Politics
Olympic Medals Are Breaking?!
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When the U.S.-Israel war with Iran began a month ago, the tragic potential reverberations of past conflicts echoed quickly for Virginia state Del. Dan Helmer, who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and is now running for Congress as a Democrat.
“In 2002, a president lied to the American people and sent my friends to die in a war of choice,” he told POLITICO in an interview, noting that next month marks the 22nd anniversary of his first friend’s death in combat. “And once again, President [Donald] Trump has circumvented the democratic process to launch a war of choice without strategic insight in Iran. … The consequences of reckless military intervention are pretty clear. And the challenges in enacting regime change to get a predictable outcome have defined my experience in the military.”
Michael Bouchard sees things differently. The Michigan Republican House candidate and Bronze Star recipient served in the Army and National Guard, including a counter-ISIS deployment in Iraq for most of 2025 — which encompassed the last Israel-Iran war. Bouchard thinks the current conflict is a necessary, limited mission against a regional menace that has endangered and targeted U.S. service members for decades.
“I’ve seen peace through strength save my friends’ lives, and that’s what this is,” he said. “No one wants to go to war less than somebody who’s been to it. But we can’t just put our heads in the sand and hope things don’t happen.”
Dozens of military veterans running for Congress across the country, both Democrats and Republicans, have now adapted their campaign messaging to befit a nation at war. In a rapidly changing landscape — with ceasefire talks, military escalation and global energy crisis all on the table on any given day — candidates from each party have starkly opposed perspectives on the conflict. But for many of them, the costs and the imperatives of war feel deeply personal.
New York Assemblymember Robert Smullen, who spent 24 years in the Marine Corps and is campaigning in an Upstate GOP House primary, has done multiple Strait of Hormuz transits and studied the enrichment process as a White House fellow at the Energy Department. Montana Democrat Matt Rains, who flew Black Hawks in South Korea and Iraq, is also a rancher watching crucial diesel costs rise. Zach Dembo, a former Navy JAG officer running as a Democrat in Kentucky, has been on two of the aircraft carriers now deployed to the Middle East.
All of that intimate knowledge leads them to some pretty different conclusions.
What they agree on: More than half a dozen Democratic and Republican veteran candidates who spoke with POLITICO said they oppose the autocratic Iranian government and wouldn’t be sorry to see it go.
Beyond that — and respect for the troops — there’s little consensus across the partisan divide.
Democrats are fuming that Trump didn’t make the case for war and get buy-in from the American public, Congress and foreign allies. They argue that the U.S. approach has lacked clear plans and strategic goals. And they deeply fear that what they see as Trump’s recklessness will lead to another forever war, needlessly sacrificing soldiers’ lives without achieving any big-picture goals.
“I don’t see an endgame here, and it makes me really worried,” Dembo said.
“This idea that you can just briefly drop bombs on a nation … and they’ll just like raise the white flag and beg for us to come put a new government in there, I mean, is asinine,” Rains said.
Many Democrats also see the war as a costly distraction from Americans’ economic struggles. “The amount of money we are spending on this war and on this conflict right now, when we have so many issues here at home that are not being addressed … that’s where the real disconnect is,” said Jessica Killin, an Army veteran running in Colorado.
GOP veterans say they oppose endless wars, too. But that’s not how they see this one. Hewing closely to Trump’s messaging, Republicans told POLITICO that Iran has been the real belligerent for 47 years. They agree with their Democratic counterparts that the U.S. needs to have a clear plan and not let the conflict drag out for too long — but they have much greater trust in Trump to achieve those goals, principally stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
“I understand veterans’ issues. I understand the cost of what they’ve given, their families have given,” said Oregon Republican Monique DeSpain, an Air Force veteran and JAG who’s worked with veterans for 30 years. “That’s why I feel strongly [about] swift removal of any threats to our country … Congress needs to understand national security: The cost of delay and inaction is irreversible.”
It remains to be seen how voters during wartime will receive these and other veterans running for Congress, many of them in crowded primaries or swing districts. Those who spoke with POLITICO said they think they’re uniquely positioned to speak with authority: Democrats pitching their national security expertise to lay bare the war’s flaws, and Republicans reassuring skittish voters about why the U.S. strikes can succeed and bolster American security.
“I’ve been in their shoes, and I actually know what they’re doing and what they’re facing, because I dealt with the same thing after September 11th,” Smullen said of the troops currently being deployed. “It’s a mission that needs to be done. It’s about time that we did it.”
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It’s obvious why London has the highest level of child poverty in the UK. Newly published data has revealed that it is one of the most economically unequal places in the country.
London poverty
Poverty levels are high in the capital, with a reported 38% of children living in relative poverty compared to 27% in the rest of the UK.
Across the North West and the Midlands, 32% of children live in poverty. In the North East the figure is closer to 30%, while in the South East it is the lowest at 21%.
Following immense pressure, only now is Labour doing something about this. Still, they appear to be reversing a Conservative policy—that’s the two child benefit cap which exacerbated child poverty levels.
Low-income families starting from 6 April will be entitled to equal universal credit payments for each of their children living in the household.
After suspending seven Labour MPs who voted against the cap, prime minister Keir Starmer is making another U-turn—in part spurred by the rise of the Greens. It seems that, for Labour, punishing children for being born is more of an electoral issue than an ethical one. The policy change makes further sense, given that the childbearing rate is just 1.4 rather than the 2.1 needed to replace the population.
In two London boroughs—Tower Hamlets and Hackney—more than half of the children live in poverty.
London inequality
The capital also has the highest level of economic inequality in the country. Money equates to resources and expertise, which are finite in some instances. It’s worth noting that the current system also upholds artificial scarcity in the instances where the service or product is not finite. These elites restrict access to resources and expertise in a similar manner to JSTOR’s academic gatekeeping.
In London, the richest 10% receive 11 times more income than the less well-off 90%. And that’s before considering higher wealth inequality.
Speaking to South West Londoner, Kelly Hobbs, 50, a single mother in Sutton said:
I’ve had to look into my finances and do huge cutbacks just to be able to afford to live.
When it comes to finite resources and expertise, people can only be rich if others are not well off. That’s why it’s obvious that London, while harbouring more of the less well off, is also the most economically unequal place. It doesn’t mean everything needs to be completely economically equal, just that working for a living if possible should guarantee you a moderately high standard of living.
With the possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI), the UK can increasingly remove the need for labour, through automated services where enjoyable work, creativity, and leisure time take its place. Until then, we need to address the rising levels of economic inequality in the country.
Featured image via Trust for London
A football fan has died inside Mexico City’s Estadio Banorte — a World Cup venue — after falling from a VIP seating area shortly before the start of the friendly match between Mexico and Portugal.
The tragic incident happened on Saturday evening at the extensively renovated Estadio Banorte, also known as the Azteca Stadium, on the same day as the deadline to declare its readiness for the World Cup.
The tragedy has casts a shadow over the stadium’s reopening and raises questions about safety as the countdown begins to highly anticipated global sports event.
Authorities in Mexico said the man was intoxicated and attempted to jump from the second tier of the stands to the first tier by climbing the stadium’s external structure, before losing his balance and falling to the ground, Reuters reported. Sadly, he died at the scene.
In a statement on X, the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office, said:
According to initial reports, the incident took place in the suite area of the venue, from where the person fell to the parking area, resulting in their death.
The Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office will continue the investigations thoroughly and will keep the public informed as relevant developments are obtained.
The incident comes as the stadium prepares to host the World Cup opening ceremony on 11 June when it will make history as the first stadium to host matches in three different editions of the World Cup.
Featured image via Estadio Banorte
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.
Donald Trump boasted that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is “kissing my ass” over America’s apparent economic rebound, a boast that seemingly doubled as both a threat and a plea for affection. Meanwhile, Narendra Modi thanked the same Crown Prince for supporting Indian workers in Saudi Arabia, a remarkable claim given the ILO complaints over migrant labour conditions.
Trump claimed MBS was impressed by America’s “hot” economy under his leadership at a speech on Friday at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute in Miami.
“One year ago, you were a dead country,” Trump quoted the Crown Prince as saying. “Now you’re the hottest country anywhere in the world.”
Trump boasted:
He [MBS] didn’t think this was going to happen. He didn’t think he’d be kissing my ass.
He followed up by saying:
Now he has to be nice to me. You tell him he’d better be nice to me.
Trump chats shit
Trump also contrasted Saudi Arabia with NATO when talking about his illegal war on Iran. He said:
I want to thank the entire Kingdom of Saudi Arabia… Unlike NATO, Saudi Arabia fought, Qatar fought, UAE fought.
During this rant against NATO, he said MBS was a warrior.
Trump’s remarks highlighted his view that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries proved more reliable than traditional Western allies during his illegal war, a theme he returned to multiple times throughout the speech.
It’s true that NATO countries didn’t provide their full support for the US and Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran. The illegality of the action meant NATO countries had no obligation to support the US, and yet many supported Trump anyway by allowing him to use their bases (the UK included).
Trump also boasted about Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally and pleaded with them to join the Abraham Accords.
When I hosted the crown prince at the White House last fall, we officially designated the kingdom as a major non-NATO ally. First time. And for the very first time, we agreed to sell Saudi Arabia perhaps the most capable fighter jet ever built, the F-35.
Modi and MBS
Trump’s other ally, Modi, was also singing MBS’s praises—if being called an arsekisser can be considered praise. On Saturday, Modi tweeted:
Spoke with Crown Prince and PM of Saudi Arabia, HRH Prince Mohammed bin Salman and discussed the ongoing conflict in West Asia.
I reiterated India’s condemnation of attacks on regional energy infrastructure.
We agreed on the need to ensure freedom of navigation and keeping…
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 28, 2026
Modi concluded by offering thanks for Saudi Arabia’s purported commitment to the welfare of Indian nationals in the Kingdom.
It is a seemingly weird claim, given that migrant labour has borne the brunt of Iran’s retaliatory strikes, and Saudi Arabia is currently facing ILO complaints over dire working conditions for racialised migrant labour.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
Pope Leo XIV has waded into the fuck up that is America’s war on Iran by condemning Donald Trump and other leaders for their “atrocious” warmongering, stating God “rejects” the prayers of those with blood-soaked hands. Ouch.
The leader of the Catholic church made the comments during a Palm Sunday mass in St Peter’s Square, in Rome. He described the war between the US, Iran and the rogue-state Israel as “atrocious”, and insists Jesus cannot be used to justify violence.
Dude even tweeted about it:
This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” (Is 1:15).
— Pope Leo XIV (@Pontifex) March 29, 2026
Pope says God doen’t listen to warmongers
The comments follow a fucking terrifying prayer from the US defence secretary. Peter Hegseth recently called for “overwhelming violence” against those who “deserve no mercy”.
Worryingly, Hegseth is a member of a church affiliated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. This is the same church that believes women shouldn’t hold positions of leadership within it, and that women should submit entirely to their husbands. Erm, yeah, they’re bad.
Addressing thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo said God “does not listen” to leaders who start wars and have “hands full of blood,” warning Jesus cannot be used to justify conflict.
As the Iran war enters its second month, he renewed calls for a ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/KtsGGClGrM
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 29, 2026
The pope reminded worshipers that Jesus rejected the sword. He stated that Jesus “revealed the gentle face of God” rather than arming himself. I never thought I’d be bigging up a Christian leader but here we are.
Escalation in the Middle East
This spiritual intervention comes as the Pentagon prepares for ground operations. Thousands of US troops are currently in the Middle East to face Iranian forces. Weird, choosing to die for Israel.
Iranian leaders have already threatened to set US troops on fire if they advance and let’s be honest, we should believe them. They have embarrassed the US/Israel way too much already in this war. The pope has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and a total ban on aerial bombing.
The pope is showing that faith should be a tool for peace and not for colonial empires. He sadly expressed that the “destruction” in the region is preventing people from celebrating Easter.
Christians in the Holy land
Israeli Occupation Forces Assault Palestinian Christians In Jerusalem, Outside The Church Of The Holy Sepulchre. Right at the beginning of Christian Easter. pic.twitter.com/GMnKHdGgkJ
— Irlandarra (@martinez_j7902) March 29, 2026
Whilst Trump’s administration uses religion as a weapon to fuel conflict, the pope makes one thing very clear: God is not on the side of warmongers.
When 20% of adults in America are Catholic, making it one of the largest religious groups, Trump is playing a very foolish game. This is going to piss off a lot of American voters and Trump is losing support all over.
Featured image via the Canary
Over the weekend, the Canary has followed an ongoing feud between former Daily Mail showbusiness editor Nicole Lampert and Green leader Zack Polanski.
It’s over Lampert’s recent Mail article claiming to have interviewed Polanski’s family members, which ran with the headline:
Zack Polanski is facing rebellion from his OWN family as they fear being forced to leave UK if Green Party leader becomes Prime Minister
Normally, Polanski seems quite happy to face the slings and arrows of the right-wing media with a smile. However, the Mail’s claims of poking around his family have been three steps too far.
Polanski: ‘all refused to talk to you’
On 29 March, the Green leader tweeted:
Spoke to my family today – all refused to talk to you.
You then started hunting down random “anon” relatives.
People are holding your shit rag accountable.
You’ve not just “touched a nerve.”
You’ve absolutely spurred on a movement ready to take on the Daily Mail. Congrats. https://t.co/95Oq3SUxAf
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) March 29, 2026
The Mail claimed to have spoken to three members of Polanski’s “extended family”. Of course, these family members are anonymous. However, they have Nicole Lampert’s journalistic seal of approval.
That counts for a lot – we know Lampert goes so far to guarantee her stories that she’s embroiled in an ongoing phone-hacking court case. Allegedly, not even the law or basic human decency can stop her in pursuit of the truth.
100% extended, 100% family, 100% definitely real
That established, one bona fide extended relative said:
He’s currently the leader of the future Islamic party of Britain, that’s what the Green Party is fast becoming. And there would be no place for Jews in an Islamic state of Britain.’
On the words “Islamic state”, the Mail helpfully linked to its page on ISIS. So, you know, they definitely don’t have an agenda there.
A separate anonymous relative, guaranteed by the Mail’s exacting editorial standards, said that:
If the Zionism-is-racism motion is passed it will make the Greens the most anti-Semitic party in British history since Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. The idea of it is one of the most sickening things I’ve heard in a long time.
It’s somewhat remarkable that the definitely real family member is happy to denounce Polanski in the Daily Mail here, given that the rag actually supported the British Union of Fascists.
A third family member said:
The mad thing is that he’s gay, he’s Jewish but he’s cosying up to people whose ideology is the complete antithesis of everything that he’s supposed to stand for. It’s like he’s a chicken, telling us to vote for KFC.
Quite apart from the antisemitic notion that all Jewish people must support Israel, this is textbook pinkwashing. Unless, that is, Israel is suddenly taking care not to genocide all of the gay Palestinians along with the straight ones.
Stop the Hate UK
In the tweet Polanski quoted, Lampert was herself quoting the nebulous organisation ‘Stop the Hate UK’ (StHUK):
You’d think the leader of a political party would have better things to do than continuing to send hatred in my direction.
My story, in which his family expressed fears about the dangerously Jew-hating place the Greens are going to, appears to have touched a nerve.
Because he… https://t.co/7umEbltNr1— Nicole Lampert (@nicolelampert) March 29, 2026
Note that StHUK manages to remember that Lampert is Jewish, but conveniently forgets that Polanski is also Jewish. Understandable, given that he’s the only Jewish leader of a major political party in the UK.
As the Canary’s Hannah Sharland previously wrote, StHUK first emerged in early 2024. Its twitter profile shows that the group registered an account in April 2024, when it immediately began posting graphics with counter-protest callouts against Palestine marches.
The group’s co-founder, Itai Galmudy, appears to have been coordinating counter-demos, though under a different name – Enough Is Enough – since at least March 2024.
Likewise, it appears that it’s Galmudy who’s been front and centre of Zionist instigators colluding with the Met to get pro-Palestine activists arrested. He’s reportedly a former IDF soldier, who served during the 2014 attacks on Gaza.
So we’re sure he’s posting about Polanski from a place of good faith.
Bring it on
However, in spite of the condemnation of his definitely non-fictional family members, Polanski remains buoyant:
And what’s delightful is every time you and other right wing hacks try this crap – our membership and poll ratings rise.
Because people hate the lies and toxicity.
They want a party taking on the billionaires and those who serve them.
Your game is up.https://t.co/0qbagSvIYp
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) March 29, 2026
And, just to hammer the point home:
🚨 The Greens are FOUR points off Reform UK.
The real opposition to Reform is the Green Party. 💚 pic.twitter.com/Q6TAceRbs5
— Green Elects (@GrnElects) March 29, 2026
The UK public are increasingly bored of this song and dance. It’s clear that the right-wing establishment are rattled at the Green’s success – and they’re throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks.
As always, if the Daily Mail hate you, it’s a sure sign you’re doing something right.
Featured image via the Canary
You may have seen that BBC just helped out disgraced Labour Together MP Josh Simons with a softball 40 minute interview. The Beeb’s arch anti-Left journalist Laura Kuenssberg even conducted it. You can read our first report on the interview here.
Simons was forced to resign from his cabinet job on 28 February. He’d instructed a PR firm to investigate multiple journalists, it had been revealed. Ex-Canary journo and Declassified UK reporter John McAvoy was one of those affected. Paul Holden – author of The Fraud, a forensic, gritty, play-by-play takedown of the right-wing project to lie a Starmer government into existence – was another.
Holden has now responded to the BBC interview at length:
PAUL HOLDEN STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO INTERVIEW WITH JOSH SIMONS ON BBC NEWSCAST
Yesterday, BBC Newscast published a lengthy, forty-minute interview with former Cabinet Minister Josh Simons MP. The interview addressed how Simons, as a director of @LabourTogether, had appointed a…
— The Fraud (@StarmertheFraud) March 29, 2026
BBC flunks on journalistic basics
Holden, unlike the hacks at the BBC it seems, is an old-fashioned muckraking reporter in the South African tradition. As he told the Canary recently, that’s a model built on journalists not being pals with politicians. Imagine?! Naturally, Holden was not happy that the vaunted corporation hadn’t even got the basics right:
Yesterday, BBC Newscast published a lengthy, forty-minute interview with former Cabinet Minister Josh Simons MP. The interview addressed how Simons, as a director of Labour Together, had appointed a firm called APCO Worldwide to investigate me and my colleagues.
He went on:
I was not told by the BBC ahead of the broadcast that the episode was being recorded or aired. I was not approached to respond to the lengthy comments made about me or the small anti-corruption organisation Shadow World Investigations, that I run with my colleague Andrew [Feinstein], who is also repeatedly mentioned, was also not approached for comment.
This failure of the BBC to adhere to basic journalistic standards is truly shocking even by the BBC’s recent performance. I would expect the Director General to respond to explain how this has happened or, failing that, a Board member to intervene. https://t.co/zRpBbPhUtz
— John McDonnell (@johnmcdonnellMP) March 29, 2026
Holden only found out that the BBC interview was going ahead from a friend:
I only found out last night, when a friend texted me, that the person who hired a major multinational reputation management firm that produced a despicable and defamatory report on me and my colleagues, and who reported me on the basis of these false and defamatory reports to the UK’s security services, was being given forty minutes to give his version of events on a major podcast published by our national broadcaster.
Holden reiterated that the BBC hadn’t so much as whispered in his direction about what is clearly a major story in which he is a key figure:
To be clear, the BBC has NEVER – not once – approached me to comment on a story that is, ultimately, about me, my investigations, my family and my colleagues. They did not approach me when the story first broke, and they did not approach me for this episode.
False ‘hack’ allegations
The BBC seem to have given free and unchallenged rein to Simons. He then painted an allegedly false picture – unchallenged.
Here’s Holden’s take:
If the BBC had done so, I would have raised several issues with the way in which matters related to me were discussed. For example, Simons repeatedly stated in the interview that he instructed APCO to investigate whether my reporting or sourcing derived from a ‘hack’ of the Electoral Commission.
He added:
The word ‘hack’ is used eight times in the interview. At no time was it acknowledged in this discussion that this allegation – that I might have received hacked materials – is entirely false, and I have repeatedly proven it to be false.
Laura,
You and the BBC have serious questions to answer about this interview.
A statement from Paul Holden @StarmertheFraud:
‘the BBC has NEVER – not once – approached me to comment on a story that is, ultimately, about me, my investigations, my family and my colleagues.’… pic.twitter.com/xx21GSbXLM
— Media Lens (@medialens) March 30, 2026
Holden contacted the BBC about the major issues with the interview. The BBC said additional reporting would be added.
However:
This has not yet happened with regards to the podcast, although I note some online reporting finally reflects a very small and limited sampling of my comments. I will wait to see if amendments and updates will follow. If they do not, I will be escalating this matter to OFCOM.
Point-by-point debunking
Holden used his initial statement to advance many criticisms of the interview and to defend his work.
- his reporting on Labour Together and Morgan McSweeney was entirely factually accurate and based on impeccable, legal sourcing
- Revelations based on his book, The Fraud, had subsequently been covered widely across the mainstream media in outlets such as The Times, Daily Mail, The Guardian, The National and ITV.
- Josh Simons states that he never intended for APCO Worldwide to investigate Holden or his colleagues. However, a copy of the contract between APCO Worldwide and Labour Together, addressed to Simons, has now been published. The contract sets out a scope of work written in plain English.
- This contract is clear. APCO were hired to investigate Holden to produce materials that would ‘proactively undermine’ my factually accurate, public interest reporting.
- Josh Simons was provided with a report called Operation Cannon. It is the result of a lengthy investigation into Holden by APCO Worldwide. Holden has seen a copy of this report and claims it mades a series of extremely defamatory allegations against him.
- Multiple media freedom advocacy organisations, including the NUJ, have strongly criticised the APCO investigation and these related matters.
Saturday’s BBC Newscast iv with Josh Simons was ridiculously cosy.
Simons was caught red-handed attempting to smear journalists and political opponents. His defence – I was only trying to smear the left wing ones!
The BBC then invited him on and allowed him to make a whole… https://t.co/W3d9Rq6eBw
— Richard Sanders (@PulaRJS) March 29, 2026
Holden added that he is “still reviewing the Newscast interview”:
I will be responding in due course and I hope that the BBC will, this time, give me the platform to set out what really happened and why.
If you’re a disgusted by the BBC’s mate’s rates style of softball journalism, you can start reading part one our twelve-part serialisation of Paul Holden’s investigative masterpiece The Fraud here. The Canary will be covering this story as it develops further – have no doubt. And we have our own deep-dive interview with Paul Holden in the works as we speak…
Featured image via the Canary
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