It’s been another fabulous day in the headlines for Nicola Sturgeon.

The stories were triggered by a speech in the House Of Commons from Tory MP Sir David Davis, which you can watch below.

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(It was meant to be a much longer speech, but Davis had to truncate it on the hoof from 10 minutes to four after his speaking time was cut.)

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Sturgeon’s response – issued through her yappy little Scrappy-Doo lapdog Aamer Anwar but written in the first person – was to lash out in blind fury.

Readers can only admire the sheer jawdropping audacity of Nicola Sturgeon calling someone else – someone with more decency and integrity in his pinkie nail than she has in her entire bloated body – a “coward”, just a couple of days after she’d hastily U-turned on her professed willingness to publish the written statement she made to police on Operation Branchform.

Below are the words Davis said, as recorded in Hansard, but let us be clear: this is now me saying them. My views are entirely in keeping with those of Sir David. What he thinks about the matter is also what I think. His views are my views. Our opinions are entirely as one. What he said is what both of us honestly and sincerely believe to be true. So I’m saying the exact same words here for myself, outside of Parliament’s protection, with no quotemarks.

Last month’s sentencing of Nicola Sturgeon’s husband exposed the real reasons behind the Scottish Government’s persecution of Alex Salmond. From 2010 to 2022, Peter Murrell abused his position to embezzle almost £500,000 from the SNP to buy luxury items. He used SNP money to buy a £33,000 Volkswagen Golf.

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Then he stole £57,000 to buy a Jaguar car. Further luxuries included handbags, an £850 gold pendant, four separate coffee machines costing £9,000, luxury kitchenware, at least 26 fountain pens costing nearly £21,000, and two £350 Dyson hairdryers – for a man with no hair. Really?

Then, of course, there is the infamous £124,000 motorhome. Did Sturgeon not wonder where he got the money for all the vehicles, the kitchenware, the handbags, the pens, the pendant she loved? After all, who used the Dyson hairdryers in that household?

My view on Sturgeon’s denial is clear: she is lying. She knew full well what her husband was doing and how those luxury purchases were funded. That Murrell was a thief was obvious in the 1980s, when he stole from Alex Salmond. Salmond told Sturgeon it was deeply unwise to keep her husband on as chief executive, but she kept him in place, enabling his crimes for years.

Eventually, in March 2021, three members of the SNP’s finance committee withdrew and resigned, blaming “chaotic” and “incompetent” financial management. In their own words, they were on the receiving end of a “hostile” backlash, driven by Sturgeon’s “toxic culture”. They resigned in protest and were later followed by the treasurer of the organisation. Sturgeon told colleagues at the meeting where those first resignations happened:

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“There are no reasons for people to be concerned about the party’s finances”

No reasons. And when the treasurer resigned, she ignored it.

Sturgeon was part of a cover-up, using her position to suppress justice. She behaved dishonourably and dishonestly, but her most evil act was stitching up Alex Salmond to hide the truth. When he was considering going on the National Executive himself, the risk to the conspirators was clear: here is a numerate man who could not be silenced.

So what did they do? In Salmond’s own words, there was “a malicious and concerted” attempt to remove him from public life in Scotland by “a range of individuals within the Scottish Government”.

Senior Scottish Government figures created a procedure for dealing with sexual harassment allegations that deliberately targeted Salmond. The procedure was so biased that a judge ruled it “unlawful” and “tainted by apparent bias”.

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Having lost that, senior figures brought prosecutions against him, but Salmond was acquitted on all charges by a majority female jury, before a female judge. It now appears clear that those actions, to destroy a man’s reputation and life, were motivated by a desire to hide their own crimes.

There are many unresolved questions. What happened with the £60,000-worth of items that were dropped from the indictment: the hairstylers, the lingerie and the books by Sturgeon’s favourite authors? Murrell was clearly protecting Sturgeon by removing items that incriminated her.

In the investigation, the police had further questions for Sturgeon, but prosecutors stopped them from putting them. Those prosecutors worked for the Lord Advocate, the principal legal adviser to the Scottish Government – a clear conflict of interest.

There is a clear pattern of secrecy, obstruction and power used to protect power – a pattern started by Sturgeon. Scotland needs a fresh start. That starts with a judicial inquiry into this entire sordid scandal, because it is a scandal that cost Alex Salmond his life.

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So there we go. I have no Parliamentary privilege. If Nicola Sturgeon wants to sue me for defamation, nothing prevents her. She can stand up in a court and be cross-examined on the matter and a judge can decide. See you in the witness box, Nicola? Come and make my heart fly.

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A coalition of campaign groups has accused UK universities of quietly integrating themselves into the UK’s defence infrastructure after 35 institutions signed up to the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Universities Alliance (DUA).

The Ministry of Defence says the alliance aims to:

reorientate academia towards Defence and National Security.

It wants to strengthen links between universities and the defence sector, and translate research into “battlefield advantage”.

Campaigners say the move represents a significant shift in the role of higher education and has taken place without meaningful public debate.

Among the founding members are:

• University of Oxford.
• University College London.
• King’s College London.
• University of Manchester.
• University of Edinburgh.
• Cardiff University.
• Queen’s University Belfast.

Jinsella Kennaway, founder and executive director of Demilitarise Education, said:

We are witnessing the formal incorporation of Britain’s universities into the defence ecosystem. The Ministry of Defence is explicit about its intentions.

Universities exist to advance knowledge and foster critical inquiry, not to become pipelines for military research and defence recruitment. Students and staff deserve to know who agreed to this and why.

Campaigners are calling on all 35 universities to publish the governance documents and board minutes relating to their decision to join the alliance, and to explain whether staff and students were consulted.

Many UK universities already maintain relationships with major defence companies, including:

• BAE Systems.
• Rolls-Royce.
• Leonardo.
• Thales.
• Lockheed Martin.
• QinetiQ.

Critics argue that the DUA formalises and accelerates the integration of academia, industry and the state.

The coalition warns that, at a time of rising defence spending, universities risk becoming increasingly aligned with government military priorities at the expense of their independence.

Eleven organisations have endorsed a statement opposing the Defence Universities Alliance, including:

• Action on Armed Violence.
• Campaign Against Arms Trade.
• Stop the War Coalition.
• Quakers in Britain.
• People & Planet.
• World BEYOND War.

The universities listed as founding members of the DUA

• Durham University.
• Newcastle University.
• Northumbria University.
• Lancaster University.
• University of Cumbria.
• University of Lancashire.
• University of Liverpool.
• University of Manchester.
• University of Huddersfield.
• University of Sheffield.
• University of York.
• Loughborough University.
• University of Lincoln.
• University of Nottingham.
• Aston University.
• University of Birmingham.
• University of Warwick.
• King’s College London.
• Kingston University.
• Queen Mary University of London.
• University College London.
• University of Oxford.
• University of Portsmouth.
• University of Surrey.
• University of Bath.
• University of Bristol.
• University of Exeter.
• University of Plymouth.
• University of Edinburgh.
• University of Glasgow.
• University of Strathclyde.
• Cardiff University.
• Swansea University.
• Queens University Belfast.
• Cranfield University.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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Sixty-six countries attended US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s summit on left-wing terrorism this week. The farcical event was meant to highlight what Rubio says is a rising leftist threat, largely ignored on ideological grounds.

In reality, it can be read as an attempt to found and codify a US-led fascist international — a new Axis steered by the Trump regime.

Al Jazeera reported:

The “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism”, taking place on Thursday, brings together government representatives from around the world to coordinate on what the US Department of State calls a “renewed threat” that has “remained a blind spot in the international community’s counterterrorism focus”.

For Rubio, a hardline war hawk obsessed with overthrowing the Cuban government, ‘left-wing’ terror and a vaguely defined ‘antifa’ are the primary threats of the day. Like most of the Trump regime he believes in a long-discredited and racist ‘civilisational’ narrative.

At the conference, he said:

This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always been driven by a hatred above all else, a hatred for civilisation itself. It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good.

Time magazine listed those in attendance. Mark them well.

The countries with officials present were: Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Uruguay.

Some of these — Israel, Argentina, Hungary and Italy, for example — make perfect sense as attendees. These are states led by far-right thugs, genocidaires and fascists who slot into what some call the ‘Reactionary International’.

New Zealand, Canada and others which claim to be particularly liberal nations should know better. The (purely theoretically) centre-left UK government was also in attendance. The sense is that this is less ‘scratch a liberal, find a fascist’, and more groveling obedience to the US empire. Though it may well be a touch of both.

Rubio wars with the oppressed and an imagined left

Rubio singled out exactly the kind of targets you would expect.

He claimed that this has led to “acts of violence and even terrorism” tied to “left-wing causes” being treated as legitimate forms of political outcry by U.S. officials, pointing in particular to the Black Lives Matter protests that broke out in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.

Predictably (and as the Canary and others have warned) the US is merging the practices and norms of War on Terror with Trump’s new war on the left, the exploited and the oppressed.

This was something worse than a double standard. Left-wing violence was not just excused, it was treated as sacrosanct, a protected class unto itself. That era has to end.

Time quoted Rubio as arguing that “the international community must come together and rebuild its counterterrorism infrastructure to combat such violence like it did to counter ‘radical Islamist extremism’ earlier in the 21st century”.

All of this fits into Trump’s vision for a ‘homeland empire’. Through his ICE attacks on migrants at home and anti-US governments in the Americas under the guise of a ‘war on drugs’, Trump wants uncontested US rule — or, failing that — fuller domestication of the American continent.

Deputy State Secretary, Christopher Landau, opened with reference to long-dead left terrorist movements as if they were current threats.

He said:

From the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof Group in Europe, to the Weather Underground here in the United States, to the Tupamaros and the Montoneros in South America, many of our countries have familiarity in the past with political terrorism, and unfortunately, we’re seeing a resurgence of that again today.

Economic war on the left

And US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessant, promised to starve this almost entirely imaginary enemy of funding.

He stated:

Ours begins where every campaign of terror does: its financial lifeblood. And at President Trump’s direction, the United States Treasury is bringing the full weight of our authorities to defend the integrity of the U.S. and global financial systems.

Naturally, actual terrorism experts argued the whole basis of the conference was a sham. Director of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, Thomas Renard, said:

What we are seeing now in the United States is that counterterrorism has been completely politicised, instrumentalised.

For instance, the threat from far-right terrorism, which was for decades considered as the primary domestic threat, has now completely disappeared from the US counter-terrorism strategy.

Renard also said the European states had sent only junior ministers.

They are not particularly convinced that this is a topic that justifies this type of gathering, but at the same time, they don’t want to antagonise the United States either. And therefore, this is the compromise they found.

In truth, of course, they should have sent no ministers at all rather than dignify the event.

Civilisational obsessives with guns

White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller — a less well-known but particularly vicious figure obsessed with fascistic civilisational narratives — said:

We must stay the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilisation. If the left is allowed to use the real or actual threat of violence to destabilise our institutions, then those institutions cannot and will not succeed.

Some of this is pure right-wing fantasia. Twentieth century fascism was in part a response to an actual organised left: mass democratic parties, strong trade unions, a sense of capitalist grievance over advances in rights for the maligned, oppressed and exploited. Fascism was, and is, an effort to put people back in what fascists believe is their rightful place and to reset capitalism.

The fact is that no left movement as broad or as powerful exists today. But the truth is fascistic hysteria, as we have seen with Trumpism and other examples, can and does move people — albeit via pure emotion, not fact.

And fascism is rising. Precisely where it is rising is significant as journalist Matt Kennard recently told the Canary.

We need to locate the United States as a centre of global fascism, as the centre of global war, and we need to work out how we can dismantle the US empire.

"We need to locate the United States as a centre of global fascism, as the centre of global war, and we need to work out how we can dismantle the US empire."

We met up with Matt Kennard outside the US Embassy in London to discuss his book, Irregular Army.

During the 'war on… pic.twitter.com/5grfQCVxQf

— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) July 17, 2026

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Rubio’s summit is laughable in some ways, as is the rhetoric of the speakers and the cowardice of the nations who attended. But it is dangerous too.

The world is increasingly fractured by active and potential wars, atrocities and economic decline. In that environment, Trumpism has established a foothold, built an armoury with truly global reach, and is seeking to unite disparate forces into a new, disciplined axis of hate.

Featured image via Alex Brandon/ Assosciated Press

By Joe Glenton

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With six weeks to go until Manchester Village Pride, performing arts union Equity is calling on Manchester City Council to ensure that performers out of pocket from last year’s Manchester Pride collapse get the pay due for their work.

Pride takes place from 28-31 August this year under a new Community Interest Company rooted in Manchester’s Gay Village. This follows the collapse of Manchester Pride in 2025.

The new Manchester Village Pride event will be one of the first Pride events to operate on a union agreement, after Equity and Manchester Village Pride signed a house agreement for minimum terms and conditions for performers, including stronger safeguards around payments.

But Equity is still working to secure funds for unpaid performers from last year. The union is working with more than 50 performers who were impacted by non-payment for their work at last year’s event, with individuals owed between £150 to £5,000 each, totalling over £70,000.

Despite some encouraging initial conversations with Manchester City Council, communication has ground to a halt and there has been no material progress in securing funds for the performers, many of them local Mancunians, who went without pay for their work.

According to Manchester Pride, the annual event generated over £104m for the city between 2021 and 2025. This means the City Council benefits and has a financial interest, as well as being a supporter of the event.

Equity’s North West Official, Karen Lockney, said:

In the run up to this year’s Manchester Pride, we renew our call to Bev Craig – current leader of Manchester City Council and Labour’s candidate for Mayor of Greater Manchester – to ensure performers who are owed money for last year’s Manchester Pride are paid for their work.

Despite passing a motion in November last year to ‘work constructively’ with Equity, Manchester City Council are yet to update us on how to recoup money owed to performers.

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We also met with Bev Craig in November and pushed for a follow up meeting with deputy leader Garry Bridges in February, but have not received any response to subsequent requests for information. There has also not been any update on our applications to suggested funds.

While it is positive that Manchester City Council champions Pride – especially when such events are under threat from Reform councils elsewhere in the country – this means little unless there is meaningful action to support the event’s workers, without whom Pride could not take place.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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During the Makerfield by-election, Andy Burnham backed Shabana Mahmood’s immigration reforms, aligning Labour’s prevailing strategy to the anti-immigration mood.

Mahmood’s position, in short, follows the Danish Social Democrats’ model: harden rhetoric and reduce numbers to take the ground from the far right.

Burnham had previously criticised the home secretary’s plans, warning they leave people “in a sense of limbo and unable to integrate”. But he seems to have dropped this concern to appeal to the political context of the Leave-voting, Reform-susceptible constituency of Makerfield.

The broader public mood on immigration is, however, more nuanced. Having won the by-election, Burnham now has an opportunity to revisit the assumptions behind Labour modelling itself after the Social Democrats to consider a potentially more successful model: Pedro Sanchez’ Spain.

Immigration figures don’t lie…

The headline figures on immigration anxiety are striking. Immigration ranks among the top three public concerns, with two-thirds of Brits saying immigration levels are too high.

However, if you look beneath the surface, a more complicated picture emerges.

When pollsters separate regular from irregular migration, only 22% of Britons say migration has been bad for the country. Those travelling via established visa routes make up the majority of arrivals.

Almost two-thirds of people support keeping NHS staffing levels, even if it means higher migration. Moreover,  six in 10 people would prioritise having enough workers for industries with skill shortages over reducing immigration. It is not as straightforward, then, to say Britons want less immigration across the board.

…but liars figure

The picture is even more complicated by polling that looks at the perception gap between what the government is doing and what is happening with immigration.

Two-thirds of Brits wrongly believe that the immigration rate is rising while net migration has fallen to 171,000 in 2025 under Labour, which represents an 82% drop from Tories’ 944,000 in 2023. Despite that sharp fall, three-quarters of voters say they have little or no confidence in the government on immigration.

That gap between the reality of net migration and the public’s perception suggests that the public is wrongly informed. Political parties like Reform and Restore Britain, of course, benefit from the public being  misinformed because their electoral success depends on voters’ anxieties around immigration.

If voters cared to understand the true figures, they would likely not trust Reform’s Robert Jenrick to lower immigration, as he was immigration minister during the 2023 peak.

The perception gap also suggests that, whatever you do to immigration numbers, it will not change the electoral picture as voters’ fears are based on what they are being told, rather than the reality. Labour’s strategy is to talk up immigration as a problem to be tackled when no one trusts them to tackle it. Working hard to lower the numbers, when no one thinks they are, might not be a winning strategy.

Play with fire, get burned

Mahmood’s strategy is coherent on paper. If Labour concedes a bit on immigration — by enacting strict asylum rules, enforced returns and caps on settlement — Reform might no longer have a distinct offer to voters.

The approach is akin to setting off a Labour-managed controlled burn to remove the fuel for a Reform-led wildfire.

For example, by making targeted concessions to the anti-immigration mood, Labour wants to prevent a Reform or Restore government that would do far worse, like ICE-style interventions into communities or stripping citizenship from British citizens. The problem is the people you are trying to satisfy with a controlled burn want the wildfire, so all you end up doing is normalising fire.

Reform, Restore Britain and Tommy Robinson’s base want the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, abandon the Refugee Convention, and breach international prohibitions on torture. Labour would hopefully never go that far, so Mahmood’s strategy does not approach a satisfactory destination.

The concessions, then, take enough of Reform’s programme to legitimise the nativist framework, while being unable to deliver its logical conclusions. Therefore, raising the threshold of what counts as tough enough and making the subsequent demands easier to voice.

Concessions help the far right

Across Europe, the evidence is clear. When centre-left parties adopt far-right positions on immigration, it does more good for the far right than for the centre-left.

Studies in journals like Political Research Exchange and Political Science Research and Methods found that mainstream parties moving toward radical-right positions on immigration consistently failed to win over right-wing voters. They also found that centre-left strategy legitimised right-wing positions, pushing voters toward the radical-right and losing support among their own base.

Centre-left parties end up squeezed from both sides, which is precisely what happened to Starmer’s Labour.

Even on its own terms, the Danish model does not work. In Denmark, the Social Democrat Party just had its worst election result since 1903. Labour politicians took inspiration from a strategy that did not even work for the people who created it.

Hasta la visa, Shabana

While Labour has been looking to Copenhagen, Pedro Sánchez’s Spain offers an alternative model, particularly for a Labour government that once made economic growth its central mission.

Sánchez’s government, for instance, launched an extraordinary regularisation process in January, expected to allow about 500,000 migrants without legal status who are already in Spain to apply for temporary legal status, moving them from the ‘shadow economy‘ into legal employment.

Under Sanchez’s pro-immigrant policies, Spain’s economy grew by 2.8% in 2025 — roughly twice the EU average and the UK’s rate. Sánchez has argued that migration represents 25% of Spain’s per capita GDP, 10% of social security revenues and just 1% of public expenditure.

This approach has historical precedent: Spain’s 2005 regularisation under former Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, gave legal status to more than 600,000 migrants who had become undocumented. Research found tax revenues increased by around €4,000 per regularised immigrant each year.

Critics would imagine such an approach only encourages illegal immigration, but studies found no evidence of a significant “magnet” effect.

Don’t chase the right on immigration

Spain has by no means solved immigration as a political issue or defeated the far right, as Vox remains the third largest party in parliament.

Spain has, however, demonstrated that a centre-left government does not need to chase the far right, and can instead, through immigration, produce economic growth that outpaces sluggish EU peers like France and Germany.

Spain’s approach also offers a remedy to the UK’s ageing population, chronic labour shortages and a Treasury that consistently misses its growth targets. The British public broadly supports migration that produces growth.

Public hostility is concentrated on immigrants who have arrived by irregular means. But the Spanish model shows that regularising people’s stay is vastly more productive than undermining fundamental rights to posture as tough.

Burnham changed his mind on Mahmood’s approach once. The evidence should give him good reason to change it again.

The Danish model is not working. Spain has shown another way is possible.

Featured image via Euronews

By Hugo Harvey

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School’s out for summer in Scotland and Northern Ireland, with kids in England and Wales soon to follow suit.

Alas, this means many working parents have six long weeks to fill with fun activities, day trips, perhaps the odd break away (if you’re lucky) and, most likely, a few expensive summer camps to bulk out the rest.

But how much is summer holiday childcare totting up at these days? A pretty wince-inducing sum, by the looks of it.

The cost of summer holiday childcare in 2026

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Children’s charity Coram’s 21st annual Holiday Childcare Survey revealed holiday childcare costs have risen by 5% over the past year in Britain.

This means many working parents now face a bill of up to £1,145 per child for six weeks of holiday childcare. That’s £191 per week.

To put that into perspective, compared to how much people are earning, Forbes reported the median monthly pay for UK workers in May this year was £2,626.

In comparison, when the Holiday Childcare Survey first began in 2005, the average cost was £76 per week – or £456 per child for the six-week break. So, the cost has more than doubled in just over 20 years.

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Wales has seen the biggest rise, with summer holiday childcare costs increasing by 10% over the past year.

The price of childcare can also vary between regions, with a 16% increase in costs in London and a 12% increase in the North East.

For disabled children, this figure can soar even more.

One parent of twin boys revealed how holiday childcare would cost £50 a day for their son Otis, and more than triple that (£178 per day) for their son Frankie, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair full-time.

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Maria Korneeva via Getty Images

Holiday support for families

UK school children take about 65 working days off each year, while most full-time workers get about 28 days annual leave.

If parents don’t have the luxury of local grandparents or family members to fall back on, this means they need to rely on paid childcare during the holidays.

Some working families may be eligible for Tax-Free Childcare, which can help pay for summer holiday childcare. For every £8 you pay into your Tax-Free Childcare account, the government automatically adds an extra £2 towards approved childcare costs. You could receive up to £2,000 per child each year, or £4,000 per disabled child.

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Every local authority in England also delivers the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme, which provides free holiday club places, meals and activities to children from low-income families. However, provision varies considerably.

Free holiday club provision is patchy

According to UK government guidance, local authorities should endeavour to offer all eligible children the equivalent of at least four hours a day, four days a week, in free holiday childcare.

But Coram’s survey found most councils do not know whether they have enough holiday childcare available.

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Again, children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) were impacted most – Coram’s report found the lowest sufficiency level in England is for children with SEND, with only 9% of councils in England able to say they have enough holiday childcare for at least three-quarters of young people with SEND in their area.

In Wales, just 5% of local authorities report sufficient holiday childcare for children with additional learning needs (ALN).

This echoes research from the national disability charity Sense, which found more than 60,000 disabled children are living in areas of England with no summer holiday club options available to them.

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests submitted to every local authority in England found that, among the 114 local authorities that responded, 6% of disabled children across the country can access holiday clubs.

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Coram wants to see reinforcement of the statutory duty to secure sufficient holiday childcare across Britain, as well as improved access for children with SEND.

Childminders offer ‘best chance’ of securing full day of childcare

Coram’s report found childminders offer parents the best chance of securing a full day of childcare during the holidays, with 79% of childminders open from 8am until6pm, compared to only 57% of holiday clubs.

But the report highlighted the cost of holiday clubs, at £191 per week, was still cheaper than the cost of childminders, which averaged £251 per week.

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Lydia Hodges, Head of Coram Family and Childcare, said: “Holiday childcare is essential for parents to take and stay in work but, for too many families, the six-week break brings a sharp increase in childcare costs.”

Acknowledging the government’s commitment to keep children away from social media, she added: “If we want children away from social media, off their phones, they need something positive to do.

“The problem is not going to go away. Most parents need to work during the school holidays at some point, and not all will have support from other family members.

“If we are to ease the annual summer stress for families, there must be an acknowledgement that childcare is a year-round requirement,” she added.

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In response to the report’s findings, a Department for Education spokesperson told HuffPost UK: “The school holidays can be a tricky time for many parents – a balancing act between work, family life and finding childcare that is affordable and accessible.

“To help families cut costs this summer we are investing over £600 million in our Holiday Activities and Food programme so children from disadvantaged backgrounds can enjoy healthy meals and take part in activities including everything from archery to coding and sports to creative arts.

“This comes alongside discounted attractions and meals out so families can enjoy days out and almost £13 million this year to help local councils offer more childcare places, including during the holidays.”

They added the forthcoming Childcare Review “will go even further to create a system that is easier and fairer for every family, all year round”.

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This is a statement from Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance regarding the Undercover Policing Inquiry

Following elation at the progress of the Hillsborough law, victims of spycops were confronted on 16 July with a Home Office ‘consultation’ into the future of the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

We are shocked and surprised by the announcement and deeply concerned that this is an attempt to shut this Inquiry down. We have been requesting a meeting with the Sponsor Department of the Home Office for more than a year and have been stonewalled.

Now, we are presented with this multiple choice survey which clearly demonstrates that they have already considered the options without listening to us. We wish to stress that the delays and costs incurred by the Inquiry to date are entirely the result of applications for secrecy and lack of candour by the state agents taking part.

The timing of this consultation (in the middle of Inquiry hearings and at the start of the Summer break) will exclude many of those affected from being able to properly engage. The options on offer have real implications for how, and whether, the truth gets established, and we are considering the survey carefully.

We are calling on supporters not to fill it in until we have had a chance to respond.

The UCPI has been running since 2015, investigating abuses by undercover officers spanning five decades. One of the most expensive and longest running in British history, it has been hampered by the death of its first Chair and the imminent retirement of its second, with no replacement in sight.

So far it has only considered a single police unit, and is yet to consider some of the most important evidence, relating to abuses that took place under the existing regulatory framework that is supposed to protect us today.

Police actions to disrupt and stall proceedings (using tactics such as ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny’, making numerous anonymity applications, and demanding extensive redactions of documents) prevented the Inquiry from even starting to hear evidence for the first six years, and continue to cause delays.

We believe that had there been a Hillsborough Law in place when the Inquiry started it would have saved much time and expense.

Since hearings started in 2020, the Inquiry has uncovered evidence of sustained misconduct and corruption. Some of the most important revelations of our time about secret state (and Home Office) interference in our political freedoms.

The constant stream of revelations has caused considerable embarrassment and led to multiple public apologies from the Metropolitan Police. We have no doubt that there are powerful interests who would want it shut down.

However, the Inquiry has yet to consider units such as the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), who employed one of the most notorious officers, Mark Kennedy. Many victims are still waiting for answers, and the Inquiry must properly consider all the evidence before key recommendations can be made.

We call on the Home Office not to hamper the search for truth and justice, and to allow the spycops Inquiry to do the job it was called on to do. We will continue to hold the police and public officials to account.

Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance

Campaigning in partnership with Police Spies Out of Lives, The Monitoring Group, the Blacklist Support Group and the Undercover Research Group.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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The post What is Keir Starmer’s legacy? appeared first on spiked.

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