Politics
The King in the North will not save us
Is the King of the North about to become Prime Minister? Maybe. Will he lead us out of the valley of darkness and into the promised land of milk and honey? I can’t see it.
Full disclosure: I know Andy well. He’s genuinely a nice bloke, and he’s a competent administrator. He is by far the best person to lead the Labour Party from amongst the contenders. And that’s the problem. 411 Labour MPs were returned at the General Election. And they’re having to bring back the king over the water to topple Starmer.
Can there really be no-one amongst the 400 who can deliver social, economic and environmental justice?
A broken party machine
In Majority‘s group chat, I proposed a thought experiment. Imagine I somehow became Labour leader tomorrow. Would I be able to deliver a democratic socialist programme? The overwhelming response was no. John McDonnell or Clive Lewis would fare no better.
The donors, the directorate, the corporate lobbyists who are now Labour MPs, would not allow it. They got a nosebleed when Jeremy Corbyn proposed ending tuition fees.
That was before the Starmer-McSweeney purges. What chance is there for grassroots socialists to organise inside the Labour Party to get socialists selected for Parliament? Or Metro Mayors? Would Andy reverse the expulsions? Change the rules so the NEC can’t block or impose candidates on a factional basis? Neoliberalism is embedded too deeply inside Labour.
Which raises the question: will an Andy Burnham-led Labour government, with minister Wes Streeting, tax wealth and not work? Reverse NHS privatisation? Support the prosecution of Israel for genocide? Reintroduce sectoral collective bargaining? Create a publicly owned zero-carbon energy system? Break up the investment banks from the retail banks? End – not mitigate – child poverty? Will he choose to take on the billionaires? Make Meta, Twitter and TikTok responsible for their content? Implement the Leveson recommendations?
If not, it’s tinkering around the edges with better comms and a more charismatic front man.
Public control or public ownership?
Andy brought the buses under public control in Manchester. Note: control, not ownership. It was the Cameron government that brought in the 2017 Bus Services Act that enables franchising. It’s better than unregulated buses, for sure. But like rail nationalisation, the establishment are happy for rundown, unprofitable sectors to be taxpayer funded on risk-free contracts.
In his recent interview, he said he wanted water and energy under public control. Good. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say he meant public ownership. But what route to public ownership of water? Bail out the shareholders, hand over £100 billion, and make the state take on the debts? Or do it without compensation – strict enforcement of Ofwat standards, force the share price to zero, and use the legal powers to hive off the assets into a debt-free public company?
After all, nationalisation is not always progressive. The National Coal Board was publicly owned throughout the miners’ strike.
An alternative to neoliberalism
I hear people say that stopping Reform is all that matters, and the Greens should stand aside. I have no problem being pragmatic. I worked cross-party for the good of the people of the North East. I worked closely with Andy on transport, devolution and standing up for the North during Covid. He was one of the few Labour politicians who publicly stood by me when the NEC stitched me up. On a personal level, I’d be delighted for him if he becomes Prime Minster.
I don’t believe a Reform government is nailed on in 2029. They’ve have passed their high water mark, and are losing vote share. Personal scandals, bringing in Tories, and incompetence in local government is accumulating. Restore UK is likely to split their vote, too.
Trying to game the electoral system does not cut it for me. The problem’s not Andy. It’s Labour. A party that still has illegal war-starter Tony Blair as a member. Labour Together has not gone – it has simply been rebranded Think Labour.
What is needed is a credible alternative to neoliberalism. The Greens are not there quite yet, at least in the eyes of the public. But they are the closest we’ve got. And they’re winning.
The Green Party
My preferred option is the Green Party become more professional, more serious. Let’s fight and win on the economic arguments. That taxing wealth instead of work would increase public investment. Reversing wealth extraction from utility owners and private equity funds will lower bills. Making the case loud and clear that keeping kids in poverty and adults too ill to work is both a moral and an economic failure. That’s the direction of travel, and it’s starting to work. It’s where I’ll be putting my energies over coming months.
I’ve seen deep inside the Labour Party. There is no one in that cabinet who has any intention of challenging neoliberalism. Half of them are bought and paid for.
Labour MPs are saying the quiet part out loud. It’s not Starmer’s policies. It’s their poll ratings. They voted through Winter Fuel cuts. Voted to arrest peaceful anti-genocide protestors as terrorists. They only acted when their jobs were on the line. Keep out Reform? They’ve aped Reform!
We must abandon the mythology. Andy is not the King of the North who stands between us and the horde of white walkers. He’s one man operating within the confines of a hostile system. There’s no doubt he’s preferable to Starmer or Streeting. But limping centrism on life support is not enough. It’s time to run Britain in the interests of the people who do the work.
Featured image via the Canary
Today, the question of the state in Lebanon is raised not merely as a crisis of governance or a systemic malfunction, but as an existential dilemma striking at its foundation and the components of its sovereignty.
In classical political literature – specifically as established by the German sociologist Max Weber, in his famous essay “Politics as a Vocation” – the state is defined as that entity which holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a specified geographical territory.
However, this definition, despite its procedural importance, falls short of describing the modern state in its institutional essence, which is supposed to rest upon three structural pillars:
- a rational bureaucracy that manages societal affairs through abstract laws immune to personal whims;
- international recognition that grants it a seat and legitimacy at the United Nations; and
- a social contract representing the dialectical relationship between authority and citizens, whereby protection and services are bartered for loyalty and fiscal commitment.
The bureaucracy of quotas and the fracture of the social contract
Yet, projecting these pillars onto the Lebanese case reveals a profound structural distortion, manufactured with deliberate intent.
Bureaucracy in Lebanon, though superficially resembling an administrative apparatus, is realistically incapable of managing the affairs of society, stripped as it is of its rational character and entirely subjugated to sectarian quotas, confessional balances, regional divisions, and vested interests. It is a “bureaucracy of self-interest”, established by colonialism to serve its purposes and ensure the state remains beholden to non-national power centres.
As for international recognition, in the Lebanese case it is nothing more than a reflection of the domestic state’s image on the global stage. If the state is inherently subservient to colonial will from its inception, its representation in international forums will merely mirror the interests of those foreign powers under fraudulent sovereign labels.
Regarding the social contract, the subordination of authority to colonial will renders its detachment from the aspirations of its citizens inevitable. Here, the state automatically transforms from a custodian of rights into an instrument of coercion and popular suppression, driving the populace to follow the external dictates of major powers. How can the concept of “civic belonging” hold true in exchange for services and taxation when colonialism grips the vital arteries of this state – economically, socially, financially, and politically?
This structural contradiction explains the state of “identity schizophrenia” that has accompanied Lebanon since its founding, where the individual seeks security within their sect rather than their state.
The wound of the Upper Galilee and the legitimacy of self-defence
The deepest legacy left by the demarcation of borders in the “Sykes-Picot” agreement is the bleeding wound in the Upper Galilee, which represents the pinnacle of social and geographical tragedy.
The colonial partition in that region left a social fracture in the purest sense, exposing its inhabitants to killing, pillage, and continuous aggression ever since the establishment of the occupying entity in Palestine in 1948. Despite their repeated appeals to the state – which is supposedly responsible for their protection – the permanent response was ignorance and neglect, at times even escalating to implicit or actual complicity in targeting the people of Southern Lebanon.
Because “survival follows existence”, the people of the Upper Galilee were forced to assume the responsibility of defending themselves, their land, and their property, in light of this deliberate absence of the state. Meanwhile, the authorities practiced the ugliest forms of sectarianism, referencing them as “Metwalis” and other derogatory terms to justify their neglect, while the sectarian representatives in power – appointed by colonialism – plotted the schemes that brought the country to its current state of dependency and collapse.
The politicisation of resistance and the trap of consociationalism
At that time, Lebanon was not split along sectarian lines with the intensity we witness today. Resisters from various sects participated in confronting the occupation, driven by a popular and national authenticity that had not yet been completely corrupted.
This was also due to the presence of regional powers that formed a certain balance against the colonial project. However, through a combination of the decline of anti-colonial regimes, society’s preoccupation with engineered economic crises, and diligent efforts to dismantle national bonds and replace them with wars and strife, the matter culminated in the resistance being confined entirely to the Shia component as a translation of this complex reality.
Although many resisters might argue they were preoccupied with existential defence against the colonial entity to the south, this defence occasionally caused them to overlook the other dimension of the colonial war being waged against them “from behind”, via the formation of an authority working to isolate and eliminate them politically. Indeed, it can be argued that engagement in the sectarian quota system and so-called “consociational democracy” facilitated internal colonial action.
This system solidifies policies dictated from abroad and entrenches the authority of sectarian leaders as agents of major interests, ultimately serving as a counter-veto against any genuine national sovereignty.
The Strait of Hormuz and the fall of petrodollar hegemony
This structural failure leads us to the necessity of linking the local crisis to the major shifts in the international balance of power.
The functional Lebanese state derives its false stability from the dominance of the “imperial system” built upon the power of the petrodollar. From here emerges the strategic blow delivered by the Axis of Resistance today as a catalyst for radical change.
For example, Iran’s ability to impose new equations in the Strait of Hormuz (coupled with the capabilities of resistance forces in other theatres) represents not merely control over a waterway, but a process of deliberate economic strangulation of the arteries feeding imperial power.
The direct threat to energy flows and control over global trade routes strikes at the very heart of the illusionary “finance-based economy” underpinning the dollar. This weakens the instruments used by colonialism to bring nations to their knees through sanctions, blockades, and the funding of both hard and soft wars.
This geopolitical shift opens a historical window for the Lebanese people to decolonise the interior; for as much as the resistance forces succeed in diminishing colonial influence regionally and internationally, the capacity of their local proxies to obstruct the building of a sovereign state diminishes alongside it.
Towards citizenship and the reclamation of comprehensive sovereignty
The decolonisation of the interior is a national duty equal in importance to fighting direct occupation. This is achieved by radically reversing the effects of “Sykes-Picot“: exploiting the current situation and its outcomes to overturn the Lebanese system from one of quotas to a system of citizenship, where allegiance to the state is absolute and direct.
The reclamation of political, financial, economic, and social sovereignty passes inevitably through the struggle to implement the 1989 Taif Agreement, which stipulates the abolition of political sectarianism under Clause C of the political reforms section, and mandates the enactment of an electoral law based on the governorate/single constituency under Clause A of the parliament section.
Furthermore, it may be possible to introduce other amendments to the Taif Agreement once true popular representation is achieved, provided that these modifications serve sovereignty and independence from all forms of colonial dependency, particularly its financial and economic aspects. In this way, the Lebanese voter is liberated from the authority of religious and political feudalism, and the true aspirations of the people to build a state of institutions free from foreign dictation are realised.
The confrontation today is a conflict between “subservient realism” and “sovereign will”. It is a battle that demands a consciousness transcending the borders drawn by the coloniser, allowing us to draw our own borders through our awareness and capacity for historical action, drawing strength from major global shifts that shatter the shackles of unipolarity and herald the era of free nations.
Featured image via the Canary
The level of fraud and error in the benefits system has seen little change in the past year, according to the DWP’s annual report.
Despite the department using the press to demonise those on benefits, its own figures show that the level of fraud and error has pretty much stayed the same. For some benefits, it’s actually gotten better. But this is the DWP, so the media headlines are focusing on the ‘billions’ lost.
While disability benefits in particular take a beating in the press, disability benefit fraud and error have only increased by one percentage point.
The DWP called this a “statistically significant increase” for personal independence payments (PIP). What’s interesting though, is that in other areas fraud has fallen by the same rate or higher, and is, of course, being ignored.
DWP benefit fraud has stayed the same
Across all benefits, fraud and error was at an estimated 3.2% (£9.9 billion) for the financial year ending (FYE) 2026, compared with 3.3% (£9.4 billion) in FYE 2025.
As the report itself says:
The Fraud (2.2%), Claimant Error (0.6%) and Official Error (0.4%) overpayment rates in FYE 2026 have remained broadly similar to FYE 2025.
The report also notes that we should pay attention to the rate, not the money:
Due to each benefit’s expenditure changing year on year, it is recommended that the rates are used when comparing levels of fraud and error over time, rather than the monetary amounts.
By that logic then, today’s 3.2% across all benefits should be regarded as an improvement, so it’s interesting the Telegraph ran with the following headline:
Benefit cheats fuel £10bn in welfare overpayments
Why not affirm that there has been “No significant change reported in benefit fraud rates”? Well, fewer people will rage click on that, won’t they?
Another relevant part of the DWP’s report to highlight is that this is not the full picture. It’s only what the DWP wants us to see as the data is devised from a sample.
The estimates in this publication are based on a sample of benefit claims. As a result, year‑on‑year comparisons are subject to sampling variability.
Universal Credit fraud lower than in Covid-19 peak
For Universal Credit, the rate of overpayment was 8.5% (£6.720 million) in FYE 2026, compared with 9.5% (£6.210 million) in FYE 2025. While the money has gone up, the DWP says this is due to how many people have migrated over to Universal Credit.
But if we’re looking at the percentage, as the DWP has told us to, this is again a significant decrease.
When compared to the COVID-19 peak, the amount of claimants overpaid has decreased even further from 24 in 100 claimants in FYE 2022 to 21 in 100 claimants in FYE 2026. Fewer claimants also lost entitlement in 2026, 7% compared to 12.5% in 2022.
Fraud due to claimants not declaring their earnings correctly has also fallen, but at least this time the DWP admits it’s relevant.
Earnings/Employment (under-declaration of income from work undertaken) remained the main cause of Universal Credit Fraud overpayments but saw a statistically significant decrease to 1.5% in FYE 2026 from 2.2% in FYE 2025.
Tiny rise in PIP overpayments
Leading up to the yearly update, we usually see an increase in disability benefit fraud hate from the rags. PIP fraud is usually minuscule, so they have to drum up hate for a few percentage increases. This year is no exception.
To further this, the DWP is trying to say a one percentage point increase is remarkable. The report states:
This was a statistically significant increase and a continuation of an upwards trend that started in FYE 2024.
That’s right, an increase of a percentage point is “significant” whilst decreases of that or higher aren’t as important. The main reason that benefits were overpaid was people not declaring changes in ‘functioning needs’. This means that the claimant didn’t tell the DWP when their condition had improved.
Though, of course, ‘improvements’ are decided by the DWP, not medical professionals. Anyone with chronic conditions can tell you that conditions have good days and bad days. However, this is the DWP, so that’s not the whole story.
As it lumps fraud and error together, that 2.3% isn’t all fraud. The DWP’s error accounted for 0.2% (£50 million) and 0.7% (£210 million) was claimant error.
DWP manipulates its own stats and the public
Once again, this is a clear case of the DWP manipulating its own data and the public’s perception. It’s true that benefit fraud and error expenditure have risen in monetary terms, but as a percentage of those who aren’t ‘cheating the system’, it’s not relevant at all. This is especially true when we’re talking about disabled people who the press won’t shut up about.
Nonetheless, at a time when the DWP is increasingly trying to limit who can access disability benefits, it’s in the department’s best interests to make disabled people all look like fraudsters.
Featured image via the Canary
Reform UK politicians have been presenting themselves as campaigners against antisemitism. Media outlets have let them get away with this despite the party having blatant antisemites in its ranks. Now, one of these racists has been spotted campaigning in Makerfield for the crucial upcoming by-election.
Canvasing for you in this video, @TiceRichard, why is Adam Mitula back canvassing for you?
He was suspended over antisemitism comments, but now he’s back. You don’t take antisemitism seriously at Reform UK.https://t.co/tm3XhkD7Mn https://t.co/WFgz5uO9Ug
— Reform Party UK Exposed
(@reformexposed) May 17, 2026
At this point, Reform UK is really just rubbing it in people’s faces.
The receipts on Adam Mitula
As we reported, Reform UK suspended Adam Mitula after unearthed comments exposed his racism. He was working as Matt Goodwin’s campaign manager in the Gorton & Denton by-election at the time, and the racist posts included this one:
Mitula has also engaged in Holocaust denial, as Manchester’s the Mill reported:
Meanwhile, discussing the number of people who died in the Holocaust in July 2024, he appears to try and play down the statistics, writing: “6 million polish [sic] people including some Jews. They always use Poles to make up the number. And on top of it they claim Poles were killing. Just sick.”
Mitula also posted:
They just make brothers bigger and bigger. N*ggers will always win!
Later, we would learn he was working as an election agent for Reform candidates in the local elections despite his suspension. Not content with working behind the scenes, Mitula would also go out campaigning.
Mainstream media have spent days calling @ZackPolanski an antisemite; why are they silent on Reform's failure to suspend an actual antisemite?
By @willem_moore_uk https://t.co/VlrTrc7R3R
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) May 4, 2026
At this time, the British media and political establishment were going wild accusing Green Party candidates of antisemitism for supporting Palestinian liberation. You’ll notice they seem to have stopped crowing about that now the local elections are over. Did the problem just magically disappear?
Because Reform know they can get away with harbouring antisemites, they’ve deployed Mitula to Makerfield.
The following tweet is from an ITV reporter:
Reform UK members are out canvassing in Makerfield.
Still without a candidate – but the ground campaign is underway.@itvnews | @ITVNewsPolitics pic.twitter.com/cLVigSD5ps
— Lewis Warner (@LewisJWarner) May 16, 2026
Mitula isn’t the only Reform candidate investigators have caught making antisemitic comments.
Ben Rowe posted Islamophobic, antisemitic and racist memes. Reform said it was 'investigating', so how come he's now a sitting councillor?
Via @willem_moore_uk https://t.co/xKyGhLh6TI
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) May 10, 2026
Another Reform activist just got exposed for antisemitism, and once again there's crickets from mainstream journalists and politicians
By @willem_moore_uk https://t.co/Ye7wR92fkd
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) May 7, 2026
How is Reform getting away with it?
What conclusion can we take from this? Well, what conclusion is there other than that neither Reform nor the media give a crap about antisemitism?
We’ve long made the case that Israel and its defenders in the West have used concocted antisemitism smears to defend the Zionist project. Now, this truth couldn’t be more obvious.
What’s really galling is that Reform politicians could do a better job of covering for themselves by simply giving low-tier operators like Adam Mitula the boot. However, they won’t, because they know they have widespread support in the political mainstream.
As the Canary wrote on 30 April (emphasis added):
There are obvious reasons why the British establishment has sought to defend Israel at the expense of its own citizens:
- The UK profits from Israel’s actions through arms deals and partnerships.
- Israel is a key ally of America, and the UK is America’s foremost lapdog.
- The Israel lobby has proven to be very effective at influencing British politicians – particularly through the ‘Labour Friends of Israel‘ and ‘Conservative Friends of Israel‘ groups.
- Once enough people within the establishment hold an opinion, mirroring that opinion becomes the price of entry.
It doesn’t end there
It’s notable that Reform is allowed to get away harbouring antisemites because of the obvious hypocrisy. We shouldn’t forget that the party hosts all sorts of racists, though, and that these people deserve the same criticism as the antisemites.
As Reform Party UK Exposed said to another canvasser in Makerfield:
The internet doesn’t forget Anthony Goodwin. You think you can just set up another account and all your anti-Muslim and Tommy Robinson support will just go away.@reformparty_uk is sending hate up to Manchester. pic.twitter.com/kzx7GLa4dx
— Reform Party UK Exposed
(@reformexposed) May 17, 2026
If Andy Burnham wins this by-election, it’s widely accepted he will become the prime minister. As such, it’s possibly the most important by-election in UK history. Despite this, Reform UK feels like it can send people like Adam Mitula to campaign in public with no pushback from the media.
The scary thing is the party seems to be right about that.
Featured image via ITV
By Willem Moore
Alex Burghart MP is Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, and Conservative MP for Brentwood and Ongar.
After the psychodrama has subsided, how will Starmer’s premiership be remembered? Unquestionably as one that failed to confront or solve the deep problems that continue to destabilise the country. A failure to create growth, a failure to manage public spending, a failure to restore our Armed Forces, a failure to secure our borders, and so on and so on.
The next Labour leader, whoever they are, from whatever wing of the party they hail, will, without doubt, also fail. The decisions that need to be made are not to be found in the Left’s locker. Starmer could have used his majority and early authority to make difficult decisions in the national interest that were counter to Labour’s culture. Instead, he immediately played to the socialist gallery, sending huge amounts of money to the unionised professions whilst hiking business taxes to cover the cost.
The result has been chaotic tax and spend, anaemic growth, inflation, unemployment and cripplingly high borrowing costs. And a Labour PLP manifestly unwilling to cut public spending. A classic Labour doom spiral in which reality and left-wing policy drag the economy into the sewer.
The greatest lie was, of course, that Labour had a plan for growth. The plan, such as it was, was simply to talk about growth whilst doing precisely nothing to achieve it. Indeed almost everything major policy decision worked the other way. Not least the work of Ed Miliband to spend huge amounts of money locking in high electricity prices to the detriment of families, businesses and public services.
But within the lie that Labour had a plan for growth, was the lie that the solution to the country’s problems lay in ‘resetting’ our relationship with the EU. From the outset, Labour was unclear about what it wanted from Europe. Not that this has dimmed its belief that putting Britain ‘at the heart of Europe’ would somehow nullify and neutralise all the harm it has done to the economy.
Thus far the ‘reset’ has been a classic triumph of Labour-led negotiation. The Government signed away 12 years of fishing rights (something deeply prized by our EU neighbours) and received the square root of diddly squat in return. Instead, before the ink had dried on that agreement, the EU gave a two-fingered salute to the UK’s request to join the SAFE defence fund (despite the enormous contribution Britain makes to continental defence).
We are now faced with the bleak prospect of the UK accepting vast tracts of EU law with no say over how those laws are made and paying for the privilege of doing so. And now, as the Labour leadership contest lumbers into life, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham are flashing their Rejoin credentials, attempting to distract from their terrifying lack of thought-through policy.
The truth is that Labour’s ‘reset’ was never part of a plan to fix the UK economy, it was simply a kneejerk reaction to a new status quo that Labour did not (and perhaps could not) understand. The major structural challenges that face our country cannot be overcome by accepting EU rules. We know this because the economic woes of Germany, France and the like have not been overcome by this means. The EU has become a low growth zone. Becoming subservient to it will not miraculously make the UK a high growth zone.
To resolve the immense challenges facing Britain we will need to acquire cheaper energy and electricity (see the excellent work of Claire Coutinho). We will need to dramatically reduce business regulation (see Andrew Griffiths). We will need to significantly reduce public spending by cutting welfare (see Helen Whately) thereby freeing up money to reduce the deficit and taxation (see Mel Stride). This must needs be coupled to a massive overhaul of the Blairite constitutional settlement so that government and ministers can again take decisions and use a sovereign parliament to make unimpeachable statute. None of this will be easy. It will require tough, consistent, brutally honest leadership. And that, only Kemi Badenoch can provide.
Kylie Minogue has opened up about the “profound effect” that her relationship with Michael Hutchence had on her.
The Can’t Get You Out Of My Head singer is currently gearing up for the release of a new Netflix documentary about her life and career, during which she’s set to discuss everything from fame and her personal relationships to her past treatment for breast cancer.
During an interview with The Times published over the weekend, she was asked about her romance with the late INXS frontman, which lasted around two years in late 80s and early 90s.
Asked if she thought her fellow Australian performer was the love of her life, Kylie responded: “Yes, probably.”
“I’ve had lots of relationships, some were love, some were not,” she continued. “My relationship with him, or our relationship at the time, was not for that long, but it had a profound effect on me.”
Speaking to Hello! in a separate interview shared on Monday morning, Kylie said: “It was definitely an amazing point in time and I’ve probably been looking for something like that ever since – and I haven’t got it.”
Andrew Murray/Shutterstock
Elsewhere in her Times interview, Kylie claimed that she is now single, revealing: “I don’t have a boyfriend. I was in a relationship and when that ended I realised I was OK on my own. I’m definitely getting pickier.”
Back in 2014, Kylie told Australian GQ of her time dating Michael: “Let’s just say I was 21 and my eyes were open to the world. You want to experience everything and I couldn’t think of a better person to, you know, take those first steps into the big wide world with.”
During a subsequent TV interview, Kylie was moved to tears when she claimed the relationship had been a “great love” and “true heartbreak”.
After their split, the two remained close until his death in 1997, at the age of 37.
Ncuti Gatwa poked fun at his stint at the helm of Doctor Who during his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live UK.
On Saturday night, the three-time Bafta nominee guest hosted the SNL UK season finale, kicking things off with a monologue referencing his career so far.
“I am so lucky, I have had so many fantastic roles in my career,” he began. “Millions of you watched me as Eric in Sex Education. And then about 12 of you watched me in Doctor Who.”
“Hey, maybe that’s why I kept crying,” he quipped.
In 2022, it was announced that Ncuti would be the first Black actor in history to take over at the helm of the Tardis as the Fifteenth Doctor in Doctor Who.
Regrettably, during Ncuti’s stint as The Doctor, the show was met with something of a backlash from far-right critics upset about the supposed “woke” direction the show was taking, which coincided with a decline in viewing figures.
Later in his SNL UK monologue, Ncuti joked that even he didn’t understand the latest twist in Doctor Who’s most recent finale.
“I have since regenerated into Billie Piper,” he continued before turning to the camera and claiming: “I don’t understand it, either.”
Billie claimed last year of her cameo: “All I can say is I was approached very last-minute, and I can’t talk about in what capacity, but I found it very emotional to film and I think it’s a really great ending.
“I found it quite moving, and it was really fun to film because it had such a sort of ‘cloak and dagger’ feeling about getting it made.
“So, yeah, I have to lie a lot about anything to do with Doctor Who, it seems.”
Showrunner Russell T Davies previously admitted that he doesn’t “don’t know what’s happening yet” when it comes to the future of Doctor Who, though the BBC previously refuted claims that the show had been “shelved”.
It was later confirmed that Doctor Who would return to our screens with an upcoming Christmas special at the end of 2026.
David Lammy has repeatedly refused to say whether the UK should rejoin the European Union as Labour’s Brexit civil war burst back into the open.
The deputy prime minister refused five times to say whether the result of the 2016 referendum should be reversed when asked on Sky News.
Meanwhile, a Labour MP said it was “absolutely brainless” for the party to even be discussing the issue because it would cost them even more support in working class areas that voted to Leave.
Labour’s splits over Brexit reignited over the weekend when leadership hopeful Wes Streeting described it as “a catastrophic mistake” and said the UK should rejoin the EU.
That piled pressure on his rival, Andy Burnham, who wants to be Labour’s candidate in the upcoming by-election in Makerfield, where the majority of people voted for Leave.
Burnham, who told last year’s Labour conference that he wanted to see the UK back in the EU in his lifetime, wants to avoid discussing the issue during the campaign.
Asked on Sky News this morning by presenter Sophy Ridge if he would like to rejoin the EU, Lammy dodged the question and would only say he was “really proud” to have been the first foreign secretary to be “back around the EU table” last year.
Asked a second time, he said: “We set red lines in the manifesto.”
Ridge then asked the same question a third time.
Lammy said: “I’m not going to make a commitment about the next election manifesto process.”
The presenter said: “I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you, David Lammy, would you like to rejoin the EU.”
He replied: “Me, David Lammy the deputy prime minister, am committed to collective responsibility.”
Asking a fifth time, Ridge said: “Tell us what you really think, go on.”
But Lammy would only say: “I am in government delivering for the British people.”
Jonathan Hinder, the Labour MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, said his party was mad to be talking about Brexit again.
He told Radio 4′s Today programme: “To suggest that the solution now is for us to reopen [the Brexit] debate is just staggering and the Labour Party is in an existential crisis, it really is, and the idea that we can reconnect to our working class base by reopening this debate is just a staggering level of out of touch.”
He added: “The priority of the British people right now is not to reopen this debate … and we’re doing that again. It’s just absolutely brainless.”
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Jewish anti-genocide activist Tony Greenstein was arrested at the Nakba Day march in London on Saturday 16 May. Greenstein’s supposed offence was to hold a placard saying “Globalise the Intifada”.
Greenstein was handcuffed and bundled into a van, triggering crowing from Israel lobbyists. The lobby hates Greenstein and other anti-Zionist Jews for exposing the lie that all Jewish people support Israel and its crimes.
Brighton-based Greenstein was attacked by all the ‘usual suspects’ of the most hateful and racist social media accounts that push pro-Israel propaganda.
The phrase, “Globalise the Intifada”, has been declared by the Zionist Starmer regime to be criminal and arrestable because, supposedly, it is a call ‘for the death of all Jews’. This is flatly untrue: the first intifada was a Gandhi-esque, non-violent campaign of civic resistance in Gaza.
‘Intifada’ simply means ‘shaking off [chains]’. But it is one of the facets of Starmer’s war on pro-Palestine speech and protest. It is cast as inherently antisemitic even though it is aimed at a colonial project, not at Jews — and even when, as on Saturday, it is held by a Jewish protester.
Greenstein punished amidst fascist impunity
But while peaceful resistance is criminalised under the Starmer regime, outright fascist hate is not. Greenstein pointed to the openly racist and Islamophobic signs held by the misnamed, extremist “Unite the kingdom” flop that took place at the same time as the huge Nakba march.
Like this one:
Those holding such signs went untroubled by the Met Police. Indeed, they were protected.
Greenstein is defiant. He says he hopes the police charge him, so he has a chance to expose the nonsense of the ban in court.
‘I HOPE THEY CHARGE ME FOR THE SIGN’ – Greenstein defiant after arrest pic.twitter.com/aVOLSL3H6s
— The Crispin Flintoff Show (@CrispinShow) May 17, 2026
He knows what he is risking. Greenstein has already been convicted of planning to participate in an action to damage an Israeli weapons factory. He still faces prosecution under terror legislation for other acts of protest. He refuses to stop challenging the Starmer police state and the Israel lobby.
Featured image via Tony Greenstein
By Skwawkbox
Following the closure of the key shipping channel, the Strait of Hormuz, jet fuel prices have reportedly doubled.
Since then, some airlines have floated the idea of, or issued, price hikes and even cancelled some journeys, despite airline bosses like TUI’s CFO Mathias Kiep and Elevate Jet CEO Greg Raiff suggesting worries about an outright jet fuel shortage are overblown.
Previously, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said he wasn’t too stressed, either. “We think the risk of a supply disruption is receding… A month ago, we were saying we’re all fine until the end of May. The fuel companies are now saying they’re seeing no supply disruption risk until the end of June,” he shared.
But speaking to CNBC, the company’s CFO, Neil Sorahan, said the budget airline did have plans should an “Armageddon” scenario arise.
Ryanair expects other airlines to suffer from higher costs
The CFO stressed that the company have hedged 80% of its summer fuel stocks, meaning it’s “not planning for cancellations”.
“We’re in obviously very volatile oil markets at the moment. If we go back a couple of months ago, we probably had some concern around oil supply, but we’re increasingly confident that there won’t be issues in relation to oil into this summer,” he added.
Still, though Ryanair appears pretty secure in its supplies, and while Europe may increasingly source fuel from other countries like Venezuela, the CFO added that he expects fuel prices to remain high.
This, he thinks, might leave already-weaker airlines on even thinner ice, predicting collapse for some.
O’Leary had previously said that if these high prices continue through the summer, “real failures” could happen among European airlines, which “in the medium term, would probably be good for Ryanair’s business”.
More recently, Sorahan said, “do we have plans for some kind of Armageddon situation? Of course, we do, but I don’t see that coming to pass. As things stand, we’re operating a full schedule this summer and plan to operate a full schedule into the winter period”.
The CFO hinted at price increases
O’Leary had previously said that “weaker” than usual demand in June to September could lead to lower fares.
“We can guarantee people there’ll be no price increases, no fuel hedging, no fuel surge levy surcharges, regardless of what happens to summer supply,” he told CNBC.
But Sorahan added that doesn’t mean they’ve ruled out any rises at all.
“We haven’t promised no price increases. Ryanair operates a load active yield passive strategy, which means we price to fill the planes, and the consumers pretty much decide what that pricing is going to be,” he said.
4 min read
Labour MP Rupa Huq shares her diary from Hungary, where she led a team of international MPs examining the elections that saw Viktor Orbán defeated
It was the morning after Hungary’s landmark election last month. “I think they heard the cheers in Brussels, Washington and Moscow,” one of two Portuguese MPs I bumped into in Budapest city centre told me. We were amongst international parliamentarians there to observe and certify them legit.
Over the years, I’ve conducted monitoring all over the world: the US, Poland, Turkey, Kazakhstan… When asked to lead the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) MP team examining the electoral contest that eventually ended Viktor Orbán’s four-term premiership, I had no hesitation.
My role included Budapest twice: a scoping visit in the run-up to the mission; then chairing briefings for 200-odd fellow MPs from 38 countries, culminating in an intense election day of primary schools where voting occurs to see the process close-up. I met ministers, media, NGOs and counterparts in the Hungarian parliament (architecturally based on Westminster) along the way.
Our mission was the second most popular after the US, such was the gravity of what was at stake from Maga strongman politics to multilateralism. Observers were deployed all over the country to check no funny business was afoot.
On the Sunday night, as the outcome became clear from my hotel room, I heard cheers and hooting of horns from mostly young people excited at both the record 80 per cent turnout and the remarkable turnabout – a regime that seemed so entrenched was gone.
I was flagging after a long polling day from opening of polls in central Budapest to the count, so I ducked out. I was also conscious that as team leader I needed to be impartial. The Portuguese, however, had gone out for air and crashed impromptu festivities, witnessing history.
Queues had already started building when we arrived to inspect empty ballot boxes at 6pm, then subsequently secured shut before us. It reminded me of similar showing-off routines with 1970s/80s magician tricks when girls were sawn in two.
We criss-crossed Budapest, observing multiple polling stations including in Veresegyház and Pestszentlőrinc. We encountered huge numbers of people; a 95-year-old great gran, kids skipping hand in hand with parents. I did a 10am press conference in a polling station location where the message was things were going smoothly. At 8pm, at the final station I ended up in, proceedings saw the boxes opened and two separate lots of ballot papers manually recounted by municipal officials, such was the unprecedented volume with a 85 per cent turnout. It all concluded beyond 10pm.
On the Sunday night, as the outcome became clear from my hotel room, I heard cheers and hooting of horns
Memorable from my first visit in March was President Volodymyr Zelensky looking out from every lamppost and billboard, with Ursula von der Leyen a close second starting from the airport road. It had to be explained to me that these were negative scare-mongering Fidesz/governing party posters about the wrong turn the country could take if it fell into opposition hands. “Wipe the smile off of Zelensky’s face, don’t be a vassal state of the EU,” they screamed, demonstrating how it takes a sophisticated electorate to recognise such propaganda – albeit with crude messaging.
On paper, Hungary has efficient election systems and a multiple-choice contest, but allowing unlimited campaign funding limits and the folding of many parties to allow Tisza a clearer run make “free and fair” hard to certify. The new parliament has different flavours of right-wing, from the victorious Tisza to extreme nationalists “Our Homeland”.
By visit two, Orbán was omnipresent – plastered too on government-owned billboards, looking suspiciously chisel-jawed compared to recent TV footage. We heard how he’d used his prime ministerial status to write to every mother in the land promising tax reductions the more kids they produced, abusing state resources for party politics.
Fears that factors wider than just the day itself of systematic changes to judiciary, constituency boundaries and media ownership designed by Orbán for Orbán would ensure his re-election were confounded. Even government “state of danger” emergency powers invokable to overrule parliament and rule by decree – rather like Boris Johnson’s Covid provisions – came to nought. The OSCE concluded it was a fair fight on the day but the line between state and party along with any ‘level playing field’ had dissolved over the 16 years.
The EU, US and Russia where the cheers landed should take note: even with a meticulously rigged system, you can’t deny an unstoppable thirst for change.
Rupa Huq is the Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton
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