Politics
Peter Mandelson reportedly backs Wes Streeting for PM
Streeting — Keir Starmer’s downfall was hastened by his relationship with Peter Mandelson. Despite knowing Mandelson maintained a relationship with the dead paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Starmer made the man our ambassador to the US. This made it clear to all that Starmer is a man with phenomenally bad judgement. It also made it clear that we can’t have another PM who’s linked to Mandelson.
Now, Wes Streeting thinks he’s the man to replace Starmer. And you know who else supposedly thinks that?
Peter Mandelson tells friends he backs Wes Streeting for Labour leader https://t.co/OohaxSyCPl
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) May 16, 2026
Wes and Pete
The Mail described Mandelson’s backing as follows:
It is the backing that every leadership contender dreads: the endorsement of Peter Mandelson.
According to the Mail, Mandelson told friends that Streeting is the only potential replacement:
with anything new to offer or the ability to connect with voters.
We know what you’re thinking, and yes — he was talking about the same Wes Streeting (allegedly). This is despite Streeting being dedicated to the same failed privatisation ideology of every other Labour right politician.
Mandelson protege Wes Streeting didn't want to speak to the Canary's @cjmbaillie today about notorious Palantir – apparently he needs "permission" to speak to journalists. From whom? Petie? #GortonAndDenton #GortonDentonByElection pic.twitter.com/LZ8xfr2LZL
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) February 26, 2026
As Health Secretary, Wes Streeting deepened the privatisation of our NHS and handed over our data to Palantir, a company involved in genocide.
I am sure his friend Peter Mandelson is very proud.
Time to reinstate our NHS as a fully public service — and kick Palantir out!
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) May 14, 2026
The Mail also reports:
I have not made and will not make – categorically – any comment on candidates or aspects of this contest, so you have been misinformed.’
Generally, with politicians like Mandelson, you can assume that when you hear from their ‘friends’ you’re actually hearing from them. This is how it all works. The media gets titbits, and the leakers get to remain anonymous.
Regardless of what Mandelson did or didn’t say, Streeting and Starmer’s government have all been tainted by this scandal:
Wes Streeting talking about Epsteins victims
Streeting knew Mandelson had stayed at Epsteins house after he was convicted & he didn't speak out publicly when he was appointed, because Mandelson was his political friend & ally. Where was Streetings concern for the victims then? pic.twitter.com/jnPp9cv87s
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) February 25, 2026
Streeting the moment
To be entirely fair, it’s not outside the realms of possibility that someone hostile to Streeting made up the Mandelson endorsement. This is the problem with the Labour Party; it’s a bunch of anti-social careerists who are constantly briefing against one another.
Regardless of who Mandelson did or didn’t endorse, anyway, this country does not need Streeting as PM.
Less than 5 months ago Wes Streeting was defending Peter Mandelson in his job as the UKs ambassador to the US (clip from September 2025) pic.twitter.com/gpqfG716uG
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) February 2, 2026
Featured image via Getty Images (WPA Pool) / Getty Images (Anna Moneymaker)
By Willem Moore
Something truly callous happened in London on Saturday. Shortly before the grieving mother of a young woman who was murdered by an illegal immigrant was about to go on stage and share her heartbreak, activists flashed the slogan ‘Immigration makes Britain brilliant’ on a huge screen. As the mum was no doubt going over her notes, steeling herself for her nervous speech about the horrors inflicted on her daughter, ‘progressives’ decided to remind her and her dumb admirers that actually immigration is fab. And there it was: the iron fist of cruelty in the velvet glove of ‘Be Kind’.
The mum was Siobhan Whyte, mother of Rhiannon. In 2024, Rhiannon was murdered by an ‘asylum seeker’ from Sudan called Deng Majek. She had been working at the very migrant hotel where Majek was staying. One evening, after she finished another day’s graft of cooking for Majek and the others, he followed her to the railway station and stabbed her 23 times with a screwdriver. He then danced with glee over her bleeding body. Siobhan, in her speech at Saturday’s Unite the Kingdom rally, fumed against the politicians who have let our borders go to rack and ruin. Keir Starmer is an ‘abhorrent excuse of a leader’, she said. He has ‘failed us’.
The ‘progressives’ who intruded into the Unite the Kingdom rally with their pro-immigration taunting were from Led By Donkeys, the turbo-smug, craft-beer tosser collective that was born from the middle classes’ imperious disgust with the vote for Brexit. As Siobhan and thousands of others made their way to Parliament Square, Led By Donkeys carried out one of their cunning stunts, flashing their ‘brilliant immigration’ slogan on a digital billboard by the roadside. The bourgeois press lapped it up, loving this vision of graduate leftists from leafy London ripping the piss out of the gammon-hued working classes who dumbly worry about our broken borders.
The rest of us, though, those of us whose moral compasses are not yet cracked, were left with two striking images from Saturday. On one side, a shattered mum giving a faltering address on the awful fallout from unchecked immigration, and on the other, well-fed Guardianista wankers saying immigration is the best. On the stage, a harrowing tale of working-class suffering at the hands of a cruel man and an apathetic establishment – in the crowd, the digital scoffing of a privileged middle class that thinks riff-raff whining about immigration is basically fascism. Working-class pain and bourgeois jeers – rarely has our moral divide, our moral chasm, been so grimly on display.
These are the battlelines in modern Britain. There are the cold, insular elites for whom mass immigration is a source of moral virtue and cheap labour – and there are the concerned communities who worry that our withered sovereignty is undermining the sanctity of the nation and the security of its people. There are the chattering classes who have made being ‘pro-immigration’ into a cheap pose designed to demonstrate one’s moral fitness for high society – and there are the working classes who must live with the consequences of this sacrifice of our territorial integrity at the altar of bourgeois virtue. People like Siobhan Whyte, whose daughter’s precious life was lost to the post-sovereignty mania of her supposed betters.
Saturday really did shine a light on The Two Britains. There were two protests in London. There was Unite the Kingdom, called by Tommy Robinson, at which a mostly working-class audience waved the Union flag and aired their grievances over the slow death of British identity. And there was the ‘Nakba Day’ protest, at which a mostly middle-class audience waved the Palestine flag and aired their fury against the world’s only Jewish nation. One gathering wanted to repair a kingdom, the other dreamt of destroying one – the Jewish one. ‘From the river to the sea’, they chanted, and we know what that means: erase the Jewish State, every last inch, all the way from the river to the sea.
The Palestine demo was an orgy of bigotry dolled up as virtue. It was proof that the middle-class left, bereft of ideas for Britain itself, now derives its sense of meaning almost entirely from hating Israel. Masked in their culturally appropriated keffiyehs, they barked for the globalisation of the intifada and wrung their untoiled hands over that sneaky, bloodlusting ‘Zionist entity’. The vibe at Unite the Kingdom could not have been more different. It was more mellow, more serious, more devoted to fixing the land in which we live rather than annihilating the land in which the Jews live. One side cried out for the restoration of
Britain, the other for the obliteration of Israel.
And yet it was Unite the Kingdom that was tarred as fascistic and dangerous, including by Keir Starmer himself. Was there bigotry in some of the speeches at Unite the Kingdom? Unquestionably. There were flashes of anti-Semitism at the rally, too, with one white-supremacist banner calling for an end to ‘the Zionist occupation of Britain’. Yet as the Campaign Against Antisemitism says, that vile far-right hate was ‘absolutely dwarfed by the anti-Jewish hatred [on the Palestine march]’. ‘Hang every ZOG pedo cunt’, said a placard on that ‘kind’ demo, ZOG meaning ‘Zionist Occupied Government’. The Palestine demo was infused with dreams of anti-Jewish violence (intifada) and a longing for the vaporisation of the Jewish State.
On what planet is it the grandmothers with St George’s flags who are the Nazis, while the masked mobs hollering for apocalyptic violence against the Jewish nation are ‘progressives’? In what moral universe does it make sense to denounce proud working-class Britons as fascist scum, while letting the lowlife celebrators of the 7 October pogrom pose as good guys? This is moral inversion of the most staggering kind. It is a crime against truth. If you’re working class and want to live in a safer, happier nation, you’re scum; if you’re a keffiyeh loudmouth who thinks the rape and murder of Jews is ‘resistance’, you’re good. Future historians will marvel at the lies and sheer moral bankruptcy of our times.
Starmer’s televised address on Friday, in which he railed against Unite the Kingdom as if it were the second coming of the Luftwaffe, was the most shaming moment of his premiership. The vast majority on that rally were good people who just want proper working borders, a tougher clampdown on Islamist extremism, and a tad more national pride. For Starmer to defame them as a threat to the nation, as a ‘stark reminder of exactly what we are up against’, is repulsive. We now have a prime minister who defines himself in opposition to his own people, like some mad, drunk monarch marooned in his remote tower. Those chanters on Saturday were right: ‘Keir Starmer’s a wanker.’
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.
Kuenssberg — Josh Simons is the now-ex-Labour MP who was found to have spied on journalists. As we’re supposed to live in a liberal democracy, this sort of behaviour should be frowned upon. Instead, the national broadcaster just treated Simons like a normal politician:
Josh Simons is on #bbclaurak this morning.
Will Laura Kuenssberg ask him about his role as the head of Labour Together, when he organised a smear campaign against a journalist investigating the organisation, and for which he had to subsequently resign as a minister? pic.twitter.com/KzN5p1EQ41
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 17, 2026
Kuenssberg — Josh Simons
On 14 May, the Canary’s Skwawkbox reported:
Simons was in charge of LT when it paid a firm to spy on independent journalist and author Paul Holden, who was writing a book about LT’s secret activities and its sabotage of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The firm also spied on a couple of ‘mainstream’ hacks who were prying a bit too closely. He quit when he was found out but remains a full-throated amplifier of antisemitism smears and turned on Starmer this week, at least publicly.
It’s clear why Simons would use antisemitism smears to discredit Israel critics, as Jody McIntyre reported for the Canary:
Last June, Simons received £5,000 from Mike Craven, a former press officer for Tony Blair. Craven, still listed as a director of Labour Together Limited on Companies House, has previously attacked Jeremy Corbyn “and the far left” for not recognising the Israeli state’s “right to exist”.
Additionally:
In February, it was revealed that he had failed to properly declare a donation from Trevor Chinn, the former Labour Together director and funder who, after being nominated by Labour Friends of Israel, received an Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor for “skills and work to the benefit of the State of Israel”.
And:
At the 2024 conference of the Jewish Labour Movement, Simons spoke alongside former Israeli spy Assaf Kaplan at an event that promised to teach the audience “how to run a good campaign”.
A more curious journalist than Kuenssberg might have asked Simons why he:
- Spied on British journalists.
- Has links to the security apparatus of a foreign country.
- Takes money from wealthy individuals whose sole interest seems to be promoting Israel.
Instead:
narrator: she did not. https://t.co/oKvTOlgOzw
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 17, 2026
Unsaid
The BBC had Simons on because he’s stepped down as an MP to allow Andy Burnham to run for parliament. This is a big story, obviously, but that doesn’t mean Simons’ history doesn’t matter. If anything, it makes his disgraceful actions more interesting.
Allowing a man who ran a factional org that broke the law when it channelled secret cash to fund Starmers rise, & which then ran a smear campaign against journalists investigating its role, to opine on whats gone wrong for Labour & the need to come together, is frankly absurd. pic.twitter.com/LmedXZ8HFT
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 17, 2026
In the clip above, Simons says this by-election is about whether Labour can win back working class voters. There’s no reflection on the fact that the right-wing faction he was a part of pushed away such voters by pursuing endless privatisation and corporatisation — a political ideology which made us all poorer (especially those of us in the North).
The endless Labour infighting also didn’t help, and most of it was driven by politicians like Simons:
Simons taking the moral high ground
Was it in the best interests of Lab & the country when you ran a smear campaign against journalists investigating the factional org you were running (which had played a key role in bringing Keir to power & broke electoral law in the process!) pic.twitter.com/VuCrvpVKza
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 17, 2026
Simons also called for an end to online anonymity:
The man who ran a secret campaign to target and smear journalists says anonymous accounts on social media are polluting our public conversation. pic.twitter.com/rkKajGy4y2
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 17, 2026
This is a bit rich from a guy who spied on journalists from the shadows!
When is a journalist not a journalist?
BBC journalism doesn’t exist to uncover the truth; it exists to obscure it. And as Saul Staniforth highlighted, this is far from the first time this has happened:
And keeps forgetting!https://t.co/IOk55q6iY2
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 17, 2026
Featured image via BBC
By Willem Moore
Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo has entered a new season of frustration with Saudi club Al-Nassr, after the team fell in the second AFC Champions League final to Japan’s Gamba Osaka by one goal to nil. The match was held at Al-Awwal Park in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
Al-Nassr lost a fresh opportunity to embrace silverware, having failed to capitalize on fan support and the advantage of playing on home soil. This continues their faltering season, having now squandered a third title after losing the Saudi Super Cup and an early exit from the King’s Cup.
“Al-Aalami” (The Global One) had opened the 2025-2026 season by losing the Super Cup title to Al-Ahli Saudi on penalties after an exciting 2-2 draw, before exiting the King’s Cup in the Round of 16 following a 2-1 defeat to Al-Ittihad Saudi.
Since Ronaldo’s arrival in Saudi Arabia at the beginning of 2023, in one of the most prominent deals in the history of Asian football, the Portuguese national team captain has failed to lead Al-Nassr to any official title, despite the massive expectations that accompanied his joining the team.
Ronaldo’s bad trophy form
The number of trophies Ronaldo has lost with Al-Nassr has reached 14, distributed among the Saudi Pro League, King’s Cup, and Super Cup, in addition to continental failure in the AFC Champions League, both in its old and new formats, culminating in the loss of the second AFC Champions League this season.
Just days ago, Ronaldo was only seconds away from clinching his first Saudi Pro League title, before his team’s goalkeeper made a mistake, putting the ball into his own net in the 98th minute, delaying the title’s fate until the final round in a tough battle with Al-Hilal.
Frustration prevailed for the Portuguese star Ronaldo after failing to win any title, despite achieving goal-scoring success after surpassing the 970-goal barrier and racing against time to reach goal number 1000.
Despite the ongoing setbacks, Ronaldo still has one last chance to break the cycle of disappointment when Al-Nassr hosts Damac in the final round of the Saudi Roshn League.
A win is enough for Al-Nassr to officially secure the league title, regardless of the result of Al-Hilal Saudi’s match against Al-Fayha, in a match that could bring Ronaldo his first official title in the team’s jersey since moving to Saudi Arabian fields.
Featured image via Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images
By Alaa Shamali
What a week of political intrigue! One of the things that has really irritated me is the number of my fellow political commentators, who refuse to give an opinion on what is likely to happen. Ok, sometimes we get things wrong, but at least we’ve nailed our colours to a particular mast. Even politicians are falling into this trap now.
I was on Newsnight on Monday with a Stermer-critical Labour MP called Jonathan Hinder. He’s the MP for Pendle and very much of the ‘you can trust me to tell the truth cos I’ve got a northern accent’ school of MPs. I liked him and he eloquently explained why Starmer needs to go. But when Victoria Derbyshire asked him who he wanted to succeed him, he was all over the place muttering inanities like ‘I need to hear what they’ve got to say’ or ‘let’s see their manifestos’. Why on earth would you seek to topple a prime minister if you had no idea who you wanted to replace him with? Bizarre.
The key to who will win is who Labour Party members vote for. Once the contest has been triggered – and it will be – MPs don’t really matter anymore. They have one vote, just as Labour members do. So who are Labour Party members?
There are far fewer of them than there used to be. They’re less left wing than they used to be. The hard left has largely, but not wholly, buggered off to the Greens. Having said that, the membership is still far more left wing than the general public as a whole. And this is where both Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham have a problem. Wes is unashamedly on the Blairite right of the party, whereas Andy Burnham is anything you’d like him to be at any particular time. He served in the Blair and Brown governments and was always seen as on the right, especially when he put in place the privatisation of a hospital while Health Secretary. And then when he failed to make a ripple in the 2015 leadership contest he served in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. He shouldn’t be allowed to gloss over that. Of the three likely runners and riders, Angela Rayner should have the left or soft-left vote sewn up.
Labour members should remember that they are not just electing a party leader, they’re electing a prime minister. They would do well to do the exact opposite of what Tory members did in 2022, when they elected Liz Truss over Rishi Sunak.
Andy Burnham may be the King of the North, and I think he has done a great job as Mayor Manchester, but running Manchester is not the same as running the country, and at least he has the experience of actually running something. However, he suffers from the same affliction as Keir Starmer – he has no fundamental ideological groundings. He is, however, excellent at the sales and marketing aspect to the job, something Starmer is also terrible at. My instinct is that he will lose the Makerfield by-election and Reform UK will throw everything at it, with the Tories and LibDems effectively sitting it out. They will field candidates, but only make token efforts to campaign. If he loses, Andy Burnham can’t run, leaving the way open for Ed Miliband to stand, if he comes to the conclusion that Angela Rayner’s candidacy doesn’t cut the mustard.
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Bridget Phillipson, Darren Jones or Al Carns could throw their hats into the ring, but that will probably not come until the by-election result is known.
So, no fence-sitting for me. I have no doubt in saying I think the best prime minister out of all the likely candidates would be Wes Streeting, even though I certainly don’t agree with a lot, and indeed most, of his policy utterances.
My hunch and prediction, though, is that Angela Rayner will win out in the end and become Britain’s first Labour female prime minister.
Go on. Shoot me down.
The UK is in an unusual situation in which everyone understands Keir Starmer is no longer PM except Keir Starmer himself. This is a problem, because Starmer is unfortunately the only person who can remove Starmer from office. Thankfully, though, there are now signs he’s planning to join us all here in reality.
As Labour MP Karl Turner said:
Good. It’s about time. He’s brought this on himself. Tatty bye. Briefed against good people. Disgrace. Absolute disgrace. https://t.co/IQ8FHSEt3B
— Karl Turner MP (@KarlTurnerMP) May 16, 2026
Keir Starmer — end of days
According to Dan Hodges of the Daily Mail, “close friends” of Starmer have said the PM is planning to set out a timetable for his departure. This obviously raises eyebrows, because it suggests he has “close friends”, and not simply people who owe their Cabinet positions to him.
Whether this anonymous insider was a friend or not, it’s reported that they said:
Keir understands the political reality.
He realises the current chaos is unsustainable. He simply wants to be able to do it in a dignified way and in a manner of his own choosing. He will set out a timetable.
The question now is not if Starmer will go but when. One source told Hodges:
Morgan McSweeney [the PM’s former chief of staff] has been urging him to hang on. He’s arguing if they show a tight contest or that Andy is on course to lose, then there is still a chance
Yes — that’s right — the disgraced McSweeney is back in the mix. It’s almost like Starmer is incapable of making his own decisions, isn’t it? And it’s almost like that’s why he proved to be such a weak and ineffectual prime minister.
Another source told Hodges:
He’s not going to take the risk of waiting for the result of the by-election. That would be too much of a personal humiliation. If he waits and then Burnham wins, it looks as if he’s driven him out of office.
To be fair, no one will think Burnham pushed him out of office; everyone understands it was Starmer’s own incompetence.
Team Burnham
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham is currently running to become the MP for Makerfield. Should he return to parliament, Burnham will be in a position to challenge Keir Starmer. That’s a big ‘if’, however, because Reform recently did well there, and current polling looks this:
Source: @Survation estimate, 15 May 2026 — Stats for Lefties
NEW | Burnham narrowly leads in Makerfield
Lab: 45% (-)
Ref: 42% (+10)
—
+/- vs 2024 general election pic.twitter.com/wwgueC9uDP
(@LeftieStats) May 16, 2026
According to Hodges, Burnham’s team want Starmer to hold back on announcing his departure until after Burnham wins. The strategy is that Starmer staying in place will motivate voters to return Burnham to parliament.
Ultimately, however, it might not make a difference, because we all know Starmer is gone one way or another.
Further on Keir Starmer and departure timetable:
* Team Burnham want him to wait until AFTER the by-election. They worry it would undermine their “Vote Andy to get rid of Starmer” message * Starmer remains furious at perceived cabinet betrayal. Believes Ministers who have been…
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) May 17, 2026
Going, going…
At this point, Keir Starmer is clearly going. While it’s not ideal that we face several months of being functionally leaderless, it’s not like Starmer was doing all that much leading anyway.
As we’ve reported, Burnham himself has many, many faults as a politician. Still, it does seem like we could get some decent policies out of him, including renationalisation and proportional representation.
In other words, while Burnham isn’t the second coming, he might at least show up.
Featured image via Getty Images / Getty Images
By Willem Moore
In 2025, Tommy Robinson surprised many by orchestrating the largest far-right rally this country had seen in decades. Robinson reacted to this as you would expect — by selling advertising space and merchandise. We imagine Robinson made good money off his fans because he always does, but the future prospects of his fash-for-cash operation are in serious doubt:
On the left the AI. — Gyll King Post Skip Diplomacy (@GyllKing) May 16, 2026
On the right the reality.
Tommy’s March was a flop.
Smaller than last year. pic.twitter.com/geBlXYWidA
A dying movement
Videos showed the crowd from different angles:
Tommy Robinson claims he's seen the aerial footage and "millions" attended his march.
Here's the main segment of their evening.
You be the judge. — smile2jannah (@smile2jannah) May 16, 2026
pic.twitter.com/vLzoKvxp5T
CNBC TV show footage of the far right march in London
They've just about filled Parliament square
With barely anyone between Parliament square and Trafalgar square On the cover image, look at the bottom, there's a giant screen, with pretty much no one to watch it – and… pic.twitter.com/AiZbNTwI4a
— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) May 16, 2026
I don't know but you can get anywhere between 10-15k in Parliament square depending on how squished up they are to one another
— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) May 16, 2026
Speaking on the number of attendees, Nick Lowles of Hope not Hate said:
I think there were between 50,000-60,000 on the Unite the Kingdom demo, way down on last September’s event.
It also felt low energy. There was a buzz about September, probably because the size of it caught people by surprise. Expectations were higher now and the event didn’t really live up to it.
The banning of 11 overseas speakers had a real impact on the demo. It distracted the organisers in the final week and the calibre of those who filled their spots were poor.
Last September, Elon Musk both helped build the demo and spoke. His absence was noticeable this time.
Lowles also said that Robinson:
will claim millions – but he will be lying.
More importantly though, and unlike last September, we have stood up to his narrative of division and hate. Britain is a better place than Lennon portrays. He failed, we are stronger than him
Today’s Unite the Kingdom rally will most likely be viewed as a disappointment by the organisers.
Low turnout, low energy, and lack of high profile speakers raises questions on how Lennon can continue these near-identical demos without losing momentum.https://t.co/vIZf1oMZhM
— HOPE not hate (@hopenothate) May 16, 2026
Commenter Mukhtar, meanwhile, noted the following:
Tommy Robinson asked for money to hire a helicopter for aerial footage so nobody could “lie about the numbers.” He claimed the helicopter had been booked four days earlier.
Guess what? No helicopter footage was used. Instead, he used clips from a TikTok livestream filmed by someone who climbed onto the roof of a building.
Embarrassing
This year’s event was such a mess that even right-wingers were embarrassed by it:
Richard here describing how he’s had to walk through urine as the drunken yobs at the UTK rally are pissing all over the streets of London
He’s had enough
And he’s a UTK supporter. https://t.co/O1zV40L9xz
— Stop The Bollocks with Mirabel (@MirabelTweets1) May 16, 2026
It’s not hard to see why given the behaviour on display:
— The Saviour (@TheSaviour) May 16, 2026
Tommy Robinson supporters in Westminister kick off and claim "two tier justice" because Tesco's aren't selling alcohol… pic.twitter.com/Yed33NNaXi
Urinate the kingdom https://t.co/Lf73Y6CnQ4
— ابا الهراء
(@m7amaRamadan) May 16, 2026
Of course, we have no sympathy for right-wingers who are fine with the blatant racism but draw the line at ungentlemanly behaviour. Because make no mistake — this was a hardcore racist affair:
the "entertainment" at Tommy Robinson low turn out unite the kingdom event..
disgusting, always is about hate nothing about unite the country at all pic.twitter.com/CfKL0VO1uM
— Just Dave now (@justdavenow89) May 16, 2026
The police would’ve arrested a pro-Palestine protester if they had held up a placard saying the exact same thing about Judaism. pic.twitter.com/FOVyR9XbC3
— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) May 16, 2026
It’s also clear from footage that some of these degenerates are teaching their kids to be as vile as they are:
I'm trying to imagine Muslim kids chanting something similar about the Jewish or Christian faiths at a rally in London. The Prevent folks, counter-terrorism police, the entire British media would be all over the story, asking why Muslims are so extreme & brainwashing their kids. https://t.co/mNDYNqtr35
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) May 17, 2026
This sort of brainwashing has real-life impacts, as we’ve seen:
I don’t recall wall to wall media coverage and politician outrage about this incident
Maybe if the Iranian Kurdish man had been an ambulance …… https://t.co/Q5VBUeI9YV
— Stop The Bollocks with Mirabel (@MirabelTweets1) March 23, 2026
Tommy Robinson’s limp lineup
As we reported, Robinson had problems getting a lineup of speakers for this years event. We’re not sure what this says about the British far-right, but Robinson heavily relied on foreign speakers. The problem is the government banned several of them from entering the UK because they’re hate mongers who wanted to stir up trouble.
As we reported on 15 January, banned speaker Eva Vlaardingerbroek:
is part of Generation Remigration, which is a group that advocates for – you guessed it – ‘remigration’.
Additionally:
Remigration is built on the idea that people of different ethnicities cannot live peacefully together. This is quite obviously what you would describe as ‘racist’. In years gone by, people on the far right would try to provide some sort of cover to claim ‘we’re not racist‘. Clearly, there is no such cover here.
Commenting on the speakers who did attend this year’s event, Mukhtar said that Robinson:
He also claimed celebrities would attend and give speeches. In the end, they had that washed-up actor Tamer Hassan on Zoom. Sharon Osbourne was a no-show, and even Katie Hopkins couldn’t be bothered to turn up, so she appeared on Zoom too.
When Starmer blocked foreign far-right agitators from entering the UK, Tommy tweeted that American congressmen were coming and dared him to block them. No American congressmen attended.
The event also included some of the worst musical performances of all time:
I must insist that you watch this from beginning to end. It’s beyond fucking awful and unintentionally hilarious. pic.twitter.com/2QWJK6Utl4
— Moog (@a_toots) May 16, 2026
Icky Rourke. pic.twitter.com/hs4Gti5f2X
— Jim Nauseum 2.0 (@jim_nauseum2) May 16, 2026
It’s hard to imagine anyone who was subjected to this racket making an effort to return next year — not when they can simply be racist at home.
Imported hatred
What the rally lacked in numbers and entertainment, it made up for in imported Yank nonsense:
I just walked past that lot. — richard bacon (@richardpbacon) May 16, 2026
It is an out and out racist march.
It’s gross to be anywhere near.
Anyone who says this is normal people expressing normal sentiments isn’t normal. https://t.co/LOUDo1TkNI
It’s not for nothing that we’re starting to see American-style far-right Christian nonsense in Britain. As Amnesty reported, US billionaires are paying for all this:
Three reasons why the "Unite the Kingdom" rally this Saturday is worse than you think…@ElonMusk a little something for you at the end. pic.twitter.com/pkrOb7OZ1L
— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) May 14, 2026
As Amnesty said in the video:
the Unite the Kingdom march this Saturday is funded by billionaires with dangerous anti-rights agendas. Ever heard of Robert Shillman? He’s a US tech billionaire who funds Islamophobic figures from across the globe like Katie Hopkins and Geert Wilders, as well as Tommy Robinson. He dug deep this year and has donated 100,000 bucks to make this rally happen.
What went wrong?
Robinson and folks like him have spent the past few years riling up their followers with hardcore Islamophobia and bullshit. If you attended the Unite the Kingdom march in 2025, you might have believed the country was on the edge of imminent collapse, and that patriots were ready to overthrow the government. The problem with operating at that level of intensity is that when nothing actually happens, people start to drift off.
Tommy Robinson is good talking a big game, but he’s also notorious for rinsing his fans for everything they’ve got:
Before his 'Unite The Kingdom' Rally last year Tommy Robinson promoted a linked crypto coin called UTK.
If you had invested £1000 then it would now be worth around just £2.50.
Yet today he is out again pushing a 'trading strategy' that says no one has lost any money. pic.twitter.com/CM8sGlsRVF
— UNN (@UnityNewsNet) January 26, 2026
A recent example was when he claimed ISIS had made him a priority target — using the situation to beg for donations and then dropping the story a few weeks later:
Is he….. seeking a safe country while unable to financially support himself?
Well, well, well. https://t.co/EPe2yJ6seY
— Ginger Tucci (@Ginger_Tucci) February 14, 2026
There’s also Unite the Kingdom itself, as Lowles noted:
More worryingly for Stephen Lennon, his supporters are beginning to see through his money making exercise. He’s admitted to receiving $300,000 from two people for the demo, plus the hundreds of thousands he raised from supporters. On top of that were all the merchandise, bucket collections etc..
Robinson isn’t capable of holding a movement like this together because he lacks the ideological zeal of an Adolf Hitler. He might genuinely hate Muslims, but he doesn’t hate them as much as he loves money, and his bank balance always come first.
Because of all this, Robinson hasn’t just failed to grow his movement; he’s actively shrunk it. And the people who are left are increasingly divorced from reality:
But… he did get away with it https://t.co/JjAtOOnDhM
— Alistair's Great Tweets (@YesitsAlistair) May 16, 2026
Tommy Robinson — the downfall
Tommy Robinson was poised to grow the British far-right into a viable and terrifying movement. Instead, he pissed it up the wall like lukewarm Stella.
At this point, this movement seems doomed to fade away. And the smaller it becomes, the more repellant it will be to the majority of people watching.
Featured image via Getty Images
By Willem Moore
President Donald Trump keeps knocking out his political enemies in the GOP. On Saturday, Sen. Bill Cassidy was the latest to fall.
It’s a massive warning sign for any Republicans who’ve provoked the president’s wrath: Trump’s revenge campaign has already mobilized voters in both Indiana, where he successfully ousted several state GOP senators over redistricting, and Saturday night in Louisiana. Tuesday’s primaries in Georgia and Kentucky, where Rep. Thomas Massie is up for reelection and he’s picked sides in the open Senate race, will be another test. Now, the president is entering those races with the wind at his back.
Cassidy’s distant third-place finish marks the end of his tenure in the Senate, one that was doomed by his vote to convict Trump on impeachment charges related to the Jan. 6 insurrection five years ago.
That decision ostracized him from Louisiana’s rabidly conservative base and set up two strong primary challengers in Rep. Julia Letlow — the Trump-endorsed candidate — and MAGA-friendly state Treasurer John Fleming. Up until polls closed, Cassidy maintained that his massive war chest, his record in Congress and a high turnout of non-party voters would be enough to save him.
In the end, it was not.
“For a man with such a formidable intellect, his political strategy was breathtakingly dense,” said Lionel Rainey, a Louisiana GOP strategist, who is unaffiliated with any of the campaigns. “History will remember Bill Cassidy as the absolute smartest guy in the political morgue.”
Letlow, boosted by Trump’s support, advanced to a runoff with a significant lead over Fleming — evidence that his endorsement is still key for Republican voters and can boost a candidate who begins a race with relatively low name ID and fundraising power.
Trump on Saturday night declared online that Cassidy’s “disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it’s nice to see that his political career is OVER!”
As Cassidy took the stage in Baton Rouge to concede and thank his supporters, he appeared to repeatedly needle Trump in his remarks, possibly previewing a potentially adversarial role to the White House he will take on as a lame duck senator.
“Insults only bother me if they come from somebody of character and integrity, I find that people of character and integrity don’t spend their time attacking people on the internet,” he said at one point, after taking apparent digs at Trump for refusing to accept his 2020 loss was legitimate and declaring that “leaders should think through the consequences of their actions.”
Cassidy’s suddenly pointed criticism of the president following his loss suggests he could quickly turn into a headache for the White House. He has already blocked a handful of White House appointees, and still chairs the powerful Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Without the need to woo the president, he could follow the path of retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and refuse to fall in line on some key votes — an important factor in a fairly narrowly divided Senate.
Throughout the campaign, Cassidy tried to cast Letlow as insufficiently conservative, nicknaming her “Liberal Letlow” and hammering her for her past support of diversity initiatives in higher education. But those attacks did not stick.
Trump didn’t dip into his own MAGA Inc. coffers or appear on the campaign trail to elevate Letlow — but she still benefited from some of his allies. The Make America Healthy Again PAC pledged $1 million in support of her candidacy, angered by Cassidy’s skepticism of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. becoming the Health and Human Services secretary. Those frustrations grew when the senator blocked Casey Means’ nomination as U.S. Surgeon General, which the White House later pulled.
Cassidy’s attempt at self-preservation was also stymied by the rise of Fleming, a former Freedom Caucus member who claimed he was the most conservative candidate in the race. In the final hours, Fleming got a shoutout from Trump as well, who posted earlier Saturday that Cassidy must be “CLOBBERED” by “two great people!!!”.
Letlow’s first-place finish is a boon for Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who aggressively campaigned for her with his endorsement, pressured big donors to get in line behind her and was behind Louisiana closing its primary system — a move that disadvantaged Cassidy, who has historically brought in some Democratic voters.
The runoff, scheduled for late June, sets up a new battle for the president’s base: Do they go with the Trump-chosen option in Letlow or the other MAGA candidate in Fleming, who previously worked as White House aide under Trump? Pre-runoff polls showed a close race between the two, though Letlow comfortably led Fleming in the first round. The extended primary is sure to be bruising.
As the polls closed on Saturday evening, Trump had already begun to expand his target map, singling out Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) for campaigning on behalf of Massie, who is facing his own tough reelection fight in Kentucky against Trump-backed primary challenger Ed Gallrein. (Colorado’s filing deadline has already closed, so it’s unlikely that threat can be carried out this election.)
“Is anyone interested in running against Weak Minded Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District?” he wrote on Truth Social. “Even though I long ago endorsed Boebert, if the right person came along, it would be my Honor to withdraw that Endorsement, and endorse a good and proper alternative.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) just lost his seat — a key victory for President Donald Trump’s revenge tour this cycle.
Rep. Julia Letlow, the Trump-backed candidate, and state Treasurer John Fleming advanced to a runoff in the Louisiana GOP Senate primary on Saturday, with Cassidy finishing in third place.
It’s a remarkable result: Cassidy is the first senator of either party to lose in a primary since 2012. The two-term senator and chair of the powerful Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee failed to even make the runoff, finishing with roughly a quarter of the vote.
Both Letlow and Fleming benefited from MAGA voters’ frustrations with Cassidy for his 2021 vote to convict Trump on impeachment charges related to the Jan. 6 insurrection, and for his skepticism of Trump’s decision to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary.
The president, who has been itching to oust Cassidy, finally got his wish Saturday. The result follows Trump’s successful attempts to oust several GOP state senators in Indiana last month over redistricting clashes.
Letlow, a three-term representative from north Louisiana, jumped into the race with Trump’s endorsement, a huge boost in the deep-red state. Gov. Jeff Landry also endorsed her and worked behind the scenes to help her campaign, and the Make America Healthy Again PAC committed $1 million to supporting her.
Fleming, a former member of Congress and White House aide under Trump, drew deep grassroots support during his campaign and was able to cut into Letlow’s polling lead in the final days of the race.
The runoff will extend an already expensive battle for the GOP nomination to late June. Early polls suggest a tight race between Letlow and Fleming, though Letlow had a clear advantage in the first round of voting.
This game of football is not over.
Except for viewers in Scotland, where no laws apply.
Don’t get us wrong, readers. In the (minimum of) 32 seconds that were left to play, it was highly unlikely that Hearts were going to score the two goals they needed to win the league. It is improbable that the referee allowing the game to end at that moment (because thousands of Celtic fans immediately invaded the pitch) changed the destination of the Premiership title.
But improbable is not impossible. let’s note a couple of things.
(1) The eight minutes added by the fourth official is a MINIMUM. It is very common for games to go on longer than the minimum for all sorts of reasons. When Scotland beat Denmark to qualify for the World Cup, Kenny McLean’s shot from the halfway line hit the net EIGHT minutes into the six that had been indicated by the fourth official.
It is perfectly possible, then, that Celtic vs Hearts could have had two and a half minutes still to go. We’ll never know when the referee was actually going to blow before he bottled it after Callum Osmand’s goal.
(2) The annals of football, as we all know, are stuffed with examples of teams scoring two goals in a couple of minutes.
Just one minute and 44 seconds, including the celebration time, elapsed between Lyndon Dykes’ equaliser for Scotland against Norway in Oslo in June 2023, and Kenny McLean’s winner. The two goals that won Manchester United the 1999 Champions League were even closer together, at just 1m 41s, again including all the celebrations.
In both cases, the ball was actually in play for only about 30 seconds of that time. 30 seconds, then, is a long time in football – the referee can’t just let goal celebrations run down the clock, he has to add time on.
And that’s why there are laws. That’s why we don’t just let the referee blow his whistle if a team is 4-0 down with 10 minutes left, even if it’d mean he could catch an earlier train home. It’s not a matter of discretion or convenience. The game has to be played to its end.
Because imagine the alternative. Imagine if the crowd could just invade the pitch when THEY thought the game was won, and we let them decide.
What if the 2,500 Danish fans at Hampden last November, say, had taken it upon themselves to storm the field in the 93rd minute with the score still at 2-2 and Denmark heading for the finals, and the referee had thought “Well, it’s Scotland, they’re not going to get another goal now and I can’t be arsed waiting for the stewards to get all these Danes off the pitch, we might as well call it a day?”
What if the Norwegian fans in Oslo, having conceded a late equaliser after dominating the game and having taken Erling Haaland off, had collectively gone “Better safe than sorry” and piled onto the turf before Kenny McLean could stroke home that exquisite winner?
Just a couple of weeks ago, Rochdale scored in the 95th minute in a vital promotion decider against York City. Fans streamed onto the pitch.
There were only 60 seconds left on the clock. The referee could have just thrown up his hands and said “Well, it’s done now.” But he insisted on completing the game. It took six minutes to clear the pitch and kick off again. 75 seconds later, York equalised and won promotion.
Where do you draw the line? If it’s okay to end a game 30 seconds early because of thugs on the pitch, why not 60? Why not 90? Why not five minutes? We’ve proved above that 30 seconds is enough to turn defeat into victory. The only answer is that you can’t – you play to the end, and if circumstances prevent that then you don’t reward the thugs with a league championship, you abandon the match.
That’s not an abstract hypothetical assertion. It actually happened literally a week ago.
The consequences were swift. In the Czech Republic, that meant the club responsible – who would have clinched the league if the game had ended normally – forfeited the match, and suffered other severe punishments.
But every single person reading this knows that that won’t happen in Scotland, because as this site has documented for years, Scotland is a country where nobody rich or powerful is ever held accountable for anything, and that goes double when the body responsible for enforcement of the laws is the Scottish Football Association.
For the last 15 years the SFA (with the support of the press) has allowed a club that’s only existed since 2012 to claim it’s won the league 55 times, to the unending (and justified) fury of Celtic supporters. Yet those same fans are all over social media this weekend insisting that the laws of the game, which are the same across the globe, should not be applied when their club is guilty of the exact same offence as Slavia Prague.
And they’ll get their way, because in Scotland whoever screams the loudest wins. We’re a joke of a country with a joke of a football league that has now, because of blatant cheating in both cases, still only been won by two clubs (or rather, three clubs pretending to be two) in over 40 years.
There is no coherent argument whatsoever for allowing yesterday’s result to stand. It is absolutely clear by the laws of the game what should happen. But not one person thinks for a single second that it will.
We’d be depressed, readers, if only we were even a tiny bit surprised.
Politics
In the birthplace of Civil Rights Movement, groups rally to defend Black political representation
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Thousands of people rallied Saturday in the cradle of the modern Civil Rights Movement to mobilize a new voting rights era as conservative states dismantle congressional districts that helped secure Black political representation.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey called Montgomery “sacred soil” in the fight for civil rights.
“if we in our generation do not now do our duty, we will lose the gains and the rights and the liberties that our ancestors afforded us,” Booker said.
The crowd was led in chants of “we won’t go back” and “we fight.”
“We are not going down without a fight. We are not going down to Jim Crow maps,” said Shalela Dowdy, a plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case.
A crowd of thousands gathered in front of the city’s historic Alabama Capitol, the place where the Confederacy was formed in 1861 and where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in 1965 at the end of the Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March. The stage, set in front of the Capitol, was flanked from behind by statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and civil rights icon Rosa Parks — dueling tributes erected nearly 90 years apart.
Speakers said the spot was once the temple of the confederacy and became holy ground of the civil rights movement.
Some in the crowd said the effort to redraw lines has echoes of the past.
“We lived through the ’60s. It takes you back. When you think that Alabama’s moving forward, it takes two steps back,” said Camellia A Hooks, 70, of Montgomery, Alabama.
The rally began in Selma, where a violent clash between law enforcement and voting rights activists in 1965 galvanized support for passage of the Voting Rights Act. It then moved to the state Capitol, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “How Long, Not Long” speech that same year.
A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving Louisiana hollowed out voting rights law that was already weakened by a separate decision in 2013 and then narrowed further over the years. That helped clear the way for stricter voter ID laws, registration restrictions, and limits on early voting and polling place changes, including in states that once needed federal preclearance before they could change voting laws because of their historical discrimination against Black voters.
Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement are alarmed by the speed of the rollbacks, noting that protections won through generations of sacrifice have been weakened in little more than a decade.
Kirk Carrington, 75, was a teen in 1965 when law enforcement officers attacked marchers in Selma on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.” A white man on a horse wielding a stick chased Carrington through the streets.
“It’s really just appalling to me and all the young people that marched during the ’60s, fought hard to get voting rights, equal rights and civil rights,” Carrington said. “It’s sad that it’s continuing after 60-plus-odd years that we are still fighting for the same thing we fought for back then.”
City will be affected by Supreme Court ruling
Montgomery is home to one of the congressional districts that is being altered in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.
A federal court in 2023 redrew Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District after ruling that the state intentionally diluted the voting power of Black residents, who make up about 27% of its population. The court said there should be a district where Black people are a majority or near-majority and have an opportunity to elect their candidate of choice.
But the Supreme Court cleared the way for a different map that could let the GOP reclaim the seat. While the matter remains under litigation, the state plans special primaries Aug. 11 under the new map.
Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, who won election in the district in 2024, said the dispute is not about him but rather people’s opportunity to have representation.
“When Republicans are literally turning back the clock on what representation, what the faces of representation, look like, what the opportunities, legitimate opportunities for representation look like across this country, then I think it starts to resonate with people in a little bit of a different way,” Figures said.
Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, a Republican, said the Louisiana ruling provided an opportunity to revisit a map that was forced on the state by the federal court.
“People tend to forget what happened. When this thing went to court, the Republican Party had that seat, congressional seat two,” Ledbetter said last week. “There’s been a push through the courts to try to overtake some of these red state seats, and that’s certainly what happened in that one.”
Evan Milligan, the lead plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case, said there is grief over the implosion of the Voting Rights Act but it is crucial that people recommit to the fight.
“We have to accept that this is the new reality, whether we like it or not,” Milligan said. “We don’t have to accept that this will be the reality for the next 10 years or two years or forever.”
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