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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is lurching so far to the right that her friendship with Donald Trump and allied tech-bros may have cost her a key referendum.

Trump as “repellent”

In a referendum she called on judicial reforms, Italians vote 54% for the “No” campaign, while 46% supported the “Yes” vote Meloni backed.

The Conversation recently reported that any association with Trump now acts as a “repellent” for Italy’s political class. This doesn’t exclude the political right and is precisely the pathway that led to Meloni’s referendum defeat. The outlet also noted that Peter Thiel’s recent Rome visit sparked Catholic outcry, with Italians labelling Palantir CEO a heretic and an opponent of the Church doctrine. That didn’t go down well.

References to Trump now act as a repellent for the entire Italian political class, including the right. This factor played a role in the vote against the referendum, which is a major blow for Meloni. It is also worth noting that the visit of Palantir CEO Peter Thiel  to Rome in March 2026 sparked both calculated political indifference and an outcry among Catholic circles: Thiel was labelled a heretic and an opponent of the social doctrine of a religious institution that remains steadfast in its defence of democracy.

This marks a sharp contrast with the warm welcome Meloni reserved for Elon Musk until 2024.

The FT reported that while Meloni’s friends include MAGA ideologue Steve Bannon and Thiel’s PayPal co-founder and longtime friend Elon Musk, Pope Leo XIV has warned of the dangers of AI.

According to MSNBC, Thiel sold out Rome to preach that Western civilisation is crumbling. He piled the blame on “people who strive for peace, work for justice, and want to embrace diversity.”

Starmer needs to pay attention

Dr Igor Merheim-Eyre is a political strategist and advisor who has worked with conservatives across the transatlantic space. 

Having returned back to Blighty last year after ten years in Brussels, I’m increasingly shocked by the failures of Brexiteers to develop a positive vision for Britain as well as their readiness to avoid accountability by finding scapegoats.

Do not get me wrong, even in Brussels, I always sought to defend the democratic will of the British people, irrespective of how unpopular that opinion may have been or however many people it alienated. I wished nothing but a bright future for Britain as it was able to chart a new course outside the European Union. But it’s time to face an uncomfortable truth.

Attending a recent event with the Bruges Group, and reading posts, letters and columns of leading Brexiteers, I’m increasingly shocked by their failure to develop a positive vision of Britain.

Even worse, after winning an unexpected referendum victory in 2016, solidified with a historical General Elections win in 2019, they blew their chance at transforming Britain for the better, leaving it even more socially divided and economically weaker.

Lord Frost in a recent letter to the FT wrote that the current government’s efforts, instead of realigning with the EU, should be expended ‘on using the benefits of British national independence, while we still have it, to deregulate and improve the business environment here in the UK’. There’s little point at finger-pointing, but I had expected such government agenda from the Brexiteers, not from Labour. At least, to Lord Frost’s credit, he has been consistently critical of the Johnson Government’s delivery of post-Brexit ‘benefits’ such as net zero, overregulation, crippling taxation or the replacement of skilled nurses with Uber drivers.

The trouble is that Brexiteers had thirty years to develop a vision of Britain ‘the day after’ and they failed spectacularly. Moreover, where they spent thirty years blaming Britain’s ills on eurocrats in Brussels, they now found new scapegoats in the Whitehall bureaucracy. There is no self-reflection nor a long-term vision for Britain. There is only scapegoating and endless calls for an illusory ‘proper Brexit’ that would solve the country’s problems.

Ironically, in this, they are increasingly behaving like the euro-federalists they hate.

For euro-federalists, Europe’s problems can only be solved by a more Federal Europe: migration? More Europe; deindustrialisation? More Europe; housing crisis? More Europe. They never consider that some issues might be better solved at a national or regional level, let alone that they should be left up to individuals, civil society or markets. For euro-federalists, the failures lie with those who simply refuse to transfer an ever-growing list of competencies to Brussels and refuse the paradise of an ‘ever closer Union’; they engage in scapegoating on one hand, and conceptual day-dreaming on the other rather than securing borders or addressing economic woes.

I have studied European politics, taught European politics, worked with and in European institutions, which is why I find it curious to see that Brexiteers are, after all, increasingly behaving like euro-federalists. Perhaps, they even go further. Calling for a ‘proper Brexit’ after all those that have been tried and failed over the past decade, is reminiscent of those Marxists arguing that their ideology was never properly tried in practice and next time will be different.

I have bad news: it won’t.

The globalisation era of trade is over while the EU remains the UK’s largest trading partner by the very fact of geography. It’s also a fact that a bloc of 27 sets its own rules for trading with others, irrespective of whether we like it or not.

Lord Frost criticises the Labour government’s ‘reset’ with the EU as constituting ‘the partial re-entry to the EU’s single market…applying EU laws without any say in them, and paying for the privilege too.’ Well, yes. It should hardly come as a surprise to a man like Lord Frost who has spent considerable time in Brussels that, having left the EU, the UK is no longer able to influence key decisions.

Lord Cameron, for all his faults, already tried to explain in 2016 that the UK is too much of a large economy to be a norm-taker within a Customs Union. However, it is also not large enough to dictate to a simply larger bloc without being a full member.

Unfortunately, the Labour government is either naïve or disingenuous about this too. They cannot claim to be pursuing a membership of the EU’s single market while avoiding the freedom of movement. The EU’s four freedoms (of goods, services, capital and people) always go together, and the EU will insist on some form of free movement.

So, where does that leave Britain ten years after the Brexit referendum?

The UK now essentially has three choices: the status quo, joining the single market as a norm-taker and accepting the EU’s four freedoms, or return to full membership. This decision has to be made in a world that is once again moving towards protectionism and geopolitical blocs.

Brexiteers have proved that the status quo does not work, while a ‘proper Brexit’ is simply an illusion. They’ve had the chance to prove otherwise and they cannot hide behind Brussels or Whitehall. That leaves two other options, and I find it hard to believe that Britain, even under a Labour government lacking all ambition, would want to remain a simple norm-taker.

As for the third option, the conservative leaders of Germany and Italy are energetically pushing a new agenda that is reshaping the harmful net zero policies, cutting red tape and regaining control of external borders. Every step of the way they are proving the continued relevance of sovereign and confident states within the European Union. This will please neither Brexiteers nor euro-federalists.

Brexiteers have become like the euro-federalists they hate so much: dreaming of a fictional future without a vision for solving real-life problems, and quick to shift blame to avoid accountability. Perhaps, this should come as no surprise. Frost, Farage and Johnson are, after all, Brussels men.

Testimony given to the Undercover Policing Inquiry this week has provided further details of systematic targeting against anti-arms trade campaigners, including Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT).

On 23 March, the inquiry heard from CAAT’s media coordinator, Emily Apple. She testified to the impact of undercover police spying on CAAT and other anti-arms trade and environmentalist groups.

HN3, an undercover Met police officer operating under pseudonym ‘Jason Bishop’, had been “authorised” to target CAAT as an organisation, the inquiry heard. Among other groups Bishop targeted were Disarm DSEI and protests at the RAF Fairford base.

Bishop had even managed to become a signatory to the Disarm DSEI bank account, managed its PO Box, and had access to the organisation’s email address.

An internal police report on Bishop’s undercover activities dating to 2003 shows that the Met police’s motivation to target DSEI protesters was borne out of concern that the protests:

could influence the financial wellbeing of the State.

139 undercover officers under examination

The inquiry is examining how 139 undercover police officers working for the Met police’s Special Demonstration Squad / Special Duties Squad (SDS) spied on over a thousand anti-war and environmentalist groups between 1968 and at least 2010.

The inquiry twice refused core participant status to CAAT, despite SDS targeting it. When the inquiry initially began in 2015, it argued there was no substantive proof that the SDS had spied on CAAT.

The inquiry rejected CAAT’s second application in 2024 on the grounds that reports on CAAT were due to ‘collateral intrusion’ – meaning consequential invasion of a third party’s privacy – arising from spying on Apple.

However, in her testimony, Apple pointed to a report by SDS manager, HN49, who confirmed that HN3 (Bishop) had been:

authorised to target CAAT because the group was known to hold protests and demonstrations, which had the potential to result in serious public disorder.

CAAT was also the victim of systematic corporate spying by Martin Hogbin, who infiltrated the organisation from 1997-2003 and provided information to BAE Systems.

CAAT has asked the inquiry to investigate the relationship between its undercover officers and corporate spies, and whether any of the information reported by Hogbin to BAE Systems ended up with the Met / SDS, since Hogbin and Bishop (HN3) knew one another.

A spokesperson from CAAT said:

The latest revelations from the Undercover Policing Inquiry provide yet more sordid details of the Met’s systematic, invasive and manipulative spying on anti-arms trade and environmentalist campaigners.

It is now abundantly clear that Met police undercover officers were explicitly authorised to target CAAT, in brazen contempt for our right to protest and campaign against a corrupt and destructive arms trade. This revelation further calls into question the inquiry’s refusal to include CAAT as a core participant.

Given the established links between corporate spies like Hogbin, and police spies like Bishop (HN3), it is high time the inquiry corrected course and examined the links between corporate spies and undercover police.

At a time when the British state is at its most authoritarian and repressive towards anti-war and anti-genocide campaigners, a full accounting of all skeletons in the Met’s closet is a must.

Featured image via the Canary

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The mainstream media – led by the ever-toxic BBC – are frothing at the mouth over a disabled woman who ‘stole’ £23,000 in benefits, then was ‘caught’ zip-lining on holiday.

You can barely move for news stories about benefits. And no, I’m not talking about the news that Motability plan to restrict how far disabled people travel. Or that the DWP will be using AI to read responses to the PIP review. Or even that MPs are calling for another carers allowance inquiry

No, the story taking up so many column inches is that of a ‘benefit cheat’. or more accurately, a disabled woman who dared to live her life and go on holiday.

BBC rabid for ‘benefit cheat’

The BBC ‘reported’:

A woman who claimed more than £23,000 in benefits, saying she was too ill to go outside, was caught surfing and ziplining in Mexico.

Catherine Wieland, 33, claimed she suffered anxiety so crippling she was housebound but the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) found evidence of her surfing in Cancun and visiting Thorpe Park three times.

Wieland, from Goring-by-Sea, West Sussex, claimed tens of thousands of pounds in Personal Independence Payments (Pip) over more than two years, spending the money on manicures, tanning sessions and trips to a private Harley Street dentist.

Obviously, the BBC is a bin fire, but fuck me, they could at least pretend to be unbiased. This reads as if it came straight from The Sun, not the BBC.

And while the BBC article was disgusting, it set the tone for the rest of the media to be just as disgusting. There are so many stories spewing the same hatred that when you Google DWP and click the news tab, there’s a whole section dedicated to just this story.

At one point the BBC ‘news’ article even details exactly how many times Wieland treated herself:

While claiming her health was so poor she could not cook or wash herself, Wieland made 76 beauty appointments, visited 60 pubs, clubs and restaurants and spent money in foreign currencies.

Media turning public against benefit claimants

Unfortunately, this all makes sense when you consider that a YouGov survey found that just 11% of people think those on benefits should be able to afford beauty treatments. 27% said you should be able to afford to go out if you’re on benefits. In the same survey, 26% said people on benefits shouldn’t be able to afford to eat a balanced diet.

Most people on benefits have experienced being asked, ‘how can you afford that?’ when they buy themselves a treat. The implication is always ‘you shouldn’t be able to afford that’. And that’s a direct effect of stories like this, where the media are screaming about how benefit cheats are ‘stealing’ taxpayers hard earned cash.

It’s also not just the media finding these stories coincidentally. As the Canary’s Hannah Sharland reported, the DWP plants benefit fraud propaganda when they need to turn the public against disabled people

It’s absolutely no coincidence that this is happening whilst the government is trying their hardest to cut disability benefits. The fact that Wieland’s anxiety was highlighted plays nicely into the DWP trying to tighten the criteria for PIP and exclude mental health conditions.

It’s also coincidentally at the same time that they’re still trying to find a way to cut the LCWRA element of Universal Credit and move it to PIP. Meaning many will be forced to work despite being too unwell to.

Disabled people should be allowed to live

This absolutely rabid coverage from the media shows just how willingly our papers are prepared to throw disabled people under the bus if it means they’ll make more money. But more than anything, it shows that society has been so turned against disabled people that it’ll only be happy if we’re all miserable and destitute.

Disabled people deserve to live full lives, without fear that our benefits will be cut for daring to enjoy ourselves. But until the media stops working for the DWP and turning the public against us, they’ll keep us afraid. And that’s exactly where the DWP wants us so we don’t attempt to fight their cruel cuts.

Featured image via the Canary

‘The Tasters’ | Image by: Luca Zontini /Busch Media

3 min read1 hr

As our TV screens fill with images of war, it was perhaps not the right time for me personally to preview The Tasters. Though ostensibly telling the story of seven young East Prussian women coerced into being food tasters for Adolf Hitler in 1943, it is actually a tense portrayal of the cost of war for both its victims and its perpetrators.

At one level, it’s a moving tale of love, hurt, betrayal and loss in a small, deprived landscape where the toll of war on ordinary family members is achingly deep.

On another, it’s about friendship and courage surviving amid coercion, suspicion and fear. Reminiscent of the plight of the ‘comfort women’ of Japan, these seven local women are conscripted into sampling all of the food on Hitler’s vegetarian-only menu before he eats it, to ensure he’s not poisoned. This all happens in a cauldron of supressed violence. The women begin to rely on and support each other, sharing risks and hidden secrets.

The tension holds throughout, with longing for missing husbands, food and normality, and with distrust and threat lurking in every scene

The film draws on Italian author Rosella Postorino’s 2018 novel At the Wolf’s Table – a fictionalised account based on the (unsubstantiated) claims of the late Margot Wölk – the veracity of which have been questioned by some German historians. It tells the story a group of women kept at the ‘Wolf’s Lair’ (Hitler’s Eastern Front headquarters), only one of whom survives the war to tell the tale.

Their story is the frame on which the Italian director Silvio Soldini tells a wider story of the struggles endured by German women as their men fight for their country. They are daughters, mothers, sisters and widows. On the one hand they represent the universal plight of women in a conflict in which they’ve had little say in its beginning, its end or how it unfolds; on the other, the film also touches on the moral ambiguity of when the struggle to survive becomes complicity.

This German language film is an Italian, Belgian and Swiss co-production, starring the scene-stealing, entrancing Elisa Schlott, with fellow German actor Max Riemelt playing the troubled SS lieutenant Albert Ziegler. The pair form an unlikely and risky alliance.

It doesn’t make for easy viewing as the tension holds throughout, with longing for missing husbands, food and normality, and with distrust and threat lurking in every scene. Its somewhat languid, sombre, atmospheric cinematography and taut dialogue are also engaging and slightly hypnotic. 

Whilst the film is a jarring personal reminder that these events took place only a short time before I was born (in Germany as it happens), it is reassuring to acknowledge that for all the awfulness of the events portrayed, Germany is now a thriving democracy, a strong ally of Britain, and a country realistic about the traumas of conflict but also the harms which can necessitate intervention. But don’t watch by yourself late at night as I did…

Baroness Hayter is a Labour peer

The Tasters

Directed by: Silvio Soldini

Venue: Selected cinemas