Politics
Student loans inquiry into ‘mountain’ of degree debts begins
Student organisations and experts are launching an inquiry into the defunct debt-bondage system of student loans across England. In particular, the National Union of Students (NUS) wants the inquiry to look at the interest rates. Additionally, it will examine threshold repayment mechanisms.
The loans inquiry can’t come soon enough for many students or graduates on the sharp end of our privatised, financialised education model. Studies show that one in three people now think that a degree:
just isn’t worth the amount of time and money.
The structurally defunct student loans system
Much of Europe and the developed world, more broadly, receives free or heavily subsidised education. This even extends to Scotland, and before 1990, also England and Wales. Moreover, English degrees now cost on average £53,000 in debt.
If most comparable countries can do free education, it’s clearly not a structural necessity. Dumping decades worth of wage debt onto young people, before they’ve entered the job market, just isn’t working.
Youth unemployment (16-24) is now nearly 15%. This figure includes countless graduates. Unsurprisingly, young people often feel that they were tricked into valueless degrees. These degrees lead to considerable debts.
The acronym NEET — Not in Education, Employment nor Training — dominated airwaves last week. This happened following the devastating report into NEETs by former minister Alan Milburn. Its 217 pages paint what Milburn calls:
a record of failure [by consecutive neoliberal governments] … We are at risk of a lost generation. That is a moral crisis. It has economic consequences.
This cumulative cost is estimated at £125bn by Milburn’s report. Furthermore, there are also stark regional inequalities between, say, North London boroughs and West Midlands areas. North London boroughs have 1% NEET, while in West Midlands areas it is over 21.5%.
In whose interest?
One of the most reprehensible aspects of student loans is how punishing the interest rates are. Extortionate interest means that many graduates’ debt actually increases while they work and pay back (those lucky to find work).
See, for example, the case of one NHS nurse whose debt rose from £57,000 to over £77,000 whilst she was working and honouring repayments. This privilege came at a monthly cost of £145 from her paycheck, although £400 was being added each month simultaneously.
The 29-year-old Labour MP Nadia Whittome pointed out earlier this year that her student debts had fallen by only £1,000 since graduating. This despite working six years on an MP’s salary in the top 5% of UK earners.
Another miserable graduate wrote to the BBC’s Your Voice platform:
Just after she graduated in 2016, her debt was £34,105 – but her latest balance statement shows it’s now £41,908 because the interest accumulating is outstripping her repayments.
“It feels like I’m constantly chasing a debt that gets bigger over time; it feels like climbing a mountain.”
This became a flashpoint earlier this year when ‘Money Saving Expert’ Martin Lewis went head-to-head with Tory elite Kemi Badenoch over the issue. Reminder that Badenoch served as Tory minister for children and families. She also served, later, for inequalities previously, thus contributing to the above structural dysfunctions.
Job market blues and AI bots
It’s hardly surprising that fewer people than perhaps ever believe that going to university leaves graduates “a lot better off” in the long run. Notably, this shocking statistic is down from 50% in 2005 to 36% in 2025.
Milburn’s report cites young people recounting dehumanising, dystopian tales of sending dozens of CVs assessed and rejected by AI. Many also reported being tested via AI simulations or self-recorded videos. These are then being turned down for work en-masse, without applicants ever talking to an actual human.
In response, many students are using AI to write their applications, since there’s little point in selling your soul only to have a robot reject you. This leaves a historically unique, bizarre robot-to-robot interaction which benefits neither companies nor job-hunters.
Entry-level jobs, the report also says, are becoming more challenging to attain, in part because of this remote recruitment farce. But the roles traditionally filled by younger people – retail, customer service, warehousing – are now either scarcer or increasingly specialised. This too is partly as a result of rapid AI automation.
These issues cannot be viewed separately. They need addressing together, systematically, and quickly.
Featured image via Sion Touhig / Getty Images
I served for 24 years as a police officer in emergency response, public order, intelligence and counter-terrorism. I saw the best of policing, worked with devoted colleagues and took pride in work that indisputably mattered. I joined the police to make a difference. Duty, camaraderie and justice were not abstract ideals – and I believed that the force made the country safer. But, in the end, disillusionment drove me out.
Over time, I watched the mission of the police being hollowed out by ideological capture. Concern for public trust mutated into a top-down obsession with political correctness and policies that increasingly served political fashions, rather than the enforcement of the law. My personal breaking point came when I understood that the institution itself was eroding the principles I had sworn to defend.
The inevitable, tragic denouement of this ideological transformation came with the murder, in December 2025, of 18-year-old Henry Nowak. Nowak was stabbed four times by a Sikh man named Vickrum Digwa. But, when police arrived at the scene, it was Nowak who was placed in handcuffs. This callous decision was made because Digwa told officers that Nowak was a ‘racist’. Nowak told officers that he’d been stabbed. His last words were reported as, ‘Please, brother, I can’t breathe’. ‘I don’t think you have, mate’, an officer responded. Nowak died at the scene.
For a long time, British policing stood for impartiality, restraint and equal enforcement of the law. Nobody thinks that now. There has been a litany of cases, some high profile and others not so, where fear of that most career-ending of accusations – ie, of racism – has led to gross injustices.
The most infamous outrage is that of grooming gangs, which have been disproportionately comprised of Pakistani Muslim men. This was not merely a tragedy – it was a disgraceful collapse of policing and child protection. In town after town across the country – in particular areas with large Muslim populations such as Rotherham and Telford – mainly white working-class girls were subjected to appalling sexual exploitation. Police stood by, failed to act or looked the other way. Last year, a report by Baroness Louise Casey found that fear of being labelled racist was one of the primary motivators of police inaction.
We witnessed a similarly perverse obsession with race in 2021. A teacher at Batley Grammar – an independent state school in West Yorkshire – showed his pupils the same cartoons of Muhammad that were published by the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, in 2015. The teacher was subject to a terrifying campaign of abuse and intimidation from Muslim parents and organisations, until he was eventually forced into hiding and police protection. Yet again, police caved to the demands of these sectarian bigots in the name of ‘cohesion’. Not one of the teacher’s persecutors was charged.
These events did not emerge out of thin air. For years, police forces have prioritised identity politics above public safety. The death of George Floyd in America in 2020, and the resulting mania of the Black Lives Matter protests, sent this process into overdrive.
This is a corruption of purpose. Policing is now viewed through social-justice conventions about competing identity groups, producing the notorious ‘two-tier’ mindset. Senior leaders have reinforced that impression with their own bombast. They now routinely describe policing as a vehicle for inclusion and broader social reform. When police leaders sound more like activists than law enforcers, the public is more than entitled to conclude that priorities have been badly warped.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct is now investigating the behaviour of the officers in the Henry Nowak case. But one thing is obvious: responsibility cannot be dumped on frontline officers alone. Culture is set by senior leadership, and senior leadership must answer for the culture that saw its officers handcuff a teenager who was in the process of bleeding to death.
I know full well that policing is hard and that difficult judgements are unavoidable. But difficulty is not an alibi for weakness. The police are not there to placate pressure groups or manage sensitivities – they are there to uphold the law and protect people from intimidation, violence and coercion. When that mission is subordinated to ideological fashion or activist pressure, trust rots. Senior ranks deserve a disproportionate share of the blame, and they must not be spared over the death of Henry Nowak.
Britain’s policing institutions face a stark choice: continue down a path where social-justice activism eclipses law enforcement, or return to the foundational principles of equal protection under the law. Without that change, public confidence, already at its lowest ebb in memory, will not be recovered.
Paul Birch is a former police officer and counter-terrorism specialist. You can read his Substack here.
The post ‘As an ex-officer, this is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen’ appeared first on spiked.
UK ministers and generals are using Palantir software to decide which Palantir products to buy. By modelling battles through the far-right tech firm’s Foundry software, officials hope to outsource thinking … then again, thinking has rarely been our governments’ strong suit.
Anyway, the Murdoch-owned Times reported on 1 June:
The US tech firm Palantir is helping ministers and military chiefs decide what weapons to invest in so they can win a war against the likes of Russia, it is understood.
A senior military source told the paper:
The CIA-backed firm evaluates force mixes — such as the balance of drones versus manned vehicles — and capabilities against a range of scenarios to help determine investment choices.
Palantir founders Alex Karp and Peter Thiel openly espouse far-right ideology.
The UK military, police, NHS and, allegedly, the Telegraph newspaper have started to use Palantir technology. The firm is also involved in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and maintains a permanent desk in southern Israel. Trump’s paramilitary immigration operations also use the firm’s gear.
Foundry has been described as:
one of the company’s flagship data integration and analytics systems that is marketed more towards civilian pursuits – specifically towards large businesses and public services.
Foundry also transforms:
an organisation’s data, actions, decision rules and security controls into a single structured system that humans and AI can use together to run complex operations. It can model how an organisation works, managing assets, people, processes, and supply chains.
It can support planning, logistics, inventory and forecasting.
The Times said:
The data-driven outcomes have helped inform the long-awaited defence investment plan (DIP), which will not be published before the second week of June. It will set out how billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money will be spent in the department.
Officials in the Ministry of Defence are also using Palantir’s Foundry software as a financial planning tool by “swapping in and out different spending decisions”, a second source familiar with the technology added.
Palantir will be hard to untangle
The process seems to involve officials asking the Palantir software questions. Foundry answers based on whatever has been been loaded into the large language model — presumably by Palantir:
For example, the MoD can ask: if it is to buy a ship, what will the associated costs be over its lifetime?
They said Palantir was being used to integrate data from all the war games the UK has held and “run queries across those to give a sense of future scenarios”.
The Times added:
Palantir’s tech is now so intertwined with all aspects of the British military that it will be hard to untangle in future years, should that ever be deemed necessary.
Not at all weird or chilling. As the Canary reported on 20 April, Palantir’s ‘manifesto’ is a collection of far-right tropes more suited to a Joe Rogan podcast than a multinational arms firm:
Point 21 reads:
Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.
While Point 22 is a fascist-accented lament for Western imperialism:
We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
Oh no, inclusion. Boo hoo!
The Times warned the tech giant is so intertwined with UK governance and militarism that it will “be hard to untangle.” Yet it must be. This isn’t just a software firm. Palantir’s founders aren’t simply Incel computer nerds. The company is a Trojan Horse. And the UK is handing greater and greater power to the company’s far-right Trump-aligned CEOs by the day.
Featured image via Carl Court / Getty Images
By Joe Glenton
Rail union RMT is demanding all Govia Thameslink Railway staff be brought into direct employment after the train company became the latest to be brought under public control.
The union has been campaigning for all elements of the railway to come into public ownership. And it has welcomed the commitment by the government to launch Great British Railways with track and train all nationalised.
However, private contractors will continue to employ thousands of workers. These include:
- Cleaners.
- Gate line staff.
- Security staff.
- Infrastructure maintenance, renewal and engineering workers.
This is despite the Labour government’s commitment to undertake the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation.
RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey said:
We want to see all our members on the railway receive the same benefits of public ownership and this includes outsourced workers.
The Labour government needs to follow through on its commitment to undertake a mass wave of insourcing.
Railway workers in outsourced companies work just as hard and contribute just as much to public transport as those directly employed.
Across our union, thousands of outsourced workers are growing increasingly frustrated at having poorer wages, no sick pay and being treated as if they are a second-class workforce.
RMT will industrially and politically maintain pressure on the government until it fulfils its obligations to our members.
Featured image via Getty Images
By The Canary
Less than a quarter of the UK’s largest commercial fishing vessels may have clear ownership transparency. And this is creating a systemic blind spot in UK fisheries governance.
Environmental law organisation ClientEarth has laid out these findings in a new analysis: Whose Boat Is This?
The current regulatory gap on commercial fishing vessel ownership risks enabling vessel owners to operate through complex corporate structures and hide behind shell companies. This can mask the Ultimate Beneficial Ownership (UBO) of these vessels.
ClientEarth’s Kyle Lischak said:
The core problem is simple: the government does not publicly identify who really owns many of the vessels commercially fishing UK waters to a clear and satisfactory extent.
This lack of transparency around vessel ownership, which limits accountability, allows for unlawful fishing practices to potentially occur.
The UK is a leading maritime nation and a global ocean governance actor. It has consistently supported international efforts to tackle illegal fishing and improve fisheries transparency through initiatives such as the Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing Action Alliance and its wider engagement in multilateral ocean governance forums.
However, it falls short of implementing the highest standards domestically because the UK current regulation does not require disclosure of ultimate beneficial owners for all commercial fishing vessels operating under its jurisdiction.
In particular, key systems such as vessel registration and fishing licences do not effectively capture who ultimately owns or controls vessels.
When ownership cannot be identified, the UK cannot rule out links to organised crime, sanctioned entities, or hostile actors. In cases where ownership is untraceable, the trail leads to opaque offshore jurisdictions.
Illegal fishing practices
The lack of regulation weakens national oversight in UK waters, making this a matter of economic control and national security, as well as public safety.
Without clear ownership and accountability, the UK public cannot be completely confident that the seafood harvested by UK vessels, and other commercial vessels that fish in UK waters, is legally and sustainably sourced. Lischak said:
At a time of focus on domestic security, the UK cannot fully account for who is exploiting its marine resources.
The UK, and the devolved governments, now have clear evidence of a major transparency gap in their fisheries governance. This regulatory gap exposes the country to risks linked to organised crime, illicit financial flows, sanctions evasion and other illegal activities associated with global fishing networks.
Most UK fishers make real and concerted efforts to follow the rules but they may be left competing with opaque commercial operators whose ownership can remain hidden behind complex structures.
When ownership is unclear, enforcement is weaker and any bad actors are not held accountable, this can create unfair competition for honest UK fishers and lead to market distortions. Lischak commented:
Law-abiding UK fishers may be left competing with operators who do not play by the same rules.
This opacity also has direct environmental consequences. Illegal and unaccountable fishing accelerates overexploitation, damages marine ecosystems, and undermines efforts to manage ocean resources sustainably and ensure food security. Lischak continued:
The ocean is one of the UK’s greatest allies on future food and job security, and in the fight against climate change. Weakening its health through poor oversight puts us all at risk.
Calls for reform
The UK already has established frameworks that could improve fisheries transparency, including company ownership rules and new verification powers.
To live up to its reputation as a global ocean governance leader, the UK must close the gaps by requiring UBO disclosure at commercial fishing vessel registration and licensing stages, lowering ownership thresholds to make it harder to hide, and publishing UBO data in a publicly accessible register.
It needs to strengthen the enforcement of company disclosure requirements and restrict access to UK waters for commercial vessels with opaque ownership, closing loopholes that currently allow anonymity to persist.
Countries around the world are endorsing the Global Charter for Fisheries Transparency and implementing its 10 principles, including UBO disclosure. The UK also supports the Charter, but now it needs to act on it or risk undermining its leadership on this issue more broadly.
Lischak added:
These reforms would strengthen enforcement, protect UK fishers, and build public trust. The solution is practical and achievable with existing tools. It is now up to the UK to act.
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via Getty Images
By The Canary
Donald Trump has claimed that Israel and Hezbollah have “agreed to halt attacks” after indirect talks through intermediaries.
Trump wrote:
I had a very good call with Hezbollah, and they agreed that all shooting will stop – that Israel will not attack them, and they will not attack Israel.
Bearing in mind that no US president has ever spoken with Hezbollah, and the US designated the group a terrorist organisation, we have to ask if the intermediary was a carrier pigeon or a pet fish?
According to statements from Lebanon’s embassy in Washington, the plans mean Hezbollah would stop ‘attacking’ Israel. This would be in exchange for Israel stopping its illegal strikes on Beirut and its southern suburbs.
Of course, Hezbollah and Lebanon have the right to self-defence under international law. Whereas Israel has zero authority to be attacking, bombing, or illegally occupying another country’s sovereign territory.
Lies
Trump has been caught lying more times than we can count since the US and Israel launched their illegal attacks on Iran.
To start with, Trump claimed that Iran was aiming to rebuild its nuclear programme. He also said Israel and the US “obliterated” these sites in strikes last year. However, there was no evidence of any nuclear programme, this year or last.
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency told NBC News the organisation did not believe Iran has nuclear weapons and:
had not seen elements of a systematic and structured program to manufacture nuclear weapons there.
Trump also claimed that Iran was seeking to develop a long-range missile to attack the US, for which there was no evidence.
A 2025 federal government assessment contradicted this. It stated that Iran was still years away from the ability to produce long-range missiles.
Then, in April, Trump claimed that the Iran-Israel ceasefire did not include Lebanon, despite Pakistan making it clear in advance that it was always included.
Around the same time, Trump delivered a 19-minute address to the nation. In it, he slurred his words and stumbled over basic sentences. He denied that he aimed to bring about regime change in Iran. This was despite his earlier demand for “unconditional surrender” from Iran.
Additionally, after Trump’s regime, alongside the Israeli regime, murdered Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump insisted that he should have a say in Iran’s new leader. Because, of course, when you murder the leader of a sovereign nation, you get first pick over its new one.
But Trump got his regime change. Khamenei was replaced by erm, Khamenei – his very own son.
More lies
Even before the US and Israel launched their unprovoked attacks, Trump was already lying about the number of Iranians the ‘regime had killed’ in its ‘brutal crackdown’ of mass protests in January.
Trump also likes to set a deadline of ‘two weeks’. This never actually comes to fruition. He has used the same time frame for Iran, Ukraine, and Russia, as well as his own tariffs. It’s been a long two weeks…
It’s unclear whether the angry orange man doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies or if he just doesn’t care.
What is clear, though, is that the things that come out of his mouth have very few links to reality. There is also no way of knowing what he might, or might not, do next.
He is in charge of one of the world’s most powerful countries. Yet his credibility is directly endangering the lives of millions of people in West Asia.
Feature image via Nathan Howard/Getty Images
By HG
The Oxford Union (OU) has issued a statement condemning the Starmer government for cancelling the entry visas of US anti-genocide speakers Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker.
The pair had been scheduled to speak at an OU debate and were barred by Starmer for their speech against Israel’s genocide and other crimes. But its own free speech record is anything but spotless.
The government’s action to please the UK Israel lobby is a disgrace, if an entirely unsurprising one.
In a post on X, OU president, Arwa Elrayess, said it would proceed with the event. She added that the cancellation was a “direct threat to free expression” by the Starmer regime.
The Oxford Union intended to host Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker on 6 June for a discussion and Head-to-Head event with our members.
We are deeply concerned by the revocation of both speakers’ Electronic Travel Authorisations on the basis that their appearances would not be ‘conducive to public good’. These events had been publicly announced for months. This eleventh-hour call signals much more than democratic decline – it is a direct threat to free expression.
The Oxford Union was founded on one principle: that ideas are challenged through debate, not silenced by decree. We have never turned a speaker away because of their political beliefs nor have we sought a permission slip from the state. We will not start now.
This event will not be cancelled. The Union will ensure this discussion takes place. Free speech does not require a visa.
We will update our members shortly.
The OU is absolutely right that the UK government is a threat to free speech. It has been one at least since Starmer took over and launched his war on UK rights to protect Israel from scrutiny and resistance.
Oxford Union has dirty hands too
However, the OU’s own hands are far from clean on the matter.
It boasts that it is the “last bastion of free speech”. However, Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa is suing the OU for deleting five sections from the record of Abulhawa’s address to a 2024 OU debate on the motion, ‘This house believes Israel is an apartheid state engaged in genocide’.
The European Legal Support Centre had noted that her “speech contributed to the proposition’s overwhelming victory —278 votes to 59”. Meanwhile, the video of her speech, “garnered a quarter of a million views in just one week”.
However, on 12 December 2024, the Oxford Union quietly deleted the original and replaced it with an altered version, cutting nearly two minutes of her words without her consent. They concurrently issued a vaguely worded statement citing “potential legal concerns,” which the claim argues are utterly unfounded.
In reality, it is claimed, this was a discriminatory, politically motivated decision to appease those offended by her truth-telling.
Two of the deletions described well-documented crimes committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians:
“…and in the 1980s and ’90s, Israeli soldiers had left booby-trapped toys in southern Lebanon that exploded when excited children picked them up”.
“…if Palestinians were systematically raping Jewish doctors, patients, and other captives with hot metal rods, jagged and electrified sticks, and fire extinguishers, sometimes raping to death, as happened with Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh and others”.
Israel’s use of rape as a weapon is now an established fact that the denialism of its lobby can’t hide. But it can try to delete mentions of it — and the OU capitulated.
First they came…
Martin Niemöller’s famous poem, First they came, notes how many people keep silent, or worse, collaborate with fascism when they are not its direct victims. The same goes for freedom of speech, particularly when it is attacked by Israel and its enablers.
The OU is complaining now — rightly so. But its complaints are undermined by its own collusion with the same Israel lobby on Israel’s crimes in the Abulhawa case (and others).
It’s good that the OU has finally found its voice, but it comes after almost three years of genocide. There must be an end to capitulations by establishment groups and politicians while there are still Palestinian people to defend.
Featured image via Rich Polk/Getty Images for Politicon and Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Streamer Awards
By Skwawkbox
Coming in at over 1,500 pages, there’s no doubting the volume of the Mandelson Files, dumped on the public to no great excitement on Monday. Their significance is rather less clear.
They certainly haven’t lived up to their billing. In February, when Tory leader Kemi Badenoch originally used a ‘humble address’ to compel the government to release all documentation relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US, the objective was clear enough – to establish what ministers and officials knew about Mandelson’s links to the Big Nonce Jeffrey Epstein, as well as any other security concerns and potential conflicts of interest that were raised during his appointment. The files published on Monday singularly fail to do any of that.
We have pages and pages of private emails and WhatsApp messages. A lot of sound and even a little fury. But the objective of the original humble address – to establish what Labour higher-ups knew about the risks of appointing Mandelson, from ‘his links to Jeffrey Epstein’ to his connections in Russia and China – remains thwarted.
This is not a surprise. The Metropolitan Police had already requested that both a nine-page summary document compiled by UK Security Vetting (UKSV), as well as messages between Keir Starmer’s then chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and Mandelson over his links to Epstein, be held back. The intelligence and security committee had also insisted on redacting any information ‘prejudicial to UK national security or international relations’. Plus, the messages of some ministers and officials have simply disappeared thanks to changing devices, deletion and the convenient misfortune of having their phones nicked.
The result is a mass of partial, liberally Tippexed correspondence, circling a void where the actual substance of the humble address ought to be. ‘It is going to take a while for the most interesting material to appear’, reported the Guardian’s live feed, which was perhaps a tad optimistic.
Yet while the files cast a redacted darkness over the appointment of Mandelson, they do shed a relentlessly gossipy light on this most ineffectual and purposeless of governments. That’s largely thanks to Mandelson himself. While no Dorothy Parker, old snidey Pete is ever ready with a withering aside on Starmer and his nominal top team.
Writing in May last year to Pat McFadden, his old New Labour mucker and current secretary of state for work and pensions, Mandelson took aim at Starmer’s then year-old administration. He charged him with not ‘leading from the front’, and complained that Starmer ‘lacks verve as does the cabinet as a whole’. Citing McSweeney himself, Mandelson goes on to say that Starmer, who at that point was constantly u-turning on policies and apologising for speeches, engages in the same cycle, ‘advance / buckle / advance / buckle’. A few weeks later he told McFadden that No10 was ‘beleaguered and bereft’.
He’s equally scathing about other members of the cabinet. Of chancellor Rachel Reeves, he tells McFadden that she’s ‘on a growth mission but without an argument about where the growth will come from or how’. They both slam Ed Miliband’s Net Zero zealotry in pretty unequivocal terms and even complain about former health secretary and Mandelson confidante Wes Streeting. After McFadden complains about Streeting circulating videos of and notes on Israel’s war in Gaza in an attempt to turn the cabinet against the Jewish State, Mandelson quips: ‘It is pathetic. I think Wes is experiencing an early midlife crisis.’
The most cutting and revealing comment arguably comes from McFadden himself. Writing at the time as Cabinet Office minister, he bemoans the reflexive, unthinking recourse to welfarism of his Labour colleagues: ‘Every meeting I have is “who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others”. They’re asking the wrong questions.’
None of this is revelatory, of course. It is just more confirmation that this government really is as woeful and clueless as we all suspected. There’s no guiding principle, no economic vision, no leadership. And in the absence of any real answers to the profound challenges we face, Labourites are content offering little more than a future of growing welfare dependency, green platitudes and self-aggrandising poses on Israel.
A No10 spokesperson described the publication of the Mandy Files yesterday as ‘an unprecedented piece of government transparency’. That’s far from the truth, of course. This was a performance of transparency, a carefully choreographed act of selective disclosure designed to conceal rather than reveal the machinations behind Mandelson’s appointment. But the gossipy morass left behind has nevertheless opened something of a window on this government. And the view is very dismal indeed.
In every way, the Mandy Files are an indictment of Starmer’s wretched government.
Tim Black is associated editor of spiked.
Four years after Qatar became the first Arab country to host the World Cup, they return to football’s biggest stage with unfinished business.
As hosts in 2022, Qatar’s national team — Al Annabi — struggled under the spotlight, losing all three group matches and finishing without a point. The campaign contrasted sharply with Qatar’s recent dominance in Asia, making the early exit harder to swallow. Questions quickly followed — did Qatar buckle under the pressure, or was it simply not ready to face the world’s top teams?
The 2026 World Cup could finally settle the question.
Qatar: A team in flux
Many of the players who shaped Qatar’s rise remain at the heart of the squad.
Akram Afif continues to drive the team, capable of moments that can swing a game. Almoez Ali and Hassan Al-Haydos bring hard-won experience that few Asian sides can rival.
More intriguing is the rise of a new generation. Young players bring pace, energy, and versatility—especially in midfield and on the flanks—giving Qatar a sharper edge than four years ago.
The challenge, however, remains the same. Against top-level opposition, Qatar must cope with a faster game, quicker decision-making, and a level of physical intensity rarely seen in Asian competition.
Quick feet
One of Qatar’s biggest strengths is its tactical flexibility. The team used to rely mainly on keeping the ball and building patiently from the back, but now it can adapt depending on the game. Qatar can sit deep and defend in numbers, break quickly on the counterattack, or press higher up the pitch when needed.
Akram Afif remains the creative spark, finding space to make things happen and driving the attack. Around him, the team can adjust its formation or approach depending on the opponent, giving the coach more options. In a World Cup, where a single moment can change everything, that flexibility could prove crucial.
Where is counts
Qatar’s group presents an opportunity rather than an impossible task. Switzerland will offer an immediate measure of where the team stands, while the clash with Canada could prove decisive in the race to reach the knockout rounds.
Reaching the last 16 would mark real progress and a clear step forward from 2022. Anything beyond that would be a significant achievement.
But this tournament is about more than results. Qatar has already shown it can host the biggest event in world football. Now it must prove that the team has a place at this level.
For Al Annabi, 2026 is a chance not just to compete, but to redeem itself after 2022
Featured image via Dan Mullan / Getty Images
By Alaa Shamali
France has banned Israeli government officials from the Eurosatory arms exhibition in Paris. It will not allow Israel to host a national pavilion, and will only permit private Israeli defence companies to display “air-defense products”.
France’s defence ministry imposed a similar ban in 2024 over its genocide in Gaza. It said that Israeli companies would be limited to showing.
equipment and materials related to air defence and missile defence.
According to Reuters, over 2,600 exhibitors are expected to take part in this year’s event, which begins on June 15.
Of course, the Israeli government called it a “disgraceful decision”, claimed it was part of a “deeply troubling pattern”, and said that France was on the wrong side of history.
Because opposing genocide and murder is apparently being on the wrong side of history.
In response to the Israeli defence ministry statement, Charles Beaudouin, president of COGES Events, said:
Only Israeli exhibitors presenting anti-ballistic and anti-air defence systems are authorised.
This is a decision by the French government, by the Defence Council
There is no room for ambiguity: if an exhibitor is also a rocket manufacturer, they will not be allowed to display them. This ensures that no offensive weapons are present.
What ceasefire?
On Sunday, May 31, France strongly condemned Israel’s illegal seizure of the medieval Beaufort castle in Lebanon and requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting.
Jerome Bonnafont, France’s ambassador to the UN, warned the Council that Israel’s expanding illegal invasion and attacks in Lebanon risked becoming a “major strategic mistake”. He urged all parties to “recommit” to the “fragile ceasefire agreement”. Of course, using the word ‘ceasefire’ at this point is ridiculous.
Essentially, it means Iran and Hezbollah have to stop firing at Israel, but Israel can continue doing whatever it wants.
France – Israel
France was one of the first countries to recognise ‘Israel’ and establish diplomatic relations with the settler-colonial state. It has promoted a two-state solution, but it has also condemned the building of illegal settlements in the West Bank and called on Israel to comply with international law.
Over the last few years, France has slowly become more vocal in its condemnation of Israel’s actions.
In September 2025, France recognised Palestinian statehood. Israel retaliated by cutting French defence contracts, and now, France has banned Israel from Eurosatory.
France also banned Israel from the naval arms show, Euronaval, in 2024. Then, in 2025, it covered up Israeli displays at the Paris Air Show. The French government made the show’s organisers hide the booths with black panels after the Israeli defence ministry ignored the ban on Israeli offensive military equipment at the show.
According to Politico, only four of nine Israeli exhibitors complied with the rules. The companies that ignored them were Elbit, Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael, UVision, and Aeronautics. French officials said:
they will be able to exhibit once they respect the rules.
Both the Israeli government and private Israeli arms companies have shown time and time again that they cannot respect the rules. Whether it’s arms shows or international law. Yet they still want to play the eternal victim.
It says a lot when the organisations that literally profit from war, bombing and destruction are banning a genocidal settler-colony from an arms expo.
Wait for the claims that the arms expo booth was promised to them 3,000 years ago in 3,2,1…
Featured image via Kiran Ridley/Getty Images
By HG
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