A leading academic on social security has slammed a new anti-benefit fraud advert released by communities minister Gordon Lyons. A brief glimpse of the fear-mongering crap can be seen here. The ad features a searchlight seeking out dishonest claimants, with a dramatic voiceover declaring:

Benefit fraudsters are being identified, caught, and prosecuted.

Ciara Fitzpatrick, who is a senior lecturer in law at Ulster University (UU), specialises in the study of social security. Speaking on X, she denounced:

…a tax-payer funded ad campaign against benefit fraud despite stats released today suggesting that allegations have increased by 40% since the publication of the names of those convicted.

She asked the reasonable question of:

…why spend thousands on an ad campaign [?] In my view, it’s an appalling use of funds.

Her first point is in reference to a move in 2025 by the Democratic Unionist Party’s (DUP) Lyons to restart the practice of naming those convicted of benefit fraud. This coincided with Lyons ramping up rhetoric. He urged people to tout on their neighbours if they suspect wrongdoing.

Fraud panic is an attempt to distract from inequality

Of course, these moves have a clear dual ideological purpose. Firstly, publicising names of those convicted, then starting a song and dance about it, inflates the size of benefit fraud in the public imagination.

In reality it constitutes a mere 2.5% of total benefit spending. There are far fewer cases resulting in prosecution. This is a more solid indicator of actual guilt. Furthermore, this directs people away from looking at much more serious cases of defrauding the public purse. For example, tax evasion is a major issue.

Not to mention diverting people from taking a critical look at capitalism itself. Our entire economic system is one big theft scheme. It is based around bosses stealing a hefty chunk of the value workers produce every day.

Secondly, asking the average taxpayer to grass up their next door neighbour is a convenient way of undermining class solidarity. See the person beside you as a potential enemy, we’re told, rather than the actual enemies faced by the vast majority. These enemies include employers who overwork and underpay us. They also include landlords who steal half our pay check, and politicians that do the bidding of both the above.

People Before Profit’s (PBP) Gerry Carroll made a similar point, saying in response to Lyons:

This is a tried and tested DUP tactic; to whip up fear and suspicion in local communities and turn neighbour against neighbour, in order to distract from the party’s own political failures on tackling poverty, the housing crisis and widening inequality.

Lyons made a speech in Stormont coinciding with the ad’s release, and boasting about the results of his change in tack:

In an early and visible sign of my intent, last year I reintroduced the departmental practice of naming those who were found guilty in the courts. Since doing so, my department has seen anonymous fraud referrals from members of the public rise to 9,857 at the end of [Jan 2026] compared with the total year end figure of 6,353 for 2024/25. It is clear that as a result of my leadership on these issues, benefit fraud is now clearly on the public agenda.

To the annoyance, I’m sure, of some in this chamber, I will keep highlighting the issue and keep it as a priority for the department.

Lyons has been demanding an increase in the department’s £16.7 million budget for tackling fraud and error in the benefits system. He claimed discussions had been ongoing with Westminster. The aim was that a portion of money recovered would be kept by Stormont. This indicates that Starmer’s stingy regime is encouraging the DUP approach.

Money for increased clampdown, but not to relieve poverty

Mark Durkan of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) asked what was actually being done to help people, rather than seeking further forms of punishment. He said:

While some people do abuse the system, this system itself abuses people. Tens of thousands of genuine claimants struggle with a complex, slow and punitive system where genuine mistakes can lead to sanctions, and now sack cloth and ashes too.

How much of that £16.7 million has been spent chasing fraudsters and how much has been spent to reduce the stress and suffering caused by a system that creates errors and hardship?

A reminder that, as an example of current benefits available, Jobseeker’s Allowance in the Six Counties is a pitiful £72.90 per week for those under 25, and £92.05 for those 25 or over. Despite how we are dishonestly told migrants flock to Britain for its generous benefits system, it in fact lags far behind the rest of Europe. UU’s Fitzpatrick also flagged how those on benefits are facing the prospect of discretionary support being gutted. This is leaving the most desperate fully exposed.

Online, commenters contrasted the DUP’s keenness to clamp down on benefits cheats with their lax approach to the massive fraud that took place under the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme. That debacle saw half a billion lost, often into the pockets of big agricultural players. The DUP ignored whistleblowers drawing attention to the money being stolen.

Nobody wants benefit fraud, but we are seeing unprecedented levels of society’s wealth hoarded by the top 0.1%. Rather than a focus on reclaiming relative pennies in an already ungenerous benefits system, the emphasis should be on taking back the billions hoarded by those at the very top.

Featured image via the Canary

Nigel Farage is going after work-from-home, in a hypocritical attempt to make it look like he’s ever worked a day in his life.

🚨 WATCH: Nigel Farage calls for an end to working from home and the focus on work-life balance

“People aren’t more productive working from home – it’s a load of nonsense. They’re more productive being with other fellow human beings” pic.twitter.com/UpjNoh7ZHX

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) February 9, 2026

Of course, Nigey isn’t telling us that he previously employed his wife to work from home.

Nigel isn’t telling you that his ex-wife worked from home when she worked for him.

He also won’t tell you that the majority of Reform UK roles are hybrid. https://t.co/JwNz63f690

— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) February 10, 2026

To make matters more infuriating, Reform UK also happens to employ people who work from home.

As the Independent previously reported, Reform UK advertised for its South Central regional director as:

home working with occasional travel within the region.

Hilariously, it advertised this role online only days after Nigel Farage promised that no Reform-run council would allow anyone to work from home.

Excellent discovery by @ThisOneAgain123 to spot that despite wanting to scrap your Work From Home, Farage’s Reform are hiring their own staff with work from home arrangements. pic.twitter.com/aXRZ2PGzPI

— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) February 10, 2026

Farage said that people with jobs related to climate change, diversity, or anyone working from home:

all better really be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly.

Farage is leading a party of millionaires

Of course, Reform UK are not out to bat for ordinary working people. Whilst they might claim they are, what we need to remember is that the only people who benefit from office-based work are those who own the offices, i.e. rich people.

Populist announces a deeply unpopular idea.

The only people who benefit from a return to office based work, are those who own the offices.
Reform are a party for the millionaires, not the working people.

— LeftSideOfHistory (@leftsidehist) February 9, 2026

When offices sit empty, the rich lose money. And oh, what a terrible shame that is.

The amount of white-haired folks in that audience; positively giddy at the prospect of dictating how *I* should work and earn – to pay all my taxes – to fund their ironclad pension hikes and fortnightly dawdle down to the GP.
Least self-aware generation there’ll ever be. https://t.co/hcr7MrCnQY

— James (@JamesFl) February 9, 2026

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Additionally, it’s the right-wing shit rag newspapers that are peddling the anti-work-from-home bullshit. Again, fewer people on foot near offices means they lose their precious millions.

The only other people who don’t like work-from-home are those who can’t.

The only against WFH are those who cant.
I use less petrol, means I can use my lunch break to get the kids, saving me money, I dont have the shite daily conversations meaning I get more work done. I am infact more productive in every aspect of my life due to being able to WFH https://t.co/oUu8pGxaXg

— CMF (@Ohffs1984) February 10, 2026

And why have Reformers managed to pack a Monday afternoon rally to the brim? Shouldn’t they all be, erm, in an office?

Nothing says ‘people should be in the office’ like a packed Reform rally on a Monday afternoon. https://t.co/iCM5TDrybS

— Has Ahmed (@HasAhmed_) February 9, 2026

Accessibility matters

A Reform government would push even more disabled and chronically ill people into work.

Importantly, working from home allows some disabled people to hold down a job. Farage’s attempts to end work-from-home whilst also claiming to want more disabled people to have jobs are contradictory and bullshit. If he actually cared about disabled people, he would be encouraging work-from-home, or work from wherever the hell you want to, as long as the work gets done.

Farage is a hypocrite. And basically, you can’t work from home unless it serves him and his pumped-up little agenda.

Feature image via Mint/YouTube

Okay, I am sick of writing about this ‘Amelia’ AI schoolgirl now. But yet again, it appears a far-right group has adopted this fake child as some kind of mascot.

Although this time, it’s a group of women. Odd.

We’re fed up of the safety of women and girls being sacrificed for the comfort of migrant men.

WE ARE ALL AMELIA! The movement has just begun. pic.twitter.com/p7QtuPtLVy

— Women’s Safety Initiative (@WomenSafety_UK) February 7, 2026

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Why are you cosplaying as a literal schoolgirl?

You see, the issue I have with the far right using Amelia as some kind of mascot is where this avatar came from.

Amelia is a purple haired goth girl, and she wasn’t born in some racist WhatsApp group. She was created by the government to be a part of a video game called Pathways which taught kids about extremism.

Oh, and she’s a fucking college-aged child. 16 to 18 years old. Yet the amount of knuckle-draggers on the internet sexualising her is absolutely disgusting:

Amelia’s emergence over the last week was explosive, injecting a sexually charged, romantic energy into British nationalism. AI image generation enables ownerless memetic characters to be collaboratively generated faster than ever before. Amelia was the first to step through this… pic.twitter.com/NAbBxERJOw

— John Carter (@martianwyrdlord) January 17, 2026

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#Amelia #ai pic.twitter.com/yJeFEizMXU

— ASHURA (@Ashura_GG) February 2, 2026

She’s meant to be a fucking child. Yet here we see the Women’s Safety Initiative cosplaying as her and drinking a pint.

Come on girls, do better. When you put yourself under a banner of protect all women, surely you shouldn’t be masquerading as a fucking child whilst doing so?

Let’s look a little deeper at who is in that video

On closer inspection, you can see the founder and director of Women’s Safety Initiative, Jess Gill, right there in the video. And she loved it:

“Anon, why didn’t I see you at the mass deportation protest?” https://t.co/j9QjnYEwUA pic.twitter.com/W2wV53Y2k3

— Jess (@jessgill03) February 7, 2026

Bit weird.

Jess, who claims to be British but hates everything about British food, has become a polarising figure at demonstrations. I mean, surely if you’re going to attend a demo to ‘protect our women’ with the racist Pink Ladies, you wouldn’t be happy to share a space with ex-Reform MP and known wife beater James McMurdoch?

Well done to the Pink Ladies in Chelmsford today.

This brave lot are standing up for the safety of women and girls. The shame of course is that they shouldn’t be having to do this at all.

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“I’m not far right. I’m worried about my kids” pic.twitter.com/8ZlhHk1eTk

— James McMurdock MP (@JMcMurdockMP) November 22, 2025

Now you’re cosplaying as an underage teen girl and quaffing pints?

Using women’s rights for political clout

As a woman, I am absolutely sick to fucking death of the far right using women’s safety as a weapon.

I don’t get it guys. When 97% of rape claims have not even been brought to charge, why are these women playing dress up as a kid? And a goth kid at that? I thought you hated bright coloured hair?

Can we stop dressing up as heavily sexualised kids as some kind of icon and actually focus on the absolute state of policing? Rape is borderline legal in the UK now when you look at conviction rates, and it pisses me off that these far right women don’t actually give a fuck. The only time they care about women is when they’re whipping up hatred against migrants.

Using attacks against women to hide your racism is fucking disgusting.

Featured image via X

You’d think that Blairites would be wary of ex-military personnel. After all, Tony Blair unites most War on Terror veterans on one thing only: a deep contempt for Tony Blair. But this isn’t the whole picture when it comes to Labour.

In recent days, ex-special forces soldier-turned-defence minister Alistair Carns has been touted a possible replacement for Keir Starmer. Starmer is currently hanging on to power by a thread after revelations about Peter Mandelson’s friendship with serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein.

Someone has even reportedly registered a webpage for Carns’ leadership bid, according to the centrist New Statesman. The paper describes Carns as a “dark horse”, adding that:

Supporters believe that his background as a colonel in the Royal Marines will help Labour win back support it has lost under Starmer.

And this is the key point. It is Carns’ background as a colonel in the Royal Marines that makes him a good shout. Not his commitment to democracy, or ethics in public life, or his values. He may have all of these, but Carns is appealing to some on the basis of his military credentials. That reveals something important which well-meaning socialists may miss about the nature of the Labour Party…

Labour party’s military fetish

Carns’ main draw is the nonsensical view that a former military man could sort out Britain’s political mess.

If I even need to say it again, there is nothing about military service which guarantees someone will be a good MP. At least no more than someone being a good nurse, or binman, or, God forbid, journalist.

I mean…have we already forgotten about Johnny Mercer? And let’s not forget the track record of the British military in Iraq — an abject failure and a stain on Blair and new Labour.

But weird soldier fetishism isn’t new and often rears its head. I first noticed it with Labour security minister Dan Jarvis, a former Parachute Regiment officer who served in Afghanistan.

Jarvis’ military credentials were routinely flaunted as if they qualified him to lead the country — even during the Corbyn days. And almost always by people, including journalists, who’d never worn a uniform.

Now there are all kinds of explanations for this. I enjoy the lowbrow ones. For example, Blairites are basically fantasist dweebs who read too many Andy McNab books. Or perhaps the authoritarian nature of the military appeals to their own Stalinist leanings. Or it could be a residual sense of our own imperial history that makes some  yearn for the power and status which accompanied those times.

These might all be true in part. But I also think that soldier-worshipping holds up a mirror to the Labour Party. It reminds me of a passage in Richard Seymour’s book ‘Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics‘ (2016).

Seymour asked, at a time when Labour’s future was being fought over, if the Labour Party is Marxist (we can laugh now)? Or is it, as Tony Blair said at the time, built on some sort of dusty English Methodism.

Seymour’s answer is that it was neither:

What seems to have more enduring significance for the distinctive shape and trajectory of the Labour Party is its origins in Victorian Liberalism.

This offers a far better explanation of why the party is so in love with militarism and war. It’s because the party is still operating on Windows 1870.

Seymour goes on:

In fact, whatever else changed about the Labour Party in this era, one of its abiding attributes was to be the priority it accorded to the interests of the ‘nation’, and the deference it accorded to extant constitutional arrangements and military commitments.

He adds that:

Those Labour MPs who, today, find simply unthinkable the break-up of the United Kingdom, the repudiation of Trident, and the end of the ‘special relationship’ with the United States, are in fact authentic legatees of their party’s traditions.

The truth is, Starmer and his allies, are right in their assessment that the Labour Party — a militarist party of capital and empire — is theirs by right. And with this in mind, why wouldn’t centrists get excited about Carns as a candidate?

While it might seem a little out of date, that book is worth picking up ten years on. Because it leaves you in no doubt that the Labour Party was never ours to begin with. And, in all honesty, given it is wedded to empire to the degree that it is, why the hell would you even want it anyway?

Featured image via the Canary

Once again, Reform have publicly shit the bed, and this time it’s over Bangor University. Well, more specifically, the Bangor Debating and Political society, but that didn’t stop Reform’s head of policy Zia Yusuf threatening the whole fucking uni:

Bangor University have banned Reform and called us “racist, transphobic and homophobic”.

Bangor receives £30 million in state funding a year, much of which comes from Reform-voting taxpayers.

I am sure they won’t mind losing every penny of that state funding under a Reform… pic.twitter.com/piUPlBzEcY

— Zia Yusuf (@ZiaYusufUK) February 9, 2026

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Very normal behaviour there, Yusuf.

Well done Bangor, you’ve pissed off Reform

Personally, I would like to say well done to the debate society. But members of Reform massively shit the bed over it, including wannabe councillor Nick Pritchard:

The only issue I have with Pritchard kicking off is why in the name of hell does anyone care about the opinion of a man who “fabricated allegations” about a local resident trying to procure someone to shoot him?

Pritchard, mate, you’re in no position to debate anyone.

And of course Richard Tice spat his dummy out about it:

Simple

In line with our values, if Bangor Uni does not believe in free speech, then British taxpayers should not have to fund them.

Perhaps remove all government funding and no student loans for Bangor students

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The phone will ring very soon https://t.co/3ZmtmbXea8

— Richard Tice MP 🇬🇧 (@TiceRichard) February 10, 2026

This is the same Tice who recently claimed we should ban children with sensory issues from wearing ear defenders in school.

Not a man who should be commenting on anything educational, it seems.

’30p Lee’ Anderson, meanwhile, made it clear that Reform are making threats:

This gives me a great idea on how to save the taxpayer £30 million.

We’re coming for you. https://t.co/QRu61qJCG0

— Lee Anderson MP (@LeeAndersonMP_) February 10, 2026

I mean, all the evidence is there

Credit where credit is due, Labour MP for Bangor Claire Hughes called out Reform for being pathetic.

Reform offer nothing but division.

Fancy accusing Bangor University of “banning” Reform and issuing threats. All because a debating society turned them down…?

Pathetic. We will fight them all the way. https://t.co/XLXKl0yTQI

— Claire Hughes (@clairehughesBA) February 9, 2026

Threatening to remove funding to a university purely because one of their societies called you racist is absolutely wild. Especially when Reform absolutely seem to be racist: e.g. when Reform MP Sarah Pochin complained there were too many Black and Asian people in adverts.

I think this is a case of ‘there’s no smoke without fire’. And the embedded racism in Reform is an inferno.

All of this screaming about free speech, but Reform have to learn that freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequence.

Featured image via Bangor University PigeonCowSheepGoatBaaa (Wikimedia)

Urgh, I already hated Kid Rock, because he’s always seemed like a greasy nonce. Now, a newly resurfaced clip seems to confirm it:

BREAKING: Disturbing video of Kid Rock has resurfaced, as he wonders why American men were waiting for the then-14 year old Olsen twins to turn 18. “if there’s grass on the field, play ball!”

That’s who MAGA supports. https://t.co/qrEJw40Spr

— Really American 🇺🇸 (@ReallyAmerican1) February 10, 2026

And shit like this makes me so fucking angry.

Has anyone even listened to Kid Rock’s lyrics?

How the hell did people not pick up on this? In 2001, for the kids film Osmosis Jones, Rock sang the following on track ‘Cool Daddy, Cool’:

Young ladies, young ladies. I like ’em underage see? Some say that’s statutory but I say it’s mandatory.

Excuse me, but what the fuck?

It’s not just actual confirmation that Rock is attracted to children, but also how the fuck were these lyrics allowed in a kids film?

How many checks did this pass? How many executives listened to these exact lyrics and thought ‘oh yeah, they’re perfect for a kids film‘.

Rock was 30 years old at the time.

Reminder that Kid Rock did a song for a children’s cartoon where he said he liked underage girls https://t.co/dUjiEJGbXo pic.twitter.com/7nY8X0Fd5k

— evan loves worf (@esjesjesj) February 12, 2025

Stop platforming these predators

Kid Rock has been in the news because he performed at Turning Point USA’s Superbowl half-time alternative. As we reported, Rock’s performance did not go down well:

all that build up for a man that couldn’t lip sync to his own song :/ https://t.co/dm3i7ESawi

— matt (@mattxiv) February 9, 2026

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Viewership numbers:

Bad Bunny – 127 million
Turning Point – 5 million

Let’s all take a moment to point and laugh at their puny safe space LOLOL 😂🫵🏾

— Isaiah Martin (@isaiahrmartin) February 9, 2026

It’s incredibly evident by the viewing numbers that people weren’t impressed with the predator-packed halftime show. Who wants to watch a saggy old nonce pretending to sing?

But cancelling people such as Rock isn’t enough. We need to be actively rejecting these losers in a bigger way.

There’s no room for predators in music or in politics, and it’s time to get them out.

Featured image via needpix

On social media, Green party leader Zack Polanski used a single word to tear apart Keir Starmer’s ‘I’m not resigning because I’m noble‘ shtick.

Polanski: “Mandates…”

Mandates…. https://t.co/GaJxZPf8xL pic.twitter.com/rNZeUQBubE— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) February 10, 2026

Indeed, Starmer was elected Labour leader on a mandate to carry out policies that party members support. But as soon as Starmer became Labour leader he gradually ditched every single one of those pledges — as Polanski highlighted.

Starmer tore up his mandate

On the pledge sheet sent to Labour members, Starmer promised raising income tax on the top 5% of earners. But in September 2023, the MP for Holborn and St Pancras walked that back, stating there would be no increase. It was a lie and Polanski is right to point this out.

He also pledged “support[ing] the abolition of tuition fees”. Instead, Labour has raised tuition fees by £285 — another lie. This should reduce Starmer’s mandate to tatters and he should be recalled for another election.

It’s increasingly clear that words mean very little to Starmer. He also promised that he would “put the Green New Deal at the heart of everything we do”.

And yet again, in February 2024, the Labour leader dropped a £28bn per year commitment to green energy. And in government, he’s propping up fossil fuel firms with £22bn for carbon capture projects that don’t even work.

Another pledge from Starmer was “no more illegal wars” and to:

“put human rights at the heart of foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and justice.

But the Labour government has provided diplomatic cover, arms, and logistic support for Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. So that’s another lie.

Starmer also claimed that “public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders. Support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water.”

But in similar form, he dropped plans to re-nationalise energy, mail and water. On rail, Labour is only nationalising the services, not the actual trains themselves. We will still rent those from rolling stock companies.

Another betrayed pledge was to “defend free movement as we leave the EU”. But in November 2022, he reversed his position. He branded free movement a “red-line” that “won’t come back under my government”.

Under another, Starmer expressed his commitment to working:

shoulder to shoulder with trade unions to stand up for working people.

But then he demanded that his shadow cabinet do not join picket lines.

Resign

With these broken pledges in mind, the lies are stacking up, and Starmer should have resigned long ago.

In the UK, manifestos and commitments are treated as a joke — a means used by politicians to slide into power. Given the current state of UK politics, the public has grown attuned to these lies, but we must hold the elite to account and demand better — for all!

Featured image via the Canary 

US president Donald Trump is determined to starve Cuba of oil in his bid for control of the Western hemisphere. Cuba buys oil from Mexico despite heavy US sanctions. Now Trump is threatening to hit Mexico with tariffs.

Trump has also been channeling a mix of Cold War and War on Terror rhetoric to justify himself. He’s accused Cuba of hosting Russian spies AND Hamas and Hezbollah agents. Any one will do, right?

Trump increasing belligerence

The New York Times reported that although Trump did not name the US’s southern neighbour:

The threat seemed to be directed at Mexico, one of the few countries still delivering oil to Cuba. Earlier this month, he even said that he had specifically asked President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico to cut off its supply.

Mexico is a key regional ally of the Cuban government:

Mexico and Cuba’s long alliance — rooted in economic and cultural cooperation and a shared wariness of U.S. intervention — survived and even deepened after the Cuban Revolution, when Mexico preserved ties with Havana even as much of the region aligned with Washington.

Anti-communism

Trump is no more a fan of having a ‘communist’ nation close by than any other US leader. But his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a son of Cuban refugees, is even more neurotically anti-Cuba.

The Cuban ambassador to the UN Ernesto Soberón Guzmán laid into Rubio in a Newsweek interview on 7 February:

What is clear to me is that Rubio has never come to Cuba, and he’s talking about something he knows nothing about.

He said Rubio’s position was contradictory because of how own family had fled the pre-Castro US-backed regime:

His parents came to the United States before the revolution. It’s false this image people have that they came to the United States running away from the revolution.

They came to the United States fleeing the dictatorship that existed in Cuba, which was supported by the U.S. government at the time, under [then Cuban President Fulgencio] Batista.

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Guzman suspected Cuba lived rent-free in Rubio’s head:

Whether it’s harmful or not, whether it’s clinically harmful or not, whether it’s clinically proven, that’s something you have to find out as a journalist.

But there is a also bigger geopolitical picture beyond the contents of Rubio’s brain.

The bigger picture

Oil politics and the personal obsessions of Trump’s goons clearly play a part in the current situation. It’s also important to recall Cuba was effectively the first colony in what would become the US’s global empire. And US policy now has reverted in some ways to the gunboat diplomacy of an era which saw the US attack Cuba, the Philippines, and China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) demands control of the hemisphere. In some ways, this is a return to the old Monroe Doctrine which helped drive US empire building in the first place.

The NSS asserts:

The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity—a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region.

For the US, is it ‘our way or the highway’ on the American continent. Or rather: our way or you’ll be starved, shot, drone-struck, and/or kidnapped into submission.

Accusations about foreign influence in Cuba echo the NSS precisely:

Some foreign influence will be hard to reverse, given the political alignments between certain Latin American governments and certain foreign actors.

And at the heart of US strategy, as ever, are the demands of the American market:

The choice all countries should face is whether they want to live in an American-led world of sovereign countries and free economies or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by countries on the other side of the world.

The Trump administration is driven by greed, ego, and a yearning for hegemony. This isn’t so different from its predecessors, Trump and his lackeys are just more open about it. What is different is that the US empire’s decline is rapidly turning into a freefall. And a wounded beast is a dangerous thing, as Cubans and Mexicans are well aware.

Featured image via the Canary

Health secretary and all round wrong ‘un Wes Streeting has revealed his messages with disgraced paedophile’s mate Peter Mandelson. Or at least some of them. It was a huge self-own and more revealing than he may have wished.

Streeting may have been hoping that openness would rescue his ambitions to replace his boss when he is (soon) forced out. However, the resulting disgust and mockery have surely put a final nail in the coffin of that nightmare scenario.

Not least because Streeting’s Mandelson association is just the latest such link.

Streeting was asked by Sky’s Beth Rigby about his messages. It was short and may well have been an exercise intended to neuter the impact of them. But it was still grim:

Streeting might as well have said ‘I am toast at the next election’

However, a look at some detail of the messages reveals not just how chummy the health secretary and Mandelson were, but how terrified Streeting is after almost losing his seat in 2024, as PoliticsUK pointed out in an X post. It exposes Streeting’s own low opinion of his own party. And it proves that Streeting continued to support Starmer despite having lost faith, and deny that Israel is committing genocide, despite knowing otherwise (emphases added):

[28/03/2025, 11:36:06] Wes Streeting: I fear we’re in big trouble here – and I am toast at the next election. We just lost our safest ward in Redbridge (51% Muslim, Ilford S) to a Gaza independent. At this rate I don’t think we’ll hold either of the two Ilford seats.

[28/03/2025, 11:39:54] Wes Streeting: There isn’t a clear answer to the question: why Labour?

[28/03/2025, 11:48:44] Lord Mandelson: The government doesn’t have an economic philosophy which is then followed through in a programme of policies.

[28/03/2025, 11:49:15] Wes Streeting: No growth strategy at all

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“Israel is committing war crimes”

[24/07/2025, 23:00:29] Wes Streeting: Am sure this will come up in coming days, so wanted to check in with you on recognition of Palestine and the domestic politics of it.

Keir’s statement today was excellent, but Macron’s statement tonight ups the ante.

Morally and politically, I think we need to join France.

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Morally, because Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes. Their government talks the language of ethnic cleansing and I have met with our own medics out there who describe the most chilling and distressing scenes of calculated brutality against women and children.

Politically, a Commons vote will be engineered in September on recognition and we will lose it if we’re not ahead of it. There are no circumstances in which people like me or Shabana could abstain or vote against, for example. Conference will be a sea of Palestinian flags and the moderates will be waving them.

We need to be leading the charge on this. The alternative is being dragged there with enormous damage to Keir, the govt and the party.

I’ve never been a shrinking violent on Israel. I’ve supported LFI for over 20 years. Our sister party, Haaretz, and progressives are clear about what’s being done in their name and they oppose it.

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I appreciate these things are always more complicated than they appear to those of us who aren’t up close as you are and I also appreciate how much Keir and David are giving to this personally.

But it is what it is. We need to lead, not follow.

[24/07/2025, 23:11:47] Lord Mandelson: I can see all this but I am worried that such a gesture now could blow a 2 SS out of the water if Israel decided that unilateral recognition justified further WB annexation which the US would be powerless to stop or reverse. That would be the end of it.

So I think we need to employ practical means to get a 2SS, not quickly I grant but realistically [written by Mandelson after almost two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza]. The PA with reform and new leadership can advance this with Arab/US/European support. The alternative is a further deadlocked death spiral on an even greater scale than now.

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[24/07/2025, 23:12:10] Wes Streeting: Israel is doing it anyway.

[24/07/2025, 23:12:39] Wes Streeting: This is rogue state behaviour. Let them pay the price as pariahs with sanctions applied to the state, not just a few ministers.

But Mandelson is far from unique in Streeting’s circle. His former office manager Sam Gould was convicted of child sex offences. One of his closest associates and now fellow MP Jas Athwal was accused of “serious” sexual assault, and the allegations remain murky. Streeting’s colleague Ivor Caplin was arrested in January 2025 in a paedophile sting. His other colleague Conor McGinn has just been charged with sex offences.

At what point does a coincidence become a pattern – one that releasing a few direct messages can’t mask?

As the @solutionsilford X account commented: