Social media users are calling on Yvette Cooper to resign after the High Court ruled the ban on Palestine Action was unlawful.

Just heard on the radio that the then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s proscribing of Palestine action was illegal. She must resign immediately. All those wrongly arrested and charged must be exonerated. A total misuse of the police to mask complicity with Israel’s genocide.

— candyman (@PeacheyGabriel) February 13, 2026

Yvette Cooper – just go, already

Yvette Cooper studied at both Oxford and Harvard – she is not unintelligent. She knew full well that in attempting to ban Palestine Action, she was attacking our right to peaceful protests – one of the cornerstones of our democracy.

Yvette Cooper must have fully understood that her unlawful proscription of Palestine Action was an attack on the fundamental freedoms of a democratic society. She did it anyway.

After today’s High Court ruling, she should no longer remain as a minister.https://t.co/Uc7NX8ax0X

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— Martin O’Neill (@martin_oneill) February 13, 2026

She can’t jail nuns anymore – someone get her a therapist.

It’s Friday. Palestine Action is now legal again. Shabana ‘migrant hunter’ Mahmood is crying into her Pret lunch. Yvette Cooper is beating her husband in apoplectic rage because she can’t jail nuns anymore. Spring has returned.

— Alex Yousif (@LibMarx93) February 13, 2026

We already know she has no morals – or personality.

Palestine Action: If Yvette Cooper had one iota of morality she would resign!!

— Martin O’Neill (@DrNostromo) February 13, 2026

Yvette Cooper should resign – or even better, Starmer should fire her. But Starmer won’t fire a guy like Mandelson until he’s really left with no choice. So I can’t see that happening.

I can’t see how Yvette Cooper manages to remain in govt. post end of this Palestine Action quashed conviction. I expect the Govt. to loose its appeal as well. She equated that PA where the same as AQ, ISIS, Combat18 – making a mockery of how serious terrorism is. She has to go!

— CronusTitan (@CronusTitan2) February 13, 2026

Did Cooper’s top-secret information about Palestine Action ever come to light? Or did that disappear along with Cooper’s last shred of integrity?

Has secret info’ about Palestine Action only Yvette Cooper knew about been revealed yet, or are they in fact just a figment of her imagination?

— James Mealey (@Jamesmealey10) February 13, 2026

There’s probably some blank piece of paper sitting in a folder marked ‘classified’ somewhere in London.

There is no question that Cooper should resign – along with any other shady minister that backed the Proscription of Palestine Action – yes, Luke Akehurst, I’m talking directly to you.

Yvette Cooper should resign, say Palestine Action activists
Palestine Action activists have called for former home secretary Yvette Cooper, who made the decision to proscribe the group last year, to resign.

In a speech outside the high court this morning, activist Lisa Minerva… pic.twitter.com/JEJOoLZ6Qg

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— Gareth Jones Society 🇵🇸 (@GarethJonesSoc) February 13, 2026

Now, the government is going to fight the lifting of the ban. But how much more taxpayers’ money is Starmer going to let it waste? At what point Yvette Cooper going to admit the whole thing was one massive fuck up and wind her neck in?

Feature image via HG

The UK’s water and sewerage industry weaponised Labour’s Universal Credit deductions cap to lobby for higher bill hikes – all with the aid of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Documents the Canary obtained via Freedom of Information (FOI) request reveal how industry body Water UK and Yorkshire Water separately lobbied regulator Ofwat ahead of Labour implementing the 15% cap on Universal Credit deductions.

What’s more, figures they relied on to call for raising bills majorly conflict with data the Canary previously acquired from the DWP. Notably, Water UK cited a figure for the industry’s annual deductions that was over four times the amount shown by the official government data.

So the documents exposed that not only did the industry cynically exploit the new deductions cap – but it appears it also inflated figures to do so.

DWP cap aiding greedy water companies

The Labour Party government first announced its so-called Fair Repayment Rate plans in the 2024 Autumn Budget.

In April 2025, the DWP brought the new cap into effect. It reduced the deductions the DWP can take on monthly payments for various debts to 15%.

However, as the Canary already highlighted, the half-assed measure amounted to little more than tinkering around at the edges of a vicious debt chasing mechanism. In effect, it merely extends claimants periods of indebtedness, instead of actually removing the debt. To make matters worse, built-in loopholes mean that for many, DWP deductions will still exceed the cap.

Nevertheless, in theory, it means that some claimants in debt will have more of their Universal Credit each month.

So of course, private sector corporations cashing in from the deductions regime weren’t happy about this. Unsurprisingly, the water and sewage companies – sixth in line for deductions – was one such industry.

Water industry will lose out? Cry me a river

Less than a month after Labour announced the new cap, Water UK CEO David Henderson wrote to head of Ofwat David Black. He laid out how it would cause the industry to lose out on £200m in deductions over the next five years.

Naturally, the industry body also couldn’t help but play the victim even more where migration to Universal Credit was concerned. In particular, it noted how people moving from legacy benefits like Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) would “become eligible” for the new cap. It argued that this could “increase bad debt further” for water firms. The implication was that the industry wouldn’t be able to rob as many claimants of their welfare.

Following this, Yorkshire Water lobbied the regulator on 26 November 2024. In a letter headed RE: Impact of October Budget, the water firm wrote:

With the cap lowered to 15%, water charge arrears, ranked low in priority, face reduced success rates.

In the last year, we received £11 million from DWP payments, which could decrease by 50%.

Although this doesn’t directly translate into bad debt, mitigating the impact will require increased debt recovery efforts and promotion of social tariffs, resulting in higher costs.

Predictably, both demanded greater ‘allowances’ to account for this. In simple terms, this would mean Ofwat increasing what it allows companies to charge – ergo, bill hikes for customers.

Bogus figures

Of course, the disparity between Water UK and Yorkshire Water’s figures with the data the Canary obtained from the DWP also raises significant questions.

Water UK claimed industry deductions for 2024 sat at £100m. Meanwhile, Yorkshire Water suggested its slice of this alone came in at £11m.

By comparison, the DWP’s data for a similar twelve-month period (March 2024 – February 2025) showed total deductions at £22m.

The first cause of the disparity could be because the department itself provided erroneous data.

However, the more plausible explanation is that Water UK and Yorkshire Water both inflated their figures to press for larger bill increases.

And notably, even Ofwat wasn’t buying their calculations. Specifically, in its ‘final determinations’ for its 2024 price review of the industry, the regulator challenged the credibility of Water UK’s claim that:

190,000 households were subject third-party deductions via Universal Credit in 2023-24, equivalent to around £100 million revenue.

Because, as it pointed out, on average this would work out at a £526 annual deduction per household. It commented how this:

seems very high relative to the average water bill.

This would be just shy of £44 a month. By contrast, the DWP’s data showed that water company deductions were £20 a month on average.

Moreover, as Ofwat also highlighted:

Water UK also seem to assume that water companies can recover all the water bill through third party provision, which would be surprising given water companies are 6th in line behind other service providers (housing, accommodation, hostel, rent and service charges, gas and electricity).

Blaming welfare claimants for bill hikes

Already, the DWP’s data is also throwing cold water on its far-fetched claims. The idea that the cap would cause the industry to lose out on £40m in Universal Credit deductions is preposterous. This is obviously not least because, according to official government data, 12 months of deductions are barely just over half of this in total. Furthermore, even the 40% drop in deductions is implausible.

Crucially, we now have the first few months worth of data that shows the effect the new cap is having on deductions. June saw a decrease of 22% from £1.8m to £1.4m. For July and August, the decrease was around 28% from £1.8m to £1.3m in each month respectively.

At the end of the day, the industry’s figures don’t add up. However, what’s clear is that it tried to use welfare claimants to hike customer bills. And it sure seems like it attempted to wilfully mislead Ofwat to do this.

Of course, for the shameless profiteers that are privatised water, exploiting the hardships of its poorest customers is all-too on-brand.

Featured image via author

Trump’s personal fascist militia are pulling out of Minneapolis. But undoubtedly, this not be the last we will be seeing of them.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other US state thugs terrorised locals for months — even killing two — as they sought to bring the city under control where their presence is fiercely contested.

ICE and border patrol operations are being carried out under the guise enforcing migration laws. However, there are stirrings of a full assault on US democracy — with new leaks showing how agents are now spying on American citizens who oppose them.

Border Czar Tom Homan said on 11 February:

A significant drawdown has already been underway this week and will continue through next week.

Bizarrely, he claimed that the move was driven by a drop in local opposition to ICE thuggery.

A small footprint of personnel will remain for a period of time to close out and transition full command control back to the field office, as well as to ensure agitator activity continues to decline and that state and local law enforcement continue to respond to ensure officer and community safety.

Homan has previously moaned that ICE were treated meanly. This time around, he’s arguing that violent officers going around — dressed like special forces soldiers — are lawful, labelling them:

legitimate federal law enforcement agency. We’re not out scouring the streets to disappear people or deny people their civil rights or due process.

If you say so, Tom. The mirage doesn’t fool us.

Critics suggested the withdrawal was due to the optics of militarised, masked thugs swaggering about the streets and beating people up:

ICE is backing out of Minneapolis because they see how poorly this operation polls with American public. That’s the only reason they’re retreating – because of polls, not people’s safety.

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) February 12, 2026

And on 12 February a judge ruled that the Trump administration was breaching the constitutional rights of detainees in Minnesota by blocking access to legal counsel inside “ill-equipped” and “overcrowded” facilities.

Homan was sent in to replace Border Patrol’s fun-size fascist-themed boss Greg Bovino. This is the same guy who  lost his job after the street execution of local nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents.

Attack on democracy

ICE chief Todd Lyons was questioned by lawmakers on 12 February. He tried to quash rumours ICE would ‘guard’ US polling stations. The notion that Trump’s boot-boys would do so is widely seen as an open attack on the democratic process.

Trump has floated the idea of nationalizing (federalising, in US terms) American elections — pivoting away from the traditional model in which states maintain substantial power over election processes. This is usually referred to part of ‘state’s rights’.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) tested Lyons at a session of the Homeland Security Committee:

You listen to what the president and his cabinet are saying, I have to ask about our 2026 elections.

She continued:

The president says we should federalize our elections, even though the U.S. Constitution was written by our founders to give that power to the states so that we would never have a president who took too much power and tried to become a king.

Lyons told Slotkin:

So, ma’am, we’re civil, obviously we do civil enforcement and criminal law enforcement There’s no reason for us to deploy to a polling facility.

Challenged again, Lyons maintained ICE would have no role in election security. Slotkin back referred to Trump’s own comments:

I’m talking about something that I think would be extraordinary in American history, which is uniformed and massed ice agents encircling polling places.

And it’s not fantasy, it’s not made up. These are things that the president and his cabinet have suggested. They’ve suggested invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow active duty military to do the very same thing.

Lyons again denied the possibility. Slotkin told him:

Great. Well, I hope that in the privacy of that meeting, when that comes down, and the president feels like he’s going to lose the midterm elections, that you don’t buckle.

But democracy isn’t just about elections. It is about the freedom to organise and express yourself. And the Feds are trying to stop that too.

ICE spies

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) controls ICE. And DHS is spying on activists. US reporter Ken Klippenstein has seen leaked files telling us how:

The new program, called “masked engagement,” allows homeland security officers to assume false identities and interact with users—friending them, joining closed groups, and gaining access to otherwise private postings, photographs, friend lists and more.

A senior DHS offical told Klippenstein:

that over 6,500 field agents and intelligence operatives can use the new tool, a significant increase explicitly linked to more intense monitoring of American citizens.

Masked engagement is a special category of surveillance. Unlike the more passive masked ‘monitoring’, ‘engagement’ operations give state security forces a licence to enter chats and groups to obtain intelligence.

The new practice of masked engagement allows for operations where a federal government employee or contractor uses fake identities or credentials that conceal their official affiliation.

ICE operate under the aegis of Trumpian anti-immigration policy. They are much more than that.

ICE are Trump’s personal posse. The agency is there to discipline the US population — if necessary with lethal force. But, as Minnesotans have just shown us, ICE can be beaten on the streets.

We must take on board those lessons, and sustain the momentum.

Featured image via the Canary

As we’ve reported, the Reform candidate in Gorton & Denton is the academic and establishment-insider Matt Goodwin. Goodwin is now attracting controversy because he wants to tell young women when to breed:

Reform by-election candidate calls for ‘young girls’ to be given ‘biological reality’ check

Matt Goodwin argued ‘young girls’ should be explained ‘the biological reality’ that ‘many women in Britain are having children much too late in life’https://t.co/bz0y5apGEA

— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) February 12, 2026

Lets be honest, this is creepy af from Matt Goodwin

Last week, Matt Goodwin stuck his foot in it when he suggested people who don’t have kids should be taxed more. As you can imagine, that went down like a lead balloon with infertile women. As Rachel Charlton-Dailey reported for the Canary:

I can’t imagine the pain that this would cause to those who are struggling with fertility. On top of the emotional and physical toll this puts on you will be financial pressures. For those of us who are infertile, it sends one message. You are not good enough and deserve to be punished for failing as a woman.

I had an elective hysterectomy in 2017 after over a decade of pain. I chose my own health over a condition that was making me want to die, for the sake of one day having a baby. Many would call my decision selfish, but I frankly don’t give a fuck what people who would rather I were in pain think of me.

As much as I loathe a Handmaid’s Tale comparison, this is very apt here. In the novel, working-class women who are infertile are cast out of society. As they have no purpose in a society that values families over all else.

Goodwin was also criticised for the following:

Reform’s by-election candidate suggested people who don’t have children should pay more tax.

He wants the govt to “remove personal income tax for women who have two or more children”.

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Do they think women are baby producing machines?

Insane policies.https://t.co/KWmx5xfuXh

— Prem Sikka (@premnsikka) February 7, 2026

Fertility

Matt Goodwin has looked at the birth rate problem and decided that the solution is to lecture young girls on when to breed.

I myself have chosen not to have kids because of the absolute state of everything. I know for a fact I cannot afford a child, and even if I could, what fucking world would I be bringing them into?

And that’s the issue.

Reform’s policies will do nothing to improve affordability, and without that change, people won’t be able to afford to have children.

Reform also want to reintroduce the two child benefit cap to save people 4p per pint. Nothing screams stimulating breeding in the UK more than a policy that caps state support.

Nigel Farage has done a U-turn. He and reform will vote against the bill to lift the two-child cap.

In May 2025, he was calling for the lifting of the two-child benefit cap. pic.twitter.com/pAVcqmgoBu

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) January 7, 2026

Reform leader Nigel Farage has also voiced creepy opinions on this topic. Back in 2014, when Farage was ranting about how women who take maternity leave are less valuable, he commented:

Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten so many women pregnant over the years that I have a different view.

That gives this new push by Matt Goodwin an even creepier spin.

Support women, get more babies

It’s becoming very clear that Reform have no policies in place to actually stimulate population growth.

Rather than weirdly going into schools and telling young girls to procreate, why don’t they actually give them a reason to? Stop supporting the two child benefit cap – which is keeping so many kids in poverty – sort out public services, and fix the fucking education system.

But no, just creepy platitudes and uninformed comments from another Reform misogynist, Matt Goodwin.

Featured image via StockVault

Since the latest release of the Epstein files, a media circus has ensued over the political and business figures connected to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The giddy fervour from some corners has been evident as people work their way through a huge number of files featuring the most powerful and elite people we know.

In a world where sexual violence is much more commonplace than we might like to admit, it is unsurprising that Epstein and his cabal of violent predators are the focus, and not the people they tortured and abused. Academic Harsha Walia had a stark and insightful summary of the situation:

Sexual violence, especially of children, is not an otherwise perverse symptom of elite rule or empire – it is literally at the CENTER of how violence and domination is structured around the world. We cannot keep treating sexual violence as a “private” issue, or as “divisive” to movements, or weaponize it to settle other political scores.

It is how power reverberates and is reproduced.

Sexual violence – especially against children – is not an aberration in our societies. It is not exclusively the preserve of the elite or powerful. It is a function at the very core of neoliberal racial capitalism. Epstein was a well-documented white supremacist and Zionist, and that is at the heart of how he and his fellow paedophiles operated.

So why is it that leftists have spent considerable time and energy since the latest release of the files defending prominent fellow leftists who allied themselves with Epstein?

Epstein files show the misogynist rot within the left

One of the most prominent leftist names mentioned in the files is that of the revered Noam Chomsky. His work has been crucial for leftists, but the academic has long known to have been friends with Epstein. Fellow academic Chris Knight has had pieces claiming to explain the reasons behind the friendship published in both CounterPunch and Novara Media.

The latter publication ran the story with the headline:

There Are Two Noam Chomskys. The One You Love, and the One That Was Friends With Jeffrey Epstein

Along with the tagline:

Not a straightforward guy.

The CounterPunch article and the one posted on Novara are similar versions of effectively the same piece.

In the version published a few days later on Novara, Knight admits:

Emails released last month by the US Department of Justice, however, now make it difficult to respect Chomsky’s views on anything at all.

How generous. By Knight’s own admission:

The emails even reveal that shortly before Epstein’s arrest and death, in July and August 2019, Chomsky was still intending to be interviewed for a documentary that Epstein was making. It seems Chomsky remained loyal to his cherished “friend” right until the end.

Chomsky was a loyal and steadfast friend of Epstein. Epstein was a known serial child rapist, child trafficker, and overseer of one of the most brutal and extensive grooming gangs in modern times. The details of such horrific crimes were an open secret even before the release of the files. Now that the files have been released, Chomsky’s wife has described their close friendship with the dead paedophile as part of “serious errors in judgement.”

Bizarre response

In both pieces, Knight muses on why Chomsky would have associated with Epstein. He makes it clear that Chomsky has a reputation for associating with people he should ostensibly have opposed – CIA directors, war hawks, and other reprehensible people. Knight maintains that:

Chomsky was at no point the perfectly principled radical intellectual admired by so many of his followers. If he had been, he would have resigned from MIT long ago. Yet, had he done so, he would never have come to know the US military establishment from the inside in a way that enabled him to become that establishment’s most knowledgeable and assured critic.

Who needs Chomsky to be perfect? Perfection is a far cry from a close personal friendship with a notorious paedophile and sex trafficker. Chomsky didn’t step down from MIT, or stop associating with rabid Zionists not as some kind of intellectual checkmate, but because he didn’t want to.

Society is far too willing to dismiss the experiences of those living at the sharp end of racial capitalism as ‘identity politics.’ But, we’re supposed to believe Chomsky needed to pal around with some of the most morally bankrupt people for research purposes? Please.

He knew exactly what he was doing. There is no duality or cognitive dissonance in Chomsky’s behaviour. He knew exactly what was doing, and he did it for decades. How could one of the most pre-eminent researchers not know the extent of Epstein’s crimes? Are we supposed to accept that he’s a genius researcher who can’t operate a simple Google search on the background of one of his best friends?

Business as usual

Knight’s passionate defence of Epstein is an obscene rehabilitation, a loving re-casting of Chomsky as somehow duped, tricked, or seduced. Knight concludes that:

It would be foolish to stop learning from his writings. It would be equally foolish to gloss over his mistakes. Instead of deciding whether to cancel or exalt him as an individual, I suggest we prioritise developing what he advocates, however hypocritically: a revolutionary politics for our times.

Since the latest release of the Epstein files, who exactly has demanded we “stop learning” from Chomsky? In fact, what is actually happening is that people are parsing through a release of files that deliberately exposes and intimidates victims and survivors of Epstein.

The choice is not whether to accept or reject Chomsky, whether to rehabilitate or castigate him. Instead, the choice facing us is a moral one: do we infantilise and clean up Chomsky’s actions, or do we accept that he repeatedly and knowingly chose to not only associate with, but loved a renowned pedophile and sex trafficker?

It is no choice at all.

I was raped as a child. Like many others who have been sexually abused, every time rape is discussed in the media, there are many all too willing to degrade the horror of abuse and defend those around the abusers. As such, the many attempts at rehabilitation of those implicated alongside Epstein in any way, whether Chomsky or anyone else, feel like an attempt to defend the rape that so many of us have had to come to terms with.

Knight – or someone from his team – offered a version of his above articles to the Canary. We immediately recognised that to publish such a thing would not only violate all of our values, it would also denigrate the experiences of victims and survivors. Shame on CounterPunch and Novara for giving a platform to the reprehensible attempt to clean up Chomsky’s image or work.

Featured image via the Canary