The following is an open letter from the West Central London Green Party to Paul Swaddle, leader of Westminster City Council and Conservative Party councillor for Regent’s Park Ward. It concerns his comments about two marches that took place in London on 16 May.

Dear Cllr Paul Swaddle OBE,

18th May 2026

We, as residents of the City of Westminster and members of the local Green Party, are writing to you with concerns about your comments on the two protests that took place on Saturday the 16th of May.

We are disturbed by the stark contrast in your approach to the ‘Nakba 78’ march and the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march. In your letter to the Home Secretary, you began by making gestures towards both protests, but then you swiftly transitioned to calling for a moratorium solely on the pro-Palestine marches. You clearly forgot to mention the harm that the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march caused in September, and the risk that it posed this time round.

Last September, we saw a large range of unacceptable and racist behaviour at the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ protest, with officers severely injured, Islamophobic chants and Elon Musk saying that attendees must “fight back or […] die”. Immigrants and people of colour were made to feel unsafe in the city that they call home. This year, we saw much of the same.

This movement is clearly one that inflames hatred against Muslims and immigrants. On Saturday, we saw activists take to the stage at the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ protest, mocking women who exercise their full right to wear Burqas. We saw people, including police officers, being racially abused, and we heard Tommy Robinson, the organiser of this march, talking about his desire to ‘stop Islam’.

We ask that you retract your statement that the ‘Nakba 78’ march and other similar peaceful marches “send damaging messages that extremist opinions are acceptable”, and that you rescind the labelling of protests in support of Palestine as “hate marches”. The allegation that tens of thousands of Britons of all faiths and none, including many Westminster residents, are either extremists or promoters of extremism is a baseless and inflammatory one.

We condemn your imbalanced approach to these two marches and question your intention when you specifically call for the suspension of protests in support of Palestine and not the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ protests. We are unfortunately left with the conclusion that you operate on a hierarchy of racism, where hatred against Muslims is ignored, and broad accusations of anti-semitism are used in order to crack down on the right to protest.

In our view, the double standards you are operating on and the blind-eye turned to racist behaviour calls into question your suitability as council leader of a borough filled with residents from all different communities.

We look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

West Central London Green Party

Featured image via Brook Mitchell / Getty Images and Carl Court / Getty Images

By The Canary

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Vessels and troops from Israel have begun attacking humanitarian vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla en route to Gaza.

Global Sumud Filosu saldırı altında!

Filoya ait Munki teknesi işgalci İsrail tarafından saldırıya uğradı. Şuan tekne ile bağlantımız kopmuş durumda.

Barışçıl bir misyon olan Global Sumud Filosu hukuksuzca saldırıya uğruyor. Sen de filoyu paylaş, destek ol!

The… pic.twitter.com/ehUaf6FkIe

— Global Sumud Filosu Türkiye (@globalsumudtr) May 18, 2026

Israeli ships had been shadowing the fleet overnight before the attacks, then moved in.

Military vessels are currently approaching our fleet. We are on high alert as we continue towards Gaza. We refuse to be intimidated.

WATCH LIVE https://t.co/PDluE7HraJ pic.twitter.com/EgbW1hwwhp

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— Global Sumud Flotilla (@gbsumudflotilla) May 18, 2026

BREAKING: A boat from the Global Sumud Flotilla has lost contact after reportedly being attacked in the Mediterranean. pic.twitter.com/00kOrHjmHr

— Global Sumud Flotilla Commentary (@GlobalSumudF) May 18, 2026

#WATCH | Footage circulating online shows the Israeli occupation forces approaching the Global Sumud Flotilla Fleet, which is en route to Gaza, in an attempt to hijack the vessels carrying peaceful activists.

Israeli occupation naval forces have seized the Flotilla and… pic.twitter.com/zjk3bqYmxz

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) May 18, 2026

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Clips show Israeli inflatable attack boats crammed with heavily-armed occupation troops.

Global Sumud Filosu saldırı altında!

Filoya ait teknelere saldırı başladı. Teknelerin güvenlik kameraları saldırıyı kayıt altına almaya devam ediyor.

The Global Sumud Flotilla is under attack!

An attack on the flotilla’s vessels has begun. The security cameras on… pic.twitter.com/9VvE6qw3rX

— Global Sumud Filosu Türkiye (@globalsumudtr) May 18, 2026

Two Speedboats Approaching GSF Boat: Visual confirmation of speedboats approaching a GSF boat potentially boarding intercepting them during the day. https://t.co/c0GiaqPDVn pic.twitter.com/ToAKRjozra

— Alex Colston (@enoughformethx) May 18, 2026

Footage streamed from one of the flotilla boats before it went dark show the assault:

BREAKING: A boat from the Global Sumud Flotilla has lost contact after reportedly being attacked in the Mediterranean. pic.twitter.com/00kOrHjmHr

— Global Sumud Flotilla Commentary (@GlobalSumudF) May 18, 2026

CCTV footage shows members of the Zionist regime have boarded one of the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) ships and pointed weapons at the humanitarian activists on board.

The world is now witnessing how humanitarian aid missions face threats and pressure when trying to bring aid to… pic.twitter.com/vIKqCkQFGU

— Global Sumud Flotilla Commentary (@GlobalSumudF) May 18, 2026

Israel accused of ‘illegal acts of piracy’

The boats had set off for Gaza to replace an earlier humanitarian convoy also attacked by Israel in international waters. Participants of that flotilla were abducted and at least some beaten and tortured.

The crews of these convoys are humanitarian volunteers from an array of countries, many of them western. How many times will their governments stand by while Israel commits blatant piracy and crimes against humanity against their citizens?

Featured image via X/ Global Sumud Filosu Türkiye

By Skwawkbox

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Campaigners from Resist Reform have projected messages onto Millbank Tower in London. It’s the home of Reform UK’s offices and the group is calling out the party’s allegiances to corporate elite and foreign funders.

The projections featured stark messages including “WHY THE £5 MIL NIGEL?” and “WHO IS CHRIS HARBORNE”. They’re referencing the shadowy funding arrangements surrounding Reform UK and its leadership.

Christopher Harborne, a billionaire who made his fortune in cryptocurrency, donated £5m to Nigel Farage directly. Farage justified the sum as a private gift and a reward for his hard work on Brexit and the reason for his failure to declare it.

Overall, Harborne is the single biggest donor to Reform UK, giving over £22m in the last seven years. That’s two thirds of the party’s funding. Resist Reform is a campaign exposing the billionaire funding and elite interests behind Reform UK and organising opposition to its political agenda.

Sam Simons, spokesperson from Resist Reform, commented:

Nigel Farage and his team are running a con operation, taking money from mysterious sources while pretending to represent ordinary people.

They’re funded by the very same oligarchs and wealthy interests that have fuelled the cost of living crisis, yet they have the audacity to present themselves as champions of working families. It’s a complete fraud.

The Fact that Nigel has accepted £5m and has dodged questions about it should ring alarm bells for all of us. He has built its entire platform on misinformation and false promises, accepting large sums from shadowy donors while maintaining complete secrecy about where the money comes from and what strings are attached.

He is swindling the working people by pretending he is the champion of the people. He is not, he is Christopher Harborne’s puppet. He works for billionaires.

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Featured image via Resist Reform

By The Canary

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Today, the question of the state in Lebanon is raised not merely as a crisis of governance or a systemic malfunction, but as an existential dilemma striking at its foundation and the components of its sovereignty.

In classical political literature – specifically as established by the German sociologist Max Weber, in his famous essay “Politics as a Vocation” – the state is defined as that entity which holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a specified geographical territory.

However, this definition, despite its procedural importance, falls short of describing the modern state in its institutional essence, which is supposed to rest upon three structural pillars:

1. a rational bureaucracy that manages societal affairs through abstract laws immune to personal whims;
2. international recognition that grants it a seat and legitimacy at the United Nations; and
3. a social contract representing the dialectical relationship between authority and citizens, whereby protection and services are bartered for loyalty and fiscal commitment.

The bureaucracy of quotas and the fracture of the social contract

Yet, projecting these pillars onto the Lebanese case reveals a profound structural distortion, manufactured with deliberate intent.

Bureaucracy in Lebanon, though superficially resembling an administrative apparatus, is realistically incapable of managing the affairs of society, stripped as it is of its rational character and entirely subjugated to sectarian quotas, confessional balances, regional divisions, and vested interests. It is a “bureaucracy of self-interest”, established by colonialism to serve its purposes and ensure the state remains beholden to non-national power centres.

As for international recognition, in the Lebanese case it is nothing more than a reflection of the domestic state’s image on the global stage. If the state is inherently subservient to colonial will from its inception, its representation in international forums will merely mirror the interests of those foreign powers under fraudulent sovereign labels.

Regarding the social contract, the subordination of authority to colonial will renders its detachment from the aspirations of its citizens inevitable. Here, the state automatically transforms from a custodian of rights into an instrument of coercion and popular suppression, driving the populace to follow the external dictates of major powers. How can the concept of “civic belonging” hold true in exchange for services and taxation when colonialism grips the vital arteries of this state – economically, socially, financially, and politically?

This structural contradiction explains the state of “identity schizophrenia” that has accompanied Lebanon since its founding, where the individual seeks security within their sect rather than their state.

The wound of the Upper Galilee and the legitimacy of self-defence

The deepest legacy left by the demarcation of borders in the “Sykes-Picot” agreement is the bleeding wound in the Upper Galilee, which represents the pinnacle of social and geographical tragedy.

The colonial partition in that region left a social fracture in the purest sense, exposing its inhabitants to killing, pillage, and continuous aggression ever since the establishment of the occupying entity in Palestine in 1948. Despite their repeated appeals to the state – which is supposedly responsible for their protection – the permanent response was ignorance and neglect, at times even escalating to implicit or actual complicity in targeting the people of Southern Lebanon.

Because “survival follows existence”, the people of the Upper Galilee were forced to assume the responsibility of defending themselves, their land, and their property, in light of this deliberate absence of the state. Meanwhile, the authorities practiced the ugliest forms of sectarianism, referencing them as “Metwalis” and other derogatory terms to justify their neglect, while the sectarian representatives in power – appointed by colonialism – plotted the schemes that brought the country to its current state of dependency and collapse.

The politicisation of resistance and the trap of consociationalism

At that time, Lebanon was not split along sectarian lines with the intensity we witness today. Resisters from various sects participated in confronting the occupation, driven by a popular and national authenticity that had not yet been completely corrupted.

This was also due to the presence of regional powers that formed a certain balance against the colonial project. However, through a combination of the decline of anti-colonial regimes, society’s preoccupation with engineered economic crises, and diligent efforts to dismantle national bonds and replace them with wars and strife, the matter culminated in the resistance being confined entirely to the Shia component as a translation of this complex reality.

Although many resisters might argue they were preoccupied with existential defence against the colonial entity to the south, this defence occasionally caused them to overlook the other dimension of the colonial war being waged against them “from behind”, via the formation of an authority working to isolate and eliminate them politically. Indeed, it can be argued that engagement in the sectarian quota system and so-called “consociational democracy” facilitated internal colonial action.

This system solidifies policies dictated from abroad and entrenches the authority of sectarian leaders as agents of major interests, ultimately serving as a counter-veto against any genuine national sovereignty.

The Strait of Hormuz and the fall of petrodollar hegemony

This structural failure leads us to the necessity of linking the local crisis to the major shifts in the international balance of power.

The functional Lebanese state derives its false stability from the dominance of the “imperial system” built upon the power of the petrodollar. From here emerges the strategic blow delivered by the Axis of Resistance today as a catalyst for radical change.

For example, Iran’s ability to impose new equations in the Strait of Hormuz (coupled with the capabilities of resistance forces in other theatres) represents not merely control over a waterway, but a process of deliberate economic strangulation of the arteries feeding imperial power.

The direct threat to energy flows and control over global trade routes strikes at the very heart of the illusionary “finance-based economy” underpinning the dollar. This weakens the instruments used by colonialism to bring nations to their knees through sanctions, blockades, and the funding of both hard and soft wars.

This geopolitical shift opens a historical window for the Lebanese people to decolonise the interior; for as much as the resistance forces succeed in diminishing colonial influence regionally and internationally, the capacity of their local proxies to obstruct the building of a sovereign state diminishes alongside it.

Towards citizenship and the reclamation of comprehensive sovereignty

The decolonisation of the interior is a national duty equal in importance to fighting direct occupation. This is achieved by radically reversing the effects of “Sykes-Picot“: exploiting the current situation and its outcomes to overturn the Lebanese system from one of quotas to a system of citizenship, where allegiance to the state is absolute and direct.

The reclamation of political, financial, economic, and social sovereignty passes inevitably through the struggle to implement the 1989 Taif Agreement, which stipulates the abolition of political sectarianism under Clause C of the political reforms section, and mandates the enactment of an electoral law based on the governorate/single constituency under Clause A of the parliament section.

Furthermore, it may be possible to introduce other amendments to the Taif Agreement once true popular representation is achieved, provided that these modifications serve sovereignty and independence from all forms of colonial dependency, particularly its financial and economic aspects. In this way, the Lebanese voter is liberated from the authority of religious and political feudalism, and the true aspirations of the people to build a state of institutions free from foreign dictation are realised.

The confrontation today is a conflict between “subservient realism” and “sovereign will”. It is a battle that demands a consciousness transcending the borders drawn by the coloniser, allowing us to draw our own borders through our awareness and capacity for historical action, drawing strength from major global shifts that shatter the shackles of unipolarity and herald the era of free nations.

Featured image via the Canary

By Mohammad Fakih

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The level of fraud and error in the benefits system has seen little change in the past year, according to the DWP’s annual report.

Despite the department using the press to demonise those on benefits, its own figures show that the level of fraud and error has pretty much stayed the same. For some benefits, it’s actually gotten better. But this is the DWP, so the media headlines are focusing on the ‘billions’ lost.

While disability benefits in particular take a beating in the press, disability benefit fraud and error have only increased by one percentage point.

The DWP called this a “statistically significant increase” for personal independence payments (PIP). What’s interesting though, is that in other areas fraud has fallen by the same rate or higher, and is, of course, being ignored.

DWP benefit fraud has stayed the same

Across all benefits, fraud and error was at an estimated 3.2% (£9.9 billion) for the financial year ending (FYE) 2026, compared with 3.3% (£9.4 billion) in FYE 2025.

As the report itself says:

The Fraud (2.2%), Claimant Error (0.6%) and Official Error (0.4%) overpayment rates in FYE 2026 have remained broadly similar to FYE 2025.

The report also notes that we should pay attention to the rate, not the money:

Due to each benefit’s expenditure changing year on year, it is recommended that the rates are used when comparing levels of fraud and error over time, rather than the monetary amounts.

By that logic then, today’s 3.2% across all benefits should be regarded as an improvement, so it’s interesting the Telegraph ran with the following headline:

Benefit cheats fuel £10bn in welfare overpayments

Why not affirm that there has been “No significant change reported in benefit fraud rates”? Well, fewer people will rage click on that, won’t they?

Another relevant part of the DWP’s report to highlight is that this is not the full picture. It’s only what the DWP wants us to see as the data is devised from a sample.

The estimates in this publication are based on a sample of benefit claims. As a result, year‑on‑year comparisons are subject to sampling variability.

Universal Credit fraud lower than in Covid-19 peak

For Universal Credit, the rate of overpayment was 8.5% (£6.720 million) in FYE 2026, compared with 9.5% (£6.210 million) in FYE 2025. While the money has gone up, the DWP says this is due to how many people have migrated over to Universal Credit.

But if we’re looking at the percentage, as the DWP has told us to, this is again a significant decrease.

When compared to the COVID-19 peak, the amount of claimants overpaid has decreased even further from 24 in 100 claimants in FYE 2022 to 21 in 100 claimants in FYE 2026. Fewer claimants also lost entitlement in 2026, 7% compared to 12.5% in 2022.

Fraud due to claimants not declaring their earnings correctly has also fallen, but at least this time the DWP admits it’s relevant.

Earnings/Employment (under-declaration of income from work undertaken) remained the main cause of Universal Credit Fraud overpayments but saw a statistically significant decrease to 1.5% in FYE 2026 from 2.2% in FYE 2025.

Tiny rise in PIP overpayments

Leading up to the yearly update, we usually see an increase in disability benefit fraud hate from the rags. PIP fraud is usually minuscule, so they have to drum up hate for a few percentage increases. This year is no exception.

To further this, the DWP is trying to say a one percentage point increase is remarkable. The report states:

This was a statistically significant increase and a continuation of an upwards trend that started in FYE 2024.

That’s right, an increase of a percentage point is “significant” whilst decreases of that or higher aren’t as important. The main reason that benefits were overpaid was people not declaring changes in ‘functioning needs’. This means that the claimant didn’t tell the DWP when their condition had improved.

Though, of course, ‘improvements’ are decided by the DWP, not medical professionals. Anyone with chronic conditions can tell you that conditions have good days and bad days. However, this is the DWP, so that’s not the whole story.

As it lumps fraud and error together, that 2.3% isn’t all fraud. The DWP’s error accounted for 0.2% (£50 million) and 0.7% (£210 million) was claimant error.

DWP manipulates its own stats and the public

Once again, this is a clear case of the DWP manipulating its own data and the public’s perception. It’s true that benefit fraud and error expenditure have risen in monetary terms, but as a percentage of those who aren’t ‘cheating the system’, it’s not relevant at all. This is especially true when we’re talking about disabled people who the press won’t shut up about.

Nonetheless, at a time when the DWP is increasingly trying to limit who can access disability benefits, it’s in the department’s best interests to make disabled people all look like fraudsters.

Featured image via the Canary

By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

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