Speaking at the Ivor Novello awards, singer CMAT has spoken out against Reform UK and the far right. She’s also called on her fellow artists to get off the fence and to take a stand:

"I have no time, sympathy or empathy for anybody that decides to make life more difficult for people who are just trying to live" – @cmatbaby sticks it to Reform, Farage and fascists during her powerful @IvorsAcademy speech#CMAT #IvorNovello2026 pic.twitter.com/wMS1dVI9MS

— NME (@NME) May 22, 2026

CMAT “F*ck Reform”

CMAT (real name Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson) was born in Dublin — the capital of the Republic of Ireland. She has spoken out on social issues before, and is a fierce defender of trans rights. As part of this, CMAT released a t-shirt that raises money for the Transgender Equality Network Ireland which claims that “The T in CMAT stands for Trans rights”. Thompson also spoke out against the singer Roisin Murphy:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by PinkNews (@pinknews)

Speaking on trans rights and the law, the Canary’s Em Colquhoun wrote:

Prioritising the legal definitions of sex and gender over and above the reality of trans lives will always be reductive, further entrenching a ‘hostile environment‘ for trans people. But that is precisely what lawfare-waging TERFs want. The more convoluted the law, the colder the chilling effect on LGBTQ+ people’s freedoms of movement and expression.

At the end of the day, it’s not the law that needs to be changed, but the general attitudes towards trans people in this country. The law may influence this, but the problems have taken root far deeper than statutes.

Luck of the draw

Speaking to Ivor Novello Awards audience, Irish singer CMAT said:

I happen to be a legal immigrant in this country only because Ireland was lucky enough to get colonised 8 years ago by England. And that is actually the only difference between me and you admin wise.

As Thompson notes, Irish citizens can live and work in the UK. She’s certainly not British, however, and she’s clearly not aligned with the rampant flag shaggers who want to keep other migrants out.

The reason these fascist goons aren’t campaigning to send Thompson back is simple; it’s because the ‘anti-migration’ movement is just racism rebranded. And this is why so many Reform politicians keep finding themselves exposed for blatantly racist comments.

Speaking on her philosophy of songwriting, Thompson explained:

I have a very specific idea of what songwriting is supposed to be for and I think it is to reflect the times through your own personal view so that everybody can have something to connect to and something to learn from years later.

As an example of what she’s talking about, there’s a song on her most recent album titled Lord, Let that Tesla Crash. That’s particularly relevant today, because Tesla owner Elon Musk came out to support the far-right Restore Britain:

Restore Britain https://t.co/y6b0RnO7p7

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2026

Stand for something

Closing out her speech, Thompson called on her peers to do more to meet the moment:

Now what would compel my fellow artists in the room, it is not the time to sit on the fence. Fascism is on the rise. That c*nt Bertie Ahern recently showed his true colours.

Providing context on this, the Canary’s Robert Freeman wrote:

Taoiseach (prime minister) Micheál Martin has responded tepidly to appallingly bigoted remarks by his predecessor Bertie Ahern on a voter’s doorstep. The voter recorded the ex-Fianna Fáil leader saying he didn’t approve of Africans entering Ireland, and vilifying the next generation of Muslims who he said were set to cause “problems.”

Instead of condemning Ahern’s overt racism and Islamophobia, Martin said the remarks were “not appropriate,” “correct, or proper” — a slap on the wrist at best.

Thompson finished by saying:

F*ck Reform.

F*ck Nigel Farage.

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I have no time, sympathy, or empathy for anybody that decides to make life more difficult for people who are just trying to live. And that’s what this record is about.

There are many good reasons to figuratively “f*ck” Reform too. As Ed Sykes recently reported for the Canary, the Greater Manchester Police arrested several Labour operators in May on the suspicion that they ran fake candidates in the Tameside local elections. Reform attempted to capitalise on this, as Sykes reported:

In Gorton and Denton, Farage’s party lost by well over 4,000 votes. But it had a tantrum anyway. It quickly blamed ‘family voting‘ for the result, trying to sow seeds of suspicion, particularly about Muslim backers of the Green Party, by suggesting men had told their wives how to vote.

Greater Manchester Police ended its investigation into Reform’s allegations a month later because there was no reliable evidence.

That hasn’t stopped Reform voices continuing to spread smears and misinformation, though. Because like Farage, racist Gorton-and-Denton-by-election-loser Matt Goodwin also responded to the news of the Tameside arrests by referring back to the Islamophobic lies about Gorton and Denton and failing to mention Tameside itself.

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And this is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the reasons why Farage & .co can go f*ck themselves.

CMAT’s latest album EURO-COUNTRY is available now.

Featured image via Getty Images (Eamonn M.McCormack)

By Willem Moore

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In recent weeks, there has been increasing evidence of authorities in the north of Ireland aligning themselves with dangerous far-right thugs. On May 1, the racists and Islamophobes of Our Northern Ireland Voice (ONIV) shared a video showing a group of men assaulting a person they described as a “Pakistani male”.

Later identified as Mohammed Manai, the thugs allege he was attempting to enter a primary school, though no evidence has been produced for his alleged crime. However, thanks to ONIV, video evidence does exist of thugs attacking Manai with punches and knees to the body as they pin him to the ground.

Despite this proof of criminal violence, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) instead arrested Manai, but not any of those who brutally set upon him. Manai remains on remand (held in police custody), despite reports that his:

…full case file is not due to be with prosecutors from police by mid-June.

Thugs attack person of colour, but police arrest only the victim

The PSNI are holding Manai for the generic catch-all charge of alleged “disorderly behaviour”. However, if the police are detaining the man purely on the basis of witness statements from those who attacked him, it represents a disgraceful failure by the police force.

In messages passed to the Canary from ONIV’s then-private Facebook forum, commenters refer to Manai as a “scumbag immigrant”. The forum has since been made public, exposing the torrent of hateful bile circulating within it. The PSNI have not yet used hate speech legislation to prosecute these commenters.

The reason ONIV seems confident to expose their previously internal messaging seems clear. On the same day that Manai was attacked, ONIV staged a protest at Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council’s Coleraine offices. The result of that was securing a meeting with the council’s chief executive David Jackson.

As pointed out by the Belfast Telegraph, the meeting essentially amounts to local authorities endorsing the work of racist thugs, who are currently attempting to assemble nightly patrols in the Coleraine area. Ostensibly to ‘protect’ local residents, their real purpose is to intimidate local people of colour. A May 20 post on ONIV Facebook asks for:

…men out there willing to stand together and help protect and strengthen our community presence…

This is next to posts screaming:

At the end of the day, if nobody takes a stand now against Third Worlders..

In time, we’ll have nowhere to stand!!

It’s more likely that local residents need protection from ONIV, given their leader Dan Grundle (who also goes under the surname Douglas) has been convicted for loyalist rioting. Fellow member Mark Brown is a Nazi ex-National Front leader who was convicted for a racially motivated attack in 2019. Brown punched a taxi driver in the head and called him a “Muslim cunt” and “low-rent Jihadi bastard”. Yet these people were invited in to the offices of their local council, on the basis of them having:

…raised concerns regarding HMO [House in Multiple Occupation] enforcement with council officials.

These are the words of a council spokesperson. A “council source” told the Telegraph:

Council officials are saying that they didn’t know about Mark Brown’s background, which isn’t good enough because you don’t have meetings with people you don’t know, especially high-profile Nazis about a topic as inflammatory as immigration.

As previously reported by the Canary, low quality HMOs are a real issue, as is lack of social housing generally. Such properties are often used to house immigrants. The outrage should be that anyone is forced to live in such sub-standard housing, but the issue is exploited by the far-right to drive resentment of new arrivals to the Six Counties.

Housing failures once again leveraged by far-right

A post provided to the Canary from an observer of the ONIV group shows “Irish only” graffiti painted on houses in the south of Ireland, with an ONIV admin suggesting that this tactic should perhaps:

…be the kind of response to any property approved as an HMO intended to house immigrants in Northern Ireland [sic] ?

Commenters say:

Get invaders out of every country illegal immigrants all of them

Another states “Only way to sort it”.

End Deportations Belfast (EDB), which opposes “border regimes, detention and deportation” in the north of Ireland, recently pointed out another state authority doing the far-right’s work. EDB report receiving:

…disturbing information and video footage regarding an ongoing immigration raid in Castlewellan.

It showed Immigration Compliance Enforcement (ICE) officers in Castlewellan “searching for People of Colour (POC) on the street.” EDB point out that:

Home Office official policy is clear, that immigration officers must not engage a person simply on the basis of their appearance, race, colour, ethnic origin or nationality.

It won’t surprise anyone that immigration enforcement is engaging in racist practices, though it is more alarming in a climate of “spiralling” race hate crimes, as EDB points out. Combined with the PSNI turning a blind eye to the likes of ONIV’s racists, and their local council endorsing them, these horrifying figures may climb further still.

Featured image via Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

By Robert Freeman

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The cost of living is an ongoing crisis in modern Britain. In response to this, the government has unveiled a ‘Summer Savings’ plan which will provide minimal savings for a single month — specifically August. In response to this, Sky News’s Trevor Phillips has laid into Labour minister Darren Jones:

As several people have pointed out, do Trevor's figures add up?

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 24, 2026

Summer Savings

As we reported on 22 May, the Great British Summer savings plan includes free bus tickets for children, in addition to:

a temporary reduction in VAT across Scotland, England and Wales from June to September. The reduction applies to admission tickets for family shows and attractions and children’s menu meals.

On the topic of free buses, transport union TSSA said:

the chancellor should now look at extending support as part of a wider package of help, well beyond the summer months. Not only would doing so assist those most in need, it will help the wider economy.

Sadly, the Cost-of-Living crisis is a year-round affair. But while things continue to get worse for ordinary Britons, the super-wealthy are experiencing bumper year after bumper year. Do you think there could be a connection between those two things?

Writing on the Summer Savings plan, the Canary’s James Wright reported:

The way Labour is conducting the policies show a further entrenchment of corporatism. The government is proposing policies to supermarkets that the corporations can choose whether or not to accept. Indeed, corporations rejected a proposal on price controls on food staples.

As he noted, there is nothing preventing companies from pocketing the VAT savings — not from a legal perspective, anyway. Wright added that the huge profits companies are making demonstrates that the Cost-of-Living crisis is manufactured. In a similar vein, the Canary’s Maddison Wheeldon described the crisis as follows in relation to supermarkets:

our political and media establishment has abandoned the very people it claims to represent. Instead of standing up for the public, politicians and the mainstream media now ask us to sympathise with supermarkets operating in an industry that continues to generate enormous profits.

Meanwhile, those same supermarkets have posted record-breaking profits throughout the cost-of-living crisis. Or, more accurately, the cost of greed crisis. Now, profits look set to rise yet again while more hard-working families fall into food poverty.

Because this crisis seems to be never-ending, many are now calling for bold solutions to tackle the issue once and for all:

Nationalise Morrisons, use it as the foundation for a new, publicly-owned grocery store selling high quality, affordable food. National-level version of the Mamdani plan in New York.

Need to think big in a world with repeated, major shocks to essential supply systems. pic.twitter.com/vlXweJl5HO

— James Meadway (@meadwaj) May 22, 2026

Labour, meanwhile, is proposing limited-time discounts.

Theme park that thought

Here’s what Phillips said to Jones in the clip at the top:

I looked at the entry passes to Thorpe Park, Alton Towers, Legoland, Chessington. They all come in around about 32 quid if you book online, which means that the saving you’re offering is £1.64 for the average family with two children. A family’s got to pay £128 just to get into the park. Then they’ve got to pay travel and all the rest of it. Free travel on buses for some kids and £1.64 off a bill that most families will see as £200, £250; it’s not very impressive, is it? It’s not going to make much of a difference

Darren Jones (chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) responded:

Savings are small, helpful contributions to just help lift the pressure a bit for families during the summer months.

Phillips repeated:

£1.64 off a bill of nearly £200?

Jones expanded:

Trevor, I don’t think you understand. There are many families who can’t afford to take their kids out for a meal or to a theme park.

And angry Phillips continued:

A family can’t afford to take their kids out for a meal is not going to spend £200 going to a theme park. The point is, you’re trumpeting this, but it’s really a tiny, tiny gesture.

Labour — calculations

As some highlighted, however, Phillips calculation may be off by a factor of ten:

What’s he talking about? The saving would be £16.

I’m not here to defend Labour, but a £32 ticket is
£26.67 + £5.33 VAT.
Cutting VAT to 5% makes it £26.67 + £1.33 VAT
So, £28 per ticket, instead of £32, saving £4 per ticket.

— Steve Paxton (@Steve__Paxton) May 24, 2026

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It’s still accurate to suggest this small amount won’t make much difference, though. As such, it’s no surprise that Labour is losing voters to the more ambitious Green Party. As the Canary’s HG wrote:

YouGov’s new study of the 2026 local elections shows that only 46% of Labour voters from 2024 who went to the polls remained loyal to the party. More previous voters backed the Green Party (22%) than voted for Reform (6%).

HG added:

Starmer has practically bet his party on trying to beat Reform. In the process, he has created the perfect opportunity for the Green Party and a more progressive version of British oolitics. Importantly, the local elections showed us that many people want that alternative – and Labour have paved the way for their own demise.

Some are hoping that switching from Keir Starmer to Andy Burnham could make all the difference, but Burnham is just as eager to chase Reform voters as Starmer. As Antifabot reported for the Canary:

Greater Manchester mayor and Makerfield by-election hopeful Andy Burnham has dumped his past defence of Trans people to protect his bid for Westminster, it seems. Journalist Alex Wickham has revealed that Burnham now backs the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) restrictions on single-sex spaces. This u-turn appears to be nothing but a transparent bid for Reform votes, something we could have predicted coming a mile off.

The Canary’s Cameron Baillie added:

Burnham might be a shot better than Starmer, sure. But don’t be fooled into thinking he can be trusted. Why trust a man who’s shape-shifted so often throughout his career? He’ll only shift again.

Labour — reverse course

The years of crushing austerity inflicted on this country have left most of us much poorer than we would have been without it. At the same time, it’s proven to be a bountiful time for the rich, with their wealth growing to obscene levels. As Tax Justice report:

The richest 350 individuals and families in the UK now hold over £784 billion — that’s more wealth than 50% of the UK population (35 million people) and more than the UK spends annually on healthcare, education, defence, policing and housing combined.

The 1.4% growth in the Rich List’s hoarded fortunes means a single person with a net worth of £1bn would be £14 million better off at the end of the year, even after their lavish annual expenses. Despite the Times’ attempt to pitch this as a “stagnation”, the truth is this represents an enormous growth— £14 million is 7x more than the average person will spend in their whole lifetime. The roughly 1% average increase seen in the last 4 years is, more accurately, a less steep increase, relative to the absurd, astronomical growth of the Rich List’s fortunes from 2000 to 2022, which grew around 600%.

Are you more than 600% better off than you were 27 years ago?

We’ve moved well beyond the point where half-measures can make a difference. And if these Labour politicians refuse to acknowledge that, they will be replaced by one party or another.

Featured image via Sky News

By Willem Moore

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Another Reform member has been exposed for having an alleged link to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party. The latest is Barnsley councillor Andy Arnold who was photographed over multiple years with a Swastika tattoo. In response, Arnold’s wife has claimed it was actually a Buddhist symbol of peace:

Swastika tattoo visible in public social media photos of Reform UK councillor Andy Arnold https://t.co/6i2H313usn

— The Star, Sheffield (@SheffieldStar) May 23, 2026

Reform — Symbolism

Putting it mildly, the Star reported:

The swastika is strongly associated with Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler’s regime and the Holocaust

Although it’s true the Swastika has existed for thousands of years, most people in Britain don’t know that. As such, it’s a strange thing for a white Brit to get tattooed on their forearm.

Arnold’s wife defended the tattoo as follows:

The only context I can provide is that, in his late teens, my husband briefly explored Buddhism and had a symbol tattooed on his arm during that period.

He has never been involved with, supported, or held views associated with Nazism or any extremist ideology.

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The problem is he’s in Reform UK; a party which scapegoats migrants like Hitler scapegoated the Jews; a party pursuing mass-deportation policies reminiscent of 1930s Germany.

Speaking of deportations and Swastikas, members of the British far-right recently launched ‘Operation Overlord’ which saw activists travelling to France to bother refugees. As the Canary’s Joe Glenton wrote:

A far-right group that started going to Calais to hassle asylum seekers seems to have fallen out. They’ve also managed to get banned by the French government after swastika graffiti started appearing everywhere. Incredible work, boys.

The group named itself Operation Overlord after the D-Day landings. An operation in which US and British troops spent a good few days killing people who shared virtually the exact political views of these chicken nugget-brained man-babies. This lot were – note, WERE – closely tied to Operation Raise the Colours. Yes, the flags-on-lamp-posts people. The Overlord group started up in 2024. Their modus operandi was to strut around French beaches making macho content.

Misunderstandings

Mrs Arnold continued:

The tattoo was later covered because the symbol was frequently misunderstood and people incorrectly associated it with something entirely different from its original religious context.

Unfortunately, the meaning was often misinterpreted without understanding the background behind it.

Oh wow, who could have seen that coming?

While it’s not impossible to believe that a boneheaded teenager with an interest in tattoos and Eastern spirituality might get a Swastika tattoo, the problem is Arnold had his until at least 2024. He’s no spring chicken, either, so he put up with several decades of ‘misunderstandings’ before making the change.

This is the tattoo in question by the way (see his left arm):

Given that Arnold is in fact himself a tattoo artist, it’s a problem he could easily have rid himself of if he wanted to.

Reform’s hippy to Hitler pipeline

If Arnold is telling the truth, he wouldn’t be the first white Brit to dabble with the Eastern swastika. He also wouldn’t be the most famous, with that award going to Kula Shaker frontman Crispian Mills. As Far Out magazine reported:

The influence of Indian culture and raga rock was pertinent in all that Kula Shaker did, but this wound up landing Mills in some very hot water in 1997 when he claimed in interviews that the swastika was a “brilliant image” with respect to its traditional Indian origins. For those unaware, the swastika was originally a symbol used in the Hindu religion to denote wellbeing and prosperity before it was reappropriated by the Nazis. However, for obvious reasons, when Mills said this, the reaction wasn’t exactly receptive.

Prompting a deluge from the British press, Mills and the rest of the band were exiled to the land of what we would now consider ‘cancel culture’, with The Independent in particular running an especially bruising line that said the frontman “had dabbled with Nazism”.

At a first glance, Arnold’s tattoo does look more like the Buddhist version than the Nazi one, but as Reform Party UK Exposed highlighted:

Educate yourself. pic.twitter.com/aYHv8mDKnI

— Reform Party UK Exposed (@reformexposed) May 22, 2026

The thing is, it actually wouldn’t be that surprising if Arnold went on a journey from hippy to fascist. This might be surprising to hear if you’ve never met or thought about hippies, but some of these people are inherently vulnerable to far-right propaganda.

As Ossiana Tepfenhart wrote on Medium:

In order to radicalize someone, you need to hook them in and appeal to them. This tends to happen with people who have a lot of the traits found in crunchy/spiritual/rave groups, including:

• You feel locked out or unheard by mainstream society. This is basically spirituality groups and rave groups in a nutshell. Radicalization can only happen when you don’t feel accepted by the people around you.
• You don’t trust society or conventional beliefs. Crunchy people, for example, are very skeptical of processed foods and are more likely to lean on alternative medicine. This flies in the face of traditional wisdom which tells you to trust in science rather than “woo woo” stuff.
• You are jaded with the shitty behavior you see in others. A lot of people distrust doctors because they were treated badly by them. A lot of people also have severe trauma related to traditional religious organizations that they haven’t unpacked.
• You just want an answer to make the world make sense. Many people in hippie-esque circles feel lost about their sense of the world. Radicalization is rough because it literally seeks out people who want an answer and a way to live and pretends to give them what they need.

So yeah. Radicalization towards the right wing happens when you take disaffected people, often with trauma, and claim to give them an easy-to-use solution to all their problems. Little do they know they’re being sold a bad bag.

Traditionalism

Tepfenhart is far from the only one observing this pipeline. Getting away from the Eastern connection, Catherine Tebaldi of the Global Network on Extremism & Technology wrote:

Digital traditionalist women carefully cultivate winsome images on Instagram: harvesting fields of beets with the folds of muslin dresses and aprons spilling around bare feet, canning and pickling them in vegetable jars surrounded by laughing blonde children. In the winter, the family stamps sugar cookies with intricate runic patterns, or braid evergreen branches and holly to celebrate the festival of Yule. The accompanying text and videos celebrate health and wellness, but this goes beyond simply bodily health to what they call “reviving folk vitality”: celebrating northern European tradition, heroic men and women at home with a large white family; herbalism and natural health; paganism and occult mythology, and the belief in a white racial spirituality.

This ideology has can be traced through history to the ‘fascist ecology’ of the Third Reich; the Nazi Party had a ‘green wing’ preoccupied with ecology, eugenics and esoteric racial essences. To describe the group with deep roots in the far-right and in contemporary practices of health and nature I use the term Granola Nazis. Their style is taken up by a broader anti-modern movement of digital traditionalism.

And now we’ve come full circle. The Nazis also chose the Swastika for its ancient history, and while an interest in traditionalism and history isn’t itself an indicator that a person is far right, it’s certainly a contributing factor when presenting in someone with a tendency towards selfishness.

So yeah, the truth is we can’t definitively say that Arnold’s tattoo is a Nazi symbol. At the same time, if Arnold was a councillor in 1930s Germany, we can guess which party he would have gravitated towards.

Featured image via Getty Images (Finnbarr Webster)

By Willem Moore

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Reform UK unveiled an attention-grabbing new policy proposal on Sunday 24 May:

Reform will scrap income tax on overtime.

It's time to make work pay. pic.twitter.com/Q0luvT9WPM

— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) May 24, 2026

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The problem for Reform is that the policy has also grabbed the attention of people who think things through.

Reform — “Avoidance opportunities”

Sam Dumitriu of the Britain Remade thinktank had 5 points on the new policy:

1. This appears to be an import of Trump’s extremely dumb (but clearly popular) ‘no tax on tips’ policy.

2. If your aim is to boost growth and incentivise work, this isn’t a good use of £5bn. It’s a luxury policy in all honesty: can they honestly say £5bn couldn’t go further elsewhere (either in tax cuts, infrastructure investment, or just improving public services)?

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3. This will likely create lots of avoidance opportunities.

4. There will also be genuine cases of unfairness. What about workers with second jobs?

5. This is likely to create a massive cliff-edge problem where taking an extra hour of overtime or getting a raise leaves someone thousands of pounds worse off.

To be clear, Britain Remade isn’t a left-wing think tank; it’s actually linked to the Tories. You could respond by saying ‘well of course they’d object to a Reform policy‘, but arguably the Tories would be more likely to steal it it it made sense (and it wouldn’t be the first time they’d poached an idea from Farage).

One banker offered a perspective on how businesses could exploit these “avoidance opportunities”:

If someone on £75k/year with a 41 hour week with 1 hour guaranteed overtime restructured the contract to earn minimum wage (age 21+ at £12.21/hour) for the first 40 hours which is £25,396.80 and the remaining £49,603.20 is overtime this would reduce their tax by about £17,000! https://t.co/XWUInbOlwt

— David Hollidge (@DavidHollidge) May 23, 2026

This tax specialist did the same:

I've only been thinking about this for about 10 minutes, but take someone earning, say, £50k in a 40 hour week doing an hour's overtime (extra £1,250 a year). Their hourly rate is currently £24/hr.

They could agree to change their contract so that:

– The first 40 hours a… https://t.co/jwWlj2vR6X

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— Stuart (@StuartMaggs) May 23, 2026

Steve Loftus is another figure on the centre right who took issue with Reform’s policy, noting:

France did this in 2007 in almost exactly the same way.

It cost €4.5b a year in lost revenue for no gain. No more hours were worked, people just shifted their work to game the system.

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It did nothing but give people more take home pay and it ended in 2012.

But if you want to give people more take home pay there are a dozen easier way to do it.

Gimmicks

Finally getting to someone who isn’t a banker or a tax wonk, trade unionist commenter Josh noted:

The UK working time directive means you can't be forced to work more than an average of 48 hours a week.

Reform's attempts to normalise 40+ hour working weeks are a clear attempt to set an agenda of rolling back on employment rights workers have fought for over the past century https://t.co/hU9Wp88TgF

— Josh (@jhendy_10) May 23, 2026

The Trades Union Congress’s general secretary Paul Nowak, meanwhile, said the following:

Nigel Farage’s overtime tax proposal is just a cynical gimmick.

Working people don’t need politicians encouraging a culture of ever-longer hours. They need decent pay rises, secure jobs and strong rights at work.

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If Mr Farage was truly serious about reducing the tax burden on workers, he’d support fairer taxes on wealth and clamping down on tax avoiders in his own ranks like Richard Tice. But that might upset his corporate donors.

He added:

Reform want to strip away protections that keep workers safe and healthy – including limits on excessive hours and rights to paid holidays and rest breaks.

And Farage’s claim to stand up for working people is frankly laughable. He wants to tear up the Employment Rights Act and scrap protections like day one sick pay, bans on exploitative zero-hours contracts and measures to stop fire-and-rehire abuses.

This is not a plan to make work pay. It’s a charter for weaker rights, longer hours and exhaustion at work.

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And what about the millions of workers – mainly women – who work part time? Does Nigel Farage think their jobs matter less?

Popularity contest

While Reform is proposing ill-thought-out tinkering, the Green Party has been proposing more serious solutions. As the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey wrote:

the Greens have proposed to introduce a 10:1 pay ratio. This would mean the highest-paid person in a company couldn’t earn more than ten times what the lowest-earning employees do.

In practice, minimum-wage employees would get a pay rise, but crucially, we would also see the end to sky-high executive salaries and ridiculous bonuses.

The overtime tax policy has at least proven to be popular with the Sun’s Kate Ferguson:

Breaking news – a politician actually proposes to cut tax.

Reform UK will stop taking workers for mugs and ban tax on overtime.

Robert Jenrick writes for us on Reform UK's new policy…https://t.co/jbX2LUZGBw

— Kate Ferguson (@kateferguson4) May 23, 2026

So it’s a question of who you trust; the nation’s least trustworthy newspaper or everyone else.

Featured image via Getty Images (Ryan Jenkinson)

By Willem Moore

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Laura Loomer is one of the best-known, most fanatical US Israel mouthpieces. She is also one of the closest to the Trump regime and has advocated feeding immigrants to alligators. She is also one of the most odious. And in response to the San Diego mosque shooting, she spewed out naked racism that would see her on trial had she — unthinkably — been a Muslim saying a quarter of the same about a synagogue attack.

Two fascist gunmen murdered three Muslims in the attack. Many US ‘mainstream’ media outlets somehow managed to make it about a nearby synagogue that was not attacked. But Loomer immediately wanted to doubt that the attack happened at all. Not just that — she claimed that those who attend it are evil would-be murderers and wanted the government’s deportation thugs set on the victims:

Laura Loomer — safety through deportation

Loomer soon seemed to realise that denying the reality of the shooting was untenable even for her. But she dialled the hate up even further. This time, to ‘keep Muslims safe’, she wanted every US Muslim deported. Imagine if some antisemitic race thug said that about US Jews:

In a country where the white majority are literally there through invasion and displacement of the native inhabitants — that applies to Loomer’s favourite place too — it’s Muslims who are the invaders, apparently. And now, according to Laura Loomer, the shooting was a ‘false flag’ designed to get sympathy. Every accusation is a confession:

Not a one-off

This is anything but a one-off for Loomer. She has called for the ’rounding up’ of Muslims — again, a call that would see her immediately arrested if said about Jewish people:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Thorns of a Rose (@thornsof.a.rose)

And for a “war with Islam”:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rise Above Justice Movement (@riseabovejusticemovement)

And her hatred and gaslighting of Muslims dates back years:

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Nor is Loomer unusual among the pro-Israel right — including in the US Congress and Senate:

Zionism is racism. The more fanatical an adherent is, the more easily they slip into evil.

Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images

By Skwawkbox

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The post ‘They’re <em>pretending</em> not to know what a woman is’ appeared first on spiked.

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It’s been widely reported that Andy Burnham wants to ‘renationalise’ vital public industries and utilities. This sounds good, because people hate privatisation, and they want the UK to once more own its own assets. The problem, of course, is that Burnham isn’t planning to renationalise anything, as he keeps admitting:

Andy Burnham says we could have a "localised public control option" for Thames Water

What does that mean? Who is in charge? Where do the profits go?

We need nothing less than permanent PUBLIC OWNERSHIP of Thames Water with households, workers and anti sewage groups on the board pic.twitter.com/0s1OT1mMzz

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— Cat Hobbs (@CatHobbs) May 23, 2026

Half measures

We observed early on that political commentators and outlets like the Guardian were reporting on Burnham’s plans to ‘renationalise’ utilities. Take the following clip, for example:

Andy Burnham: “I don’t blame anyone who left our party. I don’t blame anyone who voted for other parties”.

“We need to renationalise water, energy and housing.” pic.twitter.com/lS5TXENvXG

— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) May 16, 2026

Despite it being presented as a quote, Burnham did not talk about ‘renationalising’ anything in the above; instead he talked about putting utilities under “stronger public control”. Now, Burnham is setting the record straight, with the Times reporting:

He has also spoken of stronger public control over utility companies. “I use that phrase advisedly. People then shorthand it as nationalisation; it’s not the same thing,” he said, pointing to Greater Manchester’s bus services, which are run by private operators.

It’s good that Burnham is using terms “advisedly”, we suppose, but we’d advise he investigates what the public actually wants. As YouGov polling has shown:

Dead-eyed Labour centrists will ask: ‘as long as these services are efficient, what does it matter?‘

It matters because these services will not remain efficient if private operators remain in the mix. If we allow them to retain a stake, they will use their foothold to push for more and more power until eventually they own the lot. We’re seeing this happening in the NHS right now. And we cannot let the fox in the henhouse simply because Andy Burnham is ‘mad for it’.

You do, though

Burnham also told the Times:

Thames Water, for instance, you don’t just say ‘nationalise water’. You could have a localised public control option there.

Sorry, Andy, but we are just saying ‘nationalise water‘, and so is the majority of the public.

We ‘ve reported on scandal, after scandal, after scandal relating to these private water companies; why would we want these proven crooks to retain any degree of control over our most vital resource?

As Hannah Sharland reported for the Canary on 19 May:

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.

If working with private water companies worked, we wouldn’t have to spare them from paying fines; they would simply be able to profit from the service without incurring them.

Burnham — more of the same

Of course, it’s easy to understand why crooked Labour politicians would want private money in the mix. These people are in the same social circles as the fat cats who profit from privatisation, and ‘everyman’ Burnham is literally a graduate of Cambridge University.

We will say this for Burnham, though; he is at least making it clear what he is and isn’t offering. Hopefully people listen to him now so they’re not surprised in 12 months when Labour’s polling is back in the sewer along with Britain’s poorly treated water.

Featured image via Getty Images (Leon Neal) 

By Willem Moore

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As part of dodgy attempts to affect media coverage he was unhappy with, Fine Gael minister for communications Patrick O’Donovan held a call with Ireland’s media regulator “outside normal communication channels“. He then failed to disclose that the conversation took place.

The Ditch reports that on Saturday April 11 O’Donovan spoke to Coimisiún na Meán’s (The Media Commission or CnaM) Rónán Ó Domhnaill to:

…express concern regarding media coverage of the fuel protests and to ask whether there was a mechanism for the minister within the legislation to ask for an examination of the broadcast coverage of the protests.

The protests in early April were led by hauliers and farmers opposed to the rising cost of fuel. The recent spike in prices has been caused by the US-‘Israeli’-led illegal war on Iran, and the latter’s perfectly reasonable response of closing the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil corridor. Ireland’s government carries a share of the blame in this, due to its role in weapons shipments for the aggressors, and its failure to criticise the mass murder taking place.

Ireland — Minister likely broke EU law on press interference

Rather than accept this failure, O’Donovan — likely breaching EU rules on ministers pressuring media – sought to shift the narrative in press coverage. The Ditch note that O’Donovan complained about:

…“a lack of balance” in an RTÉ radio broadcast that included three opposition spokespeople and one government representative and “Prime Time interviewing protestor James Geoghegan in a gentle way”.

An internal note from CnaM reported that O’Donovan said:

…the media only giving the side of the protestors in their news reports, and not the victims of the blockades.

O’Donovan also bemoaned:

…a journalist broadcasting from a protest from inside an unauthorised portacabin belonging to protestors.

The latter seems an entirely reasonable thing for a journalist to do as a means of conveying the reality of a protest environment. The public clearly thought RTÉ’s coverage was adequate, with the broadcaster only receiving nine complaints following the protests’ main period.

O’Donovan went on to say on Monday April 13 that he was intending to speak to Coimisiún na Meán about his dissatisfaction on fuel protest reporting. He failed to declare that he’d already been jockeying behind the scenes via that informal phone call to find a way of pressuring media organisations.

Those public comments had already generated furore, with National Union of Journalists assistant general secretary Séamus Dooley describing them as “sinister and deeply disturbing.” Dooley said:

The Media Minister is not a bystander but is in a position to influence the allocation of funds, the approval of commercial radio licenses and overall policy on broadcasting.

It is not his role to dictate to the independent regulator or to apply pressure on media organisations. RTÉ is a public service broadcaster not a State broadcaster and is independently regulated in the interests of democracy. You cannot have a ‘slightly independent’ public service broadcaster.

O’Donovan’s ‘Trumpian’ attacks on the media

Dooley continued:

There’s no place for Trumpian ad hominem attacks on journalists and the Minister’s comments have caused genuine concern.

Upon hearing of O’Donovan’s phone call, Dooley told The Ditch that the minister “crossed a line by phoning the commissioner”. He also said:

…individually and collectively commissioners should not be subject to political pressure of any type.

O’Donovan dodgy campaign wasn’t without success, however, as The Ditch report that he managed to extract “two concessions from the regulator“. The minutes from the department of culture, communications and sport, stemming from a subsequent Tuesday April 14 meeting with CnaM, reveal that the commission will:

…”examine the issue of broadcasters producing an anonymised schedule of complaints on an annual basis” and “will provide a briefing to the minister on their work on protecting democracy”

The minutes also failed to mention the minister’s Saturday phone call with commissioner Ó Domhnaill.

EU regulations stipulate that:

Member States shall respect the effective editorial freedom and independence of media service providers in the exercise of their professional activities. Member States, including their national regulatory authorities and bodies, shall not interfere in or try to influence the editorial policies and editorial decisions of media service providers.

Given ministers are high-profile figures whose words frequently receive wide circulation, any public statement commenting on press coverage would amount to a move to “interfere in” or “influence” media. Phoning up commissioners on a Saturday outside formal channels is a further step beyond that, and neglecting to report said phone call merely compounds the misconduct.

If the minister wants nice things said about him, maybe he should focus on ensuring his government change policy away from warmongering and impoverishing its own citizens, rather than complaining when the press reports on the consequences of those disastrous decisions.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

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