Politics
Police chiefs face questions over decades of political policing as Spycops Inquiry resumes
On Monday 15 June, the Spycops inquiry resumes and campaigners will be looking for answers. Tranche 3 Phase 3 of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) is beginning. And it’ll be a crucial stage in the investigation into the Metropolitan police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).
The Inquiry has heard evidence from former undercover officers and many of those whose groups, campaigns and personal lives they infiltrated. It’s now turning its attention to the senior officers and government departments who authorised, supervised and oversaw these operations.
For many of those affected, this phase goes to the heart of the Inquiry. The key question is no longer what spycops did. It’s who knew? Who approved? Who benefited from the intelligence on political campaigners and community organisations? And who helped conceal the truth?
Over the coming weeks the Inquiry will hear evidence from SDS managers, senior Special Branch officers and former Met leaders, including former commissioner Paul Condon.
Witnesses will be questioned about how undercover political policing was managed, what information was passed up the chain of command and why these operations were allowed to happen at all.
A spokesperson for the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance said:
For years the public were told that undercover policing targeted serious criminals and threats to public safety. The evidence heard by this Inquiry has exposed a very different reality. Secret political policing units infiltrated environmental groups, anti-racist organisations, trade unions, anti-war movements and community organisations.
Officers stole the identities of dead children, formed deceptive intimate relationships, infiltrated grieving families seeking justice and gathered intelligence on thousands of people engaged in legitimate political activity.
This phase is about accountability. Who authorised these deployments and how the public and the courts were repeatedly misled about the true nature of these operations. Senior managers and commanders must finally explain how they allowed this system of political policing to continue for decades.
Spycops must come clean
A spokesperson for Police Spies Out of Lives said:
SDS managers can begin to restore public trust by giving open and honest evidence to the Inquiry. Most former officers have refused to do that, deepening the harm to those who were spied on. So far, there has been no real remorse for the abuses they enabled and oversaw.
Evidence so far has demonstrated that these operations weren’t just isolated misconduct by a few rogue officers. Instead, the Inquiry has revealed a system of abusive political policing which senior officers and government officials knew about and supported.
In his 2023 Interim Report, Spycops Inquiry chair John Mitting concluded that the SDS should have come to a rapid end in the early 1970s.
These hearings begin at a time when surveillance powers are once again expanding.
On 8 June, the government announced it was demanding Apple and Google to introduce what amounts to AI spyware able to monitor users’ messages and photos directly on smartphones and tablets, threatening legislation if the global tech giants do not comply.
Additionally the government launched PoliceAI, a national programme to accelerate the deployment of AI throughout policing in England and Wales.
These moves require urgent and robust democratic scrutiny.
A spokesperson for the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance said:
The central lesson of the Spycops scandal is that surveillance powers are rarely used only for the purposes originally claimed.
At a time when AI is being embedded throughout policing and ministers are demanding monitoring technology be built into personal devices, the public should remember the lessons of Britain’s political policing scandal.
The history being examined by this Inquiry is not simply about the past. It is a warning for the future.
Inquiry hearings begin on Monday 15 June and will continue throughout the summer.
A timetable of those due to give evidence is here.
Sessions are open to the public and will take place at the IDRC, St Paul’s Square, London EC4Y 1EU. Or you can follow live proceedings on YouTube (broadcast with a 15 minute delay for security reasons).
Featured image via Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images
By The Canary
Robert Jenrick has been accused of “playing divisive identity politics” after announcing a Reform UK government would make it more expensive for bosses to employ foreign workers.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves increased employers’ National Insurance Contributions from 13.8% to 15% in her first Budget back in 2024.
Critics have labelled the policy a “jobs tax” which makes it more expensive for employers to hire staff.
Jenrick, Reform’s Treasury spokesperson, announced on Monday that his party would reverse the NICs rise, but only for “British workers”.
He said the policy would be paid for by introducing a “Migrant Labour Levy”, which businesses would have to pay for every foreign worker they employ.
Jenrick said: “For more than 20 years now, we’ve had British workers coming second – undercut by cheap migrant labour, which drives down wages and our people’s quality of life.
“The experiment of letting in millions of low-wage migrants – as millions of Brits languish on benefits – has failed catastrophically. Reform will end it.”
He added: “If the migrant is hired, the taxman collects £7,000 in taxes, but ends up paying the British candidate not hired around £8,000 on universal credit.
“If the British worker was hired instead, the £7k in tax would still be paid. But the £8k in benefits would be saved.”
He claimed there are around 3.6 million non-EU workers in Britain – and the the levy would raise £10 billion from the non-EU migrants on PAYE alone.
Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper told HuffPost UK: “Instead of playing divisive identity politics and creating a bureaucratic anti-business nightmare, we should be focused on helping all our struggling local businesses to thrive.
“The Liberal Democrats have been clear from the start, the hike in employer National Insurance is a self-defeating jobs tax that hits high street shops, local pharmacies, GPs, and care homes hard. It needs to be scrapped for everyone.”
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “Nigel Farage’s latest half-baked plan would leave British businesses and British people worse off.
“Their proposals threaten to hike bills and leave working families paying the price.
“Reform is not on the side of working people and are simply making it up as they go along.
“Only Labour is making the fair choices to change our country, ease the cost of living, and improve our public services.
“We’ve already slashed migration by 69% since last year, our Immigration Skills Charge is funding more training for British workers, and we’re reforming the system to get people back into the work and out of the doom loop of joblessness which spiralled out of control under the Tories.”
“Another day, another uncosted policy to distract from Robert Kenyon’s sexist comments,” Labour MP Luke Charters also told HuffPost UK.
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Elon Musk — the seig-heiling owner of X — has become the world’s first trillionaire. As we’ll explain, he’s achieved this by leveraging his power, influence and shamelessness to prove that capitalism is every bit as rotten as we said it is.
However, if you ask one of the many thoughtless establishment journalists out there how he became so wealthy, they’ll tell you ‘Elon gets lots of money because he makes rockets good‘.
Amid all the predictable seething jealousy and bitter resentment to this news, I’d like to congratulate @elonmusk on an astounding achievement. He’s got there by being the most driven, creative, hard-working and ambitious business genius in history. Salut, Elon! — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) June 13, 2026
pic.twitter.com/MmrygoJfwc
In turn, we’d like to congratulate Piers Morgan for fitting Musk’s entire boot in his mouth.
He got here by being the most hard-working suck-up in the entire Western media.
Salut, Piers!
Musk games the market
First, we should explain how Elon Musk became a trillionaire.
Musk’s wealth just exploded because he’s taken SpaceX from a private company to a public one. By SpaceX, we mean the three companies that make up SpaceX, which are:
- SpaceX: The intergalactic company famous for its exploding rockets (what they call “rapid unscheduled disassemblies“)
- StarLink: The satellite internet company
- Grok AI: The AI model which is mostly localised to X (and which notoriously spent several weeks producing revenge porn and child sexual abuse material before government’s demanded Musk stop it)
- SpaceX is not profitable.
- StarLink is profitable.
- Grok AI is really not profitable.
SpaceX could be profitable in the future, as long as we keep finding new reasons to send thousands of rockets into space. StarLink could remain profitable, but the market for satellite internet is limited to customers who:
- Can’t access broadband
- Can pay for fancy satellite internet
Grok AI will probably never be profitable. OpenAI and Anthropic are both doing better than Grok, and it looks like they have no realistic path towards profitability either. The problem is AI costs so much to run that when you charge companies an honest price (instead of subsidising the cost with billionaire investor money) they abandon the product.
NEW: Uber is reportedly capping employee use of AI vibe-coding tools at $1,500 per month after blowing through its AI budget.
— Polymarket (@Polymarket) June 2, 2026
Musk and his company losses
Right, so SpaceX is not what you’d call a profitable company. In fact, it made a $4.9 billion loss last year. But despite this, when it went public, it achieved a valuation of $2 trillion.
This is the largest Initial Public Offering (IPO) of all time. On paper, it means SpaceX is more valuable than most companies which actually make money. If you’re confused that isn’t because you’re not getting it; it’s because it doesn’t make sense. It also gets worse.
To be fair to Musk, he does have a plan to make his company profitable, and that plan is data centres in space. The problem is that these data centres would almost certainly be more expensive than the terrestrial ones. They may also be physically impossible to build at scale.
Think physics before you believe in the SpaceX lies. Each data center averages 10 million pounds of servers, imagine halling multiple data centers into space. — MrsDoubtFire
Data centers use millions of gallons of water for cooling. Vacuum of space is terrible for cooling. https://t.co/8Hy3shaby1 pic.twitter.com/tsQQAjvkDk
(@MrsDoubtFireSF) June 12, 2026
Who could have guessed it would be less cost-effective to build something in space? Good lord.
And this isn’t the first time Musk has promised the impossible. There’s a site that tracks his broken promises called elonmusk.today. Examples include:
- 1,645 days since Elon Musk said he would take carbon out of the air and use it for rocket fuel
- 1,939 days since Elon Musk promised Starlink customers their speed would double by the end of 2021
- 2,166 days since Elon Musk said that people who get brain surgery from him could pay for it with augmented brain powers
- 2,327 days since Elon Musk advised consumers that Teslas can safely function as a boat for short periods of time
- 2,611 days since Elon Musk said there will be a million fully autonomous Tesla robotaxis in a year
- 2,714 days since Elon Musk said the new Roadster will use rocket technology that will allow it to fly
- 2,824 days since Elon Musk said SpaceX would probably build a base on Mars by 2028
Why does Musk make such wild claims? Almost certainly because doing so draws attention away from the fact that his companies have been mostly unprofitable, and because the pie-in-the-sky promises cause the value of his companies to rise.
How does this keep happening?
As you can see, it’s both quantifiable and widely understood that Musk’s companies are valued way above their actual — you know — value.
So why do investors keep falling for it?
Simply incredible. Elon has mastered the art of creating valuable companies that don’t actually make money. https://t.co/HYJrHduvoJ
— D (@_Unknown_D_) June 12, 2026
There are two things to bear in mind: the first is why wouldn’t they keep falling for it? In the short term, their stocks become more valuable. In the long term, well, nobody is thinking about the long term.
The other thing to be aware of is that a lot of this stuff is now algorithmic.
For example, the Chosun Daily reported:
Algorithmic trading programs that use automated pre-set trading instructions to execute orders have recently been blamed for the sharp fluctuations in global stock markets. While algorithmic trading programs offer the advantage of buying and selling assets without human intervention, they also have the drawback of triggering massive sell-offs whenever the set conditions are met, increasing market volatility.
This works in the opposite direction too. What this means is that when Musk promises the world’s first self-driving flying car, the algorithms auto-buy Tesla stock. As Chosun Daily added:
Investment bank Goldman Sachs estimated that algorithmic trading accounted for about 60% to 70% of all trades in the U.S. in 2016. Experts believe this figure has now risen to 70% to 80%.
We may not live in the Matrix, but we definitely live in a matrix.
Client media
Now that we’ve explained what the establishment media is mostly ignoring, we can gawp at some of the wretched client journalists who are defending Musk’s ‘success’.
Andrew Neil led the charge on this front, asking “What difference does it make?” if one man’s wealth is higher than the GDP of most countries.
This is one case where the public can see with their own eyes that this shit sucks. They don’t have to be told the Nazi zillionaire is bad for them and for the species, and no amount of behaving like a cunt on the internet is going to change that. pic.twitter.com/DGBXf48zpF
— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) June 13, 2026
Imagine the worst person you know, and then imagine that they had more money to play around with than Israel spends in a year. Obviously, this would not end well.
And we’ve seen what Musk uses his wealth to achieve.
The influence campaign didn’t stop there either, as the Canary reported, and many pointed out:
With his inordinate wealth he is bolstering the far right in my country – who support austerity politics, tax cuts for the wealthy, oppose public investment, brexit and aims to deport people which will cause major disturbances to our public services.
This directly affects my… https://t.co/PCL9l9yP0k
— JimmyTheGiant (@jimthegiant) June 12, 2026
He used his wealth to buy a whole ass social media platform to start a race war https://t.co/14l8nI5MDI
— NJ (@NoJusticeMTG) June 12, 2026
Musk also uses X to boost his ideological bedfellows (which include Nazis).
It is however the only social media that pays politicians and journalists based on whether they agree with his reactionary views, not whether people like their content. Sometimes tens of thousands of dollars. Unaccounted. https://t.co/o7AsW8gCTV
— Alonso Gurmendi (@Alonso_GD) June 13, 2026
Human haemorrhoid, Neil, also did the meme:
Of course Andrew is now doing the meme — NFT Hibou
pic.twitter.com/Ew4ulxgdJH
(@NFT_Hibou) June 13, 2026
Columnist and ex-prime minister, Boris Johnson, got in on the action too.
'Ego-driven lust' drives capitalism says Boris Johnson, who knows zilch about business, never understood it as a journalist, as a Mayor or as PM. He is simply wrong – in media ego sometimes does come first; BUT in business school, in boardrooms, in rooms where it happens, ego is… pic.twitter.com/oINZ7VwCGr
— David Yelland (@davidyelland) June 13, 2026
This is fine, if you’re idea of success is a series of obscenely overvalued companies that rely on government handouts while failing to deliver on most of their promises.
It’s not for nothing that Chinese electric vehicles are now more advanced and cheaper than Teslas. Those companies also benefit from state money, but said money is directed into research and development — not into inflating the ego of the world’s most insecure nerd.
Julia Hartley-Brewer had this to say:
Why don't you set up a business making rockets, electric cars and AI, Lewis? It's obviously so easy to do, anyone can do it. — Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) June 12, 2026
https://t.co/7XRtcHT5lB
The problem? Musk has never designed or built any of his products. He just profited from those who did.
This literally shows workers doing all the work lol https://t.co/VsnzAA9ZmK
— polen (@polen_ball) June 14, 2026
We also don’t have to go back that far to see an example of space travel being pursued for the sake of exploration over ego.
“Bernie, your socialism would never allow a SpaceX to be built.”
Hey Bill, who got man to the moon? Was it the government or the private sector? https://t.co/mrBYaXZ4vC — Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) June 13, 2026
Okay, so the space race did happen to boost America’s ego, but you get the point.
Perhaps the worst defence was this:
Elon literally owns this site, so every time he uses it, with his 240m followers, he is working. https://t.co/I2qelyZ8L7
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) June 13, 2026
The great IPO swindle
There’s another way Musk has used his great wealth to disadvantage the broader public that we’ve not covered yet.
SpaceX isn’t just being listed on various stock exchanges; it’s being fast-tracked. What this means is that various stock-buying schemes like 401(k) retirement plans will automatically buy SpaceX stock.
Usually, a company has to be publicly available for a year to demonstrate its value is legitimate. SpaceX, however, will wait a mere five days in some instances.
SHOCKER: S&P 500 will NOT fast track SpaceX. So it will take AT LEAST a year, probably more. This is wild considering every other big boy index is 5-15 days. This could create significant return dispersion bt 'passive' indexes. Choose wisely. https://t.co/EG7R5IfX0u
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) June 4, 2026
In other words, Musk has used his influence to ensure as many ordinary people as possible buy shares in his unprofitable business. If the business remains unprofitable, these same ordinary people who will lose out.
Top to bottom misery
The other thing to note about Musk having so much money is that it doesn’t even make him happy.
Hasan Piker noted:
Elon Musk is a fucking failure and yet in spite of his failures, because he happened to be at the right place at the right time, he has failed upwards with his endless wealth. He’s a horrible person, an unbelievably insecure person, and yet he’s the richest person on the planet. We know he doesn’t fucking work hard because he Tweets all the goddamn time.
We live in a society that is based on wealth accumulation, and yet the man who’s accumulated more than anyone is the most miserable person on the planet.
Maybe it’s time to rethink this capitalism malarkey?
Featured image via Spencer Platt/ Hoda Davaine / Hollie Adams/ Getty Images
By Willem Moore
It is remarkable how swiftly the unthinkable returns. How easily the guardrails of morality crumble to dust. That was my thought upon watching a seething mob besiege Edgware United Synagogue yesterday. They screamed abuse at Jews. They hollered for the destruction of the Jewish nation. Some were adorned in the inverted red triangle that signals support for the Jew killers of Hamas. And there you have it: Jews, once more, are being terrorised at their places of worship. What comes next?
The pretext for the vile swarming of a synagogue in a heavily Jewish part of north-west London was that it was holding a Great Israeli Real Estate Event. It was an event for ‘those thinking of moving to Israel’, as the Guardian described it. These ‘thieves’ are selling off land that isn’t theirs to sell, wailed the wild-eyed Israelophobes. In their warped worldview, no Jew should be permitted to buy property in ‘Israhell’. ‘From the river to the sea!’, they chanted, giving voice to that fever dream of all bourgeois bigots: that the world would be a better place if the Jewish nation were annihilated.
Yet however much the hordes at the synagogue doors try to dress up their agitation in the finery of radical politics, there’s no escaping the truth: it is 2026 and Jews’ holy places are once more surrounded by snarling crowds. The mob accused the event organisers of hawking properties in the ‘occupied territories’ of the West Bank. But the organisers firmly deny this. In the words of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, to fume outside a synagogue on ‘false pretences’ looks like a desperate scrabble for any old ‘excuse’ to ‘harass and intimidate’ Jews.
It’s hard to disagree. I find it remarkable that not one member of this bristling pack of Israel-haters stopped to think: ‘Should we be doing this?’ They are so intoxicated by blind animus for the Jewish nation that even optics are no longer a factor in their thinking. It doesn’t even cross their Gaza-fried minds that they might come off like those gangs of Hitler Youth who gathered outside synagogues in 1930s Germany with placards saying ‘Die Juden sind unser Unglück’ – ‘The Jews are our misfortune’. Do the keffiyeh invaders of Edgware think their antics are better because they were only saying Zionists are our misfortune? You would think at some point in the ugly mayhem, one might have said to another, in the vein of that meme, ‘Are we the baddies?’.
Even as they were finally compelled to leave the area of the synagogue, they chanted: ‘Zionists, Zionists, watch your back / We will be coming back.’ I invite you to imagine the media storm that would rage if any other minority group were told to ‘watch their backs’. Imagine if an army of racists besieged a mosque and chanted: ‘Muslims, Muslims, watch your back…’ There would be outrage over such menacing, slippery threats, rightly so. Yet the Jews of Edgware can be taunted with seeming impunity. No condemnation from the PM. No expressions of concern from London’s chattering class.
In fact, the political class helped to whip up the anti-Zionist mob. The day before the Edgware event, London mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted: ‘I condemn any attempt to sell property in the settlements in the West Bank, be that in London or anywhere else in the world.’ Again, the organisers firmly deny that West Bank property was on sale. The mayor’s comment came off like incitement of the mob. He was making it clear that he, too, was morally repulsed by what was due to unfold in Edgware, effectively giving a green light to every wanker who wanted to rage about it. Let’s see if he now tweets: ‘I condemn anyone who tells London’s Jews to “watch their backs”.’ I won’t hold my breath.
There’s one thing the synagogue mob didn’t reckon with – the determination of Edgware’s Jews to defend their place of worship. Huge numbers of Jews and their friends gathered to tell the keffiyeh bigots that ‘They shall not pass’. It was like a mini-Cable Street, only this time ‘the left’ was firmly on the other side – not the side of Jews who only want to live free of harassment, but the side of that twisted Islamo-left nexus that has made a bloodsport of taunting ‘Zionists’. The Jews danced and sang and waved the Israeli flag and the Union flag: a display of genuine anti-fascism against the fake anti-fascists of the Jew-state haters.
The magnitude of these events cannot be overstated. The unthinkable is not just thinkable now – it is doable. In vile mimicry of those 1930s mobs that swarmed synagogues and boycotted Jewish goods, now ‘the righteous’ scream about Zionism at the doors of synagogues and boycott Jewish State goods. In Manhattan, keffiyeh gangs raged outside the Park East Synagogue, also on the pretext that it was hosting an Israeli real estate event. A Jewish girl had her hair violently yanked by a masked bigot. Placards featuring Jeffrey Epstein said: ‘Free America from Isra-hell.’ The synagogue mobs of the 1930s likewise looked upon the Jews as a paedophilic race from which Germany should be ‘freed’. There have also been synagogue protests in New Jersey, LA, Canada and France.
At the New Jersey protest, Jews were called ‘Zionist pigs’ and ‘baby killers’. At the Paris protest, hundreds of Jews were trapped inside their synagogue as stones rained down on the building. And now in Edgware, Jews are told by a frothing mob to ‘watch their backs’. Can we be real? These are not protests – they’re practice pogroms. We are witnessing the sinister resuscitation of the medieval belief that Jews are pigs who kill children and thus their ‘Synagogues of Satan’ are fair game for mob fury. Not content with making life harder for Jews in the West, now the keffiyeh army tells them they are forbidden from escaping to Israel. So where can they go? Don’t answer that.
It is a testament to the battering our civilisational values have taken since 7 October that 1930s-style mobbings have returned and no one in power seems to give a damn. Good on the Jews who stood up to the keffiyeh bigots in Edgware – next time I want to see many more non-Jews standing with them.
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.
Dan Jarvis will not be given any more money to spend on Britain’s armed forces, No.10 sources have confirmed.
Jarvis took over as defence secretary following John Healey’s dramatic resignation last week.
He said he was quitting because Keir Starmer was “unable” and Rachel Reeves was “unwilling” to provide enough cash to properly implement the government’s new Defence Investment Plan.
It is understood that the Treasury is only willing to release £13.5 billion – less than half what Healey had asked for.
At the weekend, Jarvis insisted he will make sure the UK’s armed forces get “precisely what they need”.
But No.10 sources confirmed on Monday that no extra money will be made available for the new defence secretary.
That is despite culture secretary Lisa Nandy suggesting that cabinet minister were being asked to come up with more cuts from their own budgets to spend on defence.
She told the BBC that Starmer had “been clear with every single one of us in the cabinet that we need to find more money for defence”.
Nandy said: “I can only tell you as somebody who is actively involved in these discussions that these discussions are happening in real time.
“We have a new defence secretary … and I know he wouldn’t have taken the job unless he felt that we could meet this moment, and we are working together constructively to achieve that.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the PM should resign if he cannot find more money to spend on defence.
Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
On 14 June, the US celebrated its 250th anniversary with a UFC match organised by Donald Trump/ While this was a notably high-energy event, it clearly wasn’t high-energy-enough for Sleepy Don:
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) June 15, 2026
BREAKING: DONALD TRUMP HAS FALLEN ASLEEP AT HIS 80TH BIRTHDAY UFC FREEDOM 250 EVENT. pic.twitter.com/Q7hdbDWQOW
Trump corruption celebration
This is how the America 250 event described itself:
On July 4, 2026, our nation will commemorate and celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The journey toward this historic milestone is an opportunity to pause and reflect on our nation’s past, honor the contributions of all Americans, and look ahead toward the future we want to create for the next generation and beyond.
As you’ll see, there wasn’t much ‘honourable reflection’ going on.
America 250 was a real ‘who’s who’ of ‘who’s in Trump’s rolodex’:
This isn't a celebration of America 250. This is corruption on full display on the White House lawn:
— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) June 15, 2026
Trump owns shares in both UFC and Paramount
UFC CEO Dana White donated $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC
One of the event's sponsors donated $35 million to MAGA, Inc. https://t.co/HBDtmfRDXD
Over the past few days, Americans have been posting pictures of the Anniversary preparations in disbelief:
This morning at the White House… pic.twitter.com/Sj2gWF63zM
— Molly Ploofkins (@Mollyploofkins) June 13, 2026
On the one hand, Donald Trump has definitely pushed what’s considered to be ‘normal’ presidential behaviour:
One day I hope MAGA supporters can ADMIT if Barack Hussien Obama had done anything remotely close to this, we’d still be hearing about it today pic.twitter.com/IbEyLGGGtP
— Chef Anthony Thomas (@ChefAnthonyDC) June 13, 2026
On the other, this circus is more in keeping with how the rest of the world views America.
The US is a violent and vulgar nation that gets off on its own displays of power. Speaking of which:
They have turned the Lincoln Memorial into white fucking trash https://t.co/jWOyjRGkHW
— Jamie Bonkiewicz (@JamieBonkiewicz) June 13, 2026
Goodness gracious, imagine an act of violence being committed in the United States of America!? Well I never, etc.
At the event itself, Trump and UFC CEO Dana White walked out of the Oval Office as part of their big entrance:
this is so white trash i'm sorry https://t.co/NV5oz38BB3
— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) June 15, 2026
Trump already looked exhausted at this point. This isn’t that surprising, of course, because Trump is a very old man, and he holds what should be one of the most stressful jobs in the world. The fact that he’s awake for even part of the day is impressive.
None of this is to compliment to him, by the way. Really, we’re arguing that America should stop simply electing the oldest man who’s willing to run.
Crypto Land
The event itself included advertisements for Trump’s crypto coin:
The President of the United States is promoting his own crypto coin at a UFC fight being held in front of the White House. That is a real sentence. What are we doing. https://t.co/rHjut2wVks
— 𝓔𝓶 ♡ (@emkenobi) June 15, 2026
If you’re considering investing in Trump Coin, we suggest you consult with a financial adviser:
The TRUMP meme coin generated about $616 million for the Trump family, while buyers lost more than $700 million, according to Reuters' estimates.
The coin has dropped 97% from its January 2025 peak
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) June 14, 2026
Surprise! https://t.co/2qBAw5tMQ0
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) June 14, 2026
Of course, if you fought at the event, you didn’t really have a choice:
The official broadcast for Trump's UFC fight announces that fighters will be paid in crypto from the Trump family's crypto company pic.twitter.com/IB8r1sxWyt
— FactPost (@factpostnews) June 15, 2026
If you’re feeling sorry for the fighters, be aware that you shouldn’t feel sorry for all of them:
Tonight is a DISGRACE to our country, not a celebration. pic.twitter.com/VdtMtA5UKa
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) June 15, 2026
OMG. A fighter just declared “Michelle Obama is a man” on the White House lawn as Joe Rogan chuckles.
Here’s the same guy a day beforehand stumbling around drunk and spitting up on himself:
This disgusting, ugly sub-human had the audacity to call Michelle Obama a man at the UFC Freedom 250 shit fest. pic.twitter.com/4wNaKVB3G4
— ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ (@LePapillonBlu2) June 15, 2026
You ready to start chanting “USA! USA!” yet?
Donald Trump wasn’t the only Trump generating controversy, anyway. His son Eric was exposed by a UFC fighter for asking if any of the fights were ‘rigged’:
BREAKING: Eric Trump BUSTED for trying to rig a UFC bet at the White House over DMs — Right Wing Cope (@RightWingCope) June 14, 2026
pic.twitter.com/Ba7PWgH2NQ
Imagine having so much going for you and still relying on skullduggery to get ahead.
This is America
Americans need to understand something: the US isn’t a nation of violence and scammery because Trump is president – it’s the reverse. He is not the poison itself but the poison being drawn to the surface. And although you can vote him out in 2028, you’re only going to end up with someone far, far worse if you don’t address the underlying disparity which allows men like Trump to thrive.
Featured image via Pool (Getty Images)
By Willem Moore
New defence secretary Dan Jarvis leaves 10 Downing Street.Whitehall departments are facing further spending cuts to provide more cash for Britain’s armed forces, a cabinet minister has said.
Culture secretary Lisa Nandy said discussions between No.10 and ministers were happening “in real time” to find extra money for the government’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP).
Her comments came just days after John Healey quit as defence secretary, saying the £13.5 billion extra being given to his department was not enough to keep the country safe.
In a blistering resignation letter, he accused Keir Starmer of being “unable” to get more cash out of chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Healey has been replaced as defence secretary by former paratrooper Dan Jarvis, who told the Sunday Telegraph that he was determined to make sure that the armed forced get “precisely what they need”.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show, Nandy said the PM had “been clear with every single one of us in the cabinet that we need to find more money for defence”.
She said: “I last spoke to the prime minister about this on Friday. I’ve spoken to the chancellor this week as well. I’m having discussions with my own officials in my own department about the amount of funding that we make available.
“We’ve got a new defence secretary who is looking at the Defence Investment Plan in its current draft form and having those discussions with the chancellor and the prime minister as well.
“These discussions are ongoing, we are looking very carefully at how we achieve it.”
Kuenssberg said: “So John Healey resigned because he was told by Downing Street that the prime minister’s decision was final.
“You’re now telling us that there are conversations happening to find more money, to increase the amount that was designed to be in the Defence Investment Plan? So there will be more cash?”
Nandy replied: “Yeah. I can only tell you as somebody who is actively involved in these discussions that these discussions are happening in real time, we have a new defence secretary … and I know he wouldn’t have taken the job unless he felt that we could meet this moment, and we are working together constructively to achieve that.”
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The father of a teenager who took her own life after viewing harmful content online has accused Keir Starmer of “gambling with young people’s lives” over his plans for a social media ban for under-16s.
Ian Russell accused the prime minister of “playing politics” by rushing the announcement amid speculation about his future.
Starmer is expected to announce on Monday that the government plans to ban young people from using some social media platforms.
But Russell, whose daughter Molly died in 2017 aged 14, said the PM’s behaviour was “deplorable”.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, he said: “In opposition, Keir Starmer promised to tighten up the online safety world by regulating better.
“Early last year, father to father, I met with him briefly and he was very concerned – and he promised me he would look into effective solutions to deal with this problem.
“But as we sit here on the verge of this announcement, it seems that he’s not kept either of those promises.”
He said the prime minister had “promised a group of bereaved parents” an announcement could be expected by the summer recess, which falls in mid-July, “so he’s rushed that forward for some reason”.
“I can’t think of a reason other than a political reason… if he’s playing politics, what he’s doing is gambling with young people’s lives – and I find that deplorable,” he said.
Culture secretary Lisa Nandy told the same programme she “respectfully disagreed” with what Ian Russell had said.
She said: “There is an urgency to this because young people need help now and we cannot stand aside and not act when we see that very clearly.
“The tech companies have had more than enough time to get their own house in order and to be able to create products to keep children safe online. If they’re not prepared to do it, they lose the right to market their products towards children, and I don’t think the government should be neutral about that.”
Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Not only are we entering peak bee swarming season, but James Higgins, Head of eCommerce at Grass247, said we’re about to be beset by woodworms too.
“Most people associate woodworm with lofts, floorboards, and old indoor furniture, but many don’t realise that wooden features in the garden can also be vulnerable,” he shared.
With recent wet, warm weather “and woodworm season underway, it’s a good time to check timber features around the garden for the early warning signs of damage,” he added.
This can include a dust-like substance called “frass”.
What are woodworms?
They’re the larvae of different species of wood-eating beetles.
Their peak season is usually from March to October.
Woodworms cause the most damage in their larval stage, when they gnaw through the cellulose, hemicellulose and nitrogen present in the wood. That can cause structural damage.
Additionally, the adult beetles tunnel their way out of the wood, leading to further tiny holes.
They usually have a pale body with a black head, but you probably won’t see them if you’ve got them – they hide deep in the wood.
Where are woodworms found?
They typically like older, softer, wetter materials. They can be found in joists, floorboards, lofts, and vintage furniture.
But they can be found in your garden, too.
“Woodworm tends to favour timber with higher moisture levels because it’s easier for larvae to feed and develop within the wood. That means everything from garden furniture and decking to timber sleepers, raised beds, and wooden lawn edging can be worth checking at this time of year,” Higgins shared.
“Damp conditions won’t suddenly create an infestation overnight, but they can make existing problems easier to spot and allow damage to worsen if it’s left untreated.”
What are the signs of woodworm?
One sign you’ve got an infestation is a substance that looks like dust at first glance.
“Fresh woodworm activity often leaves behind a fine, cream-coloured dust known as ‘frass’. It can collect beneath things like furniture legs, decking boards, timber edging, sleeper borders, and around the base of raised beds,” Higgins revealed.
“It looks very similar to sawdust, but if it keeps reappearing after being brushed away, it could indicate active woodworm.”
Other signs of woodworm include:
- Soft, crumbling, or weakened timber,
- Dead beetles around windows, sheds, or conservatories,
- Tiny round holes (1-2mm) appearing in timber.
“Pay particular attention to garden sleepers, timber edging, pergolas, decking, and other wooden landscaping features that are exposed to the elements year-round or sit close to the soil” when looking for softer or crumbling wood, the expert continued.
Remember: beetles usually come out en masse from June to July, meaning you’ll benefit most from a keen bug watch, especially around sheds, conservatories, garages, and windows during those months.
If you think you might have woodworm, drying, ventilating, and treating the wood can help. If you’re not sure, it’s best to reach out to a professional.
Former RuPaul’s Drag Race UK champion Danny Beard has been unveiled as the lead in a new play about the late Paul O’Grady.
On Monday morning, it was announced that Danny would be starring as Paul in Savage, named after the late TV personality’s drag alter-ego, Lily Savage.
The play was penned by screenwriter and playwright Jonathan Harvey, whose biggest credits have included Beautiful To Heaven, Closer To Heaven and the award-winning TV comedy Gimme Gimme Gimme.
Jonathan had briefly worked with Paul on the play, prior to the Bafta winner’s death in 2023 at the age of 67.
Paul had previously said of the project: “I’m delighted Jonathan has agreed to write the script, I really am, as he’s perfect for this and he’s such a great writer.”
An official synopsis teases: “The show follows Paul’s journey from the streets of Merseyside to the heart of London’s club scene, where, armed with little more than his wits and a wig, he began carving out a place for himself.
“From humble roots and an unassuming start emerged Lily Savage: the fearless, foul-mouthed alter ego who would defy convention and win the hearts of millions.”
Speaking in a promotional video, recorded at London’s Royal Vauxhall Tavern, where Paul previously performed as Lily, Danny called the role a “dream come true”.
Jonathan enthused: “I was so thrilled when Paul gave me the opportunity to turn his life story into a stage show. I first saw Lily in a scuzzy gay bar in West London in the late 80s and laughed ’til I hurt, so it’s an honour indeed to bring his story and the colourful escapades of the blonde bombsite herself to life.
“This is one of those few shows that I’m involved in where I can go ‘You need to come. It’s really good’… because the zinging one-liners are all his.”
Fremantle Media/Shutterstock
“It’s so sad he’s not here to see it, but hopefully this will be a fitting testament to everything he achieved, and a cracking night out full of humour and heart,” he added.
Savage will premiere at Leicester’s Curve theatre in February 2027, before touring the UK and arriving in London’s West End.
The Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of home secretary Shabana Mahmood’s appeal against the High Court’s ruling that the ‘terrorism’ ban on Palestine Action was unlawful. The appeals court decided that the ban was a proportionate infringement on UK human rights and did not exceed the government’s powers.
Palestine Action
The judge reading out the decision based this judgment on the home secretary being better placed than the courts to decide what was needed – an anti-judicial coup carried out by judges, effectively. The interference of pro-Israel groups in the decision to ban the direct action group was ignored. The judge also denied that Palestine Action is comparable to the suffragettes because it used secrecy and carried out serious damage.
The suffragettes threw bombs and sent letter bombs. The dismissal of the point that the suffragettes used worse tactics and are now lauded goes a long way to illustrating today’s judgement.
Palestine Action remains a banned organisation. UK free speech and protest rights have been slashed by a corrupt government to protect Israel and the appeal court has, unsurprisingly, colluded in it.
Featured image via Getty/Carl Court
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