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Britain’s high streets have faced increasing pressures in recent years (Alamy)

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Vape shops will need to secure planning permission before opening in reforms that Andy Burnham has said will help reverse “decades of decline” on Britain’s high streets.

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The government announced on Monday night that it will also tighten the definition of a vape shop to prevent owners from getting around current rules by describing themselves as a general convenience shop or retailer. 

There will also be new measures targeting large betting shops and what ministers describe as rogue businesses, with the PM saying that previous governments “stood by” while high streets suffered.

“Local councils will be given the powers they need to rein in unwanted shops and bring town centres back to life,” the Prime Minister said.

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The government highlighted research by the Centre for Social Justice think tank showing that the number of vape and tobacco shops has risen by more than 2,000 nationwide since 2016, while the number of pubs and bars has diminished by nearly 1,800.

High streets have come under intense pressure in recent years with rising costs and customers switching to online shopping. Research shared with PoliticsHome last year found that support for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK had been rising most in areas that had seen the most acute high street decline.

The government has announced that it will revoke the Gambling Act’s “Aim to Permit” rule, which currently restricts the ability of councils to refuse new betting shops and 24-hour slot machine shops even where there are strong local concerns.

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Ministers will also work with councils to improve the appearance of high streets and help restore pride in local town centres, pointing to “poor-quality shopfronts, garish neon signs, and oversized logos”, which have prompted complaints from local people and contributed to high streets feeling less welcoming.

In addition, there are plans to double the maximum length of closure orders from six months to a year –  under which a business or premises can be closed while it is investigated – to allow police and local authorities more time to look into premises linked to organised crime, pursue prosecutions, and prevent rogue businesses reopening before investigations are complete.

The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Angela Rayner, said: “These problems have built up over years, but this government won’t leave councils and communities powerless to crack down on everyday eyesores that blight our high streets. 

“That’s why we’re giving local leaders the power to say no to what doesn’t belong on their high street, and the tools to fix it themselves.”

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Burnham added: “For many people, the high streets they grew up with have been hollowed out and become unrecognisable over decades of decline. The rise of vape shops, betting shops and rogue operators have replaced the shops, services, and community spaces that people are crying out for. 

“That’s not on. I said we would improve Britain’s high streets, and that’s exactly what we are starting to do. We’re putting communities back in control and giving local people a real say over what opens on their high street. Local councils will be given the powers they need to rein in unwanted shops and bring town centres back to life.”

 

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Green Party leader Zack Polanski has taken aim at “absurd” editorial decisions by the BBC. In particular, Polanski slammed the Beeb for giving far more airtime to Reform UK than the Greens.

His comments come after tge BBC was seemingly ambushed on Newsnight by presenters last week. There, Polanski’s interviewers read anonymous texts from “senior” Reform figures live on air.

For context, Reform UK’s unelected spokesperson Zia Yusuf has appeared on BBC Question Time a whole 38 times. That’s more than the Green Party’s people have appeared collectively on the show.

After multiple such failures at the BBC, it’s quite clear which direction the corporation is pandering.

The BBC’s tactic of ‘subtle genocide denial’ over Gaza

Polanski sets the record straight

Polanski made the fierce comments during a weekend interview with Iain Dale at the Edinburgh Fringe. Dale asked why Polanski had seemingly been appearing in the media less in recent months.

In comparison, Dale spoke of major media interest in preceding months. These included Polanski’s sweeping victory in the Greens’ leadership contest and the Greens’ historic Gorton and Denton by-election win.

By Cameron Baillie

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The Oldspeak Bookshop in Long Melford has announced its intention to close. It follows the backlash which resulted from the business supporting ‘remigration’ — i.e. the policy of ethnically cleansing Europe of all People of Colour.

Hostility? I wonder why https://t.co/8sklJiF6Nk pic.twitter.com/4P8M2Tykua

— keewa (@keewa) August 9, 2026

Oldspeak Bookshop backs “remigration”

Remigration has become very unpopular with the European far-right in recent years (and also with Elon Musk, despite the man being a migrant himself). As we reported in July:

The UK group Remigration Now describes ‘remigration’ as follows:

Remigration is the act of returning immigrants and their descendants to their country of origin through both voluntary and mandatory measures.

They say ‘immigrants’, but what they mean is People of Colour. And you know they mean this, because there’s no campaign to deport anyone who has an Irish grandad or an Austrian nana (both of which this writer has).

Basically, then, remigration is just Nazi-grade racism with a fresh coat of paint. And everyone knows this stuff never ends with deportations.

Remigration, then, is textbook racism. As such, we’re very comfortable calling Oldspeak a ‘racist bookshop’.

Go anti-woke, go broke

Explaining their reason for closing down, the Oldspeak Bookshop has said:

Sadly, Oldspeak Bookshop is closing its physical shop doors.

Over time, it became increasingly difficult to maintain a welcoming environment due to the constant hostility I experienced. The uncertainty around which customers were genuine, made it hard for me to greet everyone warmly, and my customer service suffered.

To every one of you who has supported me, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’m sorry for letting you down, but we can still stay connected!! I am remaining fully online and will be offering a wider range of harder-to-find books, imports, and similar.

They added:

I am also searching for premises in a friendlier location.

May we suggest 1940s Germany?

The Keewa account highlighted some of the texts that Oldspeak was selling:

Amid the Agatha Christies, you can find books by "Confidant of Christchurch Shooter" Martin Sellner, late "Culture Officer" for the BNP Bowden, " The Raw Egg Nationalist", and many more! pic.twitter.com/4ztU3iTLBq

— keewa (@keewa) August 9, 2026

Keewa also highlighted the futility of the shop’s business plan:

How much passerby foot traffic were you expecting to receive at a location in a yard set back from the road, in a village of 4000 people in Suffolk? Enough to support a fringe bookshop? pic.twitter.com/a8Lzv4m44r

— keewa (@keewa) August 9, 2026

The Oldspeak Bookshop backlash has continued even though the shop is closing. As you’d imagine, Oldspeak is taking it well:

Growth

The UK far right is growing, and that’s a problem. Given that, it’s important to know where the limits are, and to push back wherever we can. A bookshop that promotes ethnic cleansing being financially viable would be an alarming sign, so thank god they’re shutting their doors.

Featured image via the Canary

By Willem Moore

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Manchester is preparing itself for another, albeit lower-profile, by-election, and the Green party is already ahead.

It’s true that the Green Party didn’t get the result it wanted in the Manchester mayoral by-election. Instead, Bev Craig, former Manchester City Council (MCC) leader and Burnham-Labour ally, took on the big job.

However, one consequence of that huge mayoral by-election is yet another in Manchester. Only this time, instead of two million Mancunians being offered the vote, it’s some 13,000 Burnage residents.

And despite their lack of a mayor — for now, anyway — the Green Party is prepping for another electoral fight. And this time, even more than before, the odds do seem to be in their favour.

Manchester’s lowest-ever election turnout results broken down

Bye-bye, by-election, bye-bye…

The Burnage ward by-election takes place to fill a gap in the shape of ex-councillor, now mayor, Bev Craig. She represented the seat in MCC until she became the new Greater Manchester Mayor.

That gap, of course, was created by our new PM Andy Burnham stepping down as mayor. That empty job, in turn, was created by ex-MP Josh Simons stepping down and sparking (not by accident) the whole leadership handover.

And that handover was necessitated, arguably, by the inept political vacuity of Keir Starmer. You could even stretch the causal chain back further to Gorton and Denton — yet another Manchester by-election, triggered by Starmer’s poor choice of allies. You might think that’s unrelated by this point — but wait.

As it happens, Burnage ward is in the Gorton and Denton constituency. So at the moment, its residents are represented in parliament by Hannah Spencer MP.

With potentially very strong odds for the Green party candidate, mayor Craig may be glad she got the promotion before re-election time came. It’s only 18 months before she has to stand again.

Labour and Reform dodge Manchester mayoral election community hustings

Who is the Green party’s hopeful candidate?

In an email shared with the Canary, the Manchester-wide party federation shared its candidate. It was both a mayoral by-election debrief and an announcement of next steps, including the Burnage by-election news.

Manchester’s Green Party branch says it has just selected a “wonderful candidate”, Daoud Nawaz, described by Manchester Green Party as:

a local resident with 15 years of political activism and grassroots campaigning.

In line with the party’s internal democracy practices, Nawaz was selected through internal, Manchester branch party elections. The branch states what platform Nawaz will run on:

Daoud’s priorities will include tackling speeding and dangerous driving, fighting for genuinely affordable housing, and protecting vital services for those who need them most, including older people, families and vulnerable residents.

In an early campaign video, Nawaz donned football boots and flashed a smile, with a simple message. He also took square aim at the right-wing media sensationalisation — touted by Tony Blair, naturally — of a so-called:

‘unholy alliance between the Greens and the Muslim vote’.

Instead, he’s doubled down on his platform of being a local champion. In the same video, Nawaz says:

I’m a local, I’ve got the same issues as you. …Local bins. Local schools. Local businesses. Local leisure facilities, like the local cricket club — which isn’t there anymore.

Like many of us who are local, we feel like we’re losing a sense of what Burnage is.

I want us to be more Burnage. Where accessibility is not optional. Where road safety’s not trapped in red tape. Where local voices around developments are listened to. Where businesses flourish. And where our youth aren’t left to fend for themselves when school’s out.

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It’s hard to argue with a message like that — so far, so good.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Daoud Nawaz (@greenpartydaoud)

Where do local Greens stand now?

The Greens missed their target in the mayoral by-election. Only around 25% of the two million-odd voters actually turned out, making it a historically low turnout.

Unfortunately for those on the left, Reform claimed the second-place vote across Greater Manchester.

But the Greens nonetheless claim multiple symbolic and strategic gains during Geraldine Coggins’ campaign. In the same email announcing Nawaz’s candidacy, Greens stated:

Last week, with our wonderful candidate Geraldine Coggins, the Green Parties in Greater Manchester ran one of our largest ever election campaigns and achieved our best ever result in a mayoral election. Across all 10 boroughs, we delivered hundreds of thousands pieces of literature, knocked on thousands of doors, and built campaign teams that will be invaluable in future elections.

Speaking directly to the Canary, a Green Party spokesperson said:

The Greens have increased our vote share by nearly 80% from the same election just a couple of years ago and Labour’s vote has fallen by a quarter. This gives us a good springboard for future campaigns and the general election where we saw particularly strong votes in our target areas of Greater Manchester.

We are proud of the campaign fought by Geraldine, who fought this campaign in the unusual circumstances of a new PM in his honeymoon period. Geraldine spoke up for the many people in the region who feel Labour has run Greater Manchester for developers and big money, and not the people.

With the bigger Green vote, we hope the new mayor has heard clearly that voters expect her to deliver on affordable housing, rent controls, and to put people over profit.

When you add the recent experience of multiple local elections and by-elections across the city-region to this confidence, things already look strong for Nawaz. This is only aided by his colleague Hannah Spencer, Burnage’s vibrant, multiracial working-class community, and an already active Green base.

The ward will have its say on 10 September — one month away. Let’s see if the area is keen to replace its now-vacant Labour councillor with a progressive, Green party alternative.

Property and poverty dominate Manchester’s mayoral election politics

Featured image via the Canary

By Cameron Baillie

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Responding to an article from Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph has publicly described Israel’s genocide as a “lie”. It comes as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK launched an attack on rivals Restore Britain over accusations of ‘antisemitism’:

Restore Britain has endorsed the monstrous lie that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza – the opposite of the truth. The horseshoe theory of politics is being proved correct – a right-wing party has aligned itself with the far Left and extreme Islamists on this issue. It is…

— Allister Heath (@AllisterHeath) August 10, 2026

Israel’s Gaza genocide

Heath’s post finishes:

It is vital that retired actors, pro-Israel conservatives or observers of UK politics in Europe or America, including [Elon Musk] understand the truth about this party.

Restore’s talk of Gaza ‘genocide’ is as ridiculous as the Left’s

The issue for Heath and Pollard is that Restore politician Charlie Downes posted the following:

We’ve been heavily critical of Restore Britain, but Downes isn’t wrong to describe the situation as a genocide. He’s also not wrong to highlight the complicity of the British media.

Pollard’s piece opens with the following:

Genocide requires state intent. Instead, Israel deserves praise for the humanitarian care it has taken in its fight against terrorists

On the topic of “state intent”, Law for Palestine meticulously documented 500+ instances of “Israeli Incitement to Genocide”. They described this work in 2024 as follows:

Since the commencement of our investigative efforts on October 7th, 2023, Law for Palestine has meticulously amassed a compelling body of evidence exposing the proliferation of incitement to violence and genocidal intent perpetrated by Israeli officials and public figures, against Palestinians. Our documentation encompasses over 500 incitements of violence and genocidal incitement, appearing in the forms of social media posts, television interviews, and official statements from Israeli politicians, army personnel, journalists, and other influential personalities.

These reprehensible incitements have been categorized into significant thematic areas, including genocidal intent, forced displacement, and collective punishment. What makes this evidence all the more disconcerting is its origin, emanating from the upper echelons of the Israeli government, including the President, Prime Minister, Knesset members, military personnel, and law enforcement.

Nothing Pollard writes in his piece does anything to undo this reality. And speaking of reality, the Telegraph seems to exist on an entirely different plane of it than the rest of us:

Britain can’t stop climate change. Scrap net zero and embrace Mediterranean life https://t.co/AjtkLDpMsS

— Allister Heath (@AllisterHeath) July 29, 2026

Right VS Right

The Telegraph isn’t the only organisation attacking Restore Britain over alleged antisemitism. In an announcement given on Monday 10 August, Farage said that for Reform to work with Restore, his rivals would have to shed members like Downes. As GB Politics reported:

BREAKING: Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has ruled out any deal with Restore Britain unless Rupert Lowe expels Charlie Downes from the party

Nigel Farage has accused Charlie Downes of antisemitism after the Restore Britain spokesperson insinuated that Farage had been bought by Jewish supporters

These comments from Downes are less defensible, obviously. While it’s true that many people in the Zionist movement fund UK politicians, there are reasons why we highlight that they’re Zionists rather than Jews:

1. Not all Jewish people are Zionists.
2. Not all Zionists are Jewish.

Many non-Jewish American politicians are Zionists; the same is true of many non-Jewish European and British politicians. Many Western journalists are Zionists too, including the non-Jewish Allister Heath.

To be especially clear on what we’re talking about, Zionism is the ideology which dictates that Israel must exist as an expansionist colonial project in the Middle East. Both colonialism and expansionism are bad, which is why we oppose the ideology. When someone talks about opposing ‘Jews’, though, it seems like there’s something else at play.

Collaboration

With both Reform and the Telegraph attacking Restore, it does seem like there’s some degree of coordination. We’re not going to throw our support behind Downes, but we will acknowledge he was right about the genocide. And we’re far from the only people who hold that opinion:

'far left and extreme islamists' or as they're otherwise known, half the fucking country https://t.co/zXjQ7maymn pic.twitter.com/aurvI5hBII

— NJ (@NoJusticeMTG) August 10, 2026

Featured image via the Canary

By Willem Moore

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Montana’s Democratic Senate nominee on Monday refused to drop her campaign to clear the way for an independent candidate, setting up a crowded race that is likely to help Republicans win in November.

Alani Bankhead made certain with hours to go before Monday’s deadline that she would not step aside to give independent Seth Bodnar — who is backed by former Sen. John Tester (D-Mont.) — a clearer run at Republican Kurt Alme.

“I’ll never bow down,” Bankhead said during a press conference ahead of the 7 p.m. Eastern Time deadline to drop out. “I am in this race to win it and I am staying through Nov. 3.”

Bankhead accused her opponents of being “hand picked” by the establishment while she won the Democratic Primary.

Her refusal to drop is no surprise. She told POLITICO earlier this month that it would take “a lighting bolt from God” to convince her to exit, and she’s cast Bodnar’s backing from Tester as proof that he’s more aligned with the establishment than she is.

It’s caused a significant headache for Democrats, who have had some success getting their candidates to drop out for independents in other deep-red states carried by President Donald Trump by wide margins in 2024. Democrats in Idaho, South Dakota and Nebraska have all dropped their bids, though legal challenges could still complicate some of those efforts.

But Montana is Democrats’ best shot of actually flipping a seat with an independent candidacy, and Bankhead remaining on the ballot is likely to complicate that path exponentially.

Polling has shown Bodnar in a competitive head-to-head position against Alme and closer than if Bankhead had a one-on-one contest. But with both on the ballot, Alme leads by more than 20 points. Democrats like Tester and former Gov. Steve Bullock have found success in the red-leaning state, but a split ticket all but cedes the race to the GOP and narrows Democrats’ path to a majority in the upper chamber.

Bodnar and his allies have upped their focus on Bankhead in recent days. A super PAC backing Bodnar has been hammering her on television while another group is posting signs around the state calling for her to drop out.

More than 20 local Democratic lawmakers recently called on Bankhead to drop out, as well as former Democratic Party leaders. But in the end, their argument wasn’t enough to change Bankhead’s mind.

Bodnar recently told reporters ahead of the Monday deadline that he, too, had no plans to drop — while publicly bashing Bankhead for the first time.

“On the Democratic side, millions of dollars of outside dark money poured into a primary to determine an outcome,” Bodnar said at a press conference. “Now they have a candidate who’s unvetted.”

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Months of unusually dry weather have killed the grass that British farmer John Franklin’s sheep would normally graze on. Like other farmers, Franklin’s only contingency is to dip into the winter feed. He had been saving this feed for colder months, he told CGTN.

His 200-acre farm, which also runs a shop and cafe selling local produce, has lost a third of its income this year as crops fail to meet market specifications and yields drop.

He is not the only one. Research from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) suggests that the 2026 harvest is now likely to be one of the five worst since 1984

Climate-sceptical farmers can no longer ignore realities

In its latest study, latest, World Weather Attribution has reported that the June heatwave (where temperatures climbed to 37.7 degrees celsius) would have been unimaginable 50 years ago, adding that climate change is “unequivocally to blame.”

Martin Lines, CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network and a farmer from Cambridgeshire, said that even climate-sceptical farmers were facing the brutalities of climate change:

I’ve never known it this dry and hot on our farm. Even farmers I know who were sceptical of climate change are now saying they’re really worried about the future of their businesses and production, it’s just been completely brutal for our industry. And with high input costs because of the Iran war, planning crops for next year is a total nightmare. The nature-friendly practices we’ve deployed on the farm have helped our soils hold on to water for longer, but there’s only so much you can do to adapt to these sorts of extremes.

Consequences even for Clarkson

Jeremy Clarkson who has made a career out of dismissing climate worries as the preserve of “soup-throwing” activists and “Elton John-taxing” do-gooders, has found himself in an awkward position. His own Diddly Squat farm in Oxfordshire has not been immune to the same brutal conditions.

In his typical fashion, Clarkson wrote in the Times earlier this year:

I fully understand that a great many people are extremely worried about climate change and believe that unless we immediately give Israel to the Palestinians and throw soup over a few more paintings, the whole world will quickly become a blazing inferno. So understandably they fully support the concept of net zero and argue that the £7 zillion to implement it should be met by vigorously taxing Elton John and the nation’s bankers.

But even Clarkson might struggle to joke his way out of a parched field and shrivelled crop. 

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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4 min read9 min

I have spent a year trying to find out why political trust in Whitehall has deteriorated. The problems can be fixed – but first we need to be honest about them.

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“I am concerned at what I see as a slow deterioration over time in the trust between ministers and civil servants”. So wrote David Normington, previously the top civil servant at the Home Office and, at the time, the first civil service commissioner.

That was almost a decade ago.

And yet we are still grappling – or rather failing to grapple – with the question of political trust in the civil service. Soon after Normington wrote the above in 2017, we saw a sharp deterioration in relations: see for reference anything from the antagonistic approach of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Cummings to Liz Truss’s attacks on the “Treasury orthodoxy”.

Recent attempts to improve the relationship have at best managed to stabilise it.

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Rishi Sunak refused to condone his colleagues’ characterisation of Whitehall as “the blob”, and Keir Starmer began his premiership with a private note to civil servants assuring them, “you have my confidence, my support, and my respect.” Both are welcome. But five months later, Starmer was so frustrated with that same civil service that he accused too many of them of being “too comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”. It’s a phrase that has stuck around. I am sure that is in part because it is too clunky to ignore. But also in part because it was Starmer – the civil servant’s prime minister, as a former civil servant himself – who felt compelled to make the accusation. The much-hyped Labour reset of relations with the civil service had failed.

I have spent the past year trying to find out what is going wrong – why have the resets failed, and why do ministers not trust the civil service? To understand this, we’ve spoken to ministers, civil servants and special advisers to help us build a picture of how trust in the civil service is lost.

The vague, hand-wavey language we use around this relationship has to end

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It is not the prettiest of pictures.

There are problems with underlying capability – both in policy advice and delivery.

But far more salient to politicians is how that capability is applied. We heard about a culture of overwhelming inertia and status quo bias where it feels impossible to get things done. We were told about a sense that the civil service lacks the professional curiosity it needs to address first-order questions and escape the trap of formulaic answers, compounded by the stifling of junior civil servants by their seniors. We heard about conflict aversion practiced to the extent that trade-offs don’t get surfaced at all, and about a civil service that leans back rather than leaning in to working alongside politicians. And we heard about a civil service that draws the line around what is ‘political’ so widely that it lacks the political judgement and understanding to properly advise ministers.

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If all of that sounds very one-sided, it is. Trust is a two-way street. But in our system of elected politicians and a permanent civil service, it is the civil service that must earn the trust of the ministers they serve – or at least show themselves to be trustworthy.

It also sounds very negative. That is – again – intentional.

The vague, hand-wavey language we use around this relationship has to end. We all (ministers, officials, and anyone who has ever used the term “the blob”) need a proper way to describe what is going wrong. Otherwise we end up with either jibes about an amorphous mess of unelected bureaucrats, or meaningless platitudes about the need for ‘respect’. As we have seen, neither approach works. This mushy language means we are not pinpointing the real problems in the relationship, and so can’t do anything about them.

If you disagree with the above – great. Let me know, and let’s build a better picture together.

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Hannah Keenan is an associate director at the Institute for Government

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