Ongoing rearmament efforts by European NATO members led to the sharpest annual growth in spending in Central and Western Europe since the end of the Cold War, with 2025 marking the record increase.

While this is sombre news from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), resisting rearmament offers the British left a historic opportunity to link working class material gains with anti-imperialist struggle.

Military spending continues to rise

Between 2024 and 2025, global military expenditure rose by 2.9 per cent to $2887 billion, the eleventh consecutive year of growth. European NATO rearmament efforts have largely driven the increase, which led to the sharpest annual spending surge in Central and Western Europe since the Cold War, even as US spending declined.

Although the decline in US military expenditure in 2025 is likely to be short-lived — US Congress has approved more than $1 trillion for 2026 and President Trump’s latest budget proposal could raise spending to $1.5 trillion in 2027 — the 2025 decline shows transfers to Ukraine by the US are falling.

Xiao Liang, a researcher with SIPRI’s military expenditure and arms production programme, said:

Given the range of current crises, as well as many states’ long-term military spending targets, this growth will probably continue through 2026 and beyond.

Lining the pockets of arm dealers

The real question is who is benefiting from this eleventh consecutive rise in military spending.

BAE Systems, Rheinmetall, Thales and Leonardo led a record $5 billion shareholder payout in 2025, according to Vertical Research Partners.

British BAE Systems has paid a total of $16 billion to its shareholders since 2016. Its shareholders are the usual suspects — America’s Capital Research & Management Co, BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Ltd, WCM Investment Management LLC, Fidelity Management & Research Co, and The Vanguard Group. Together, they hold more than 25% of the company’s equity.

The wealthiest 10% of Americans hold 93% of all stocks, the highest level ever recorded. Therefore, the profits from this military spending surge flow overwhelmingly to the wealthiest American households.

War and death are opportunities for the arms dealers of the world. The FT summarised their fortunes well recently:

Many defence contractors have seen their fortunes transformed by the Ukraine war, with order books and revenues hitting record highs. The Middle East conflict promises another injection of cash into the sector as the US and its allies rush to refill their weapon stockpiles.

Resisting rearmament as a political strategy

The UK, as a part of NATO, has clearly subordinated itself to the needs of US monopoly capital. The extensive dealings of the UK government with Palantir are another case in point.

Britain’s subordination to US monopoly capital is evident in its support for three pillars of US grand strategy: NATO enlargement, Zionist hegemony in West Asia, and strategic confrontation with China.

Climate Vanguard recently published a primer on why resisting British rearmament should be a primary strategic focus of the British left.

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A post shared by Climate Vanguard (@climatevanguard)

The four reasons they articulate are:

1. Resisting rearmament can provide material gains to the British working class while weakening imperialism. It is a historic opportunity to link material gains for the British working class with the imperative of anti-imperialism.
2. Resisting rearmament has the potential to re-energise, unite, and strengthen a scattered left.
3. Resisting rearmament is a wedge issue that can fracture the far right’s coalition. It distinguishes the left as a genuine insurgent force from the far right’s faux populism.
4. Resisting rearmament is necessary to prevent the two existential threats of our time: thermonuclear war and ecological breakdown.

While the news from SIPRI is somber, Climate Vanguard is right to argue that resisting rearmament presents a historic opportunity: one that links material gains for the British working class and weakens US imperialism.

Featured image via the Canary

By Nandita Lal

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The 16-year-old boy who died in custody in London’s Feltham young offenders’ institute on 20 April has been named. A Prison and Probation Ombudsman’s (PPO) comms officer told the Canary on 27 April:

I can confirm we are investigating the death of Eder Duarte on 20 April 2026 at HMP Feltham. I’m afraid we cannot comment on the details of Mr Duarte’s death as the investigation is live.

As the Canary reported in the aftermath of the death:

His [Duarte’s] girlfriend described to reporters that he was “covered in bruises” after identifying his body. Yet much of the corporate media has since pulled her comments. Feltham is widely described as the most violent jail in the UK’s woefully dysfunctional prison system.

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) scrambled to tell the Canary that they did not agree with that assessment of Duarte’s condition.

Adrian Usher, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, released a further statement on 27 April:

My office is conducting an independent investigation into the death of Eder Duarte on 20 April 2026 at HMP Feltham. I offer my condolences to Mr Duarte’s family and friends. I will make my final investigation report public after the conclusion of the inquest.

The Canary previously spoke to the NGO Inquest which lobbies for those who’ve lost loves ones in deaths related to the British state. Director Deborah Coles said on 23 April:

No child should be dying in the care of the state, let alone a prison. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.

Away from their families and support systems, locked in their cells for most of the day, with high rates of violence and self-harm, and prison guards now allowed to use PAVA spray, it is clear that imprisoning children will always be harmful and never be safe. This death is a urgent reminder of this.

Adding:

The government must divest money away from punishment and prisons and into community based support services to prevent further death and harm.

High levels of violence at Feltham

Prisons magazine The Justice Gap reported in 2025 that Feltham has major problems with violence:

Conditions at Feltham prison remain ‘insufficiently improved’ after an inspection by the prisons watchdog found high levels of violence against staff and one of the highest levels of drug use in any category C prison.

The Howard League for Penal Reform has also condemned the authorities over conditions at the jail. The facility has both a youth and adult jail. Chief Executive Frances Crook slammed both in 2025:

These are two of the worst in a long line of terrible prison inspection reports. It is all the more disturbing that they concern children and young people.

These children are suffering abuse and neglect by the state. Feltham has failed to care for children and help them turn their lives around for decades. It is time to put an end to this abusive failing system and properly help children live law-abiding lives.

In August 2025 the prisons inspectorate found:

levels of violence were still the highest of any prison in the country.

The inspectorate said things had been improved by a policy of:

‘keep-apart’ lists that prevented children from mixing, allowing for a better regime.

Authorities are yet to publicise a cause of death for Eder Duarte. Feltham is just one especially egregious example of a broken UK jail system. In 2019, Inquest said:

Deaths, self-harm, violence, impoverished regimes and conditions are the daily reality of the prison system.

And, as various charities and civil society organisations regularly point out, a system which puts minors in jail needs deeper examination and serious reform.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

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Nearly half of NHS hospital trusts are using non-doctors in their doctor rotas, according to Freedom of Information (FOI) responses to the British Medical Association. The revelation is a continuation of the Starmer government’s scandalous push to ‘downskill’ the NHS and reduce staff costs to allow greater profits for private providers.

An absolute shambles in the NHS

Starmer’s health secretary Wes Streeting is an ardent advocate of the expanded use of ‘medical associates’ (sometimes called ‘physician or anaesthetist assistants’) and ‘advanced practitioners’. Streeting, who has accepted huge amounts of cash from the private health industry, claims this is safe for patients. Labour’s own data show it to be “high risk” to patients, but Streeting has told doctors who protest that it’s none of their business.

Streeting is so committed to this that he has pressured the General Medical Council (GMC) to remove the need for medical training to be GMC-registered. He also says he will let the NHS ‘die’ if it doesn’t submit to such ‘reforms’ as part of his ten-year slash-and-burn plan.

The new FOI responses show that the net effect is that the sick are made to see non-doctors with a fraction of a real doctor’s training. The BMA received responses from 85 of the UK’s 202 NHS hospital trusts. Of them, 48% confirmed they are using ‘advanced practitioner’ roles to fill out doctor rotas.

This number does not even include those using ‘medical associates’, who have just two years’ basic training. ‘Advanced practitioners’ are nurses, paramedics, physiotherapists and pharmacists who complete an “Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACP) apprenticeship” or similar bolt-on training module. As the BMA notes:

While many are experienced in their base profession, working on medical roles is beyond their scope of practice.

People are dying

However, they are being used well beyond their qualified scope, as is also the case with ‘associates’, meaning many patients are being treated by people they think are doctors but aren’t. As of July 2025, at least six have died as a result.

BMA council chair Tom Dolphin said the findings prove NHS management’s ‘haphazard’ approach to staffing:

Our colleagues in advanced practice roles are valued members of our multidisciplinary teams. Yet our research reveals an NHS management that will risk patient safety to push these professionals out of what they do best and use them as spare capacity to fill up understaffed doctors’ rotas. While other healthcare roles can be enhanced within safe limits, this must never encroach into areas where a doctor’s training and expertise is required.

What is especially concerning is just how slapdash the NHS’s approach is. Many trusts have clearly and sensibly told us they would not put a non-doctor into the role of a doctor. Other trusts have unashamedly responded that they have done. That these responses split almost down the middle is an indictment of an approach by Trusts and the NHS which means that where you live determines whether you will be seen by a doctor or by someone else for the same condition.

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This is a potential disaster for everyone involved. Advanced practitioners are being asked to do jobs they shouldn’t have to. Patients are being given no clarity about who is treating them and what level of care they’re meant to be getting. Doctors are being left unclear on where the lines are drawn. The whole thing is a haphazard mess brought on by an absence of workforce planning and rational thinking about who can do what.

Patients deserve a good standard of care whichever hospital they happen to live near. They shouldn’t have to worry about whether the local managers have asked non-doctors to deliver care that only uniquely qualified doctors can safely deliver. ‘An NHS stretched to breaking point is no excuse. Better regulation and clear and uniform scopes of practice to stop this blurring of professional lines are needed, so no patient comes to harm.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council agrees. It told the BMA in March 2026 that “advanced practitioners are not a substitute for medical practitioners”.

Streeting has a lot to answer for

The use of these sub-medical roles as medics is a core part of the government’s ‘integrated care services’ ICS) plans to close hospitals and ration treatment. ICS used to be called ‘Accountable Care Organisations” (ACOs) after the dangerous US cost-cutting system it copies. However, after the US ACO scandal became known in the US, NHS ACOs were renamed to ICS. ICS even rewards NHS trusts and private providers for not treating the sick, putting healthcare further out of reach for those who need it.

To the Starmer government, cost-cutting to enable private health corporations to make fatter profits trumps the needs of patients and the future of the NHS, every time. No matter how it’s dressed up or what terms they invent to disguise it.

Featured image via the Canary

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Gone are the days of the same old wedding ceremony: traditional white dress for the bride, tuxedo for the groom, and style over comfort.

We might have had centuries of the same, but that’s all about to change now that Gen Z is entering the marriage market.

A new report by Bridebook reveals what to expect the generation to prioritise when it comes to their big day – and you’d get no prizes for guessing it’s not what you grandmother would’ve planned for them.

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While previously, the run up to weddings is seen as the most stressful time in the couples’ lives, Gen Z is baking their obsession with wellness into the ceremony itself.

According to Bridebook, wedding parties of the happy couple should prepare themselves for starting the day with a guided breathwork session.

The ceremony itself will feature aura photography, or even energy readings, the report suggests, in a move away from traditional photoshoots with the couple and their families.

You might even have to take a day off work, as more than a third have moved to a weekday wedding to save costs, according to Bridebook.

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But, don’t worry, there is still something about Gen Z weddings that would make your elders proud, as they’re 25% more likely to get married in a place of worship than previous generations.

Although, er, just don’t tell them that this could be more to do with their penchant for ‘dark romance’ and gothic cottagecore aesthetics than their devoutness.

Of course, this commitment to drama will also translate to their fashion, accessories, and drink options.

So to prepare you for your next guest experience, we’ve rounded up everything you’ll see at a Gen Z wedding.

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Star-crossed lovers, unite! Gen Z is embracing the Juliet Cap in a big way to live up to the drama.

Gen Z is also leading the return of the chocker, with searches for ‘bridal choker necklaces’ up 344% year-on-year.

There’s no such thing as too much for Gen Z, so expect cascading, oversized veils encrusted with everything from diamonds to pearls.

Pearls don’t stop at the neck – Gen Z wants them over their gloves, too.

I mean, they’re not exactly subtle: Gen Z clasps at anything that gives ‘theatre’, such as these long lace gloves, which FYI, have become 1,319% more popular on search in the last year.

With all those dainty pearl and lace details knocking around, you need some edge in there, too. So of course, Gen Z is pairing their opera gloves with black sunnies on their big day.

You can’t tear us away from our sneakerinas, not even when we’re walking down the aisle. And you know what, fair enough, because it can’t exactly be the best day of your life if you’re not comfortable now, can it?

For those not quite bold enough to embrace the sneakerina, a simple mary jane is shoving heels aside for top wedding shoe spot.

And for the gentleman, a little pastel. White gets pretty boring, we have to admit, so it makes sense there’s a sudden move towards more saccharine shades like this aqua number.

Trying too hard is embarrasing, so baggy suits will be making their way to the altar.

We’ve moved past jewellery being reserved for women, so naturally men are donning brooches during their betrothal. This one will literally help you tie the knot. But if that’s not your style, opt for a rosette-shaped pin to award yourself for getting down the aisle, or this pearly number to match with your beloved.

Forget the champagne towers, Gen Z is all about wellness, so we could see matcha towers become the drink of choice at wedding receptions. Hey, maybe this blueberry one could count as your something blue?

No one can deny the appeal of a spicy margarita, which is tying with the Hugo Spritz for Gen Z’s favourite cocktail. But what about a spicy vodkarita, with this Tabasco-flavoured Absolut?

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(Alamy)

3 min read59 min

Exclusive: A pressure group focused on who Muslims should vote for will endorse Plaid Cymru and the Green Party ahead of next month’s Senedd elections.

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The Muslim Vote, set up in late 2023, endorsed the four independent candidates who were elected at the 2024 general election on campaigns centred on the war in Gaza. They were Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan and Iqbal Mohammed.

The organisation has now turned its attention to the 7 May elections, which are taking place in Wales, Scotland and in council areas across England.

It is a highly anticipated set of elections, with both Labour and the Conservatives on course to suffer major losses, and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Zack Polanski’s Greens expected to make significant gains.

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The Muslim Vote recently told PoliticsHome that its broad strategy was to persuade Muslims to vote against Labour.

Now the organisation has revealed to PoliticsHome that it has decided to endorse Labour’s two left-wing challengers in Wales, Plaid Cymru and the Greens.

Muslim Vote’s Welsh spokesperson, Sumayya Ahmed, said Muslim communities in Wales are most concerned about “rising costs of living, falling living standards, underfunded public services, and the rise in Islamophobia accompanied by emboldened far-right rhetoric”.

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She added: “Our endorsements come after extensive analysis of what would be best for our communities as integral components of the fabric of Welsh society. We hope that whoever governs Wales in the coming few years brings prosperity, opportunity, safety, and sanctuary to the people of Wales.”

Wales is expected to produce one of the most bruising results for Keir Starmer’s Labour when voters go to the polls next week.

The party has controlled the Welsh devolved government since the creation of the Senedd nearly 30 years ago. However, opinion polls indicate that Labour’s support has fallen sharply ahead of 7 May. A YouGov survey published last week projected that the party will lose 23 per cent of its vote share, leaving it on 12 seats. There are fears within Labour that First Minister Eluned Morgan could lose her seat.

The same research put Reform UK and Plaid Cymru neck-and-neck, on 37 and 36 seats respectively.

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Responding to the Muslim Vote endorsement, a Plaid Cymru spokesperson said the election in Wales was a choice between Plaid’s “fairer, more inclusive” politics and Reform’s “inflammatory rhetoric”.

“We are proud to be a party committed to eradicating all forms of Islamophobia, antisemitism, racism and intolerance. We must ensure that one party has more seats than Reform. That can only be Plaid Cymru,” they said.

Anthony Slaughter, the Green Party leader in Wales, told PoliticsHome: “In the lead up to the election, we have been meeting and working with all the communities across Wales.

“In the current political climate, with Reform stoking up hate and division, it feels more important than ever for us to be supporting and standing in solidarity with all our different communities.”

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It is possible that Plaid, led by Rhun ap Iorwerth, looks to support from the Greens to form a government in Cardiff if the party falls short of the number of seats it needs for a majority.

Last week, PoliticsHome reported that the Muslim Vote had held hustings in Scotland and Wales, which members of the Conservatives, Greens, Liberal Democrats, Plaid, Scottish National Party and George Galloway’s Workers Party have all attended. Labour and Reform UK have so far not participated, PoliticsHome understands.

 

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As reported by Stats for Lefties, a polling prediction has Jeremy Corbyn losing his seat to the Green Party:

NEW | MRP projects Corbyn losing to Greens

Greens: 32% (+27)
Your Party: 28% (-21)

Via @ElectCalculus / @FindOutNowUK, 7 April
—
(+/- vs GE2024) pic.twitter.com/WHqnqdU2GN

— Stats for Lefties (@LeftieStats) April 27, 2026

It’s important to remember that polls aren’t premonitions. At the same time, it’s another sign the Greens have proven more effective at uniting the British left than Your Party.

End of an era for Corbyn?

Looking at the graph in full, you can see how extreme the shift has been since the 2024 election:

However, things aren’t quite as they seem.

One thing to note is that the graph presents it as a shift away from Your Party (YP). This isn’t strictly accurate, however, because YP didn’t exist in 2024 – Corbyn ran as an independent. Technically, then, the graph could actually say the party is set to increase its vote share by 28 percentage points.

There’s something else to consider too. For their voting intention polls, Find Out Now ask which party potential voters favour – not which potential candidates. In the 2024 general election, voters were presented with the independent Jeremy Corbyn as an option; in this poll, they were presented with the option of ‘Your Party’. Electoral Calculus then took this polling and used Census information and other datasets to predict how this national polling might map to Islington North.

All this means the prediction could be way off, because Jeremy Corbyn is a uniquely popular political force, and he’s incredibly well respected in his constituency (hence him winning as an independent in 2024).

Given all this, when Islington voters have the choice of Corbyn or an as-yet-unannounced Green in 2029, we wouldn’t put money on said Green just yet.

Your Party

There is one more thing to mention. Technically, Jeremy Corbyn isn’t a Your Party MP; he’s an independent. We’re not sure why Corbyn hasn’t switched to the party he founded, but unless he does so between now and 2029, he will once again be running as an independent. He certainly could switch, by the way, as Zarah Sultana has already done so.

In other words, Corbyn could potentially end up holding on without YP gaining a seat. It also means YP don’t hold the seat right now.

This is just one of the ways in which YP has proven confusing to potential members, and it’s indicative of why the Green Party has proven more effective at hoovering up left-wing voters.

Musical chairs

In news which is less divisive for the British left, a similar prediction has Starmer losing his seat to the Greens:

NEW | MRP projects Starmer losing to Greens

Grn: 34% (+24)
Lab: 26% (-23)
Ind: 14% (-5)
Ref: 12% (+6)

Via @ElectCalculus / @FindOutNowUK, 7 April
—
(+/- vs GE2024) pic.twitter.com/yTR8JiSsuJ

— Stats for Lefties (@LeftieStats) April 27, 2026

While we can’t predict the future, the next election will likely be the biggest shakeup in over a century.

Featured image via Barold

By Willem Moore

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