Politics
No one can deny it now: anti-Zionism is an ideology of hatred
The most striking thing in those leaked WhatsApp messages from the Greens for Palestine group was the activists’ searing irritation at having to say ‘Zionists’ rather than ‘Jews’. I’m sick of it, said one. The monsters who laid waste to Gaza ‘were Jews’, the activist said. ‘They were Jewish supremacists’, that lowest, most vile category of human being, which loves to ‘murder, bomb and starve children’. We have been ‘scared into using the word Zionists because of the fear of being labelled anti-Semites’, said these digital lowlifes.
It gets worse. Not only were these Green Party activists hell-bent on truthfully naming the object of their bilious hatred – Jews – they also wanted to preach to the world what a demonic people these Jews are. These supremacists, these slayers of innocents, are ‘an abomination to this planet’, said one.
The 1930s card is played way too often these days. But I honestly cannot recall the last time such Nazi-level bile was uncovered in a mainstream political party in the UK. Greens for Palestine is a faction in the Green Party of England and Wales, which is led by Zack Polanski. The party is in the ascendancy, building an electoral base from that unholiest alliance of bourgeois genderfluids and Gaza-obsessed Muslim conservatives. And now we know it has within its ranks activists who look upon the Jews as a uniquely wicked people and a pox on the planet.
They lie too, these ‘abominable’ creatures. The Green activists flirted with the idea, rife in the digital sewers of Israelophobia, that the burning of the four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green in London last week might have been a ‘false flag’. That is, the Jews did it to themselves for moral advantage. A Green candidate in the upcoming local elections in England said there is no doubt the attack was an ‘inside job’.
Tellingly, the WhatsApping activists warned each other to watch their words. Our enemies will try to ‘bait us into making statements emotionally’ so that they can ‘say that we are a bunch of unpleasant, vengeful anti-Semites’, one said. ‘Don’t take the bait!’ Can we speak plainly? If you need to remind yourself not to have an ‘emotional’ outburst that might come across as anti-Semitic, then you might well be anti-Semitic. I’m old enough to remember when being anti-racist meant challenging racism, not keeping a lid on your own racism so that no one will find out what a piece of shit you are.
Of course, that’s not how these activists see it. Remember, said one, ‘our cause is a righteous one – we are the good guys’. You know what? Every hater of Jews in history thought this. From the medieval mobs that hunted Jews for ‘killing Christian children’ to the fascists who exterminated Jews for being a typhus-like threat to the Aryan race to the frothing Israelophobes who devote themselves to the destruction of the abominable homeland of this abominable people – all thought they were serving a great, high cause. A burning, untameable, wholly misplaced sense of righteousness lies at the rotten heart of every anti-Semitic crusade.
As rancid as that digital chat was, the Green Party’s response to it was worse. Where was Zack Polanski in the hours after this story broke in the Telegraph? Dad-dancing on the stage in Trafalgar Square at that orgy of bourgeois smugness, the Together Alliance’s ‘march against the far right’. The future satirists of our political moment will be so spoilt for content. They will scarcely believe that a party leader gyrated with BDSM fellas to prove his hatred of ‘the fash’ and yet had not a word to say about the fascist-style banter in his own ranks.
Actually, it was even worse than that. Over the weekend, Polanski aimed his ire not at those Green activists spouting Jew hate on WhatsApp but at a Jewish journalist who had the temerity to interview members of his family about the Green Party’s possible adoption of a ‘Zionism is racism’ policy. Polanski himself is Jewish and the fine journalist Nicole Lampert found that some of his relatives think he is taking the Greens in a very dark direction. They said it would be devastating for Britain’s Jews if the Greens decreed that ‘Zionism is racism’ – a policy they didn’t get around to discussing in the end at their party conference this weekend. Polanski accused Lampert of ‘parasitic behaviour’ – oof – and she swiftly found herself on the receiving end of a shitshow of hate from all those ‘good guys’.
So, a recap. Green activists referred to Jews as an ‘abomination to this planet’. The Green Party is considering adopting a policy singling out Jewish nationalism as racist. Polanski called a Jewish journalist ‘parasitic’. And, going back further, the Greens’ deputy leader, Mothin Ali, made excuses for the anti-Semitic barbarism of 7 October 2023, as did other Greens. Can we say it now – that the Green Party has a very serious problem with that most ancient of bigotries?
The Israelophobic left loves to say: ‘But Polanski is a Jew! How can you say the Greens have a problem with Jews?’ Here I will merely cite the words of Ms Lampert, who has been fighting the Jews’ corner in British journalism for many years. Polanski uses his Jewish heritage, she wrote in the Telegraph, to ‘kosherise the rampant Jew hatred in the Greens’. It’s a devastating line, and one it is increasingly hard to disagree with: that Polanski’s historic role is to provide the middle-class adherents to the new Socialism of Fools with a get-out-of-jail card. They point to his Jewishness as proof of their righteousness even as they engage in truly hateful behaviour against that ‘abominable’ people.
‘We’re not anti-Semitic, we’re anti-Zionist’, they’ll say. The irritation of Greens for Palestine at having to say Zionist rather than Jew surely explodes that crap once and for all. But more to the point, what do people mean when they say they’re anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic? All I hear is: ‘I don’t hate Jews, I just want to deprive them of a right enjoyed by every other people and bring about the destruction of their homeland so that they will once again be scattered across the Earth.’
I’m sick of pussyfooting around this: if you dream of the Jewish nation’s destruction, and chant for the death of Jewish soldiers, and demonise Jewish nationalism as uniquely barbarous, then you have a problem with Jews. It might take 10 years, maybe 30, perhaps longer, but I am confident we will one day look back at the people who said, ‘I’m an anti-Zionist’, in the same way we look at those who said, ‘Round up the Jews’.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.
PM Keir Starmer stood in the House of Commons on Monday 20 April as he attempted once again to wiggle out of responsibility for his highly dubious decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US.
However, Starmer seemed to expose himself as operationally inferior to Foreign Office officials. According to the PM, those officials decided that the UK’s highest office holder did not need to know about the failed vetting and the red flags attached to Peter Mandelson. This is yet another highly concerning development when accounting for his friendship with convicted paedophile and Zionist stooge, Jeffrey Epstein.
Secondly, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) have attracted significant scrutiny in light of its lofty funding contributions to the pro-Israel Dinah Report, to which it awarded the large majority of its annual budget. Officials commissioned the biased Dinah Report as propaganda for Israel to wage its’ genocide against the indigenous Palestinian population, casting serious doubt on the motives of those within the FCDO.
Finally, this raises serious questions about whose interests these officials actually work for. In turn, a serious long-felt concern is brought to the forefront: is the UK government occupied by Israel?
The key points from Keir Starmer's Mandelson statement https://t.co/RHXBPKU9Jj
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) April 21, 2026
What we know over Starmer and the FCDO
Official documents show that Keir Starmer received clear advice to make all appointments contingent on security vetting. Nevertheless, former Permanent Under-Secretary Olly Robbins told MPs this morning that the FCDO operated in an “atmosphere of pressure”. This was apparently the case before the appointment and the start of the vetting process. Specifically, he suggested that pressure from the government pushed him to overlook serious concerns.
In fact, Robbins went further and suggested that cabinet office officials had previously attempted to block vetting entirely. Arguing that Mandelson’s extreme privilege as a member of the House of Lords at the time and a privy councilor made him exempt from scrutiny, those with most responsibility to the electorate decided his shady history with a convicted paedophile was of no concern.
"Just fucking approve it."
Emily Thornberry recites Morgan McSweeney's call for the Foreign Office to approve Peter Mandelson's appointment as US Ambassador. pic.twitter.com/i4hzCUEXFd
— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) April 21, 2026
Given reports that Epstein and his kompromat files were integral to the settler-colonial project of Israel, this decision to place such a shady figure in the White House carries – like ‘Petie’ himself – major red flags.
Moreover, Foreign Office officials reportedly told Robbins, after the failed security vetting, they had sufficiently identified the risks. They also claimed that those risks could be “mitigated”. Duty bound, Robbins then used his unique authority to wave through security clearance for the disgraced former ambassador. That raises obvious questions about how the FCDO thought it could manage these serious concerns around Peter Mandelson’s past while sending him to deal directly with Donald Trump in the United States.
Those questions only grow when you factor in Trump’s close alignment with Israel, suggesting the government may have seen those same connections as a political edge to play.
This leads to a very urgent question that must be answered: is the British government and the FCDO working on behalf of Israel’s interests or our own?
"You could have got away with it two years ago, you can't anymore."
The British public are no longer buying media and government misinformation on Israel's genocide in Gaza, @seannhickey explains. pic.twitter.com/3pRtJ1lVIU
— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) October 6, 2025
Dinah Report and the Israel lobby under Starmer
We already know that the FCDO awarded a large majority of its annual budget to the coordinated, politically charged Dinah Report. This is thanks to Freedom of Information requests filed by Novara Media to the FCDO. Many have argued that this report aimed to legitimise the barbarism of Israel. Especially due to its explicit purpose to establish that sexual violence was indeed used as a weapon of war on October 7.
It is important to note that no credible evidence supports these claims, according to any independent officials who have reviewed the available material.
We wrote at the time:
This blatant bias and conflict of interest should come as little to no surprise. Ever since October 7th, we have seen a concerted push by Israel and its lobby groups to manipulate data, grief and material facts in their own interest. All whilst conveniently and simultaneously demonising Palestinian resistance. If we have learned anything through this horrific 2.5 years, it is the reminder that every life matters and civilians should not pay the price for the sins of the powerful.
Going further, we have also learned in the most disgusting way that the saying ‘lies, damn lies and statistics’ applies all the more in times of conflict. Especially when we consider Israeli and western tactics to manufacture consent for what has been one of the most brutal bombing campaigns the world has ever seen. On the backs of the lack of condemnation afforded by the UK government for crimes against Palestinians, our governments complicity in Israel’s crimes cannot be ignored.
It is for this reason that it is essential we as ordinary people work only from verified, factual information
As a result, significant donations from Israeli lobby groups to MPs and political parties appear to buy political allegiance and diplomatic cover for Israel. This is only evidenced by the International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants outstanding for senior leaders in Israel for genocide and war crimes. Warrants which the UK has repeatedly violated, welcoming war criminals to our shores. In fact, David Cameron even threatened ICC prosecutor Karim Khan to block warrants in the first place.
This development provides further evidence that our so-called democratic process faces repeated undermining by a colonialist and violent Zionist project.
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) March 2, 2026
NEW: The UK Government’s Foreign Office quietly gave £90,000 to fund an Israeli report that described sexual violence on October 7 as “systematic” and “premeditated” — a characterization not substantiated by UN or Amnesty investigations, and
central to Israel’s public case for… https://t.co/nYCflDaUXq
Cabinet office in the pocket of Israel
We have also reported heavily on the donations received by MPs and the Labour Party in the run up to the general election, including Starmer himself, writing:
Before becoming an MP, Keir Starmer was director of public prosecutions. In June 2011, there is a record of a “meet and greet” with the only foreign state attorney Starmer convened with whilst leading the Crown Prosecution Service: the Israeli state prosecutor, Moshe Lador. Lador gave Starmer a “book on places & history in Israel”, but in response to a subsequent Freedom of Information request, the CPS claimed not to have any records of:
“planning documents, briefing notes, communications relating to the meeting, and minutes from the meeting.”
Three months after meeting with Lador, Starmer blocked an arrest warrant for former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, who was visiting the UK. Starmer’s e-mails on the Livni case have been redacted, but the UK government changed the law to ensure that a repeat would not occur.
Starmer’s history of protecting Zionists has been well documented. That leaves one cabinet official we know who favours Israel and is complicit in genocide.
Nevertheless, he is not the only one.
This can only underscore how deep the Zionist rot goes, as Chris Williamson of Palestine Declassified posted on X:
Sir @Keir_Starmer's Labour Party is desperate. Here's @SteveReedMP, one Starmer's key lieutenants, resorting to bogus anti-Semitism smears against @TheGreenParty activists. The same smears that were used to destroy Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. But it won't work this time and it… https://t.co/V0C4tWGskc
— Chris Williamson (@DerbyChrisW) April 16, 2026
Of particular note is the murky, misaligned interests at play with Reed and those like him in the cabinet. Williamson specifically pointed out:
In addition to Steve’s obvious desperation, there are some other factors that put his bogus anti-Semitism allegations into context.
︎ Steve is a supporter of Israel.
Again, not the only MP and cabinet minister:
by @kennardmatt Labour’s shadow health secretary has a long history of supporting Israel going back to his days at the National Union of Students – and has been rewarded for it.https://t.co/y8sJNyA3CJ
— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) June 4, 2024
NEW — 'Our Friend': How the Israel lobby spent £30,000 on Wes Streeting
The FCDO isn’t the only department apparently working to protect and champion the murderous interests of Israel.
The UK’s department of education is also implicated, as Double Down News pointed out:
This is the shocking story of how the British Department for Education has been captured by Israeli forces.
It's time to ask ourselves, who do our politicians actually work for?@BobbyVylan pic.twitter.com/uAQT4vgWhm
— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) April 21, 2026
We are occupied
We’re all used to the mainstream media pushing fear-driven narratives about threats from Russia and China. Stories much of the electorate has come to accept. After all, fear of the “other” has always been a reliable tool for governments to rally support and manufacture unity against a supposed enemy.
But look a little closer at the decisions made by UK officials, and a different picture starts to emerge. It’s not Russia or China that appear most embedded in our political system. Instead, Israel, along with its lobbying networks and strategic interests, seems to run consistently through both our domestic politics and the mainstream media.
All the while, Israel and its occupation forces are murdering thousands upon thousands of people. Since 2023, Israel has waged wars of aggression on multiple territories with Trump’s full support. Furthermore, allegations have also been made that Israel has used false flag attacks to further its murderous ambitions.
Taken together, this raises a serious question: why isn’t this dangerous influence being examined more openly? If there are nefarious networks of power shaping decisions behind the scenes, they should be subject to scrutiny like anything else in a functioning democracy.
At the end of the day, most Britons would rather stand against genocide than directly arm and enable it.
MPs would do well to remember that.
Featured image via the Canary
This article is part of a series looking at the British media’s smear campaign against the Green Party in the May 2026 elections
On 15 April, we reported that Labour gasbag Steve Reed was accusing the Greens of antisemitism. This was despite the antisemitism smear perpetrated by the Labour right having lost any impact. It was also despite Reed having antisemitism accusations of his own.
Since then, Reed has doubled down on the slanderous accusations. The result has been more criticism of Reed and still no impact on the Greens:
Steve Reed would not be allowed to join the Green Party due to known past antisemitic views. https://t.co/3ogOSN7LTY
— Dr Iain Darcy
(@doctoriaindarcy) April 20, 2026
Smear merchant
To be clear, when we describe Reed’s actions as an ‘antisemitism smear‘, what we mean is that he’s concocting allegations for political purposes.
In the video above, an unsettlingly wide-eyed Reed talks about an alleged antisemite who was “exposed” by the Spectator – a right-wing shitrag.
According to Reed, this candidate posted a meme which featured a venomous snake wrapped around the world. Reed highlights that this snake had the Star of David on it. What he fails to mention is that the snake is actually wrapped in the Israeli flag – a flag which prominently displays the Star of David.
Reed fails to mention this, of course, because there’s obviously a big difference between criticising Israel and criticising Judaism.
A person can still take offence with criticism of Israel if they like, although fewer are choosing to do so. This is especially the case since Israel kickstarted the war on Iran, with disastrous consequences for the global economy.
Reed faces pushback
People laid into Reed for his latest intervention, anyway. Ex-BBC employee David McNab said:
Still banging the ‘any criticism if Israel is antisemitic’ bs I see. Just like WW1 generals, the Labour Party have run out of ideas and are going to die on that hill.
Journalist Richard Sanders said:
Steve Reed embodies a particularly distasteful feature of Starmer’s Labour Party – non-Jews who believe they have a God-given right to designate Jews they disagree with about Israel antisemites.
The Fraud details how he led a purge of left wing Jews shortly after Starmer became leader.
If white people roamed the Labour Party expelling black people as Uncle Toms we would be absolutely appalled. When and how did this become acceptable?
You can read that passage on Steve Reed in The Fraud here.
Lads the corrupt racist who backs a genocide and is linked to Labour pedophiles is trying the antisemitism smears agst a Jewish man
Not happy with sabotaging their own side. They want to try and do it to @ZackPolanski https://t.co/SQFpulg2B0 https://t.co/EtfnZpP9ju
— jan (@smerkinkones) April 21, 2026
Media smears
As people highlighted, the Spectator has been pulled up for concocted antisemitism accusations before:
The Spectator? Isn’t that the rag once edited by Alexander de Feffel Johnson whose novel is dripping with antisemitic tropes and which had to pay compensation to a man falsely accused of antisemitism in an article by its journalist who was cited in Anders Breivik’s manifesto? pic.twitter.com/eU1K4kmRGC
— Carl Freeman
(@carljfree) April 21, 2026
In fact, the entire British media has been pulled up for this shit.
The fact that these smears no longer work is a positive development, but they still need calling out wherever we see them.
Featured image via Steve Reed
By Willem Moore
Four senior Labour figures are being charged following a criminal investigation into vote-rigging allegations in Croydon East. The allegations against them centre on irregularities in the Labour candidate selection process for the constituency.
The Standard named the individuals involved as ex-Croydon councillor Carole Bonner, Unison organiser and prospective candidate Joel Bodmer, Shila Bodmer, and Gabriel Leroy.
All four face charges of conspiracy and computer misuse. Joel Bodhmer is also being charged with perverting the course of justice over suspicions that he tampered with phone records.
The Labour Party has immediately suspended all four individuals.
‘A whole new level’ of (alleged) dodginess in Croydon
Back in 2023, Labour Party members in Croydon East filed complaints about their contact details being altered. Somebody had apparently falsified their phone numbers and email addresses. This, in turn, meant that some of the potential parliamentary candidates couldn’t vote in the selection process.
Eventually, Labour had to temporarily call a halt to the selection process. Some of the injured parties levelled allegations of targeted vote rigging.
Joel Bodhmer withdrew from the race, leaving Natasha Irons to win both the selection process and the Labour safe seat.
At the time, the Morning Star quoted investigative journalist Michael Crick stating:
there are suggestions that this could be part of a much wider campaign that involves senior party figures, a systematic programme of data protection offences and interference in Labour’s supposedly democratic procedures.
Notably, Crick found evidence of current and former members being registered to vote online without their consent or knowledge. However, the charges announced today don’t appear to relate to these potential offences.
The Morning Star also alleged that:
Conspiracy and cyber-crime
In March 2024, the Metropolitan Police launched its official investigation into the Croydon East allegations.
On 21 April 2026, a spokesman for the Met stated that:
The Crown Prosecution Service has authorised charges against four people after an investigation by the Met’s Cyber Crime Unit into allegations that a Labour Party database was manipulated to increase a candidate’s chances of selection in Croydon.
The individuals have been charged with conspiracy to commit an offence contrary to Section 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977 and Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act relates to unauthorised acts “with intent to impair” the operation of computer.
Frank Ferguson, leader of the Crown Prosecution Service’s Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, announced:
Our prosecutors have worked to establish that there is sufficient evidence to bring this case to court and that it is in the public interest to pursue criminal proceedings.
We have worked closely with the Metropolitan Police Service as it has carried out its investigation.
We remind all concerned that criminal proceedings against these defendants are active and that they have the right to a fair trial.
It is vital that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.
‘We cannot comment further’
The four defendants from Croydon East Labour are scheduled to appear before Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday 19 May.
A spokesperson for the Labour Party said:
These are incredibly serious charges.
When complaints were first raised with the Labour Party we conducted a thorough internal investigation and we referred the matter to the police as soon as potential criminal wrongdoing was identified.
We cannot comment further while legal proceedings are ongoing.
This latest scandal will come as unwelcome news for Labour. Earlier this year, the PLP faced allegations of blocking Andy Burnham’s candidacy for Gorton and Denton because he posed a threat to Starmer and the party’s right wing.
Likewise, on 17 April, we learned that Peter Mandelson failed the vetting for his position as ambassador to the US. However, Starmer and/or other senior Labour figures reportedly pressed through Mandelson’s appointment in spite of his name appearing in the Epstein files.
Alongside these recent scandals, vote rigging allegations would appear par-for-the-course for Starmer’s Labour.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
Politics
Politics Home Article | Ed Miliband Says He Will “Double Down, Not Back Down” On Clean Energy
Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband speaking at the National Growth Debate at the Institute of Directors in London | Alamy
3 min read
Ed Miliband has said he will “double down, not back down” on the government’s clean energy mission in the face of critics calling on him to change course.
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero said the UK must go “faster” in its shift away from fossil fuels and that there was “not a moment to waste”.
The Labour government has faced calls to rethink its energy policy in response to the global energy crisis triggered by the war in Iran.
The conflict, initiated by US and Israeli strikes on Iran in February, has resulted in severe disruption to the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane responsible for significant volumes of world gas and oil. Tehran has threatened to attack ships trying to pass through, leading to a sharp fall in maritime traffic.
Miliband has been urged by the Conservatives and Reform UK to restart drilling for gas and oil in the North Sea as a way of protecting the country’s energy supplies from shortages.
Speaking at an event in London hosted by the Good Growth Foundation think tank on Tuesday, Miliband said that “the era of fossil fuel security is over.”
“We have not a moment to waste, and that’s why we’ll double down, not back down on our mission for clean energy,” the Labour cabinet minister said, adding: “Clean energy is now the only route to financial security, energy security, and indeed, national security.”
The government has announced a package of measures aimed at protecting Britain from the impact of fossil fuel shortages, including expanding the use of solar on public land, breaking the link between gas and energy policies, and taking further action to encourage households to switch to solar panels and electric vehicles (EVs).
Ministers are also working on a targeted scheme to protect some households from rising energy bills.
Ofgem’s current price cap, which sets the maximum amount suppliers can charge households for energy, expires in July, when average bills are expected to rise sharply due to the war in Iran.
Speaking this morning, Miliband accused those who want the government to dilute its clean energy policy of being “a coalition of naysayers and defeatists”.
“No matter what some people would have us believe, solar panels, heat pumps and EVs are not woke, or a left-wing conspiracy, or even a Marxist plot. They’re actually common sense.”
He added that it was a “myth” to say that gas and oil extraction from the North Sea would help cut domestic energy bills, stressing that prices are set on international markets.
However, he did not rule out approving further drilling at the Jackdaw and Rosebank sites off the coast of northwest Scotland.
Work to begin extracting oil and gas at these sites was delayed after judges ruled that licenses were granted unlawfully, and now Miliband is under pressure from business groups and some Labour MPs to greenlight the projects.
“I do not agree with those who say we should turn off the taps overnight, but nor do I agree with those who suggest that somehow drilling every last drop will take a penny off bills or give us energy security,” he said.
“I will not betray the future generations of this country by acting on the basis of myth, falsehood and misinformation.”
Keir Starmer’s pressure on the Foreign Office to ignore Israel-supporting paedophiles’ pals is not limited to Peter Mandelson. He did the same with ‘Labour’ peer Matthew Doyle, who has since been suspended for his support for convicted child sex offender Sean Morton.
Starmer knew about Doyle’s links to Morton when he appointed him. Which means he also knew when he pressured the Foreign Office to give Doyle a job. As the Independent’s political editor spotted:
Starmer put pressure on the FCDO to give Matthew Doyle a job and not tell the Foreign Secretary. Another person suspended because he was close to a paedophile.
That is stunning.— David Maddox (@DavidPBMaddox) April 21, 2026
Tip of the iceberg
But these incidents are just the tip of the iceberg of Labour Zionist paedophiles and sex offenders – and Starmer’s protection of them.
Starmeroid MP Dan Norris’s recent arrest for rape was his second on suspicion of sex offences. The first, in 2025, was for alleged rape and paedophilia and is still under investigation. As noted, Starmer is currently under pressure for appointing his mentor and chief adviser Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, who has since resigned over his notorious links with serial child rapist and Israeli agent Jeffrey Epstein.
But even just in 2026 the issue goes far further. In early January, Israel fanatic Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) organiser Liron Velleman admitted child sex offences. In February, Labour councillor Conor McGrath was charged and convicted for possessing child rape images. Like Velleman and other Labour-right paedophiles, McGrath escaped jail, receiving only a ‘slap on the wrist’. In April 2026, right-wing ‘friend of Israel’ former Labour councillor Adrian Hughes was convicted of grooming three children for sex. He has not yet been sentenced.
But we’re just getting started.
In January 2025, former Blair minister Ivor Caplin was arrested in a sting operation as he allegedly attempted to meet a 15-year-old boy for sex. Local police decided to go after local left-winger Greg Hadfield for exposing explicit content Caplin posted on his X feed – Hadfield defeated the ‘vexatious’ charge in November 2025. However, no charges have yet been brought against Caplin and he is not even on bail. A court did not re-impose bail conditions after his initial bail expired. Despite the ongoing police investigation, Caplin was recently invited to speak on LBC about Keir Starmer’s move to block Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham’s bid to stand in a parliamentary election.
There’s more
Hackney councillor Tom Dewey, an organiser in pro-Israel group ‘Labour First’, admitted possession of the most serious category of child rape images in 2023. The party knew of his arrest when it allowed him to stand for election. After his conviction, it blocked local women members from its systems to prevent them discussing the case.
And in March 2025 Sam Gould, who worked for Starmer’s health secretary Wes Streeting, quit as a Redbridge councillor after being convicted on two separate counts of indecent exposure to a 13-year-old girl.
Cover-ups and appointments
Keir Starmer’s personal involvement in covering up alleged sex offences has been extensively documented by Skwawkbox – and not just from his time as Director of Public prosecutions when the CPS declined to prosecute rapist celebrity Jimmy Savile and others.
Starmer:
- Welcomed the London MP Neil Coyle back under the Labour whip despite Coyle being found by Parliament to have sexually harassed a staffer, as well as racially abusing a Chinese-British man.
- Turned a blind eye to then-Chester MP Chris Matheson’s sexual harassment: neither Starmer nor the party machine suspended him pending the outcome of the investigation, as would be usual practice to protect the women around him.
- Protected at least two further alleged sex pests on his front bench.
And Starmer and his then-sidekick David Evans covered up Jewish whistleblower Elaina Cohen’s allegations of serial abuse of vulnerable Muslim women by a party staffer.
Cohen repeatedly warned Starmer and Evans that a staffer working for then-Perry Barr MP Khalid Mahmood — and allegedly Mahmood’s lover — was engaged in ‘sadistic’ and ‘criminal’ abuse of vulnerable Muslim women. The victims were fleeing domestic violence, allegedly inflicted through the now-defunct domestic violence ‘charity’ that she ran. Starmer and Evans did nothing. Mahmood remained on Starmer’s front bench and Cohen was sacked from her role as parliamentary aide.
One of the victims gave evidence at Cohen’s successful wrongful dismissal tribunal. She spoke of the horrific abuse she and others suffered. This included blackmail and sexual exploitation. Her evidence was not challenged by Mahmood or his lawyers. At the tribunal, Mahmood admitted under oath that he’d personally made sure that Starmer was aware of Cohen’s allegations.
Labour’s ‘paedophile friends of Israel’ problem is also so widespread as to be a defining characteristic of that faction. And Starmer’s cover-ups and blind-eye-turning regarding paedophiles and sex offenders is a defining characteristic for him. That he is still in a job shows how sick and dysfunctional the UK’s ‘democracy’ really is.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
Walking through central London as part of the Free Iran protest movement a couple of Sundays ago, I kept noticing the faces of bystanders. There was certainly very little in the way of support. But equally, open hostility wasn’t the predominant response either. Many of the expressions were marked by something harder to discern – a kind of consternation, an ill-disposed bemusement, as though what was in front of them couldn’t quite be metabolised, not without a certain level of discomfort anyway.
The marchers, among them actual survivors of imprisonment and torture, were carrying the traditional Iranian lion-and-sun alongside the flags of America and Israel. They have been calling for the same freedom that Britain has, for the longest time, claimed to represent in the world. And yet there on the faces of onlookers was not recognition, but something else entirely.
I have spent a great deal of time with the Iranian diaspora. I have photographed them during their Nowruz (Persian New Year) celebrations in Golders Green, at the permanent encampment outside the Iranian Embassy in Knightsbridge, and at their Sunday protests on Whitehall, where they gather outside Downing Street, calling on the government to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). They are, in my experience, some of the most serious and clear-eyed people living in the UK at the moment. They have seen political Islam from the inside, not as a theoretical proposition but as a lived system of repression and coercion. A system that has disappeared friends, imprisoned family members and attempted to overwrite a truly great civilisation. The country of Hafez and Rumi has in their exile become a byword for extremist and authoritarian terror and a nation that is now ranked 145th out of 148 for the treatment of women. Some of these protesters literally have the scars.
Unusually for people coming from the part of the world they do, and increasingly Britain, these protesting Iranians appear to be largely free of anti-Semitism too. Not carefully managed about it or judiciously restrained. It just doesn’t seem to be there. When they speak of Jews and Israel, there is none of the loaded hesitation, the over-careful neutrality or the strained balancing act one detects in even the most educated and well-meaning of British liberals. These Iranians see Jews really as cousins. And not without good reason. The relationship between Persians and Jews is probably the oldest and most honourable in the Bible. Cyrus the Great, who put an end to the Babylonian captivity and sponsored the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, is the only non-Jew ever to receive the title, Mashiach (Messiah).
This Persian-Jewish bond was forged long before Christianity or Islam existed and continued into the modern era. During the time of the last Shah, Iran was among the first nations to recognise the state of Israel, and the Israeli airline, El Al, flew between Tel Aviv and Tehran almost daily. Something of that long-standing familial recognition has quietly re-emerged in the Iranian protest movement that has grown up in cities all across the West in recent months. Among Iranians and Jews there, one finds an ease and immediacy of understanding that requires no translation. They know what the other has experienced and there is no need to establish first principles.
The Islamic Republic, which took power after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, completed this inoculation. It made anti-Semitism central to state doctrine. Friday sermons, school curriculum, even how Iran addressed itself to the world. How could any of us forget Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s illustrious world symposium of Holocaust denial in 2006? For Iranians who have managed to escape the regime, anti-Semitism was never one detachable prejudice among others. It characterised the whole fraudulent package – the lies, the coercion, the false sense of moral grandeur. When they rejected the Islamic regime, naturally they rejected anti-Semitism, too.
The mullahs produced something else which has become genuinely rare in contemporary Britain – people with an acute instinct for the early signs of coercive ideology in a society, an awareness of the gap between a society’s stated values and what it is actually becoming. These are men and women who understand what freedom costs because they have already paid for it with theirs. And they know how quickly a country can be lost.
That is why, when the conversation turns from Tehran to London, as so often it does, what they say carries a weight that is absent from so much of the commentary that now passes for serious discourse in the UK. Their insights are drawn from bitter experience. They recognise a familiar pattern – and they care. The Iranians feel they are watching, for a second time in their lifetimes, a society that is moving, with surprising speed, from the liberal moral consensus of 20 years ago, towards something much more confused – and considerably more dangerous. What has become known as the red-green alliance, a convergence of left-coded moral language with Islamist political energy, ended, in their own country’s history, in the destruction of a free society.
The Iranians have watched on as a political class has been increasingly willing to indulge sectarian religious grievance, while slowly abandoning the civilisational inheritance that made tolerance so valued in the first place. They watch as Keir Starmer grows furious during Prime Minister’s Questions at those expressing concerns about the recent Trafalgar Square ‘Open Iftar‘, claiming people with views very similar to their own are trying to create divisions in British society. They see the PM warmly embracing Hasam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador, at a separate Ramadan event in Westminster Hall – the same man who, on a favoured centrist political podcast, free-wheeled a semi-fictional account of Middle East history and has repeatedly refused to condemn 7 October; a man who has called terrorists, victims. The Iranians watch as blasphemy laws creep back into British life via the ever-more strained definitions of ‘Islamophobia’ or ‘anti-Muslim hate’ as it is now being called. And they hear the jargon of diversity deployed as a veto on very well-founded fears. They recognise this atmosphere and they know where it goes…
Outside Downing Street, alongside the demand to proscribe the IRGC, the Iranians have a second refrain. ‘Shame on you BBC’ – or, as they also call it, ‘Ayatollah BBC’. BBC Persian is their obvious target. Its former head, Sadeq Saba, noted that many Iranians feel the service has lost credibility in its attempt at ‘balanced’ coverage over the years, as it increasingly leans in towards more of the Islamic Republic’s perspective, while ignoring the very clear antipathy so many ordinary Iranians feel towards it. For them, BBC Persian does not represent balance but something more like an acquiescence. For others it is craven timidity. Much of this is likely a product of the fact the service’s ranks have historically been drawn from the ‘reformist’ current within Iran – people shaped within the Islamic Republic’s own media ecosystem. Many of them arrived in the UK with well-rehearsed habits of managed distance from the regime’s worst realities.
This was brought home in BBC Persian’s coverage of Ayatollah Khamenei’s death at the end of February. As Iranians poured into the streets to celebrate, everywhere from Tehran to Finchley (now home to a diaspora community of many thousands), BBC Persian struck quite a different tone. Announcing his death, Farnaz Ghazizadeh, a lead presenter, appeared to seriously lose her composure on air. And something similar had happened after President Raisi’s death in 2024.
This, it should be said, is not evidence of some sort of conspiracy or duplicitous coordination on the part of BBC Persian with the regime. But it does reveal something about the proclivities of the Persian service – and why, for people who have actually lived under these men, that much-vaunted BBC impartiality has been seriously compromised.
It is not just BBC Persian either – BBC News suffers similar problems. The widespread and popular protests against the Islamic regime from the end of December into the New Year were under-reported or often ignored. And the subsequent lethal regime crackdown, resulting in the massacre of protesters took too long to meaningfully register. When it finally did, the broadcaster’s estimates of likely casualties were overcautious – putting the death toll in the thousands, rather than the likely figure of tens of thousands. In terms of BBC News’s analyses too, it painted protesters’ grievances as stubbornly economic, even as the little footage that was escaping Iran suggested almost immediately, far broader, more terminal frustrations.
As it has for many in the Jewish community, the corporation’s position on Israel has felt more like activism than journalism. Right up until her departure as BBC head of news last year, Deborah Turness had repeatedly proclaimed the BBC’s solidarity with ‘journalists’ in Gaza – a position that would have been unthinkable in any previous era of BBC editorial culture. Its coverage of the war in Gaza has been consistent with that posture: obsessive in its focus, imbalanced in treatment, and in common with much of the British establishment, marked by a chronic unwillingness to name plainly the theocratic, annihilationist ideology, at the heart of Gazan political and social life. The same Islamist ideology, in its essential character, that the Islamic Republic has spent decades imposing on Iran.
The genuine menace of Islamist ideology is all around us today. Two Jews were murdered outside a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur last year. Not long after, two Muslim men were convicted of plotting what police believe would have been the deadliest terror attack in British history – an ISIS-inspired plan to massacre hundreds of Jews, again on the streets of Manchester. In 2024, Israeli musician Itay Kashti had been lured to a remote cottage in Wales, handcuffed to a radiator and brutally beaten. In February, a Gail’s bakery in North London was trashed for tangential links to Israel; the Guardian ran a piece that fell just short of justifying why. And then the burning of those four Hatzola ambulances.
And now, it’s not just Jewish people under attack. Iranian opposition supporters have begun to see their cars and homes targeted for arson and over the past week, we can add to that list an attack on an Iranian TV station, two more London synagogues (one in Kenton and one in Finchley), a Jewish charity’s offices and the Israeli Embassy, which was apparently targeted twice last week.
The official response to all this is depressingly familiar. Statements are made. Security outside synagogues is apparently tightened. ‘Antisemitism has no place in Britain’, the Prime Minister seems to imagine… Meanwhile the attacks keep coming and the online sewer continues to flow – a vile stream of hatred across social media that no government has seriously confronted and no platform meaningfully checks. And the ideas themselves, of course, remain entirely and lethally untouched – the ideology behind all this managed scrupulously out of sight.
Only a moment’s reflection takes us back to the protests and unrest after the awful Southport killings in the summer of 2024. Starmer could not have been more outraged or urgent in his response – concerning, as it happens, communities of mainly working-class white Brits. The law was deployed with unusual speed and severity, court hearings were fast-tracked, anyone and everyone even remotely connected to these events seemed to be prosecuted and in many cases imprisoned, often for longer than the same conduct in a different, less political atmosphere.
And meanwhile, here in 2026, when Jews are placed in increasing physical danger, with two already murdered just for being Jews, better security feels about as serious as it’s going to get. Where is that same personal contempt from Starmer for these people? Where is his zero-tolerance response to the escalating anti-Semitic violence which is happening now? And while the political classes sneer at Trump’s supposed messianic delusions and condemn Israel’s action against Hezbollah, actually committed religious fundamentalists in our own society are increasingly doing their worst on an almost daily basis – and seem somehow forever to dodge the political agenda.
The Iranian cause could have hardly been more legible. Freedom from theocratic tyranny, freedom for women and minorities, and that special freedom – not to be gunned down by your own government in the thousands. A generation or so ago, their plight would have been so obvious to us.
And if we did not know the response they’d actually received was in large part the result of Europe’s oldest pathology, we might be tempted to read their lack of popular appeal as the inevitable fate of darker-skinned people telling an uncomfortable story in contemporary Britain. They are, after all, from a Muslim-majority country and refusing the script assigned to them. They should, by the logic of the culture around them, be the recipients of progressive solidarity – not its critics. But they are supposed to be talking about Islamophobia and not Islamism. And they should be on the Gaza march, not outside Downing Street demanding the proscription of the IRGC. Their inconvenience is layered: they carry the wrong flag, the wrong narrative and are in the wrong skin.
What has changed is not the Iranians. It is us. The solidarity that should have been extended to them was always conditional on accepting certain articles of faith that Western progressivism now implicitly requires. When the Iranian diaspora naturally and proudly aligned with Israel, they found themselves irreconcilably at odds with this worldview, one cultivated by activists and institutions over many years – and one in which the word genocide now travels freely, stripped of its meaning and singularly indicting one people, and one state, alone.
By the time of the Islamic Republic’s massacres in January, the flag of that state was no longer seeable, its name, Israel, no longer sayable. The blue and white Star of David had become the purest kind of trigger – loaded with a presumed and totalising injustice and the weight of everything the culture had learned, or remembered, to deplore. By hoisting Israel’s colours the Iranians found themselves utterly immiscible with the reigning narrative and so, in a very real way, genuinely invisible, too.
There is a profound difference between not knowing and refusing to know. The Iranian diaspora arrived in this country with a cause that should have felt unmistakably just and historically grounded. But they chose truth over indulging one of the West’s oldest and most persistent prejudices, and truth also over the lie of diversity at any cost. That is their distinction. It is also, for now, the cause of their continued invisibility.
The question this poses is not really about Iran. It is about what kind of society cannot recognise, in the people standing directly in front of it, the values it still claims to hold.
Max Sadie is a photographer who has been documenting the Iranian diaspora and its protest movement in London.
Shahzad Akbar, an aide in Imran Khan’s government, has told Declassified UK that he has been the target of a sustained campaign of “transnational repression” since fleeing to Britain following the US-backed 2022 regime change in Pakistan.
The former Pakistani cabinet minister, barrister, and close ally of the currently incarcerated Imran Khan, told Declassified’s Mark Curtis that he was brutally assaulted on his doorstep last Christmas Eve. This followed his protests against Khan’s imprisonment outside the Pakistani High Commission in the week leading up to the attack.
Please watch this @declassifieduk interview with @ShazadAkbar who was horrendously attacked at his home in England — for his criticism of Pakistan. https://t.co/BEMFSYIEkk
— Mark Curtis (@markcurtis30) April 16, 2026
Akbar told Curtis:
Imran Khan’s illegal incarceration is not because of any cases or corruption charges. It is because of the personal vendetta of the current army chief, Asim Munir, who Imran Khan fired as the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] chief when he was prime minister.
Despite being a political exile living in the UK, Akbar says he has been attacked and intimidated, raising urgent questions about Britain’s duty to protect dissidents.
Akbar said that the UK takes threats seriously when they come from Russia or Iran, “but they must do everything to protect people from Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, because we have rights too”.
Pakistan recently mediated talks between the US and Iran because of its ties to both. However, Khan’s incarceration has cast a shadow over it.
Imran Khan’s incarceration brings up uncomfortable questions for Pakistan’s role as a colonial lapdog for the US and Israelhttps://t.co/cVR8QAdPQa
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) April 13, 2026
The Washington Post said that despite Pakistan not recognising Israel, its ties with the US “through deals in crypto, minerals and counterterrorism”, have helped Pakistan’s role as a mediator.
Pakistan, a nuclear-armed power that doesn’t recognize Israel, is hosting talks to end the Iran war despite not always getting along with President Trump.
The country improved ties with the U.S. through deals in crypto, minerals and counterterrorism. https://t.co/KQPjiNH2nN
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 21, 2026
But as the US and Britain embrace Pakistan as a strategic partner, they are complicit in the very repression Akbar fled from.
Featured image via Associated Press of Pakistan
By The Canary
As reported by Stats for Lefties, support for the two main parties – Labour and the Tories – has tanked:
Since last time these seats were up, support for the two big parties has fallen by over **37pts** — Stats for Lefties
Ahead of local elections, how have polls shifted since the last time these seats were contested (in 2022)?
Ref +24.2
Grn +10.7
Lib +1.7
Con -15.5
Lab -21.6
pic.twitter.com/bYcWyHBSoO
(@LeftieStats) April 20, 2026
At this point, we should probably stop calling them the ‘two main parties’.
While they hold the most seats right now, that almost certainly won’t be the case come the next general election.
Fading fortunes of Labour and the Tories
Unfortunately, it looks like Reform UK are set to capitalise on the downfall of Labour and the Tories. In addition to the above, Reform have once again opened up a significant lead with the pollster YouGov:
— Seats — Poll: @YouGov, 19-20 Apr 2026 (+/- vs 13 Apr) pic.twitter.com/3Q8lGtwMA9 — Stats for Lefties
POLL | Reform lead by 10pts
Ref: 27% (+3) Grn: 17% (-1) Con: 17% (-2) Lab: 16% (-1) Lib: 14% (+1)
Ref: 337 Lib: 89 Grn: 82
SNP: 47 Con: 40 Lab: 23
Plaid: 10
(@LeftieStats) April 21, 2026
If an election happened today, the above result would see Reform UK securing a majority government. We dread to think what that would look like (although it probably wouldn’t be any different to a Reform-Tory coalition).
Reform’s polling bounce has come despite the constant controversies of the past few weeks, including:
- Reform activist said ‘Hitler was right’.
- Reform candidate wants to ‘tear down’ the NHS.
- Reform welcomes ‘shoot the p*kis’ scandal ex-Tory.
- Reform UK accused of ‘nil vetting’ as another racist candidate exposed.
- Farage heckled at Reform’s Jimmy Saville-aping London launch.
The ‘glass half full’ analysis is that voters see Reform as the logical protest vote.
With Labour PM Keir Starmer embroiled in many controversies of his own, the UK public have much to protest:
You don’t need a vetting process to tell you that you shouldn’t appoint the best friend of a convicted paedophile who continued the friendship after the conviction. Starmer knew, he should go. https://t.co/ISHehVDvnY
— Mark Roberts (@Roberts_Mark_) April 21, 2026
The other note of optimism is that Reform have struggled to turn their national polling into local success. Most notably this happened in the Caerphilly by-election, and also in Gorton & Denton:
Sore loser Farage can't accept that Reform's man in Gorton & Denton was a dud, so he's resorted to accusing the Green Party of cheating.https://t.co/N0t4YG65X2
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) February 27, 2026
The problem for Reform is that the party is incredibly polarising. Their supporters love them, but their detractors will go out of their way to ensure they don’t get in.
This has kept Reform out in by-elections; we’ll see if the same proves true in the locals.
Problems regardless
Should Reform perform as expected, this still may not benefit them in the long run. The party runs several councils now, and the consequence of that is people have got to see how Reform govern.
Horror stories we’ve covered include:
- Reform councillor reposts that Labour MP ‘should be shot’.
- Reform councillor dramatically quits over council tax betrayal.
- What a surprise – Reform councillor attends just one meeting and sends two emails in six months.
- Reform councillor fined £40,000 for hiring ‘illegal’ workers.
- Reform councillor would like to see wage cuts to fund his pay rise.
Reform may have considerably more councillors after the local elections. This will mean they have considerably more scandals, and that the public gets a much better idea of the threat they represent.
Let’s hope that reality doesn’t manifest, and that Reform underperform this May.
If you want to see that happen, be sure to get out there and vote.
Featured image via Stats for Lefties
By Willem Moore
PARC Against DARC has been campaigning since 2024 against the US military’s proposed DARC radar array in Pembrokeshire. Now it’s spoken out on Eluned Morgan’s surprise announcement which called for the UK government to ‘pause’ the DARC project while Donald Trump remains US president.
The campaigners say that while they welcome any opposition to DARC from the first minister, her calls lack any real substance when viewed under scrutiny as she is only calling for a pause and has not come out in outright opposition to the project. They add that there’s nothing to stop her doing another U-turn if she wins re-election.
Reports suggest there were over 500 opposing emails in response to the MOD’s recent public consultation on DARC and many to Morgan and MP Henry Tufnell. Campaigners believe this may have contributed to what they describe as Morgan’s ‘election jitters’ over the issue, adding:
It’s clearly in the minds of voters for the upcoming Senedd elections and may well also be a key issue being reported back to Morgan from the doorsteps too.
The campaign has also been quick to criticise Tufnell’s rebuke of Morgan’s remarks where he cited ‘Pembrokeshire DARC jobs’ as a key pro-DARC factor, saying:
It’s absolutely unbelievable how out of touch Henry Tufnell is on the whole DARC debate. You can tell that ‘somehow’, he hasn’t even got the memo from the MOD that they stopped trying to use jobs to try and sell their disastrous radar as soon as their Environmental Impact Assessment forced them to officially admit that the number of jobs for locals would be a meagre 20 at a maximum!
And that’s with the rest of the tiny operational staff being made up entirely of US personnel. Given that the EIA also shows that a necessary condition of DARC being built is that the entire existing staff would have to evacuate the Brawdy base, what we’re actually talking about with this proposal is a net loss of about 300 to 500 Pembrokeshire jobs, and that’s before we even get to the knock-on job losses from the huge damage to tourism.
Henry Tufnell has done what all of the very few DARC advocates left in the county always do: they just lie and lie and lie. Both he and Eluned Morgan recently trotted out this MOD lie that the statutory consultation just passed was publicised to all residents in the area, yet if they had paid attention to even a single email we know they were sent by local residents, they’d realise that not a single one of the leaflets the MOD distributed to the community ever even mentioned the consultation, and that the whole thing was a huge scandal.
For them to miss something so glaringly big just confirms that they continue to be utterly clueless as to how contemptuous the MOD’s handling of the local community actually has been. Either they don’t know, they don’t care, or they just can’t possibly believe how bad and out of control this project actually has been.
Party lines on DARC
Prior to Morgan’s unexpected announcement, campaigners had been critical of what they described as:
an abject silence and lack of any meaningful comment from local Labour officials on DARC.
This announcement, they say, is a clear sign that there are deep ruptures within the Labour Party over DARC. They believe Morgan may have seen the ‘writing on the wall’ for Starmer with predictions of an electoral bloodbath for Labour on 7 May.
So, effectively, Morgan has nothing left to lose with the prospect of her losing her seat and Starmer losing the leadership after the elections. The PARC campaign says, however, that it does wish to acknowledge what it describes as “Morgan’s bravery in standing up to Trump,” who has a reputation for bullying people, and especially for attacking women, who criticise him.
Both Plaid Cymru and the Wales Green Party have publicly opposed DARC from the beginning. And with polls showing Plaid as the largest party in Wales after 7 May, a likely Plaid / Green coalition could well be able to stop DARC in its tracks by a means of ‘calling in’ the planning application to the Senedd once in power.
A Plaid Cymru spokesperson said:
This is nothing but a last-ditch attempt by Eluned Morgan to cling on to her seat. Since becoming first minister, she has chosen to stay quiet on defence and international affairs, only now speaking up after polls show her losing her seat.
Plaid Cymru has consistently called on the UK government to focus on rebuilding European ties in response to Trump’s increasingly dangerous positions.
We have consistently opposed DARC alongside local communities, passing a motion at our annual conference in October 2024 and tabling a parliamentary motion in Westminster in March 2025.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski referred to Morgan’s comments as “Absolutely right”. He also said:
Standing up the USA must mean more than words. Let’s get serious about national security by working closely with our EU neighbours & rapidly decoupling from a rogue US president.
With public divisions now seeping out from inside the Labour Party itself and DARC becoming an ever more hotly debated election issue, the campaign believes that now is the time to put DARC to bed once and for all. Campaigners say that they have repeatedly ‘blown up’ every single justification the MOD has tried to make for it.
Campaigners point out:
The fact that in the recent war on Iran, the IRGC destroyed all of the $billions worth of US military radars in Gulf countries within hours of hostilities beginning proves that radar sites like DARC would make Pembrokeshire a ‘first priority military target’ in any conflict, which is completely unacceptable and should not be supported by our ‘parachuted in’ Labour MP.
They add:
Comments from Downing Street and Henry Tufnell yesterday which sought to minimise local impacts are simply laughable too and are an insult to the intelligence of Pembrokeshire and its people.
The MOD’s Environmental Impact Assessment does nothing but outright and openly confirm that DARC would have significantly adverse effects on literally every environmental level assessed, particularly in its visual impact on the National Park skyline.
The MOD’s had to admit that the visual impact is adverse in 100% of the 33 assessed viewpoints, and substantially adverse in at least 21% of them.
Having to admit all of this, all the MOD can then try to do is make out that DARC, which we’ve now extensively proven to be for targeting enemy assets in space and is considered a huge escalation by China and Russia who are now having to basically enter an arms race because of Trump’s increasingly unstable global aggression, is some kind of civilian system for space management.
Yet anyone who knows a single thing about that subject would see that claiming to have solved one of the most legally and diplomatically difficult endeavours of building an actual international space traffic management regime with just one radar site in West Wales is just simply yet another one of the most easily discredited and brazen lies the MOD have told so far.
As the issue gains national attention following Morgan’s remarks, campaigners conclude:
DARC must be stopped, it’s as simple as that, and to achieve that we urge people to vote for the anti-DARC parties on 7 May.
Featured image via PARC Against DARC
By The Canary
On 19 April, scandal-ridden Reform MP Richard Tice posted on social media about his visit to Erdington, and how he feels a change in the political waters. The only problem? His ‘supporters’ appear to have been generated by AI.
Richard Tice and his slop
The far-right MP for Boston and Skegness claimed that:
My team and I knocked on thousands of doors in all weathers, speaking to anyone who would listen, putting everything we had into that campaign. In the end, we received just 293 votes, and it was a tough result to take.
My heart bleeds, it truly does. However, all that had apparently changed for Tice’s latest visit:
Yesterday, I returned to Erdington and everything had changed. The support, the recognition and the mood was something I had never quite seen before.
However, there’s something not quite about those supporters:
Back in February 2022, @drdavidbull and I spent weeks in Erdington leading a newly rebranded Reform UK. My team and I knocked on thousands of doors in all weathers, speaking to anyone who would listen, putting everything we had into that campaign. In the end, we received just 293… pic.twitter.com/aWBAv6hxAE
— Richard Tice MP
(@TiceRichard) April 19, 2026
‘Get Shysmnds Out’
As the context note helpfully points out, the image appears to be an AI fake. All the classic hallmarks are there – the seven-fingered hands, the smeared faces, the text on the signs appearing to read “Get Shysmnds Out”. Some of the more egregious errors are circled here in red:
The Guardian consulted a digital intelligence expert regarding the image. They stated that AI was almost certainly involved:
The faces (especially the mouths) of the figures all have a ‘smear’ to them. The woman in the denim jacket has extra long fingers on her left hand and what appear to be six fingers on her right. The man in the white jacket (fourth from the left) doesn’t appear to be gripping his sign at all.
However, the plot thickens. As reported in Lincolnshire World, Tice is denying that the image was generated by AI:
Reform says the image is a real picture of activities, and was ‘touched up’ to make it brighter and easier to view.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service has been sent what appears to be the original image, which doesn’t have the apparent AI mistakes.
The weather has altered from overcast to sunny blue skies, although the people in the picture don’t change.
The original, apparently, from Richard Tice
Unfortunately, the image Reform sent to the Local Democracy Reporting Service appears to have been taken on an early-2000s camera phone. Of course, this makes it understandable that Tice would want to spruce it up a bit. Handily, it also makes it difficult to debunk as the original.
However, we would note that the alleged-original still features a sign appearing to levitate in front of one individual’s hands:
But who knows, maybe an enterprising Reform supporter made some little handles for their sign?
This being the case, it’s hard to reach a definitive conclusion on the image. It could be AI-generated, and the dim version is yet another manipulation, or it could be that Richard Tice was simply lazy and failed to notice the mis-spelling of ‘Starmer’.
‘Even their campaigners are fake’
What we do know, however, is that Reform have form for using AI-generated slop to do their lying for them.
For example, Reform’s Darren Grimes – the deputy leader of Durham County Council – used an AI image of a group of South Asian men boarding a bus for a blog post trying to drum up opposition to refugees in the area. He argued that:
The image was obviously for illustrative purposes.
Likewise, Reform’s unsuccessful Gorton and Denton candidate, Matt Goodwin, landed himself in hot water by using AI to ‘write’ a book. The volume was filled with dodgy stats, fake quotes, and AI hallucinations. However, Goodwin tried to claim that the errors were down to his own incompetence.
On the subject of Tice’s post, Green leader Zack Polanski said:
There’s nothing real about the Reform party. Their supposed policies for working people are fake, they spin stories that are fake and now we know even their campaigners are fake.
Alongside AI-generated propaganda and AI-generated facts, Richard Tice’s allegedly AI-generated supporters would fit right in.
Featured image via screengrab
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