Politics
Peter Franklin: Yes, there is a moral case against taxing wealth
Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
Say what you like about the wealth tax advocate Gary Stevenson — and just about everyone has lately — but, at least, he’s been willing to face his adversaries.
He interviewed some of them in his Channel 4 documentary, How to Get Filthy Rich with Gary Stevenson. I wish certain other high profile “activists” were as upfront and open to scrutiny.
Nevertheless, it can’t be denied that Stevenson has come off worse from the experience. Naturally, his central argument — for a 2 per cent annual tax on assets totalling over £10 million — attracted criticism from the right. But more damaging was the reception from the left. Lucy Mangan of The Guardian gave Stevenson’s documentary a two-star review. It’s presenter was “left floundering” by the critics he interviewed, she said. Another critic, the tax expert and longtime Labour Party member, Dan Neidle, was also unimpressed. Here he is, in his interview with Stevenson, painfully exposing the basic flaws in his big idea.
Of course, one needn’t possess Neidle’s forensic knowledge of the tax system to understand why the proposal — or anything close to it — wouldn’t work.
In a global economy, capital doesn’t sit still. It moves to where it attracts the highest returns and/or is subject to the lowest taxes. No one with a good accountant is going to keep an asset in a country where the government simply confiscates 2 per cent of its value each and every year. At least, not unless the asset appreciates in value by a sufficient margin over the annual tax rate — which is likely to bias the deployment of capital towards short-term speculation instead of the long-term investment that our economy desperately needs.
The practical problems with the Stevenson tax don’t end there. But rather than shoot fish in a barrel, I’d like to tackle a more difficult — and fascinating — aspect of this debate. It’s articulated by the Blue Labour MP, Jonathan Hinder:
“The Right’s response to a wealth tax is always “but it won’t work!” What I find interesting is that there is rarely an attempt to argue against it on moral grounds…”
As it happens, James Cleverly responded to Hinder’s tweet, making the point that that “it won’t work” is a moral argument. One needn’t agree with Tony Blair’s claim that “what’s right is what works” to see that “what doesn’t work, isn’t right” — not when other people’s time and effort is at stake. But let’s steel man Hinder’s argument by assuming that a new wealth tax would work — by which I mean raise a significant amount of revenue for the public purse without killing the golden goose.
In such a scenario, is there still a moral problem with taxing wealth? Or to make the question even harder — isn’t it obviously better than, say, taxing earned income? Framed that way, wealth taxation doesn’t just find support on the left, but from many centrists too — and even a few right-wingers (I could name names, but won’t).
Before going on, let me clarify that I’m not just talking about wealth-taxing the super-rich. Stevenson’s proposal applies to asset totals exceeding £10 million, but you can bet that any serious shift towards wealth taxation would start hitting much lower thresholds. Andy Burnham’s people are already floating the idea of reducing the Mansion Tax threshold from £2 million to £1.5 million. We can see where this is heading. For his part, Jonathan Hinder wants a “a proportional property tax” — and I’ve little doubt that proportionality would mean punishing cash-poor pensioners for the crime of living in a nice-ish house in the South East.
It’s a fundamental principle of progressive taxation that the amount asked for should be related to the ability to pay. That’s why modern tax systems focus on income (and its close proxy, consumption) not wealth. Indeed, from a conservative point of view, the best argument against libertarian claims that tax-is-theft is that tax is a commission on everything that a well-governed country does to enable its inhabitants to earn money. By contrast, demanding money from someone merely on the basis that they own something (which they’ve paid for out of already-taxed income) isn’t a commission, it is confiscation.
Of course, there’s the counter-argument that such taxpayers are nevertheless able to pay because assets can be sold to settle the bill. That may mean forcing people out of their homes, but to a certain kind of “rational” liberal, this is offset by the more efficient allocation of housing stock that supposedly results. On the other hand, to a conservative, it is a violation of the home and of family life — and, therefore, objectively evil.
Ah, but what about the aBaird increase in the value of these sacred suburban semis over the last fifty years? Why are the pensioners I want to protect from expropriation morally entitled to that?
Let me reply in three ways:
Firstly, property inflation in this country is indeed ridiculous, yet from the point of view of a long-term home owner it is still the same house. It’s paper value is, in most circumstances, notional and the lived experience of “wealth” unchanged. Secondly, many forms of wealth tax — like the Mansion Tax — take no account of the capital gain or loss: someone who bought a taxable property yesterday pays the same as someone who was lucky enough to buy an identical residence decades ago. And, thirdly, far from fixing the housing crisis, which is a crisis of affordability, a shift to taxing wealth would give politicians a perverse incentive to keep it going.
While we’re on the subject of perverse incentives, let’s look at another moral hazard that comes with wealth taxation:
By now, we’re all too familiar with the concept of public borrowing as a tax on future generations. It allows politicians today to buy votes with money that our children and grandchildren will have to pay back. No doubt you see the problem with that. Well, I’d argue that wealth taxation is its mirror image i.e. it is a tax on the past. I’ll explain:
“Wealth“, for most people, is literally what the taxman has previously allowed us to keep from our earnings minus what we had to (or chose to) consume. It therefore represents the willingness and ability of past governments to a) restrain their spending b) hold down the cost of living and c) encourage the citizenry to build-up capital. These, surely, are things that our leaders should be encouraged to strive for. In this regard, the trouble with wealth taxation is that it allows incumbent governments to leech off the responsibility of their predecessors. It’s the equivalent of raiding a sovereign wealth fund to bankroll profligate spending — only, in this case, the fund is owned individually by the people, not the state.
It’s another reason why a tax base consisting of current income and consumption is greatly to be preferred: because it directly incentivises serving governments to foster ongoing growth and prosperity instead of strip-mining past achievements. To put it another way, ministers should be farmers, not scavengers.
OK, that’s my argument against wealth taxation in general. But what about the billionaire problem? Is it fair that they should be able to get away with effective tax rates below those paid by the rest of us?
Absolutely not, but the solution isn’t crude wealth taxation — not least because the mega-wealthy are those best-placed to take their money elsewhere. Better then to recognise this reality and develop the capacity of government to do deals on a case-by-case basis
In this respect, HMG isn’t entirely without cards to play. Holders of great wealth, whether individuals or corporate entities, have a problem: their money doesn’t exist in the abstract, it has to go somewhere. In that respect, the UK is an attractive destination — not least because we’ve yet to indulge (much) in the self-cannibalisation that is taxing wealth.
Instead, we need to be bolder in the way we influence where global capital flows to in this country and the impact it has while it’s here. For instance, there’s a world of difference between investing in the UK-based industries of the future and outbidding first-time buyers for new housing stock. One creates the good jobs that Britain needs, the other a new class of serfs (not to mention, a generation of voters for the left).
These are qualitative — and, I would say, moral — distinctions that a wealth tax cannot capture.
Politics
New report details the Spectator’s ‘systematic, sustained, & measurable problem with Muslims’
On 14 July, the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) published a shocking – but sadly unsurprising – report into the stark Islamophobia on display at the Spectator, the UK’s oldest political magazine.
The CfMM is an independent non-profit organisation which monitors the representation of Islam in the mainstream media. For its latest report, entitled ‘No Mere Spectator’, it presented comprehensive qualitative and quantitative analysis:
of 3,733 articles published by The Spectator between January 2018 and December 2025 relating to Islam, Muslims, Muslim communities, Muslim-majority countries, or issues in which Muslims were a central subject of discussion.
From this analysis, it concluded that the magazine:
does not merely comment on Muslims and Islam but consistently constructs them as a problem, and that it does so while invoking the language of free speech to place that coverage beyond criticism.
Spectator dismissing and perpetuating Islamophobia
The CfMM study found that just over 57% of the Spectator’s articles were either ‘biased’ or ‘very biased’ against Muslims. Meanwhile, it rated just 11.6% as ‘not biased’.
This effect was even more pronounced for articles which specifically centered on the subject of Islamophobia. A massive 72.8% were either biased or very biased, whereas just 2% were unbiased. In particular, the report stated that:
Rather than treating anti-Muslim prejudice as a form of discrimination requiring serious consideration, articles frequently characterise concerns about Islamophobia as attempts to suppress criticism, restrict free speech, obstruct counter-extremism efforts or shield Islam from scrutiny. The effect is to recast protections against discrimination as threats to liberal values.
This bias was notably visible in the magazine’s treatment of the topic of terrorism and political violence. The report observed a “persistent tendency” to conflate Islam, Islamism, and extremist movements. It also added that:
The Conflict and Terrorism coverage presents acts of “Islamist” violence not as the product of specific extremist ideologies but as expressions of Islam’s inherent character, while consistently minimising and relativising far-right terrorism. This includes its response to the Christchurch massacre, where the murder of 51 Muslims in their places of worship was used primarily as a vehicle to attack those who raised concerns about anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Complicity with the far right
Meanwhile, the Spectator repeatedly framed Muslim political advocacy and campaigning as evidence of extremism or ‘disproportionate influence’. What for any other community would be perfectly ordinary participation in democracy instead became sinister, sectarian and “uniquely problematic” for Muslims.
The magazine also displayed a deeply alarming ideological complicity with the narratives of the far right. This included presenting ‘great replacement’ arguments alongside mainstream political commentary, and even framing Muslims’ participation in society as invasion.
The CfMM stated that this repeated pattern went far beyond “isolated editorial lapses”, and that its relationship to the far right was well past the mere “toleration of editorial opinion”. The report held that this relationship was:
cemented by the political affiliations of The Spectator’s new owner, hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall. Marshall bought the magazine for £100 million in September 2024 and is co-owner and founder of GB News as well as owner of UnHerd. Marshall’s media titles are highly influential vehicles for the circulation of right-wing and anti-Muslim content. According to the Media Reform Coalition, GB News and The Spectator have regularly been found in breach of broadcasting and editorial standards by Ofcom and the press regulator IPSO.
In the pockets of billionaires
The CfMM’s work in general, and ‘No Mere Spectator’ in particular, is important precisely because it provides robust, evidence based backing for what Muslims in the UK have recognised for decades: this country’s mainstream media outlets emit a distinct and longstanding bias against Islam and its adherents.
Our attitudes as a society are shaped by the things we read about our communities and others. That’s why, as the Canary has previously reported, a handful of billionaires have pumped more than £170 million into the UK’s populist right-wing ecosystem over the last five years. Alex/Rose Cocker wrote that:
The £170 million was split between populist-right MPs and political parties, alongside their aligned media organisations and thinktanks. Of that, more than £130 million came from just four sources: crypto investor Chris Harborne, financier Jeremy Hosking, hedge fund manager Paul Marshall, and investment firm Legatum.
The UK’s media, and our society’s opinions along with it, are being bought wholesale by the ultra-rich right. They profit from our hatred and division, and use Islamophobia as a tool of distraction and influence – to the ongoing devastation of the Muslims in the UK and around the world.
Featured image via the Canary
By Grace
Politics
The House | Our life sciences plan is transforming Britain into a healthier, wealthier nation
(Milos / Adobe Stock)
4 min read
Earlier this year, regulators approved the first-ever immunotherapy treatment for people with an aggressive form of stomach cancer, made by AstraZeneca.
Just two weeks ago, the world’s first-ever immunotherapy for type 1 diabetes was approved for use in the NHS. This could give people months or even years before they need treatment, by slowing down the disease before symptoms begin. A 15-year-old boy, Sam, in Birmingham Children’s Hospital, was the first person to receive the drug.
These life-changing innovations are all made possible by a thriving life sciences ecosystem in the UK. However, in recent years we have seen the sector struggle with slowing investment, new treatments tangled up in red tape, and a looming skills gap.
That is why we launched our Life Sciences Sector Plan a year ago. Supported by £2bn of government funding over the Spending Review, to bring in billions in investment, create thousands of new jobs and most importantly, to deliver innovative treatments to patients faster. And the plan is working.
We are making the UK a top destination to invest in life sciences, and businesses are taking notice. Over the past year, we have attracted more than £3bn of investment into the UK’s life sciences sector. In 2024, we raised the highest amount of equity finance in Europe and were behind only the US and China globally.
Through the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund, our strategic grants have helped to secure £700m in public-private investment so far. This investment brings new labs and research facilities in the UK and makes sure they stay here.
Crucially, these investments are turning talent and expertise right across the country into new treatments for illnesses which touch all of our lives.
We are also putting the UK and the NHS in the best position to gain swift access to new medicines.
Through our UK/US pharmaceutical arrangement, we are ensuring we can continue to gain access to the latest pharmaceutical treatments for NHS patients, as well as securing a commitment to zero tariffs on our pharmaceutical exports to the US – the best any country has achieved.
Our changes to the NICE cost-effectiveness threshold – essentially the amount that we will pay for important new innovative medicines – are opening up access to new treatments for NHS patients, which were previously turned down on cost grounds alone.
This has already given NHS patients access to life-changing medicines, including a brain cancer drug for patients as young as 12, a treatment for muscular dystrophy in children, and a last-resort treatment for patients with a rare form of stomach cancer.
We are also getting new treatments to patients faster by cutting red tape to speed up clinical trials. The average set-up time for commercial clinical trials in the UK has been slashed from 169 to 122 days.
A thriving life sciences sector isn’t just good for patients, it drives the UK’s economic growth. Indeed, science and innovation are the building blocks for reindustrialising Britain.
Around 360,000 people in the UK work in life sciences, in every area of the country.
Success in life sciences here means thousands of skilled workers gaining good jobs and powering regional economies.
With our new Life Sciences Sector Jobs Plan, we are working with industry to lay the foundations for an additional 66,000 roles in priority professions in the sector by 2035.
This offers exciting prospects for young people to find careers as lab technicians, chemical scientists or software developers. Apprenticeships, T Levels and V Levels will offer a key path for young people to break into life sciences and help create new ways of detecting and preventing diseases, and treating them.
The UK has the research base, the talent, and, through this government, the right plan to ensure our Life Sciences sector can go from strength to strength.
We are putting science to work to transform the UK into a healthier and wealthier nation.
Lord Vallance is Minister for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear
Ellie Kamio is one of the ‘Filton 25’ group of anti-genocide activists targeted by the UK government for damaging an Israeli death factory.
In the sick farce of Keir Starmer’s war on UK, Kamio and three others were sentenced as terrorists despite being charged with no terror offence.
The judge, deeply connected to the ‘security services’, banned the jury from knowing they could acquit — and banned jurors from knowing about his sentencing plans until after they convicted. Even the press were banned from reporting on it.
But Kamio remains defiant and celebrates the ‘award’ of her ‘terror’ sentence.
View this post on Instagram
ellie kamio 
(@elliekamio)Filton 25 activist shares powerful social media post
In an Instagram post, Kamio posted a mocked-up image of herself receiving a gold award, alongside images of Israel’s destruction of Gaza.
In a statement accompanying the images, she thanked her supporters and the Palestinian people, talked about the farce of the trial and the regime’s purposes in criminalising protest.
She defiantly refused to be crushed by the draconian sentences imposed on her and fellow protesters for resisting the UK’s collaboration with Israel. She also added that the victims of the trial will be appealing against the sentences.
Her post in full:
wow wtf who would have thought that the girl from swansea who grows veggies and likes to party would earn this title. i’m flattered that the state thinks i’m this annoying. this is a label that has been given to so many who have fought against apartheid and genocide throughout history. if opposing genocide makes me a terrorist then so be it. because it was an honour to dismantle 40 weapons that would commit war crimes.
i’d like to thank my mum and the rest of my family. to the people who raised me and the ones who shaped how i see and move through the world. but most importantly i need to thank palestinians because when i think of your liberation, it is worth it.
i’m grateful to everyone who has been here, physically and spiritually, who has written, prayed, cast spells and sends us love. you lot have given me strength for prison round 2
on the morning of the 12th of june it was clear from judge johnson’s giddiness that he had prewritten a wild sentence, that completely disregarded sentencing guidelines and quite frankly the law. no surprise there lol. now i know what the worst case scenario is. it sucks but i can do it.
the crown prosecution aptly named our case ‘operation recomply’. we were arrested under counter terror powers on the 7th august 2024. this was always their plan. to use our convictions to justify the proscription of palestine action. to intimidate britain into complying. to stay ignorant or lose hope. has it worked?
so long as there is a hole in my arse my spirit cannot be crushed. it is not the time to despair. it is the time to work together and channel our rage into something productive. because when the state moves as weird as it has been, it means that liberation is close.
celebrate moog’s hung jury! pull up for the next wave of filton 25 (major babes) who are currently on trial at the old bailey. they need you now so please show them the same love we received. meanwhile us four will be back at it again to appeal sentencing.
my final thank you goes to all the losers who have had a hand in my imprisonment. in trying to squash our spirits, the state has hammered us with everything they’ve got. in doing so, it has created the most resilient group of people who now know the inner workings of the legal and prison system. knowledge is power baby! they will continue to underestimate the people and i will watch the state’s flailing corruption burn to the ground from my cell hehe.
i believe in you all.
palestine will hear the birds
Ongoing war on freedom
Starmer is packing his bags ready to slink out of No.10 in disgrace. But even as he slithers away, his regime continues its war on UK freedoms and rights to protect Israel.
His government finds the Terrorism Act so useful and easy to wield against peaceful resistance that it has extended the same provisions to any group it decides to ‘designate’.
The new National Security (State Threats) Act allows the government to prosecute anyone who even uses information from sources the UK regime decides oppose its interests. The first to be banned is Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), making it a criminal offence to quote the IRGC on its military actions against the UK and Israel’s illegal war.
Sentences range to up to 14 years in prison, just as for the Terrorism Act.
There is no exemption for journalism.
To his everlasting shame, incoming prime minister, Andy Burnham — supposedly a change from Starmer — has supported the new legislation. Just as he has supported Starmer’s backdoor mandatory ID scam and other attacks on UK citizens’ freedoms.
Burnham shows no sign at all of rolling back any of his predecessor’s police-state measures. Indeed, he is already signalling that he will go further.
Featured image via PA
By Skwawkbox
A noisy protest erupted outside the Biodiversity + Business Live conference at the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. Campaigners were challenging NatureScot over its role in licensing the controversial guga hunt.
From 8am on 15 July, protesters gathered with placards and megaphones outside the conference, which NatureScot is co-hosting. They accused Scotland’s nature agency of undermining its own biodiversity commitments by licensing the annual killing of gannet chicks.
Delegates arriving for the conference, including Scottish government ministers and UK business leaders, faced protesters chanting:
NatureScot, shame, shame! Gannets killed in your name!
Protect the Wild, one of the groups involved, said the vast majority of delegates responded positively to the demonstration. Many smiled, gave a thumbs-up or expressed support as they entered the conference. However, at least one attendee reacted angrily, confronting protesters as they demonstrated outside the venue.
NatureScot holds future of guga hunt in its hands
The guga hunt involves hunters travelling to the remote island of Sula Sgeir, around 40 miles north of the Isle of Lewis. There they take young gannets from their nests and kill them for a traditional delicacy.
This year, 2026, the guga hunters have requested to kill up to 2,000 gannet chicks. It has become the most controversial licence application in the hunt’s history. Following mounting scientific evidence, animal welfare concerns and unprecedented public opposition, NatureScot’s Board will decide on 3 August whether to grant the 2026 licence. This is the first time the decision has escalated to NatureScot’s senior leadership.
Today’s protest comes just weeks before that decision, with campaigners urging NatureScot to refuse the licence. Protect the Wild said the Board’s decision on 3 August will be a defining test of whether NatureScot’s commitment to protecting Scotland’s biodiversity is meaningful, or merely “words on paper.”
Speaking at the protest, Devon Docherty, Scottish campaigns manager at Protect the Wild, said:
It’s hard to imagine a more striking contradiction than a nature agency co-hosting a biodiversity conference while facilitating the mass-slaughter of protected native seabirds.
NatureScot’s job is to protect nature and wildlife, not outdated cultural traditions that harm them. It’s baffling that we’re even having to be here reminding them of that.
On 3 August, NatureScot has a choice: keep defending a cruel hunt that robs Gannets of their only chick, or show that their commitment to biodiversity is more than just words on paper.
Protect the Wild argues that the licensing landscape has fundamentally changed. It cites the “devastating” impacts of avian influenza on gannet populations, disturbance of other nesting seabirds, and recent evidence that the killing is inhumane.
The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission is the Scottish government’s official advisor on animal welfare. It recently concluded there is no feasible way to carry out the guga hunt humanely. Its report found that the hunt risks causing unnecessary suffering to gannet chicks, which are taken from their nests using noose-ended poles before being killed by repeated blows to the head with a wooden club.
Protect the Wild says the Commission’s findings should be “the nail in the coffin” for the guga hunt.
Featured image via Protect the Wild
By The Canary
Pat McFadden, the leader of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is already working to set the media agenda ahead of the full publication of two flagship reports in the autumn. Inevitably, he’s bleating about ‘supporting’ people with health conditions to get into work.
In a 15 July interview with the Guardian, McFadden stated that his department had already begun its work in advance of the final reports:
Even before they’ve reported, I’m already speaking to the Department for Education [and] the Department for Health. We’re going to have to respond to this as a government.
It’s my job to put together a plan, a proposal, [that] changes the question of the welfare state from simply asking, ‘what benefits are you entitled to?’, to asking, ‘how can we help you live the fullest life?’
Well that’s just lovely, isn’t it? The problem, of course, is that we live in a capitalist society, and frequently ‘having money’ is a necessary component of being alive.
The Milburn and Timms Reviews
First, a note on the findings of those two major reports so far. The Milburn Review on youth unemployment published its interim report back in May. The preliminary findings mentioned increasing levels of disability, a lack of support in schools, and growing up in poverty.
However, the interjection of review leader MP Alan Milburn’s hostility to mental health conditions and neurodivergence. Meanwhile, back in reality, DWP benefits are often harder for neurodivergent individuals – like those with ADHD – to obtain.
Likewise, in July, social security minister Stephen Timms published his interim report on the state of the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) system. He found that the payments were vitally necessary for disabled recipients. However, the system was “not fit for purpose”, and assessments were often “degrading” and “dehumanising”.
The problem with DWP ‘support’
So, what has McFadden’s take-away from the interim reports been so far? The DWP boss said:
I don’t believe government fulfils its responsibilities simply by writing a cheque. I think we owe people more than that.
Of course, for people who can never work, the system must always be there for them, and it always should be. But for those who could work, or could change their situation, then we’ve got to help them do that.
That’s a lot of words for not much at all, isn’t it?
Of course, there’s no problem with trying to provide extra support for people who are trying to get into work. As the interim Timms report acknowledged, the vast majority of people on health and disability benefits are open to the idea of work. However, they’re often constrained by their health or a lack of support in work.
However, there’s a distinct undercurrent to what McFadden is saying: it looks an awful lot like he’s suggesting ‘support’ instead of vital benefits, rather than as well as benefits. Or, at the very least, he’s failing to rule that out.
In fact, McFadden has previously acknowledged that the Timms Review is forbidden from stating that more money needs to put into the system. However, it’s of course permitted to recommend cuts.
Those strictures are at odds with the actual findings of the interim report, which acknowledges the benefit as necessary but frequently monetarily inadequate.
The welfare ‘reform’ agenda
With the now seemingly-inevitable takeover of Andy Burnham and the next PM, welfare reform is once again at the top of the agenda. Inevitably, the compliant mainsteam media is trotting out the narrative that benefits spending is ‘out of control’ right on cue.
In reality, however, benefits spending from the DWP has actually fallen as a percentage of GDP compared to 2012-13 levels. This is significant because 2013 represents the peak of welfare spending following the global financial crisis. However, even compared to the pre-crisis figures of 2007-8, it’s only risen by 0.8%.
However, the UK government has ever been a follower of the dominant narrative, rather than fact. As such, McFadden has been scrabbling to find room for welfare cuts.
In the recent Guardian interview, regarding potential avenues for welfare reform, he stated that:
You have to invest in the support. In the past, people have been signed off [on benefits] and written off. That has – as we’ve heard from this morning’s group – often led to people feeling isolated, depressed, their condition becoming worse, not better.
McFadden had met with work coaches and the disabled individuals they worked with at a job centre in Kennington. The Guardian reported that the pensions secretary saw such work-support schemes as showing how Labour needs to approach welfare reform.
Again, and for emphasis, supporting people as they get into work is a good thing. However, the DWP has demonstrated time and time again that it can’t be trusted to determine who can and cannot work.
Likewise, as Timms has already found, benefits like PIP are already too low to achieve their stated purpose. Any additional support for work must work alongside benefits rather than replacing them. Burnham’s government, whether or not it features McFadden, must not use ‘reform’ as a byword for gutting welfare even further.
Featured image via the Canary
By Grace
Toy Story 5 PIXAR/Alamy
4 min read
When Pixar want to frighten us, they do not reach for monsters. In the new Toy Story 5, the villain is something familiar to many a family: a frog-shaped tablet called Lilypad, given to eight-year-old Bonnie by well-meaning parents who hope it will help her make friends.
It does the opposite. Bonnie becomes hooked. Her toys are abandoned in a drawer. The ‘friends’ the tablet introduces turn on her in a group chat. The film’s director, Andrew Stanton, put it bluntly: ‘When tech comes in, it wins. It happens to adults and kids. It just wins.’
Any parent watching will feel the recognition land like a stone. Government has seen this too – the impact of screens on mental health, sleep, and school achievement – and it has acted. Our Australian style ban on under-16s accessing social media is expected to reach Parliament before Christmas and it will have my full support.
A vast majority of parents support it too, and as a dad with two young boys, I understand why. It is a wild-west online with inappropriate and often dangerous content rife across the platforms children spend hours on each day. Since being elected, I have received well over a thousand emails from parents on these issues. Their desire for action is unanimous, and I am pleased the Government has listened.
But there are no quick fixes here, and we do families a disservice if we expect a ban to work on its own. Children are ingenious, workarounds are everywhere, and a child will one day turn sixteen and step onto these platforms with no more preparation than the day the ban came in. A ban does not build the one thing that actually protects children in the long run: a confident parent who knows how to have difficult conversations about content, models their own relationship with their phone, and provides boundaries and rules that stick. Restriction without guidance simply moves the problem to another day.
A social media ban won’t save childhood. A parenting programme for every parent might.
The solution to this can also be modelled on Australia too – where a digital programme providing advice, strategies and tips has been available for the last four years. Thankfully, we have pledged to roll out a similar digital programme for every parent – yet the rollout has been paused at a vital time. This would make guidance available to parents at their fingertips, at the moment they need it, wherever they live. That commitment is written into the Best Start for Life strategy in black and white – and I hope the value of this support programme for parents won’t be lost at a moment of political transition.
Finishing the job on the online parenting programme will cost a fraction of the effort that a ban will take, and the benefits will be vast. We know this because in Australia, the Triple P parenting programme has reached almost 700,000 families. Deloitte assessed the initiative to deliver up to $20 in benefits for every $1 invested over 20 years. Few policies in government offer that.
Australia did not choose between regulating platforms and equipping parents. They did both. Too often, parents who admit they are struggling are met with judgment rather than an outstretched hand. Modern problems require modern solutions, and the solution here is not to shame parents into fighting the tide alone, nor to imagine that a ban will do the parenting for them.
So, sure, banning access to the apps is an important part of this solution. But the new PM will also need to give parents a tool to work through this major change to family life. In the film, Bonnie eventually found a way to build friendships, re-discover joy, and allow herself to be ‘childish’ and play. We can, and should, do this for young people in real life, too.
Connor Rand, is Labour MP for Altrincham and Sale West.
Andreas Kirsch is a research scientist at Google’s AI DeepMind project. Well, he is right now, anyway. When his bosses read what he’s been saying, they might be having a conversation:
I work at Google DeepMind. This won't make me popular. But it's all public reporting:
2014: DeepMind reportedly sold to Google on conditions: no military use, independent oversight
2026: a Pentagon contract for "any lawful government purpose" Not one safeguard survived intact pic.twitter.com/bdPBqbGvu6
— Andreas Kirsch
(@BlackHC) July 14, 2026
Google: intimate relationship with the Pentagon
Kirsch has taken issue with a new contract between Google and the Pentagon. He says that 600 of his colleagues:
signed an open letter asking Sundar Pichai not to put our AI models on classified networks.
The deal was signed anyway. I learned about it from the press.
Large Language Model (LLM) research company DeepMind was originally independent before Google bought it. Kirsch showed the timeline of how DeepMind got to where it is today:
None of this is new. DeepMind’s governance record:
2014: independent ethics board — reportedly a condition of the sale
2015: one informal meeting; then effectively abandoned
2018: AI Principles exclude weapons & surveillance
2025: exclusions dropped
2026: Pentagon contract pic.twitter.com/ZBaZrUG8Ls— Andreas Kirsch
As Kirsch highlighted, some of the wording in the contract is designed to give the impression that safety protocols exist. The reality is the US military will be able to use AI as it likes.
Weapons of war
To be clear: I’m not categorically against military AI. I wrote in 2018 that autonomous weapons are inevitable, and I haven’t changed my mind. Ukraine has reinforced that.
The US and its allies can’t afford a capability asymmetry with adversaries eager to militarize AI.
Whether you agree with this or not, it is the case that people have always objected to new weapons of war; whether they were talking about the musket, the machine gun, or the autonomous drone. It’s a stronger position to oppose war full stop than it is to oppose the means of war, because once you accept war is needed, it obviously follows that you should use the most advanced technology at your disposal.
This isn’t to say it’s always wrong to oppose the use of certain weapons, obviously, but it can be a distraction from the underlying problem.
Explaining his opposition, Kirsch said:
today’s LLMs are not robust enough to make life-and-death decisions on their own. They hallucinate. They fail in surprising, banal ways. They should not be used for targeting decisions or as part of autonomous weapons.
And the bigger problem isn’t military use at all.
The reported contract does not exclude mass surveillance, and it keeps paths open that could extend to autonomous policing.
These don’t defend us against foreign adversaries. They shift power from citizens toward the state, in ways that are very hard to reverse.
Agentic frontier models are a step change for surveillance. They can fuse data streams, track individuals, and reason about people’s motivations to predict their behavior. Autonomously, and at scale.
And governments rarely surrender new capabilities once they have them.
The fact that this tech is prone to mistakes makes it even more terrifying. Especially as we’ve already seen what this looks like in action, as the BBC reported in March:
A police force has paused the use of live facial recognition (LFR) cameras after a study found it was statistically more likely to identify black people than other ethnic groups.
Essex Police has used the technology since summer 2024, but the study identified “a potential bias in the positive identification rate” of black people over white people on its watchlist.
The force said that following updates to its algorithm and software, it was confident that LFR cameras could be deployed again.
But campaign group Big Brother Watch said the technology was “authoritarian, inaccurate and ineffective in equal measure”.
Solutions
Speaking on what he wants from Google, Kirsch said:
What should happen now?
Google should publish the terms, or enough of them to show whether enforceable safeguards exist and what visibility remains in classified deployments. And it should tell employees what was signed.
We need laws, not policy memos.
It’s predictable that a monopoly like Google would bend to the whims of the US government. Google relies on state support to maintain its monopoly just as America relies on Google to give it the tech infrastructure needed to maintain the surveillance state.
This is just one more reason why no company should be as big or powerful as Google is today.
Featured image via the Canary
By Willem Moore
Former senior UN human rights chief, Craig Mokhiber, has written a fierce opinion piece in Mondoweiss denying Israel’s right to exist.
In the essay, he calls for the dismantling of the Israeli regime, which is on trial for genocide at the ICJ, charges that the court has found plausible enough to issue a series of preliminary orders — all of which the regime has ignored.
Mokhiber calls for Israel to be replaced by a free Palestine with equal rights for all, which is not only a legal requirement but an “existential imperative for all of humanity”.
My latest: No, Israel does not have ‘a right to exist.’ Quite the contrary, actually. https://t.co/AeqS7e9YGp
— Craig Mokhiber (@CraigMokhiber) July 14, 2026
In the article, Mokhiber deploys both decolonial theory and international jurisprudence to argue that Israel, like the apartheid and colonial regimes of the past, possesses no legitimate “right to exist” and indeed should be dismantled.
He writes:
Clearly, no one would today argue that Nazi Germany, or Apartheid South Africa, or Vichy France, or Khmer Rouge Kampuchea had a “right to exist.” Nor would we entertain claims for eternal colonial regimes in Algeria, India, Namibia, or Kenya. For the same reasons, no legal (or moral) argument could justify a right to exist for Zionist Israel.
There is no “right to exist” for states under international law. Thus, Israel cannot claim such a right.
Craig Mokhiber highlights Namibia and Rhodesia
Mokhiber draws particular attention to the legal precedents set by the international community’s treatment of apartheid Namibia and white-minority-ruled Rhodesia. Cases that he argues establish binding obligations for how the world must respond to Israel today.
He says:
To the contrary, international law requires that, where breaches of peremptory norms of international law are integral to the creation, expansion, and sustaining of a state (as was the case in apartheid Namibia and Rhodesia), such entities should not be recognized or accepted as legitimate states and should in no way be assisted.
Mokhiber noted that, like the two, Israel was founded on the breach of two peremptory (jus cogens) norms of international law.
Israel’s record is clear. It was founded on the breach of two peremptory (jus cogens) norms: the right to self-determination of the people of the land, and the rule on the non-acquisition of territory by force, as well as on the two highest crimes in international law: genocide and aggression.
Israel: A rogue regime
Scathingly, he lists Israel’s crimes:
- The Israeli regime has held the distinction of being in breach of the highest number of UN resolutions and ICJ decisions of any country on the planet.
- The regime is unlawfully occupying Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, attacking Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, and beyond, and perpetrating genocide in Palestine.
- The regime has carried out assassinations across the region and has admitted to (indeed, bragged about) transnational terrorist attacks with booby-trapped pagers in Lebanon.
- The regime has declared policies mandating the mass murder of civilians (the Dahiya Doctrine), the killing of its own citizens (the Hannibal Directive), and the potential nuclear destruction of the world (the Samson Option).
- The regime has spies active in countries around the globe, and its proxies are actively engaged in corrupting governments and institutions across the West.
For Mokhiber, the question is not whether Israel has a right to exist, a concept he calls “nonsense, unrooted as it is in either law or fact”.
Rather, it is whether the international community dares to apply the same legal and moral standards to Israel that it applied to the colonial and apartheid regimes of the past.
Featured image via Democracy Now
By The Canary
Lebanon — On the road to Tebnine we passed through the village of al-Mashouk. On one side of the road, which fell sharply into the valley below, was the empty shell of a modern building that had contained four stories — now above and below the carriageway. The bomb, which had destroyed it, had been powerful enough to set fire to homes and businesses on the other side of the street. Also writing off a Civil Defence fire appliance parked nearby.
South Lebanon health sector
This area — south of the southern city of Tyre — is sparsely populated with many remote low-income farming communities. It is the kind of rural area that has been hit particularly hard by the ongoing financial crisis that has crippled Lebanon since 2019. So, the people here rely on humanitarian organizations to fill the gaps in primary health care.
This building had been home to several specialist clinics and numerous offices. It had been a hub for mobile healthcare where ambulances and mobile clinics, often staffed by volunteers, were coordinated to serve the locality. A place where programs for mental and physical health education were formulated along with vaccinations, maternity care, dentistry and other specialist services. It was also run by the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Authority, which had sealed its fate.
This organisation was established in 1984 during Lebanon’s nightmarish civil war. It has a charitable status recognised nationally and internationally. It runs an estimated ninety-five clinics across the south and Bekaa Valley — and is seen as a key component of the social work that cements the popularity of Hezbollah in poorer areas.
The Israelis claim that such projects, and their associated buildings and ambulances, are being secretly used by Hezbollah to transport and store weapons — making them a military target. As with similar accusations made against hospitals in Gaza, no evidence has been produced. There was certainly no sign of any military equipment among the furniture and patient records strewn among the rubble of this particular bomb site.
South Lebanon — central war-zone
Twenty kilometres along the road we reached our destination. The town of Tebnine sits in the centre of South Lebanon. Just one kilometre away, across the valley, the Israelis occupy the hilltops. Post-ceasefire, the town shakes several times a day as the occupiers demolish villages on their side of the yellow line with hundreds of tons of explosives.
The Tebnine Governmental Hospital serves the Bint Jbeil district, which saw the fiercest fighting right up until the recent ceasefire. Its staff, who continued their life-saving work through one hundred and ten days of intense bombardment, are the stuff of local legend.
The visibly damaged hospital stood amid the rubble of multiple airstrikes. The security guard’s booth — by the entrance — was burnt out along with a vehicle used for delivering blood and documents. The outside walls were peppered with the shrapnel of multiple blasts, and the solar panels lay smashed upon the roof. Most people here agree that the presence of international Red Cross staff was possibly what prevented it from being targeted for direct hits.
Inside, administrator Mohammad Awarke showed us around destroyed offices scattered with glass from their smashed windows. Rooms and corridors had temporary perspex walls constructed to replace the demolished concrete. He explained how a dedicated team of builders had operated twenty-four hours a day during the onslaught. Replacing walls and windows with plastic to keep out the clouds of smoke and dust that billowed all around the building during the war.
The damage inside had extended way past the waiting areas into the emergency departments, ICU, operating theatres and MRI unit. Outside, multiple ambulances had been damaged beyond repair by the strikes.
The countdown to war
Mohammad explained that intense preparations had been made in the run-up to the war restarting on March 1st:
For about fifteen months between 2024 and 2026 the atmosphere pointed towards another war coming — daily attacks, daily strikes, daily targeting, drones, and so on. During those fifteen months, we were already working with the consequences of war: the wounded arriving from the attacks and the bombardments. So, we prepared stores for this next phase.
We also had support from the International Committee of the Red Cross. They were helping us and were present with us in the hospital. Their team was here, assisting us. The Ministry of Health was also helping.
It is hard to imagine the exhaustion endured by the staff as the three months of carnage commenced and intensified with no end in sight. All the nearest medical facilities were either damaged or evacuated, leaving this one alone to face wave after wave of casualties. He continued:
From the very beginning of the war on the first of March, our position was clear. We knew that we were staying in the hospital, standing firm to serve our people and our community in this area. During those hundred and ten days, we received around two thousand people. Between martyrs and the wounded, around one thousand four hundred and fifty were wounded, and the rest were martyrs.
As the war had rolled on the hospital had started to run low on essentials of every description. Mohammad explained:
In terms of supplies. Medical supplies, food and so on. We had some stock. But a hundred and ten days is a long period. The Red Cross helped us with some medical items, also with diesel for the generator. The Lebanese Army was providing us with water because we had a problem with that. We usually get it from the state. But that supply was cut off. So the army brought us water every day. The South Council also brought us food and other supplies. These were the people and organisations who stood by our side.
Doctors and nurses targeted
On the relentless explosions endured by the staff and patients he said:
There was around fourteen airstrikes next to the hospital, all within a hundred metres. It sustained a lot of damage, but we kept going. The strikes were heavy and extremely close. If you walk around the hospital, you can see the destruction. Equipment destroyed, ceilings collapsed, glass shattered.
During the closest strikes we had over thirty injuries among the medical staff. The nurses and doctors. Some of those injuries happening four or five at a time, mostly from flying glass. Thankfully all those injuries were minor. But one young man from the Red Cross was martyred.
Volunteer paramedic Hasan Badawi had been with the Lebanese Red Cross since 2012. On April 13th he had been answering an emergency call with a colleague at the village of Beit Yahoun. Their ambulance was clearly marked. They were both in uniform. There is no way that they could have been mistaken for anything other than civilian first responders doing their duty.
As Hasan had been taking a stretcher from the back of the vehicle a drone had attacked. He was killed and his colleague seriously injured. He was the eighty-ninth humanitarian worker killed since the war had restarted in March. His colleague was also badly injured.
Hasan had two children with another on the way. He had called his pregnant wife the day before he was killed, saying that the bombing was everywhere but he would not leave his colleagues and patients.
The Israelis have offered no explanation for this atrocity. Outcry from the International Red Cross and the government in Lebanon has received the usual response that the incident is “under investigation”.
Warcrime after warcrime
Before leaving Tebnine, we visited the scene of yet another destroyed health centre just yards from the hospital. Across the street and around a hundred yards up the hill stood what was left of the ‘Dr’s Lab for medical analysis’ building. A large three-story facility which had contained a number of laboratories dedicated to the task of processing medical samples. It had clearly taken a direct hit from a bomb which had penetrated the roof and exploded in the rooms of the basement floor destroying everything above.
Yet another war crime against civilian medical infrastructure. Funded and facilitated by hypocritical Western democracies that supply the weapons while looking away from the consequences.
Images supplied by Guy Smallman
Video supplied by Tebnine Government Hospital
By Guy Smallman
Beware a prime minister in search of a legacy. Fresh off imposing a social-media ban on British teenagers, Keir Starmer appears determined to inflict another dreadful parting gift on the nation.
This week, the Labour government announced plans to end ‘pay discrimination’ by ensuring all work that is of ‘equal value’ receives equal pay. On the surface, this might sound harmless or even progressive. In practice, it is anything but.
Listening to equalities minister Seema Malhotra announcing the reforms, you might get the impression that workplace discrimination in 21st-century Britain is on a par with segregation in 19th-century Mississippi. Apparently, racist employers – both in the public and private sectors – are paying some people less, purely on the basis of their skin colour or because they have a disability.
If you’d not heard before that such evil practices were happening in the UK, that’s because they are not. Indeed, it has long been illegal to pay people differently on the basis of race, sex, disability or any other protected characteristic. Certainly, any major employer would risk catastrophic fines and penalties if it were found guilty of racial discrimination. Nevertheless, to combat this allegedly rampant unfairness, the government has floated the idea of creating an Equal Pay Regulation and Enforcement Unit and expanding ‘equal pay’ rules that currently apply to sex to cover ‘race and disability’, too.
A clue as to what this really means is buried in a consultation document, published on Tuesday. New legislation, it says, will ‘enable claims for pay discrimination where work is not materially similar but is “rated as equivalent” or of “equal value”, for race and disability’. The jargon can’t disguise what is very bad news indeed.
We need only look at the unhappy state of affairs at Birmingham City Council to see how damaging the equal-pay regime has already been when applied only to sex. In 2012, 175 workers – predominantly women – took the council to court over claims that they were being paid less than male employees. The basis of this claim was that female-dominated jobs, like cleaners, were paid less than male-dominated jobs, like refuse workers. They didn’t argue the work was actually the same, only that it was of ‘equal value’, and that they had therefore been subjected to sex-based discrimination. The Supreme Court, citing the Equality Act 2010, agreed with the claimants. This landed Birmingham with a £750million bill.
Finally, unable to cover the costs of the payouts, Birmingham declared bankruptcy in 2023. One of the most notorious consequences of this was the rolling bin strikes, which began last year and are still ongoing. For months on end, hundreds of tonnes of rubbish were left uncollected to rot on the streets of the UK’s second city.
The concept of ‘equivalent work’ could soon do to Brighton and Coventry what it has done to Birmingham. As of December 2025, the GMB union claimed it had won over £1 billion on behalf of its members from settling equal-pay cases with six local councils, including Glasgow, Leeds and Sheffield.
The private sector is not immune, either. Leigh Day, the same law firm that successfully bankrupted Birmingham, was also partly successful in suing Asda and is now taking legal action against Tesco. In both cases, the supermarket giants stood accused of illegally paying warehouse workers (mainly men) more than workers stacking shelves or working at checkouts (mainly women). Asda could be forced to pay £1.2 billion should the equal-pay claims succeed fully, while Tesco could be on the hook for as much as £4 billion.
It ought to go without saying that neither Birmingham nor Tesco is alleged to have paid men more than women for performing the same work. What they have done is pay higher wages for certain jobs that are less desirable and more demanding. Refuse work and warehouse work both require employees to work unsociable hours – often very early in the morning or through the night – and are more physically intensive. The fact that more men have taken up these posts than women is not a sign of sexism or discrimination. It merely reflects those employees’ choices and personal circumstances.
You might now be thinking, why should I shed a tear for Tesco or Asda, or for Birmingham’s bureaucrats? But it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that these equal-pay claims quickly rebound on workers. Birmingham’s refuse workers, for instance, were forced to take a pay cut, partly to ‘equalise’ their pay with female staff and to cover the staggering costs of the backpay from the successful equal-pay claims. This then prompted them to go on strike, causing the entire city to suffer. The refuse workers clearly felt their reduced pay package no longer reflected the value of their work.
Expanding these equal-pay provisions to race and disability would undoubtedly lead to an explosion in employment-tribunal claims. Worse, it could set off a bomb under the economy, as firms go bust and councils declare themselves bankrupt. And it could even prove damaging to race relations, encouraging employees to view themselves as members of competing identity blocs, rather than as workers with shared interests.
Keir Starmer, whether he cares or not, is playing with fire with this parting equal-pay shot. It marks yet another contribution to the disastrous legacy of this most useless of prime ministers.
Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.
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