MLAs and representatives of the community and voluntary sector are among those who have slammed the Labour government for the decision to push ahead with funding cuts to charities in the north of Ireland. As a result of post-Brexit expenditure changes, on April 1 Westminster will replace the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) with the Local Growth Fund (LGF). The UKSPF supplied money previously provided by the EU. The move will result in a loss of £16m per year for the community and voluntary sector, going from £25 million to just £9 million.

People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll was among those who condemned the decision, saying:

From Wednesday, Westminster will reduce funding for community support programmes by a staggering 64%. This will leave 11,000 people without employment support, and equates to roughly 400 job losses in the sector. It’s particularly cruel that on the same day hundreds of charity workers are handed redundancy notices, a £14,000 pay increase for MLAs will come into effect.

Politicians to get 27% pay rise as charities have funds slashed

The independent remuneration board confirmed last month that MLAs would be receiving the obscene salary uptick, taking salaries up to £67,200. Part of their reasoning was that it will be combined with penalties in the event of another Stormont shutdown. There will be 10% cuts on each of weeks 6, 12 and 18 in the event of a collapse. This seems like curious logic, given the whopping pay boost gives MLAs a buffer that makes financial penalties much easier to absorb.

Carroll called on Stormont to fix the problem through transfer of moneys from corporate rates relief:

Rather than begging Westminster for help that clearly isn’t coming, the Executive must step in today. It is entirely within their remit to provide the £15.8 million to keep these services afloat. The five big parties found £1.2 million for a 27% pay hike and handed over £76 million in rates breaks for the likes of Moy Park and Coca Cola last year alone. It’s time they cough up for people who need it most.

England, Scotland and Wales have all long since abolished these corporate handouts. Carroll also criticised Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) education minister Paul Givan for “overseeing a slow-motion collapse of youth services“. He concluded:

Working class communities didn’t create this crisis and they shouldn’t be made to pay for it.

The cuts will primarily affect employment support programs. The Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA) represents charity and community groups across the Six Counties (a decolonial term to refer to the north of Ireland). Earlier in March their CEO Celine McStravick highlighted the effect cuts will have on already marginalised groups:

This drastic reduction in funding for Local Growth will strip away vital services for people furthest from the labour market – including young people, those with disabilities or returning to work after long‑term illness and those with caring responsibilities. These are precisely the groups most in need of targeted, sustained intervention and support.

Disabled people to lose crucial support

The Chief Commissioner for the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland Geraldine McGahey had previously highlighted the support needed by disabled people to assist them into employment. She said:

Recent figures report that the disability employment rate here remains stubbornly low at 43.4%, while the disability employment gap is most recently reported as 40.3 percentage points and remains the largest of any of the UK regions.

Ultimately Northern Ireland simply cannot afford cuts to the very limited budgets that currently exist for this important and often life changing work.

NICVA’s McStravick contrasted the support Westminster provides other nations under its control with that granted to the North of Ireland:

Today’s announcement from the Prime Minister highlights a growing disparity between the opportunities being created elsewhere in the UK and the shrinking support available for those most acutely in need across Northern Ireland. While England is benefitting from billions in new investment to tackle youth unemployment and expand apprenticeships, Northern Ireland is witnessing its core employability infrastructure being hollowed out.

Secretary of state for Northern Ireland Hilary Benn has said he expects Stormont to cover the gap in funding itself. However, multiple Northern Ireland Executive ministers have already said they are unable to cover the bare minimum for their departments as it is.

The first day of April is offering fresh opportunities for Westminster to once again show it is populated by fools. Labour continues its trend of being penny wise and pound foolish, as it fails to cough up tiny sums that would pay off many times in the long run.

Featured image via the Canary

Western media’s reporting of the Anglo-American-Zionist strategy of decapitation of leaders in the Middle East is so prolific that one might think they don’t see a problem with it.

As ever, a central element of settler colonialism and imperialism is cognitive dissonance. After all, imagine the absolute uproar in the West if a political leader was beheaded. But for leaders from the Global South, suddenly beheading is a genius military manoeuvre ripe with incisive intelligence operations.

Western media salivates

Greg Miller of the Washington Post, describing what amounts to state terrorism by Israel, uses words like “tactics,” “honed,” and “capable.”

How Israel tracks and targets Iran’s leaders – with an expanding role from AI. A story from Tel Aviv. https://t.co/tGSd54V9CU

— Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) March 30, 2026

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He says:

Israel’s targeted killing tactics — bombs planted months before being detonated, drones capable of slipping into apartment windows and supersonic missiles fired from stealth fighter jets — have been honed by years of conflict in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.

“Years of conflict” is a funny way of saying ‘belligerent invasions from a rogue state,’ but okay Greg.

The assassination of Khamenei is described a “singular intelligence breakthrough.”

Even when Miller offers criticism, it is not of the terrorism or extrajudicial killings, but because the goals of the decapitation strategy are “elusive” or the AI is not “foolproof.”

There are many such cases.

‘A whiff’

The FT asks whether the killing of a sovereign state’s leader can ever be justified.

When, if ever, is it an appropriate tactic of war or foreign policy to engage in a ‘decapitation strike’ — the intentional targeted killing of the leaders of another state?

Martin Sandbu reports: https://t.co/wGDMLpIRlh pic.twitter.com/YQOcSCgzWW

— Financial Times (@FT) March 28, 2026

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To the FT’s defence, at least it concludes that there is “more than a whiff of racism or imperialism” about this strategy. We’d call it an unbearable, rancid stench – but there we are.

Sandbu says:

And it is not a coincidence that when heads of state or government have been targeted, it has usually been in what used to be known as the third world. There is more than a whiff of racism or imperialism in the selective respect the norm enjoyed in the first place, of the same type as has been called out in the International Criminal Court for tending to pursue the leaders of poor countries.

The whole essay, nevertheless, is an ice-cold bucket of imperialism. The essay worries about “what we lose when we lose the norm.” The “we” is unmistakably Western.

And, the framing Iran’s ability to survive decapitation is also replete with racist innuendos.

The hydra at the core of Iran’s regime built to survive decapitation https://t.co/AT708WPILP

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) March 27, 2026

The Times, for instance, somehow calls Iran’s government a hydra. Calling a sovereign government a mythical beast strips it of legitimacy before the analysis even starts. It frames Iran not as a country with people, laws, and a history, but as a monster that needs killing.

State terrorism

Across Western media, the killing of leaders is often framed as a strategy.

Iran’s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, in a letter to the Security Council, called the US-Israeli policy of “assassination lists” as state terrorism.

He said the promotion of such lists is no different from the terrorist actions that have deliberately bombed and killed hundreds of schoolchildren, targeted hospitals, and destroyed cultural heritage sites.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Iran’s Speaker of Parliament Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf were on the US-Israeli assassination target lists.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the head of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, are among those killed by US and Israeli strikes.

Norman Finkelstein said in a recent interview that the assassination of Khamenei on February 28 was “the most brazen, flagrant, outrageous breach of the UN Charter ever.” He specifically pointed to Article 2 and Article 51 of the UN Charter.

He pointed to Article 2 of the UN Charter, which requires states to exhaust diplomatic means before resorting to war. The Omanis were mediating between the US and Iran. Oman confirmed that talks were moving forward.

Secondly, he pointed to Article 51, which allows self-defence only in the event of an armed attack.

Finkelstein explained that there is a narrow exception for a preemptive strike, like if missiles were already in the air or planes were on route and couldn’t be turned back. “None of those applied in this situation,” he said.

So let’s ask Western media: why is state terrorism called “strategy,” and why are UN violations treated as a “dilemma”?

Featured image via the Canary

If the above headline makes no sense to you, it’s because you’re unfamiliar with the tradition of egg rolling. This is a game played around Easter in which children roll hard-boiled eggs down a big hill. The reason you’ve never heard of it is because it’s localised to Scotland and the Lancashire city of Preston.

It’s hitting the news now, because PETA have stepped in to ask that we use potatoes instead of eggs. And as a Prestonian myself, I want to say this is the worst thing to ever happen to someone in the Easter period (barring the crucifixion, of course).

PETA is urging a city council to “modernise” their famous Easter egg roll – by swapping traditional hens’ eggs for dyed potatoes.https://t.co/pdCFY6vRaE

— ITV Granada Reports (@GranadaReports) March 31, 2026

The spud, the bad, and the eggly

Wikipedia notes the following about egg rolling:

In Lancashire there are annual egg rolling competitions at Holcombe Hill near Ramsbottom and Avenham Park in Preston. Egg rolling has been a tradition at Avenham Park for hundreds of years, but in recent years chocolate eggs have been used.

We were already using chocolate eggs when I grew up in the 90’s, so this is nothing new. If it rained, we used to roll them down the stairs at home. When I grew up, I was baffled to learn that most people eat their chocolate eggs without first rolling them down some sort of incline.

Wikipedia adds:

Traditionally, the eggs were wrapped in onion skins and boiled to give them a mottled, gold appearance (although today they usually are painted), and the children competed to see who could roll their egg the farthest. There is an old Lancashire legend that says the broken eggshells should be crushed carefully afterward, or these would be stolen and used as boats by witches.

No one believes the above now, of course, because it’s well known Preston witches build their boats from fiberglass.

Getting to the story at hand, Blog Preston reported:

An animal rights organisation has urged Preston City Council to swap eggs for dyed potatoes for the annual tradition of egg-rolling.

People have been visiting Avenham Park to roll eggs down the hill for more than 150 years and thousands of people attend every year.

But PETA has written to Preston City Council urging them to switch eggs for dyed ‘Easter potatoes’ – despite the majority of people now rolling chocolate eggs rather than boiled eggs.

In PETA’s own words:

Children love animals and would be sad to learn that the eggs used for fun and games at Preston’s egg rolling event come from tormented hens who live miserable lives on Britain’s farms.

Easter should be a time of renewal and joy for all sentient beings – and that means hens, too.

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There are a couple of problems with PETA’s stance. The first is they’re several decades too late, because people mostly use chocolate eggs now. The second is there are no inspectors checking attendees’ eggs to ensure they’re up to code. People just rock up and roll; it’s incredibly informal like that.

As Preston City Council said:

The event does not prescribe the type of egg to be rolled, and visitors have the choice as to what they roll down the hill.

This isn’t the first time that PETA has attached itself to a baffling campaign anyway:

Dear @peta

As the parent of a child with Autism, kindly get in the bin.

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What is your issue with people who are neurodivergent?

This is next level ableism and flat out lies. pic.twitter.com/G8gvVgsRhE

— Alex Tiffin (@RespectIsVital) January 5, 2021

If you’ve read this and would like to know more about Preston, our other big controversy is that historians keep asking our promoters stop claiming Toto wrote their smash hit Africa in one of our nightclubs. We’re also the birthplace of R2-D2 actor Kenny Baker (RIP).

Featured image via Visit Preston

On 25 March 2026, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly voted to recognise the Transatlantic Slave Trade as the ‘gravest crime against humanity’. It was a move that many hoped would increase legitimacy for reparations and justice for the descendants and the countries affected by the trafficking of 12 to 17 million African people to the Americas between 1502 and 1888.

The resolution follows over three years of campaigning – particularly by Ghana, which brought the resolution forward – and has been supported by 123 countries. It calls for discussions around reparations, compensation and systemic reforms.

UN secretary general António Guterres said:

The Transatlantic Slave Trade was a crime against humanity that struck at the core of personhood, broke up families and devastated communities… I welcome the steps countries are taking to apologise for their role in the evil of slavery and to join an honest dialogue about its lasting consequences…

Controversy

The UN declaration has unsurprisingly sparked opposition around the world, particularly from former colonial powers in Western Europe and the United States, which took part in and benefitted from the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Only three countries – the United States, Israel and Argentina – voted against the declaration. 52 other countries, most of them from the EU and Britain, abstained from the vote.

The U.S. Ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council Dan Negrea argued:

The United States strongly objects to this cynical usage of historical wrongs as a leverage point in an attempt to reallocate modern resources to people and nations who are distantly related to the historical victims.

Negrea’s position deliberately ignores and downplays the longstanding impact that the slave trade has had on international relations, as well as the impoverishment, economic and political inequality that plagues many Black communities today.

Others argued that if reparations are being demanded of Western nations, then the same should be demanded of African states and societies that partook in selling Africans to Europeans:

Britain should not pay reparations.

We abstained from voting against paying reparations for the transatlantic slave trade in yet another egregious example of this Labour Government’s desperate attempt to curry favour.

The transatlantic slave trade was a deplorable and horrific… pic.twitter.com/yYCYunWzOM

— Ben Obese-Jecty MP (@BenObeseJecty) March 26, 2026

Within a class context, there is an argument for this. But such arguments are often made in order to deflect from Western/European accountability.

There are families across West Africa that profited from the slave trade, who probably should face their own accountability. But this will likely come after the process of decolonisation in these African societies is fully complete and the power of slave-trading families’ descendants and Western-backed puppet leaders is broken.

This would require Africa to be fully liberated from the Western sphere, which is economically and politically against the interests of the West.

The reality of British slavery

In the UK, the leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, argued that the UK should have voted against the resolution and described the UK position as an act of ‘cowardice’.

Russia, China and Iran vote with others to demand trillions in reparations from UK taxpayers…and the Labour government abstain!

Britain led the fight to end slavery.

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Why didn’t Starmer’s representative vote against this? Ignorance…or cowardice?

We shouldn’t be paying for a… https://t.co/nWlzBxhb5w

— Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) March 26, 2026

Her position reflects UK’s mainstream position on slavery, which overemphasises the country’s role in ending the slave trade rather than its role in perpetuating and expanding it.

This obscures the horrific reality of the UK’s role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its historical and economic impact, which continues to affect former British colonies today, particularly in the Caribbean.

In the 18th century, Britain was shipping more Africans than any other Western power. Plantations in the British Caribbean had become the most heavily enslaved societies on Earth at the time, resulting in the demographic transformation of huge portions of the Caribbean. To put this into perspective, between 1640 and 1807, Britain trafficked 3.4 million Africans across the Atlantic Ocean, representing the second-highest amount, just behind Portugal/Brazil.

Slavery was an important part of the British economy. Profits from plantations boosted capital accumulation, which helped to expand industrial production and accelerate the Industrial Revolution. Wealth generated from the slave trade was invested in businesses, banks, ports, institutions and entire communities. It was transformative on a scale very few understand.

The significance of the UN resolution

Many people believe that the UN resolution is part of a growing political trend that is calling for reparations and justice for countries and communities affected by the slave trade.

A few years ago, the Netherlands apologised for its role in slavery, which I reported on as part of a wider trend among European states to reposition their relations with formally colonised countries. As power slowly shifts to the Global South, the pressure and incentives to name and label slavery as a crime against humanity will grow.

Cynically, an argument could be made that the UN resolution is more about preserving the declining influence and legitimacy of the liberal world order. Countries that are products of the slave trade (particularly those in South America, the Caribbean and West Africa) increasingly choose to build deeper relations with China, India and Russia – powerful countries without the historical baggage and legacy of Western European barbarism and exploitation.

But Western countries still want to control the narrative around accountability. Ultimately, they also want to control the terms of any reparations, because they know that acknowledgment could easily spiral into calls to seize the very economic foundations that their modern economies have been built on.

Can the UN make any meaningful difference?

The question I have is whether this declaration will make any long-term meaningful difference that is tangible to African diaspora communities.

I am not alone in this. Professor Kehinde Andrews, a long-time opponent and critic of the UN, views the resolution as a distraction. He has reiterated his position that Western liberal institutions, like the UN, remain arms of imperialism that act in a more covert and ‘friendly’ way:

‘You left your mind in Africa if you think the UN is recognising slavery as a “crime against humanity’ in 2026′. New @makeitplainorg pod where I warn about the dangers of reparations when it comes from CARICOM, ADOS and big companies. Watch https://t.co/i9Y9W4qO5m pic.twitter.com/cWyelke4Eb

— Kehinde Andrews (@kehinde_andrews) March 28, 2026

Another issue is the fact that the UN does not have any power to enforce reparations or reparatory justice. The fact is that many former slave-trading nations – such as the US, France and the UK – sit on the security council of the UN and wield substantial influence over it. This includes veto powers that will always limit the extent to which the UN could act on issues like this.

However, supporters of the resolution argue that the UN still matters. The fact that the resolution has 123 countries supporting it, representing the majority of the world, serves as a compass for the direction the world is going in, particularly in terms of the the Global South’s relationship to the West.

This relationship is likely to become more tense with time. Countries have indicated their desire to correct historical crimes upon which Western countries have built themselves on. It is possible that this won’t end with the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Western crimes of colonialism and genocide could eventually follow.

Legitimacy in crisis

For Western countries, legitimacy is key to not being left behind. But an inability to face accountability and transform their relationship with the Global South could eventually put liberal institutions like the UN in crisis, if Global South countries start building their own international institutions.

From the West’s support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza to its inability to condemn US imperialism against Venezuela, Cuba and Iran, Western legitimacy is already in crisis. Combined with the inability of Western countries to accept the UN declaration of the Transatlantic Slave Trade as the gravest crime against humanity, this sends a message that, from 1502 to 2026, the West is still the same and unwilling to change and evolve.

The UK downgraded and sidelined its own atrocity monitoring protocols with regard to Sudan. This helped compound what is now clearly an active genocide. That genocide is largely being carried out by a militia backed the UK’s Gulf ally and arms trade customer UAE.

The damning assessment comes from a 25 March Guardian investigation. Journalists documented the fall of the southern city of El Fasher to the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The story explains in shocking detail the heroism and horror of 27 October.

Local defence forces and military members struggled in vain to hold off RSF and help civilians escape. The death toll of the city’s fall may be as high as 70,000.

The war between Sudanese government forces and RSF has been raging since 2023. So far millions have been displaced and up to 150,000 killed. Several Gulf states, Egypt, Israel, UK, US and many other local and global powers are pursuing their own colonial interests in Sudan.

UK abandoned Sudan

The report found:

The UK seemingly abandoned El Fasher: reports predicting genocide apparently discarded; intelligence apparatus that should have prompted intervention were not updated throughout the 561-day siege.

As fighting had intensified, the UK removed Darfur’s original genocide – when 300,000 were slaughtered by the RSF’s Arab predecessors – from its list of recognised mass atrocities.

The authors warned this wasn’t just a matter of generalised humanitarian failure. The UK – and US – were key players in the eventual massacre:

To frame El Fasher within the timeworn narrative of collective international failure avoids the darker truth.

Decisions were taken that ensured help never came. Both the US and UK suppressed or sidelined warnings that would have helped avoid the slaughter.

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And they said that when it comes to it, the British government will have few excuses:

Central to the UK’s approach was the Joint Analysis of Conflict and Stability (Jacs), conceived to assess whether genocide was likely and, if so, intervene suitably.

The UK’s own intelligence, sources confirm, said the RSF wanted to “eliminate” the city’s non-Arab population.

However:

…no attempt was made to update Jacs throughout the 18-month siege. The most recent Jacs assessment for Sudan is dated 2019: four years before the current war began.

Cold indifference?

The UK even approached a group of US-based experts whose innovative use of satellite and open source intelligence has revealed a range of atrocities.

The Guardian report states:

The UK mission to the UN security council asked Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, what could be done.

Raymond advocated urgently deploying a UN monitoring force around El Fasher. “If we don’t, these people will die. I begged them.”

Despite this advice, “nothing happened”.

The US proved just as unwilling to help:

The US similarly seemed in no rush to help. Requests for “kinetic intervention” to protect El Fasher were rejected.

The US state department blocked intelligence assessments relating to El Fasher that would have triggered an intervention to prevent genocide.

Exactly why is unclear, but UK MPs were briefed as early as 2023. And a secret Cabinet Office briefing was even held to discuss the matter. At one point the UK even removed Darfur – an affected region of Sudan – from a watchlist:

…when the Islamic State’s targeting of Iraq’s Yazidi minority was added to the UK’s official list in August 2023, Darfur was removed.

“It silently – inexplicably – removed the Darfur genocide,” stated the briefing.

The Guardian explained:

It wasn’t the first sign Darfur had been deprioritised. As fighting spread across the region in 2023, a parliamentary report warned of genocide. Submitted to Downing Street it received no formal response. “We were indignant, outraged,” said one of the authors.

This is despite the UK effectively being in charge of Sudan issues and civilian protection at the UN’s highest body:

Yet the UK was El Fasher’s great hope. Not only Sudan’s penholder at the UN security council, it had international responsibility for civilian protection.

UK-UAE relations

The UAE is a major customer for UK arms. British military gear has been seen in the hands of RSF. UK relations with UAE seem to have shaped the British response to the Sudan Genocide.

The Guardian reported:

Weeks before the siege began, the UK’s then Africa minister, Andrew Mitchell, met the president of Chad and discreetly urged him to stop the UAE smuggling weapons into neighbouring Darfur.

Mitchell confirmed that even then – March 2024 – he possessed “incontrovertible proof” that the Emiratis were arming the RSF.

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Adding:

Yet his government, likewise the current, seemingly chose not to act. “It was quickly clear the Starmer government did not want to piss off the Emiratis,” said a US source.

The UK is culpable for the genocide in Sudan, every bit as much as it is for the one in Gaza. This is true now, but also historically. The British ruled Sudan by force until independence in 1956. A young Winston Churchill even bragged (at book length) about fighting there in the 1890s. The people of Sudan, whose heroic agency is so apparent in the Guardian report, remain trapped at the point where global and local powers fight like vultures over land and resources which do not belong to them.

Featured image via the Canary

Green Party deputy leader Mothin Ali has responded to an attack from Keir Starmer:

NEW: Green deputy leader @MothinAli responds to @Keir_Starmer‘s claim the Greens would leave UK “weak & exposed” bc of @ZackPolanski‘s anti-Nato stance.

Ali says UK’s “long-term interests lie in reducing dependence on Trump’s US” but Starmer is “too weak to stand up to Trump”. pic.twitter.com/0W5lYeOYrg

— Rivkah Brown (@rivkahbrown) March 30, 2026

It comes as president Donald Trump suggested that NATO is dead.

Mothin Ali calls out Starmer

Ali was responding to the following from Starmer:

Then you’ve got Polanski

He thinks that with a war on two fronts, now is the time to give up our NATO membership.

“A war on two fronts”, Starmer says.

Would you believe Starmer also bragged about not dragging us into the US and Israel’s war on Iran?

UK PM Keir Starmer responds to Trump’s attacks:

“A lot of what he says is designed to pressure me to change my mind and get dragged into this war but I’m not going to do so. I’m the British Prime Minster, and I act in the British national security interest” pic.twitter.com/0G4PzUwESN

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) March 28, 2026

So which is it: are we at war or not?

Spoiler alert, we’re absolutely involved in the war:

Keir Starmer is taking Britain into an illegal war AGAINST the wishes of the majority of British people

And putting us in danger

Starmer is a disgrace https://t.co/MxBEGqhoqr

— Stop The Bollocks with Mirabel (@MirabelTweets1) March 20, 2026

Mothin Ali also called this out:

Spineless Starmer is back!
A little pressure and a bit of name calling from Trump and he backs down, taking us into another illegal war the public clearly don’t support!
Starmer needs to resign now before he ruins this country any further! https://t.co/9FrDYzCTmI

— Mothin Ali (@MothinAli) March 21, 2026

As we reported on 28 March, NATO is a US protection racket. This is a problem, because Donald Trump is saying things like this:

But I think a tremendous mistake was when NATO just wasn’t there. They just weren’t there.

It’s going to make a lot of money for the United States, because we spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on NATO – hundreds protecting them. And we would have always been there for them. But now, based on their actions, I guess we don’t have to be, do we?

And let’s not forget that Trump was also talking about invading NATO member Greenland.

Starmer can bang on about NATO protecting us as much as he likes, but the reality is that the US is a menace, and sucking up to them no longer works.

Talk

Back to Starmer’s speech, he continued:

Now is the time to start negotiating with Putin over our nuclear deterrent

Is Starmer suggesting that negotiating with other world leaders is bad?

As opposed to what – just blowing up negotiators, as the US and Israel are prone to do?

Absolute bombshell. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt casually confesses on live TV that the Trump administration assassinated previous Iranian leaders just because they strung the US along in negotiations. Washington is openly operating like a global mafia cartel. pic.twitter.com/leCEsRkli7

— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) March 30, 2026

BREAKING: 🇮🇱 🇶🇦

Israel bombed the Palestinian group negotiating headquarters in Doha, Qatar

Multiple explosions were reported, some say as many as 10 bombs were used pic.twitter.com/euBo05pfCO

— ADAM (@AdameMedia) September 9, 2025

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Is this the mythical ‘sensible’ politics we’ve heard so much about?

Starmer’s speech finished as follows:

We’d be left so weak and so exposed if any of those individuals were in government.

It’s really important that we stick to our principles – stick to our value – and show the leadership that’s needed in a time like this.

Which values are we sticking to: the values of fighting two wars at once, or the values of not being dragged into any wars at all?

Values

‘Values’ and ‘principles’ are a good way of understanding why Starmer hates the Green Party. Specifically, his issue is that they actually seem to have values and principles (although they do need to sort out their stance on Zionism).

This is quite unlike Starmer himself, who has never announced a policy he hasn’t u-turned on.

Featured image via Downing Street (Flickr)

Speaking at a panel event hosted by the Demos think-tank, Liberal Democrat MP Max Wilkinson said that “social media…is making sure that you can have your voice heard in a really easy way that you couldn’t in the past”.

He went on to argue that this is a “massive problem”, because it allows members of the public to highlight problems with mass migration. For Wilkinson, the issue isn’t the impact that mass migration is having on our public finances, or the healthcare system, or our communities. It’s that people can now freely express and debate their concerns.

This approach is frighteningly common in our politics. Far too often, politicians have tried to make difficult problems go away by encouraging people not to talk about them. In some quarters, there seems to be a genuine belief that real-world problems are conjured into being when people talk about them, and that problems can be made to disappear if only people would just keep their concerns to themselves.

But that isn’t how the truth works. If something is true, then it remains true regardless of whether people are able to acknowledge it or not. In fact, failure to acknowledge the truth almost always makes problems worse.

That’s exactly what happened with the rape and grooming gangs, which operated with impunity across dozens of towns and cities for decades. Institutions like the police, local councils, and care homes refused to properly acknowledge or investigate the horrific abuse perpetrated by these gangs. In many cases, this is because they were unwilling to face difficult truths about the role that ethnicity, religion, and culture played in motivating these crimes.

The result is that thousands of children across the country were abused, trafficked, and raped. Failure to acknowledge the truth, and a desire to prevent other people from doing so, allowed people to get away with the some of the very worst crimes committed in this country in living memory.

And I fear that it’s exactly what’s happening with the Government’s approach to the twin threats of Islamist extremism and separatism. Last month, the Home Office published its so-called ‘social cohesion white paper’, which promised to address concerns about migration, culture, and extremism.

The report acknowledged that “for many living in the UK, the changes brought about by…migration have been too much, too quickly, and have put huge pressure on services and housing”. It also acknowledged the existence of “communities in the UK living segregated or parallel lives”.

Clearly, this is all true. As Kemi said last month in her speech on British integration, “for too long, Britain has been complacent about our culture and too tolerant of those weaponising identity politics for their own gain”.

Yet instead of confronting difficult realities about culture and religion, the report instead blamed the internet, and underplayed the role of Islamist extremism in particular, despite the fact that it represents by far the most serious extremist threat to our country.

The paper could have recommended a lower overall level of immigration, and a more selective migration system. It could have recommended curbing the pernicious family visa system, which so often results in chain migration from cultures with very different norms to our own. It could have recommended enforcing our country’s norms, or reforming our approach to Islamist terror networks.

Instead, the paper’s headline recommendation was the adoption of a “non-statutory definition of anti-Muslim hostility”, a rebranding of the Government’s plans for an Islamophobia definition.

As Nick Timothy and Claire Coutinho highlighted in their campaign against the definition, this guidance will make it harder for institutions like the civil service to have frank conversations about subjects like extremism, female genital mutilation, and the grooming gangs. If public officials fear being perceived as ‘anti-Muslim’, how can they be expected to carry out their jobs without fear or favour, and to acknowledge difficult truths?

And worse, the Government now plans to appoint a “Special Representative on anti-Muslim hostility’, meaning that they will employ a paid-up advocate for their new definition. It will be their job to spend all day, every day, condemning people, policies, or views that they consider to be ‘anti-Muslim’.

Under those conditions, how can we possibly have open, public conversations about the real threat posed by Islamist extremism, or separatism amongst certain groups? Once again, when confronted with difficult truths, this Government’s approach is to prevent people from acknowledging those truths, in the vain hope that suppressing discussion will alter reality.

Trying to solve a problem by encouraging people not to talk about it has never worked, and it never will. This cowardly approach must not form the basis for our approach to Islamist separatism and extremism. The stakes are far too high; we must not let the Government bury their heads in the sand, or force other people to do so.