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Former neo-Nazi Joshua Bonehill-Paine has withdrawn as a Tory candidate for the 2027 council elections in Somerset. Far-right candidate are hardly a rarity in UK politics these days. However, reports claim he has now been given an internal Conservative Party role educating people about extremism.

Another Tory misstep

Bonehill-Paine was convicted in 2016 for harassing former Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger.

The Guardian reported on 5 August:

Joshua Bonehill-Paine said on Wednesday that he had withdrawn from next year’s local elections, and that the Conservative leader had instead asked him to become an adviser to the party’s culture and integration commission, where he will specifically focus on how young men become radicalised.

The outlet added:

Badenoch, who has come under pressure in the last 48 hours from individuals and organisations including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said she was “sad” that Bonehill-Paine felt he “won’t be given the space to explain his position and represent his community”.

Berger, who is now a baroness in the House of Lords, condemned the move on X:

The decision to welcome this individual as an adviser to the Leader of the Opposition is no better than allowing him to stand as a council candidate. It is a privileged and influential national role. As a victim of this man’s heinous crimes this appointment is an insult.

— Luciana Berger (@lucianaberger) August 5, 2026

The Guardian said:

Both the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) had turned down the Tory party’s offer of a meeting with the former neo-Nazi, who previously described himself as a “nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights” and re-emerged in recent years as the creator of the Crewkerne Gazette, a satirical online account.

A ‘formidable record’ of hate offences

The BBC reported that Bonehill-Paine’s new role:

would focus on advising on how to prevent young men from being radicalised.

According to the corporation, Bonehill-Paine spent:

three years in prison after he was jailed in 2015 for posting antisemitic material ahead of a planned neo-Nazi rally.

The report added:

He was convicted of racially harassing then-Labour MP Berger the following year.

During sentencing in the 2016 case, Justice Spencer said Bonehill-Paine had enacted:

a cruel campaign of vile racist abuse on the Internet against a Jewish Labour Member of Parliament, Luciana Berger, simply because she is Jewish.

At the age of only 24 you have amassed a formidable record of offences of hate crime using the Internet.

Meanwhile Badenoch tried to spin the story in her favour, saying it was important to engage with reformed fascists:

If we are going to stop extremism and antisemitism, we are going to need help from those people who were part of the problem, but have now changed and are being part of the solution.

A former neo-Nazi seems like an odd choice for a candidate a political party led by a British-Nigerian woman. Or it may be that UK politics is at this stage so decayed and unhinged that we should stop being surprised by these sorts of events.

Either way, Bonehill-Paine has still ended up with an influential job in the Tory party. Just not quite the one he was after…

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

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The past week has been a rollercoaster for trans rights in the UK. On Friday 31 July, the High Court rejected a legal challenge to the upcoming trial of puberty-blocking medication. That same day, the court also ruled that police don’t have to perform strip searches based on ‘biological sex’.

On 5 August, the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) new transphobic code of practice came into effect. It holds that a trans-inclusive women’s service is “very likely” to be discriminatory on the basis of sex. However, just one day later, the Good Law Project (GLP) has supported a legal challenge against the code.

Puberty blocker trial challenge fails

In spite of the fact that the (already ludicrously transphobic) Cass Review recommended the upcoming Pathways puberty blocker trial for trans youth medicine, transphobes have nevertheless been up in arms against it. Most recently, as GLP explained:

The controversial Bayswater Support Group have teamed up with claimants including Keira Bell, whose legal challenge to young trans healthcare in 2020 was overturned on appeal, following an intervention by Good Law Project. In a case funded by a group with links to the far right, they are asking the High Court for permission to challenge the NHS Pathways trial.

The claimants tried to argue that the medication – widely used throughout the world as part of routine trans care – posed a risk to children. As such, they held that the trial was unlawful.

Instead, Bayswater and its supporters suggested that the puberty blockers be tested on adults. This was, of course, patently ridiculous given that the adults would already have gone through puberty.

On 27 July, GLP announced that both it and trans-led charity Gendered Intelligence would oppose Bayswater’s challenge in court, if necessary. Fortunately, however, a legal battle won’t be necessary in this case. On 31 July, GLP reported:

The court held that the trial was “commissioned by NHS England with conspicuous care”, that the MHRA, the medicines regulator, undertook a “rigorous process” before approving it, and that each child involved in the trial will have been assessed for many months by specialist doctors as likely to receive direct benefit from the treatment.

The judge also noted that the court must be “very cautious” about interfering with medical regulatory decisions.

Gendered Intelligence stated that it was:

glad to hear that clinical trials of safe, effective gender care will be able to continue without interference. We should always put our young people first, and always put healthcare before politics

High Court strip-search ruling

On the same day, 31 July, the High Court also threw out a legal challenge against police strip-search guidance. The challenge, issued by anti-trans pressure group Sex Matters, argued that trans people should always be strip searched by an officer of the trans individual’s sex-assigned-at-birth.

Previous guidance held that officers matching a trans detainee’s gender should perform strip-searches, provided the detainee holds a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). However, following the 2025 Supreme Court ruling invalidating trans people’s gender under the Equality Act, the government issued new guidance.

The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (known as PACE) governs police powers to perform strip searches. Notably, PACE requires that an officer of the same sex as the detainee performs the search.

While the Supreme Court seemingly invalidated trans people’s right to be treated as a member of their assumed sex — i.e. the purpose of a GRC – the newest guidance argued that:

when requested, a strip search of a trans woman should be conducted by a female police officer. But there’s a significant limitation – both the trans detainee and the police officer have to consent to the search.

One might think that this is fairly straightforward. If a trans person requests an officer of their gender, and the officer is fine with it, this is a non-issue. However, Sex Matters objected, as the GLP explained:

They argued that the guidance creates a “shadow regime” attempting to “contract out” of the PACE framework, as established by the legislature.

Justice Lindon, the presiding judge, rejected the campaign group’s premise. He stated that PACE doesn’t forbid consensual searches outside of the statutory requirement, and voiced doubt that PACE was intended to protect officers rather than detainees. Moreover, he added that:

the effect of the ability to consent to a search by a person of the opposite biological sex is to mitigate the distress which the detained transgender person may feel, rather than to increase it

Anti-trans EHRC code challenged

However, the enactment of the EHRC’s new transphobic code of practice on 5 August overshadowed these two relatively-minor legal victories.

Though the code doesn’t carry legal weight in itself, instead offering an interpretation of equalities law, it encourages a nationwide bathroom ban against trans people, and their wholesale exclusion from single-sex services aligned with their lived gender.

As such, Leigh Day solicitors and GLP are supporting a legal challenge against the guidance. The claimants are currently anonymous, though GLP described them as a “trans person and a trans-inclusive organisation”.

Together, they will argue that the EHRC has fundamentally misunderstood the law, and that its code violates human rights. As an opening salvo, Leigh Day has sent a pre-action letter to both the EHRC and government setting out their argument.

GLP explained that:

Trans-inclusive women’s organisations […] are now faced with a stark choice:

1. Ban trans women entirely.
2. Stop being a women’s service, and open up to all men.

This blanket instruction puts inclusive organisations in an impossible position. […] The guidance lacks nuance, ignores context and pays no attention to the ways women want to run their own spaces and services.

Jess O’Thomson, GLP’s trans rights lead, added that:

This Labour government pushed through its transphobic guidance in the face of opposition from many MPs, including nearly a hundred of its own backbenchers. It’s not just immensely harmful. We think it’s unlawful, and completely against human rights. So this challenge is absolutely essential.

The Canary will report on the legal argument behind the challenge in more detail tomorrow. For now, however, it’s gratifying to see that neither trans people nor their allies have given up the fight just yet — no matter the forces arrayed against them.

Featured image via the Canary

By Grace

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The former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has warned the big tech firms are winning in the battle over regulation (Alamy)

3 min read7 min

Major tech companies are “winning in a big way” against efforts to make the internet safer for women and children, according to former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips.

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Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, said that during her time in government, parts of Whitehall, including No 10, were reluctant to take action for fear of retaliation by tech giants and the Donald Trump administration.

Speaking on the latest episode of PoliticsHome podcast The Rundown, which will be published on Friday (7 August), Phillips said: “We are too beholden currently in the world to basically five unelected people.”

The Labour MP resigned as a Home Office minister in May, accusing the Keir Starmer administration of not working hard enough to protect women and girls online. Phillips said Starmer was a “decent man” but his reluctance to “have an argument” meant that steps to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG) were “stalled and delayed”.

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In her resignation letter to the then-prime minister, Phillips said that “91 per cent of online child sex abuse is self-generated by children groomed, tricked and exploited into abuse”, and that Google and Apple, the two companies that control the operating systems on almost all smartphones, could quickly and easily install software that would stop them being used by children to take and receive naked pictures.

In June, Starmer gave tech firms a September deadline to make this change, warning that the government would give itself the powers to fine or take criminal action against those that did not comply.

Phillips wants new Prime Minister Andy Burnham to hold them to this, telling the podcast that, as things stand, “tech companies are winning in a big, big way”.

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The former minister said there was a divide within Whitehall about how to tackle online safety when she was in government. She described the Home Office as being “hawkish as hell about tech companies”, while No 10 and the now-abolished Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) were nervous about being too aggressive.

Phillips recalled “the sense that tech companies and the US would hold us to ransom on all sorts of different things”, adding: “I’ve had it directly said to my face, ‘well, look, they’ll just put trade levies on us if you try and do anything with tech companies’.”

She said Starmer “was always on my side in conversations”, but that she “just started to feel like I was going slowly mad” waiting for the machinery of government to make it happen.

“If you could hear some of the conversations I had to have with people. There are some people who genuinely just think that people taking dick pics is a human right,” Phillips said. 

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“I had to say to somebody once: ‘You know, you won’t die. It’s not water or shelter’.”

Phillips expressed concern that the government’s Online Safety Act is “woeful for women” in its current form and “20 years behind” where it needs to be to tackle evolving online harms.

“As somebody who was seeking to put down lots of amendments to the Online Safety Act while it was passing through, I’ve never known aggressive lobbying like it,” said the Labour MP. “Every single law firm in the whole of London was basically on retainer to one of the big tech companies so that they couldn’t work for anyone else. That is just anti-democratic.”

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The Rundown is presented by Alain Tolhurst, and is produced and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

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• Click here to listen to the latest episode of The Rundown, or search for ‘PoliticsHome’ wherever you get your podcasts.

 

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A December 2024 report from Unipol and HEPI confirmed something students already knew but universities were slow to acknowledge: the maximum student loan in England is now less than the average student rent. You read that right. The government’s own financial support package doesn’t cover your highest single cost.

That reality is changing how students choose universities. And if you’re currently deciding where to study, it should change how you think about it too.

The Numbers That Are Actually Driving the Decision

Student rents in university-owned accommodation rose an average of 12% across UK cities between 2021/22 and 2023/24, with private housing used by universities rising 13% over the same period. Those aren’t anomalies. They’re a consistent trend that hasn’t reversed.

London now averages around £13,600 per year for student accommodation alone, according to HESA data from 2024. Split across twelve months, that’s over £1,133 a month on rent before you’ve bought a single meal or paid a transport fare.

And the supply side isn’t catching up. Purpose-built student accommodation in prime locations consistently exceeds 97% occupancy, with many properties in high-demand cities fully booked by spring, months before the September intake. If you’re applying to a London university and you haven’t started your housing search by February, you’re already late.

How Students Are Voting With Their Feet

Here’s the shift that’s happening quietly but clearly. Students are increasingly factoring total cost of living into university choice, not just league table position or course quality.

One in two students reported fears about the student housing shortage in the 2024 National Student Accommodation Survey by Save the Student. That’s not a niche concern. That’s half of all students actively worried about where they’ll live, which is exactly the kind of anxiety that influences where prospective students decide to apply in the first place.

The result is growing interest in regional universities in cities where housing costs are significantly lower. Lincoln, Bolton, and Cardiff consistently appear in affordability comparisons precisely because their total student cost of living sits well below London, Manchester, or Bristol. The degree at the end looks the same on a CV. The debt at the end does not.

The London Premium Is Real and Worth Calculating

Total monthly costs in London run £300 to £500 higher than in most other UK cities, driven by rent that sits 30 to 60% above the national student average, higher transport costs, and higher general spending.

Over three years, that premium compounds to between £10,800 and £18,000 in additional living costs compared to studying somewhere like Sheffield or Nottingham. For many students, that’s the difference between graduating with manageable debt and graduating with debt that follows them for a decade.

The counterintuitive truth: choosing a lower-ranked university in a cheaper city often produces better financial outcomes than choosing a higher-ranked one in London, especially if you’re in a field where the degree classification matters more than the institution name. Law and medicine are exceptions. Most humanities, social sciences, and business degrees are not.

What This Means If You’re Set on London

London’s universities aren’t going to get cheaper. The demand is too high and the housing supply too constrained for that to change in any timeframe relevant to your degree.

So if London is where your course, your career, or your personal circumstances require you to be, the decision isn’t whether to accept the cost. It’s how to manage it as intelligently as possible.

Student apartments in London vary more than most students realise before they start searching. Zone 2 and Zone 3 locations with good Tube access can run £150 to £250 per month cheaper than equivalent rooms in Zone 1, with commutes that add fifteen to twenty minutes to your journey. For most students, that trade-off makes financial sense across a full academic year.

Bills-included accommodation is worth prioritising in London specifically. University halls and PBSA almost always include bills, while shared houses frequently don’t. In a city where energy costs are higher and winter bills spike, an unexpected £80 utility bill on top of already stretched rent is the kind of thing that tips students into arrears. 10% of students were in rent arrears at the time of the Save the Student 2026 survey, up from 7% in 2025, with the average amount owed sitting at £621.

Check amberstudent for verified student apartments in London across different zones and price points. Searching through a platform that lists bills-included options clearly saves you the maths of comparing headline rents that don’t include utilities, which makes genuine cost comparison significantly faster.

The Contract Length Problem Nobody Warns You About

This affects students in every UK city but hits hardest in London, where the base rent is already high.

Most private rental contracts run 51 to 52 weeks. Your academic year runs 38 to 40 weeks. The gap between those two numbers is weeks of rent you pay for a room you’re not living in. In London, at £1,100 per month, ten weeks of unused rent costs you £2,750.

University halls and most PBSA providers offer 40- to 44-week contracts aligned to the academic year. That alignment alone can save you more than the difference in weekly rent between accommodation types. Run the annual total, not the weekly headline, before you sign anything.

The One Comparison Most Students Don’t Make

Before you commit to a university and city, build a simple spreadsheet. Put the annual rent for realistic accommodation in each city you’re considering in one column. Add estimated transport costs. Add average food costs. Then subtract any scholarship or bursary income specific to that institution.

That number, the real annual cost of attending each university, tells you more than any open day ever will. Several institutions in northern England and the Midlands now actively market their lower total cost of attendance as a competitive advantage precisely because students are finally doing this comparison and choosing accordingly.

The universities know the housing crisis is reshaping their intake. Now you know it too, and you can use that information before you make a decision that affects your finances for years after graduation.

By Nathan Spears

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No one starts a relationship expecting it to end. When it does, the practical questions arrive fast. Who stays in the home. How the bills get paid. What happens with the children. What you are actually entitled to.

The answers depend far more on your legal status than most people expect, and the gap between what people assume and what the law provides causes real financial harm every year. Understanding where you stand early gives you a far better chance of a fair outcome. Speaking to Family Law Partners or another family law specialist at the outset can help you avoid decisions that are difficult to undo later.

This guide covers the position in England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate family law systems, and some of the rules below work differently there.

Your rights depend on your legal status

There is no such thing as a common law marriage. It does not exist in England and Wales and never has, no matter how long you have lived together, whether you have children, or whether you share a bank account.

This matters because married couples and civil partners have access to a broad set of financial claims when they separate. Cohabiting couples do not. Two people in outwardly identical situations can end up with completely different outcomes purely because one couple signed a marriage register and the other did not.

So the first question to answer is not what feels fair. It is what legal category you fall into.

If you are married or in a civil partnership

Since April 2022, England and Wales has operated a no-fault divorce system. Neither of you has to prove wrongdoing or blame the other. There is a minimum period of 20 weeks between applying and being able to apply for a conditional order, then a further 6 weeks and 1 day before the final order.

Separately from the divorce itself, you have the right to apply for a financial order. That can cover:

• The family home and any other property
• Savings, investments and business interests
• Pensions, including pension sharing orders
• Maintenance for you and for your children

The court works through a list of factors set out in the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, including the length of the marriage, each person’s income and earning capacity, contributions made to the family, and future needs. The welfare of any child under 18 comes first.

One point is routinely missed. Getting divorced does not, by itself, end your financial claims against each other. Without a financial order approved by the court, a claim can in principle be brought years later. If you want a clean break, it has to be documented properly.

If you are living together

Cohabiting couples are the fastest-growing family type in the UK, with more than 3.5 million cohabiting couple families. The law has not kept pace.

If you separate, you have no automatic right to a share of your partner’s property, savings, income or pension, regardless of how long you were together. What you may have instead:

• A property claim. If you contributed to a home held in your partner’s sole name, you may be able to establish a beneficial interest under the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996. These claims turn on evidence of what was agreed and what was paid, and they are harder and more expensive to run than a divorce financial claim.
• Claims for your children. Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989 allows a parent to seek financial provision for a child, which can include a lump sum or the use of a property until the child reaches adulthood. This is provision for the child, not for you.
• Child maintenance. Available through the Child Maintenance Service regardless of marital status.

If you are currently living together and not planning to marry, a cohabitation agreement or a declaration of trust recording who owns what is far cheaper than litigating the question later.

Your rights as a parent

Parental responsibility gives you a say in major decisions about your child, including schooling, medical treatment and where they live. Mothers have it automatically. Fathers have it if they were married to the mother, or if they are named on the birth certificate for a birth registered from 1 December 2003 onwards.

There is no legal presumption that children’s time should be split equally. The court’s guiding principle is the welfare of the child, and there is a separate presumption that involving both parents benefits the child unless there is a risk of harm.

Most parents never need a court. If you cannot agree, you will usually be required to attend a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting before you can apply for a child arrangements order. Exemptions apply, including where there has been domestic abuse.

Everything the original guidance says about protecting children still holds. Keep arguments away from them. Do not ask them to take sides. Hold routines, meals and school activities steady where you can. None of that is a legal right, but courts do look at which parent has supported the child’s relationship with the other.

The family home

If you are married or in a civil partnership and the home is in your partner’s sole name, you have home rights. You can occupy the property and you can register a notice against the title at HM Land Registry, which prevents a sale going through without your knowledge. This is worth doing early if you have any concern about it.

If you are not married, your position depends on whether you are on the title and, if not, whether you can establish a beneficial interest. Being on the mortgage, paying towards it or paying for renovations does not automatically give you ownership, though it can form part of the evidence.

Looking Ahead

The end of a relationship is difficult, but it does not have to leave you powerless. Find out which legal category you are in, get advice before you make irreversible decisions, and keep your paperwork in order. Every situation is different, and early advice usually costs far less than fixing a rushed agreement afterwards.

Disclaimer

This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. If you are facing separation or divorce, please seek advice from a qualified family law solicitor about your own circumstances.

By Nathan Spears

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