Politics
Michigan’s three-car pileup of a primary has Senate Democrats worried
DETROIT — As a professional driver navigated a gleaming new Ford Bronco Sport up a steep ridge, Mallory McMorrow found herself pinned in the back seat clinging to the overhead roll bar.
The Detroit Auto Show course is designed to show off the Bronco’s capabilities — while putting an escapist scare into its thrill-seeking passengers. But it just reminded McMorrow of her day-to-day reality running for Michigan’s open Senate seat.
“It’s a teeter-totter, man,” McMorrow told POLITICO about her race, after having navigated a very literal giant teeter-totter in the Bronco. “It could go any direction.”
McMorrow is locked in a tight three-way primary with Rep. Haley Stevens and physician Abdul El-Sayed that has emerged as a test for what the next generation of Democrats will look like — and whether they can win a key swing-state election that will help determine Senate control.
In recent days, the trio of candidates’ squabbles careened hour to hour from whether they should embrace Medicare for All, to how far Democrats should go in fighting ICE. In fact, the contest has emerged as a catch-all for every question and problem plaguing Democrats politically and tactically: Where should they stand on Israel and Gaza? Should they send their aging congressional leaders packing? What does electability look like in this political environment? Should Democrats tap into the attention economy or focus on traditional campaigning?
El-Sayed, on the left, has taken consistently maximalist positions fitting for a man who wrote a book titled “Medicare For All: A Citizen’s Guide” and has vocal support from Sen. Bernie Sanders. Stevens, a classic swing-state centrist favored by many establishment Democrats, has taken smaller-bore stances. Between them sits McMorrow, who’s aiming to appeal to voters in both of their lanes.
But this three-way battle to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) isn’t just about what direction the Democratic Party takes in Washington — it’s whether they can get there in the first place.
Democrats think they see a route back to the Senate majority. But if they don’t hold on to their seat in Michigan, that faint path won’t materialize.
“It’s already a long shot, but it’s a doable thing — but not without Michigan,” said David Axelrod, the longtime senior adviser to former President Barack Obama.
Axelrod called it the “most fascinating and consequential primary” in the country.
Democratic leaders both in Michigan and D.C. are growing more worried by the day that the hard-fought contest, which won’t be decided until the August primary, will exacerbate ideological tensions and leave the nominee in a weakened position heading into a contest against former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.).
“We’re used to having long primaries,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told POLITICO. “No one loves them, but we’re used to having them. And I don’t think it’s insurmountable.”
For now, the race is wide open.
Most public polls have found a tight three-way race in the primary, with Stevens or McMorrow holding a slight lead depending on the survey; in those same polls, Stevens runs slightly ahead of Rogers in the general election, with McMorrow just a bit behind her and El-Sayed a bit further back.
Stevens has a fundraising edge. According to the latest Federal Election Commission reports, which posted on Saturday, she brought in $2.1 million in the past quarter and has $3 million cash on hand; McMorrow and El-Sayed both raised around $1.75 million and each has just under $2 million in the bank. Rogers raised just under $2 million and has just under $3.5 million cash on hand.
Part of the lack of separation in the polls is that voters haven’t engaged yet. The campaigns don’t expect cleavage until paid media starts happening in full (El-Sayed is the only candidate so far to roll out a statewide ad.)
“Only the most political have started to click in,” Slotkin said.
Michigan Democrats also worried about the impact the primary could have on the rest of the party as they fight to hold on to term-limited Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office and win back control of the Legislature.
Whitmer, with her 60 percent approval rating, is facing a pressure campaign from some in the party to endorse either Stevens or McMorrow early in the race to narrow the field, according to two senior Michigan Democratic officials granted anonymity to speak about private discussions. Otherwise, one of them worried, “we could see real losses.”
Whitmer and El-Sayed duked it out in a 2018 gubernatorial primary, and the officials say bad blood remains between them.
A Whitmer spokesperson declined to comment.
A clash of ideologies
The candidates have sharp ideological divides on major issues including health care, Israel and Gaza and accepting corporate PAC money.
After a second person was killed by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis, the three candidates’ diverging approach to ICE and its funding supercharged the primary.
While McMorrow and Stevens glad-handed at the Detroit Auto Show and union halls around the MLK holiday, after immigration agents killed Renee Good and before they killed Alex Pretti, El-Sayed, who has championed the Abolish ICE movement since 2018, went to Minneapolis and filmed man-on-the-street interviews for social media that were reminiscent of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s successful viral campaign videos.
He told POLITICO he was there to “understand what it looks like when an arm of the government lays siege to a city in America.” (El-Sayed also jetted to California for a fundraiser earlier that week).
McMorrow has expressed supportfor reforms to ICE, such as requiring agents to be unmasked, and argues Republicans and Democrats should “deny DHS one penny more until complete overhaul and accountability of this agency” happens.
Stevens, meanwhile, is co-sponsoring a bill that would divert what she called ICE’s $75 billion “slush fund” to state and local law enforcement agencies; she has also called for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s impeachment.
The candidates are also at odds over health care, an issue over which they’ve sparred in recent days.
In an interview with Democratic influencer Brian Tyler Cohen last week, El-Sayed reignited the health care debate. He said, “if you like your insurance from your employer or from your union, that can still be there for you,” apparently flipping on his stance on Medicare for All. McMorrow and her allies seized on his remarks as El-Sayed seemingly embracing a position he had repeatedly attacked her on. El-Sayed hosted a December health care town hall with Sanders where he contrasted his Medicare for All support with McMorrow’s and Steven’s backing of a public option.
“It’s wild to call yourself the ‘next generation’ of Democratic leadership and be running AGAINST Medicare for All in 2026,” he posted on X a month ago, quote-tweeting McMorrow.
In an interview with POLITICO after the dustup, El-Sayed declined to discuss specifics of his position on the record. In a statement, a spokesperson said that he supports Medicare for All as a baseline option for everyone, “and if folks want additional private coverage through a union or an employer then that can be there for them too.”
The conflict in Gaza has also led to sharp divisions in the race.
El-Sayed, who is the son of Egyptian immigrants, has been an outspoken critic of Israel, which he has long said was committing genocide in Gaza. That’s a major issue in a state with the highest percent of Arab-Americans in the country; more than 100,000 people voted “uncommitted” instead of backing then-President Joe Biden in the 2024 primary over his administration’s support of Israel — an effort El-Sayed helped lead.
He told POLITICO that when he talks about U.S. tax dollars “being misappropriated to weaponize food against children and to subsidize a genocide, rather than to invest in real people in their communities and their kids and their schools and their health care, it is the single biggest applause line in every speech.”
McMorrow took a bit more time to come to that view. In October, when asked whether she thought the conflict was a genocide, she paused for several seconds, exhaled, and responded, “Based on the definition, yes.” Her campaign said her view was informed by a September United Nations Commission of Inquiry report.
Stevens has been more supportive of Israel, and has the support of AIPAC, the politically influential pro-Israel lobby. Some senior Michigan Democrats have expressed concern that an AIPAC independent expenditure campaign backing Haley could make the primary even more toxic ahead of the general election. Asked about their plans, an AIPAC spokesperson told POLITICO they had no updates.
Asked by POLITICO in November whether she was comfortable with AIPAC support, Stevens dodged, saying she’s delighted to “see the hostages get home,” and added she “wanted to see an enduring ceasefire where Hamas surrenders and so that we can get the people of Palestine and Israel in long standing peace, living peacefully, side by side with one another.”
Stevens’ campaign also attacked both El-Sayed and McMorrow’s record on manufacturing, a sector that employs some 600,000 in Michigan. She told POLITICO that McMorrow “has a history of criticizing Michigan’s key industries” and that El-Sayed “supports policies that would decimate Michigan’s manufacturing economy,” citing his support for the Green New Deal.
“I’m going to call out what isn’t working for Michigan’s manufacturing economy, whether it is Mike Rogers or members of my own party,” Stevens said in an interview in the conference room of the Teamsters Local 234 union hall in Plymouth.
Old school vs. new school
The race is also shaping up as a test of offline coalitional politics at a moment increasingly defined more by viral videos than baby-kissing and union hall campaign stops.
Stevens has leaned hardest into traditional brick-and-mortar campaigning, while El-Sayed has been much more focused online, with McMorrow’s approach once again falling between them.
McMorrow’s biggest splash of the campaign so far came with a viral video that attacked NFL RedZone for adding ads as “the latest example of corporate greed,” and tied it to spiking grocery costs. It earned nearly 2 million views.
El-Sayed has built a national profile and fundraising network in part with a health care-focused podcast on Crooked Media, the network run by the Pod Save America team made up largely of former Obama senior advisers. At least three members, Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Ben Rhodes, appeared as hosts on an invite to El-Sayed’s fundraiser earlier this month in California.
Stevens has taken a different tack, putting more focus on campaign stops and meat-and-potatoes fights for local industry, especially auto and other factory jobs.
In a year-out-from-election day memo, Stevens’ campaign argued that her “strength with Black Michiganders and union workers, her relentless focus on lowering costs and protecting Michigan manufacturing, and her record fighting for Michiganders — which has led to her winning tough primaries and general elections — will propel her to victory.”
Campaigning at a Teamsters Local 234 union hall in Plymouth, she spent a lot more time talking about a local labor contract dispute than national concerns.
“Look, manufacturing might not light up the internet, but it fuels a lot of jobs here,” she told POLITICO afterward.
That dogged approach helped her flip and hold a swing seat, then win a tough incumbent-on-incumbent primary in 2022, and is one she thinks will pay dividends now.
“I’ve had a couple of tough primaries before, and I’m just out here trying to win it for Michiganders,” she said.
But it remains unclear how well it will translate in a statewide campaign.
“Haley seems to have more institutional support — whether or not it’s admitted as such — and that is a strength, but it also could be a weakness,” said a longtime Michigan Democratic operative who remains neutral in the race and was granted anonymity to assess the primary. “Her presence on the campaign trail I’m not sure is one that’s really like, Man, I got to be with her.”
Stevens has earned criticism over whether she can galvanize the online, grassroots activists, or electrify crowds on the trail. “She’s [an] uneven campaigner when it comes to the retail stuff,” said Adam Jentleson, a longtime Democratic campaign strategist whois pushing for the party to break more with left-wing interest groups and focus more on expanding the party’s coalition to win (he also voiced concern about El-Sayed as a general-election candidate).
Right now, both El-Sayed and Stevens have been training most of their fire on McMorrow rather than each other, seeing her as the bigger threat to their potential voting coalitions.
Insiders and outsiders
Stevens’ electoral track record is part of why many establishment-leaning Democrats in D.C. prefer her in the race.
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) invited her to attend a fundraising retreat in Napa Valley that featured a crypto roundtable, but Stevens told POLITICO she did not attend due to the government shutdown.
In an interview with POLITICO, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was bullish on defending Michigan but declined to appraise any individual candidacies; a DSCC spokesperson declined to comment on whether the committee would officially endorse in the race.
McMorrow has taken a very different approach to D.C.’s Democratic leadership.
Shetold POLITICO last March, before she was even officially a candidate, that she wouldn’t vote for Schumer as party leader should she win her Senate seat. She also previously penned a scathing letter to Biden following his disastrous debate with Donald Trump, urging him to drop out.
“We’re drawing a contrast that is really about defining my lane,” McMorrow said in an interview at a campaign stop at a park in Grand Rapids late last year, suggesting Stevens, without naming her, was running “an uninspiring campaign that’s right out of the D.C. playbook” and that El-Sayed, also without naming him, was campaigning on the idea “that there’s just one weird trick to fix democracy.”
Stevens has said it’s too early to determine whether to would back Schumer; she has called him “a great leader.”
El-Sayed also hasn’t said whether he’d back Schumer for leader. But he’s made it clear he is running headlong against the Democratic establishment.
“The movement we’re building is about taking a bet on the divide in our politics not really being about left versus right, but being about the folks who are locked out and the folks who are locking them out,” El-Sayed told POLITICO.
About the only thing the candidates can all agree on is the stakes of the contest.
“The future of this party is going to be based on what happens in this race,” McMorrow said.
Elena Scheider contributed to this report.
NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pick to succeed him in the state Assembly cruised to an easy victory Tuesday night. But Diana Moreno’s win in that Queens special election is likely the last cakewalk we’ll see from a Mamdani-backed candidate in the near future.
The new mayor has endorsed Brad Lander in his quest to unseat Rep. Dan Goldman in New York’s 10th Congressional District and Assemblymember Claire Valdez for the NY-07 seat being vacated by Rep. Nydia Velázquez.
The pair of Democratic congressional primaries is expected to be far more competitive than Moreno’s race, raising a central question: How far can a Mamdani endorsement get you?
“We’re testing that out,” said Grace Mausser, co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter, which has endorsed both Moreno and Valdez, but not Lander. “He has a lot of hard resources that come with an endorsement: his impressive volunteer and donor lists, his strong reach on social media … There’s also the soft power that we’re testing out now, right? Who is the leader of left and progressive politics in New York right now?”
Mamdani has so far been more involved in boosting Valdez than Lander.
The mayor appeared with Valdez — a Queens lawmaker, former United Auto Workers union organizer and the first elected official to stand with Mamdani in his campaign for mayor — at an event the day after she launched her bid. He also filmed a whimsical social media video set in a subway station to boost her fundraising.
Valdez is running against Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president who Velázquez has endorsed as her preferred successor. Queens City Council Member Julie Won also recently entered the race in the progressive Brooklyn and Queens district.
The mayor has been largely hands-off in Lander’s campaign after endorsing the former city comptroller on the day of his launch for Congress. Lander, who cross-endorsed Mamdani in last year’s mayoral race, is running in Brooklyn and Manhattan against an incumbent with more than three times as much campaign cash on hand and the backing of Democratic House leadership, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
A political adviser to Mamdani said his team is still assessing how much to get involved in the two congressional contests and cautioned against reading anything into the fact that the mayor has been more involved in Valdez’s race so far. The adviser said the Mamdani team is waiting to make major moves in NY-10 pending the outcome of a court case that could scramble the lines of the district in such a way that Goldman may run in the neighboring 11th District instead.
Regardless, the Mamdani adviser, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said the mayor simply lending his name to Lander and Valdez “already carries a lot of weight that these campaigns can make the most of.”
“His direct involvement is always going to be second to governing,” said the aide. “Ninety-nine percent of his energy is going to be focused on running the city.”
The politics-versus-governance balance is part of Mamdani’s clash with Velázquez, the highly respected progressive who effectively warned him in a New York Times interview to stay in his lane.
And the mayor does have a lot of work to do at the helm of the country’s largest city. June’s congressional primaries fall around the same time he and the City Council will be putting finishing touches on the city budget amid serious fiscal headwinds.
“I don’t know if that was the wisest thing for him to do because the job of being mayor is so big,” Democratic strategist Lupe Todd-Medina said, arguing Mamdani could end up in a situation where he’s not able to stump for Lander and Valdez as much as they want and need him to due to the sheer burden of governing New York City.
As June’s primaries still loom more than four months away, a Lander campaign official, granted anonymity to share sensitive considerations, said his team is also still waiting to see if a court decision could rip up the lines of NY-10.
But if the race ends up competitive, the Lander aide said his team is confident Mamdani will help fundraise and campaign for the former comptroller. The fact that Mamdani hasn’t done so yet, the aide said, is understandable since the mayor has been focused on governing in his first month in office.
The two House primaries have different dynamics but they’ll determine whether Mamdani can replicate the magic that catapulted him from relative obscurity to the nation’s second toughest job.
“He has a lot at stake by pushing in some chips on two fronts, but I think he has more at stake in the 7th District,” said Michael Lange, an analyst who specializes in progressive politics. Valdez “is a really close ally who comes from his political movement and his political home.”
The latest: Labour is preparing an archaic last-minute manuscript amendment to its own amendment to cave in to some of its MPs’ demands with regard to how much information on Mandelson should be released. It’s bedlam behind the scenes…
UK prime minister Keir Starmer is far from the only one who stuck by Peter Mandelson long after the scandal surrounding him became impossible to ignore. In the past few weeks, despite new evidence of Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein being made public, the BBC continued to offer him a platform. And still today, even as the extent of Mandelson’s alleged corruption, betrayal of trust and potentially criminal activity is made clear, it seems that the commentariat is prepared to come to his defence in sympathetic tweets, interviews and newspaper columns.
Starmer appointed Mandelson British ambassador to the US in 2024, despite knowing that the architect of New Labour had twice been forced to resign in disgrace from cabinet posts and had maintained a close association with Epstein. It took until September last year for Starmer to finally give him the boot, after emails were published showing Mandelson urging Epstein to ‘fight for early release’ from jail, following his conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
But while Starmer may have finally decided Mandelson was no longer fit for public life, the BBC took a different stance. Even after we had been treated to creepy photos of him in a bathrobe, casually chatting to his ‘best pal’ Epstein, Mandelson continued to be offered a cosy platform on the BBC. Just three weeks ago, on 11 January, he appeared on the BBC’s flagship Sunday morning politics show, where he was interviewed by presenter Laura Kuenssberg. Mandelson was given over half an hour to offer his take on the Trump administration, Greenland, Ukraine and the British government.
It was only in the final 10 minutes of the interview that Mandelson was asked about his relationship with Epstein. Even then, Kuenssberg threw him softball questions. This gave him a chance to offer a perfunctory apology to ‘the victims’, before giving his excuses. He told a credulous Kuenssberg that because he is gay, ‘he was kept separate from the sexual side of Epstein’s life’. Worse still, Mandelson – always the spin doctor – was able to present himself as a victim. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time as a maelstrom of sex and scandal happened all around him.
This interview was no one-off. Just days later, Mandelson was at Broadcasting House again, this time being interviewed by Sarah Montague for Radio 4’s World at One. Once again, Mandelson got to present himself as an elder statesman turned commentator on global events, with the promise of moral rehabilitation via apologies and disclaimers. We have to ask why. Why did BBC producers and presenters think Mandelson worthy of this reprieve?
But the media’s special treatment of Mandelson does not stop at the BBC. Even now, when we know that the real scandal in the relationship between Mandelson and Epstein was not sex but money, knowledge and power, he is being fawned over by some commentators. This week, the former Conservative MP turned Times columnist, Matthew Parris, has been gushing over Mandelson, describing him as ‘a man of wisdom and judgement in all but the conduct of his personal affairs’. ‘Within his party he has been a seminal influence for good’, Parris continues, ‘on the right side of every important argument in the politics of the left’.
Labour’s one-time spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, has been defending him as ‘talented’. ‘There’s no doubt. If you push to one side the reasons for his resignations, he was an effective cabinet minister,’ says Campbell on the latest edition of his Rest is Politics podcast. Despite Mandelson being implicated in the biggest scandal to hit the British government in decades – allegedly engaged in corruption that makes ‘partygate’ seem like the tea party it really was – neither Campbell nor Parris can summon up the words to wholeheartedly condemn him.
There’s a reason for this treatment of Mandelson. His role in orchestrating New Labour’s success under Tony Blair means that, even today, he is given a free pass by establishment centrists. They either refuse to believe he has done anything terribly wrong, or think that the sleaze, alleged corruption and seeming acts of treachery were a price worth paying for getting their men into power.
The Mandelson affair raises questions not just about the prime minister’s judgement but about Britain’s entire political and media class. Far too many decades-old stalwarts of the Westminster-media pipeline are implicated in defending Mandelson long after his failings were manifest. Either they have grown so used to shouting ‘scandal’ over every cake crumb and undeclared payment, that they can no longer spot the real thing. Or they so firmly believe in the moral rightness of the centrist, technocratic political project that they see corruption as a price worth paying. In either case, it’s not just Mandelson, Starmer and the Labour government that Britain needs to be shot of, but their sympathisers and hangers-on in the media, too.
Reform leader Nigel Farage is running scared of Green leader Zack Polanski. And, in the run-up to the Gorton and Denton by-election, the clash between the two parties could well be a sign of things to come in the British political landscape.
Of course, Farage is refusing a challenge to a face-to-face debate with Polanski. After all, the far-right figurehead is far batter at manufacturing glib soundbites than he is at answering probing questions.
Politics UK posted on social media:
🚨 WATCH: Nigel Farage rejects Zack Polanski’s request for a one-to-one debate
“I generally find that if you pick a fight with a chimney sweep you get covered in soot, so I might just leave that alone”
“But he’s got a fan club – all the heroin smokers and everything” pic.twitter.com/e5F6H80eV4
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) February 3, 2026
Farage is a glutton for punishment
In the clip, the interviewer reminded Farage that Polanski had expressed interest in a debate with him. However, that’s not the whole story.
Rather, Reform had previously challenged the Green leader to debate Zia Yusuf, the party’s head of policy. However, that’s not exactly an even matchup, is it?
Yusuf is an unelected benchwarmer for the far-right party who’ll get ditched as soon as another ex-Tory shows up to replace him. Meanwhile, Polanski is a serving member of the London Assembly.
Likewise, Polanski is the leader of his party, rather than being ‘head of policy’ for a party that only has one real policy.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that Yusuf has already debated Polanski. The two both appeared on BBC’s Question Time in December of last year. As I recall, Yusuf got booed for being a slimy little tosser.
The fact Yusuf appears eager to repeat the experience is his own business. However, Polanski was eager to debate – but against a fellow party leader:
Dear @ZiaYusufUK,
As I keep saying, I would be more than happy to debate, leader to leader, with Nigel Farage.
I’m starting to get the impression he might not be keen?
Maybe you could be kind enough to pass this message on?
Hugs, Zack.
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) February 2, 2026
‘Hugs, Zack’
Addressing Yusuf on social media, the Green leader wrote:
As I keep saying, I would be more than happy to debate, leader to leader, with Nigel Farage.
I’m starting to get the impression he might not be keen?
Maybe you could be kind enough to pass this message on?
Polanski then signed off with a cheeky little “Hugs, Zack”.
However, Farage was far less willing to face Polanski in a head-to-head debate. When he was reminded of the Green leader’s challenge, Farage tried to brush it off, stating:
No, I generally find that if you pick a fight with a chimney sweep you get covered in soot, so I might just leave that alone for now.
And that’s the nearest to an insult I’ll ever come, alright?
But you know, he’s got a fan club – all the heroin smokers and everything think he’s absolutely marvelous.
Apparently, calling a fellow schoolmate a “stupid Yid” doesn’t count as an insult. But anyway.
Running scared
Of course, it’s not surprising that Farage is running scared from a debate – he’s shite at them. In 2024, the Reform leader threw a tantrum and announced that he was boycotting the BBC after getting thrashed on Question Time himself.
Attendees grilled the party leader on immigration, health care, and his campaign activists’ racist and homophobic remarks. In return, Farage accused the BBC of rigging the audience.
As a side note, Farage seems to love boycotting the BBC – especially when people point out that he’s a racist sack of shit. Likewise, he’s also made a habit of accusing debate audiences of being left-wing plants whenever he starts losing.
You see, like most members of the far right, Farage can’t hold up in a debate he can’t control. He pulls stunts and generates headlines, but his ideas fall down under basic scrutiny.
Given his obvious ambition to install himself as the UK’s prime minister, Farage had better get comfortable in the hot seat pretty sharpish. Otherwise, the public might start to notice that he’s a hollow, bigoted authoritarian with no real answers. And we’d hate to see that now, wouldn’t we?
Featured image via the Canary
In the aftermath of the acquittal of six of the Filton 24, pressure groups and the families of the vindicated prisoners have spoken about what the verdict could mean.
Pressure group CAGE responds
The refusal to convict any of the six defendants of any charges, including on the most serious of charges, is a powerful affirmation of jury equity and brings to a humiliating end one of the most politically charged trials of this year thus far.
The decision made by the jury critically undermines the rationale used to proscribe Palestine Action, and underscores the urgent need for that ban to be lifted. This case was the most significant test of the government’s claim that acts of conscience against arms companies constitute a threat to public safety.
An independent jury, guided by conscience and moral clarity, rejected that narrative despite extraordinary political pressure, ministerial intervention, and an environment shaped to shield Israeli state-aligned interests from scrutiny.
The verdict echoes a wider public rejection of Zionist impunity, and growing support for direct action against companies complicit in genocide.
The trial has exposed how pre-trial detention and public spectacle were used to punish the defendants in advance and to deter others from challenging Israel’s largest arms manufacturer. The proscription of Palestine Action must now be lifted, and all those held as a result of this political process in prison should be released immediately.
The trial demonstrated that counter-terrorism and national security frameworks are being used in line with their established purpose: to silence dissent and shield state complicity in crimes from accountability. Context was excluded, and scrutiny of Elbit systems – Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer – supplying an ongoing genocide was treated as a matter to be suppressed rather than examined.
Naila Ahmed, Head of Campaigns at CAGE, said:
This is a huge victory for the movement but nationally and abroad who campaigned on behalf of the defendants, and a powerful affirmation of jury independence and moral courage in the face of extraordinary political pressure.
Though they cannot get back the 17 months of their life taken from them unlawfully, they should all be compensated and the remaining 18 defendants of the Filton 24 should also be released on bail. This case was used to justify the ban against Palestine Action, a decision that should now be overturned.
CAGE calls for full compensation for those acquitted, a lifting of the ban on Palestine Action, an independent review into the political handling of the case, and the abolition of terror laws. The acquittal should prompt serious reflection on how easily due process can be eroded when political interests are at stake.
Filton24 Defence Committee
lisa minerva luxx, a representative of the Filton24 Defence Committee said:
Today’s significant victory delivered by the jury has vindicated the six defendants, who are the first six on trial from the Filton 24.
There are still 18 more defendants imprisoned across the UK in connection with this case. They are being held under joint enterprise which means they each have the same 3 charges whether they are accused of being present at the action or not. Now that the first 6 have been liberated of the most serious charge, Aggravated Burglary, and none were convicted of a single offence, it follows that the rest must immediately have this charge dropped against them, and be granted bail.
This was a trial by media. Yvette Cooper and Keir Starmer took evidence in this case out of context and broadcast it on televisions and tabloids across the country in order to justify proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, despite forewarning that this will prejudice the trial.
By acquitting the defendants of aggravated burglary, the Jury aligned with the defence case that the items taken in to the warehouse were not weapons, but were tools used to dismantle and neutralise Israeli weapons.
Now that a court of law have vindicated the first six of the Filton 24 of the exaggerated charges against them [and found that the actions against Elbit Systems that night were reasonable], we should all expect Shabana Mahmood to do the reasonable thing herself and lift the ban on Palestine Action.
It’s time for the British state to accept that the movement for a liberated Palestine has been, and will continue to be, justified.
Filton 24 relatives respond
Clare Rogers, mother of Zoe Rogers said:
Our loved one’s action against Elbit Systems and the state’s brutal response have exposed the true values of the government. The government is determined to do business with Israel and protect its weapons industry at any cost. Our loved ones dared to poke this beast – and no expense has been spared in policing prosecuting and imprisoning them without trial. Imagine if the government had put the same amount of money, resources and political will into preventing a genocide.
As the court heard, these are six young people of conscience and compassion. They took action against Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems in Filton, Bristol, because they could not sit by and do nothing while their country armed Israel’s genocide. They had tried everything else – marches, petitions, writing to MPs, encampments – and they could see that the government was not only breaking international law but was ignoring the will of its own people. They felt they had no option but to take action themselves, to try to save as many lives as they could.
Inside the Elbit facility, they found deadly quadcopter drones packed up ready for export, and were able to destroy some of them with crowbars and sledgehammers. These are the type of drones the Israeli military uses in Gaza to drop explosives, typically after a bomb has been dropped, to target survivors.
Emma Kamio, mother of Leona (Ellie) Kamio said:
The police strategically released selected clips of footage during the trial, including the incident where Sam had struck a police officer. This was devoid of all context. The public were not told that Sam had just been blinded by PAVA spray and acted to protect my daughter while unable to see.
Ellie had been tasered twice at this point, the second time by accident, and the police officer who did so was dragging her up off the ground in one handcuff while standing on her abdomen and screaming at her to stay down. The whole time she had painful tazor barbs still in her arm and thigh as he dragged her around.
So she was screaming in pain, and was never resisting arrest. At this point, Samuel Corner had witnessed a security guard strike his co-defendant with a sledgehammer, and had witnessed excessive force repeatedly by the security. Whilst blinded by PAVA spray, and hearing screams from Ellie, screams which even the police described as “blood curdling”, he could only make out what he thought was a security guard, causing more pain, and did what he could to make it stop.
Striking the police officer was a terrible mistake that I’m sure Sam deeply regrets, but he simply reacted to protect Ellie when he heard the blood curdling scream that came from the second electrical current passing through her body, and all this after having witnessed the violence they experienced from the security guards that night.
Sukaina Rajwani, mother of Fatema Zainab Rajwani said:
‘When they are told, “Do not spread corruption in the land”, they reply, “We are only peace-makers”. Indeed it is they who are the corruptors, but they fail to perceive it.’ (Holy Quran 2:11-12)
I am grateful for every heart that has turned towards this movement, for every hand that has raised in prayer for us, and for every word that has amplified our voice in seeking justice for the Filton 24. Despite the state’s best efforts to silence us and oppress our loved ones; we stand united in strength and power against a corrupt government and an unjust legal system.
Our fight does not end here. We will continue to expose Elbit Systems and British complicity in genocide.
Brogan Devlin, sister of Jordan Devlin said:
Despite having all the odds stacked against them, I can now say with the biggest smile that Jordan has been acquitted of aggravated burglary and violent disorder, and none of the defendants have been convicted of a single offence. The jury could see through the state lies, the political interference and the corruption.
Today we celebrate, tomorrow we rest, but this is not over – Angelo Volante is the name of the Elbit Systems security guard who assaulted my brother multiple times. My heart sank watching the footage of my brother unarmed, being attacked by Volante with a sledgehammer. Jordan was attempting to deescalate the situation when Angelo Volante kicked, choked, struck and even attempted to bit my brother.
The jury was shown Jordan’s black eye, bruised body and sledgehammer marks. Why was this never released to the media? Throughout the trial we have been silenced by reporting restrictions in a bid to protect Elbit Systems and its violent employees.
Angelo Volante and Elbit Systems should be the ones on trial, not my brother. Thankfully ordinary citizens of the jury could see that and so we leave today with our heads held high and our loved ones by our side.
Featured image supplied
Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration policies are reprehensible racism. And, they’re completely unviable for the economy.
Dr Benjamin Caswell, a senior economist at National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), has said:
Net zero migration leaves the economy 3.6% smaller by 2040 and this reflects slower employment growth and a smaller workforce.
Farage would tank the economy
The vast majority of people coming to the UK are studying or working, or their dependants. In fact, people born outside the UK but living here are more likely to be employed than UK born residents. Towards the end of 2025, 74.7% of UK-born residents were employed, compared to 81.1% of EU born residents and 74.8% of non-EU and non-UK born residents.
Farage’s anti-immigration policies are not only unprincipled, but economically deficient. His party Reform aims to deport 600,000 people from the UK over the course of a parliament. And that’s before you get to added restrictions on people arriving. As NIESR research shows, this would contract the economy because we are relying on people from other countries to support our workforce.
Caswell continued:
Imagine it as like freezing the population where it is, and then just having a continually ageing population. In the short to medium term, it’s not too detrimental, but over 20 years this gap [in spending and receipts] becomes continually larger and larger.
This is because the UK’s fertility rate is just 1.44. In order for the population to be replaced, it must be 2.1.
The cause of less children: inequality
In 1964, the UK’s fertility rate was 2.9. People could afford houses, had free university, and a much cheaper cost of living due to the nationalisation of essentials. Now no one can afford a home. Many of us don’t have the financial security to have children. Student debt is hanging over us and the cost of living keeps getting worse.
Another issue is the ratio of older people to the workforce. In 1973, there were 21.8 retired people for every 100 people working. Now there are 30.4 retired people for every 100 workers.
As economist Richard Murphy summarises:
We have a system which is, in other words, basically hostile to children; hostile to the actual fact of having children; hostile to the support of children; hostile to the parents who want to support children financially and who can’t because the system makes that nigh on impossible for them to do so. Hostile to the whole idea that we should be able to reproduce in the way that we need to. And now hostile to migrants who might be able to help solve this problem by becoming the teachers and everything else that we need to fill the gaps in the system, or to simply provide the cover to ensure that sufficient nursery care is, for example, available. Everything is hostile to having children.
Automation and technological advancement could solve this. But Farage’s ideological anti-immigrant policies would only make it worse.
Featured image via the Canary
LIVE: PMQs
Honey – get the popcorn…
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has spiked its own report describing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as a “crime against humanity”. It’s Israel-Palestine director Omar Shakir resigned in protest at the decision.
The report, which had been legally approved and was ready for publication, addressed Israel’s denial of Palestinians’ legal ‘right of return’ to their homes and lands. Hundreds of thousands were violently expelled by Zionist militias and UK military in 1948. Many more have been dispossessed or killed since and Israel has forcibly expelled Palestinians from refugee camps.
The report analysed field work in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. Despite passing successfully through all HRW’s checklist stages, new executive director Philippe Bolopion shelved it. It was due to go public last December, but Shakir was informed that it had been spiked a fortnight before.
Bolopion’s killing of the report came after a senior HRW official objected on the grounds that it would undermine Israel’s apartheid. Or, as the official put it, that it might:
demographically extinguish the Jewishness of the Israeli state.
‘Lost faith’ in Human Rights Watch leadership
Shakir told Drop Site News that he had lost faith in HRW’s leadership after a decade of hard work:
I’ve given every bit of myself to the work for a decade. I’ve defended the work in very, very difficult circumstances. I have lost faith in our senior leadership’s fidelity to the core way that we do our work, to the integrity of our work, at least in the context of Israel, Palestine.
The refugees I interviewed deserve to know why their stories aren’t being told.
Shakir’s Palestinian researcher Milena Ansari also resigned, leaving HRW without an Israel-Palestine team.
In an attempt to justify its decision, HRW said in a statement that the report was “complex“:
The report in question raised complex and consequential issues. In our review process, we concluded that aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet Human Rights Watch’s high standards. For that reason, the publication of the report was paused pending further analysis and research. This process is ongoing.
Bill Frelick, HRW’s Refugees and Migrant head, claimed he did not object to Palestinians’ legal right of return. He then questioned whether it really applied any more – in part, ironically, because some Palestinians might have obtained citizenship elsewhere:
To be clear, I am not objecting to our position that the Right of Return (RoR) is, indeed, a human right and that denying the right of return is a human rights violation. I do not think, however, that we have strong grounds for asserting that the denial of this right is a Crime Against Humanity (CAH)…
…I also question the strategic value of HRW advocating in 2025 for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to reclaim homes in present-day Israel that were lost in 1948…
… Does the suffering (and claims) of descendants of refugees who lost their homes in 1948 weaken over time? How does HRW assess whether descendants of refugees from 1948 have maintained ties that keep their claims viable? Does having citizenship in another country have impact on those claims? Are these claims unique to the descendants of Palestinian refugees or do they apply to the descendants of all refugees from all places throughout history?
At least ten percent of Israelis hold dual nationality – probably considerably more now. Iran’s effective retaliation to Israel’s aggression in June 2025 saw a flood of Israelis apply for passports in their original states. Frelick also questioned whether Israel was deliberately causing harm by preventing Palestinians returning to their homes:
Per the requirement of “intentionally” causing great suffering, is Israel’s intent in denying return to cause great suffering or it is rather motivated by Israel’s national security concerns, demographic engineering, or other motivations, and, therefore, whatever suffering it causes would be incidental or consequential to these purposes but not their intent?
“Losing the organization”
According to Drop Site, HRW’s senior management refused attempts to find a compromise and told staff the report could only be published if its scope was limited to Palestinians displaced since 2023 and excluded refugees in other countries. Some 200 staff signed a letter of complaint; 300 participated in an online all-staff meeting and voiced their objections. All were ignored. Participants in the meeting said that human rights defenders were “losing” HRW and that the spiking was indefensible:
We are losing the organization we love and are so passionate about…
…no one will be able to defend the organization.
Quite.
While HRW is frequently critical of Israel, it has also been accused of going soft on its crimes when it matters. Academic and author Immanuel Ness wrote that HRW demonstrates:
continuous and reliable support for positions advanced by the USA, Britain, and Western states.
Featured image via the Canary
As reported by the BBC, Peter Mandelson has made his most brazen claim yet:
Mandelson just told the BBC that when he passed government documents to Jeffrey Epstein he was “acting in the national interest” pic.twitter.com/8NY8YOYeqo
— Nicholas Guyatt (@NicholasGuyatt) February 3, 2026
Sorry, but we’re having a hard time believing that feeding British secrets to an international paedophile was in the “national interest”.
Mandelson and suspected criminal behaviour
As revealed by the latest Epstein Files, Mandelson was feeding the now-dead paedophile confidential government information during the New Labour years:
Peter Mandelson leaked a sensitive UK government document to Jeffrey Epstein while he was business secretary that proposed £20bn of asset sales and revealed Labour’s tax policy plans. https://t.co/vVvoE5TIH9 pic.twitter.com/B31Ba2sKXj
— Financial Times (@FT) February 2, 2026
I’ve been trawling through the Mandelson/Epstein emails and those guys were TIGHT
Here’s Mandelson tipping Epstein off on a major financial announcement while he was Business Secretary and Epstein was on year of probation on house arrest after his conviction and jail sentence pic.twitter.com/nYC32jSg7A— Robbie G D2theI2theD2theF (@Gruntfutuck) January 31, 2026
In the clip at the top, the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason said:
It’s my understanding that he doesn’t believe he has acted in any way criminally; that he was acting in the national interest. It’s his view, I’m told, that in his dealings with Jeffrey Epstein – particularly during the financial crisis – dealing with Epstein, a man who had knowledge and expertise in banking, was worthwhile.
To give you an idea of how Epstein viewed the world, we know from another leak that he told Palantir boss Peter Thiel Brexit was “just the beginning”. When asked “of what”, Epstein answered:
return to tribalism… counter to globalization. amazing new alliances. you and I both agreed zero interest rates were too high, and as I said in your office, finding things on their way to collapse… was much easier than finding the next bargain
Reading this, do you think it would be in your interests for this man to have access to confidential British secrets?
Because to us, it reads like the grandiose monologuing of a man who wants to burn the world down to sell off the ashes.
Speaking of Peter Thiel and Palantir, as we’ve reported, Starmer’s government has handed this company new contracts worth hundreds of millions.
And the dodginess doesn’t end there.
They are, generally speaking, disgusting people entirely unrepresentative of the country in just about every way.
But a combination of our electoral system (which has so far guaranteed two parties), and the media, has completely insulated them from real accountability.
— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) February 2, 2026
An actual conspiracy
At this point, the connections are obvious. And it’s clear that none of this is being done in the name of Britain’s ‘national interests’.
Featured image via FCDO
Choppier seas await Mamdani-backed candidates after Diana Moreno's landslide win
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