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The realities of prisoner ill health are shocking. You are much more likely to die young in prison: the average age of death in custody is 56, compared to 81 in the general population. Prisoners also experience a wide range of serious long-term conditions, including higher rates of infectious disease, respiratory disease, and cardiovascular disease than the wider public. Substance use is widespread, as is gambling. Poor mental health is common.

Some groups face distinct health risks. Women have particular needs, including higher rates of self-harm and gender-specific gaps in care, and there have been reports that babies have died in prison after their mothers gave birth without medical assistance. All people face health risks as they age, and older prisoners – defined as those aged 50 and above, reflecting evidence that health problems appear around ten years earlier in prison – are no exception. Young people in custody also have disproportionately high health needs, often rooted in childhood adversity and abuse.

Part of the explanation is that people in prison often face complex needs before entering custody, shaped by deep-rooted societal inequalities. Just as deprivation, disadvantage and trauma drive crime, they also take a heavy toll on public health. Prisons inherit poor health and face significant challenges from the outset.

Another reason for prisoner ill health lies within the estate itself. Life in prison is brutal, and deteriorating facilities – HMP Wandsworth being a prime example – with cramped and dirty cells, failing sewage systems and rodent infestations compound existing problems. Overcrowding and staff shortages, a matter of considerable political attention under this Labour government, make it even more difficult to manage prisoners’ health and safety.

Healthcare in custody depends on a functioning prison regime, yet services are poorly equipped to meet prisoners’ needs. Public spending cuts under austerity, falling standards, and fragmented, siloed services mean the system is not working as effectively as it could. Continuity of care is crucial, but evidence shows post-release healthcare is often poor, with many people losing contact with treatment once in the community, perpetuating poor health.

‘Why should I care?’, some might ask. Prisoners, whatever their background or crime, are often seen as worthy of only punitive treatment, and investing in improving their conditions may not be, on the face of it, a vote-winning topic.

First and foremost, healthcare is a human right – and that includes prisoners. Even if your view is that prison should be punitive, not rehabilitative, its purpose is to restrict the liberty of those convicted of crimes, not to harm their health or deprive them of necessary care. Prisoners deserve and are entitled to medical treatment, and ensuring they receive it is the right thing to do.

Second, aside from questions of human rights, investment in prisoners carries public health dividends, shaping outcomes long after release. As isolated as they are, prisons are not sealed off from society. People enter custody from the community and return to it when their sentence ends. The burden of our collective healthcare falls on us all, so a healthier prisoner population is in society’s interest.

It can also help reduce reoffending. As the Chief Medical Officer for England, Professor Chris Whitty, has highlighted, offending and reoffending after release are closely linked to health. Access to good health services can support engagement with rehabilitation, delivering positive social and economic benefits in the long run. Less offending means less demand for costly prison places, freeing up public resources for more effective use elsewhere.

Crime, poverty and health are inextricably linked, and breaking this cycle benefits not only prisoners but society as a whole, including the taxpayer. If the government is serious about improving the health of people in prison – and realising the wider benefits this entails – action is needed, including greater investment in the deteriorating prison estate, support for prevention measures to address illness as early as possible, and improved coordination and integration across health services.

It is time to consign the appalling state of health in prisons to history, where it belongs.  

Jake Shepherd is a senior researcher at the Social Market Foundation

We cover Reform UK a lot here at the Canary, and little would surprise us at this point. Saying that, politicians openly calling for MPs to be shot is a step up from what we’ve seen before:

Grim

Natalie Fleet responded to the post as follows:

Posts like this are so common I don’t bat an eyelid.

But they remind me why my husband & kids *begged* me not to stand.

I felt huge responsibility; last lab gov helped me, I wanted to help others.

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But…we should be able to fight for our areas w/o death threats as standard. https://t.co/rygygMqikY

— Natalie Fleet MP (@NatalieFleetMP) February 24, 2026

Regardless of political differences, Facebook dipshits shouldn’t be calling for MPs to be shot. We watched a man gun down Jo Cox on the street in 2016, and it would be grim to see a repeat of that. There is a real risk that could happen, though, with politicians themselves riling up voters like this.

One outlet phrased the incident like this:

Reform UK deputy leader reshared social media post calling for Labour MP to be shothttps://t.co/kfsRAauS1E

— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) February 24, 2026

Let’s be real, though; if you share a post calling for someone to be shot, then you are calling for that person to be shot.

Councillor Simon Evans has now responded with the following:

If Evans is telling the truth, what he’s saying is: ‘I’m a fucking idiot who will just share things without reading them or checking that they’re true‘.

In other words, whether he’s telling the truth or not, he’s clearly incompetent.

The account Reform Party UK Exposed said the following:

Reform UK’s Deputy Leader in Lancashire Simon Evans… has made a “sorry, not sorry if I caused offence” apology for reposting a post on Facebook calling for Natalie Fleet MP to be shot.

It’s not good enough. He let comments be posted, he had it there for a full day. She is a grooming and rape survivor.

A sincere apology would be resigning.

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They added:

This comment and this reply were still live this morning. He only took action when we posted.

His excuse is ‘I didn’t notice the text’.

Not good enough, this man is responsible for a £1.2bn Lancashire budget and he is claiming he didn’t notice what he was posting to Facebook.

Ridiculous.

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Violence

This is all happening at the same time that a Reform MP talked up the possibility of a civil war, and Nigel Farage threatened to bring ICE-style policing to the UK.

A new footage has been released, and it looks like the ICE agent Jonathan Ross was the agitator and called her a bitch after he shot her.

Renee Nicole Good engaged calmly and told him “I’m not mad to you, dude.” pic.twitter.com/Ozhjnn7MPx

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) January 9, 2026

Reform really are a gruesome lot.

Featured image via X

Why is ‘frilustsliv’ so good for us?

How can I incorporate “frilustsliv” into my life?

Mitchell Foyle-York-York is a freelance writer and works for the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation.

In his first speech after defecting to become a Reform MP, given alongside Nigel Farage in a room jammed with bustling journalists, Robert Jenrick struck a consistent chord: vanity. Jenrick not only spoke of the need to “unite the right” but that he was the figure by which the right could be united.

His speech implied that a Tory Party without Jenrick lacked any serious right-of-centre coherence, and that his defection would be the final nail in the coffin for the Tories, paving the way for Reform to scoop up the right-of-centre vote. But don’t just take it from me. It was revealed in a leaked document that Jenrick’s own team had assured him that he would arrive on the Reform scene as “the new sheriff in town”. But has this proven to be the case? Is Jenrick really as influential and as popular as he likes to think?

There is still a long way to go until the next general election, but the (early) indicators are not good for Jenrick. In a YouGov poll, published the day after Jenrick’s defection was announced, it was recorded that Jenrick’s popularity rating sat at just 11 per cent, with 41 per cent of people polled saying they had an “unfavourable” view.

The same YouGov poll shows a somewhat similar trend among Tory and Reform voters (the people Jenrick was claiming to “unite”), with 39 per cent of Tory and 22 per cent of Reform voters having an “unfavourable” view of Jenrick. Furthermore, recent general election polling indicates either no gain or a small loss for Reform in national polls. As I have said, there is a long way to go, but all recent polling data suggests that Sherriff Jenrick is more Milky Bar Kid than John Wayne.

Jenrick’s opinion of himself and his political prospects may be a delusion, but delusions come from somewhere. How, even after losing the last Tory leadership election, has Jenrick been able to convince himself that he is one of the political heavyweights of our age? A clue lies in David Scullion’s review of Jenrick’s leadership campaign, published in The Critic in November 2024. In interviews with Jenrick’s own campaign team, Scullion reports that Jenrick’s spin-doctors had developed an “obsession with tweets… Everything had to go viral.” Herein lies the cause of Jenrick’s delusions: the internet.

If you were to look at Robert Jenrick’s X account, especially from the time of his leadership campaign, you might be forgiven for thinking that Jenrick was/is a very popular figure. After all, he gets plenty of ‘likes’ and ‘reposts’. The problem, however, is that the internet is not real life. Once you subtract bots and non-UK residents out of those social media engagements, what remains is barely enough engaged floating-voters to win you a seat on the local council, let alone a leadership contest!

The reality is that most people who engage feverishly with such online political content are usually ideologues with strange, niche, and sometimes even extreme, interests. They rarely reflect a significant chunk of the electorate, let alone the majority of it. Jenrick – as well as his team – appear to have been trapped inside an internet echo chamber… and it is clearly having some very damaging effects on his popularity and prospects.

Campaigners from PARC Against DARC are accusing the Ministry of Defence of a series of potential moves to split out planning elements required for the DARC radar proposal without including them in the main planning application. They say legal precedents show this practice may be unlawful.

A PARC Against DARC spokesperson said:

We haven’t come across a single person who doesn’t think the whole story behind the RDF aircraft tracker relocation proposal that’s just been tabled, the inexplicably high-security landing cable station, the unanimously unpopular £60m Newgale bypass road and required power cable upgrades for miles just stinks to high heaven.

After 37 Senedd and Westminster politicians have come out against DARC, a petition of 18,000 signatures and public demonstrations that have gone viral online, the MOD seems to be looking for any way it can to ‘salami slice’ the massively unpopular DARC plans and try to ram them through planning against the local community’s will. We think that this would be both unlawful and wrong.

Follow the DARC Money

The spokesperson continued:

DARC admits to funding the new RDF aircraft tracker in the application. The MOD’s environmental screening document states clearly that relocating the RDF has been part of DARC’s plans, and the only reason it gives as to why it was excluded from them was because DARC were assured that its relocation would be completed prior to DARC’s construction.

It even goes as far as clearly implying DARC is paying off who it needs to to expedite the relocation of the RDF, using distracting language to hide these realities behind the operational separation between the two projects.

It just leaves you with the question: why does it appear as if money has been changing hands in order for this aircraft tracker to be done and dusted at all costs before DARC is potentially started, if not for the reason that the application is blatantly linked to DARC, and yet unjustifiably is not being considered part and parcel of it?

We strongly question whether the MOD’s attempts to escape reality would stand up in court, and we are disgusted with PCC for issuing a screening opinion that throws the Pembrokeshire people it’s meant to stand up for completely under the bus.

The MOD’s screening request for the upgraded aircraft tracker includes no environmental assessment for radiofrequency radiation impacts to local people and livestock, which means it fails to consider the cumulative impact of what would be that plus DARC’s radiation.

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Considering we’ve found over 4,000 studies showing the type of radiation DARC would emit is linked with health impacts including cancer, and that the MOD has ignored nine whole freedom of information requests from us, the fact the MOD refuses to release a scrap of meaningful data on DARC’s huge potential radiation risks for our community leaves people here furious and disgusted.

All they can ever keep trotting out in response is the widely-criticised regulator ICNIRP and a tiny department of the WHO that’s completely riddled with telecoms and military lobbyists.

Suspicious ‘high-security’ undersea cable leads directly to DARC site

It gets even worse though, say campaigners:

There’s a strong public perception that the sea cable landing station they’re now building metres away from the gates of Cawdor Barracks, despite being said to be civilian, would actually be likely to supply DARC with data from overseas as well.

There’s an identical one proposed near Roch using the other one of the two new sea cables coming, but unlike that one, the Brawdy station features razor wire, security guards with on-site parking and CCTV cameras.

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The MOD won’t explain why it could possibly need any of this, but if you consider that Brawdy was involved in the SOSUS programme which literally covered up the fact that the British military was concealing that its sea cables were for civilian use when in fact they were tracking submarines, you can see why locals are sceptical.

If they’re right, none of this was ever going to be included in DARC’s potential upcoming planning application, making that application seem less consequential than it would really be.

Newgale bypass with DARC links

The Newgale bypass road has recently suffered another 18 month delay due to a public consultation response that almost unanimously rejected the entire proposal. According to PARC Against DARC, nearly everyone they’ve spoken to believes that the road:

had to have been connected to DARC, because it was so implausible that they could construct and operate such a large-scale military site using tiny backroads that would cause traffic bottlenecks from all sides. This was not factored into DARC’s scoping report either.

Silence surrounds DARC Pylons

Campaigners add that on top of that, documented talks between the MOD and PCNPA show that the MOD has so far failed to include in any publicised planning materials what could be extensive pylon-based or underground network power upgrades it admits could be required for DARC:

It just seems to us like the MOD is dripping with the kind of perceptions of corrupt practice in the local community that the DARC fiasco has become so well-known for in the St Davids peninsula.

The MOD, from the start and throughout, has proven itself to be a government ministry that seems to do nothing but railroad communities, flouting both strongly held public opinion and potentially the law to get what it wants.

DARC opposition set to be ‘hot topic’ at the ballot box

With the Senedd election just ten weeks away and with two of the main contenders in Plaid Cymru and the Wales Green Party both having come out very firmly against DARC as party policy, campaigners say:

Labour locally risks destroying its voter base even further if they fail to recognise the huge levels of local opposition to the proposals and change course.

They add:

The Labour governments on both sides of the border that are presiding over DARC have been an utter shambles, and FM Eluned Morgan and MP Henry Tufnell have been as silent as the grave on DARC since day one.

With a move to proportional representation, voting for 16-18s and an increase from 60 to 96 MSs in the upcoming Senedd elections, it’s looking ever more likely that Labour will be completely wiped out and a progressive ‘Anti-DARC’ government will form the next administration in Wales, so we believe Labour has everything to lose on this key election issue if they fail to about turn.

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Featured image (artist’s impression) via PARC Against DARC

Earlier this month, Manchester’s the Mill published a story highlighting racist comments from a Reform campaigner. The man in question was Adam Mitula, and the party has finally suspended him. The question is what took them so long?

Reform have finally suspended Matt Goodwin’s interim campaign mgr Adam Mitula following complaints about his online activity. The posts included the denial of Holocaust death tolls & antisemitic slurs like “I wouldn’t touch a Jewish woman”#politicslive#GortonandDentonByElection pic.twitter.com/2HjinzZwRS

— Mike H (@mikoh123) February 24, 2026

Revolting Reform

The Mill noted that Goodwin has actually surrounded himself with far-right activists. They argue that this is at odds with how Nigel Farage has historically operated:

Nigel Farage has always been at pains to distance his party from known far-right groups. He’s been publicly critical of Tommy Robinson on many occasions, and as UKIP leader he banned ex-British National Party members from running for his party.

Farage is pretty far to the right, obviously, but there’s always a further right. Most recently this manifested with the creation of Rupert Lowe’s Restore Party.

According to the Mill, Adam Mitula was the most problematic of Goodwin’s team:

Mitula’s output, posted on social media, includes his suggestion that “60-70%” of transgender people are paedophiles, the fact he would “never touch a Jewish woman”, and his use of the n-word. Meanwhile, discussing the number of people who died in the Holocaust in July 2024, he appears to try and play down the statistics, writing: “6 million polish [sic] people including some Jews. They always use Poles to make up the number. And on top of it they claim Poles were killing. Just sick.”

The Mill also highlighted the following tweet:

The Mill noted that Goodwin may not have been aware of the above. This was ten days ago, however, so Reform have certainly known about it since then. Despite this, it seems it took them until now to get rid of Mitula.

Here’s what the Mill said on 23 February:

And Reform’s former campaign manager in Tameside, Adam Mitula, is reclining on a poolside sun-lounger as we speak, perhaps enjoying a daiquiri, after the party quietly suspended him following our reporting on his history of anti-semitic and racist tweets, in a piece which used research by Hope Not Hate.

And here’s what BBC North West said today:

One of Reform UK’s campaign team in the Gorton and Denton by-election has been suspended after racist comments made on social media.

Adam Mitula, the party’s interim campaign manager, used an inappropriate word on X, and appeared to suggest the Jewish community had inflated the number of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust.

He says his comments have been taken out of context and he claims he was defending the Jewish community.

‘Defending’, he says.

Sure, pal.

Just like we’re defending you now when we say “get wrecked, bozo”.

At odds

As we reported yesterday, Farage seems to have abandoned Matt Goodwin following a series of scandals. And when we say ‘abandoned’, we’re saying that quite literally, because big Nige is literally on the other side of the world:

Chagos is a restricted UK territory. Access is tightly controlled through permits because of the strategic military base on Diego Garcia. This isn’t a tourist island it’s a high-security defence asset.

So did Farage request a permit ?

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Or is it another day another stunt https://t.co/ac0sWSJsGf

— Charlie (@CheckCharlieB) February 21, 2026

Farage is trying to create a Goldilocks political movement in which everyone is just racist enough. The problem is reactionary politics demands constant lurches to the right, and that’s going to make Reform impossible to hold together as a mainstream political project.

Featured image via The Mill