The band Franz Ferdinand has angrily hit back after the Israeli Defence Forces used their song Take Me Out in a propaganda video posted on social media.

Franz Ferdinand calls IDF ‘warmongering murderers’

The video shows fighter jets and explosions as Israeli soldiers celebrate Israel and the US’ recent attacks on Iran. The caption reads ‘Operation Roaring Lion – this is how it’s done.’

To reiterate, this was all happening while fucking Take Me Out played

Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos took to his own Instagram stories to condemn the genocidal IDF:

These warmongering murderers are using our music without our consent. This makes us both nauseous and furious.

Kapronos also pointed out just how typical of the IDF this is:

Kind of typical though, isn’t it? To strut up and take what isn’t theirs with a vile arrogance…

With the British Media pumping out warmongering propaganda, it’s important that everyone with a voice does speak out against Israel.

History of speaking out

The band are no strangers to standing up for what’s right. In 2016 they released Demagogue as part of 30 Days, 30 Songs, protesting the election of Donald Trump. This was an independent campaign created by Artists for a Trump-free America.

The song included the lyric:

Those pussy grabbing fingers won’t let go of me now.

We can’t possibly ignore the fact that the band is named after Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination led to World War 1.

It’s absolutely bizarre that his namesake is fighting against true evil harder than the British government

If I had a nickel for every time Franz Ferdinand was involved in the precursor events of a world war, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice https://t.co/feAbNuGJr8

— Adam Smith (@adamndsmith) March 8, 2026

Featured image via the Canary

Jeremy Corbyn joins demonstrators at Parliament Square protesting against US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran, February 2026 (Credit: Waldemar Sikora / Alamy Live News)

3 min read1 hr

At a meeting of the party’s central executive committee (CEC) on Sunday afternoon, 14 members voted to appoint Corbyn parliamentary leader, with zero against. He will now lead the party’s cohort of four MPs in Westminster.

Your Party insiders hope the development will provide clear leadership after much turmoil, as the new initiative has been beset by persistent infighting since the start.

Two of the Independent Alliance MPs –  Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed – who were co-founding Your Party quit the project over internal tensions, and just two – Shockat Adam and Ayoub Khan – are still involved.

Zarah Sultana, who quit the Labour Party to join Corbyn’s party last year, has now been effectively sidelined after recent internal elections saw her slate of candidates – ‘Grassroots Left’ – win only seven seats on the CEC. ‘The Many’, the Corbyn-linked slate, secured 14 seats, and independents won three.

A source close to Corbyn had warned during the voting period for the CEC that Your Party would not survive unless his supporters won power.

The Coventry South MP is the only Your Party MP so far according to Parliament’s listings, having self-declared as such some months ago, but PoliticsHome understands that Corbyn is set to follow suit.

Corbyn officially becoming a Your Party MP is a formality that needs to go through the necessary CEC and parliamentary procedures, a source close to him explained. It is understood that, as a YP MP, he will continue to work with the Independent Alliance group.

Members of Your Party voted narrowly for a ‘collective leadership’ over a ‘single leader’ model during its founding conference in November. They decided that the party as a whole would instead be led formally by a 16-member committee, including a chair and deputy chair who must be lay members.

Jennifer Forbes, a Corbyn ally, was elected chair of the party on Sunday. Members of Corbyn’s ‘The Many’ won all eight leadership positions up for grabs in the CEC’s first full meeting. Former Labour MP Laura Smith was elected as vice-chair, and Palestine campaigner and National Education Union activist Louise Regan as political officer.

Sources now say the focus of Your Party will turn to the May elections. During the founding conference, members voted to endorse independent council candidates in England who are politically aligned to Your Party, and to prioritise potential gains over number of candidates endorsed.

Insiders are confident they can help to defeat Labour candidates in urban areas previously considered safe for the governing party, such as in east London and Bradford.

Reacting to his new leadership role, Corbyn said: “It’s an honour to be elected the parliamentary leader of Your Party. From now on, everything we do must serve the people we seek to represent.

“That means campaigning fearlessly against poverty, racism and war. That means building power everywhere: in our workplaces, in our communities and in Parliament. That means taking the fight to Starmer and Farage with a message of hope.

“We have a precious opportunity to unite our movement around a bold alternative – and I’m looking forward to campaigning alongside all members to build the mass, community-based, socialist party this country needs.”

Forbes said: “I’m delighted and honoured to have been elected chair of Your Party. The Westminster political class are failing us, delivering nothing but more wars, higher bills and a country falling apart.

“Your Party will build a genuine alternative, organising our mass membership to campaign on the big issues, from the cost-of-living to opposing militarism. With Jeremy leading us in Parliament, Your Party will now be laser-focused on the people’s priorities.”

James Lawson, is chairman of the Adam Smith Institute.

Traditionally, the Conservative Party is the party of sound money and free enterprise.

From Pitt the Younger to Thatcher, its best leaders understood that prosperity stems not from state direction but from free individuals operating under the rule of law. When the party strays by embracing the mixed economy, accepting soft socialism, or losing the confidence to champion markets, the country suffers and the party loses.

The 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published on the 9th of March 1776, is the perfect moment to remember where these principles originated, and to ask if the party is ready to champion them again.

The Wealth of Nations was the first systematic work of economics. Smith showed specialisation is the engine of prosperity: ten workers in a pin factory, dividing tasks, produce forty-eight thousand pins a day; one alone barely manages a single pin. He demonstrated that self-interest serves the public better than government diktats: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Competition harnesses this motivation to deliver better, cheaper goods. Prices carry information no bureaucrat possesses; markets allocate resources more efficiently than any civil service committee.

The implications remain as relevant today as in 1776. Shun protectionism: a country refusing to buy from efficient foreign producers taxes its citizens for worse goods. Reject industrial planning: the enterprise of millions, not the wisdom of ministers, creates growth. And do not mistake money for wealth: what matters is what a nation produces, not what it hoards.

Conservatives grasped this first. Edmund Burke praised the book as “an excellent digest… with many valuable corrective observations.” In 1792, Pitt the Younger told the Commons that Smith’s research would “furnish the best solution to every question connected with the history of commerce” and proceeded to cut tariffs. Peel repealed the Corn Laws, quoting Smith’s observation that farmers are “of all people the least subject to the wretched spirit of monopoly.” Thatcher rolled back the frontier of the state and joked, when accused of ideological novelty: “You are totally wrong. I learned it from Adam Smith and he was a long time before me!”

But Smith did not just argue for free markets in theory. A recurring theme of The Wealth of Nations is his assault on entrenched interest groups: merchants lobbying for tariffs and guilds restricting entry to inflate prices. His warning is famous: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Here, the modern Conservative Party is weakest. Believing in free markets as a slogan is insufficient. You must confront the vested interests that distort them, even when they are your own voters.

Britain’s planning system, the developed world’s most restrictive, is a machine protecting incumbent homeowners’ property values at the direct expense of the young. The pension triple lock acts as a state-mandated wealth transfer from working-age taxpayers enduring stagnant wages to a largely insulated pensioner class. The net zero lobby has rebuilt mercantilism in green clothing. Billions in subsidies flow to politically connected firms, saddling consumers with Europe’s highest electricity prices, while we could instead have abundant nuclear power, revived North Sea oil, and American-style fracking. Smith would recognise every one of these as a conspiracy against the public.

The economic consequences are dire. In the eighteen years since the financial crisis, Britain’s real per capita income grew by roughly 2 per cent in total. In the eighteen years prior, it grew by nearly 50 per cent. Adjusted for purchasing power, average British living standards have slipped behind Mississippi, America’s poorest state. Strip out London’s outsized output, and our comparative decline is even starker.

The electoral consequences are predictably bleak. At the 2024 election, just 8 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds voted Conservative. The median Tory voter is now 63. How can we expect younger generations to become conservatives without a stake in capitalism? Priced out of homeownership, unable to build, taxed to subsidise wealthier retirees, and squeezed by high energy bills, why would they vote for the party that presided over this settlement?

Yet there are reasons for optimism. As the then Trade Secretary, now Leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch spoke against “hosing industries down with subsidies or slapping tariffs on products from abroad.” That is the authentic voice of the Smithian tradition. But the wider party must follow.

The Wealth of Nations turns 250 today. For most of that time, the Conservative Party was its most effective champion. It can be again, but only if it challenges its own coalition’s vested interests with the same vigour Smith challenged the mercantilists. The party can either reclaim its free-market inheritance or continue managing the decline it recently presided over. Smith told us what works. The question is whether the party still has the courage to do it. Anything less is just nostalgia.

What are “goblet squats”?

What are the benefits of goblet squats?

How do I do a goblet squat?

Jonathan Portes and John Springford share their new analysis that estimates how the number of foreign-born workers would have evolved had the UK remained in the EU. They argue that while leaving changed the composition of migration flows dramatically, it did not materially alter the underlying balance between labour demand, demographic pressures and political constraints.

When the UK voted to leave the EU, much of the economic debate focused on two channels: trade and migration. While there has been extensive work on Brexit’s effects on trade and GDP, its impact on immigration – particularly on the size and composition of the workforce – has been less systematically examined.

In a new analysis, we estimate how the number of foreign-born workers in the UK would have evolved had the country remained in the EU. The results suggest that ending free movement and introducing a new immigration system in 2021 led to a modest rise in the number of foreign born workers in the UK, but a dramatic shift in their countries of origin.

Before and immediately after the 2016 referendum, most forecasts suggested that Brexit would reduce overall immigration. The end of free movement was expected to cut EU inflows, only partially offset by a more liberal regime for non-EU workers. The Home Office, for example, estimated that the post-Brexit system would reduce work-related migration by around 40,000 per year.

What happened instead was more complex. Following the introduction of the new system in January 2021, net migration rose sharply, reaching record levels in 2023. That surge prompted successive Home Secretaries to tighten visa rules. Combined with a weakening labour market, this has led to a sharp fall in work visas issued, including dependants – from 541,100 in 2023 to 186,000 in 2025, with further declines in recent months.

The political debate has often treated these developments as clear evidence either of regained “control” or of policy failure. Our findings point to a more nuanced picture.

It is not possible simply to attribute post-2016 changes in migration to Brexit. The pandemic, post-pandemic labour shortages, the war in Ukraine and the visa route for Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas) all influenced flows. To isolate the effect of Brexit, we apply a synthetic difference-in-differences approach. In essence, we construct a “counterfactual UK” using a weighted average of comparable EU-15 and EEA countries that closely matched UK trends in foreign-born employment before the referendum. This method improves on simply assuming existing trends continue, and avoids relying on a single comparator country such as Germany.

We focus on foreign-born employees rather than immigration flows. UK flow data have been repeatedly revised, and the Labour Force Survey has had well-documented sampling issues for migrants. Instead, we use HMRC data on non-national employees for the UK and Eurostat data on foreign-born employees for comparator countries. Concentrating on workers also reduces the influence of country-specific shocks to asylum and refugee numbers, which might distort the results.

We estimate effects separately for EU-origin and non-EU-origin workers. For EU workers, we treat the referendum in June 2016 as the start of the “treatment”, reflecting the immediate political and economic uncertainty, including sterling’s depreciation. For non-EU workers, we treat January 2021 – when the new system came into force – as the relevant break point. However, using either 2016 or 2021 for both does not hugely change results

For EU-origin workers, the divergence between the UK and its counterfactual is substantial. By 2024, the number of EU-origin workers in the UK had returned roughly to its 2016 level. In our counterfactual UK, it had risen by around 30 per cent. That implies that Brexit reduced the number of EU-origin employees by about 785,000 by 2024 – equivalent to roughly 2.6 per cent of the total UK workforce. Most of this effect had materialised by 2023, with both the actual and counterfactual series flattening thereafter.

This confirms that ending free movement had a substantial and lasting effect on EU labour supply to the UK.

The story for non-EU workers runs in the opposite direction. After 2021, non-EU employment rose sharply in the UK – far more than in the counterfactual. By the end of 2024, non-EU employment in the UK had reached about 225 per cent of its 2016 level, compared with about 150 per cent in the synthetic control. We estimate that Brexit increased the number of non-EU employees by around 992,000 in 2024. Unlike the EU effect, this divergence continued to grow through 2024, consistent with a sustained increase in work-related migration under the new system.

However, more recent data, not included in our analysis, suggests that this expansion appears to have peaked. Visa data indicate that work-related non-EU migration slowed sharply in 2025 as the government tightened rules and labour shortages eased. The additional boost to non-EU employment seen in 2024 is therefore unlikely to persist at the same pace.

Combining these two large but offsetting shifts, we estimate that the net effect of Brexit in 2024 was an increase of around 207,000 non-UK-origin employees – approximately 0.6 per cent of the total workforce. In other words, Brexit substantially reduced EU-origin employment and substantially increased non-EU-origin employment. But the overall number of foreign-born workers in the UK was only modestly, although significantly, higher than it would have been had the UK remained in the EU.

The broader political economy challenge remains. Across Europe, ageing populations are increasing demand for migrant labour, even as public and political pressures push governments to reduce immigration. The UK is not unique in facing this tension.

Our analysis suggests that leaving the EU did not resolve that dilemma. It changed the composition of migration flows dramatically, and it restored nominal “control” over the nature of those flows, but it did not materially alter the underlying balance between labour demand, demographic pressures and political constraints.

By Professor Jonathan Portes, Senior Fellow, UK in a Changing Europe and John Springford, Associate Fellow, Centre for European Reform.

Why might coffee consumption help brain age?

Does that mean drinking coffee will definitely lower my dementia risk?

1996, Tracey Emin: ‘Exorcism of the last painting I ever made’ | Image © Tracey Emin

4 min read4 min

As I started to walk around the new Tracey Emin exhibition, Tracey Emin: A Second Life at Tate Modern, curiously my first thought (and one that kept coming back) was about framing.

Emin is an artist (and a very self-conscious one) who has mined her life and the things her life consists of, for art, as art. She will frame anything and everything if it fits into one of the many ‘stories’ that make up the totality of her work.

A trip to the dentist inspires her piece My Future (1993) in which she frames an old passport (a past identity), a tooth and the dentist’s card (both in the same frame) and separately a hand-written lyrical text that ends with the line “That’s the last dead thing that leaves my body” – a reference to her abortions. 

Everything is framed, one way or another: the large, impressive and beautifully composed appliqué blankets are mounted in thick white frames. Even the famous My Bed is framed twice: by what is left out around the bed and the bedside rug, turning the bed into a lonely ‘oasis’ of being, as well as the line you as the viewer cannot cross. That and her studio installation feel, then, a little like crime scenes, though less perhaps about the crime, more about the potential loss of the fragile evidence.

But perhaps the most interesting framing is that of the paintings which, in an exhibition of varied media, are the dominant medium – and clearly the work Emin has most thrown herself into in recent years.

The newest largescale paintings have metal frames leaving just a slight gap between painting and frame. This interesting aesthetic choice adds to the sense of the severe physical limitation placed on the ideals and emotions you sense in the painting: freedom, ecstasy, joy and sexual desire in the face of anger and latterly the fight against death. The paintings that work best – such as Rape (2018) and You Keep Fucking Me (2024) – do so when the face-off between freedom and obstruction (or erasure) feels most acute. 

Emin’s work is full of such contradictions and ambiguities. Her embroidered cotton Why (2009) contains the phrase “Why Be Afraid”, which may start out as consolation but, when persistently repeated, turns into a cry of fear itself – as well as the cold analysis of the fact.

Her brilliant Super 8 film Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995), rightly given a room of its own, lingers nostalgically over a timeless Margate, with its beach and seaside attractions, even as her voiceover tells us the town is too small and it is time to leave.

She never became a dancer because she was called a “slag” on the dancefloor, but she also never became a dancer because she became an artist, even as much of the film is devoted to her dancing. The artist returned to Margate, but on her own terms.

This is a hugely emotional exhibition. If there is one fault, it is nothing to do with the artist but the stupid trigger warnings. They should all be gathered up, framed and put in a room by themselves. Almost Tracey Emin.

Earl of Clancarty is a Crossbench peer

Tracey Emin: A Second Life

Curated by: Maria Balshaw, Alvin Li and Jess Baxter

Venue: Tate Modern until 31 August 2026

Credit: The Crown Estate/Ben Barden Photography Ltd

In just 25 years the United Kingdom has turned offshore wind from an idea into an industry – from a nascent technology into national infrastructure. It is already power­ing communities, cutting bills and supporting jobs in constituencies across the country. And it has the potential to deliver far more for jobs, growth and energy security.

The case for offshore wind is prac­tical and measurable. Every additional gigawatt delivers an estimated £2-3bn boost to the economy.¹ Between 2010 and 2023, UK consumers are estimated to have saved around £104bn² as wind generation helped shield families from volatile gas prices. Today, the UK oper­ates nearly 3,000 offshore wind turbines³ with a total capacity of 16.1GW – enough clean power for over 16 million homes.

“Offshore wind may be offshore – but its jobs, skills and supply chains are firmly onshore, in your coastal constituencies”

Advertisement

And the momentum continues. The latest Contracts for Difference auction backed a further 8GW of capacity – reinforcing the UK’s clean energy lead­ership and unlocking billions more in investment and thousands of new jobs across the country.

That scale translates directly to constit­uencies. Offshore wind already supports close to 40,000 jobs across the UK, and this could rise to 94,000 by 2030.⁴ Many of those roles – from component manu­facturing to engineering to port services, are rooted onshore, well beyond the coast. Even where turbines cannot be seen – the impact is felt locally.

This is also a clear energy security test. The UK still imports around 42 per cent of its energy,⁵ leaving households and businesses exposed to global gas price shocks driven by geopolitics, supply disruption and extreme weather. Reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels is one of the most effective ways to protect families from future price spikes and strengthen national resilience.

A key reason the UK has made such progress is the strong institutional model underpinning offshore wind. At the centre is the stewardship of the seabed. Created by an Act of Parliament, The Crown Estate has a clear mandate to act independently and commercially to deliver long‑term value for the nation and returns all our profits to HM Treasury for the benefit of public spending.

This enables us to take a strategic approach: working with government and industry, investing in data and evidence to reduce risk, and running transparent leasing rounds that give developers the certainty to invest for decades.

Scaling back ambition now would be a profound mistake. It would jeopardise energy security, slow the clean energy transition, and limit economic oppor­tunities for constituencies nationwide. Sustained growth depends on grid readiness, stable policy signals and long-term investment confidence – all areas where Parliament’s role is decisive.

Meeting the UK’s clean power and energy security ambitions requires a step change in deployment, supported by the right onshore conditions. Cutting-edge offshore wind needs larger ports, heav­ier-lift quaysides and strong pathways into secure, well-paid technical jobs.

We therefore ask parliamentarians to continue prioritising R&D investment and policy that supports innovation from research to deployment.

Government departments and devolved nations must work together on a co-or­dinated strategy that gives communities, industry and investors the certainty required to deliver at pace.

The Crown Estate is committed to ensuring the seabed continues to drive investment for the benefit of people onshore. Through The Crown Estate Act 2025, Parliament granted us the flexibility to invest more widely across priority areas. We are already using these powers to support the next phase of offshore wind.

First, we will provide long-term visi­bility through a new Marine Delivery Routemap – or a “sat nav for the seabed” – a unique mapping and planning tool that can help identify how marine indus­tries and nature can grow together. Our seabed is becoming increasingly crowded. Offshore wind must co-exist alongside cables and pipelines, shipping lanes, fisheries, defence activity and marine protected areas. As demands on our seabed grow, clear mapping is essential to support decision making, avoid conflict, protect nature and give investors confidence.

Second, we will stimulate growth through a £50m Supply Chain Accelerator to unlock early-stage projects where capacity is needed most.

Third, we will invest directly, commit­ting an additional £350m through our Supply Chain Investment Programme to support offshore wind ports and supply chains, working alongside co-investors including Great British Energy.

Over time the Routemap will become a shared national resource – helping local communities and their representatives to engage with the seabed as a vital strategic asset.

To support that engagement, The Crown Estate will offer parliamentary stakeholders the opportunity to explore a working demonstration of the Marine Delivery Routemap following its oper­ational launch.

Our aim is a common endeavour: long-term, cross-sector planning that strengthens the UK’s energy security and delivers lasting benefits for communities, nature and the nation.

Click here to find out more about The Crown Estate.

References

Advertisement
1. https://www.renewableuk.com/media/rqvlqzu0/ offshore-wind-industrial-growth-plan.pdf, p.1
2. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/oct/ wind-power-delivers-ps104-billion-net-benefit-uk-consumers
3. https://www.datocms-assets.com/136653/1747814298- osw-report-2024.pdf, p.8
4. https://www.renewableuk.com/news-and-resources/ publications/wind-industry-skills-intelligence-report-2025/
5. https://oeuk.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/ woocommerce_uploads/2025/09/Economic- Report-2025-OEUK-becfs5.pdf, p.16

Why do people think magnesium will help sleep?

Does magnesium definitely help sleep?

Is magnesium right for me?

What is the right dose of magnesium?

What are some natural sources of magnesium?

Dr Stephen Goss is a freelance historian, lectures in history and politics in London, and is a Conservative councillor in Reading.

According to the Just War Theory, the use of force must be for a morally defensible cause – typically self-defence or the protection of innocent life. It must be fought by legitimate authorities. It must be a last resort. Its expected benefits must outweigh the harm it causes. Combatants must distinguish between military targets and civilians, and the harm caused must be proportionate to the military objective being pursued.

Modern international law largely mirrors these principles. The Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols require armed forces to distinguish between non-combatants and combatants, to minimise civilian harm, and to avoid disproportionate attacks.

While the weight of benefits against harm caused is subjective, the ethical and legal standards for hostilities are not. A last resort; declared by legitimate authorities; proportionate; and directed at military targets – not civilians.

Last week we learnt that bombing is justified when Sinn Féin think it is. In an interview, Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy TD insisted that ‘there isn’t an instance where bombing a country ended up resulting in a better situation’. This is blatantly not true. NATO’s intervention in the Balkans during the 1990s involved air strikes which halted ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo and contributed to establishing peace. The situation was complex, but the idea that military force can never produce a better outcome is simply not borne out by history.

Carthy’s comment might have passed unnoticed as a banal soundbite was it not for the fact that he represents a party whose political history is intertwined with one of the most sustained bombing campaigns ever conducted in Western Europe.

For the three decades of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA made bombing a central instrument of its strategy. Bombs were detonated across Northern Ireland and Great Britain in an attempt to exert pressure on the British state and advance the republican cause. The human cost was immense. Town centres were devastated. Civilians were killed and injured. On Bloody Friday in July 1972 the IRA detonated 22 bombs in bus and train stations, hotels, and shopping areas killing nine and seriously injuring 130 innocent people. On Remembrance Sunday in 1987 an IRA bomb at the War Memorial in Enniskillen killed 11 and injured 63. These are but two of many possible examples.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has complained that her party should not have to answer for the IRA as its violence is now in the past. Yet Sinn Féin has repeatedly refused to condemn the IRA’s campaign in unequivocal terms. Three current Sinn Féin members of the Northern Ireland Assembly have served prison sentences for bombing offences (Pat Sheehan, Gerry Kelly and Carál Ní Chuilín). Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill stated in a 2022 interview that there had been ‘no alternative’ to IRA violence. Last year former Sinn Féin MP Michelle Gildernew asserted that murder was justified during the Troubles.

Indeed, Carthy himself has paid tribute to Hunger Striker Kieran Doherty who was arrested while on a bombing mission. Carthy also defended Tommy McMahon canvassing for him. McMahon was the only person convicted for the assassination of Lord Mountbatten in 1979. The bomb onboard Mountbatten’s fishing boat killed four, including two children.

Republican leaders argue that the IRA campaign, combined with Sinn Féin’s political strategy – the so-called ‘Armalite and ballot box’ approach – helped create the pressure that eventually led to negotiations and the Agreement in 1998.

If bombing can never produce a better situation, then the strategic logic behind the IRA’s campaign collapses. Either the campaign was both morally and strategically wrong, or Carthy’s statement is not a universal principle at all but a selectively applied one.

What makes Sinn Féin’s position all the more inconsistent is that the party regularly pronounces on international conflicts while failing to apply the same moral standards to its own past. Responding to the US and Israeli strikes on Iran, Ms McDonald demanded that the Irish Government condemn the action ‘without qualification’, declaring that the attacks were in breach of international law and warning they risked destabilising the region.

The principles Sinn Féin now invoke internationally: proportionality, restraint, and the protection of civilians sit uneasily alongside the record of the movement from which the party’s electoral strength emerged. The IRA campaign was built around bombing as a political instrument. Many attacks were directed not at military targets but at civilians. Measured against the standards Sinn Féin now demands others observe, many of those attacks would plainly fail.

As the situation in Iran and the wider Middle East has deteriorated, political leaders across the UK have been receiving security briefings on developments and their potential implications. These briefings are not academic exercises. They exist so that those responsible for governing can understand the risks, the intelligence picture, and the strategic choices moving forward. First Minister Michelle O’Neill has repeatedly refused to attend. For a party that frequently offers sweeping moral pronouncements about conflicts abroad: condemning Western military action, criticising NATO, and presenting itself as a voice for peace and international law, this is a notable decision.

It matters because serious discussion about the use of force requires more than rhetorical certainty. It requires an understanding of the intelligence, the risks, and the consequences that governments must weigh before acting. That is precisely why such briefings exist. Choosing not to attend them while simultaneously offering absolute judgements about the legitimacy of military action reinforces the Students’ Union-esque politics Sinn Féin prefers – debating international conflicts in the abstract rather than engaging with the difficult realities behind them.

That detachment from reality was illustrated by scenes in Belfast itself recently. Following the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, Iranians gathered in front of Belfast City Hall to celebrate. Men and women waved Iranian flags, cheered, and literally danced in the street. For them, the decapitation of a regime synonymous with brutal repression, imprisonment, and executions represented the possibility – however uncertain – of liberation. People who had actually lived under the Iranian regime were openly rejoicing at its seeming demise.

Sometimes military force is abused, mis-used, or disastrously misjudged. However, history also shows that it can halt aggression, stop atrocities, and bring down regimes that brutalise their own people. Just War theory does not claim that violence is never justified. On the contrary, it exists precisely because the use of force sometimes may be morally defensible. It places strict conditions on when and how it may be used.

Measured against those criteria, the IRA campaign was not justifiable. Many of its most notorious and deadly attacks were directed at civilians as the primary victims. The same ethical framework Sinn Féin now invokes to condemn the actions of others would render much of the IRA campaign indefensible. To claim that bombing can never produce a better situation is therefore not a serious moral position. Coming from a movement that once defended one of Europe’s most prolonged bombing campaigns, it is something else entirely: selective amnesia masquerading as principle.