” against him since the release of a February 2016 email in which Wolff suggested the serial rapist was the “bullet” that could terminate Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to Fox News.
Trump followed up his condemnation of the writer in a Truth Social post on Monday, referring to Wolff as a “SLEAZEBAG lying ‘author’” who “conspired in order to damage me and /or my Presidency.”
In an Instagram video posted on Monday, Wolff responded to Trump’s threats.
“I woke up this morning and found that last night Donald Trump had threatened to sue me again,” he said. “I think this is the third or possibly fourth time the president of the United States has threatened to sue me.”
Wolff defended himself, saying, “Yes, I tried to encourage Jeffrey Epstein in any way I knew how to come forward with what he knew about Donald Trump.”
He went on to mention his book “Siege,” in which he said Epstein discussed his “breakup” with Trump “over a piece of real estate in Palm Beach.” Wolff then said that “three weeks after that book was published, Epstein was arrested by Donald Trump’s Justice Department.”
The author referenced Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, saying in the video that she threatened to sue him after he “said she was part of Epstein’s social circle, which we can see in these latest emails that have been released.”
“This lawsuit gives me the power to subpoena Mrs. Trump, Mr. Trump and all their friends,” Wolff continued, before sharing that he raised $800,000 through GoFundMe to fund the case.
Wrapping up his message, Wolff straight up told Trump to “bring it on.”
“I believe that if the American public knew the real nature of Donald Trump’s long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, they would turn away in horror and revulsion. So sue me. Let’s sue each other,” he said.
Wolff added: “I have nothing to hide, but, Mr. President, you surely do.”
Watch Wolff’s message to Trump below.
The way much of the media handled last week’s ‘news’ about Gaza’s death toll is nothing short of shameful.
On 29 January, left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported, based on an anonymous source, that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had ‘accepted’ the Gaza Health Ministry’s (GHM) estimate of 70,000 Palestinian deaths since October 2023. Immediately, major outlets ran headlines declaring an Israeli ‘u-turn’ – after all, officials had long dismissed such figures as Hamas propaganda. Journalists and commentators, who had spent two years lambasting those sceptical of the GHM figures, rushed to claim vindication. Among them was Mehdi Hasan, who crowed on social media that after every Gaza war, Israel ‘accepts the Palestinian death toll’. Hasan implied that those of us who dared ask questions about it were engaging in gaslighting.
However, as is often the case, there appears to be a significant gap between media narrative and reality. To begin with, the IDF has outright denied Haaretz’s report. LTC Nadav Shoshani of the IDF Spokesperson’s Department stated the reported 70,000 figure ‘does not reflect official IDF data’. In other words, the widely promoted ‘admission’ was based on an anonymous background briefing – not an official, verified statement. The IDF emphasised that any formal report would be issued through the proper channels. Unsurprisingly, this caveat has been conveniently ignored in much of the news coverage.
Even so, the framing of this story has been highly misleading. The debate over the death toll was never about whether tens of thousands have died in Gaza. Everyone agrees the war has been devastating. The real dispute, both then and now, concerns the composition of that death toll, the credibility of its sources, and how many of the dead were Hamas combatants or victims of Hamas’s own actions, rather than civilians killed by the IDF. In addressing these questions, the media’s performance has been appalling.
From the outset of the war, the Hamas-run GHM became the main source of casualty figures in Western reports. By early 2024, the GHM was claiming that about 70 per cent of the dead were ‘women and children’ – a statistic cited endlessly by sympathetic journalists and activists. This claim was always nonsense, and is easily disproven just by looking more closely at Hamas’s own data. Most of the casualties were, in fact, male, with a disproportionate number of those being of fighting age. But you wouldn’t know that from reading the BBC.
Those of us who dared to scrutinise the Gaza death toll were not denying that civilians were being killed. We were simply emphasising that the figures came from a party directly involved in the conflict. A study of international coverage between February and May 2024 found that a staggering 84 per cent of major media reports failed to distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths when citing Gaza’s death toll. Ninety-eight per cent of reports cited Hamas’s numbers, while only five per cent referenced Israeli estimates. Tellingly, one in five articles didn’t even attribute the death toll to a source, presenting Hamas’s tally as if it were an uncontested fact. Meanwhile, on the rare occasions that Israeli figures were mentioned, they were often treated with outright scepticism. This blatant double standard undoubtedly laid the foundations for today’s rampant disinformation.
Over a year ago, the Henry Jackson Society published my team’s analysis on the GHM’s fatality lists. The findings were damning. We discovered that Hamas’s lists were riddled with errors and non-combat deaths. Individuals’ ages and genders were frequently misreported (men were listed as women, adults as children) in ways that artificially inflated the count of female and child victims. The lists included people who had died before the war – including those killed by Hamas’s own actions (such as by misfired militant rockets). All of these were lumped together as if Israel was directly responsible. Unsurprisingly, the published toll made no mention of any Hamas combatants whatsoever. Every single fatality was implicitly presented as a civilian who died as a result of Israeli strikes – a near-impossible scenario in a conflict of this nature.
We also observed evidence that the Gazan death toll encompassed natural deaths, which would have occurred regardless of the war. Gaza, like any society, experiences deaths from illness and old age every day. These do not stop during wartime. But the GHM’s methodology appeared to include all manner of deaths in the conflict tally. It even used a public Google Form for individuals to self-report deceased relatives. Given that compensation is offered to families of the deceased, this was clearly a system prone to duplicate entries or misuse. Our qualitative analysis found that these lists were unreliable, and the media should never have treated them as definitive.
Initially, the Palestinian representative in London angrily dismissed our warnings. But a few months later, Hamas discreetly took action that proved our point. In March 2025, the Gaza Health Ministry released an updated casualty report that had quietly removed around 3,400 names that appeared on previous lists. At least a thousand supposed child victims were among those deleted. The likely explanation is that these were duplicate entries, errors, or otherwise invalid records that Hamas erased once they were identified. Our paper was validated: the lists contained thousands of errors.
Our research identified a consistent pattern in conflicts in Gaza: Hamas hides its combatant casualties during the fighting, only acknowledging them much later (if at all). This war has been no exception. Hamas officials have largely remained silent on how many of their militants have perished. Meanwhile, the IDF has consistently reported its estimates of enemy fighters killed. By late 2025, the IDF stated it had killed at least 22,000 Hamas and allied combatants in Gaza. It reported that the fatalities were roughly one-third combatant, two-thirds civilian. This ratio, though tragic, has been consistently maintained in Israeli military briefings. It is a far cry from the ‘nearly all civilians’ picture painted by Hamas.
Can we say for sure that the IDF’s own militant body count is reliable? Of course, Israel is itself an actor in the conflict. But there is historical precedent to suggest its figures are more reliable. After the 2014 Gaza war, independent analyses of casualty lists, along with statements made by Hamas officials, revealed that hundreds of the dead were combatants. Though during the 2014 conflict, Hamas had insisted that almost all fatalities were civilian, the numbers ended up roughly aligning with Israeli estimates.
The same dynamic is unfolding now. While Hamas’s public statements still account for zero militant deaths, behind closed doors, Palestinian sources have acknowledged thousands of militant losses via their Telegram channels. Our report found that Hamas privately pegged around 6,000 of the dead as their fighters. While this number is far lower than Israel’s estimate, it offers stark proof that the GHM’s narrative is a fabrication.
It is important to remember that the GHM figure includes everyone who died as a result of the war. This covers not only airstrike victims, but also people who died from secondary effects like lack of medical care, starvation, being trapped under rubble, or strikes from stray rockets launched by Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. While Gazan officials claimed over 440 deaths from malnutrition or starvation during the war, Israel firmly disputes that any deaths from hunger ever occurred. The IDF notes that Hamas likely counted individuals with severe illnesses as ‘starvation’ victims. The upshot remains that the death toll of 70,000 is a composite of many categories of deaths which, though devastating, cannot be attributed entirely to Israel.
The heated debate that followed the Haaretz report completely overlooks these vital distinctions. Instead of engaging with the complex reality of Gaza’s death toll, much of the press chose self-congratulation. ‘See, even Israel now admits 70,000 died – we told you so!’, they have insisted. But what exactly did they ‘tell us’? Many of these outlets spent two years obscuring the very issues I have outlined. They parroted Hamas’s GHM without caveats, failed to verify the figures, and overlooked the astonishing lack of combatants listed among the dead. They were quick to doubt Israeli statements about militant casualties, yet slow to acknowledge clear evidence of Hamas’s number-fudging. When the GHM quietly removed thousands of names from its records in March 2025, did CNN or the BBC make it headline news? Of course not. That ‘small inconvenience’ was largely left to niche researchers and think-tanks to expose.
Personally, I do not enjoy saying ‘I told you so’. The loss of tens of thousands of lives in Gaza is a reality, and nothing can lessen that human tragedy. However, facts matter, especially in wartime. I warned over a year ago, in detail, that the Gaza death toll was being reported without proper care: that it included errors, double counts, natural deaths and propaganda; that the frequently cited civilian-versus-combatant breakdown was unreliable; and that eventually, the truth about the underreported militant casualties would emerge. I was correct on all points.
Shame on the world’s media for ignoring these red flags for so long. Shame on them for allowing a terror group’s unverifiable claims to shape the narrative, and for smearing those who raised legitimate questions as bad-faith actors. The press should be scrutinising both sides’ claims rigorously, not selectively echoing whichever figures fit a simplistic morality tale we wish to tell ourselves.
The mishandling of this issue has done a huge disservice to both truth and history. Gaza’s dead deserve to be remembered accurately, not reduced to pawns in a propaganda contest. We can mourn the innocents lost while still insisting on an honest accounting. We should not fail them by obscuring the reason their lives were cut short in the first place: a war that was started by the terrorists of Hamas, in which they did everything they could to place civilians in harm’s way.
Andrew Fox is a former British Army officer and an associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, specialising in defence and the Middle East.
Republicans are in full-out panic mode over their plunging support with Hispanic voters after losing a special election in a ruby-red Texas district over the weekend.
On Saturday, a Democrat posted a 14-point victory in a Fort Worth-based state senate district President Donald Trump had won by 17 points in 2024, a staggering swing that was powered by significant shifts across the district’s Hispanic areas.
It’s the clearest sign yet that the GOP’s newfound coalition that propelled Trump’s return to the White House may be short-lived. Many Republicans are warning the party needs to change course on immigration, focus on bread-and-butter economic issues and start pouring money into competitive races — or risk getting stomped in November.
Polling already showed that Republicans were rapidly losing support from Hispanic voters. But the electoral results were a confirmation of that drop.
“It should be an eye-opener to all of us that we all need to pick up the pace,” U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican from a majority-Hispanic district in South Texas, said in an interview. “The candidate has to do their part, the party has to do their part. And then those of us in the arena, we have to do our part to help them as well.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters Tuesday that the election was a “very concerning outcome.” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick posted on X that the results should be a “wake-up call for Republicans across Texas. Our voters cannot take anything for granted.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said “a swing of this magnitude is not something that can be dismissed.”
Taylor Rehmet, the Democrat who flipped the state Senate seat over the weekend, made huge gains with Hispanic voters amid national pushback to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics and widespread economic frustration across demographic groups.
Ahead of the election, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — an immigration hardliner who bused migrants to Democratic-led cities during the Biden administration — said the White House needed to “recalibrate” on its immigration crackdowns following the shooting of Alex Pretti by an immigration officer in Minneapolis.
“That imagery coming out of Minnesota in the last few days has had a huge impact on not only Hispanic voters, but swing voters, independents in Texas and around the country,” said Texas GOP consultant Brendan Steinhauser. “What’s transpired there has definitely led to a bit of a political backlash.”
As Republicans panic, Democrats are feeling a renewed jolt of optimism after they swept statewide races last year in Virginia and New Jersey. They believe they found a winning formula with Rehmet, whose working-class biography as a union leader, Air Force veteran and Lockheed Martin machinist resonated with voters, along with his narrow focus on local issues like maintaining public school funding.
Tory Gavito, president of Democratic donor network Way to Win, said she received excited texts from several major donors over the weekend after the win. “Knowing it’s a wave year, this just adds a little bit of more wind in our sails,” she said. “It’s not just a question around Texas, it’s a question around Texas and Mississippi and Alabama and what does this mean for lots of places.”
Texas Republicans have the most to worry about of any in their party about a major Hispanic snapback towards Democrats.
Hispanics are now the largest ethnic group in Texas, making up 40 percent of the population. Trump carried Latinos in the state in 2024, exit polls showed, a massive swing from earlier elections, and Republicans had been making especially strong gains with rural, more conservative Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley. But as Texas Democrats look to win a U.S. Senate election for the first time since 1988, they’re eyeing an opportunity to pull those voters back in.
“They are leaving in droves and going in the opposite direction,” said Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Business Council. “This is a warning sign.”
And Texas Republicans also banked on retaining at least some of their newfound Hispanic support when they redrew their Congressional map last year, creating several majority-Hispanic districts that Trump would have carried by double digits last year. That includes rejiggering district lines for two top GOP targets, Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, as well as a third district outside San Antonio.
“They’ve banged three of these five new Republican seats on a demographic that Democrats were never able to turn out for 30-40 years, ” said GOP consultant and Trump critic Mike Madrid, referring to young, Hispanic male voters. But now, Trump’s hardline immigration policies have “angered and upset them.”
Samuel Benson and Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.
Reform UK treasurer and ‘property tycoon’ Nick Candy appears in the latest Epstein files. More than appears, in fact. Serial child-rapists and Israeli agents Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were so enamoured of him that Maxwell was “very disappointed” that Candy didn’t let her know he was coming to town.
Furthermore, they were eager to arrange dinner together before he left:
Candy also asked for Maxwell’s email address. Afterwards, he received congratulations as (apparently) Maxwell congratulated him on something and gushed about how great it is on “Jeffrey’s island”:
Candy also received a message from one of Maxwell’s friends, whose name is redacted – but may, based on a missed redaction in a different email, be called ‘Sarah’ — perhaps Sarah Kellen, an interior designer and Epstein associate. ‘Sarah’ wished Candy “exciting adventures” and hoped to see him again soon, even if he never got to know her surname after their first party meeting:
As Middle East Eye has pointed out:
Kellen was in her early 20s when she met Epstein, and she was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 plea deal in which Epstein pleaded guilty to procuring a child for prostitution. But her legal representatives have said Kellen was one of Epstein’s victims.
Kellen was seemingly the sender of the ‘Ghislaine is disappointed’ email at the top of this article.
Harry Eccles, who discovered the emails in the latest release, asked Reform UK for comment. None appears to have been sent. Eccles also pointed out that emails referred to Candy’s company selling a property for Epstein and therefore making money from him:
Jed Garfield, is a known associate of Nick Candy.
Here it seems ‘Candy’ is arranging a first, and second visit to a house with the help of Jed Garfield liaising directly with Jeffrey Epstein pic.twitter.com/c5XnCOVGvQ
— Harry Eccles (@Heccles94) February 3, 2026
And here Epstien and Jobor Y are discussing Candy’s tax court case. pic.twitter.com/0u3URlWPkA
— Harry Eccles (@Heccles94) February 3, 2026
The emails also show that Candy had Epstein’s personal number:
The above forwarded to Epstein personally pic.twitter.com/ZrmZUvxq35
— Harry Eccles (@Heccles94) February 3, 2026
And they show both that Maxwell was involved in the property discussions. Epstein said he had spoken with Candy himself. In addition, Epstein was a fan of Candy and his brother:
Epstein about Candy: ‘no I spoke to him’ pic.twitter.com/cKBi6oeqOk
— Harry Eccles (@Heccles94) February 3, 2026
Jeffrey Epstein about the Candy Brothers: ‘I like both of those guys’ pic.twitter.com/wPS0VEyzo7
— Harry Eccles (@Heccles94) February 3, 2026
And – of course – the disgraced ex-peer and senior Starmer adviser Peter Mandelson had his fingerprints on it, too:
Epstein Residence plans – on the Epstine Library has C Candy (copyright Candy) as the title. pic.twitter.com/22LgL2JVYI
— Harry Eccles (@Heccles94) February 3, 2026
Reform and its treasurer have questions to answer about the association. Somehow it seems unlikely that they will.
Featured image via the Canary
Never a party to miss a vapid appeal to populism, Reform UK have announced plans to cut beer duty by 10%. Except, how do they plan to fund such a feat? Well, by reintroducing the two-child benefit cap, of course.
Under Reform’s new commitment, the party would gradually phase out business rates altogether for UK pubs. Incidentally, they’d also plunge around 350,000 children back into poverty, and 700,000 into deep poverty.
The fact that a mainstream political party can suggest something like this without being spat on immediately by everyone in range indicates that something is deeply wrong with our country. I just don’t have a better way to say that.
Facts about taxes, as if that’s the problem here and not Reform
In Rachel Reeves’ autumn budget, the chancellor unveiled plans to hike business rates for pubs by 76%. This would boil down to additional costs of around £4,300 a year, after the current freeze ends.
However, on 27 January Labour announced that it would reverse course. Starting in April, pubs will now receive a 15% cut to new business rates bills, along with a two-year real-terms freeze.
Reform MP, and general shithouse, Lee Anderson stated that:
The loss of one pub is not just the loss of livelihood for a landlord, or the loss of a local employment hub. The loss of one pub is a loss to all of us as inheritors of a tradition dating back to Roman rule.
He went on:
Yet the Conservatives, and now Labour, have facilitated the closure of thousands of pubs over the last decade. Any contrition they show is false.
As things stand, beer duty – i.e., tax – averages out at around 49p a pint, although that varies according to the drink’s strength. Reform’s plan would knock 10% from that figure by taking the money directly from struggling children and families.
Likewise, the far-right party would also cut VAT from 20% to 10% for the hospitality sector. Reform said that the fact supermarkets don’t pay VAT on food sales gives them an unfair advantage over pubs, as if the party has any concept of what fairness is.
The entire plan would carry a cost of £2.29bn in the first year, rising to £2.9bn by the fourth year. For contrast, estimates suggest that scrapping the two-child benefit cap will cost £3.6bn a year once it’s fully implemented.
There’s something wrong with all of us
There are too many things to say about this, I don’t really know where to start.
As recently as May 2025, Reform was all for scrapping the two-child cap. Then, they flipped to saying it should only be lifted for two-parent full-time-working households, and finally to opposing the removal of the cap altogether. This pointless contrarianism was motivated purely by Labour getting behind scrapping the cap.
This plan is yet another monstering of people who receive benefits – this time pitting them against local pubs, of all things. These two causes are completely unrelated to one another, but Reform has very deliberately chosen to pair them off.
Given Reform’s projected image as champion’s of ‘British culture’, pubs make sense as their chosen cause to champion – but that’s not a compliment. The UK has massive problems with alcoholism and binge drinking, and has even topped world alcohol consumption charts in recent years.
And finally, this is children we’re talking about. Reform are proposing to take money directly from the very poorest children in the UK, and to then give it to pub landlords. If the landlords chose to pass that saving on to customers, a pint might be 5p cheaper, at the cost of making life harder for 100,000 kids.
When did we get to this point, as a society? How can a mainstream political party can suggest something like this without it immediately sinking them? Why are the right-wing papers reporting this like it’s a normal idea?
This job sometimes involves reading, seeing, and reporting on heinous things. Many of them are objectively more awful than this. But this is just such a banal, calculated, cynical evil, it’s turned something in my stomach. There is something deeply wrong with us all. None of this is OK.
Featured image via the Canary
Defence minister Luke Pollard just reiterated in the House of Commons what UK defence policy is all about these days. It’s about massively expensive drones, nukes that aren’t ours, and a sniveling attitude to the US. Rule Britannia etc.
Pollard was answering questions from MPs on a range of military matters on 2 February. Tory Mark Francois (remember him!?) wondered if the UK would gift its Watchkeeper drones to Ukraine. Pollard said no:
Supposedly, the search for Watchkeeper’s replacement – AKA, the Corvus program – will cost £130mn. This seems very optimistic. Based on the Israeli Hermes drone, Watchkeeper was ten years late late and cost £1bn. That’s according to Drone Wars UK. The NGO also said Watchkeeper flew only 14 hours in Afghanistan in 2014 because combat operations had effectively ended by the time it was usable.
The drone, which is unarmed, was then used to monitor refugees coming over the channel:
Very cost effective indeed.
Also on 2 February Pollard was questioned about US-UK defence relations. Independent MP Ayoub Khan asked:
Whether he is taking steps to increase the UK’s level of military independence from the US.
Pollard said:
The US remains the UK’s principal defence and security partner, and our co-operation on defence, nuclear capability and intelligence remains as close and effective as any anywhere in the world, keeping Britain safe in an increasingly dangerous environment.
No change there then, despite Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic warmongering. Pollard added:
As close friends, we are not afraid to have difficult conversations when we need to. Friends turn up for each other, as we did for the US in Afghanistan, and friends are also honest with each other, as the Prime Minister has set out.
Trump recently disparaged the NATO contribution to the disastrous Afghan war, causing immense public butthurt to British MPs. Trump eventually walked back his comments, lauding British soldiers for their efforts in that pointless, failed occupation.
Cheers, Don.
Independent nukes?
Khan had another question, however. He asked if the government would consider dropping military programs which did nothing to protect the country:
Our nuclear deterrent now consumes nearly a third of the defence budget through Trident, a system that cannot be launched without US approval. In pursuing nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction, we have drained funding from conventional forces and neglected the diplomacy and development that actually prevents conflicts.
He asked:
Does the Minister believe that prioritising nuclear defence over reducing tensions, ending conflicts and promoting peace genuinely delivers security for our people, and if so, can he explain why?
Pollard reiterated that the House of Commons is populated largely by sycophants divorced from public outlooks:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question; it comes from a point of view that is different from that of many people in this House and in the wider public.
Then he leant into the usual inaccurate stock answer
Our nuclear deterrent is operationally independent; the only person who can authorise its firing is the Prime Minister. It is a part of our security apparatus, which keeps us safe every single day, and has done for decades.
Adding:
As a Government, we are continuing to invest in our nuclear deterrent, just as we are investing in jobs and skills right across the country that keep us safe every single day. Our relationship with the United States is a key part of that, but we will also continue to invest in our relationships with our other allies, especially around Europe.
In reality, as the US publication National Interest explained on 5 March 2025:
the Trident missiles are not even owned by Britain, but are instead leased by the British military from the Americans.
They expanded:
British nuclear deterrent relies exclusively on American ballistic missile technology, the submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) known as the Trident II D5, built by the U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin.
So, not independent then. The UK has lashed its future security to the whims of US leaders – whoever is in charge at a given time. Donald Trump’s first year back in power has rocked alliances like NATO. It seems like exactly the time to start thinking about what a serious, independent defence and foreign policy would look like. Pollard and Starmer, however, remain committed to a dying consensus which serves nobody but the US.
Featured image via the Canary
The wealthy, high-profile contacts of late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein surprises no one. From one US president to another, billionaires to yet more billionaires, Israeli war criminals to British politicians, and transatlantic fascists to royalty — it makes sense. But one big shock has been Epstein’s apparent friendship with Noam Chomsky.
What we know about Chomsky’s relationship with Epstein
For decades, Chomsky railed against US imperialism, and its propping up of a settler-colonial system, “worse than apartheid” in occupied Palestine.
He exposed the hypocrisy of Western media propaganda and called out its cynical smears against progressive movements.
Even though Epstein was apparently a charismatic charmer with sociopathic traits who could “go between different cultures and networks“, Chomsky’s positions might make you think he’d never socialise with multi-millionaires like Epstein. But whether through awful judgement or hypocrisy, he did.
It appears, as pundits contend, that Chomsky had reportedly maintained a very “close friendship” with Epstein even after the latter’s imprisonment in 2008. And the academic’s support for free speech and the fact he has unapologetically “met and corresponded with everyone” — including war criminals — does not explain the level of warmth in their interactions.
Chomsky once said his dealings with Epstein were mostly financial. But new communications releases show that:
- The two spoke about dinner and holiday plans, while sharing jokes and affectionate exchanges.
- Epstein served as a social and political connector, linking Chomsky up with prominent far-right figure Steve Bannon and Israeli war criminal Ehud Barak.
- Epstein made numerous payments to Chomsky and his relatives. Chomsky’s wife called Epstein a “very dear friend”, and even a “hero” at one point.
- While there’s no evidence he went to Epstein’s island, Chomsky insisted he was “eager” to. And in one response to an invitation, he said “I’m really fantasizing about the Caribbean island”.
- Chomsky gave Epstein advice in 2019 about how to deal with the sex-crime allegations against him. His words seemed to downplay the accusations and treat Epstein like the victim. He described “a hysteria that has developed about abuse of women” that could cause “torture and distress” to someone like Epstein.
Countless academics needed money and linked up with Epstein for financial reasons. The serial rapist, on the other hand, collected connections in exchange for information or favours. He was curious about genetics and how other people could serve his interests.
Epstein may have pulled Chomsky in, but the academic stuck around. And Chomsky either refused to accept his friend was a criminal (disbelieving the women who called him out in the process), or he simply cared more about Epstein.
Chomsky, meanwhile, didn’t just look the other way on Epstein.
Fellow academic Lawrence Krauss also faced accusations from numerous women, asked Epstein for advice on how to deal with them. He said he would trust Epstein’s words over those of the women accusing the multi-millionaire. Chomsky, meanwhile, continued to appear publicly with Krauss despite the allegations against him.
“Unforgiveable”
Journalist Matt Kennard, who has interviewed Chomsky on numerous occasions, responded to the latest revelations by saying the academic’s:
consorting with Epstein is unforgiveable
As philosopher Émile Torres added:
Chomsky has shown a clear pattern of poor judgment and low moral standards.
Author Vijay Prashad, meanwhile, insisted:
There is no defence for this, in my view, no context that can explain this outrage.
He also clarified that, in addition to Epstein being a sex offender, the multi-millionaire:
was a man of the Far Right and a Zionist
Epstein’s connection with Israel is clear, though we don’t know all the details. It’s not just that the father of his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, was reportedly an Israeli “superspy“. Numerous sources highlight his own apparent connections to Israel and its intelligence agency too.
Epstein’s work in the arms trade reportedly saw him work with numerous governments. And he often bragged about how he advised dodgy regimes around the world, while:
making a fortune out of arms, drugs, and diamonds.
In short, the corruption in the world’s economic system seemed to reward his sociopathic personality and lack of a moral compass. And apparently, the settler-colonial regime of Israel did too.
Because of how Epstein represents so much of what Chomsky spent his career criticising, his friendship with the sex offender will leave a shameful stain on his legacy.
Featured image via the Canary
Thousands of families missing out
A Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) impact assessment has revealed that roughly 50,000 families who are currently affected by the two-child limit won’t actually be any better off once the cap is removed in April. This is due to the separate, overall benefit cap, which limits the total amount a single household can receive.
Likewise, another 20,000 families won’t receive the full benefit of the two-child cap’s removal, as it would take them above the overall limit.
The overall cap is currently frozen, and hasn’t increase with inflation since 2023. As things stand, the upper limit on benefits is currently £22,020 for a couple with children.
Worse still, it will remain in place for the coming fiscal year 2026/2027. MPs are only under a statutory obligation to review this limit every 5 years.
‘It’s not enough’
The DWP’s assessment underscores a warning issued last week by independent social change organisation the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It stated that, even in spite of the removal of the two-child benefit cap, 4.2 million kids will still grow up in poverty by 2029.
Iain Porter, a senior policy adviser at the JRF, said:
It’s good news that the government has begun the process of reducing child poverty and the removal of the 2-child-limit for Universal Credit is a undoubtedly a step in the right direction.
But on its own it’s not enough.
Our analysis shows child poverty will fall sharply in April, but then stall. By the end of the parliament there will still be around 4m children in poverty – unless the government takes additional steps. An immediate and obvious step is to address the damage done by the benefit cap, which leaves families in hardship.”
The foundation urged the government to adopt a ‘protected minimum floor’ for Universal Credit. This would set a limit on payment reductions such as the overall benefit cap or debt deductions. Likewise, the JRF also called for an ‘essentials guarantee’, ensuring that benefit payments meet a minimum standard of living costs.
The second reading of the Universal Credit Bill brings us that bit closer to seeing the ruinous two-child cap scrapped, as it should have been all along.
However, as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warned, Labour has much more work to do if they’re serious about their plans to tackle child poverty across the UK.
Featured image via Unsplash/the Canary
Why Cardano Investors Are Moving Assets to Self-Custody Now
Katie Lam: Some think Britain is ‘going down the sewer’ – but those that built them have a lesson for how to avoid that fate
Avalanche look to build momentum vs. Sharks before Olympic break
![BITCOIN: YOU'RE GETTING TRAPPED!!!!! [CAUTION]](https://wordupnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/1770184302_maxresdefault-80x80.jpg)
-
Crypto World5 days agoSmart energy pays enters the US market, targeting scalable financial infrastructure
-
Crypto World5 days agoSoftware stocks enter bear market on AI disruption fear with ServiceNow plunging 10%
-
Politics5 days agoWhy is the NHS registering babies as ‘theybies’?
-
Crypto World5 days agoAdam Back says Liquid BTC is collateralized after dashboard problem
-
Video1 day agoWhen Money Enters #motivation #mindset #selfimprovement
-
NewsBeat5 days agoDonald Trump Criticises Keir Starmer Over China Discussions
-
Politics2 days agoSky News Presenter Criticises Lord Mandelson As Greedy And Duplicitous
-
Crypto World4 days agoU.S. government enters partial shutdown, here’s how it impacts bitcoin and ether
-
Sports3 days agoSinner battles Australian Open heat to enter last 16, injured Osaka pulls out
-
Fashion4 days agoWeekend Open Thread – Corporette.com
-
Crypto World3 days agoBitcoin Drops Below $80K, But New Buyers are Entering the Market
-
Crypto World2 days agoMarket Analysis: GBP/USD Retreats From Highs As EUR/GBP Enters Holding Pattern
-
Crypto World4 days agoKuCoin CEO on MiCA, Europe entering new era of compliance
-
Business4 days ago
Entergy declares quarterly dividend of $0.64 per share
-
Sports2 days agoShannon Birchard enters Canadian curling history with sixth Scotties title
-
NewsBeat22 hours agoUS-brokered Russia-Ukraine talks are resuming this week
-
NewsBeat2 days agoGAME to close all standalone stores in the UK after it enters administration
-
Crypto World7 hours agoRussia’s Largest Bitcoin Miner BitRiver Enters Bankruptcy Proceedings: Report
-
Crypto World5 days agoWhy AI Agents Will Replace DeFi Dashboards
-
Tech4 days agoVery first Apple check & early Apple-1 motherboard sold for $5 million combined