Politics
Politics Home Article | Muslim Voters Could Swing By-Election In Gorton And Denton
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6 min read
Last month, PoliticsHome revealed that the Muslim Vote organisation had endorsed the Green Party in the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election. Now a battle is underway to secure votes that could be key to the outcome on 26 February.
“It’s incredibly lazy to say all Muslim voters are left-wing,” said one Labour MP. “Are you telling me that these voters look at Zack Polanski and like his drugs policy?”
The Labour Party has controlled Gorton and Denton for well over a century.
At the 2024 general election, it was one of 70 constituencies that Keir Starmer’s party won with an absolute majority, securing over 50 per cent of the vote share. Defeat in this Greater Manchester seat later this month would represent a major symbolic blow to the Prime Minister as he seeks to put his shaky leadership on firmer footing.
A minister this week told PoliticsHome that the by-election would be the next “trigger point”.
Despite Labour’s position in Gorton and Denton seeming unassailable just 18 months ago, defeat at the end of February is seen as a very real prospect, with both the Greens and Reform UK confident of victory.
Green candidate Hannah Spencer, a plumber and councillor for nearby Hale, is the bookies’ favourite to succeed Andrew Gwynne, who resigned as the seat’s Labour MP on health grounds. “It’s really powerful to see so many people turn around and say, forget it, I’m not [voting Labour] anymore,” she told PoliticsHome.
“Labour is totally irrelevant in this constituency at this point,” Green Party leader Zack Polanski told PoliticsHome during a visit to the Greater Manchester contest.
Labour strongly rejects the suggestion that the by-election is a contest between the Greens and Nigel Farage’s Reform, with party sources in the area this week telling PoliticsHome they are increasingly confident of keeping hold of the seat. While the party and the Prime Minister poll poorly nationally, Labour possesses significant institutional knowledge of the seat, having controlled it for over 100 years, and is seen as having a strong ground campaign.
Labour currently holds 25 of the 27 MPs in the Greater Manchester region, and more than 600 councillors across the city. Andy Burnham, the popular local Labour mayor, is a regular campaigner and features prominently on literature alongside Labour candidate Angeliki Stogia, despite being blocked by Labour officials as the party’s candidate. Mancunian rock band Inspiral Carpets performed for Labour activists during PoliticsHome‘s visit to the constituency last weekend.
Labour and the Greens are engaged in a communications battle to persuade voters in Gorton and Denton that they are the best way of stopping Reform.
How the progressive vote splits on the day will be determined to a significant degree by the seat’s Muslim residents, who make up over 30 per cent of the constituency.
Amongst Pakistani and Bangladeshi voters – who, according to the most recent data, are the predominant Muslim group in Gorton and Denton – the Greens outperform Labour in nationwide polling. A YouGov survey conducted in October found that more than half of this cohort (58 per cent) felt positive about the Greens, compared with 31 per cent who felt positive about Labour.
The decision by both George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain and the Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana-fronted Your Party not to stand means there is no pro-Gaza voice to the left of the Greens. According to Ben Walker, co-founder of Britain Elects, this suggests there will be a few thousand votes that will “tack themselves on to the Green column”.
The Muslim Vote, an influential organisation which urges people to vote on religious lines, endorsed the Greens early in the campaign. The organisation, set up in late 2023, endorsed the four independent candidates who were elected at the 2024 general election on campaigns centred on the war in Gaza. They were Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan and Iqbal Mohammed.
However, the Greens face challenges in securing Muslim voters.
One reason for Labour optimism heading into the by-election is a belief that the area’s older voters, particularly older Muslim voters, remain loyal to the party.
Labour peer Lord Wajid Khan, who has been closely involved in the review into Islamophobia, has been helping the party’s dialogue with ethnic minorities groups in the constituency.
There is also a belief among Labour figures that Gaza as an issue is not as salient as it was earlier in the conflict. Labour candidate Stogia, a local councillor, told PoliticsHome she hosted an event for several dozen Muslim women in February and Gaza was not brought up once. She also claimed that the local Labour Party had experienced less of a backlash than elsewhere in the country, as Manchester City council was one of the first authorities to call for a ceasefire after the October 2023 attacks.
Middle East minister Hamish Falconer, who is regarded as a well-respected figure within the pro-Palestine wing of the party, has been to Gorton and Denton to campaign.
There is also a logistical challenge posed by the by-election falling during Ramadan, shortening the window for when Muslim voters can go to the polling station.
“A lot of voters will have a small window on which they can get out to vote, which is a two-hour window or a two-and-a-half-hour window,” the Muslim Vote’s Abubakr Nanabawa told PoliticsHome. “And it’s very important that the Green Party have a strategy to mobilise in those two and a half hours.”
The organisation is urging community leaders to use WhatsApp chats and channels to persuade friends and family members to get out the vote on by-election day.
Reform, whose hopes of victory in Gorton and Denton hinge largely on Labour and the Greens dividing the left-wing vote, has criticised what they describe as sectarian voting.
“We should not be having by-elections on issues which are unfolding in other parts of the world,” the party’s candidate Matt Goodwin told PoliticsHome. “National elections should be about the national economy. What we’ve seen in recent years is the Greens deliberately attempting to divide communities along lines of Gaza.”
“I have warned about [sectarian voting] for a few years,” added Reform leader Farage. “The Greens are a substitute sectarian candidate in Gorton.”
Polanski has welcomed the Muslim Vote endorsement, but stressed in an interview with PoliticsHome that voters should be treated as individuals.
“I think any organisation that wants to back the Green Party because they align with our values is something that I applaud and welcome,” he told PoliticsHome.
“I think we also know that whether they’re religious groups or any demographic groups, people don’t necessarily all vote the same way, and I think it’s important that we always treat people as individuals.”
Christian Bale has spoken out about the news that a new movie adaptation of American Psycho is in the works.
The Oscar winner had a major breakthrough moment in the early 2000s when he was cast as serial killer Patrick Bateman in the film version of American Psycho, based on Bret Easton Ellis’ novel of the same name.
Back in 2024, it was first reported that Call Me By Your Name and Challengers director Luca Guadagnino was working on putting his own spin on the novel, which Christian has now shared his thoughts on during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“Whoever wants to give it a shot, give it a pop,” he said, when asked about who should be the next actor to play Patrick Bateman.
“I loved making [American Psycho] with [director] Mary Harron so many years back, [I have] fantastic memories of it all.”
He continued: “Bold choice of anyone to try to do a – I don’t know if they’re doing a remake or what, I don’t know anything else about it. But all the best to ’em, I like brave people.”
Last week, Bret Easton Ellis told Variety that “a couple of high-profile actors” had already turned down an offer to play Patrick Bateman.
“I think maybe because they don’t want to be in the shoes of Christian Bale,” he added.
Lionsgate/Kobal/Shutterstock
Back in December 2024, Variety alleged that Austin Butler was “poised to star” in the film, following previous rumours that Jacob Elordi “was being eyed”.
Meanwhile, The White Lotus star Patrick Schwarzenegger has made no secret of his hopes to land the part, telling one fan that he’d “love nothing more” than to be cast as Patrick Bateman in the film.
The first adaptation of American Psycho gained a cult following after its release in 2000, and was last year named by The New York Times as the best movie of the 21st century.
An oft-forgotten sequel, starring Mila Kunis and William Shatner, came out direct-to-video in 2002.
The US and Israel’s joint strikes on Iran will have sent ripples across Russia as Donald Trump targets one of Vladimir Putin’s international allies.
Iran previously supplied Russia with crucial weapons for its war in Ukraine and offered support at a time when Putin remains isolated on the world stage.
But, as attention shifts away from Russia’s grinding offensive in Ukraine and refusal to compromise in peace talks, the emerging conflict in the Middle East could end up working to Putin’s advantage.
Here’s what you need to know.
Loss of An Ally
The US-Israeli strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday, and his immediate successor was taken out in a subsequent attack.
Putin denounced it as “murder … committed in cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law” in a statement on the Kremlin’s website.
Though the Iranian regime has not completely collapse just yet, the strikes have weakened Tehran.
The strikes also came months after another ally, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, was kidnapped by US authorities, and more than a year after Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by opposition forces.
All three leaders had ties to Putin’s regime.
According to geopolitical expert and partner of the international law firm Pillsbury, Matthew Oresman, Russia is now “in a worse position today than it was a week ago”.
He told HuffPost UK: “Iran was a major supporter of Russia, including providing significant military equipment and other support for its war in Ukraine – it has now lost this.”
Similarly, Chatham House’s associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia programme, Keir Giles, said Russia will be “dismayed” after the “severe embarrassment” of an ally.
A Boost For Resources
Iran has been providing Russia with weapons to use against Ukraine, meaning the strikes could cause significant disruption to Putin’s offensive.
But Dr Simon Bennett – director of the civil safety and security unit at the University of Leicester – said Moscow was already weaning itself off Iranian supplied weapons and manufacturing its own Shahed drones.
Bennett told HuffPost UK: “Whatever economic and diplomatic support Russia was providing the Khamenei regime can now be redeployed in support of his war on Ukraine.”
Iran was also a rival source of oil for Putin, who lost many European customers over his attack on Ukraine as governments slapped sanctions on the authoritarian.
If Iran’s own supplies become inaccessible, “Putin’s depleted coffers will be replenished by rising oil and gas prices,” Bennett pointed out.
“As the coffers fill, Putin will be able to further develop Russia’s war economy and intensify his assault on Ukraine.”
Giles said Putin would also benefit from the “US reducing its own munitions’ supply” with its attack on Iran – thus reducing the likelihood it could go after Russia.
A Trump Distraction
Trump’s focus appears to be on the Middle East right now, allowing Russia to continue with its war of attrition away from the spotlight.
Oresman said: “The US is now distracted by the Iranian conflict, which limits its ability to focus on Ukraine or provide it military support.
“The US certainly won’t commit to any aggressive attack on Russia now, given its stretched resources and the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
“Putin may even be thinking that the US will be more inclined to rush a peace deal on Ukraine just to free up the resources and attention.”
But as Giles noted, the strikes may have put Putin’s long-term plans under strain.
The strikes “torpedoed the ‘spheres of interest’ idea”, which was thought to interest both Trump and Putin.
The concept suggests the US, Russia and China would agree to divide the world up into their own areas of influences.
But, the Middle East did not appear to be part of the US’s planned areas, suggesting Trump has already exceeded his boundaries.
Exposes Europe’s Vulnerabilities
Putin is known to detest everything Europe stands for – and this war has highlighted the continent’s limitations.
Bennett said: “Britain’s inability to defend its overseas assets – witness the RAF’s inability to shoot down a slow-flying drone before it impacted the runway at Akrotiri [in Cyprus] – will confirm Putin’s view that western Europe is militarily weak and there for the taking. And he’s not wrong.”
He said the UK only has six destroyers and seven frigates right now, but it needs dozens of both if it were ever to fight Russia.
Europe’s split response to the strikes on Iran will have delighted the Kremlin, too, with Spain and the UK calling the war “unlawful”, while Germany appears to stand by the White House.
Giles also told HuffPost UK it makes sense why “Russia is now being so vocal about international law” right now after Khamenei’s death.
There is an international arrest warrant out for Putin, which stops him from travelling to certain countries – so he will relish any opportunity to call out supposed double standards.
What Will This Mean For Ukraine?
Ukraine is likely be in two minds over the conflict in Iran.
On one hand, it must be “soul-destroying to see European allies willing to do for Israel what they won’t do for Ukraine”, according to Giles, who said it shows once again that Kyiv “is low in the pecking order”.
To make matters worse, Europe’s ability to supply Ukraine with weapons and America’s ability to sell military devices to the Europe for Kyiv may also be impacted by the war.
But Giles added that a US distraction is “not necessarily a bad thing” for Ukraine.
Trump has falsely blamed Kyiv for holding up talks and pushed the country to give up more land in the name of peace.
A delay, while prolonging the conflict on the frontlines, might therefore take the pressure off.
What Happens Next?
Russia is not looking to aggravate the US, according to the experts, pointing to the way Putin did not even mention Trump with his condemnation of Khamenei’s killing.
Oresman said Putin is in a “wait and see” mode, adding: “I don’t expect Putin to make any big moves in the near term, preferring to wait to see if the Iranian situation creates an opportunity for Russia to gain leverage in [Ukraine] negotiations.”
Giles said Russia could assist Iran in retaliation – but then it would be in the conflict with the US, and Putin is keen to keep Trump on side.
He said that, just as China is “sitting back and watching” what unfolds in Ukraine, Russia is doing the same when it comes to Iran.
Zendaya’s mum has added her voice to the ongoing speculation about whether the Euphoria actor quietly married her partner Tom Holland without the world knowing.
Over the weekend, Zendaya’s long-time stylist Law Roach made headlines when he told reporters that the Emmy winner and Marvel hero had already privately tied the knot.
“The wedding has already happened!” he told Access Hollywood, when pressed on what he could share about the couple’s upcoming nuptials. “You missed it!”
Law then made the same remarks to Entertainment Tonight, adding: “The wedding’s over, sorry!”
After video footage of the exchange went viral, Zendaya’s mum Claire Stoermer reposted the Entertainment Tonight interview on her Instagram story earlier this week.
“The laugh…” she added, per BuzzFeed, alongside a laughing emoji, referring to the RuPaul’s Drag Race regular’s reaction in the clip.
Michael Kovac via Getty Images for ELLE
HuffPost UK contacted Zendaya and Tom Holland’s representatives earlier this week but did not receive a response.
Over the years, the pair have become renowned for keeping their relationship out of the spotlight, only acknowledging their romance in 2021 when pictures of them kissing were made public.
Zendaya and Tom met on the set of the 2017 superhero movie Spider-Man: Homecoming, in which he played the titular hero and she appeared as his classmate and love interest, MJ.
Later this year, they will share the screen again in Oscar-winning filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to his hit movie Oppenheimer, a new adaptation of the epic The Odyssey.
Zendaya is rumoured to be playing the Greek goddess Athena in the film, while Tom is set to appear as Telemachus, the on-screen son of Matt Damon’s Odysseus.
Joining Zendaya and Tom in the star-studded cast of The Odyssey will be Oscar winners Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron and Anne Hathaway, as well as Nolan regulars Benny Safdie, Elliot Page and Robert Pattinson.
Mitchell Palmer is an economist at the Adam Smith Institute.
The British housing market is broken, especially in the South East of England. In London, the average private renter spends more than 40 per cent of their income on rent, while more than 15 per cent of private rentals are not deemed ‘decent’ for human habitation. At the same time, first-home buyers struggle to accumulate a deposit. This creates misery, as well as unmeetable demand for social housing.
But the consequences are even more dire than they first appear. Since the Global Financial Crisis, Britain’s economic output per capita has remained basically static. As new research from the Adam Smith Institute shows, housing is to blame for much of this stagnation. Of the 10–20 per cent of additional growth we identified as available, fixing our planning system alone accounts for around 7 percentage points. It is the largest single pro-growth move we could make.
The reason is simple. When homes are scarce and expensive, everything else suffers. Workers can’t relocate to better opportunities. Businesses struggle to recruit. Families spend more of their income on subpar housing and less on everything else. Productivity falls, wages stagnate, and growth slows.
Despite this obvious catastrophe, Britain has made it harder and harder to build. Our planning system gives councils wide discretion to delay or block development, even in places crying out for homes. Layers of regulation add years of uncertainty and cost, especially for small and medium-sized builders who once delivered much of the country’s housing.
The result is a supply crunch that never seems to ease. Even when demand softens, the underlying shortage remains. That’s why prices rebound so quickly, and why rents barely ever fall.
Everyone knows the conventional solutions offered to this problem. The left proposes more social housing. Both sides demand tougher rules on private landlords. On a good day, politicians even propose loosening rules that restrict the supply of high-density housing in town centres or near railway stations. These three proposals are not equal, but all are insufficient. They do not solve the monopoly problem at the heart of the housing crisis.
What we need are competitive urban land markets.
Landowners must feel a rush to build for fear of a missed opportunity and someone else satisfying demand. To make this threat real, governments must enable development on a wide variety of different plots, both inside and outside the city limits, and at a scale much larger than anticipated housing demand. Much of this housing will never be built; it simply needs to be threatened.
This is the concept at the heart of New Zealand’s successful housing reforms. As the Kiwi housing minister Chris Bishop recently put it, ‘abundant development opportunities [will] drive down land prices and create housing choice’. The reforms are still in progress, but they are already paying dividends. Auckland – a city of 1.5 million – is now building three times as many dwellings as London – a city of 9 million. Unsurprisingly, rents are now 19 per cent more affordable, relative to incomes, than they were in 2015.
To create competitive urban land markets in this country, we will need to throw out the discretionary planning system entirely. It should be replaced with a transparent framework of pre-determined, liberal development rights, so landowners know that building is not a special favour granted by the state but a normal economic activity. Crucially, these rights should respond to market signals: If land prices surge in a city, more land should automatically be released for development.
At the same time, councils should abandon the idea of merely meeting minimum housing targets, which entrenches scarcity and monopoly power, and instead enable housing wherever it can reasonably be accommodated, letting the market choose between abundant sites.
Finally, Britain must relax green belt constraints and invest in transport to cut commuting times. Done properly, this growth can pay for itself through land value uplift, just as the Metropolitan Railway once did and Japan’s railways still do today.
Politicians talk a lot about ‘boosting growth’. Unfortunately, a few new towns or tower blocks won’t solve Britain’s housing crisis. De facto rent controls and higher social housing obligations certainly won’t. If the government is serious about making it easier to build homes they need to commit to reshaping our broken urban land market. Until we fix that, Britain’s housing crisis will keep doing what it’s done for years: quietly making us all poorer.
A Labour MP has spoken out after her husband was arrested on suspicion of spying for China.
Joani Reid’s spouse, lobbyist David Taylor, was arrested along with two other men – one of whom is understood to be the partner of a former Labour MP.
The Metropolitan Police said the suspects – aged 39, 43 and 68 – were arrested by counter-terrorism officers in London and Wales after being accused of assisting a foreign intelligence service.
All three men remain in custody and searches have been carried out at the addresses where they were arrested, the force added.
Reid, the MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven, said: “I have never seen anything to make me suspect my husband has broken any law.
“I am not part of my husband’s business activities and neither I nor my children are part of this investigation, and we should not be treated by media organisations as though we are. Above all I expect media organisations to respect my children’s privacy.”
She continued: “I have never been to China. I have never spoken on China or China related matters in the Commons. I have never asked a question on China-related matters.
“As far as I am aware I have never met any Chinese businesses whilst I have been an MP, any Chinese diplomats or government employees, nor raised any concern with ministers or anyone else on behalf of, even coincidentally, Chinese interests.
“I am a social democrat who believes in freedom of expression, free trade unions and free elections. I am not any sort of admirer or apologist for the Chinese Communist party’s dictatorship.”
Updating the Commons, security minister Dan Jarvis said there will be “severe consequences” if it is proven that China attempted to interfere with UK sovereign affairs.
He said the investigation “relates to China” and “foreign interference targeting UK democracy”.
He told MPs: “Let me be clear, if there is proven evidence of attempts by China to interfere with UK sovereign affairs, we will impose severe consequences and hold all actors involved to account.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been forced to backtrack. The hapless Rubio told reporters ahead of a classified briefing to Congress members that Israel made US join the attack on Iran.
Rubio had previously said that:
a plan from Israel to attack Iran spurred the Trump administration to take pre-emptive strikes.
His statement was then contradicted by US President Donald Trump who said on 3 March:
If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.
Rubio then told reporters by way of backtracking (and without reference to his original statement):
I told you, this had to happen anyway, the president made a decision, and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program
Once the president made a decision that negotiations were not going to work … the decision was made to strike.
Adding:
The bottom line is this. We, the president, determined we were not going to get hit first.
Democrats go anti-war
US Democrats received a classified briefing from Rubio, defence secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior officials on 3 March. There are limits on what those briefed can disclose to the public.
Senator Elizabeth Warren posted on X on 3 March:
It is so much worse than you thought.
You are right to be worried. The Trump administration has no plan in Iran. This illegal war is based on lies, and it was launched without any imminent threat to our nation.
I just left a classified briefing with the Trump Administration about the war in Iran.
I was worried before, but I’m more worried now. pic.twitter.com/HoSWLVWrR8
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 3, 2026
The death toll in the war has risen rapidly to over 1000 as of 4 March:
🚨At least 1,097 civilians have been killed in U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran since Feb. 28, including 181 children under 10, according to monitor HRANA.
In the past 24 hours, the group recorded 104 attacks across 19 provinces, with strikes hitting military bases, medical… https://t.co/dBi6DraVkL
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) March 4, 2026
The US-Israel attack on Iran is now pulling in European countries like France, Greece and the UK. Israel has begun a ground invasion of Lebanon. In Washington DC, the heart of US empire, they’re debating matters of procedure.
Featured image via the Canary
German chancellor Friedrich Merz said of last year’s illegal US-Israeli attacks on Iran that “Israel is doing the dirty work for us all”. Now he has said that the protections of international law shouldn’t apply to Iran. Because rogue states ignore international law.
Except that when he says ‘rogue states’, he doesn’t mean Israel and the US, which just ditched international law to murder Iranian schoolgirls, assassinate Iran’s leader and blow up around twenty Iranian hospitals. He doesn’t mean their enablers – like the German and UK governments – who ignored international law to support the Epstein class’s genocide and now to abet its latest illegal war.
He means Iran.
German double standards
Merz said that “now is not the time” (we’ve heard that before) to “lecture” the US and Israel about their lawbreaking. But apparently now is the time to lecture the victims and tell them international law doesn’t protect them because that doesn’t suit Trump or Netanyahu.
Because Iran hasn’t done the ‘right’ thing and surrendered completely to US and Israel’s demands and the amplification of their European cheerleaders, as he made clear:
Appeals from Europe, including from Germany, and condemnations of Iranian violations of international law, and even extensive sanctions, have achieved little over the years and decades…international legal assessments will have relatively little effect. This is all the more true if they remain largely without consequence… therefore, now is not the time to lecture our partners and allies.
What international law?
Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Wolfgang Janitsch described the comments as “a long farewell to international law”.
Even in Germany, which has a genocide-long record of brutal repression of protests against Israel’s crimes, Merz’s comments caused outrage. So his spokesperson tried to backtrack without backtracking, insisting both that Germany respects international law and doesn’t at the same time:
Germany does not question international law. I want to make that absolutely clear. But there is also a security interest that is not addressed by international law.
Responsible Statecraft summed up the situation succinctly:
Craven Europeans give US and Israel a blank check for illegal war. They frame the crisis not as an act of war against a UN member state, but as a natural consequence of Tehran’s failure to capitulate unconditionally.
Perhaps it’s Merz, like Starmer and his fellow criminals, who needs the protection of international law – but only of his right to a fair trial in the Hague before going down for crimes against humanity.
Featured image via the Canary
Palestine activists are preparing to lobby Welsh pension bosses. And they’ll be pushing the case for divestment, human rights and justice for Palestinians. The push will call on the Wales Pension Partnership to divest pension money from companies complicit in the oppression of Palestinians.
The activists, from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others, will come to Cardiff from all over Wales. They’ll form a Red Line protest from 9.30am on 10 March at County Hall in Cardiff during a meeting of the Wales Pension Partnership. And they’ll call on the pension fund to divest from genocide.
The Red Line for Gaza campaign takes inspiration from symbolic ‘red line’ protests around Wales and the world. Protesters carry a symbolic red line fabric. The red lines the Israeli government continues to cross include starvation as a weapon of war, and targeting and killing civilians seeking safety (including children), journalists, medics and care givers.
The Wales Pension Partnership
The Wales Pension Partnership invests £1.1bn on behalf of Welsh local authorities in companies enabling Israel’s genocide. They include Elbit, Palantir, Barclays Bank and companies critical to the West Bank settlements. The United Nations has declared these settlements illegal.
Despite the declared ceasefire, Israel continues to attack Gaza and the West Bank, with hundreds killed and infrastructure destroyed. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Israel has killed over 100 children in Gaza since the ceasefire. Israel has intensified, not relaxed, land confiscation – especially in the West Bank.
Ten Welsh councils have already voted to back divestment by their pension funds, yet the Wales Pension Partnership refuses to act. On 4 March Rhondda Cynon Taf council will debate and hopefully pass a divestment motion. While on 5 March Pembrokeshire council will debate divestment by Dyfed Pension Fund.
The Wales Pension Partnership approach is what it calls “constructive engagement” with companies identified as potentially complicit in human right abuses.
Bethan Sayed is co-chair of PSC Cymru. PSC Cymru is the Welsh branches of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Ahead of the protest, she said:
The Wales Pension Partnership prefers to write polite letters to companies selling the means of genocide than pulling the rug on them. It’s not good enough, and that’s why we call on the WPP to change course and set about pulling money out of these companies.
Our focus is firmly on the lack of decisive divestment despite most councils in Wales demanding it. Genocide continues.
Featured image via the Canary
The post PMQs: Badenoch “The PM is catching arrows not dealing with the archers” appeared first on Conservative Home.
Commanders at more than 30 US military locations have told their troops that the US is attacking Iran to cause “armageddon” and hasten the second coming of Jesus – passing on an apparent message from deranged defence secretary Pete Hegseth.
The message includes a combat unit commander telling unit non-commissioned officers – sergeants and corporals – that US president Donald Trump is:
anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.
Hesgeth leading ‘Christian’ charge
According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), in just a three-day period from the start of the illegal US-Israel attacks on Iran, MRFF has been “inundated” by more than 110 complaints from various units across thirty different bases in every branch of the US military about this messaging.
Hegseth reportedly attends, at least weekly, a White House ‘bible study’ led by a Zionist ‘pastor’ who insists the US must support Israel no matter what.
The news has horrified many US Christians as well as the rest of the right-thinking world. Baptist News Global covered the revelations and noted MRFF’s disgust with the bloodthirstiness of the so-called ‘Christian nationalism‘ Hegseth and his ilk espouse:
These calls have one damn thing in freaking common: Our MRFF clients (service members who seek MRFF aid) report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new ‘biblically-sanctioned’ war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian ‘end times’ as vividly described in the New Testament book of Revelation,” Weinstein said.
Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world eschatology.
A horror show run by paedophiles, fanatics and heretics who threaten the world and feed on the innocent: the US government under Donald Trump (and not only his administration).
Featured image via the Canary
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