Politics
The Risks Of Schools Sharing Pupil Photos Online
Imagine a photograph of your child taken on sports day. They’re laughing, probably slightly out of breath, wearing their school kit.
It’s the kind of image that ends up in the school newsletter, on the website, shared with pride by staff who want to show what school life looks like.
Now imagine that same photograph being found by a criminal who lifts the face of the child in seconds and, using freely available AI tools, turns it into something so harmful I am not going to describe it in detail here.
That image is then sent to the school with a demand: pay up, or it goes online.
This is not a hypothetical. The scale of child abuse imagery has grown from fewer than 10,000 images 25 years ago, to tens of millions today.
This has happened to schools in the UK, and most schools have no idea it is possible.
I know that’s uncomfortable to read. Though, as the mother of two teenage daughters, I strongly believe that all parents deserve to know the internet where their children’s photographs are being uploaded is not the same internet that schools developed their safeguarding policies for.
I didn’t come to this issue as a parent whose child was affected. I came to it as someone who has run branding agencies for the last two decades, sitting in a meeting with a school I had been working with on a rebrand – a school I knew well, whose team I respected.
It was during that work it came to light that a number of the school’s pupil photographs had been stolen, turned into deepfake abuse material, and that the school had been sent a ransom demand.
I sat there and listened to what had happened to those children. And my first thought – before anything to do with technology, platforms, or solutions – was simple: I never want this to happen to my daughters.
I have spent my entire career working in branding, working with businesses, charities and organisations, of all sizes, to tell their stories through imagery. I understand better than most what those photographs mean and why they matter, not least for schools.
The school newsletter, sports day, the nativity play – these are not trivial things, they are how schools communicate joy, build community and celebrate the children in their care.
Schools should not have to stop celebrating their pupils or sharing moments with their communities, but they do need tools designed for the internet those images now live in.
The consent form most parents sign at the start of each school year was written for a different world. It was designed to address whether your child’s image could be used – shared in a newsletter, published on a website, posted on social media.
It was not written to address what happens once that image is publicly accessible online. Because when those consent forms were first written, what is now possible simply wasn’t.
AI tools that can take a child’s face from a school website and generate abusive content from it are not hypothetical. They are freely available, require no technical expertise, and the safeguarding gap they have created is one that almost no school in the country has a policy to address.
New research that we commissioned found that while 85% of UK teachers are aware that AI criminals are targeting school photographs, fewer than one in three have any AI or deepfake-specific policies in place, and nearly a quarter said their school has already been targeted.
This isn’t about stopping schools from sharing images. It’s about understanding what those images are exposed to once they’re online.
Before any parents sign that consent form, they should be asking their child’s school so many more questions – from what happens to images once they are online; whether their photography policy has been updated to reflect the risks of generative AI; to what protection they have in place for pupil images shared on public-facing channels.
These are not unreasonable questions and are simply the ones that every parent of a school-age child should now be asking, and that every school should be ready to answer.
But let’s be clear, schools are not to blame for this.
They shared those photographs in good faith, as they always have. It’s just the world those images are being shared into has changed, and the frameworks most schools rely on have not yet caught up.
Consent forms, GDPR policies, online safety training: none of these protect a child from a criminal who takes their image without asking. AI criminals don’t need permission. They take images directly from school websites and social media without ever making contact.
What’s needed now isn’t less sharing, but safer sharing. That’s the problem I set out to solve when I built Aidos – a safeguarding platform that makes every pupil in a school photograph permanently unidentifiable before the image is shared online.
Not blurring, not pixelation, but a full replacement of every child’s face with a realistic AI-generated substitute, so that the image can never be traced back to a real child.
Schools can keep sharing everything they have always shared. The difference is that those images can no longer be used to harm the children within them.
Protecting children’s digital identities is becoming one of the defining safeguarding challenges of the AI era. Schools shouldn’t have to face it alone, but as parents we have a role too and it starts with asking the question.
So, before you sign that consent form this September, ask your school what they have in place. They may not yet have the answer, but the fact that you’re asking means they’ll need to find one.
Carole Osborne is the founder and CEO of Aidos, an AI safeguarding platform that makes pupils in school photographs permanently unidentifiable before they are shared online.
“It’s important to recognise your more annoying traits, and mine is that I keep banging on about sarcopenia, or age-related muscle loss.
In my defence, the process, which begins as early as your 30s, has been linked to a higher risk of falls, dementia, and even a shorter lifespan. It’s part of the reason strength training is so important as we age.
We’re expected to lose half of our muscle mass by 80 if we don’t work to keep the tissue healthy. But a recent study found that a chemical made by old garlic might be a useful addition to your workout routine.
How can garlic help maintain muscle mass?
This study looked specifically at aged, or “black”, garlic.
S-1-propenyl-L-cysteine, or S1PC, which is a compound found in aged garlic, seems to improve communication between mice’s fat cells and their brains. That communication appears to improve muscle strength over time.
This research found that SIPC activated liver kinase B1 (LKB1), which leads to the secretion of extracellular nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (eNAMPT).
eNAMPT is key to creating NAD+, a coenzyme crucial for cell health and metabolism. Greater NAD+ levels have been linked to better ageing.
And eNAMPT can also travel through the bloodstream to reach an area of the brain called the hypothalamus. Once there, it seems to improve muscle function.
This study showed that humans who were given aged garlic-derived S1PC had greater amounts of eNAMPT in their blood. And mice given the same compound saw reduced frailty across 31 health markers.
“We anticipate that S1PC is likely to have a broader anti-ageing effect that warrants detailed investigation,” said study author Dr Shin-ichiro Imai.
The researchers hope this will keep older people stronger for longer
Another study author, Dr Kiyoshi Yoshioka, said: “During my clinical experience as a physical therapist, I was often frustrated to see older adults lose physical function and vitality simply because they had no specific disease requiring medical treatment. This gap in proactive care has driven my research.
“We hope our findings will help improve fitness and muscle strength in older individuals by the simple inclusion of a nutraceutical as part of the daily diet.”
But the journey isn’t expected to end there.
“We have succeeded in expanding the current understanding of how different organs coordinate responses during ageing. Further research is needed to determine improvements in muscle function in humans and to evaluate the long-term effects of S1PC,” said Dr Imai.
“The presence and possible role of LKB1 in the brain also needs evaluation.”
What Kids Are Carrying is a HuffPost UK series focusing on how the nation’s youngest generation is *really* feeling right now – and how parents and caregivers can support them.
Anxiety is one of the most common issues young children and teenagers are bringing to therapy, according to therapists.
Just like there are myriad reasons why young children are increasingly anxious – from over-exposure to screens, to neurodivergence, to absorbing anxiety of ‘grown-up problems’ like money worries – for teens, there are a number of factors driving their anxiety. But therapists are witnessing some key trends.
“Adolescence is a challenging time, and the move towards increased independence while still only having recently left an era of play and imagination can bring with it increased anxiety,” said therapist and BACP member Amanda MacDonald.
“Teens will be aware of exams coming up, and other factors surrounding their immediate world, together with an awareness of global concerns such as conflicts and the environment.
“All this is going on at a time when they are working out who they are, and forming friendships based on this developing sense of identity.”
A 2025 survey by BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Bitesize, which polled 2,000 kids aged 13-18, found two-thirds (69%) of all participants reported feeling anxious at least some of the time. Pressure around exams and grades was the biggest worry.
Counselling Directory member Debbie Keenan suggests teen anxiety is often driven by a mix of developmental pressure, expectations and uncertainty.
“Recurring themes include academic performance, social comparison, questioning identity/sexuality and fear of failure,” she noted.
Therapists also noticed the Covid-19 pandemic seems to have “significantly amplified” anxiety as teens experienced disrupted routines, isolation, and a prolonged sense of threat. Keenan noted this may have “sensitised their nervous systems and reduced their capacity to cope with stress”.
How parents can support anxious teens
When your child is struggling, you probably want to jump in and solve all their problems for them, but experts suggest the best way parents can support is to simply be there, be curious and listen without judgement.
Connection is key. “Check in with them to see how they are doing, and get a sense of what is happening in their life,” advised MacDonald. Sometimes it can help to do these check-ins while you’re doing something else together – gaming, shopping or driving in the car, for instance.
Joseph Conway, psychotherapist and mental health trainer at Vita Health Group, previously suggested that “side-by-side talking” can help teens, especially boys, feel comfortable enough to open up.
“Pick an activity they enjoy, such as football, baking, crafting, or gaming, to create a safe-space for conversation,” he said.
“Shared activities give boys room to open up without feeling scrutinised, or having the intensity of eye contact.”
Another helpful tip from Keenan is to explore your teen’s “window of tolerance”.
“The window of tolerance is the range in which a person can think, feel, and learn effectively,” she explained.
“When anxiety pushes them outside this window, they may become hyperaroused (panic, avoidance, irritability) or hypoaroused (shutdown, numbness).”
Support starts with helping teens recognise these states and teaching regulation skills. This might look like slow breathing, grounding, mindfulness or co-regulation exercises “to bring them back into their window of tolerance”, Keenan said.
What not to do when supporting your teen with anxiety
Counselling Directory member Bella Hird stressed that it’s key for parents to resist all urges to tell their teen “there is nothing to worry about”.
“Never in the history of mankind has anyone ever calmed down when told to ‘calm down’,” she said.
Counselling Directory member Mandi Simons agrees that teens benefit more from being listened to without judgement or minimisation.
Discussing what to do instead of saying “there’s nothing to worry about”, Hird suggested the internal narrative of “I am not worried about this but I want to understand your worry” can be helpful for parents to take on board.
“The experience of not being heard or understood is only going to add to the experience of anxiety,” she explained. “If you can show them you are willing to truly understand their anxiety and sit with them in it, you will be modelling that anxiety is not something to be feared and just simply our minds and bodies picking up on data that something is amiss.”
She added that sometimes, studying the “data” may throw to light an understanding that can be really helpful, for example a belief that might be challenged or a “worse case scenario” that isn’t that bad after all.
“Once you have allowed space to explore the anxiety you can together find ways to support,” she added.
Of course, if your teenager is no longer getting involved with the things they enjoy, or seems to have low or irritable moods that go on for longer, making contact with a mental health professional can help.
When anxiety fuels school avoidance
Therapists are noticing there are a growing number of children struggling to attend school because of anxiety, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic.
A survey by youth mental health charity stem4 found more than one-quarter (28%) of 12- to 18-year-olds hadn’t attended school in 2023-24 because of it, according to the Guardian.
If your teen is struggling with anxiety and it’s preventing them from going to school, Hird suggested that open communication with the school is important, “but make sure that the goal remains the wellbeing of the child and that you don’t fall into the trap of becoming anxious that you won’t find a suitable solution”.
“You will,” she added. “This is where counselling or coaching can be particularly useful for a parent.”
Charity Young Minds recommends for parents to tell their teenager’s school about the specific things they are finding difficult and also asking their teacher(s) about anything they’ve noticed. Getting a note from your child’s GP, CAMHS or another mental health professional can also be helpful to show why your child isn’t at school.
“If you and your child have already identified some things that might help, ask for specific changes,” adds the charity. “If you’re not sure where to start, ask what changes the school can offer…” You can also ask for these changes to be formalised in an Individual Education Plan. It might also be helpful to schedule check-ins with the school so you can assess how your child is getting on.
Keenan noted that some of the effective strategies she uses, in collaboration with parents/caregivers, include: reassurance, gradual and gentle exposure back to school, validating anxiety without reinforcing avoidance, addressing underlying learning or social issues, and strengthening coping skills so teens feel safer tolerating distress rather than escaping it.
Macdonald acknowledges that while it can feel very concerning for parents who may feel worried for their child’s future, “for some young people this may pass, and they may just need a bit of time to have some adjustments made”.
For other young people, when attending school feels impossible, compassion is key.
“Your teen is in distress, and it may be at that time they need more space than a day or two at home will provide,” she concluded.
“There are young people who have taken paths other than traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ education, and who thrive in a different setting.”
Help and support:
- Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393.
- Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI – this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).
- CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) offer a helpline open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year, on 0800 58 58 58, and a webchat service.
- The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email help@themix.org.uk
- Rethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0808 801 0525 (Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on rethink.org.
Big Oil, Big Banks and arms companies are profiting massively from the war on Iran.
Iran War — Oil
While most people face higher bills, oil giants are making a lot of money. Shell has reported its first quarterly profits. They are up £982 million on the year before. That’s after BP, which actually doubled its profit for the same period. Further, the French giant TotalEnergies had its profits increase by almost a third.
The price of oil has jumped partly because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Yet the UK only gets around 2% of its oil via that route. It’s the market that is raising the price due to companies selling it at the highest price they can, which is very high because of the disruption.
Big oil profits underscore the need to move away from fossil fuels and volatile international markets. Instead, the UK should bring in a publicly owned Green New Deal.
Banks
Big Banks are also profiteering from the war. The Big Six banks — Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and JP Morgan — all saw huge profits in the first quarter, at around £36 billion. That’s up £12 billion on the average from the year before.
In the UK, Lloyds Bank has increased profits by more than 30% over the same period. Barclays also saw increased profit before tax.
Arms
As well as big banks and oil, arms companies are expecting to cash it in. BAE systems expects increased profits this year and Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman had their highest orders as of the first quarter.
Function of war on Iran
War has long been profitable for the ruling class. Indeed, the US DOJ is investigating £1.9 billion in insider trading from the Trump regime over the war on Iran, Forbes reports.
The oligarchy use war to justify their position in power, because they aren’t actually improving people’s lives.
Featured image via FreePress
By James Wright
Labour has lost Bradford District Council to no overall control, as no party secured a majority.
Reform won 29 seats, up from zero at the last election, but fell shy of the 44 seats needed for a majority. The party won 26% of the vote.
Labour only won 15 seats, meaning it lost a shocking 27.
One of the people to lose her seat was Bradford council leader, Susan Hinchcliffe. She lost her seat in the Windhill and Wrose ward. She had been the leader of the council for a decade.
Reform UK councillors Sally Jane Birch, Stephen Broadbent and Chris Howlett won the ward. This means the ward went from three Labour councillors to three Reform councillors overnight.
The Tories won 18 seats, which is three more than in the previous election, and the Greens won seven, meaning the party lost three. Finally, ‘Independents and others’ lost two seats compared to the previous election.
All three results are in for the Little Horton Ward
Talat Sajawal (Your Bradford Independent Group)
Taj Salam (Your Bradford Independent Group)
Noor Elahi (Your Bradford Independent Group) pic.twitter.com/Yq3C7Frr5M— Bradford Council (@bradfordmdc) May 9, 2026
Labour’s controversial candidates
Daniel Devaney was the party’s candidate for the Clayton and Fairweather Green ward in Bradford. Before the election, he said he was stepping down, wasn’t “really bothered” and was going on holiday. He was upset about public outrage over social media posts.
He claimed he was standing down as a candidate. However, he was one of three councillors whom voters elected for Reform UK in that ward.
This lines up with stories from up and down the country, where Reform has fielded abusive, racist, and completely innapropriate candidates for public office.
Demographic differences
However, Bradford was one of the places where we expected the Green Party to be more successful.
In other constituencies, we have seen a higher proportion of Green Party and Independent votes in areas with a higher proportion of voters who are Muslim and not white, due to the Greens’ stance on Palestine.
Around 61.1%% of people in Bradford are white, whereas 32.1% are Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh. Similarly, 30.5% described themselves as Muslim.
These demographics are similar to those in Blackburn, where Reform also made huge gains.
Luckily for Reform, Bradford has plenty of bins to collect and potholes to fill. Did they really think they’d be stopping the boats?
Feature image via Michael Broomhead/X
By HG
Labour MP Catherine West has dropped her immediate threat to challenge Keir Starmer’s premiership after his make-or-break speech on Monday.
But the former Foreign Office minister still insisted he should resign by September following Labour’s catastrophic results in last week’s local elections.
The MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet announced on Saturday that she planned to gather 81 Labour MPs’ names to formally challenge Starmer.
At least 20% of the total parliamentary party needs to back one challenger MP for a Labour leader to be ousted.
West insisted that she did not want to take over from the prime minister, but suggested this would encourage others to step up.
Starmer tried to win back disillusioned MPs by promising to prove his doubters “wrong” in a high-stakes address to the party this morning, vowing to fight on.
Shortly after his speech, West said in a statement: “I have listened to the prime minister’s speech this morning. I welcome the renewed energy and ideas.
“However, I have reluctantly concluded that this morning’s speech was too little, too late.
“The results last Thursday show that the prime minister has failed to inspire hope. What is best for the party and country now is for an orderly transition.
“I am hereby giving notice to No 10 that I am collecting names of Labour MPs to call on the prime minister to set a timetable for the election of a new leader in September.
“I want to thank everyone who has been in contact over the weekend to offer good wishes. We need our best top team in place to fight the next election. We owe working people up and down the country nothing less.”
Potential rivals, health secretary Wes Streeting and former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, were expected to launch imminent leadership bids after West offered to be the stalking horse over the weekend.
West’s pivot will take the immediate pressure off Starmer, and give another expected challenger, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, more time to secure a seat in parliament.
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Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne has become the latest to join a growing chorus of Labour politicians to demand the resignation of Keir Starmer over the party’s appalling performance in the 2026 local elections.
Labour collapsed, losing — so far — almost 60% of the seats it was defending: 1443 lost out of 2484. Three areas have yet to declare. It has also lost a number of mayoral positions. It was too much for Byrne, a Hillsborough survivor who held onto his selection for the 2024 general election only after defeating the party machine’s attempt to remove him.
He said:
Statement re: local election results
The election results across the country make this a truly existential moment for Labour. They cannot be dismissed as a bad night or a messaging problem. This is a political crisis.
Councillors in Knowsley and across the country who have lost their seats will rightly be furious with the Prime Minister and the national leadership, who must be held accountable for this electoral disaster.
Like them, I do not believe this will be fixed by another speech, another reset, or another reshuffle. The problem runs far deeper. Labour has lost touch with the working class people and communities it was created to represent.
Our natural voting base has turned away because we have failed to address the deep-seated decline they see in their public services and communities. This sense of anger is being intensified by the Government’s failure to tackle the cost of living crisis, rooted first in Tory austerity and sustained by an economic system that allows the wealth of this country to flow upwards, instead of being shared fairly across it.
Across towns and cities that should be Labour heartlands, our base has collapsed. We cannot brush this off as a bad night or a messaging issue. This is a political crisis for the entire Labour movement. How we respond now will determine whether the Labour Party remains a relevant political force for years, and decades, to come.
The Prime Minister has reached the point where the question is no longer whether he can recover, but whether staying on causes lasting damage to Labour’s ability to rebuild trust and stop the advance of the right.
The longer this drags on, the greater the damage to the party and the country. The Prime Minister must now set out a clear timetable for his departure, and restore our party’s democratic processes for selecting candidates, which have been shamefully eroded in recent years.
Only then can we use every asset this party still has to deliver the change we promised this country.
Byrne doesn’t go far enough, though. Labour is beyond saving. Keir Starmer is clinging on, but his response to the collapse has been to appoint disliked former PM Gordon Brown and a(nother) paedophile-linked adviser, Harriet Harman. Harman wrote an argument in the 1970s against prosecuting paedophiles who sexually exploit children on film.
There could hardly be a clearer demonstration of Starmer’s utter moral and political bankruptcy — and the rotting corpse he has made what was once the Labour party that Byrne loved.
Featured image via the NewWorld
By Skwawkbox
With Keir Starmer in meltdown mode, Andy Burnham is being presented as Labour’s saviour. Last time he stood for leader, in 2015, Burnham promised that his first trip overseas would be to the Israeli settler-state. This would be his third attempt at securing the top job at Labour, but does Burnham really represent a change from the failings of Starmer, or simply more of the same?
Burnham’s Friends of Israel
Whilst serving in the last Labour administration, Andy Burnham’s principal adviser was Jennifer Gerber. In 2010, Gerber was appointed director of the lobby group Labour Friends of Israel, which she went on to lead for the next decade.
In 2016, then Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham was one of the Labour MPs who “flocked” to support Labour Friends of Israel under Gerber’s leadership. He was joined by then Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry; Jess Phillips, now sitting on a wafer-thin majority in Birmingham Yardley; and Dan Jarvis, amongst others.
Gerber previously led Progress, a Labour Party pressure group reportedly founded by Epstein-associate Peter Mandelson. The group received millions from David Sainsbury, a major backer of the infamous Labour Together think tank, and were also funded by pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
In 2021, Progress merged with Policy Network, another Peter Mandelson operation, and changed their name to Progressive Britain. The group is currently led by Adam Langleben, a former national secretary of the Jewish Labour Movement.
When Jennifer Gerber stepped down from Labour Friends of Israel in 2020, she praised Keir Starmer for “[committing to] fully rooting out the … Israel obsession in the party.” In his first meeting with LFI as party leader, Starmer pledged to travel to Israel with the group.
At the time, Keir Starmer thanked LFI for “the crucial role they play in the Labour Party”. Now, Andy Burnham, a parliamentary supporter of LFI who voted for Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq, seeks to depose him.
Past leadership bids
Burnham has tried to become Labour leader twice before. In 2015, his leadership bid was supported by Dan Jarvis, another parliamentary supporter of Labour Friends of Israel. Jarvis has previously been funded by Martin Taylor, a major backer of Morgan McSweeney’s Labour Together, who also gave £95,000 to Keir Starmer’s 2020 leadership bid.
Andy Burnham’s 2015 leadership campaign received over £130,000 in private donations. One of his funders was Michael Sternberg, who has also financed Labour’s current Courts Minister, Sarah Sackman. Sackman, a key supporter of David Lammy’s proposals to restrict jury trials, previously worked as a judicial clerk at the Israeli Supreme Court.
Sternberg also gave £5000 to Labour’s current Middle East Secretary, Hamish Falconer. Falconer received another £5000 from Labour Together Limited, and £13,900 from Mike Craven, a former press officer to Tony Blair and current Labour Together board member.
Falconer also received £4600 from a group called “SME 4 Labour”. In the run up to the 2024 general election, with a view to helping Keir Starmer secure a parliamentary majority, SME 4 Labour held a fundraising dinner in London with Jeffrey Epstein’s “best pal” Peter Mandelson.
For the 2024 election, SME 4 Labour had identified Scotland as a “crucial” target. Labour’s parliamentary candidate (and now MP) for Rutherglen Michael Shanks received £4000 from Sternberg. Shanks was also one of several Scottish Labour MPs who received £10,000 from Labour Together to fund their electoral campaigns.
Another funder of Burnham’s 2015 leadership campaign was Howard Borrington. For 22 years, ending with his retirement in 2024, Borrington was Director of UK Government Affairs at arms firm MBDA, the self-declared “world leader in missiles and missile systems”. Before that, he spent almost 16 years at BAE Systems.
Burnham won’t mop up the bloodbath
In 2010, Burnham stood against Ed Miliband and lost. In 2015, Burnham promised that, if he won, he “would involve Jeremy [Corbyn] in my team from the outset.” As recently as February, he was publicly backing Keir Starmer. Burnham will say anything to get into power.
After the bloodbath of last week’s council, Scottish, and Welsh elections, it is clear that Keir Starmer has lost any mandate to rule, but do not expect any stronger moral fibre from Andy Burnham.
Featured image via the Canary
Politics
Politics Home | Keir Starmer Tries To Position Labour As The Party Of A “Stronger And Fairer” Britain
Keir Starmer gave a speech to try to defend his position as prime minister on Monday morning (Alamy)
5 min read
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has attempted to shore up his leadership of the Labour Party and of the country by saying Labour needs to go beyond just “incremental change” and be the party of a “stronger and fairer” Britain.
The Prime Minister is attempting to see off potential leadership challenges following Thursday’s local election results, which saw Labour lose the Senedd in Wales for the first time, fail to make inroads against the SNP in Scotland, and lose around 1,500 seats on local councils in England.
In a speech in London on Monday morning, he admitted that “like every government, we’ve made mistakes”, but insisted “we got the big political choices right”. It was a speech that was passionate, but lacking in policy meat on the bone.
What is the Labour Party for?
Starmer attacked both Reform and the Green Party, arguing that only Labour can “face up to the big challenges” and “make the big arguments”.
“Delivery is, of course, essential, but it’s not sufficient on its own to address the frustration that voters feel, with battling Reform and the Greens, but at a deeper level, with battling the despair on which they prey, despair that they exploit and amplify,” he said.
“And so analysis matters, but argument matters more. Evidence matters, but so too does the emotion. Stories beat spreadsheets. People need hope.”
He went on to say that the Labour Party would not be able to win going forwards as a “weaker version of Reform or the Greens”.
“We can only win as a stronger version of Labour… I will never stop fighting for the decent, respectful, diverse country that I love.”
The status quo is not enough
He appeared to argue for railing against the status quo in government, but did not set out any major new policies.
“Incremental change won’t cut it on growth, defence, Europe, energy,” he said.
“We need a bigger response than we anticipated in 2024 because these are not ordinary times, and this is a political challenge, just as much as it’s a party challenge.”
By way of hard policy, however, there was very little: the one major announcement was that legislation would be brought forward this week to give the government powers to take “full ownership of British Steel”, subject to a public-interest test.
Starmer described this as an example of a policy which will “show the Labour values we will be guided from, and the lessons we will learn”.
He said the government would also go “much further on our investment” in apprenticeships in technical excellence colleges and special educational needs.
Starmer has come under criticism by his own MPs for not spearheading the change that was promised to voters in the 2024 general election.
Senior Labour MP Sarah Owen told The Times over the weekend: “Unless Keir Starmer delivers tangible change and truly connects with the public on a human level, he can’t lead us into another election (locally or nationally). People want politics and politicians who are upfront and true to their values.”
Closer ties with Europe at the heart of the “Labour choice”
Starmer also set out a closer relationship with Europe as being at the heart of the “Labour choice” going forward.
“This Labour government will be defined by rebuilding our relationship with Europe, by having Britain at the heart of Europe, standing shoulder to shoulder with the countries that most share our interests, our values and our enemies,” he said.
“That is the right choice for Britain. That is the Labour choice.”
However, asked whether the next Labour manifesto would include single market or customs union membership, Starmer simply said the UK will take a “big leap forward with the EU-UK summit this year and take us closer, both on trade and the economy, and defence and security.
“That will then be a platform on which we can build as we go forward,” he said.
Change in leadership would be too “damaging”
Addressing Thursday’s elections, the PM said Labour’s losses “hurt”: “I get it, I feel it”.
But many Labour MPs are already concerned that the speech listed the government’s achievements again and did little to shift the dial on either Starmer’s own leadership or the public perception of the Labour government.
Backbench Labour MP and former minister Catherine West has said she could try to launch her own leadership bid if no cabinet minister steps forward to challenge Starmer.
Former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has told Starmer that “what we are doing isn’t working”, calling for Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to return to Parliament. Indeed, perhaps the most significant moment of Starmer’s speech came when he said that Burnham’s return would be a matter for the party’s National Executive Committee, rather than closing the door on him entirely.
Starmer had already insisted he will not step down as PM, and in his speech on Monday, he said he did not want to “plunge the country into chaos”.
“I’m not going to shy away from the fact that I’ve got some doubters, including in my own part,” he said.
“And I’m not going to shy away from the fact that I have to prove them wrong, and I will.”
In what was likely an appeal to his own MPs, he said that the government constantly changing their leadership was “damaging”.
“We tested it, we tested its destruction, and it inflicted huge damage on this country,” he said, in a reference to the changing of leaders under previous Conservative governments.
“A Labour government will never be forgiven if we repeat that and inflict that on the country.”
Labour deputy leader Lucy Powell sat on the front row during Starmer’s speech, with one of the PM’s PPSs Jon Pearce sitting on the row behind.
Labour MP for Ossett and Denby Dale Jade Botterill introduced Starmer on the stage, saying that it was clear to her that the Labour Party “is one of the greatest vehicles for changing the lives of working people this country has ever known”
“But yet, on the doorstep, people no longer believed it.”
Ralph Fiennes as Henry Irving and Miranda Raison as Ellen Terry | Photography by: Marc Brenner
5 min read
A superbly acted contemplation on theatre and the acting profession, this play may appeal more to the cognoscenti, but the one-liners are worth the ticket price alone
This is a play about what a play is about. It is an examination of theatre and the acting profession.
That I took an instant dislike to Teddy was a tribute to Jordan Metcalfe’s point-perfect interpretation of the arrogant Edward ‘Teddy’ Gordon Craig who opens the play recalling his mother, the superstar of Victorian drama, Ellen Terry with the question, “What is it like to be a genius?”
Not that he seems a great fan of his mother, remarking that “if one is still an actor at 40, you need to ask yourself some serious questions”. It is a line that the 78-year-old David Hare must have enjoyed writing, and one which the audience fully appreciated the nuance of.
The play’s title, Grace Pervades, is another blague privée intended for the theatrical cognoscenti. It refers to a less than kind contemporary review, that said of her performances “Grace pervades the hussy”. Not much used in modern parlance, “hussy” is a word to which Terry’s daughter Edith, ‘Edy’, would have taken great exception. Her own dramatic productions were focused on achieving social revolution and the advancement of the suffrage movement.
In fact, living at the bottom of her mother’s garden in a lesbian ménage-à-trois with the occasional “sympathy frig” by Vita Sackville West, Edy might well have had the word applied to herself. However, it must be considered the more remarkable that in the prurient Victorian age, Ellen Terry – whose string of affairs began at the age of 14 – could be deemed such a national sweetheart.
Her amorous liaisons did not prevent her becoming the best-paid woman in England. On one of her American tours, she earned the modern equivalent of £24,000 a week – and just as well. Edy slyly tells us, when disparaging her brother’s theatrical disasters, that “Teddy’s Vikings of Helgeland lost more in a week than Ellen made in a year!”
David Hare has lost none of his powers
Teddy believes in “a theatre without actors” and in real life became (in retrospect, it must be said) a noted theoretician of drama and performance, revered by the likes of Konstantin Stanislavski and Peter Brook. A self-righteous, arrogant womaniser who had an affair with Isadora Duncan, we are told by sister Edy that in his own short acting career, the other spear carriers in Hamlet threw him off the battlements at the end of one rehearsal!
Now, the man himself: Henry Irving. Or do I mean Ralph Fiennes? It is difficult to tell. Irving regarded the theatre with the utmost seriousness. Meticulous in his preparation, he boasts that his is “a company of equals in which I am the boss”. He admits to Ellen that he is “atrabilious” (yes, I had to look it up too) and “an evening in my company can sometimes be very grim”, yet this is the man who single-handedly transformed 19th-century theatre into a respected art form. On stage he was the charismatic epicentre from which no eye turned, except to alight on Ellen Terry.
Ellen (played by Miranda Raison) was his theatrical and life partner for 27 years. She was “the day to his night”. She it was who persuaded him to direct his gaze away from declamation at the audience and to the other actors on stage. With her, Irving ran the Lyceum Theatre, overpaying his actors, accumulating debt, but entrancing audiences.
“You see everything as tragic,” she tells his Malvolio, “but Twelfth Night is supposed to be a comedy!” For him, theatre always comes first. For her, life does. She just happens to be spectacularly good at being an actress. “We have taken this forsaken art form and taken it to a level it has never aspired to,” he tells her. “To you, the theatre is everything. I’d rather be a successful human being,” she retorts.
In a moment of purity and tenderness, he admits, “A faltering actor until 40, you were the instrument of my transformation.” I cannot remember if it is he or she who then says, “Together we made a harmony we could not make apart.” But of course it does not matter.
And this is the heart of David Hare’s contemplation on what it is to be a player, and what this strange art form is. He gives us four very different approaches in Teddy, Edy, Ellen and Irving. The minimalist, Teddy; the purposeful utilitarian, Edy; the escapist, Ellen; and Henry Irving, for whom the theatre is inextricable from life itself.
If you love theatre, go – these are some of our finest actors paying obeisance to the nobility of their calling and the giants on whose shoulders they stand.
If you do not count yourself a thespian, still go – Hare has lost none of his powers, and some of his one-liners are worth the price of the ticket all on their own.
Barry Gardiner is Labour MP for Brent West
Grace Pervades
Written by: David Hare
Directed by: Jeremy Herrin
Venue: Theatre Royal Haymarket, London SW1 – until 11 July 2026
Labour has lost control of Lambeth council for the first time in 20 years.
The Greens are now the largest party; however, no party gained overall control of the council.
Lambeth goes from Labour -> No Overall Control (NOC).
Check out all of the election results by ward with our ward and council-level maps over at: https://t.co/QXT1tzrRXB pic.twitter.com/e8s1KiHxeW
— Election Maps UK (@ElectionMapsUK) May 9, 2026
According to the BBC:
Labour has controlled Lambeth since 2006. After the 2022 elections, Labour had 54 seats with the Greens and Lib Dems both on four.
The Green Party gained 27 seats, taking their new total to 29. This is up from four at the last election.
The Green Party go from 2 seats to 28 in Lambeth – and Labour lose control!
This is happening in our cities and in many of our rural targets too.
People voting Green Party councillors to help end Rip Off Britain!https://t.co/0qbagSvIYp https://t.co/rymnuWMQnX pic.twitter.com/yyxpggAW2s
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) May 9, 2026
Hilariously, Labour lost 32 seats, leaving the party with only 26.
The Liberal Democrats won eight seats.
This is yet another example of the Labour vote collapsing in former strongholds.
The Labour leader of the council, Claire Holland, managed to keep her seat, but so many others didn’t.
It’s a shame the leader of the council managed to keep her seat but so many other cllrs didn’t.
I’ve written in about countless residents over the years in lambeth and she’d never even acknowledge the emails let alone respond
Welp.
— KWAJO- Social Issues Campaigner (@Kwajotweneboa) May 9, 2026
Labour together?
Lambeth is also where Morgan McSweeney, enemy of the Canary and Starmer’s former right-hand man, helped to run a successful Labour campaign to retake it in 2006.
McSweeney resigned as Starmer’s chief of staff in February over the shocking appointment of Lord Mandelson as US ambassador.
Similarly, it was also the training ground for now-MP Steve Reed. He was the leader of Lambeth Borough Council from 2006 to 2012. He is now the MP for Streatham and Croydon North.
Lambeth council was a training ground for both Morgcn McSweeney and Steve Reed. Two of the architects of Labour Together. https://t.co/jaBm6hEWux
— Samantha Asumadu (@SamanthaAsumadu) May 9, 2026
Both were architects of Labour Together — which seems to be falling apart.
However, this makes the loss even more symbolic and will hopefully hit Starmer right where it hurts.
Feature image via Lambeth Council/YouTube
By HG
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