On 17 August, we learned that PM Andy Burnham had inadvertently been exchanging text messages with a hoaxer. This seemed odd at the time, because you’d assume the prime minister has all his contacts vetted. As it turns out, the number was vetted in a way — namely in the sense that it came from what should have been a trusted source — David Lammy.

In future, this source may not be so trusted:

EXCL: David Lammy gave the PM the phone number of the con artist pretending to be Donald Trump’s chief-of-staff.

Andy Burnham exchanged several messages with the hoaxer.

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The blunder was a big embarrassment for the new PM.https://t.co/MBwckTChq4

— Kate Ferguson (@kateferguson4) August 22, 2026

David Lammy — Embarrassing

The person Burnham thought he was communicating with was White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. You’d assume Downing Street would have a rolodex or database containing all the relevant phone numbers for politicians and appointees the world over. Instead, our PM is seemingly reliant on one of his MPs having the number. This is a bad system in normal circumstances; it’s especially bad when you factor in the existence of malicious actors.

Following the revelation that Burnham had been in contact with a fake Susie Wiles, the BBC reported:

It is understood the communication between Burnham and the person posing as Wiles was in the form of messages and there was no conversation between the two.

“No messages of significance” were exchanged and the texts were “quickly reported to the appropriate authorities” once they were believed to be suspicious, sources said.

Downing Street did not say when the messages were exchanged, or how many there were, nor whether they were over WhatsApp or another system.

It’s unclear why Burnham was able to quickly smell a rat when Lammy could not. Perhaps the fake Wiles behaved more suspiciously in conversation with Burnham; perhaps Lammy is just clueless.

“Massive headache”

News of Lammy’s involvement was broke by the Sun. According to a source who spoke with the Murdoch rag:

David Lammy thought he was currying favour with the new PM by getting them the phone number of one of the most powerful people in Washington.

If all this true, it’s a terrible look for everyone involved. It really doesn’t say much for the special relationship that our leader has to scrounge around for contact details like this. Saying that, the so-called ‘special relationship’ was always a propaganda tool to convince Britons we somehow got something out of being America’s lapdog:

Not since George W Bush and his "yo Blair" has there been a humiliation scene like this one. The heir of Churchill Atlee Wilson Callaghan Thatcher on his knees like a schoolboy sneak running around the school bully… https://t.co/rr57JCdqSr

— George Galloway (@georgegalloway) June 17, 2025

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The Sun’s source added:

But it turned out to be the wrong one and the whole thing has turned into a massive headache for the PM.

It is a serious embarrassment for David.

And that’s putting it mildly.

What a mess

This situation begs a number of questions:

• How long has Lammy had the number for?
• Where did he get it from?
• To what degree was he communicating with the hoax caller?
• Who else did he give the number to?
• To what degree were they communicating with the hoax caller?

We’re using the term ‘hoax caller’, but potentially that’s diminishing the seriousness of all this. Obviously the government would want us to think it’s some prankster, but this could be a serious security breach.

What a mess.

On the plus side, don’t expect to see David Lammy – the man who tried to scrap jury trials – back in the Cabinet any time soon.

Featured image via PA Wire

By Willem Moore

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Ireland — The Irish Council Against Blood Sports (ICABS) has denounced heritage minister James Browne for “shamefully [granting] 2026-27 licences for cruel hare coursing“. The activist group explain that the licences will mean that:

Thousands of hares will be cruelly netted from their habitats, manhandled, transported in crates to coursing enclosures, held in captivity for weeks or months and forced to run for their lives. All the hares will suffer fear and stress and some of those hit and mauled into the ground will sustain broken bones and die from their injuries.

During a coursing event, a terrified wild hare captured from its natural habitat must run, in fear for its life, from muzzled greyhounds while trapped in a confined area. Despite the protection from biting, hares are routinely killed, and dogs frequently injured. One recent horror story involved a hare at a Rathkeale and Limerick city coursing event, who:

…had to be put down by the vet as the femur was visible outside and not attached to the foot of the hare.

This was reported by the Minister of State for nature and biodiversity Christopher O’Sullivan, in response to a question by People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy.

O’Sullivan did his bit for nature and biodiversity by voting for the continued torture and killing of hares. Left-wing parties recently put forward a bill to outlaw the so-called ‘sport’, but were voted down by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin. The Republic of Ireland is one of only three European countries to still allow the barbaric practice. The others are Portugal and Spain.

Government in Ireland barely regulating barbaric ‘sport’

ICABS denounced both Browne and O’Sullivan, saying:

This is an insult to the majority in Ireland who want this barbaric bloodsport banned and it is a betrayal of the threatened Irish Hare, an icon of biodiversity. You should be protecting this species, not facilitating its persecution.

Browne licensed the clubs despite investigative journalist Patricia Devlin recently showing that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM):

…inspected just four hare coursing events in five years

Devlin said that records she acquired:

…under Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) revealed that DAFM veterinary inspectors attended just four of around 200 coursing meetings between 2019 and 2023 – and none at all in 2021 or 2023.

She continued:

During those handful of inspections alone, 16 hares were recorded as being “hit” by dogs and one injured greyhound was euthanised.

She points out that DAFM claim to have the sport under “constant review” but “were absent from around 98% of events”. At all four events where they were present, hares were recorded as being struck by the dogs. One report recorded 10 hares killed, though DAFM blamed this on a clerical error. Yet the “inspection report released several years later” still had the original figure.

Adding to the incompetence or indifference about how the archaic bloodsport is regulated, government bodies weren’t able to make up their minds about whose responsibility hare coursing is. Both the National Parks and Wildlife Service and DAFM told Devlin the ‘sport’ fell within the purview of the other.

No tolerance for people who entertain themselves with cruelty

ICABS have recently argued that heritage minister Browne has the right to refuse “all hare coursing licences” on the basis that he is:

…entitled to apply “the precautionary principle” to protect a species.

This follows a High Court decision which ruled that a previous heritage minister, Malcolm Noonan, acted lawfully in 2023 when he banned shooting of four species of duck to ensure their conservation. The National Association of Regional Game Councils challenged the decision, on behalf of their members, whose chosen pastime is apparently murdering endangered birds. However:

The judge ruled the minister had powers to take whatever steps were deemed necessary to maintain the populations of wild birds at satisfactory levels.

The minister’s powers were not:

…circumscribed by any requirement to take any economic or recreational factors into account in making his decision.

Bloodsports practitioners typically tend to exaggerate the economic contribution of these cruel activities. As for the recreational side, in the year 2026, no consideration should be shown to people who choose to entertain themselves by tormenting and murdering other sentient creatures.

77% of the Irish public seem to feel that way about hare coursing, meaning Browne’s recent licensing decision has shown disdain for animal wellbeing, and democracy.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

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Over the past few months, Reform UK and its politicians have embroiled themselves in a never-ending series of scandals. With their polling simultaneously dipping and rumours that Nigel Farage could walk away, this has predictably led to infighting among the party’s bigwigs. The latest development on that front has been the suggestion that ex-Tory Suella Braverman is apparently on ‘resignation watch’:

Apparently – i.e the Sun's Harry Cole has said – there is friction among senior Reform figures (golly gosh!), placing Braverman on 'resignation watch'.https://t.co/bNImKuVQyX https://t.co/L7nmxFY39i

— Moyra Grant (@moyra_grant) August 23, 2026

Braverman has now denied she’s on the verge of quitting. Some have taken this as confirmation the media is making up stories; others have shrugged at her denials and said: ‘well she would say that, wouldn’t she?‘

Suella Braverman on resignation watch

The suggestion that Braverman is considering her position came from longtime Sun journalist and editor Harry Cole. If the name ‘Harry Cole’ rings a bell, you’re no doubt remembering him as the man who said this (as immortalised by the WayBack Machine):

According to Cole, Reform insiders told him that Braverman is so obviously unhappy in her position that the party is closely watching. The worry, apparently, is that she could quit at any moment. She presumably can’t defect, however, as the Tories’ Kemi Badenoch described her as follows:

Badenoch says Reform defectors ‘some of the most dishonest people I have met’ https://t.co/nO4tQ3OgUW

— Reform UK Exposed (@reformexposed) August 23, 2026

She also couldn’t defect to Restore Britain, because the party is full of hardcore white supremacists who wouldn’t tolerate a Person of Colour dictating their political direction.

Braverman herself has denied the accusations, putting the following to Cole:

The piece is literally calling for an end to division…….

— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) August 22, 2026

Cole would later ask Braverman to clarify what specifically she was denying. Braverman replied:

What you’ve written about me is categorically wrong. I’m setting the record straight.

And you didn’t check with me before you wrote it- which is a real shame as I would have corrected you.

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If Reform insiders are quietly watching Suella Braverman without her knowledge, she isn’t in a position to deny that. She could deny she’s unhappy, obviously, which is presumably what she’s doing. This still doesn’t rule out the possibility she seems unhappy enough to warrant observation, though; it also doesn’t rule out the possibility that she’s lying.

Trouble brewing

Of course, it’s entirely possible that Cole made the story up; that or the person feeding him the gossip was doing so with an agenda. As commentator Dan Hodges noted, though:

By my reckoning in the past week senior Reform figures have claimed journalists from the Spectator, the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, the Sun, the Times and the I Paper have all independently invented broadly the same stories about internal infighting within the party…

— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) August 22, 2026

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Many have noted that Cole is sympathetic to Reform UK and its agenda. At the same time, Cole is one of Rupert Murdoch’s longest-serving lackeys, and the Murdoch press has been hammering Reform recently. Most obviously, this has materialised via the Times’ investigative reports into Reform’s various donation scandals.

While this reporting does seem to be genuine and worthy, the notable thing is that much of it is stuff we’ve broadly known for years – i.e. that for whatever reason, the Times has just now deemed it worthy of coverage. Many speculate this is because Reform and its politicians have shown they lack the ability to effectively manage decline as the Tories did. The risk is that if things deteriorate too quickly, people may rise up and overthrow the capitalist class – the class which has profited from this managed decline, and which includes people like Rupert Murdoch.

Regardless of what’s happening, anyway, we’re more than happy to sit back and watch these two sides tear chunks out of one another.

Featured image via Bridport News

By Willem Moore

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This may not surprise anyone at this point, but Donald Trump’s latest financial disclosure has given many the impression that he’s insider trading at an unprecedented level:

Trump Made Over 1,000 Stock Trades in June Worth $78M–$263M, Ethics Filing Shows

— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) August 22, 2026

Rampant

In the US, alleged insider trading is far from a partisan activity. Perhaps the most notorious of the alleged inside traders is Nancy Pelosi, who we reported on in November 2025. A stock tracker which launched in 2024 showed that Pelosi was realising 54% gains on her portfolio – a percentage which far exceeded most hedge funds. As we said at the time:

If Pelosi is not in fact an insider trader, she’s simply so good at it that she can beat professionals despite working full-time in a notably stressful field of work.

And as Benzinga reported:

The former Speaker of the House of Representatives’ impressive results are highly controversial and we only know about them because of the information made public through the STOCK Act, passed in 2012. This law requires members of Congress to share details about any stock trades worth over $1,000 within 30 to 45 days. The goal of the law was to stop insider trading and make things more transparent. And while that hasn’t exactly happened, the disclosures have inspired investors to copy lawmakers’ trades.

As bad as Pelosi allegedly is, however, the scale that Trump is operating on is something else entirely. This led to the following accusation from tech YouTuber Jerry Rig Everything:

Donald Trump just made more money in one month via insider trading than Nancy Pelosi did in 37 years. https://t.co/eyFAu5BuI7

— JerryRigEverything (@ZacksJerryRig) August 23, 2026

Trump trades

Meidas Touch drew attention to the following from Trump’s disclosure:

Trump reported a staggering 1,051 trades in his June financial disclosure. Here are two of the more curious ones:

— June 18: Bought $250K–$500K in Boeing, the same day the Navy awarded Boeing an $880 million contract for P-8A training systems.

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— June 23: Bought $15K–$50K in SpaceX, the same day NASA recorded a $425.6 million award to SpaceX.

While Trump is clearly doing well for himself, he’s not doing well for the country:

The Trump economy: $40tn debt, 6.7% mortgages and $5 diesel https://t.co/9SKepLrG8S

— Financial Times (@FT) August 22, 2026

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If you’re just waking up to the tariff news – this is a good summary of the trade chaos Trump has created…and why#onpoli #cdnpoli https://t.co/EsY55NPtUW

— Catherine Fife (@CFifeKW) August 22, 2026

Unsurprisingly, Trump is warning that the Democrats will impeach him if his party performs poorly in the midterm elections:

Trump: I’ll be impeached if I lose the midterms

— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) August 22, 2026

It’s unclear what Trump’s strategy is besides complaining. His war on Iran and the resulting inflation is very unpopular; as are his tariff wars and the resulting inflation. Americans also don’t like the insider trading which he appears to be gleefully and sloppily engaging in (allegedly).

The only move he’s making which seems designed to generate mass appeal is the following, and let’s be real; this looks terrible too:

MYSTERY MEAT: Trump says he struck a deal to flood the U.S. with cheaper foreign beef.

There’s just one problem: He refuses to tell Americans which countries the beef is coming from.

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And U.S. ranchers are furious. https://t.co/xtjFb43rnp

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) August 21, 2026

His mystery meat gambit looks even worse coming in the middle of an unprecedented number of food recalls:

Jesus Christ, I expanded the tweet and the list is a fucking mile long https://t.co/YkTZL12Ngz

— bunny sanders (@whatbunnysaid) August 19, 2026

Slippery slopes

Will US politicians eventually hold Trump and his cronies accountable for his allegedly criminal behaviour? That remains to be seen. But if they don’t, expect politicians to keep pushing the boundaries of what they can get away with.

Featured image via Harry Benson / Kevin Dietsch

By Willem Moore

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Israeli settler violence — The most striking thing about the cruelty of so-called ‘Israel’ is perhaps the cowardice with which it is exercised. The Gaza holocaust is one giant act of spinelessness, bombarding from afar a captive population for over 1000 days like fish being shot in a barrel. Now a Zionist thug has exemplified that tendency once more, by attacking a Palestinian amputee of advanced years from behind as he hobbles away on crutches.

Middle East Eye have the video, and diplomatically refer to the gutless terrorist as a “settler”. It’s a strange term to use. Tea leaves ‘settle’ at the bottom of a mug. The Zionist colonisation project is not an equivalently benign and natural process. These people are not ‘settlers’ — they are land thieves, waging a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people.

Attack victim lost leg to previous Israeli settler violence

The victim is Saeed al-Amour, whose amputation is horrifyingly the result of a previous vile attack by another group of pogrom enthusiasts. Al-Amour was the focus of a Channel 4 News report more than a year ago.

On 17 April 2025, cameras captured him again trying to defend his land from armed thugs, allowed to continue unimpeded by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Despite being unarmed, a land thief shot him in the leg, as others pinned his son Elias down helpless nearby. As a result of the attack, Al-Amour lost his leg. ‘Israeli’ authorities charged the Palestinian man and his son with violent disorder, despite footage clearly showing they were not the aggressors. They paid a £2,000 fine to escape jail.

WAFA news agency reports that the most recent attack happened on August 22:

…in the village of Khirbet al-Rakeez, located in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron

They say:

The attack left al-Amour with multiple injuries and bruises, prompting Palestine Red Crescent crews to transport him to Yatta Governmental Hospital for medical treatment.

Again Al-Amour is being criminalised despite being the victim, with WAFA adding:

[Activist Osama] Makhamreh further reported that Israeli occupation forces subsequently raided al-Amour’s home, searched the premises, vandalized its contents, and confiscated the family’s mobile phones.

West’s failure to sanction ‘Israel’ means the terror continues

The IOF and land thieves continue to make life unliveable for Palestinians in the West Bank. Earlier this week, the Canary’s Charlie Jaay reported on Zionist criminality in Hebron. A Palestinian family described the terror they endure constantly:

About 7.30pm, just before sunset, a group of settlers was roaming Tel Rumeida with the intention of attacking the Palestinian residents. They started throwing stones at our house. My wife and I were inside so, fearing we would be hit by stones and attacked, we had to lock ourselves in the house and wait.

Tel Aviv continues to push ahead with illegal colonial outposts that slice up Palestine into small disconnected fragments. The United Nations warned the apartheid entity’s plan for “1,200 new housing units” would:

…effectively sever the connection between occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank and bisect north and south, triggering severe consequences for the territorial integrity of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and present an existential threat to the two-State solution.

Leading ‘Israeli’ politicians have been open about destroying any possibility of ‘two states’, making it clear they intend to steal all of Palestine. Western governments continue with mere words and trivial punishment of individuals like war criminal Bezalel Smotrich. He responds by brazenly mocking Britain.

The year between Channel 4’s coverage of land thieves destroying Saeed Al-Amour’s leg, and the latest brutal and cowardly attack on him, is emblematic of this failure to act. Despite the horrors revealed to us daily, complicit states take no meaningful action, meaning we are only left with fresh outrages piled upon those that went before.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

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Mark Ruffalo has hit back at Paramount after they accused him of ‘antisemitism’. The attack followed Ruffalo’s criticism of a potential merger which would result in Paramount and the Ellison family owning a significant percentage of all US media:

The best part about the Zionists trying to attack Mark Ruffalo is that now tons of Americans will see the connection between Paramount and genocide. https://t.co/FbfrUlahFn

— Marxist Mark & The Socialist Bunch (@MarxistBunch) August 22, 2026

Paramount importance

The man who owns Paramount and tech company Oracle is Larry Ellison. In the UK, Ellison is best known for his links to Tony Blair, the Tony Blair Institute (TBI), and Digital ID.

Well this isn’t terrifying at all. Here’s Blair talking to Oracles Larry Ellison.

"Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly watching & recording everything that's going on."

Now you can see why Starmer is so keen on digital ID

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pic.twitter.com/sZuB0tj02p

— Bernie (@Artemisfornow) September 28, 2025

Larry’s son David also works in the family business. David is a failed actor who later turned his hand to movie production. Notoriously, he’s the man who greenlit many of the big budget streaming movies you either:

• Didn’t watch.
• Barely remember.

If the Paramount merger goes ahead, these soulless husks will be in charge of a significant percentage of all creative and informative media in the US. And this is something Ruffalo saw fit to draw attention to, resulting in Paramount smearing him.

Smeared

Paramount is currently aiming to buy out Warner Bros. for $111bn. Ruffalo is among the many critics of the deal. And as part of his criticism, he drew attention to tech company Oracle’s links to Israel and the ongoing genocide.

The CEO of the American technology company Oracle boasts about the services it provides to the Israeli occupation army, which uses them to kill us. She even boasts about the fact that several of her employees work with the occupation army! pic.twitter.com/D4WAGT090J

— Hamza Ali (@HamzaAli340214) August 21, 2026

Given that Larry Ellison owns both Paramount and Oracle, Ruffalo’s point is a fair one to make. In response, Paramount issued the following statement:

We are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute. Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong — they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe. This doesn’t deserve a response in kind — and to be clear, we don’t tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.

Ruffalo responded as follows:

The accusation that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest. Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people. This critical and necessary dialogue is then dishonestly framed as being anti-Israel. To be clear, my views come from my own political convictions and should never be interpreted as hostility toward Jewish people, for whom I have deep love and respect. Everything I know about acting, activism, and humanism has been profoundly shaped by the Jewish friends, colleagues, and loved ones who have been integral and family throughout every point of my life.

This merger has real consequences for real people, and for the entire country. Scrutinizing the Ellisons, including Oracle’s business built on data, surveillance technology and government contracts, and the serious threat to editorial freedom and the loss of a livelihood for thousands of families, is fair and necessary. The $111 billion deal would hand one family control over CNN, HBO and Warner Bros., backed in part by foreign money whose influence on editorial decisions has never been fully explained to the public.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for serious national security review, and regulators still haven’t given the public a real answer. Until they do, the merger shouldn’t move forward. Now is the time to dive boldly into all these issues, not step back or concede.

Mark Ruffalo — Consolidation

Mark Ruffalo and pro-Palestinian advocates are far from the only ones criticising the potential merger. L.A. County is warning it could cost the area $2.78bn in lost economic value. In other words, the only people this merger is good for are the Ellisons, and the authoritarian politicians in the US and Israel who will no doubt enjoy active PR from this increasingly bloated media empire.

Featured image via the Canary

By Willem Moore

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5 min read18 min

Our data shows there is political ground to be won in not stopping at mayors and regions.

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Take back control. One of the most effective yet divisive pieces of political messaging in recent memory. Whatever you think of its use during the Brexit campaign, you’d be hard pushed to find a phrase which better describes the political mood of the country over the past decade.

It manifests in all sorts of different ways. Anger at the impact of private equity and multinational companies on the fabric of our public services and places. Frustration that the state can’t fulfil seemingly basic functions, like repairing potholes. And, of course, a sense that the state doesn’t have control of our borders, starkly exemplified by the debate on small boat crossings. Together, a widespread feeling that people have less and less ability to shape what’s going on in the world around them.

The best way to respond to this public sentiment today is through a persistent focus on the ‘last mile’ of devolution, not just devolution to mayors and regions, but down to the community level. If done well, there’s political ground to be won. The ‘take back control’ sentiment shows up in data all over the place, and the newly published findings from the government’s Community Engagement Survey are no different.

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The survey shows a big jump in the number of people who feel it’s important to have the ability to influence decisions affecting their local area. Three in five place importance on this, up nine percent on last year. We’re Right Here’s polling finds that, when looking at where this comes from, 84 per cent of people feel they have little or no control over important decisions affecting their neighbourhood and community. Put simply, people increasingly value local influence, but most feel they do not have it.

So, how to capitalise on this politically? Politicians of different stripes have tried to respond to this in a range of ways. With Andy Burnham installed in No 10 (and of course Heron House), you could be forgiven for thinking that the PM is already well out ahead of this. Devolution has never been more fashionable and ‘rewiring the state’ is the talk of Westminster.

True, but does the current approach capture what the call to “take back control” is reaching for? Our analysis of the Community Engagement Survey shows no discernible difference in people’s perceived ability to influence local decisions between those in areas with devolution and those without. The suggestion is, as important as it is for our national growth story, not all devolution gives people that sense of local control, the feeling that they can actually shape things.

This is where the untapped opportunity lies – if Burnham can see Pride in Place not merely as a standalone programme, but as a governing ethos which captures the spirit of his administration

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The Community Engagement Survey and other polling and survey work consistently show a stark difference between how positive people feel about their local area, and how negative they feel about the country at large.

The Keir Starmer government understood this. It was the political logic at the heart of Pride in Place. It went something like: if we can harness people’s pride in their local area, and help build it further, we’ll receive political benefit as a result. This resulted in a £5bn programme of funding for 300 ‘doubly disadvantaged’ neighbourhoods across the country. Residents and communities were given the power to decide how £20m is spent in their neighbourhood over the next decade. Giving people the power and the tools to take back control.

Despite its radical premise, given the hyper-local focus of the fund, it currently only serves less than 5 per cent of the population. The Starmer administration also struggled to join the programme up with a wider message. Burham is a very different politician and much more comfortable exercising a form of ‘progressive communitarianism’ which we saw in action via his Live Well agenda in Greater Manchester. This is where the untapped opportunity lies – if Burnham can see Pride in Place not merely as a standalone programme, but as a governing ethos which captures the spirit of his administration.

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We’ve started to see Burnham dance close to this in his focus on restoring pride in local high streets, accurately identifying its political potency. But people do not just want better places, and the power to stop high street uses they don’t want. They want a greater say in what happens in their local area.

In an essay for Power to Change, We’re Right Here and the UCL Policy Lab last year, Burnham set out this vision himself: “The country is crying out for change. But not just any change. People don’t want more promises from on high. They want to be part of something. They want to be seen, heard, and trusted.”

To harness the opportunity that’s there in front of it, the new administration should ask itself three questions. Is our agenda thinking as much about the ‘last mile’ of devolution as the first 100? How can we apply the principles of Pride in Place to a much wider sweep of government policy? And, ultimately, is the change we’re creating something where people can be ‘part of something’?  

 

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Nick Plumb is Director of Policy and Insight at Power to Change and was a board member of the High Streets Task Force from 2022 to 2024

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Tony Greenstein’s trial at Kingston Crown Court has ended in a spectacular own goal for Sussex Zionist complainants and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), as a jury of seven men and five women took just two hours and eleven minutes to clear the 72-year-old Jewish anti-Zionist writer and activist. The verdict left an openly hostile judge furious and the unfortunate CPS humiliated.

Greenstein, a veteran socialist, author, and founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, was charged under Section 12(1) of the Terrorism Act 2000 with inviting support for a proscribed organisation following three social media posts published on 7 October 2023. Facing up to 14 years in prison for describing the breakout from the Strip as a “Gaza ghetto uprising”, Greenstein delivered a blistering closing defence to the jury that resulted in spontaneous applause echoing from the packed public gallery.

The Crown’s party political analogy

The CPS, represented by Kate Temple-Mabe, who was bound by the cab rank principle to present the state’s case, attempted to convince the jury that by linking to his blog and stating Greenstein was criminally inviting the public to support Hamas:

whatever criticisms one can make of Hamas, we should congratulate them on this well-planned and audacious attack

The prosecution tried to simplify their case by equating Palestinian anti-colonial resistance to a British party political analogy. The Crown argued that if an individual dislikes Party A more than Party B, knocking on doors for Party B makes them a supporter of Party B, no matter what their past ideological leanings. Under this logic, the prosecution claimed that praising the tactical efficiency of the October 7th military offensive constituted an endorsement for Hamas.

The prosecution also leaned heavily on online exchanges, including a reply to Peter Tatchell where Greenstein argued that October 7th was not the time or place to criticise Hamas for LGBT issues while bombs were raining down on Gaza.

Judicial interference and Greenstein’s excluded evidence

Throughout the trial, defence barrister Lawrence McNulty pushed back against the judge’s interference and did so in a way that made the jury highly aware of how the bench was attempting to steer the case. McNulty eventually stood down so Greenstein could address the jury directly in person, while solicitor Zafar Iqbal remained in court to instruct him.

The tension between the bench and defence reached a flashpoint before police witnesses were questioned. Clearly nervous about where the defence might lead and seeking to control the narrative from the outset, Judge Sarah Plaschkes KC demanded to know in advance what line of questioning McNulty intended to pursue with the police. McNulty pushed back immediately, asking the judge whether she planned to micromanage the defence. He even offered to hand over a full list of his questions if the bench formally compelled him to do so, a demand Plaschkes ultimately refused. As the standoff threatened to turn into a complete stalemate, the jury was eventually brought back into the courtroom, where McNulty proceeded to ask the officer just a single question: getting the police to confirm that the transcript from Greenstein’s second interview was so short that it had obviously been heavily redacted.

The jurors were asked to leave the courtroom quite frequently so that Judge Plaschkes could attempt to impose limits on the defence team, which they consistently managed to get around. Significant context was actively kept from the jury. Large sections of Greenstein’s voluntary police interview transcripts were excluded, and over half of the controversial blog post was omitted from the prosecution’s extracts. Furthermore, dozens of historical articles attacking Hamas across the 3,500 posts on Greenstein’s platform — including pieces written by guest bloggers as well as mainstream outlets like The Washington Post and Haaretz that he regularly published — were ruled inadmissible as evidence to the court or jury.

Greenstein pointed out the huge gaps in what the jury was permitted to see, noting that had any of the posts on his platform expressed praise or support for Hamas, the Crown would have rushed to include every single one of them. Instead, because his site served as an open forum documenting decades of trenchant opposition to religious fundamentalism by both himself and contributing writers, those articles were deliberately kept out of evidence to bolster the state’s fragile prosecution. Greenstein and his legal team made sure the jury became aware of this censorship, a revelation that decisively turned the room against the heavy-handed approach of the judge and prosecution.

Judge Plaschkes repeatedly halted Greenstein’s evidence when he sought to provide historical context, warning him against treating the court as a “political forum” and claiming the jury was “not concerned with events in the Middle East”. Greenstein rebuked the bench directly, retorting that turning a blind eye to genocide is the exact problem with the ruling class in Britain. As the judge attempted to silence him further, Greenstein fired back that he was talking about human rights, including her own.

Plaschkes went on to direct the jury to disregard the excluded blog posts and strictly instructed them to ignore Greenstein’s mentions of the 14-year sentence hanging over him. At one point during the trial, Greenstein remarked directly to the bench that it felt as though the prosecution had two people working for it, implying that the judge was ganging up with the prosecution.

Tony Greenstein’s closing address

Giving evidence, Greenstein described Gaza as a cage and a human prison where Palestinians had been locked up for 57 years, asking the jury to imagine living under an inescapable blockade with poisoned water and power cuts. He insisted that when a colonial power holds another people down, those people have the right to resist.

Addressing the jury directly in his closing speech, Greenstein dismantled the Crown’s party political analogy:

The prosecution used an analogy of supporting party A and not party B. This analogy is not sufficient for the context of colonial occupation. I support occupied people, but I have never supported Hamas. Kemi Badenoch might support Andy Burnham if he cuts benefits, but nobody would then accuse Badenoch of supporting Labour.

Greenstein anchored his anti-Zionism in his family history and Jewish heritage. He recounted how his family fled Poland while most relatives were murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp, and recalled how his father, Rabbi Solomon Greenstein, stood at Cable Street in 1936 against Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Raised as a religious Zionist who celebrated the 1967 war, Greenstein became an anti-Zionist in 1969 after researching the Nakba for a school debate.

Greenstein drew chilling parallels between historical and contemporary fascist rhetoric, pointing out how Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and Nazi architect Heinrich Himmler both used identical dehumanising language by referring to human beings as animals to justify mass slaughter.

In an impassioned section of his address, Greenstein confronted the jury directly with the realities of the ongoing genocide:

If the devil exists, it is amongst those who prohibit anaesthetics entering Gaza. It is amongst those who deliberately starve children to death, those who bomb tents and burn children alive, and those who call Palestinians “human animals”.

Explaining his use of the phrase “Gaza ghetto uprising”, Greenstein invoked Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. When Edelman died in 2009, he was accorded a state funeral with full military honours in Poland, yet he remained despised and boycotted by the Israeli establishment because he was a lifelong anti-Zionist who explicitly stated that Gazans were being treated just like Jews were in Warsaw, addressing Palestinian fighters as fellow partisans. Greenstein warned the jury that Britain’s Terrorism Act 2000 is written so broadly that it would have criminalised the Warsaw uprising itself, remarking that it is wide enough to drive a coach and horses through.

Turning to the state’s targeting of Palestine Action, Greenstein drew a direct historical comparison with the Suffragettes. He stressed that the Suffragettes engaged in far more violent direct action — not just smashing windows, but setting off bombs — yet today they are universally celebrated as having been on the right side of history. He told the jury that future generations will view Palestine Action in exactly the same way. He contrasted this with the grotesque abuse of counter-terror legislation, pointing out that while roughly 200 people were arrested for terrorism in 2024, that figure rocketed to 3,000 in 2025, with the average terror suspect now being a 50-something white woman.

He challenged the deep hypocrisy of the state and the architects of the counter-terror legislation. Greenstein pointed out the grim irony that Tony Blair and Jack Straw introduced the Terrorism Act 2000 while launching illegal imperialist wars across Iraq and Afghanistan, foreign invasions that directly bred Islamic State, destabilised the region, and brought blowback to the UK in the form of the 7/7 London bombings and the Manchester Arena attack. The very politicians who engineered modern terror legislation were the ones whose foreign policies brought terrorism to British soil.

He contrasted this with double standards in the establishment media, pointing out that mainstream figures like Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart interviewed Abu Mohammad al-Jolani — the former leader of the proscribed Syrian militant group HTS (formerly the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda) who previously had a multi-million dollar CIA bounty on his head before becoming Syria’s president — without facing dawn raids or device seizures. He reminded the jury that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had once labelled Nelson Mandela a terrorist, noting that history always delivers its own verdict on such political classifications.

Citing John Stuart Mill, George Orwell’s maxim that liberty means telling people what they do not want to hear, and Benjamin Franklin’s warning on trading liberty for security, Greenstein likened the state’s prosecution to Idi Amin’s famous quip that freedom of speech exists, but not freedom after speech.

Drawing his address to a close, Greenstein quoted Lord Devlin on trial by jury being the lamp that shows freedom lives, and cited the 1670 Bushell’s Case commemorated on the wall of the Old Bailey, which established the constitutional right of juries to acquit according to their conscience without judicial intimidation.

The verdict and the Streisand effect

As Greenstein finished his closing speech, a round of applause broke out across the public gallery.

Before allowing the jury to return with their verdict, Judge Plaschkes addressed the court. She warned the public gallery that anyone unable to remain completely silent when the verdict was delivered would be forced to leave immediately.

The judge also stated that she was initially minded to initiate contempt of court proceedings against Greenstein for raising wider political issues and advising the jury on conscience-based acquittals. She invited the Crown to make a formal contempt complaint, but when Temple-Mabe declined, Judge Plaschkes dropped the matter, remarking that on calm reflection Greenstein’s address amounted only to a rambling speech delivered by an old man. She added her belief that the jury would have reached its decision regardless of his closing remarks. The comment provoked gasps of disapproval across the packed public gallery.

When the unanimous not-guilty verdict was delivered, Greenstein grinned visibly and looked emotional as supporters in the gallery celebrated.

The entire prosecution stands as a clear demonstration of the Streisand effect. Zionist complainants in Sussex sought to criminalise Greenstein and silence anti-Zionist speech. Instead, all they achieved was to amplify Greenstein’s anti-Zionist analysis, his book Zionism During the Holocaust, and his platform onto a national stage. It exposed the sharp contrast where establishment journalists interview former proscribed al-Qaeda leaders without police interference, while anti-war activists face dawn raids and frozen bank accounts. Above all, it delivered a resounding defeat for the state with the fourth jury acquittal out of seven recent Section 12 terrorism prosecutions against pro-Palestine speech — reaffirming that ordinary juries refuse to treat political opposition to genocide as terrorism.

Outside the court, Greenstein addressed a crowd of supporters, declaring the acquittal a shared victory for Palestine and democratic rights in Britain. He affirmed that opposing genocide is not a crime, whereas supplying arms to Israel to perpetrate a genocide is, concluding that the movement stands on the right side of history.

Following the verdict, civil rights groups welcomed the outcome, with human rights organisation CAGE International releasing a statement affirming that the jury’s swift decision demonstrates that Palestinian liberation is not a crime.

Featured image via Twitter

By Ranjan Balakumaran

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