When FIFA decided to expand the World Cup to 48 teams for the first time in history, it seemed like a new victory for the idea of inclusivity that the world’s most popular sport has long championed.

More countries will get the chance to appear on football’s biggest stage. Continents that previously suffered from a lack of places will find themselves more widely represented and new fans will live the long-awaited World Cup dream.

But ahead of the 2026 edition, a striking paradox has emerged that is making itself felt with increasing force. whilst the tournament’s doors have opened wider to national teams, they seem narrower than ever for many fans.

World Cup of the People to World Cup of the Market

For many decades, the World Cup has been more than just a football tournament; it has been a global event where cultures and peoples come together in the stands before the pitch. Fans from all over the world have been an integral part of the tournament’s identity, creating the colours, chants and stories that remain in the memory longer than some of the matches themselves.

But the upcoming edition reflects a different reality. With the growing reliance on luxury hospitality packages, variable ticket pricing and rising travel and accommodation costs, many are wondering whether the tournament is gradually shifting from a global festival for the masses to a sporting and commercial product aimed more at those who can afford its exorbitant costs.

The tournament has expanded in sporting terms, but it has become more selective economically.

More teams but less fans able to attend

From a sporting perspective, the 48-team format represents an unprecedented historic step. The tournament will see a greater number of nations, players and fans from different continents taking part, thereby boosting the game’s global reach.

However, the picture looks different off the pitch.

A fan dreaming of following their national team in North America faces not only the cost of the ticket, but a whole range of expenses, starting with flights and extending to hotels, transport, food, insurance and other travel requirements.

And herein lies the greatest paradox in the history of the modern tournament: whilst qualifying for the World Cup has become easier for national teams, it has become more difficult for many fans.

Let’s compare Qatar 2022 and Russia 2018

At World Cup Russia 2018, fans benefited from relatively lower accommodation and travel costs compared to major Western markets.

In Qatar, in 2022, despite the widespread controversy that preceded the tournament, the country’s compact geography allowed fans to attend more than one match a day and significantly reduced the cost of domestic travel.

As for the 2026 World Cup, the picture is completely different.

The tournament will be held across 16 cities in the US, Canada and Mexico, with huge distances between  some stadiums. Fans may find themselves having to fly more than once just to follow a single team during the group stage.

Thus, the problem is not just the ticket price but the cost of the entire World Cup experience.

Tickets and costs…’A dream that turns into a budget’

At the 2026 World Cup, tickets are no longer the only obstacle facing fans; they have become part of a complex pricing system that makes getting into the stands a real financial challenge.

Reports suggest that ticket prices in some categories have risen significantly compared to previous tournaments, with a variable pricing system in place that makes major matches more expensive as demand increases.

However, the biggest burden lies not in the ticket price alone but in the ‘full experience’ of the World Cup. Fans will face a series of mounting costs: hotels in cities that are among the most expensive in the world during peak season, domestic flights between geographically distant cities, and high daily expenses due to differences in the cost of living.

When these factors are combined, a trip to watch the tournament could turn into a financial undertaking beyond the means of many of the traditional fans who have shaped the history of the World Cup.

Most expensive and resource-intensive tournament

The 2026 World Cup is likely to be the largest in terms of expenditure, logistics and environmental emissions.

With the number of matches increased to 104 and the number of host cities rising to 16 across three different countries, the tournament will see unprecedented travel by teams, fans, media and sponsors.

This massive expansion has prompted a number of environmental studies to warn that the 2026 tournament could have the highest carbon footprint in World Cup history, at a time when global sporting bodies are championing sustainability and environmental conservation.

Thus, the expansion of sport is shifting from an organisational achievement to a source of both economic and environmental controversy.

Are World Cup stands losing their spirit?

This is perhaps the most sensitive question of all. The value of the World Cup has never lain solely in the number of matches or the scale of revenue, but in the fans who have given the tournament its unique spirit. Fans who have saved for years to make the journey, who have waved their national flags in the stands, and who have created unforgettable moments that have become part of the game’s history.

However, many fear that the stands will gradually become spaces that are less representative of the average fan and more dominated by companies, major sponsors and holders of exclusive rights.

At that point, the question will no longer be about the number of participating teams or the number of matches, but about the very identity of the tournament itself.

The paradox of the new era

The 2026 World Cup will go down in history as the biggest, most expansive and richest edition in the tournament’s history, which dates back to 1930. But it also faces questions that have never before been raised with such intensity.

Whilst FIFA has succeeded in expanding the global reach of football, it is still required to prove that this expansion does not necessarily mean excluding the fans who have built the game’s popularity across generations.

The World Cup is accessible to more countries than ever before, but the road to the stands is longer and more expensive than ever too.

And therein lies the paradox that perhaps sums up the whole story of the 2026 World Cup: a tournament that is more global on paper, but less accessible to everyone in reality.

Featured image via Luke Hales/ Getty Images

By Alaa Shamali

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Labour MP Nadia Whittome has announced a motion to reject the Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) transphobic Code of Practice. Rachel Taylor MP, likewise of Labour, also gave a moving account of why she signed the motion.

Whittome and Taylor have also urged other MPs to sign the motion. To this end, trans rights campaign groups TransActual, Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, and Scottish Trans have created an email template for constituents to write to their MPs to urge them to sign.

Scottish Trans stated that, in just one week, over 1,200 people have already written to their representatives.

Transphobic code rejected

The EHRC’s draft guidance, as it currently stands, calls for service providers to exclude trans people from single-sex spaces reflecting their gender, and also often those of their sex assigned at birth. The government’s own impact assessment has acknowledged that it will likely harm trans and gender non-conforming individuals.

Whittome explained that her Early Day Motion (EDM), tabled 1 June, is:

This motion is currently the only available mechanism by which MPs can reject the EHRC’s Code of Practice; if debated and passed within the 40-day scrutiny window, it would prevent the EHRC from issuing the Code and bringing it into force. This is unfortunately unlikely, but it is important that as many MPs as possible sign the motion.

MPs already highlighted the obvious harms of the EHRC’s draft code in a parliamentary debate at the beginning of Pride month. Nevertheless, as Whittome highlighted, the government still looks highly likely to accept the guidance.

Early Day Motions have no set day for debate in Parliament. As such, most are never debated. However, EDMs do act as a mechanism to track MPs’ support for a particular cause.

The only current alternative is to allow the segregation of trans people in the UK to be enacted with apparent total support. As such, it’s crucial that trans-positive MPs (or even the transphobes who recognise that the code is unworkable) make their voices heard.

EHRC’s ‘hollow words of concern’

Regarding her decision to sign Whittome’s EDM, Rachel Taylor MP explained that:

I went into today’s Women and Equalities Committee to listen carefully to what the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) had to say about the recently tabled Code of Practice. After that session, I am deeply concerned that our national human rights body is worryingly complacent about a document that the government’s own impact assessment says puts transgender people at increased risk of harassment, violence and sexual abuse.

In particular, Taylor highlighted the EHRC chair’s “hollow words of concern” in answer to a question on trans people fleeing domestic violence. She continued:

During the session, the chair repeatedly struggled to answer questions about the glaring contradictions throughout the guidance. It is not good enough to simply defer to notions of ‘common sense’ at points where the guidance simply isn’t fit for purpose. It is blatantly obvious that the code is simply unworkable. And it is not credible to deny to enacting the Code will entrench a policing of harmful gender norms that many of us have fought so hard to overturn for many decades.

This gender policing hasn’t waited for the code to pass. Support groups have already reported that, following the Supreme Court’s ruling, gender non-conforming women have faced increased harassment in single-sex spaces.

‘The return of poisonous division’

Taylor also called out the ludicrous fact that the government’s impact assessment recognises the harm perpetrated by the code. She highlighted that the assessment:

repeatedly states that it is likely to increase community tension and conflict across our society, in an age that already feels defined by the return of poisonous division and open bigotry. The EHRC was created to be the champion of equality and tolerance, not a passive bystander to the marginalisation of vulnerable people.

Despite a change of leadership, it remains my view that the EHRC does not seem interested in advocating for and standing up for the rights of LGBT – and particularly transgender – people. As a lifelong campaigner for equality, that is not something I can accept.

The Women and Equalities Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights refused to endorse the current EHRC chair, Mary-Ann Stephenson. Both groups warned that she lacked experience in advocacy work beyond a narrow, and distinctly transphobic, focus on women’s rights.

Taylor also reiterated Whittome’s pessimism regarding the EDM itself, deeming it a “symbolic act”. Stating that she couldn’t sit by and allow the harmful code to pass without making her voice heard, she expressed frustration that:

signing this one is the only avenue available for making my views clear in what is clearly a deeply flawed process.

‘Stand in solidarity’

However, above and beyond that frustration, Taylor recognised her duty to stand up for a marginalised community:

I believe it is incumbent on me to stand in solidarity with transgender people across the country, and particularly my transgender constituents who have told me the real fear and distress they are feeling.

By Alex/Rose Cocker

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It’s Carers Week, and unsurprisingly, the Labour government couldn’t care less.

Despite this being an easy way to prove that they at least superficially give a toss, neither the DWP nor the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) have posted about the week on social media.

Carers Week ignored this year

Just one department has posted about it, and it was to remind people to fill in a consultation about enabling unpaid carers to get back into work

Millions could re-enter the workforce if better workplace protections for unpaid carers were implemented. That’s why we’re consulting on possible changes to pay and leave entitlements. Have your say: https://t.co/81dhMf7enM pic.twitter.com/dpWr86WKkQ

— Department for Business and Trade (@biztradegovuk) June 9, 2026

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The Department for Business and Trade posted a link to a consultation on employment rights for unpaid carers and parents of seriously ill children. Whilst this would make a difference, it ignores the fact that many carers can’t work because of their caring responsibilities.

DWP penalises informal carers

It’s also deeply hypocritical that the government wants to push more carers to be cogs in the capitalist machine when they’ve penalised so many for earning what they deem to be too much.

Carers have been battling for justice from the DWP for a long time. Those running the department still refuse to take accountability.

Just days after a scathing review into the government’s handling of the Carers Allowance scandal was published, a DWP senior civil servant published a blog post blaming carers for failing to report changes.

In an internal blog post seen by the Guardian, Neil Coulling said:

Incidentally what has been missed in all the [media] coverage is that this error (and hands up we made it and we will put it right) affects only a relatively small number of cases and wasn’t the cause of the original complaint. Because at the heart of the overpayment issues in [Carers Allowance] is a failure to report changes of circumstances.

It’s almost as if said carers are too busy looking after their loved ones and trying their hardest not to get into debt that they don’t have time to spend hours doing the DWP’s job for them.

The review found that some carers contemplated suicide due to the distress of being expected to pay back thousands of pounds that they never knew they owed.

Carers described how they were expected to work to strict DWP timelines but then made to wait excruciating lengths of time for responses. In some cases, they never received a reply at all.

One carer described it as “playing a game where only the other side knows the rules”.

The review especially highlighted how much senior figures within the DWP (such as Couling) were repeatedly warned of the issues in the system yet ignored them for more than a decade.

DWP hopes carers scandal will fizzle away

In a Work and Pensions Committee hearing, Liz Sayce, who headed up the inquiry, said the DWP was minimising the problem and deflecting the blame.

When asked about Couling’s comments, she said:

What you were hoping for from senior people at that point was to really share with colleagues across the department the seriousness of this – what has been learned, what is going to be put right. Not attempt to minimise or again, place a responsibility back on the carers, as if it was their fault.

Sayce also felt that senior members of staff had attempted to brush the issue under the carpet.

I felt that sometimes there was a kind of effort to almost minimise what had gone wrong to reassure staff that they hadn’t done anything. And actually that’s the wrong thing to do. As a leader in such a circumstance what you need to do, I think, is to own the problem, explain why the system wasn’t right.

When asked by the Committee to explain itself, the DWP floundered. Peter Schofield, permanent secretary of the DWP, waffled on so much that Lib Dem Steve Darling accused him of talking “blancmange”.

Darling said:

You’ve given me a lot of blancmange that I’m finding difficult to nail to the ceiling what clear evidence of management change is there, and I’m concerned that you’re not able to give me any.

Laughably, Schofield’s response claimed the DWP always fixed its mistakes.

We’ve got a great track record of putting things right when things go wrong. This is a department that when it knows we have to get things right we put it right.

DWP works exactly how the government wants

And despite all this, the DWP is still chasing carers over supposedly unpaid bills. The Canary reported the situation is so bad that another inquiry could be looming.

However, as we pointed out, the DWP is doing exactly what the government told it to.

Repeatedly, successive governments have tasked the DWP with reducing benefits payments and rooting out largely imaginary ‘fraud’. They don’t get to feign shock that the DWP is hounding innocent people. That’s the department’s whole job – the same disgraceful job the government tasked them with.

At the end of the day, no amount of sanctimonious nothing sentiments from the government will make up for the fact that they enable a department whose primary focus is to hound vulnerable people and instead of supporting them, work to actively make their lives worse.

Featured image via Naomi Baker/ Getty Images

By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

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A conference held by a US-Israel lobby group has laughed uproariously at the memory of an Israeli terrorist attack that killed and maimed thousands, including children.

US politician calls not shaking Netanyahu’s hand ‘wild’

Lobby-funded senator, John Fetterman, was speaking to the American Jewish Committee, a hardcore Zionist, pro-genocide group.

He told listeners that the idea of someone not shaking the hand of wanted war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, was “wild”.

But blowing up kids and old people? “I love it.” (Cue hilarity from the AJC audience.)

Zionism is racism. Israel is terrorism.

Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/ Getty Images

By Skwawkbox

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Activists occupied the Gherkin’s foyer in protest against insurance company Swiss Re’s refusal to rule out liquefied natural gas projects in the Coral Triangle on international Coral Triangle Day.

Protesters chanted: “Protect our oceans, protect our future!” and “Swiss Re, you can’t hide, don’t insure this ecocide!” The Coral Triangle spans much of South East Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste.

When the protesters tried to deliver a letter to Swiss Re, they were refused. Security guards man-handled young people and dragged a scientist participating in the protest to the revolving door, where he lay between the panels blocking the entrance. City of London Police attended but made no arrests.

Protect the Coral Triangle

Lily, 17, a student from Generation 1.5, said:

We are demanding Swiss Re rules out the insuring of new oil and gas projects in the Coral Triangle. Our futures depend on scaling down fossil fuels, not more expansion, and biodiverse regions like the Coral Triangle have to be protected.

Insurers have the power to stop extractive and destructive projects like this by withdrawing support, but they need to be willing to act.

The protest follows an open letter from over 70 organisations, calling on insurance companies to:

• Rule out insuring gas expansion into the Coral Triangle.
• Exclude fossil gas projects in high-biodiversity and protected areas.
• Stop insuring fossil gas expansion globally.
• Support a just and secure energy transition.
• Respect human rights and Indigenous sovereignty as a condition of insurance coverage.

The Coral Triangle is home to 76% of the world’s coral species, critical tuna spawning grounds and vast mangrove carbon sinks. It supports over 360 million people’s livelihoods. Fossil fuel expansion there would increase threats of oil spills and pollution.

This could devastate critical coral reef ecosystems that are essential for global food security, water security and geopolitical stability, according to the UK government’s report on ecosystems collapse and national security threats.

Shana Sullivan, a PhD student and spokesperson for the student protest group No New Workers, added:

As students we pledge to boycott careers in any such insurance or financial companies that prop up the fossil fuel or arms industries, while calling on our peers to do the same, building pressure on the insurance sector to withdraw their support for extractive, ecocidal and imperialist projects wiping out communities and accelerating climate breakdown.

Insurance sector is worried

Already the insurance sector is showing alarm at student opposition to destructive underwriting practices. Just 13% of students say they’ll ever consider a career in insurance, a historic low. Student protests will “send shivers through the insurance sector”, according to Emerging Risks trade commentary.

No New Workers is a youth-led grassroots campaign targeting the industries enabling new fossil fuels and weapons of war. Students, graduates and young people are promising no new workers for these industries until they divest from ecocide and genocide.

Generation 1.5 is a youth climate justice action group. It aims to build a community of young people willing to organise and take action to make our voices and the ones of marginalised and oppressed groups heard, and to educate about the root causes and injustices surrounding the climate crisis.

Featured image supplied

By The Canary

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In this scene, John Swinney is portrayed by Stewie Griffin, and the membership of the SNP is portrayed by Brian Griffin.

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We’re not sure any words are needed after that, but what the heck.

Because it’s really, really difficult to overstate the blind idiot gullibility of the 40% of the SNP’s one-time members who still HAVEN’T quit the party since the revelations about the stolen fundraiser money.

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(Let’s stop calling it “missing”, because there’s no mystery about where it is – the SNP have now openly told us that they stole it and spent it on the exact thing they swore blind they WOULDN’T spend it on.)

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But it’s all fine, Swinney insists, because there’s been a “governance review” and new rules that will stop it from happening again. And indeed there was, in 2024, and indeed it did promise to make some vague unspecified changes.

But of course, the immediate problem with that is that we know the SNP doesn’t give a damn about following its own rules.

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It was in the rules in 2021 that the party’s National Executive Committee, under the auspices of its National Treasurer and its Finance & Audit Committee, had to be allowed to see the books in order to prevent Peter Murrell embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds.

But when the Treasurer and the Committee tried to exercise their rights in order to do their legal duties they were refused by Murrell, and when members of the NEC tried to alert Nicola Sturgeon to this breach of the rules she angrily insisted her husband wasn’t up to anything and that the treasurer and the committee members should simply shut up, leaving those with any conscience or integrity forced to resign.

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The 2024 Governance Review actually made the leader’s power far MORE absolute over the party, chiefly by effectively removing any way they can be challenged, so absolutely nothing would prevent the same thing happening again. If an SNP CEO is on the fiddle and its leader is determined to cover up for them, the NEC – even assuming there’s anyone on it with a spine, which is unlikely – is toothless.

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So THAT’S been going well since 2023.

But we don’t even need to make any such deductions or assumptions to know that the 2024 Governance & Transparency Review (to give it its full irony-laden title) is cobblers.

On the GTR screenshot above we deliberately left in the next item, which categorically states that “membership numbers will be reported twice a year”. That rule, however, has been simply ignored since Swinney took over the leadership. The most recent published SNP membership figures date from 1 June 2025, more than a year ago.

(They weren’t actually released until last August, in the party’s annual accounts.)

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The rule hasn’t been changed since 2024, just ignored by Swinney. And yet still the remaining diehards cling to the leadership’s every lie as gospel.

Everything’s fine, you see, because you’ll probably get a receipt for a raffle ticket. And the complicity of the previous leadership in Peter Murrell’s crimes, and the current leadership’s admission that it stole donors’ money, are apparently less important and pressing issues than controls on vape shops.

Now, it’s fair to say that anyone dumb enough to still be in the SNP probably deserves to be robbed at every step. “If we do everything the same, all the outcomes will be different” is the line that the leadership has taken on independence strategy, and – as Swinney points out in the video above – the loyal rump of the membership swallowed that, so why would they question anything else?

But everyone else who donated to the “ringfenced” fundraisers, only to see their money used to prop up a zombie party that is now the main obstacle to independence, would still like to see justice, and however much John Swinney (and Nicola Sturgeon) might wish otherwise, that story still has a long way left to run.

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Because at the end of the day, there’s just too big a river of effluent on the floor for even the hungry gullets of the eternally stupid to choke down.

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According to the Guardian’s Jessica Elgot, voters in Makerfield are baffled by a decision from the Reform candidate. The candidate in question is Robert Kenyon, and the decision he made is to not apologise for the comments he made online:

Voters who had noticed Kenyon’s online comments (almost everyone was aware) were slightly baffled he hadn’t apologised. Feel a difference here between “never back down” attitude of online debate versus what people expect in real life.

— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) June 9, 2026

Kenyon has a track record of derogatory comments

When it comes to Kenyon’s online comments, there are many which may have caused offence. As the Canary has reported, these comments include the following on women’s rights:

I’d hazard a guess that the majority [of abortions] are for vanity purposes like unwanted pregnancies.

On the question of whether this makes him a sexist, the answer is Kenyon doesn’t care, because he’s also said:

I’m sexist, sorry I am.

While Kenyon technically said “sorry” here, he’s steadfastly refused to apologise since.

Kenyon also said:

Reproductive rights? Women’s rights? They can dress it up all they want, they are deciding to kill a baby inside the womb…What they mean is they want to shag anyone they want and if they get caught they get a second chance and treat it [sic] as a secondary last chance form of contraception. They ain’t kidding anyone.

Kenyon sells himself as a straight talker, but really he’s just another Billy big-bollocks who wants to import Yank-style Christo-fascist politics to the UK.

Oh, and he’s also a coward because while it’s true he won’t apologise for his words, he won’t stand by them either.

He literally went for ‘how can I hate women, when my mum was a woman?’ https://t.co/6oTZDGwRKh

— Willem Moore (@willem_moore_uk) June 4, 2026

Honestly, it’s a bit odd that he’s a plumber given how much time he’s spent sitting on fences in regard to his own opinions.

Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon on #BBCQuestionTime:

Audience: “I’d rather have a career politician than a plumber who’s a sexist.”

“You described yourself as a sexist.”

Kenyon: “Allegedly.”

Then refuses to apologise to Carol Vorderman after agreeing in 2021 that a creep wanting… pic.twitter.com/gtDR4WqgtC

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— King (@King0243_PJC) June 5, 2026

How is this any different to the careerist politicians who refuse to answer questions? The careerist politicians Reform is supposedly here to replace?

On the the Vorderman comments, the Guardian reported:

In 2021, Kenyon responded to a social media post about [Carol] Vorderman in which another user wrote: “My god I’d love to smell and lick your arsehole”, by saying: “He’s only saying what we’re all thinking”.

You’d think this would be an easy one to apologise for, but Kenyon flat-out refused to do so. Adding insult to injury, he attacked Vorderman for speaking out, saying:

There’s been a lot of noise about this indirect, sort of vulgar tweet that I’ve made, but I’ve not heard much about Carol’s thoughts on Labour not having the grooming gangs inquiry last year or what she thinks about biological males being allowed into single sex spaces.

Kenyon also claimed women “can’t drive“, which is ironic in the sense that he’s driving women to not vote for him.

It doesn’t end with sexism either.

Rob Kenyon has still not apologised for his homophobic or sexist comments.#Makerfield pic.twitter.com/zg91qJf7eT

— Reform Party UK Exposed (@reformexposed) June 9, 2026

The more they see of him, the less they want

Elgot also observed the following:

Spent Monday in parts of Ashton and Orrell where Labour are targeting around 16% still undecided voters in Makerfield by-election.

Some observations

– Many who voted Reform only weeks ago are prepared to vote for Burnham. There is a *big* gender divide and QT was a big factor

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— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) June 9, 2026

Many of the clips above are from Kenyon’s Question Time appearance. It was there that he was asked to apologise for his past sexism, and it was there that he refused to do so.

Following Kenyon’s appearance, the Canary‘s Maddison Wheeldon wrote:

Rather than recognising why people took issue with the Reform candidate’s remarks or offering any meaningful apology, Kenyon has chosen to dispute the criticism itself. That approach has only deepened concerns about his dangerous judgment.

When someone seeks influence and authority, their willingness to listen to criticism and reflect on their mistakes matters just as much as the views they express.

Given all this, it’s unsurprising women don’t see Reform as having their interests in mind. What’s disappointing is that many men seemingly don’t care.

As the vast majority of these men were no doubt born of woman, this puts to bed the idea that lads can’t be sexist if they have mothers.

Featured image via Christopher Furlong/ Getty Images

By Willem Moore

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The US has bombed 20 locations in Iran after it shot down an ‘Apache’ helicopter set up for electronic warfare in the Hormuz Strait.

Trump has pulled in the AH-64 Apache from American facilities worldwide for use in attacks on Iran.

US surveillance and attack

The US military had originally claimed that a technical fault caused the crash. The helicopter’s crew survived and was picked up from the sea.

The ‘Longbow’ variant of the apache is set up for surveillance and for support of special forces. Former US special forces officer, Lt Col Antony Aguilar, described it as hard to shoot down and said that similar aircraft had been used a week earlier to attack Iranian civilian vessels.

Trump attacked Iran for successfully defending itself and has described the escalated aggression as “defensive”.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. For more information on his work, visit lordashcroft.com

The ten-year anniversary of the Brexit referendum and the musings of Labour leadership hopefuls have combined to revive the debate over Britain’s relationship with Europe.

Would it help Labour to make rejoining the EU a cornerstone of their next election campaign?

How a ‘rejoin’ campaign could help Labour

A decade on from the referendum, Brexit has a poor reputation. My poll found only 11 per cent of people saying life in Britain in recent years has been better than it would have been if the UK were still a member of the EU, with a majority thinking it has been worse. Given a binary choice between the UK needing to accept that Brexit has failed and should try to rejoin some aspects of the EU, and the UK needing to accept that we have left for good and should make the best of it, the former leads by 16 points. When asked how they would vote in a referendum on rejoining the EU, 53 per cent of people said they would vote to rejoin, as against 30 per cent who said they would vote to stay out. These figures become even more favourable for Labour when broken down by party affiliation, as shown below

Rejoining leads by 82 points among current Labour supporters, 74 points among Greens and 69 points among Lib Dems. Current Reform voters would vote to stay out by a 62-point margin but Conservatives are more closely divided, saying they would vote against rejoining by 52 per cent to 33 per cent. Since the decisive factor at the next election will be which party is most able to consolidate support within its own “bloc” (Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens on the one hand, and the Tories and Reform on the other), making the next election about an issue which unites the left but splits the right could clearly be profitable for Labour.

There are other potential advantages.

Tying Nigel Farage to Brexit may give Labour a more promising line of attack than anything they have found to date. A focus on Brexit could also allow Labour to attribute to the Conservatives some blame for the state of the country and to assert that they have learned nothing from 2024, without needing to resort to the much-derided lines about £22 billion black holes. And with six in ten voters saying the current Labour government is no better or even worse than its predecessor, it would save Labour from having to campaign solely on its record in office. Since most voters agree a referendum would be needed to rejoin the EU, such a policy would allow Labour to promise change without having to explain why they didn’t use their vast majority to bring it about. A rejoin policy would also provide a reason to back Labour beyond a tactical vote to stop Reform, and a sense of purpose whose absence has characterised the government’s first two years.

We can examine this further by reference to our political map.

The chart below shows how people currently plan to vote and who has noticed what about the government so far. Bubble sizes are proportional to the size of the relevant voter group, and the closer bubbles are, the more similar the respective groups of voters. In the party colours, we have the locations of current support for the five largest parties. The ten grey bubbles come from a regular question where we ask respondents to recall, unprompted, things this Labour government has done (whether they agree with them or not). This shows the ten most-noticed acts (as opposed to failures and omissions to do things). We also highlight the people who identified improving relations with Europe as something the government has done so far.

This shows a number of things.

One is that Labour’s message is simply not cutting through much beyond its core support, even in the bottom left quadrant which is historical Labour territory and where the party has shed votes to the Greens. Another is that very few people have noticed the government policy on Europe, and those who have tend to be slightly closer in political outlook to Lib Dem voters rather than Labour voters. Labour proposing rejoining would eclipse the Lib Dem policy on a customs union. It would polarise the electorate in a way the current policy does not.

But it would be noticed.

It is too early to quantify the potential impact on Labour’s electoral prospects if they back rejoining the EU – we don’t know how they will perform in other areas in the coming months and years, or even who the prime minister will be. But there is an arguable case that a rejoin policy would make some of the campaign obstacles and electoral dynamics less unfavourable for Labour. In their current predicament, some chance of a way out may be preferable to no chance at all.

The risks for Labour of a rejoin policy

Admiral Nelson’s maxim that the boldest measures are the safest has some application to 21^st century politics as well as 19^th century naval combat. Election results worldwide suggest that incumbent parties cannot retain office by simply playing it safe (witness the successes of Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese and the failures of Chris Hipkins, Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton). As against that, we have Sir Humphrey’s dictum that “controversial” means “this will lose you votes,” but “courageous” means “this will lose you the election”. What are the risks of Labour nailing its colours to the rejoin mast?

One obvious risk is that public support for rejoining may turn out to be weaker than it first appears, especially once questions of detail emerge.

Testing every potential sticking point in hypothetical negotiations with the EU is clearly not practical, so we asked about three potential conditions which might be attached to the UK’s readmittance: joining the euro, paying a higher membership fee than before Brexit and joining the Schengen area. We also asked people which came closer to their opinion in a forced choice between the UK needing to agree that Brexit has failed and should seek to rejoin some parts of the EU, and the UK needing to accept that the UK has left the EU for good and should try to make the best of it.

Based on these questions, as well as the voting intention in a hypothetical referendum on rejoining the EU, we can divide the population into four categories:

• Strong Rejoiners, who say that they would vote to rejoin, agree that Brexit has failed and would consider at least one of the conditions acceptable
• Hesitant Rejoiners, who say that they would vote to rejoin but either consider all three above conditions unacceptable or agree that the UK needs to accept that it has left the EU for good, or both
• Rejoin Rejecters, who say that they would vote to stay out or are unsure how they would vote, consider all three potential conditions unacceptable and agree that the UK needs to accept that it has left the EU for good
• Others, who do not fall into the above three categories

We could reasonably expect the Strong Rejoiners to vote to rejoin in a referendum and the Rejoin Rejecters to vote against rejoining. Having any expectations about how the hesitant rejoiners would vote is harder. If they perceived the UK as having secured favourable terms, they might come out in favour of rejoin; if the terms seemed unacceptable, they may well break strongly against rejoining.  If we treat the hesitant rejoiners as undecided voters, then the 23-point lead for rejoin in headline referendum voting intention shrinks to six points.

This analysis is necessarily speculative and is certainly not intended as a prediction. But there is a temptation to see such a large lead on a subject as being decisive and thus to believe the result of a referendum is a foregone conclusion. If people have made up their mind about Brexit, that is not the case with rejoining.

A second risk is that, as with Brexit, a campaign around rejoining could divide Labour’s voter base. The chart below shows how the different categories we defined above break down based on current voting intention.

This is the sort of picture which would vindicate a rejoin-centric election campaign. It shows that current Conservative voters are divided on the issue: around a quarter are Strong Rejoiners whereas a slender majority are Rejoin Rejecters. Whichever stance the Conservative leadership took on the issue, at least one of these groups would be disappointed. Conversely, current Labour voters skew heavily towards Strong Rejoiners and are more united on this issue than current Lib Dem or Green voters; they are about as unified in favour of rejoin as Reform voters are in favour of staying out.

However, by 2024 vote the picture is somewhat different and significantly more ominous for Labour:

By 2024 vote, Labour are at least as divided as the Conservatives (and no more united than the Greens or Lib Dems). If a tactical benefit of placing rejoin front and centre of an election campaign is that it helps parties which are united on this issue, the primary beneficiaries going by 2024 vote would be Reform. Current voting intention is a snapshot of a dynamic situation. By the time of the next election, will the profile of opinion on rejoining the EU still look like the breakdown by current voting intention, or revert to something closer to the 2024 breakdown (even if headline voting intention does not change)? In the latter case, making the election about an issue which unites Reform voters but splits the other parties could hand Nigel Farage the keys to Number 10.

But waiting to see how things look in 2028 is not a credible option, largely because of the third risk: relevance.

Successful parties fight elections based on voters’ priorities.

For putting rejoin at the centre of an election campaign to pay political dividends, voters would either need to consider Britain’s relationship with the EU a high priority, or believe that rejoining the EU would enable meaningful improvement on some of their big concerns. Otherwise, the campaign looks irrelevant and out of touch. The last time I asked people to name the three most important issues facing the country, Brexit languished outside the top ten, chosen by just six per cent of voters.

Could things be changing?

Since January 2025, those preferring a closer relationship with the EU rather than the US has risen by nine points to 76 per cent. Even so, it is hard to see EU relations beginning to rival immigration, the NHS or the cost of living in the near future.

The best politicians are, to an extent, able to set the agenda; however, no amount of political skill or leadership ability allows this to be done overnight.

Whatever the issue or policy – be it small boat crossings, net zero, a wealth tax, or Brexit itself – none of these materialised without trace on the British public’s consciousness.  But far from banging the drum for rejoin, Labour have been cautious and equivocal.  How would rejoining improve the NHS, help address concerns over immigration or make the average person better off? If rejoining is to be the centrepiece of a future Labour general election campaign, then Labour need to be making those arguments and be comfortable doing so.

Next is the risk of polarisation.

Andy Burnham cited the division reopening the Brexit debate would cause as a reason for drawing back from advocating an immediate return. Even if this is a fig leaf for saying one thing to the voters of Makerfield and a different thing to the Labour membership, the risk of returning to parliamentary paralysis and government gridlock is real. If sufficient time has passed to warrant reconsidering the 2016 vote, the SNP will leap on this as justification for a re-run of the Scottish independence referendum. Again, this risk is difficult to quantify. Division and polarisation are inevitable consequences of putting rejoin on the political agenda; the question is whether Labour decide the benefits of rejoining outweigh the downsides of reviving the Brexit wars.

The fourth risk to Labour is perhaps the biggest of all.

What if they were to win the election but lose the subsequent referendum?

Their parliamentary coalition would collapse. They would be damned by rejoiners for having failed, and damned by opponents of rejoining for having tried at all. Predictions of long-established parties being finished as political forces are made too lightly in political commentary, but it is no hyperbole to say that if Labour bet everything on rejoin and lose the referendum, the consequences could be existential.

There is a common thread running through these four risks.

Labour voters uniting rather than dividing, EU relations becoming more relevant, people believing that polarisation is a price worth paying for putting the issue on the agenda and rejoin winning a referendum will only happen if the groundwork has been laid. Laying the groundwork will require patience, discipline, strong communication and a lot of political skill – all of which have so far been scarce in this government. If, on the other hand, Labour declares its support for rejoining as a last-minute roll of the dice, these risks will bite harder and the party’s reward could be to turn a very bad election result into a disastrous one.

Coming soon: ‘How should the Conservatives respond to a rejoin campaign?’ Full data tables at LordAshcroftPolls.com

The post Lord Ashcroft: Should Labour promise a ‘rejoin’ referendum? appeared first on Conservative Home.

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GMB, Unison and Unite have penned a joint letter to education secretary Bridget Phillipson MP. It expresses:

profound concern regarding the current direction and lack of meaningful progress within the School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB).

Together the unions represent more than 500,000 school workers. General secretaries Gary Smith, Andrea Egan and Sharon Graham warn against the ‘continued expansion of academisation’. And they say unless things change:

we will have no option but to escalate our response publicly and industrially.

The letter to the education secretary says:

The joint trade unions campaigned extensively over many years to re-establish the SSSNB.

We did so in good faith because we knew it was our best and long overdue opportunity to address the deep-rooted inequalities, fragmentation, and inconsistency experienced by school support staff across England.

However, the pace and substance of negotiations to date are now placing that confidence at serious risk.

At the recent SSSNB Working Group meeting on 20 May 2026, it was extremely disappointing to be informed that the remit for the SSSNB in its first year would be very limited.

The continued expansion of academy trust structures, in the absence of a coherent national framework for school support staff, risks accelerating workforce fragmentation.

GMB, UNISON and UNITE remain committed to constructive engagement and would strongly prefer to resolve these issues through meaningful progress and genuine partnership with government.

However, the current trajectory is rapidly exhausting the goodwill that existed when the SSSNB was re-established.

Should meaningful progress continue to be absent, we will have no option but to escalate our response publicly and industrially, including at upcoming conferences over the summer period.

We are therefore urging government to treat this moment with the seriousness it requires and to work with us urgently to restore confidence in the process before further damage is done.

Featured image via Ian Forsyth / Getty Images

By The Canary

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