London’s preponderant financial interest in crushing Gaddafi’s nationalist, Pan-Arabist rule was openly admitted before he was even sodomised to death with a bayonet by fighters of the Western-backed National Transitional Council that October.

The previous month, then-British Foreign Secretary William Hague began lobbying the UN to lift arms restrictions on Tripoli, to facilitate London’s sale of weapons to the NTC, including its military wing and self-appointed national police force.

Not long after, junior defense minister Gerald Howard explicitly declared, “We liberated Libya from a tyrant, frankly, I want to see UK business benefit from the liberation we’ve given to their people.” Chief among the intended beneficiaries was BP, a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London.

There is also another article in The Guardian about an open letter by nearly 400 British and Irish writers, calling Israel's war on Gaza "genocide". This seems to be a separate letter from the one reported by the BBC above.

Another thing I read this morning was this BBC story about a woman in Gaza who suffered a miscarriage due to the tribulations of trying to survive during Israel's military action. She and her husband also had IVF embryos at a fertility clinic in Gaza, but those have been destroyed by Israeli bombing, so this couple believe they may never have a chance to have children now.

Thoughts?

Labour has called on Nigel Farage to take action after an image emerged from a Reform local election stunt depicting female cabinet ministers as cows in an abattoir.

The roadside setup in Hertsmere, Hertfordshire, shows deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, chancellor Rachel Reeves and education secretary Bridget Phillipson depicted as cows waiting to be slaughtered.

The stunt, pictured by a passerby and passed to The Independent, was damned as “dehumanising” and “misogynistic”. Reform local election stunt depicting leading female cabinet ministers as cows in an abattoir.
[…]
Reform did not initially answer questions on the issue, but responding to The Independent at a press conference in London, Mr Farage said: “All sorts of appalling things get said and done by people fighting in elections, at local and national level, and we get it done to us.

“If one or two of our people do it to them, maybe they think it’s funny. It probably isn’t very funny.

“I can’t pretend we’re perfect. What I can tell you is that one of the ways in which we have professionalised this party is to put people through a vetting process. And I think we’ve come up with a slate of elected councillors and mayors and a new MP that we can genuinely be very proud of.

“If there is the odd lapse in taste, then I regret it, but it’s kind of called politics.”

Starmer (44%) vs Farage (29%)
Starmer (36%) vs Badenoch (25%)
Starmer (27%) vs Davey (25%)

Davey (41%) vs Farage (27%)
Davey (33%) vs Badenoch (21%)

Badenoch (29%) vs Farage (25%)

I recently posted an article about the effects of Fox News to the politics community.

Fox News is like a virus of the mind, it attacks and destroys reasonable thinking and puts people in a constant state of fear so they're addicted to watching the program. It tears apart families and infects other with their propaganda too. It spreads lies, misinformation and disinformation.

When I first found out about GB News I felt really worried that another country would have what is essentially a carbon copy of Fox News. It's the same brainwashing slop that differs only in accent. That's why I want to warn about this and do what I can to stop it, I don't want anyone else to suffer the way we're suffering in America. It's scary here, people are getting detained for no reason, even U.S. citizens who had valid ID on them.

I also see Fox News as being similar to a cancer. It will keep growing and growing until someone stops it. In America we didn't do enough to stop Fox News so the cancer has been growing, spreading to other parts of the body and now we're really sick. With advance treatment I think we'll make it but it's not going to be easy. Once we beat our cancer we'll probably have to spend a lot of time fixing the damage caused by the cancer.

My understanding is that GB News is still somewhat in it's infancy, like a stage 1 or stage 2 cancer. You can beat GB News a lot easier than we can beat Fox News. That's why I'm calling on you to take action now and defeat GB News.

You have the power to prevent the U.K. from becoming like the U.S. I recently found out about a campaign called "Stop Funding Hate". They do a great job listing who advertised on GB News on their Bluesky account.. Consider following them and contacting the advertisers. It could only take a few minutes a day and it will make a huge difference in defunding hate.

Another idea is writing to Legatum, the foreign Dubai based investors who own GB News. Contact them here: https://www.legatum.com/about/contact/. Tell them you don't like GB News.

Also consider sending this video: https://bsky.app/profile/stopfundingheat.bsky.social/post/3lnhwsu7h6c2j to Ofcom. Proof that the purpose of GB News is influence.

George Monbiot suggests that Labour shouldn't be supported because they're now pushing right-wing policies, in his view.

So he thinks people should tactically support progressive parties who support electoral reform (Lib Dems, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru), which may hopefully then lead to electoral reform, so that we end up with proportional representation. Then Brits will have more choices than effectively just two parties for future elections.

Thoughts?

Ian Austin, the UK trade envoy to Israel, has said in a post on X that he is currently in Israel to “meet businesses and officials to promote trade with the UK”.

His visit to Israel comes a week after the British government said it was suspending free trade negotiations with Israel due to its military conduct in the war on Gaza.

An earlier post from the UK embassy in Israel said Austin’s itinerary on Monday included visits to Israel’s Institute of Technology – Technion – and a “cutting-edge Customs Scanning Centre”.

Critics say Israel’s economy profits from selling surveillance technology and weapons it tests on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, to countries around the world.

Do you agree that Brexit has been "a pointless waste of time, money and effort"?

Downing Street has postponed releasing a child poverty reduction strategy despite new data showing increased hardship. Over 120,000 more UK children fell into poverty last year, with charities criticizing the delay as families face worsening conditions during economic crises. The government acknowledges the issue but cites "policy refinement" needs, while opposition leaders argue urgent action is required. Key statistics show 4.3 million UK children now live in poverty, with single-parent households disproportionately affected. Essential context includes rising food bank usage and inflation outpacing benefit increases.

Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn is set to introduce a parliamentary Bill on 4 June calling for an independent public inquiry into the UK’s involvement in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Tabled under the Ten Minute Rule—a parliamentary mechanism that allows MPs to propose new legislation in a short speech lasting up to ten minutes — the bill seeks to examine UK political, military and economic support for Israel since October 2023.

Corbyn confirmed the move in a statement on social media, writing: “It’s official. I will be introducing a Bill for an independent public inquiry into the UK’s involvement in Israel’s assault on Gaza. The government must decide: will it support this inquiry, or will it block our efforts to establish the truth?”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/30517008

May 22, 2025

Sir Keir Starmer has been accused by an Israeli minister of “emboldening the forces of terror” that led to the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington DC.

Israeli ministers have directed blame towards western political leaders, suggesting their recent condemnation of Israel’s aid blockade and resumed offensive in Gaza was partly to blame.

“We must also hold to account the irresponsible leaders in the West who give backing to this hatred – whether through appeasement, double standards, or silence,” said Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister for the diaspora and combatting antisemitism.

“French president Emmanuel Macron, British prime minister Keir Starmer, and Canadian prime minister Mark Carney have all, in different ways, emboldened the forces of terror through their failure to draw moral red lines. This cowardice has a price – and that price is paid in Jewish blood,” he added in a post on X.

Archive

Keir Starmer is at odds with his powerful chief of staff over whether to scrap a two-child cap on benefits, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, a costly policy move that the British prime minister is under pressure to make after bruising local election results.

Starmer favors lifting the limit as a way to demonstrate the ruling Labour Party’s commitment to alleviating child poverty, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing internal government matters. His chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, however, has been one of the main opponents of the move, contesting the estimated £2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) expense ahead of the government’s most recent fiscal statement in March.
[…]
Starmer has faced repeated calls from Labour lawmakers to reverse the cap, which currently limits child benefit payments to two children per household. Rather than heed pressure to change the policy immediately upon entering government in July, the government delayed a decision by announcing a consultation on a broader child poverty strategy. McSweeney urged Starmer at that time to rule out scrapping the two-child cap, according to people familiar with the matter. He argued that polling shows that Labour voters view the cap as fair, the people said. Starmer pushed back and removing the cap has remained an option under consideration by the government.

Starmer, Chancellor of Exchequer Rachel Reeves and Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall proposed scrapping the cap in the March statement, according to the people, before concluding there wasn’t enough money to fund it. McSweeney was again opposed to the idea, the people said.

The Downing Street official said any suggestion that McSweeney had blocked a worked-up plan supported by three ministers would not be true.
[…]
Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown added to the pressure on Starmer on Wednesday, saying that scrapping the cap was “the cost-effective way of getting more children out of poverty” in an interview with ITV. He separately told Sky News that Reeves could raise £3 billion by either increasing taxes on the gambling industry or reducing the interest paid to commercial banks for their deposits held by the Bank of England.

One government figure in favor of the scrapping the cap countered McSweeney’s polling argument by pointing out that most Labour voters also don’t want child poverty to go up. Lifting the cap is the most financially efficient way of doing that, the person said.

An good article that does its best to highlight the council needing to be effective in some fashion, generate actions. But misses on the NI question, or Welsh Labour being is dissaray too. Still, this is something of a test for Starmer who has seemed to be more internationialist than a home PM to my eyes since his ascendancy