Source link

Ministers are regularly holding off-the-record meetings with the CEOs and senior staff of England and Wales’ scandal-riddled privatised water and sewage sector.

As the Labour government introduces a new bill anti-privatisation campaigners brand a “gift to shareholders”, the Canary can reveal how water bosses are schmoozing with cabinet ministers behind closed doors.

Water companies schmoozing with Labour in unminuted meetings

Official data from the Department of Food, Environment, and Rural Affairs (Defra) shows that government ministers met with CEOs and representatives of water companies across at least nine separate meetings in the final three months of 2025.

Now, a Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) request the Canary submitted to the department has revealed how ministers attended these meetings entirely unminuted and without formal agendas.

The quarterly release gives a limited description of the purpose of these meetings, as required by the Ministerial Code and further set out in Cabinet Office guidance.

But the lack of documentation raises serious questions over the nature and content of what essentially amounts to secret discussions between the government and the millionaire CEOs of privatised water corporations.

Secretary of state discussions behind closed doors

The off-record meetings included a meeting between secretary of state Emma Reynolds and Thames Water chair Adrian Montague at the end of November.

The department recorded this simply with the description “Discussion on Thames Water”.

Of course, the government has so far actively refused to bring Thames Water into special administration. It has repeatedly fallen back on water industry spin to justify pursuing a ‘market-led’ – privatised – solution. Now, ministers and Ofwat are poised to sign a deal that would allow it to dodge fines for the next four years.

Another meeting Reynolds hosted at the end of October included a “Discussion on water operations” with Severn Trent CEO Liv Garfield.

Days earlier, Severn Trent was one of just two major water suppliers that regulator Ofwat did not order to make ‘underperformance’ payments to its customers. This is where the regulator forces companies failing to meet certain pollution targets to pay up. As a result, this is meant to reduce customer bills.

In practice, however, it doesn’t actually mean customers see a reduction in their water bills. This is because parasitic private suppliers have been simultaneously hiking these. In reality, then, underperformance payments simply mean Ofwat forces companies to reduce an already raised bill. Nonetheless, Severn Trent’s supposed ‘overperformance’ meant it evaded these payments.

However, fast-forward to April 2026, and the Environment Agency revealed that the company had wracked up the highest bill for fines over pollution incidents. These totalled £4.6m – the highest total of any provider within the 2025-26 financial year.

Rubbing shoulders with water privatisation lobbyists

On 9 December, the environment secretary also held a ‘Water Investor Roundtable’ to discuss “water sector investability”. But the register entry fails to disclose attendees. And of course, according to Defra’s response to the Canary’s EIR request, Reynolds held the roundtable entirely unminuted.

As such, there’s no public record of the companies involved in these conversations. Of course, it’s likely that discussions on ‘investability’ concern the water sector’s and corporate capitalist creditors’ vested interests in maintaining the privatised status quo.

Defra minister Emma Hardy also held a number of meetings with CEOs of major water companies off-the-record. This included two meetings with South East Water boss David Hinton in December.

At the beginning of May, Hinton stepped down from his role after scathing criticism from the EFRA parliamentary committee. The committee had issued a damning report documenting the company’s routine failures. This included a two-week water outage in Tonbridge Wells during November 2025 that left 24,000 properties without water. It declared no confidence in SEW’s leadership team.

Hardy also held an unminuted meeting with industry trade group Water UK that same month. The lobby body has been a staunch defender of privatised interests in the sector.

Dodging public scrutiny over water privatisation: a feature of this Labour government

The Canary’s recent EIR request also wasn’t the first time Defra ministers hosted unminuted meetings with the water sector.

We previously submitted an EIR request concerning ministerial meetings with Water UK. This revealed that Defra ministers had hosted four separate off-the-record discussions between October and December 2024.

Previously, the Good Law Project also found that ministers had taken no minutes in nine meetings with water companies. The meetings took place between July and September that same year.

The Canary hasn’t (yet) obtained minutes and agendas for all the meetings Labour ministers have held with water companies. Nevertheless, a clear pattern is emerging that points to dodging public scrutiny as a shameful feature of this government.

Separately, the Canary also discovered that former environment secretary and shady Labour Together-linked MP Steve Reed had failed to publish a record of his meetings in the ministerial register. This was for the first quarter of 2025 – and to this day, there’s still no entries. As such, not only would meetings Reed held with water companies be off-the-record – currently, they’re entirely scrubbed from it.

Room to ‘bend and break the rules for profit’

Given all this, anyone might think the government has something to hide. Its continued failure to even temporarily nationalise Thames Water could have something to do with it. Instead, the government continues to tinker around at the edges of the glaring problems of privatised water.

And this Labour administration full-well knows that sewage pollution is a hot button issue for the electorate. If meetings were to show ministers getting chummy with the privatised water racket, that might just blow an irreparable hole in their – already dire and plummeting – popularity.

On the Canary’s findings, Sophie Conquest, lead campaigner at anti-privatisation campaign group We Own It, said:

Water is one of our most vital resources. We are dependent upon it, and we pay increasingly high bills for it. So it is insulting that fundamental decisions about our water system are being made without us, behind closed doors – without even a public record of what was said.

It is hardly surprising that – following these conversations – the government produced a water White Paper which is a gift to shareholders, with new measures which will give water companies even more room to bend and break the rules for profit.

A single regulator will be ripe for corporate capture. Plans for a ‘tailored approach’ for each water company will even further reduce consistency and transparency.To make these reforms into law would be a dangerous step in the wrong direction – favouring faraway shareholders over the people that use and pay for our water system.

Advertisement

Instead, this government should be bringing water into public ownership, starting with the collapsing Thames Water. Under public ownership, we can make water truly democratic, with decisions being made on Boards where Environmental Groups, Households and Workers are represented.

Ultimately, ministers rubbing shoulders with the corporate criminal bosses of England and Wales’ sewage scandal-laden water industry in clandestine conversations may make people legitimately wonder whose interests this government serves.

But of course, the answer to that has long been obvious with this shower of corporate-captured ministers.

Featured image via Dan Kitwood / Getty Images

By Hannah Sharland

Source link

The Kenyan state is ramping up its repression against activists, particularly anti-imperialist and communist organisers. Hundreds recently mobilised against the Africa Forward Summit (AFS) conference in Nairobi.

At least 11 protestors were arrested as they marched against the AFS as part of the Pan-Africanism Summit Against Imperialism (PASAI) on 12 May. Among those arrested were British, French, Greek, and South Korean revolutionary party delegates.

Officially the ‘Africa Forward Summit: Africa-France Partnerships for Innovation and Growth’, AFS is the first major high-level French-led summit to be held in any non-francophone African nation.

Opponents such as the PASAI consider AFS to be a neo-colonial enterprise, orchestrated and led by the openly imperialist, neoliberal Macron regime in France. France currently seeks to strengthen its regional influence in Eastern Africa as its powerful grip is shaken off in the Western continent.

Repression of Kenyan communists

The following day, 13 May 2026, General Secretary of the Kenyan communist party (CPMK) Booker Omole attended a court hearing in Nairobi on a case linked to his previous arrest and abduction. During the proceedings, the court adjourned the matter and scheduled the next hearing for 27 May 2026.

Reports from supporters and observers described the case as politically charged, with growing criticism over the circumstances surrounding his arrest and detention.

Omole stated outside court that this repression has been mounting for the past decade. He said:

The communists of this country have been charged on organising street protests to defend the poorest of the poorest … Comrades, now we are criminals … now we are “narcos”; now we are “small-arms traders”; now we are “terrorists”.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Peoples Dispatch (@peoplesdispatch)

African masses mobilise against imperialism

The AFS comes as France’s notoriously extractive ‘post’-colonial France-Afrique arrangement in the Western continent and Sahel region suffers a string of defeats. These include the loss of military outposts and control across its former colonies.

National sovereigntist figures and military leaders in nations such as Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali often frame their political platforms in anti-French-imperialist terms.

The PASAI counter-summit was arranged to agitate against what organisers call:

a rebranded offensive of imperialist recolonization disguised behind the mask of environmental diplomacy and financial reform.

Arrests were made after protesters attempted to disrupt the gathering at the Kenyatta International Convention Center, where French President Macron himself was hosted.

William Ruto’s increasingly authoritarian administration hosted Macron, gathering with various African rulers, elite autocrats, careerist politicians and neoliberal loyalists.

Muhemsi Mwakihwelo, a Tanzanian socialist organiser, wrote of the protests:

The response from the Kenyan security apparatus was predictable: brute force, arrests, intimidation, and disappearances – all in service of protecting imperial prestige and suppressing dissent.

Three weeks before, some 53 Kenyan protestors appeared in courts – ten in one dock and 43 in another courthouse – charged with blocking a road and “free movement of the people” during one demonstration.

Ongoing repression and waning British control

The recent mobilisations and subsequent arrests come after a tumultuous couple of years for Kenyan President William Ruto’s elite-led, comprador government.

June 2025 saw at least 50 people killed by police gunfire in anti-government protests. The BBC framed this such that you’d suspect one prominent arrestee, Boniface Mwangi, of being partially guilty; yet multiple human rights groups blamed the state’s enforcers.

The protests followed shockingly similar demonstrations led by Gen-Z in June 2024, in which Ruto deployed the military and government forces killed dozens of activists.

Ruto and the Kenyan ruling class gained recognition as a major NATO non-member ally – a status also held by Israel – in 2024, indicating the international priorities of the present regime. Pan-Africanists, they are not.

The BBC labelled this NATO alignment “crucial for regional security” at the time.

The US, UK and now likely French military intelligence interests in the country stem from a desire to maintain trade openness, or rather trade dependency. British oversees officials show regular contempt for the highly unequal and impoverished nation.

The Canary’s Joe Glenton wrote in 2025 of Britain’s waning colonial control in Kenya:

Before and since occupation the British have treated Kenya as a resource to be exploited … Yet it seems that grip has loosened in recent years as more and more Kenyans rail against this “occupying presence.”

The characterisation of British troops as an “occupying presence” actually comes from a report authored and published by British MPs into the countries’ bilateral relations.

Yet despite arrests, disappearances, killings and intimidation of organisers, the people of Kenya are doubtless wise enough to recognise that one European imperialist power is no better than another.

French imperialism: alive but declining

Speaking at the AFS, Macron made remarks of a typical neoliberal, post-political style:

It is a new philosophy … not looking backwards, neither left nor right, as my friend the President Ruto says, but to look ahead of us.

Macron stated that he wishes to be by the side of Africa “for its own agenda,” and noted the return of looted colonial-era artefacts and his desire to “co-invest” in Africa. Macron even went so far as to absurdly call the French “the real Pan-Africanists” – perhaps what he envisions is continent-wide French recolonisation.

Perhaps more than any other European imperial power in Africa, France maintained a decades-long stranglehold on fledgling post-independence nations. Particularly effective in this was the 1945 imposition of a French-controlled CFA Franc currency.

The CFA Franc was pegged to the French Franc until 2002, when it converted to the Euro, but it remains printed entirely in the Bank of France. Even bloggers from the elite-coded London School of Economics recognise it as “monetary imperialism.”

The CFA has no independent value beyond its conversion rate to the Euro, which remains controlled by the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), frequently run by appointees of the French Treasury.

French corporations and a local Francophile ruling class have long upheld control over the region. This ran through military occupation, then CFA-style economic coercion, alongside a comprador elite class and often violence through proxy militias.

Muhemsi Mwakihwelo wrote also about France’s eyes on Africa:

Imperialism does not invest in Africa to liberate Africans. It invests to secure markets, extract resources, discipline governments, and reproduce dependency under modern financial and military arrangements.

But Macron was shunned on his trip by some schoolchildren in favour of a famous marathon runner. So too can we expect the Kenyan people to shun French imperialism in favour of their sovereignty.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sovereign Media (@sovereign_media_)

Featured image via kenyans.co.ke / The Canary

By Cameron Baillie

Source link

Source link

Israel has abducted the sister of Irish president Catherine Connolly during its criminal assault on the Gaza-bound humanitarian Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF). Margaret Connolly, a physician, is among eight Irish citizens kidnapped in international waters by the genocidal occupation.

President Connolly promptly condemned the abduction, describing it as “upsetting”, adding that:

I’m very worried about her, and I’m also very concerned about her colleagues on board.

Fifty GSF vessels were attempting to break Israel’s war crime, a brutal starvation blockade of Gaza. At least a dozen of the ships were attacked yesterday and their crews abducted. The Irish government condemned Israel’s actions as “wrong” and “unacceptable”.

UK citizens are also among the victims, but UK PM Keir Starmer has still kept silent about Israel’s crimes. Abductees in previous flotillas have been beaten and tortured, and at least one has been raped. The occupation regime regards rape as a weapon of war. Its routine and brutal rape of Palestinian prisoners has begun even to catch the attention of US ‘mainstream’ media, but is still mostly ignored by UK ‘msm’ – though a few have noted Israel’s threat to sue the New York Times for covering it.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

Source link

While navigating difficult circumstances during his life and football career, international striker Aymen Hussein always returned strongly to shine. Now, he’s fulfilling a long time promise to fans to lead Iraq to the 2026 World Cup.

Iraq, Aymen Hussein and a viral video

It was 10 years ago when Hussein first promised to take his country’s national team to the World Cup, a dream that came true after a long journey through the qualifiers, the Asian play-offs, and then the final stage in the global play-offs in Mexico, where he played 21 full matches on his journey back to the World Cup spotlight.

Things became difficult for the team after Hussein suffered career-impacting injuries. At one point, this prompted fans to call for him to be excluded from the national team, but Hussein would come back stronger every time, whether in the qualifiers or the continental championships.

The 30-year-old began playing football with clubs in Duhok and played for several Iraqi teams. His professional career started in Qatar, the UAE and Morocco, before returning to Iraq, where he scored more than 100 goals.

Hussein contributed to Iraq winning the 2023 Gulf Cup title in Basra and scored 93 goals wearing the ‘Lions of Mesopotamia’ jersey. The most precious of which was his goal against Bolivia, which announced Iraq’s arrival at the World Cup.

Hussein continued to spread joy to his country and all Arabs, writing a historical chapter in his football journey filled with lessons and achievements.

From the moment Iraq made its historic second return to the World Cup after 40 years, a video of Hussein promising to lead Iraq to the World Cup in 2016, went viral. In 2026, his promise is finally being fulfilled.

Fighting mentality and team spirit

Iraq’s national team coach, Graham Arnold, confirmed that the Lions of Mesopotamia will enter the 2026 World Cup with a fighting mentality and team spirit, relying on discipline and determination in facing one of the toughest groups in the tournament.

During a press conference in Baghdad, Arnold said that the Iraqi national team is aware of the magnitude of the challenges that await it in the World Cup, especially after being placed in a group that includes France, Norway and Senegal. However, he stressed that the players will enter the tournament with great confidence and a desire to honour Iraqi football.

Featured image via Rodrigo Oropeza/ Getty Images

By Alaa Shamali

Source link

Source link

The CPS has added Lewis Chiaramello from the ‘Brize Norton 5‘ to the prosecution of the ‘Filton 24’ anti-genocide activists – making them now the Filton 25. Chiaramello is scheduled to enter his plea this Thursday, 21 May 2026. The move comes as the state pushes to sentence four of the group as terrorists, despite them being convicted only of criminal damage. The Filton incident took place before the Starmer regime unlawfully banned Palestine Action as a terror group at the behest of the Israel lobby.

Filton 25: a show of support

Supporters have asked everyone who can do so to join them from 10am on Thursday 21st May outside Westminster Magistrates’ court for a demonstration. The “Free the Filton 24” campaign said:

The Filton case now has 25 defendants. We stand with Lewie, and Lewie stands with Palestine.

So do Skwawkbox and the Canary.

Featured image via Getty/Brook Mitchell

By Skwawkbox

Source link

Source link

Georgia Republicans are already bracing for their bruising Senate primary to continue past Tuesday night.

Once viewed as a clear GOP pickup opportunity, the contest to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has remained largely static for months — with no candidate fully separating from the field and President Donald Trump yet to get involved.

Many expect the contest to go to a runoff, interviews with more than half a dozen GOP strategists and campaign officials reveal. Rep. Mike Collins, the front-runner, is likely to make the cut, but it’s unclear whether he’ll face fellow Rep. Buddy Carter or former football coach Derek Dooley, who’s had a late rise in the polls.

That means while the candidates are poised to duke it out until June 16 for the GOP nomination, Ossoff has free rein to shore up his cash advantage and attack lines ahead of November. The Democrat, Republicans say, is beatable — but the path to unseating him gets more difficult if their own primary drags on.

“The longer the party stays fractured … that harms the chances in the general election,” said Jason Shepherd, the former Cobb County GOP chair. “The beneficiary of all this is Jon Ossoff. All he has to do right now is continue to raise money.”

Cole Muzio, a conservative activist and president of the Frontline Policy Council who voted for Collins, said the nearly large faction of undecided voters “is wild for what was initially supposed to be the most competitive race in the country…. It is not a good scenario.”

With Trump still on the sidelines, the candidates have been largely left to battle it out on their own, exposing fault lines over MAGA loyalty. Collins and Carter, both allies of the president, have mostly aimed their fire at one another as they work to win over the far-right base.

Collins, who has the backing of the Club for Growth PAC, a major conservative super PAC, appeared at a campaign rally with Trump earlier this year, while Carter has presented himself as a “trusted MAGA warrior.” Carter has ramped up his spending in the contest’s closing weeks, but recent polling shows Dooley beating him in second place.

And that’s exactly where Dooley’s campaign says they want him to be.

Dooley jumped into the race with Gov. Brian Kemp’s backing — and he’s gained momentum in the final stretch by leaning on his status as a political outsider and emphasizing his ties to a popular governor whose approval rating is nearly 20 points higher than Trump’s in Georgia.

His rise is emerging as yet another test of Kemp’s political muscle against the party’s more hardline MAGA wing. The governor has joined Dooley at dozens of campaign stops. And Hardworking Americans, a Kemp-aligned PAC, is up on the air on Dooley’s behalf.

“I’m totally fine with the timing of where we are, because really all we lost is the D.C. chattering class thinking that Derek didn’t have a chance. I’m more than happy to overperform expectations,” said one senior Dooley adviser, who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Traditionally, you want to be spending your money and peaking when people are voting or right before they’re voting, and that’s what we’ve been able to do.”

Dooley’s campaign declined to comment.

Collins spokesperson Corbin Keown said in a statement that “despite the field outspending Mike Collins 15-to-1 in advertising, Georgians have consistently shown that they want [his] conservative record.” Carter, in a statement, expressed confidence in his standing with voters and said “Ossoff is desperate to face one of my primary opponents because he knows their baggage would distract from his terrible record.”

Republicans are hopeful that Tuesday night’s outcome — especially if it’s a runoff — will finally force Trump’s hand on an endorsement, putting the national political spotlight back on the Georgia Senate race.

The Collins campaign is already looking to make a pitch for Trump’s backing after the results come in.

“We are definitely going to make the case starting Wednesday that it’s clear he’s the best candidate for the general,” said one Republican strategist close to Collins’ campaign.

Trump’s endorsement has already proven to have significant sway in Republican primaries. His efforts to run challengers against several state GOP senators in Indiana and against Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana paid off. His endorsement of Barry Moore in Alabama’s Senate race helped him become the new front-runner. And he’s fronting a challenger to Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in what has turned into a very tight — and incredibly expensive — contest.

But even though all three leading GOP candidates for Georgia Senate have had meetings at the White House, they’ve had little luck getting Trump to weigh in publicly. That has meant that other party operations, such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee — which typically follow the president’s lead or wait until a nominee emerges from the primary — have also stayed on the sidelines.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some Republicans argue that outside funding will ramp up significantly once the primary concludes.

“Every race in Georgia will tighten between now and Sept. 1, and when it comes time to put resources together, Georgia will be in the fold,” said one Georgia-based GOP strategist close to Kemp. The Senate Leadership Fund, the top Senate GOP super PAC, has committed an initial $44 million in Georgia.

But in the meantime, the fractured primary field has started Republicans on their back foot while Ossoff continues to raise money. The Democrat ended the first quarter of the year with $31 million in the bank, according to federal campaign finance reports, and has largely allowed his trio of challengers to battle themselves rather than taking direct aim across the aisle.

“[The race] will tighten, I think, but right now, it’s looking a little gloomier than what it normally would just because Ossoff is building a war chest and we’re infighting and all these things,” said another Georgia-based Republican strategist, who is unaffiliated with a Senate campaign.

Beyond contending with Ossoff’s warchest, the Senate GOP candidates continue to face another hurdle: Breaking through with voters at the same time as the Republican gubernatorial race is sucking up all the political — and advertising — oxygen.

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson, who are locked in their own monstrously expensive primary, have spent a combined $94 million in that race so far. Their television and digital ads, paired with an overwhelming amount of physical mailers, has made it harder for candidates in other races to attract Georgians’ attention.

“The challenge for the Senate race is you’re not going to see a slowdown in spending in the governor’s race come the runoff,” Muzio said. “Can any of these guys really elevate above the noise to make a clear message?”

Source link