Politics
What Will Reform UK’s Foreign Policy Look Like?
Nigel Farage at a press conference in Westminster (Alamy)
7 min read
Nigel Farage may be an election away from representing the UK on the world stage. Tom Scotson investigates the battle to fill in the blanks on Reform’s foreign policy
Reform UK’s foreign policy is, it is fair to say, a work in progress. While Nigel Farage recently nominated spokespeople for the economy, home affairs, business and education, the identity of the person who would serve as his foreign secretary remains unknown.
Farage likes room for manoeuvre and has trimmed and tacked his way around big foreign policy questions for decades. But, as he seeks to project his outfit as a government-in-waiting, pressure is increasing on him to define how he would lead Britain on the world stage.
The Reform leader does not start with a blank page, however. And while support for Donald Trump and Israel and opposition to the EU and China might be givens, Farage faces persistent attacks from his enemies over his past support for Vladimir Putin.
I think the ECHR is going to take up the majority of Reform’s thinking around foreign policy
In 2014, asked about the world leader he admired most, he cited the Russian President: “As an operator, but not as a human being”. A decade later, the Reform UK leader suggested to the BBC that the West had provoked the Ukraine invasion, saying it was clear that “the ever-eastward expansion of Nato and the European Union was giving this man a reason to his Russian people to say, ‘They’re coming for us again,’ and to go to war”.
Farage does his best to disavow these past positions, for example, telling The House that President Trump had finally seen Putin was “not anyone you can do business with” last July. But they remain a drag on his support. Polling by More in Common found only 26 per cent think that Farage sides with Ukraine in its conflict, the lowest of any mainstream party leader.
In seeking a reset, Reform has turned to Alan Mendoza, executive director of The Henry Jackson Society, and now the party’s chief adviser on global affairs.
Speaking to The House magazine, Mendoza was keen to stress that Reform does not have an official formulated foreign policy as it develops. But his insights are a useful indicator of where the party is moving.
“The Elizabethan age gives a sense of what Britain is beyond just its immediate confines,” he says, referring to a time when Britain had an “expansive” trading relationship and presence with the outside world.
“Now, you could say that the date we stopped doing that was the east of Suez decision in 1967 onwards,” he says, referring to Harold Wilson’s decision to cut Britain’s military presence in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Persian Gulf.
“When you ally that to entering the European Union, which brought its own complexities in terms of our foreign policy positioning, and suddenly you no longer necessarily had a global British outlook. You had more a parochial Britain as part of the European Union outlook.”
He adds: “I think it’s fair to say that sometimes what we have done in recent years is put, for example, alliance interests above necessarily strict British interests.
“And now it’s about a time of rediscovering what British interests actually are. That’s the key thing. What are British interests? What are they overseas? What should this country be doing in a post-European age?”
One early concrete step in this effort to reassert national interest over alliances would be taking the country out of the ECHR. Invoking Article 58 of the ECHR, which would start a six-month countdown to leave the convention, would require consequent changes to the UK’s trade agreement with the EU and the Good Friday Agreement.
“I think the ECHR is going to take up the majority of Reform’s thinking around foreign policy,” predicts Fred de Fossard, director of strategy at the Prosperity Institute.
The Prosperity Institute, highly rated by Reform insiders, published a paper on withdrawing from the ECHR last year, with a foreword from new recruit Suella Braverman.
“It’s what their voters will care about,” Fossard adds. “They will get credit in the bank for stopping the boats, fixing the borders, ensuring proper deportations, no longer having to pay money into the European Union.”
The United Nations has come under pressure from much of the British right, but it appears Reform UK has no plans to leave the organisation, despite raising serious concerns over the Human Rights Council (HRC) and UNRWA.
Then there is the question of the US – and a relationship with Trump that is, by turns, a help and a hindrance. “Farage’s foreign policy is probably a natural outgrowth of his personal links and issues over the years,” Jonathan Brown, an ex-foreign office diplomat and former chief operating officer of Reform UK, says. “So, that’s both with American and Europe, moderated by concern for what’s electorally popular.”
Another constant is the party’s relationship with Israel, with many of its MPs and members holding strong pro-Israel views. “Nigel Farage’s party have openly supported Israel, and we’re really grateful for it,” Sharren Haskel, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, told The House in December.
“It shows quite a lot of courage and backbone to [stand] by the right side of history, talking in depth and not in slogans, not to populism and not to the surrender to very radical and loud voices.” Reform Friends of Israel has sent two delegations to the Jewish state, which have included party chairman David Bull and board member Dan Barker.
“What is there to be nuanced on the pro-Israel question? What, be pro-Hamas? That’s your nuance on that? Of course, Reform is not going to be a pro-Hamas party,” Mendoza tells The House. “Reform is going to be a party and is a party that is very supportive of a democratic state fighting Islamist terrorists.”
I’m not sure anyone wants to pay a billion dollars to [sign up to the Board of Peace]
Despite these twin pillars – Trump and Israel – Mendoza is sceptical that Farage would join the Board of Peace, not least because of the cost. “I’m not sure anyone wants to pay a billion dollars to do that, but I suspect we might have some input because of our traditional relationships in the region.”
Mendoza faces competition for influence over foreign policy. Reform UK MP Danny Kruger and Farage’s senior adviser James Orr both met with vice-president JD Vance on his holiday to the Cotswolds in August. Although Kruger tells The House he is “not very close” with Vance, he describes himself as “a great admirer of his”.
The MP, who heads Reform’s preparing for government unit, says of the vice-president: “I know he’s not very popular among all sections of our population, but I think he is a decent, thoughtful man who – by the way – loves this country.”
The party also continues to pursue relationships with individuals from other parties around the world. Gawain Towler, a Reform UK board member, met with New Zealand First and Australia’s Liberal Party recently. He has also increased the party’s outreach and developed contacts with Danish and Hungarian embassies.
“Broadening our scope – as we must, as a responsible party that may be in government – it is essential we build those links,” Towler says. “[Farage] went to Davos to say, ‘I am here!’”
He adds: “We are not isolationists in any way; we understand that geopolitics is not going away, we can’t live in a small bubble.”
As PM, Farage might find his biggest headaches are closest to home. “I can’t imagine the UK-French relationship is going to be as close,” Ed Arnold, fellow of defence think tank Rusi, tells The House. “The UK-German relationship might be difficult; the UK-Poland relationship will also be pretty difficult.”
One of the architects of Brexit might be about to be confronted with the task of building Britain a new home in the world.
Hannah Campbell specialises in data, and AI workforce transformation. She was Parliamentary candidate for Telford in 2024 and is currently the Regional Deputy Chairman (Political) for the West Midlands.
The 2024 general election was widely billed as the first “AI election”. It was not. Artificial intelligence appeared largely at the margins: modest productivity gains, a handful of deepfakes, and limited use by Reform to generate TikTok content. Yet to dismiss 2024 as overhyped would be a mistake. The cultural and technological shift is now unmistakable.
When an AI-assisted video of Kemi Badenoch “rapping” in response to the Budget went viral, it marked a turning point. The clip was satirical, quickly consumed, and widely shared. It demonstrated that political culture has already changed. AI is no longer experimental. It is becoming part of the core infrastructure of campaigns.
The next election will not be defined by whether AI appears, but by who uses it well. This transition will be visible in the May 2026 local elections and, by the next general election, AI will be embedded in the operations of every serious campaign.
This is not optional. Campaigns are being asked to deliver more with fewer volunteers, tighter budgets, and an electorate whose attention has shifted decisively towards short-form video, satire and decentralised online creators. Those who use AI to scale operations, sharpen messaging and produce high-impact content will outperform those who do not. For the Conservative Party, failing to keep pace would be a strategic error.
How AI Has Already Entered UK Campaigning:
Despite the hype, AI’s most common uses in 2024 were practical rather than transformative. Campaigns used it to draft emails, leaflets and social media posts; generate multiple message variations in seconds; speed up rebuttal and opposition analysis; add subtitles and edit video; and improve back-office efficiency.
In effect, AI has already become a productivity engine. It allows local associations to match national-level production values and to respond at speed in a compressed media cycle.
This matters in an environment where timing often determines reach.
Academic assessments also confirm that AI-enabled disinformation surfaced in 2024. The scale was limited, but the direction of travel is clear. The tools are improving, misuse is becoming cheaper, and voters are increasingly uncertain about what to trust. Future campaigns will operate in an environment shaped by synthetic content, rapid iteration and narratives created outside formal party structures.
The Opportunities AI Brings:
AI enables campaigns to do more with less. Volunteer numbers are falling, digital expectations are rising, and budgets remain constrained. AI can generate targeted messaging, graphics, canvassing routes, donor communications and briefing packs in minutes, freeing scarce human time for strategy and persuasion.
It also sharpens political judgement. AI can analyse sentiment, test arguments, identify weak lines and surface emerging issues before a human team has convened. It does not replace political instinct, but it accelerates it.
Mobilisation and engagement can also improve. Chatbots and automated tools can help voters with registration, voter ID requirements and polling logistics, reducing friction and allowing campaign teams to focus on persuasion rather than administration.
Crucially, AI levels the playing field. Associations and candidates without professional creative teams can now produce high-quality content. Campaign capability is being democratised, but only if people are trained and confident enough to use the technology. That requires investment, support and leadership from the centre.
The most significant cultural shift, however, is the rise of AI-enabled video satire. Younger voters increasingly consume politics through humour, remix culture and short-form video rather than leaflets or long policy documents. AI is now the engine powering much of this ecosystem.
Groups such as Crewkerne Gazette illustrate this vividly, producing parody songs and videos using AI-enhanced voices or imagery of political figures. These are not official communications, yet they shape perceptions, embed narratives and reach audiences that formal campaigns struggle to access.
Political satire is not new, but access has changed. You no longer need a production studio to reach millions. AI-powered satire spreads quickly and cheaply, often outside formal campaign rules, and the boundary between parody and misinformation is increasingly blurred.
Risks to Democratic Integrity:
The risks are real. Deepfakes and engineered deception are becoming easier to produce, and misuse will increase. Even a small number of convincing falsehoods can erode public trust. When voters assume any clip might be fake, democratic accountability weakens.
Hyper-personalised persuasion also raises concerns. AI-driven interactions can be persuasive yet opaque, creating an uneven playing field. Microtargeted messages fragment public debate by delivering claims to audiences unseen by others, limiting scrutiny and challenge.
Independent creators may also cross ethical lines that political parties would avoid. Campaigns may benefit or suffer reputationally, but they cannot control the outcome.
Unlabelled synthetic content creates serious exposure. It can breach electoral law around imprints and misleading material, trigger defamation claims where individuals are falsely represented, and raise data protection issues where targeting lacks proper safeguards. Platforms may remove content at critical moments, and regulators may intervene. Most damaging of all, voters punish perceived manipulation. Once trust is lost, it is difficult to recover.
Using AI for Attacks – Legal Boundaries:
AI-assisted attacks must sit within clear legal limits. It is lawful to analyse opponents’ records, highlight genuine inconsistencies, and produce parody or satire, provided it is clearly labelled and would not reasonably be understood as fact.
However, AI-generated audio, video or imagery that fabricates words, actions or behaviour risks breaching electoral law, particularly the prohibition on false statements about a candidate’s character or conduct under the Representation of the People Act. Outsourcing such material to “independent” creators does not remove exposure where campaigns encourage, coordinate or knowingly benefit. The test is whether voters are misled, not who created the content.
What Conservatives Should Do Now:
The Conservative Party operates within a framework overseen by the Electoral Commission and cannot dictate the direction of regulation. What it can do is ensure its own practices are robust, credible and defensible.
That means setting clear internal standards now: no synthetic impersonation intended to mislead; consistent labelling of AI-generated content; and a presumption that campaign communications are traceable and attributable. These safeguards reflect existing law, public expectation and basic political common sense.
Regulation should remain targeted and proportionate, focused on deception, impersonation and covert interference rather than legitimate creativity or satire. Where work is already under way through regulators or Parliament, Conservatives should engage constructively. Shaping outcomes from within the system is more effective than objecting once rules are fixed.
Above all, the party should lead by example. If Conservatives use AI openly, responsibly and competently, that approach becomes the benchmark. In practice, regulators tend to codify behaviour that already works.
The Strategic Imperative:
The 2024 election was the AI election that was not. The next will be the opposite. As volunteer numbers decline, budgets tighten and video dominates political communication, AI will sit at the heart of campaign success.
AI will shape how future elections are fought, whether parties prepare for it or not. Those that embed it early, train their people and use it responsibly will define the terms of political competition. The rest will spend their time reacting to a campaign environment they no longer control.
‘Perhaps [he] will end up killing someone.’ These were the prescient words of one psychiatrist involved in the treatment of Valdo Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenic who went on to murder Ian Coates, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber in an unprovoked attack in Nottingham on 13 June 2023. As the ongoing inquiry into these tragic events has revealed, the psychiatrist in question had good reason to make such a grave prediction. In the years leading up to the Nottingham incident, Calocane is alleged to have assaulted a police officer, attacked an emergency worker, assaulted two colleagues at a factory and frightened a neighbour so badly that she jumped from a first-floor window, seriously injuring her back.
Press coverage of the inquiry this week has focussed on revelations that Calocane was not sectioned under mental-health legislation because health staff were worried about the ‘over-representation of young black men in custody’. In other words, clinical professionals were more concerned about protecting themselves from allegations of racism than protecting the public from serious violence. This extraordinary disclosure is but the latest chapter in an ongoing saga of ‘protected-characteristic exceptionalism’. It is the same attitude that left grooming-gang victims ignored, allowed male rapists into women’s prisons and permitted adult male migrants to claim they are children.
Yet Valdo Calocane’s skin colour was not the primary reason that he was allowed to remain at large. Calocane was free to kill because Britain’s political and medical establishments have made the deliberate choice to allow dangerous psychiatric patients to live unsupervised.
In the past, individuals with psychiatric disorders were detained, often indefinitely. Asylums were built from the Victorian era onwards, and by the 1950s there were around 150,000 secure mental-health beds across the country. Many of these institutions became overcrowded and, sadly, as happens in many residential establishments, abuse occurred. Nevertheless, the purpose of the insane-asylum system was to protect the public from violent crime.
From the early 1960s, everything changed. Treatment of psychiatric patients in Western countries moved away from incarceration and towards a policy of ‘care in the community’. The discovery and promotion of anti-psychotic drugs by a nascent pharmaceutical industry made such a revolution feasible. But it was the cultural climate that enabled this ‘deinstitutionalisation’, as concern for individual autonomy overtook the pursuit of the common good as the organising moral principle of Western liberal democracies.
Left-liberals were not the only proponents of care in the community. Small-state conservatives welcomed the opportunity to close expensive taxpayer-funded institutions; Enoch Powell was a champion for the cause.
From our contemporary perspective, the idea of removing a sick person’s liberty – perhaps for life, and before he or she has even committed a crime – seems deeply distasteful, even barbaric. Yet if Calocane had been detained after his first psychotic episode in 2020, Coates, Webber and O’Malley-Kumar would still be alive.
When it comes to the far-reaching consequences of deinstitutionalisation, Calocane’s crimes are just the tip of the iceberg. Between 2008 and 2018, an average of 69 people a year were murdered in the UK by patients under the care of mental-health services. Over the same time period, more than 4,000 people suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and living alone ‘in the community’ committed suicide.
In the late 1970s, Britain had around 400 psychiatric beds for every 100,000 people; in 2023, that number was just 22 beds per 100,000. As the number of mental-health inpatients has fallen, rough sleeping has risen. And over the past half a century, Britain’s per-capita prison population has nearly doubled. Identical trends can be seen in countries across the liberal West with the notable exception of Japan, which has 260 mental-health beds per 100,000 and the lowest rate of homelessness in the world.
Care in the community could be more accurately termed ‘neglect in isolation’. The reality is that many people with serious psychiatric disorders cannot be safely ‘managed’ without constant supervision and the capacity to use force if necessary to prevent them from doing harm – either to themselves or others. It is impossible to predict if, or when, a particular patient will turn violent.
As the Nottingham inquiry continues, we will be told that ‘lessons must be learned’ by both the NHS and the police. The left will blame cuts and the right will blame DEI culture for the failure to section Calocane earlier. But until we admit that care in the community has failed, nothing substantial will change. Violent crimes will continue to be committed with diminished responsibility by people who are severely mentally unwell. If we truly want to prevent another tragedy like Nottingham, we must reverse decades of policy and begin the process of re-institutionalisation.
Unfortunately, in today’s political climate, it seems highly unlikely that we will see such a u-turn. Proposing that the state should routinely incarcerate innocent people is akin to heresy. All societies must find a balance between individual freedom and collective security, and liberal democracies like ours have typically allowed the pendulum to swing hard towards personal liberty. But as the case of Valdo Calocane shows us, when the pendulum swings too far, we all become less safe and less free.
Miriam Cates is a GB News presenter, senior fellow at the Centre for Social Justice and a former Conservative MP.
Esther Rantzen has called for the abolition of the House of Lords after it emerged a bill legalising assisted dying in England and Wales is set to run out of time.
The former TV presenter, who has terminal lung cancer, said it was “a disgrace” that unelected peers were able to effectively block the will of MPs.
The House of Commons voted 314-291 last June to allow the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill to proceed to third reading.
It is a private member’s bill brought forward by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater.
However, it has become bogged down in the Lords as peers opposed to the legislation tabled more than 1,000 amendments to it.
Sky News reported that ministers are unwilling to allow more parliamentary time to be devoted to the bill, meaning it will not become law.
Rantzen, who persuaded Keir Starmer to back her calls for parliament to be given a fresh say on legalising assisted dying, told the broadcaster it was “absolute blatant sabotage” by the Lords.
She said: “A few peers, for their own reasons, have decided that they’re going to stop this going through parliament, and the only way to stop them would be to invoke the Parliament Act, which has happened before, or get rid of the House of Lords. They’re clearly not fit for purpose.”
The Parliament Act allows the Commons to overrule the Lords, but it is rarely used.
Under the bill, terminally ill adults with less than six months left to live would be allowed to legally end their lives at at time when they choose instead of suffering though a prolonged illness.
The proposals stipulate that an individual must have the mental capacity to make the choice, make two separate declarations – witnessed and signed – about their desire to die, and have approval from two independent doctors that they are eligible.
A survey last year found 73% of Brits back the idea, while 72% support Leadbeater’s proposals.
Rantzen said: “The general population wants the law to change. Every survey shows this. The majority of the public understand the cruelty and, ridiculous provisions of the current criminal law, which doesn’t criminalise suicide but does criminalise families who want to say goodbye to loved ones when life becomes unbearable and they want the choice of a quick, pain free death.
“This law would allow people like me not to shorten my life, but to shorten my death.”
The prime minister’s official spokesman said: “Our position is that it’s absolutely right that bills face the appropriate scrutiny, it’s what the parliamentary process is there for.”
(Credit: Haris Malekos)
4 min read
With the Greens and even the Tories ready to outflank them, Labour must take action on student loans to show it is still on the side of young people.
Tuition fees are back on the political agenda for the first time since the increase to £9,000 during the coalition years. There were many lessons to be learnt from the impact of that rise in 2012. The change was near fatal to the Liberal Democrats at the next election and has continued to haunt them ever since, with the party still not trusted with young voters more than 15 years later.
The Labour Party now stands in a precarious position, at risk of making a similarly damaging mistake and losing support with a generation of young graduates who have become a key demographic.
While standing to be Labour leader, Keir Starmer described the need to end the “scandal of spiralling debt”. A month ago, however, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the current system of Plan 2 loans is “fair”. Sticking with the latter position, and not reviving the former, would side Labour against a key group of voters, leaving the Greens and even the Conservatives with an opportunity to outflank them.
Graduates and younger people were key to Labour’s success at the 2024 general election. YouGov polling suggested that 42 per cent of voters with a degree supported Labour, more than twice as many as who voted Conservative (18 per cent). Even smaller portions of this cohort voted for Reform (8 per cent) and the Greens (9 per cent).
This has changed dramatically since then, however.
The same pollster now has only 25 per cent of graduates voting Labour, closely followed by the Green Party on 21 per cent. This represents a near 15-point swing from Labour to the Greens. There is a similar trend amongst young people. At the last election, 41 per cent of 18-24 year olds supported Labour. This has now halved to just 21 per cent. Meanwhile, the Greens, who want to scrap tuition fees altogether, have jumped from 18 per cent to 37 per cent with the same age group and are also more popular than Labour with 25-29 year olds, overturning a 33 point deficit to lead by 7 points.
Both these groups may be small parts of the electorate overall, but they will continue to grow in size and significance. There are already an estimated 5.8m adults who took out a student loan between 2012 and 2023. With almost half of graduates predicted to never pay back their loan in full, these concerns will remain with graduates as they enter their 30s, 40s and 50s, while, at the same time, more young people attend university and are burdened with debt.
The risk for Labour is that even delayed and reactive tweaks to the system, which reportedly could come as soon as next week, may struggle to win over young Green curious voters who are tempted by Zack Polanski’s bolder offer to scrap tuition fees altogether.
The electoral threat has been further complicated by Labour’s decision to allow 16 and 17-year-olds a vote at the next general election.
Our polling of teenagers aged 13-17 (who will all likely be eligible to vote at the next general election, depending on timings) highlights the impact of university fees on this cohort. Almost 3 in 4 (71 per cent) teenagers say that reducing tuition fees is a big priority which should be addressed urgently. This new electorate of 16-17-year-olds will only be one or two years away from aspiring to attend university when polling day next comes around, and tuition fees will be high on their personal agendas. If Labour is not seen as the party on their side on this issue, then the decision to extend the vote to this group risks backfiring on the party and boosting the electoral prospects of their rivals.
It would be wrong to say that this is a narrow interest in terms of the population at large.
According to Ipsos research published this week, a majority of Brits (54 per cent) say that student loans should not be charged any interest, with just over three-quarters (76 per cent) of Brits concerned that students are ending up with too much debt from going to university. Dealing with student loans can reaffirm Labour’s support with their base, but also appeal to parents, employers and voters outside of it.
Being seen as failing to do so will only fuel Labour’s losses.
Julian Gallie is Head of Research at Merlin Strategy
Your Party have announced the results of the elections for seats on the party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC). After months of endless controversy and bickering, the results are undoubtedly going to have an impact on the direction of travel for this new socialist party. As expected, both Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn have been elected as public office holders.
Corbyn posted a statement:
We have no time to waste. So let’s get to work.
Join us at https://t.co/kMShFQTxzH pic.twitter.com/iuqjE4AfTj
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) February 26, 2026
Sultana’s team also released a statement:
Grassroots Left congratulates all those elected in the Your Party leadership elections, and extends our thanks to every member who voted, organised and campaigned for us.
Having won collective leadership at the founding conference, we are delighted that eight women have been elected to the CEC who support our programme for Maximum Member Democracy.
A significant number of members have signalled their desire for a democratic, accountable and transparent party. We will now be in the room and ensure your voice is heard.
Our party is strongest when members have real power: over policy, finances, selections, and decision-making – through transparent, accountable structures. All Grassroots Left members will push for this on the CEC. We will push to make sure the branches are recognised immediately, fully supported and that members are put at the heart of the party.
Your Party must now work together to become a party of and for the whole left – with no more witch-hunts or stitch-ups. All those who have been expelled should be reinstated. We now need a culture of mutual respect, open debate, and a shared focus on the real issues facing us: inequality, insecure work, crumbling public services, fascism, and a political establishment that keeps letting working people down.
Grassroots Left will work with all those elected who are committed to rebuilding trust by putting the members first and fighting with the branches for accountable, transparent and democratic structures and strong socialist policies in Your Party.
Your Party election results
The fledgling party saw two slates form sparking toxic debate among members: Grassroots Left and The Many. Refusing the factionality, many Independent candidates also stood.
The total number of votes received were 25,347, out of a possible 40,985 members. This represents an impressive 61.8% turnout. 43 postal ballots were received, of which 29 were accepted which represents 14 members returning two ballots and one member returning just one. Two ballots were removed due to having already voted online.
The results for Public Office Holders: Zarah Sultana (GL), Jeremy Corbyn (TM), Laura Smith (TM) and Grace Lewis (GL).
Northwest: Sam Gorst (Ind), Dawn Aspinall (TM)
Northeast: Catherine Davis (TM) and Hannah Hawkins (TM)
Yorkshire and Humber: Monique Mosley (TM) and Sophie Wilson (GL)
East of England: Jo Rust (TM) and Solma Ahmed (GL)
East Midlands: Louise Regan (TM) and Riaz Khan (TM)
West Midlands: Megan Clarke (GL) and Sue Moffat (TM)
Southeast: Naomi Wimbourne-Idrissi (Ind) and Cassandra Bellingham (TM)
Southwest: Candi Williams (GL) and Jennifer Forbes (TM)
London: Mel Mullings (GL) and Noor Jahan Begum (TM)
Scotland: Niall Christy (Ind)
Wales: Maria Donnellan (TM)
Results are in, now move forward
Now the results are in we can see there are fourteen for The Many, seven for Grassroots Left, and three Independents making up Your Party’s new CEC.
Let’s hope this at least allows the party to move forward from months of bickering and toxic briefing to a place where it can actually be effective from the grassroots.
After all, the far-right aren’t waiting around, neither should we.
Featured image via the Canary
With just days until Texas’ primary, Republicans in Washington are growing more alarmed that their increasingly vicious intraparty contest could cost them a must-win Senate seat.
Sen. John Cornyn appears to be headed to an expensive and nasty 10-week runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, with a strong chance that Paxton wins the nomination even after national Republicans spent months airing his dirty laundry all over the Texas airwaves in an effort to boost Cornyn.
“Honestly, if you look at the polling in a general election setting, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that the seat [flips], depending on who the Democrats nominate,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, when asked about the possibility that Republicans could lose the race if Cornyn, who he endorsed, is not the party’s nominee.
If Cornyn loses the primary, Senate Republicans worry they could be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars that could otherwise go toward key battleground races in expensive states like North Carolina, Georgia or Michigan, complicating their path toward holding Senate control.
Republicans have already spent nearly $100 million on TV advertising in the primary, which also includes Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), according to data from AdImpact. And Cornyn launched new ads this week, with support from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, that hammer Paxton in ways that could hurt him in the general election too: highlighting his messy ongoing divorce and accusations of corruption and calling Paxton a “wife-cheater and fraud.”
But those attacks haven’t stopped Paxton, a MAGA hero more aligned with the party base who has been bolstered by positive polling and a wave of grassroots enthusiasm.
“All signs indicate that Paxton probably finishes first,” a Washington GOP operative close to Cornyn told POLITICO granted anonymity to candidly discuss the race. “We’re just hoping the gap is close enough the narrative isn’t ‘Paxton kicked the crap out of Cornyn.’”
Paxton attended the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday night as a guest of Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), who called warnings of an expensive general election a “scare tactic.”
“What you’re doing now is you’re telling Texas you can’t elect Ken Paxton, not because you do a better job than me, but it’ll cost too much to win it,” said Nehls. “What a desperate attempt to convince voters to not vote for Ken Paxton because it could cost too much money in November. That’s ridiculous.”
Paxton is predicting a massive victory. Speaking with reporters after a campaign rally in the Houston suburbs last Friday, he suggested he may win the race outright and avoid a runoff.
Both Paxton and Cornyn allies have been running ads attacking Hunt in recent days, a sign either that they see a chance that Hunt could edge Cornyn for a spot in the runoff — or that Paxton could win outright.
If the race does extend until the end of May, Paxton said he doesn’t intend to change his strategy.
“It’ll be grassroots, just like it always has been, and we’ll be out trying to compete,” Paxton said. “Obviously, [Cornyn] has got a lot of money, D.C. money. I don’t have that money. We’ll have our money from Texas.”
A spokesperson for Hunt said the congressman told NRSC chair Sen. Tim Scott last year before he got into the race that Cornyn was going to lose, but “Washington ignored it.” They also warned that Paxton could be vulnerable in the general election.
“If Senate Republicans lose the majority, it will be because the NRSC failed to plan for the future and chose to spend a record-breaking sum meddling in a Republican primary in Texas, of all places, where the GOP nominee is almost always favored to win,” the spokesperson said. “That’s malpractice.”
Republican Party officials and Senate GOP leaders think Cornyn has a far better chance than Paxton of staving off a Democratic challenger in the general election. When asked for comment on the race, the NRSC pointed to a memo it circulated to donors earlier this month that said that “John Cornyn is the only Republican candidate who reliably wins a general election matchup,” and warned “Paxton puts this seat at risk.”
“We have to be prepared to spend there, and that’s a very different scenario if Cornyn’s the nominee,” Thune said. “He is by far, I think, the best candidate on the ballot in a general election, not only for the Senate, but also for down-ballot races in the House that could be impacted by the Senate race too.”
The polls bear that out. The NRSC released polling toplines showing Cornyn leading state Rep. James Talarico by 3 points and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) by 7 points in general-election matchups. Paxton would trail Talarico by 3 points and lead Crockett by just 1 point. Nonpartisan public polls have found similar numbers.
A Democrat has not won a U.S. Senate election in Texas since 1988.
Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas), who hasn’t made an endorsement in the race, said she hopes the Republican primary avoids a runoff. “We’ve got to keep Texas red,” she said. “That is not a choice, and so the faster we can get someone in place, the better it is for all Texans.”
During a Fox News appearance Monday, Cornyn said he anticipates he will face Paxton in a runoff and warned that a Paxton victory would give Democrats a boost in November.
“Unfortunately, the attorney general has got so much baggage and corruption in his wake that he will jeopardize our chances of keeping this seat red in November,” Cornyn said. “I believe that I can help President Trump in [the] end of his second term by not only winning this race, but bringing along some of these congressmen who are running in these five new congressional seats. Ken Paxton jeopardizes all of that.”
Paxton has led or been in a statistical tie with Cornyn in nearly every primary poll since launching his bid in April of last year, despite campaigning minimally and spending a small fraction compared with Cornyn’s war chest. It’s a testament to Paxton’s status as an aggressive MAGA figure in Texas, a reputation he has forged while serving as Texas’ top lawyer for a decade. Paxton used the power of his office to stoke the culture wars in court, like suing to overturn the 2020 election and defending the state’s strict abortion ban.
Dave Carney, an adviser to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, predicted that Cornyn and Paxton will face off in a runoff, where he suggested Paxton would have the edge. The most conservative candidate tends to win because they often have the most driven supporters in low-turnout primary runoff elections.
“They have to run real campaigns, both of them, they got to model their voters and turn them out,” said Carney.
To date, Trump has resisted making an endorsement in the primary. “I’m friendly with all of them,” he said earlier this month. “I like all of them, all three.”
Thune and other Senate Republicans for months privately lobbied to get Trump to endorse Cornyn, believing he would be the most formidable candidate in the general election. Thune has been careful not to predict what Trump will do in the future. Some top Trump political aides are working on Cornyn’s campaign — but the president has a longstanding relationship with Paxton. There is lingering skepticism in and outside of the Capitol that Trump would endorse Cornyn if the senator comes in second heading into the runoff.
Trump is scheduled to make an appearance in Corpus Christi on Friday to deliver a speech on the economy. A White House aide, granted anonymity to speak freely, said the president will not endorse at the event. The White House hasn’t announced if any of the GOP Senate candidates will join Trump on the trip.
Top GOP donors, too, worry that the party is burning money — and that Paxton still has the upper hand in spite of the huge spending against him, with some concerned about an outright Paxton win.
“Nobody truly knows what is going to happen based on the polling,” said one GOP donor. “There is a scenario [where] Cornyn doesn’t make it into a runoff. But even if he does, a runoff with Paxton will be very tough because of [the] low number of voters who turn out — most of whom are very conservative and viewed as Paxton voters.”
The person added that there is “frustration from everyone that Trump lets this happen by not endorsing.”
Another GOP donor said there’s “not a lot of cautious optimism” among donors that Cornyn will even make it to a runoff. “It’s going down to the wire,” the donor lamented.
Lisa Kashinsky contributed reporting.
The stage lights lift to reveal a young child from Gaza, aloof and tricksy, swallowed by darkness. Theatregoers have assembled at Arcola theatre to see A Grain of Sand — a stand-out one-woman play delivering a bird-eye view of children’s experience of genocide. First commissioned by the London Palestine film festival in 2024, the play is directed by Elias Matar and gracefully executed by Irish-Palestinian actress Sarah Agha.
Agha, playing Renad, wears the brightest smile, dungarees, and two tidy braids. She is perched on a mound of sand, not pale or quartz, but muddy and sullied. She gazes tenderly at Gaza’s shoreline while Israeli fighter jets overhead hum and drum.
Gaza immortalised on stage
The young child was 11 years-old when she was killed by Israel, following its 2023 military assault on Gaza. Her spirit and testimony, one of many in the play, endures through Agha. The play’s message is clear, that no child will be expunged from the historical record – not like the countless lives disappearing from Palestine’s civil registry. Renad’s “verbatim testimony” is one of 18 collected experiences. Agha tells the Canary that these stories were taken from an anthology of poems and testimonies written by Gazan kids — A Million Kites. They form the backbone of the screenplay produced by Good Chance Theatre.
In Agha’s words, the show “immortalises” the hundreds and thousands of children Israeli occupation forces have killed. These deaths are no lapse in international conventions — they’re deliberate. The play conveys this without thrusting upon viewers the gore and depravity clogging our newsfeeds which – while educating the world of Israel’s crimes – also inures us to suffering. Instead, it invites you into the lives and children’s fantasy-prone imagination.
Daisy testimonies
Like a matryoshka doll, Agha pulls out story after story, each nested within each other. But where one story ends and another begins isn’t always clear. Their tales, memories, and fantasies are relayed with tact, levity, and acerbity, despite the difficulty, Agha explains, of being an adult actor playing a child and the “added complexity of it being a child from Gaza”.
The interlaced stories evoke emotions and sensorial experiences of life in Gaza, through a child’s eyes — the aroma of Ouzi rice as it simmers, screeching missiles, shells whistling, chairs falling, drones hissing, and the cacophony of shrieking children, and the haunting silences in between.
As a survivor of war, I’m reminded of my Iraqi father’s words: “you hated the sound of F-16s, you wept inconsolably.” Children, as I’m painfully reminded by those in the play, are rarely handed the mic to speak — their voices muffled beneath the toll of war.
Hell with the lid off
Before Israel’s onslaught transformed Gaza into “hell with the lid off” (a term coined by James Parton), people’s ‘everyday’ wasn’t much different from yours or mine. The play delivers flashbacks to when Gaza was in better shape. Renad, seeking safety and trying to drown out the terror of her missing family, retreats into the folktales her Siti (Arabic for grandma) told, and shares these with us.
Peppered throughout the play, these folktales stand as a monument to Palestinian heritage. They braid together motifs, legends, fables, and mythical creatures. The most striking is Al-Anqaa, a firebird, synonymous with the phoenix and born from Arabic Islamic literature. It also appears as the protagonist of Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “Death of Al-Anqaa,” symbolising the Palestinian experience and perseverance.
If you pay close attention to Gaza municipality’s insignia, you’ll also find the fire bird proudly at its centre.
Renad looks up at the sky, searching for a signal, and Al-Anqaa swoops in — the all-knowing, all-seeing protector of the land of Palestine. The mythical figure reflects Renad’s dissociative state, with her relationship to the sunbird shifting between dour and tongue-in-cheek.
Imagination holds a lifeline
For Gaza’s children imagination is the magic carpet that transports them to a safe space in times of genocide. Zainah, aged 13, expresses this in her cerebral poem where her imagination opens doors to unsuspecting sites of refuge – none of which reality permits.
I hid inside the paintings of artists who paint freedom…Or maybe I hid in the sea, where no one could find me…mov[ing] from one place to another, like a bottle of oil someone threw on the shore. Am I free if I become an object?
The abject helplessness her magical thinking conveys is overwhelming. For Agha, motifs and metaphors form a visual language “to help communicate something horrendous” – a coping mechanism in other words. As one child recounts:
When drones invade my brain I think of Siti’s stories
The actress added that “we cannot summarise or depict how bad the situation is — that’s not what the play is trying to do. The use of metaphor helps me. I need moments of levity, colour, to get me through to the next scene — otherwise I can’t carry it alone.” But warns that “we can’t just rely on a bird” if we’re to effect change.
The sore spots
This levity contrasts with the hair-raising attacks and flashpoints of Israel’s military assault, retold from the perspective of the children no longer with us. Among the tragedies is the senseless raid on al-Shifaa, Gaza’s largest hospital, and the fatal strike on the Abu Hajjaj family residence. The sole survivor, 9-year-old Elham, was left orphaned and severely burned. Despite its lighter notes which darken as it progresses, the play puts its finger on all the sore spots.
As the first UK show to represent a televised genocide, “still unfolding,” Agha reminds us, A Grain of Sand is ultimately a political act. It’s not a play about sentimentality but an elegy for Gazan children. Behind the scenes, multiple discussions were held, she explained, and these eventually spawned an advisory group made up of Gazan artists and writers. Their pain and anguish is felt in every second, minute, and passage – ultimately responding to the impossible question of how, in the midst of a genocide, do you produce art responsibly and truthfully?
There is no single template but as Agha says:
like a grain of sand on a beach, there are thousands, 2.2 million stories and more, we can’t do it all. You cannot account for every grain, but just one is relevant to make up the entire shoreline.
Call to action
By pulling back the curtain on the unspeakable cruelties foisted upon children, the show renders Israel’s excuses inadmissible. It tears away the mask and lays bare the mental horror children endure. But the full depth is accessible only to viewers able to activate their imagination, to pause, and awaken their psyche. Beneath the theatrics, tricksy stories, and fables, there lies an urgent call to action.
Following its initial run at the Arcola Theatre, the tour resumes in Canterbury on February 26, 2026, with the final show set to be staged in Dublin. The full list of dates for the second leg of the tour are accessible here.
Featured image via Good Chance Theatre
Only, the story gets even more bloody ridiculous than that. The Met documents passed to Mandelson’s lawyers actually implicated the speaker for the Lords, Michael Forsyth, who had nothing to do with the whole sorry affair.
Met police blunder
Yesterday, 25 February, the Canary reported that Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle had admitted he was the one who tipped off police to the likelihood that disgraced former peer Peter Mandelson was planning to flee the country and fly to the British Virgin Islands. The tip-off led to Mandelson’s arrest and a renewed police raid on his home.
Mandelson is under investigation after the latest Epstein file release showed him sending confidential government information to serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein. The ‘insider trading’ information would have enabled Epstein and his associates to make an illegal fortune. Former prince Andrew is also under investigation for similar communications.
New information has now revealed that the senior Met officials met with Hoyle on the afternoon of 25 February. They offered an apology to the speaker for revealing that he was the source of the flight-risk tip-off. Internally, the police are treating the incident as a serious breach of protocol.
A Met spokesperson said:
The Met has apologised to the Speaker of the House of Commons this afternoon for inadvertently revealing information during an investigation into allegations of misconduct in public office.
However, the BBC reported that officers twice informed Mandelson’s lawyers, Mishcon de Reya, that Forsyth was the source of the tip-off. This is apparently because the Met doesn’t know its ass from its elbow, and confused the speakers for the Commons with the Lords.
‘To prevent any inaccurate speculation’
When the media immediately announced Forsyth as the informant, the Lords speaker said the reporting was “entirely false and without foundation”. Instead, Hoyle publicly stated that he was the previously-anonymous source.
On 25 February, Hoyle told the Commons that:
To prevent any inaccurate speculation, I’d like to confirm that upon receipt of information, I felt it was relevant I pass this on to the Metropolitan police in good faith, as is my duty and responsibility.
The Commons speaker also revealed that the information on Mandelson’s flight-risk was given to him by an an individual in a position of authority in the British Virgin Islands.
The Met police then conducted their own investigation of the veracity of the information. Whilst Mandelson was released on Tuesday morning, the day after his arrest, he reportedly surrendered his passport as a condition of his bail. The ex-peer denies all wrongdoing.
Activists from action group “People against Genocide” have used modified Transit vans to block the entrance to an Israeli weapons factory. Access to the Elbit Systems’ Filton factory was blocked as of 7am today. Palestine Action activists were jailed for over eighteen months without trial for damaging the same factory in August 2024. It was among the pro-Israel groups that pressured the Starmer government to mendaciously ‘proscribe‘ Palestine Action as a ‘terrorist’ group.
Members of People Against Genocide “locked on” inside one vehicle while others climbed on top of the second van to blockade the site.
Elbit claims that its Filton facility is a research, development, and manufacturing centre. However, previous raids found the military quadcopter drones awaiting shipment to Israel. The occupying force uses these lethal quadcopter drones to murder Palestinians, and, in total, Elbit supplies the occupation with 85 percent of its killer drone fleet.
The Filton protest is part of a wider campaign against firms enabling Israel’s genocide. On 25 February 2026, People Against Genocide activists sprayed the front of the Birmingham offices of Chubb Insurance, a week after targeting Chubb’s London office. Chubb insures Elbit subsidiary UAV Engines, which manufactures engines for Israel’s drone fleet. Without insurance, UAV could not produce these engines in the UK.
A spokesperson for People Against Genocide said of today’s action:
Yesterday we were in Birmingham, hitting Elbit’s insurer. Today, we strike at them directly, by shutting down their key facility at Filton, Bristol. While the genocide of the Palestinians continues, we will not rest in terms of targeting the British-based companies and facilities, who contribute to these war crimes. Elbit, it is time to go!
The very name, People against Genocide, was likely chosen to shame the Starmer regime if it tries to proscribe the group too.
Judge Justice Chamberlain said last year that while Palestine Action was proscribed, the ban does not prevent other groups or individuals undertaking similar actions.
The Palestine Action ban has been ruled unlawful, but remains in place while the Home Office appeals the decision.
Featured image via the Canary
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