If Britain really has “run out of money” – as both Labour and the Conservatives keep childishly claiming – why are neither party actually proposing any ways to raise more money?
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It seems a little strange, doesn’t it!
I mean, both are essentially saying “let’s continue doing exactly the same things that got us into this mess in the first place and hope everything somehow gets better on its own“!
It’s literally the definition of insanity.
However, there’s one surefire way of raising a bit more money that neither politicians or the media talking about: increasing taxes.
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But we’re not talking about raising taxes on ordinary people (in fact, I think we should lower taxes on ordinary people considerably).
No. We’re talking about something the billionaire-controlled media, and the entire political class, fiercely avoids mentioning: raising taxes on the very richest (and making damn sure they can’t just avoid them)!
However, it’s not just the media and politicans who consistently reject the idea. Many ordinary people – even though they’re definitely not rich themselves – constantly argue against raising taxes on the rich as well.
“If we raise taxes on the rich, they’ll simply just leave the country or they’ll just find some way to avoid paying it – and anyway, rich people work hard and create jobs, so they deserve low taxes anyway” they claim.
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However, every single one of these arguments is complete and utter horse shit, concocted by some Billionaire-backed thinktank, Trust Fund baby “journalist”, or private-schooled posho politician, purely so them and their wealthy chums can simply continue to hoard increasingly massive stacks of cash and assets without paying a penny more in tax.
And yet, for the last half decade, ordinary people have been constantly falling for these completely bogus arguments – totally against their own interests.
So here’s how the hell it happened – and here’s how we can actually start to improve our country again.
50 Years of Tax Cuts for The Rich and Tax Rises for The Poor
First, a little bit of history.
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Many people aren’t aware of it, but for the last 50 years or so, successive governments have constantly lowered taxes purely for the very richest people in our society.
And, whilst doing so, numerous progressive wealth taxes have also been scrapped and replaced by regressive taxes which hit ordinary people far harder than those at the top.
And then there are the mountains of tax loopholes that have been intentionally baked into the system, which only the very richest with their fancy pants accountants and high price lawyers can afford to take advantage of.
And, if you don’t believe me, here are the facts:
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In 1972, the Purchase Tax – a progressive tax on luxury goods which stood at 33% – was abolished. It was replaced by VAT, a regressive tax levied on almost all goods which hits the poorest the hardest. VAT has gradually been raised from 10% on its introduction, to 20% presently.
In 1975, Estate Duty was abolished. It taxed the transfer of estates worth over £5.5m (adjusted for inflation) at 85%. Thatcher replaced Estate Duty with Inheritance Tax, which currently taxes estates worth over £325,000 at a flat rate of 40%. However, there are numerous huge loopholes built into the tax; loopholes which Margaret Thatcher’s children used to avoid paying around £1m in Inheritance Tax on the estate she left to them because the property was registered in an offshore trust. In addition, research shows that the super-rich pay an average rate of just 10% in Inheritance Tax – saving them countless billions each year – whilst ordinary families inheriting average sized estates pay far more.
In 1979, the top rate of income tax was 83%. By 1988, Margeret Thatcher had more than halved it to 40%. It currently stands at 45%
In 1979, Corporation Tax was 52%. It has been systematically reduced over the last 40 years, and now stands at just 25%
In 1984, Thatcher abolished the Surtax – an extra tax levied at 15% for unearned income such as interest from investments, dividends from shareholdings, or rent from investment properties
In 1990, Thatcher introduced the widely-hated Poll Tax – a regressive flat rate charge on every adult in the country regardless of income. This was replaced by Council Tax in 1993 – a system which is almost as regressive as the Poll Tax, and which still hits lower earners far harder than the rich
(This is by no means a definitive list – and if you have any more examples, please leave them in the comments!)
These tax changes were purposefully designed to shift a large proportion of the tax burden from the very richest onto the rest of us instead – and it worked.
Indeed, from the late 1970s until the present day, the richest 10% of Brits have steadily increased their share of the UK’s wealth, whilst the wealth of the bottom 50% has fallen.
After WWII, high taxes specifically on the super-rich helped to fund the creation of the the NHS, the Welfare State and other progressive public policies, helping to dramatically improve ordinary people’s incomes, reduce inequality, and significantly improve the state of the country (which is why this period is widely know as the ‘post-war boom’).
However, as demonstrated by the graph below, since the late 1970s and the introduction of so-called Trickle Down Economics (or Neoliberalism), the rich have slowly been clawing this lost wealth back, and income equality has become just as bad as it was prior to WWII again.
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Tax (The Rich) Avoidance
So, as I’m sure you’ll now agree, the facts are crystal clear: cutting taxes for the rich only benefits the rich.
Yet, despite the state of the UK declining horrendously over the last decade or so, barely anybody is talking about reversing the trend which is quite clearly causing it – especially not the mainstream media.
So why is nobody talking about taxing the rich again?
Well it’s quite simple. The vast majority of our political institutions – including the mainstream media and both main political parties – have been captured by the super-rich and their outriders.
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These institutions are simply used as vehicles to further their own interests – and these interests quite obviously include, among other things, keeping their own taxes as low as possible!
Who controls the UK media?
Who controls the UK’s main political parties?
The Conservative Party has been the political vehicle of the rich and powerful since it was formed – as I have previously written about extensively here.
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Its donors include a who’s who of billionaires, oligarchs, hedge fund managers, property developers and other extremely wealthy individuals and organisations.
It’s obviously not a coincedence that Tory policies just happene to benefit these people, and that they also often benefit from crony contracts and lifetime peerages – just a few of the numerous examples of legalised corruption that plague our political system.
However, when it comes to the Labour Party – which was created as the political vehicle of the working class, and whose funding comes from a mixture of Trade Unions and private donors – things are a little more complicated.
As you’ve probably heard before, the Labour Party has always been a so-called “broad church” o left-wingers. However, since the 1990s, the party has become increasingly dominated by a right-wing faction funded by vested interests and closely aligned with the interests of the Establishment.
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When a Labour leader is elected who doesn’t adequately serve the interests of the Estalishment, they are systematically attacked both internally by careerist MPs who align with the rich and powerful, and externally by the billionaire-controlled media and their outriders – something we saw with both Ed Miliband from 2010-15 and, to a far greater extent, Jeremy Corbyn from 2015-19.
And now, the current Labour leader Keir Starmer is following this exact playbook: steadfastly refusing to do literally anything which could in any way contradict the interests of the Establishment, and completely reversing on his previous redistributive pledges in an attempt to reassure the rich and powerful that he is not a threat.
Class Interest
With control of virtually the entire media and the two main political parties, the Establishment has untold power to dominate the political narrative and shape public talking points to suit themselves – allowing fierce debate, but only within a tight ‘acceptable’ political spectrum.
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Any talk of taxing the rich, reversing privatisation, or tackling inequality, is highly frowned upon – and anyone with any kind of platform who attempts to bring up these subjects is immediately and unrelentingly attacked with the full force of the political and media Establishment.
This hyper-domination of the narrative, added to the demonisation of anyone who strays from it, trickles down into the public conciousness and leads to a rote-learning of arguments and the creation of a false reality where it seems as if there is simply is no alternative.
It’s essentially a case of “So many popular people are saying the same thing that it simply must be true.”
This learned helplessness is routinely displayed by people on social media who clearly aren’t rich, but who routinely mock the idea that taxing the rich could actually work – even though it clearly does!
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Hare are some of the more commonly-used arguments, and exactly why they’re complete rubbish:
Argument 1: “If we increased taxes on the rich they’d just find some way of avoiding it anyway!”
Solution 1: Britain controls a huge proportion of the world’s tax havens – and we’re literally the world’s biggest enabler of global tax abuse. We have the power to shut these Tax Havens down any time we want. According to research, Tax Havens based in UK Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories help the rich avoid a staggering £152 billion in tax every single year – with Jersey and Guernsey adding a further £6.9bn to this total!
Also, regarding our domestic tax laws, we could also just close all the tax loopholes which are intentionally written into our current laws, or just write new laws instead!
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Argument 2: “But if we closed all the loopholes, the rich would just move to another country with lower taxes!”
Solution 2: Most rich people who live in the UK have their wealth tied up in fixed assets like land, properties and businesses that they can’t take with them! Even if we raised taxes, they’d still be able to make profits here – but they’d just make slightly less profit. The very worst that could happen is they sell all their fixed assets, uproot their family, and start again somewhere else – but if they did this they’d just leave a gap in the market for someone else to fill and get rich from anyway!
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Argument 3: “Taxes are already at their highest levels since WWII!”
Solution 3: Yes, they are. However, ordinary people are now contributing a far higher proportion of the tax burden than they used to due of 40 years worth of tax cuts for the super rich, loopholes that have been built into the system to allow them to avoid tax, and regressive stealth taxes which have been implemented on the rest of us.
In addition, in comparison to other similar countries, the UK actually has a relatively low tax burden – lower than both the EU and G7 average, as shown in the graphs below – meaning there is significant scope to increase taxes on the wealthy.
Argument 4: If we raise taxes on the rich, I might be affected!
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Solution 4: But you’re not rich are you?
Argument 4a: No, of course not. But I read the news and they keep warning me that I might be affected. Also, I might actually get rich someday and I wouldn’t want to pay higher taxes even though I’d have more than enough to live comfortably anyway.
Solution 4a: Stop reading the billionaire-owned media, for fuck sake.
How should we tax the rich?
There’s been huge amounts of research conducted into wealth taxes by various charities and progressive think tanks over the past decade or so, looking at as how much money they could raise and the potential positive and negatives effects, but almost all of the research has – surprise surprise – been almost ignored by the mainstream media and polticians.
Whilst properly cracking down on tax avoidance and evasion, and closing existing loopholes within legislation, could raise around £30bn a year.
And just a simple policy such as raising Capital Gains Tax – a tax on unearned income from the sale of assets or investment profits which the rich often benefit from – to the same level as income tax, could raise an extra £12.5bn a year.
Then there’s the idea of equalising the tax system so that people who do absolutely nothing for their income are taxed at the same rate as people who actially work for a living. Because, believe it or not, our tax system currently rewards landowners and landlords far better than nurses and teachers.
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For instance, we could implement a Land Value Tax – a radical left-wing policy championed by noneother than the world-famous Socialist, err… Winston Churchill.
“Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains – and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived.” argued the then Conservative MP in the House of Commons in a rousing speech in favour of a Land Value Tax in 1909.
The fact is that Britain is not broke at all. There’s more than enough wealth to go around. It’s just that tax system has been rigged by the rich in favour of themselves, meaning that wealth is increasingly being siphoned off and stashed away in Tax Havens, laundered through the purchase of economically unproductive assets that gain value over time, or pumped into property in order to generate passive income.
There are countless opportunities to raise money from additional taxes on those who can actually afford to pay them – and absolutely none of the arguments spouted by the billionaire-controlled media against increasing taxes on them and their wealthy chums have any merit whatsoever.
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But, for as long as ordinary people continue to be brainwashed against their own interests, the rich and powerful will simply continue to become richer and richer – all at our expense.
A cabinet minister has ruled out giving MPs a vote on UK military action in Iran.
Steve Reed said it would be “unprecedented” for the Commons to be given a say on operations “defending British people” in the area.
Opposition parties, and some Labour MPs, have demanded a vote in parliament after Keir Starmer gave the US the green light to use British bases for bombing raids to re-open the Strait of Hormuz.
On the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Reed was asked whether there would be a Commons vote.
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He said: “It would be unprecedented to call a vote in parliament on defending British people and British assets. That is why we have security apparatus in place.
“The UK did not take part in the initial offensive action because we didn’t see there was a legal basis for the UK to participate.
“There is no precedent for a vote in parliament for defending British people.”
When it was pointed out to the minister that Keir Starmer had previously said MPs should be given a vote on any UK military action, he replied: “I don’t think at any point the prime minister has believed that there should be a vote on defending British people who are under attack from a hostile state.”
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Green Party leader Zack Polanski accused Reed of “gaslighting the nation”.
He told HuffPost UK: “It’s very clearly not defensive action and their semantics this morning will never hide that a Labour government have learnt no lessons about getting involved in illegal Middle East wars that are truly deadly.
“The prime minister promised that military action would be subject to a binding vote in parliament and I’m sure he wouldn’t want to be telling lies to the whole country on such a crucial issue.
Meanwhile, Reed also rejected Israeli claims that Iranian missiles could reach London after Tehran unsuccessfully tried to hit Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
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He said: “There is no specific assessment that the Iranians are targeting the UK or even could, if they wanted to.
“We have the finest military in the world. We are perfectly capable of protecting this country.”
When Brandon Herrera ran for Congress in 2024, the Republican Jewish Coalition called him “a goose-stepping extremist” and spent big to take him down. Two years later, he’s the presumptive GOP nominee — and his former foes are staying home as the GOP establishment moves to embrace him.
But now, a scandal forced Gonzales to drop out of the runoff, and Herrera is the GOP nominee in the sprawling, GOP-leaning Texas border district, which President Donald Trump carried by a 17-point margin in 2024.
AIPAC, which backs both Democratic and Republican pro-Israel candidates and usually focuses its efforts in primaries, has not endorsed in the race. AIPAC spokesperson Deryn Sousa said in a statement only that the group would “continue to assess where candidates across the country stand on issues that affect the U.S.-Israel partnership.”
And the RJC, which only supports Republican candidates, won’t get involved. “The RJC has a longstanding policy of speaking out against those who traffic in Nazi ideology, and this is another case,” said RJC political director and spokesperson Sam Markstein. “The RJC opposed Mr. Herrera in 2024, and he will not get our support now.”
But Markstein made clear it was likely they would sit the race out rather than oppose him in the general election. “We’ve never supported a Democrat, so that should tell you everything you need to know,” he said.
In the weeks since Herrera finished as the top vote-getter in Texas’ March 4 primary and Gonzales dropped out, the GOP establishment has largely embraced Herrera.
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Last week, as lawmakers and donors socialized during a glitzy Mar-a-Lago fundraiser for the House Freedom Caucus, which backed him in the primary, Herrera made a triumphant appearance, according to an attendee granted anonymity to detail a private event and another attendee’s post on social media. Trump announced his endorsement on social media the same night.
“Brandon is strongly supported by many Highly Respected MAGA Warriors in Texas, and Republicans in the US House,” Trump wrote. “HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
Speaker Mike Johnson and House GOP leadership followed a week later, calling him an “America First grassroots leader” in a joint statement Thursday.
Trump’s endorsement brings “a little bit of comfort” to pro-Israel GOP donors who view Trump as a loyal ally, said Gabriel Groisman, a Florida-based GOP donor active in pro-Israel circles. “We trust the president and his team in their vetting of congressional candidates,” Groisman said. “But it doesn’t mean we don’t ask questions and we don’t dig further.”And Groisman said that the “ugly truth about politics” is Jewish Republican donors are now faced with the option of him or a Democrat, rather than another Republican. “So the question is whether it’s better to have him in [office], or not. That’s a very, very difficult question to answer.”
He has also been critical of U.S. policy toward Israel, arguing American taxpayers should not have to pay for military aid to Israel. We shouldn’t be spending a cent of taxpayer dollars on anything that is not either an investment or right here in the United States,” he said in a speech, Israel National News reported. “I don’t hate my neighbor just because I don’t want to pay his power bill. If they want to buy rockets from us, let’s sell to them.”
Republicans’ embrace of Herrera shows how seriously the GOP values maintaining control of the House this cycle, even as some Republicans warn of growing antisemitism within their own ranks.
“The accusations against Brandon were bizarre and false, manufactured by a desperate political opponent who misleadingly cut and pasted together disparate video clips,” Herrera campaign manager Kimmie Gonzalez said in a statement.
Groisman, the Florida-based donor, said Herrera’s allies are working to assuage concerns about his past statements through outreach to Jewish and pro-Israel donors in Texas and beyond.
“They’re trying to send them what he has actually said, versus what people say he said, which they seem to claim that there’s a big delta there,” Groisman said. “The concern is, are we, as a Republican Party, allowing in another potential Thomas Massie-type figure? Nobody knows the answer to that question.” Massie, a Republican member of the House from Kentucky, has been an outspoken critic of Trump and Israel.
Herrera’s campaign confirmed he is looking for dialogue with those same groups that have attacked him for years — including the RJC.
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Katie Padilla Stout, the Democratic nominee in the district, has said that Herrera has “consistently been on the wrong side of history,” citing content from his YouTube videos that mocked veterans and another video in which he tested Nazi weaponry. Padilla Stout has started to make allegations of antisemitism core to her attacks on her Republican opponent, as outside Democratic groups — like the House Majority PAC — use his past videos as attacks.
“Given his documented history of apparent anti-semitism, it’s no surprise our campaign has received an outpouring of support from people from all across the district and from both sides of the aisle, including support from the Jewish community,” Padilla Stout’s campaign manager, Yolitzma Aguirre, said in a statement.
Some of the Republican officeholders who have warned loudly about growing antisemitism within their party dodged when asked about Herrera.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who denounced podcaster Nick Fuentes as a “goose-stepping Nazi” during a speech last week, has stayed out of the primary, even as he endorsed in other U.S. House races in his state. He said questions about Herrera’s statements or actions should be directed to Herrera himself.
“I haven’t seen the video you’re discussing, and so you’re welcome to ask him those questions,” Cruz said in a brief interview last week.
When asked how he would advise Texas voters to cast their ballot in Herrera’s race, Cruz refused to answer. “Those are the exact same questions a Democrat tracker would ask,” Cruz said before walking away. His office declined to elaborate on his answers.
While Republicans circle the wagons or duck the topic, a Jewish Democratic group that rarely plays in districts like this is thinking about investing in trying to defeat Herrera.
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The Jewish Democratic Council of America is considering getting involved in the heavily Republican district, which would deviate from their norm of engaging only in districts with significant Jewish voter populations.
“If there was ever a chance that a Democrat could win a seat like this, maybe it’s in these midterms,” said JDCA president Hailie Soifer. “So it is something we’re looking at. Certainly it is a priority for us to defeat Trump-endorsed neo-Nazis, like this candidate.”
When I was 14 years old, I wrote my first letter to My Future Husband. Over the course of six years, I wrote more than 100 similar letters, with the intent of one day sharing them with my God-ordained groom.
While perhaps an overachiever in this endeavour, I was certainly not alone. Many young women raised in evangelical Christianity in the 90s and 2000s were heavily influenced by “purity culture”, an evangelical movement promoting sexual abstinence until marriage, modesty and traditional gender roles.
Purity Culture mandated a shift away from casual dating and toward dating with the express intention of a swift and Christ-centred marriage, especially for girls.
I absorbed the high value placed on my role as a future bride, and I tasked myself with fulfilling that role as quickly and expertly as possible.
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When I was a little girl, my grandmother sewed me a child-sized wedding dress. It was white with a train, lace trim, pearls and a veil with a blusher.
With the perfect costume, I spent hours playing Bride in the living room: walking down the aisle, standing by the hearth and kissing an imaginary man the way I secretly spied women kissing men on daytime soaps when my mum didn’t know I was looking.
I would run around in the back yard making up songs about being a woman, being a bride, having a wedding day. I even wore the dress as a Halloween costume a couple of times, much to my little brother’s dismay – what if people mistook him as the groom?!
It’s not out of the ordinary for a kid to engage in imaginary play, whether that’s dressing up as a princess or teaching math to a class of stuffed animals. But, for me, the fantasy was more than playing dress up. As the white polyblend zipped up over my shoulders, I felt I was accepting a mantle of great power.
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In my imagination, being a bride was synonymous with being visible, honoured and adored. If I were a bride, I would have acrylic French tips like my mum, a 1.5-inch curling iron like my big sister and a man who would look at me the way Captain Von Trapp looks at Maria in the gazebo. (This is still the epitome of romance to me.)
On the wide spectrum of childhoods, I had a pretty good one. I had parents who loved me and did their best with the tools available to them. Some parts of my story are pretty standard-issue teen stuff. As a chubby preteen of the aughts, I shopped in the Dillard’s women’s section, mowed my unibrow with a disposable razor twice a week, and struggled against my naturally curly hair with a Wet 2 Straight hair straightener. I can still hear and smell the sizzle of the iron on my damp, Pantene-scented curls.
But other parts of my story, while also common, are less relatable to a lot of people. For instance, for the first 18 years of my life, I was at church no less than three days per week learning that it was my personal responsibility to rescue my non-Christian classmates from the jaws of hell due to an unseen spiritual war that was *literally* being waged all around me.
Still another part of my story is, thankfully, relatable to very few. When I was five years old, my little brother nearly died of liver failure, kickstarting a lifetime of physical, mental and emotional health crises that ricocheted throughout my family, shaped my childhood and still echo in the present.
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I outgrew the little white dress, but not the fantasy of marriage. This fantasy was reinforced by religious teachings that emphasised the importance of marriage, purity and obedience to God and to one’s husband.
I was trying to manage many things that were fully out of my control, within the context of a high-control, patriarchal religion, which left me feeling powerless and afraid and in need of an escape. And in my world, marriage was power. Marriage was purpose. At least for girls, marriage was agency.
As far as fantasies go, this was an achievable one! Most of the adults I knew were married, so why not me? This was surely my calling. This would surely be the end to the chaos, the uncertainty, the victimhood.
So, when I was 14, I wrote my first letter to My Future Husband. It was intended to be read by the lucky man on our wedding night. Predictably, I waxed on about my virginal purity and the “special gift” I’d been saving for him. It is extremely cringeworthy.
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The 14-year-old version of me then continued to write an obsessive amount of letters to her Future Husband over six years. Eventually, I stopped writing the letters, put them in storage, and largely forgot about them.
Until 16 years later when, married but no longer an Evangelical Christian, I started reading them out loud to my actual husband – along with an audience of strangers on the internet.
Photo Courtesy Of Abigail Freshley
Abigail and Zach, married June 2024
At 30 – after a decade of faith deconstruction and much-needed therapy – I am married to a great man. Though the 14-year-old version of myself would be disappointed to know that my actual wedding night with my husband, Zach, was spent counting the cash from our wedding cards, eating some chocolate strawberries and promptly passing out.
No one’s hymen was broken. No purity was “given”. We simply snuggled into the deep, dreamless sleep of two people who loved each other deeply and had already shared a bed together for years.
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When Zach and I found the letters in an old box of my things at my parents’ home, I knew we had to do something with them. After reading one or two on our own, I had the idea to record myself reading one of the letters to Zach for the first time and post it on TikTok.
So far, I’ve read 38 letters online, which has been equal parts excruciating and liberating. The content ranges from salacious gossip about my friends, to opining about my lonely condition as a single 15-year-old, to writing veritable fanfiction about a young couple at my church.
Inspired by a particular scene of Cory and Topanga from one of the later seasons of Boy Meets World, I imagined a young couple at my church to be poverty-stricken but in love – reduced to “eating chicken salad sandwiches on the floor of their living room”.
I finish my story with the declaration: “Fast forward 10 years … that will be us.” This had Zach and I both doubled over and gasping for air.
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I figured the goofy letters might resonate with some folks online, but I had no idea how much. Countless women in the comments of my videos have shared similar stories and experiences. I was shocked to find out just how many people burn their old journals and husband letters.
Burning seems excessive to me, but hey – your letters, your choice to perform a sacramental bonfire, am I right?
Many followers have thanked me for the “bravery” of sharing a bit of my story. While I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t actually think reading the letters online is all that brave. I think the brave person in this story is the teenager who found a way to survive far more than she should have had to handle, and who survived deconstructing a belief system that supported her entire identity and worldview. The bravest thing I’ve ever done is heal.
And every time we share a letter online, a little bit more healing happens. We laugh until our stomachs hurt and we gasp at the melodramatic high school tales I’ve gifted myself from the past. The sweetest irony is that I originally meant these letters to be a way for me to connect with My Future Husband … and they are! Just not remotely in the way I imagined.
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In retrospect, the letters were misguided, but this journey has given me deep compassion and empathy for the young woman who wrote them.
She grew from a teenage girl whose wildest fantasy for her future was having a husband to obey to a woman who knows that being a wife is the least interesting thing about her.
If you grew up anything like me, especially if you’re working to deconstruct your harmful internalised beliefs – I hope this series also reminds you that there’s so much more power, agency and purpose in life than being someone’s wife.
I initially shared my letters to My Future Husband online because I was hoping to make you laugh, but the best outcome I could hope for is to also help you heal.
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Abigail Freshley is a writer, reader, podcast host and social media over-sharer based in Los Angeles. She reflects on her evangelical upbringing, love of books and obsession with her dog, Bonnie, on Instagram and TikTok.
A former senior US government official has said Donald Trump is “in a panic” because the Iran war is not progressing as he had hoped.
Karen von Hippel, who spent nearly six years as a senior adviser in the Department of State’s bureau on counter-terrorism, spoke out after Trump threatened to “obliterate” Iranian power plants if the Strait of Hormuz is not re-opened within 48 hours.
That came barely a day after he said America was preparing to “wind down” its operations in the region.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show, von Hippel cast doubt on whether the US president would actually go through with his latest threat.
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She said: “It’s certainly not the first time we’ve heard him make ultimatums that he doesn’t act on. We’ve heard that throughout this entire term so far.
“I think he’s in a bit of a panic because he thought the war would go better than it has.
“Just as he said ‘we’re winding it down’, they’re sending thousands of Marines over and the Israelis say they’re going to ramp it up over the next few weeks, so it’s hard to know what’s going on.”
Around one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran has been attacking tankers trying to use it since the war began three weeks ago.
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That has led to a spike in the price of oil, triggering a potential global economic crisis as energy costs soar.
In a pist on Truth Social, Trump said: “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”
Communities secretary Steve Reed refused to be drawn on whether the UK government agreed with the president.
He told Sky News: “I think you need to ask President Trump about the things that President Trump is talking about.”
And this week, sexologist and therapist Sofie Roos has shared the concerns menopausal women most often bring to her.
1) Reduced sexual desire
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“Almost all menopausal women I meet during sex therapy bring up their changed lust and/or decreased interest in sex,” Roos told us.
That’s partly because of the hormonal changes that happen during the life stage, including decreases in oestrogen and testosterone.
Then, there are factors like “stress, tiredness, worse sleep quality, and a changed life situation, such as children moving out,” which Roos says are common in menopause.
For some women, that makes “lust less intense, and it can feel difficult to get as turned on as before”. And for others, it can create a general loss of desire.
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2) Vaginal dryness and discomfort
Vaginal dryness is a common symptom of menopause. It can make penetrative sex “uncomfortable and, for some, even painful,” the sexologist shared.
“Decreased oestrogen levels additionally affect vaginal tissue, [which] gets thinner and less elastic, which also can lead to discomfort.”
That can create a fear of sex, which, in turn, decreases drive further, she added.
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3) Changes in body image and self-esteem
Often, menopause changes people’s body composition. Roos said that the people she speaks to about menopause often notice changes to their self-esteem and body image as a result.
This “tends to lead to women feeling less attractive and less sensual, which often negatively affects how we feel in intimate situations, leading to one avoiding sex.”
4) Difficulty getting aroused and orgasming
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Hormone changes in menopause might mean some people take longer to “get going” in the bedroom, as their levels of sensitivity change.
Roos has noticed this among her clients. “Some women find themselves in a situation where it takes longer to get turned on, or that [orgasm] feels far away and hard to get, or that it’s less intense than previously,” she shared.
“These are also all normal effects of hormonal changes and reduced blood flow to the genital area, and while it’s completely natural, it can still feel extremely frustrating, especially if you don’t understand why it’s happening.”
5) Relationship changes
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In Roos’ experience, “menopause often happens at the same time as other big life-changing moments.
“Couples who have been together for a long time often face intimacy issues, identity challenges are common, and on top of this, many families go from living with their kids to just being the parents left in the household – all things that already affect their [relationship to] sex.”
What advice does a sexologist have for women in menopause?
Roos said, “My best advice is to normalise what’s happening, and to openly talk about it with your partner”.
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That way, you can largely skip past “shame, misunderstandings and pressure,” and help you to find new solutions.
“Sex during and after menopause tends to need new kinds of physical and emotional stimulation as well as more time than before, so be open to discovering new things and be responsive to how it feels,” she added.
That could mean exploring different kinds of emotional connection, extending foreplay, and/or giving new toys and positions a go.
“A great lube can be a real game changer when experiencing vaginal dryness, and a good vibrator can be what’s needed to be able to orgasm again,” the sexologist continued.
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Then, there’s the “boring” stuff: investing in your relationship, eating healthily, and reducing stress where possible, while exercise “benefits blood flow to the vaginal area, but also improves mood, energy and sleep, which all boost your desire.
“Many women eventually realise that the menopause is a chance [to develop] a more relaxed, easy-going and interesting relationship with sex,” Roos ended.
“The sooner you start seeing the menopause as a chance to make the intimacy something new, the sooner you’ll be able to work [towards having] the best sex of your life after 50!”
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Spring is here at last – the birds are chirping, the bees are buzzing and the sun is just starting to peek through the clouds, teasing us with what’s to come during the summer.
But during this tricky, barely-warming-up time of year, getting your transitional dressing right can be such a pain. And that goes double for your fitness gear, which needs to see you through not just rain or shine, but sweat too.
Whether you’re prepping for April’s showers or May’s flowers, give these fashionable fitness ’fits a look in.
Rugby league is cherished by many of the ‘left behind’ towns that become central to Britain’s electoral politics. But now community clubs are fighting to stay afloat, reports Adam Payne
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In the run-up to Boris Johnson’s red wall landslide in 2019, rugby league found itself in a peculiar position. Its fans, based mostly in northern England, generally regard the London class, its politicians and media, as having little interest in their sport.
To generations of supporters, it is an ignored and underappreciated game, played a long way from the corridors of Westminster in mileage and in mind, in the towns of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria.
“Rugby union has always been the sport of the establishment, the media, Westminster, big businesses, even the Royal Family. Rugby league, like most things in the North, it had to fight just to be heard,” says Anthony Broxton, author of Hope and Glory: Rugby League in Thatcher’s Britain.
Naturally, then, there was some bemusement when, in autumn 2019, the spotlight of British politics landed on the Cumbrian coast. Onward, the centre-right think tank with close links to the Conservative Party, had declared rugby league towns to be pivotal to that year’s general election. A new voter archetype had been born: Workington Man.
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Will Tanner, one of the brains behind the analysis, who was later chief of staff to Rishi Sunak in No 10, recalls when he and Onward colleague Nick Faith realised that rugby league towns were where key swing voters were hiding.
“When I was listing constituencies we thought would be most important, [Faith] was the one who said nearly all of them are rugby league towns. That was the common denominator, and it was something incredibly resonant and powerful,” Tanner tells The House.
Featherstone Rovers in Yorkshire were not allowed to take part in this season’s competition after falling into administration (Alamy)
Workington Man, set out in Onward’s subsequent report, The Politics of Belonging, was, generally speaking, a retired, non-university-educated male who backed Brexit and valued local pride and security in a fast-changing world. Johnson went on to turn swathes of rugby league towns from Labour red to Conservative blue. Trudy Harrison, the then newly elected Tory MP for Workington’s local rival, Whitehaven, was made his parliamentary private secretary.
Fast forward a few years, and rugby league certainly feels more relevant in Westminster. In Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, the game has a genuine fan in Keir Starmer’s Cabinet; the Wigan MP tells The House it is “very close to my heart”. The same is true of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle.
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The knighting last year of legend Sir Billy Boston sparked tentative hope within the game that rugby league would finally play a bigger part in the national story, and there is optimism that Kevin Sinfield will soon be a knight of the realm after raising millions for Motor Neurone Disease research in memory of his former teammate, Rob Burrow. At Labour Conference in Liverpool in September, MPs and ex-players booted up for a tag war of the roses.
Community and belonging, through those rugby league clubs, was fundamental to how people were thinking
But up in the sport’s traditional heartlands, all is not well.
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At the heart of the Workington Man analysis was voters in rugby league towns feeling that their local areas were crumbling – their high streets, post offices, pubs – leaving them feeling disheartened and disconnected. And perhaps nothing better captures that sense of community identity than the local rugby league club.
“Community and belonging, through those rugby league clubs, were fundamental to how people were thinking,” reflects Tanner.
The liquidation of Halifax in February stunned the town and disturbed the wider game. How could a 153-year-old club, a cherished community asset, simply cease to exist?
“There was so much shock across the community,” says Kate Dearden, Labour MP for Halifax. “To not have rugby in the town was unthinkable for lots of people.”
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Halifax has since returned to the second division under new ownership, albeit with a 12-point deduction, after two weeks of frantic negotiations. It was a “huge, huge relief”, adds Dearden, who says people “travelled miles” to be at the club’s return to the pitch at the start of March.
“It made us sit back and reflect on the importance of rugby league to the town. When you’re so close to losing it – the emotional impact of that on people.”
the town has lost a part of its soul
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Lower league sides like your author’s hometown club, Barrow, have recently been forced to crowdfund to stay afloat due to a lack of home fixtures, while Featherstone has been blocked from entering this season’s competition after falling into administration, leaving the West Yorkshire town without a rugby league team until at least 2027.
“The closure of the club has been really, really bad for morale in the area. Even people who don’t necessarily go to watch the match still think Featherstone Rovers is part of their identity,” says Jon Trickett, Labour MP for Normanton and Hemsworth. “At the moment, the town has lost a part of its soul.”
A local crowdfunding effort, led by the True Blue Revival Group, has raised thousands of pounds in a bid to put the club in a position to enter next season under new ownership. “For some people, [the club] is their whole life,” organisers Gareth Dyas and Jock Higgins recently told the BBC.
Why are heartlands club struggling? David Baines, Labour MP for St Helens North and chair of the Rugby League All-Party Parliamentary Group, says falling crowd numbers, driven in part by cost-of-living pressures, are an important factor.
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“The communities that they represent, smaller towns in the North of England, are struggling areas. They have less money in their pockets to spend,” he explains.
“People have got difficult choices about where their money goes,” he continues. “Twenty years ago, Netflix didn’t exist, Amazon Prime didn’t exist, Apple TV didn’t exist. Plus WiFi, mobile phone costs…. entertainment that isn’t sport, that isn’t leaving the house. Traditional sports, like rugby league, are competing with that.”
Baines also believes the game has struggled in the face of football, which “dominates absolutely everything”, particularly for younger generations.
There is hope that former rugby league player Kevin Sinfield will be knighted after raising millions for MND research (Alamy)
The Labour MP hopes that the government will be persuaded to look again at loans that were granted to rugby league clubs via the Rugby Football League (RFL) to help them survive the pandemic. Of the near £3m owed by Featherstone when it was put into administration, reportedly around £320,000 was Covid loan repayments owed to the Treasury.
“It’s something I’ve heard from clubs and raised with ministers, with Lisa Nandy and Steph Peacock. The APPG has discussed it. It’s something I’d definitely like the government to look at,” he says, floating the idea, for example, of extending the repayment period to ease the financial strain on clubs.
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The RFL’s interim chief executive, Abi Ekoku, says the body was “fully committed to its fiscal responsibility to government” but had suggested to ministers ways “of how best we might balance Covid loan repayment obligations with the need to preserve and upgrade rugby league’s vital community infrastructure”.
He tells The House: “Grassroots rugby league plays a significant anchoring role in many of the UK’s most economically challenged areas. The sport’s social dividend is a very well-known and highly regarded part of Northern England’s social fabric. As such, we are keen to see Covid loan repayments redirected into facilities that help to deliver stability and purpose for the volunteer-led and resource-poor community game”.
Nandy acknowledges that the debt is adding to the problems facing rugby league clubs on “multiple fronts” but says that writing it off altogether is “off the agenda” as government would “have to do it” for other sports. “Forgiving the debt would open the floodgates for other stressed sports,” she says.
In terms of where ministers can help rugby league, Nandy says it must ensure it has “proper systems and governance in place going forwards, that they can act as a cohesive unit and that they can maximise the broadcast revenue that is available”.
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She adds that she has been “working closely with a number of the clubs” and talking regularly to the figures in the game to support a plan to “pool their resources so that they get better broadcasters”. The amount of Sky TV money that goes to rugby league clubs has fallen significantly in recent years.
Speaking to The House in a personal capacity, pundit and former player Brian Carney said there had to be stronger checks and balances on rugby league club owners (Alamy)
Brian Carney, TV pundit and former player, is one of the game’s most vocal proponents of reform. Speaking to The House in a personal capacity, he says the RFL governing body ought to shoulder blame for not stepping in earlier to stop “avoidable” club disasters.
“What I’d like to see is them [the RFL] getting ahead of these problems, because some of them you can see galloping at you, clear as day,” he says, pointing to players being paid salaries that clubs cannot afford.
Salford recently had to be revived under a new name after being wound up late last year with debts of over £700,000. Carney argues there needs to be stronger checks and balances, whether it be a more proactive RFL or greater government involvement, to address problems before they escalate rather than “after the fact”.
He suggests that English rugby league may ultimately require oversight like the new football regulator to protect the long-term sustainability of clubs. Reckless owners must take some blame when clubs fall into crisis, he says, but “they needed to have harnesses put on them as, otherwise, as in any other sport, they’ll just run amok, and true fans will be left to pick up the pieces”.
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I’ve lived through a dozen or so so-called apocalypses facing the game
Despite the challenges, the rugby league community is defiant. “Featherstone will rise again,” declares Trickett.
Baines says: “I’ve lived through a dozen or so so-called apocalypses facing the game. These headlines have been written a lot since 1895 [when rugby league was founded] by people who want to see the game fail… It is facing challenges, but so does every sport in this country.”
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He adds: “Rugby league will still be here in 50 years, 100 years. It will always survive because it’s a great sport to watch, to play, and it’s embedded in communities and loved by hundreds of thousands of people up and down the country.”
Dearden says the speed at which her local community was able to bring Halifax back to life demonstrated the resilience of rugby league fans: “From the get-go, as soon as the news was announced, it was, ‘How do we save our club?’”
Hull KR recently defeated Australia’s Brisbane Broncos to become world champions (Alamy)
There are other reasons for optimism. Crowds are up in the game’s premier division, the Super League, and the early success of York, Bradford and Toulouse’s admission to the league suggests that the contentious franchise model, which determines who plays in the game’s highest bracket, may be starting to bear fruit. Hull, home to the league and world champions, Hull KR, is a fervent rugby league city. KR, Leeds, Warrington and Wigan have played to large crowds in Las Vegas this year and last.
But there is also widespread recognition that if the game is to survive at its lower echelons, then things cannot continue as they are. “There needs to be some deep thinking about how we build community clubs that have a sustainable future. Government should be thinking about this,” says Trickett.
Does the answer lie overseas? There are talks over Australian investment in the English game, which advocates in the northern hemisphere say would bring not just desperately needed cash but expertise that is sorely lacking. While rugby league struggles for national profile in Britain, it is one of the biggest sports in Australia, centred on the National Rugby League (NRL) – brutally demonstrated in Australia’s demolition of England last year.
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Peter V’landys, NRL head, has claimed in rather Trumpian terms that the English game is “heading for a train crash” without new money. “The answers don’t presently lie within,” says Carney. He believes that, ultimately, rugby league heartlands will only be lifted out of their struggles when the sport as a whole is more popular.
“It’s not relevant enough for enough people,” he puts it bluntly. “You can send development officers into schools anywhere in the world to promote a particular sport, but unless those kids are seeing it week in, week out, day in, day out, on TV, on billboards, on magazines, online, [players] modelling clothes or boots, it’s irrelevant. If we can raise the profile of the elite-level competition, all those people working at the grassroots level have an easier job selling the game.”
Baines says the English game would “be daft not to want to explore how we can work together” with Australia, but stresses that it would have to be for “the whole health of the game, from the community game upwards”. According to Broxton, rugby league must be better at telling its story: resistance, survival, “doing things differently”.
“In an age where authenticity is everything, rugby league already has the most powerful asset in sport – a genuine story. All it has to do is own it.”
Given the overwhelming amount of sleep advice out there, it can be hard to define what “good” sleep actually means, never mind how to achieve it.
But a white paper from Vitality and The London School of Economics and Political Science has suggested that two numbers – “7-1” – provide a way to “distil the science into a simple rule of thumb”.
What is the “7-1” rule?
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The approach, which they estimate could add up to four years to your life and boost the economy, is simple: “aim for seven hours of sleep per night, anchored to a consistent bedtime and falling asleep within a one-hour window (half an hour on either side)”.
Though not included in the name, they added, sticking to this rule at least five nights a week is key to seeing the benefits.
Some previous research has found that sleep consistency is a better indicator of mortality risk than sleep duration. This paper said that falling asleep consistently within a one-hour window lowers mortality risk by 31% and in-hospital admissions by 9%.
Meanwhile, seven hours of sleep is linked to better cognitive performance and mental health among older and middle-aged adults.
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Currently, the paper adds, only about 10% of us are believed to meet this standard, which they linked to four additional years of life and “a higher quality of health” throughout.
“Even if one in four poor sleepers were to shift to this sleep pattern, the potential gains would be substantial: reduced healthcare utilisation and costs, improved workplace productivity, and a measurable reduction in premature mortality.”
Donald Trump has warned Iran the United States will “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz is re-opened within 48 hours.
The US president issued the ultimatum in an angry post on Truth Social.
Around one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran has been attacking tankers trying to use it since the war began three weeks ago.
That has led to a spike in the price of oil, triggering a potential global economic crisis as energy costs soar.
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Trump said: “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”
It came just a day after Trump said America was preparing to “wind down” its operations in Iran.
In another Truth Social post on Friday, he said: “We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran.”
He said the Strait of Hormuz “will have to be guarded and policed”, but said that responsibility would fall on other countries which rely on it for their oil supply.
Iranian long-range missiles now have the capability of hitting London, Keir Starmer has been warned.
It comes after Tehran targeted Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands, 3,800 kilometres from Iran’s capital, with two missiles.
One was intercepted by a US warship, with the other failing in flight.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said that showed Iran is now able to target major European capitals
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“We have been saying it: the Iranian terrorist regime poses a global threat,” they said. “Now, with missiles that can reach London, Paris or Berlin.”
Diego Garcia houses a joint UK-US military base, and has has been used as a launchpad for American operations in the Middle East for years.
It has a large airfield, major fuel storage facilities, radar installations and a deep-water port and is home to about 2,500 mostly American personnel.
Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper condemned the “reckless” Iranian attack, but insisted the UK was not involved in America’s “offensive” strikes on Tehran.
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She said: “We want to see as swift as possible a resolution to this conflict. Our approach to this conflict has been the same throughout.
“We were not and continue not to be involved in offensive action, and we’ve taken a different view from the US and Israel on this.
“But we are supporting defensive action to support our interests. That includes recognising Iran’s escalating threats to international shipping, as well as their threats to our Gulf partners.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said it was time for Starmer to “come clean”.
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She said: “Now we find out, from the media and not the prime minister, that the British base on Diego Garcia has been the target of Iranian missile attacks.
“As we saw with Peter Mandelson, Starmer’s first instinct is always to cover up the truth.
“On Wednesday he attacked me at PMQs for calling for the proper defence of our bases, now we learn that as he did so our base in the Chagos Islands was being targeted by Iran.
“The prime minister needs to immediately come clean about the details of this latest attack on British troops and explain why the public weren’t informed sooner.”
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