It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, October 26, 2025
UK
Sinn Féin raises concerns with Starmer’s legacy legislation
“The inclusion of a clause to change the law and block compensation for former internees is an act of bad faith and political cynicism.”
From Sinn Féin
A Sinn Féin delegation, led by John Finucane MP, met on Thursday with British Secretary of State Hilary Benn to discuss the legacy framework. Speaking after the meeting, the North Belfast MP said he had raised a series of serious concerns with Hilary Benn following the publication of legislation in the British House of Commons yesterday.
Speaking on Thursday, Mr Finucane said, “With the publication of this legislation, the real work now is to scrutinise the detail and ensure it can command the confidence of victims and families. At today’s meeting, we pressed the British Secretary of State on our initial concerns. The inclusion of a clause to change the law and block compensation for former internees is an act of bad faith and political cynicism. That approach was ruled unlawful in 2020, yet the British government now proposes to circumvent both that ruling and existing legislation.
“We are equally alarmed by the proposed ‘national security’ veto, which would place the release of information to families at the discretion of a British Secretary of State. The current Secretary of State is already challenging a coroner’s right to provide a gist in the Supreme Court; if that is his stance now, what will it be with a statutory veto? We also made clear that the public commentary around protections for former British combatants is being watched closely. There can be no side deals for veterans. Everyone must be equal before the law. On inquests, the bar for re-establishment appears so high that few will be reopened, with cases instead pushed into the new Legacy Commission. That is despite inquests being a tried and tested route to establishing truth.
“The family of Sean Brown are still without answers 29 years after his murder. That is a shameful indictment of British justice, and this agreement makes no reference to it. A public inquiry should be established without delay, as recommended by five High Court judges, and the British government should end its legal challenges against Bridie Brown and her family.
“There is also a lack of clarity around the resourcing and implementation of these legacy mechanisms. We have asked for concrete detail to be provided. As it stands, this process appears designed to protect the interests of the British state rather than deliver for families. Sinn Féin will continue to engage with both governments and to work closely with victims and families, whose voices must be paramount. Any process must earn — and keep — their confidence.”
Former Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams, commenting on the British government’s proposed legacy legislation and its denial of the right of internees to compensation for wrongful imprisonment, said: “I have instructed my legal team that it is my intention to pursue legal action against Keir Starmer’s decision to retrospectively change a law which a Conservative government broke over 50 years ago. At the same time, the British are introducing new legislation to protect British soldiers and RUC officers from facing the legal consequences of their criminal actions.”
Speaking on Wednesday, Mr. Adams said: “In 2020, the British Supreme Court determined that I was wrongfully interned for a period in the 1970s. The decision by the Court was explicit. Interim Custody Orders not authorised and approved by the Secretary of State were illegal. It is believed that upwards of 400 other internees are similarly affected. The British government, which knew it was in the wrong at that time, knowingly broke its own law.
“In January, Keir Starmer made it clear that he would look at ‘every conceivable way’ to ensure that I and others impacted by this did not receive compensation. Yesterday, the British government produced legislation which upholds the quashing of the convictions but denies compensation. This is clearly discriminatory. Once again, the British state changes the rules to protect its security personnel while denying others equality of treatment. That an Irish government would collude in this is disgraceful.
“The British military was involved in the Dublin-Monaghan bombings. A Committee of the Oireachtas on Justice concluded in 2005 that: ‘We are dealing with acts of international terrorism that were colluded in by the British security forces’. The Irish government has now signed up to new laws that will protect those British soldiers involved in these and other attacks in the South and in the North. The British want to close the door on their past actions. Like many others, I will be speaking to my legal team in the next few days to examine what options here and within Europe are open to us.”
This article was originally published in Sinn Féin’s email bulletin on 17/10/2025.
Jessie Hoskin, a Gloucestershire resident, has launched a petition calling on the Gloucestershire Hospital Trust to support their hardworking staff.
“Why have over £100,000 of NHS funds been wasted on defending bullying instead of paying frontline staff fairly?”
In December 2023, a judge found that Kevin McNamara, the former CEO of Great Western Hospitals Swindon, had subjected a member of staff undergoing chemotherapy to “brutal” and “calculated” bullying.
The following month, Kevin McNamara left his job and began a new role as CEO of Gloucestershire Hospitals Trust, facing no consequences for his behaviour. The Trust Board were aware of his record and appointed him anyway.
Over £100,000 of NHS funds have been wasted appealing the court ruling, but two further judgements have upheld the original verdict.
As NHS patients and supporters, we are deeply alarmed that a man found to have bullied a vulnerable NHS worker has been rewarded with a position of power.
This helps to explain the treatment of NHS workers on strike in Gloucestershire in recent months.
A small but mighty group of workers have been on strike since March, fighting for fair pay. Phlebotomists, specialists in collecting blood samples, are currently paid at the lowest band in the NHS: just 30p over minimum wage. The all-female group are asking for a correction to their pay band to help them weather the cost-of-living crisis.
The phlebotomists have now hit the highest number of days of any NHS strike in history. After 200 days on strike, Kevin McNamara is still refusing to resolve this fairly and pay the phlebotomists what they deserve.
Why have over £100,000 of NHS funds been wasted on defending bullying instead of paying frontline staff fairly?
Sign the petition now to demand that Gloucestershire Hospitals Trust conduct a full investigation into Kevin McNamara’s treatment of NHS staff.
On the same day as Labour’s crushing defeat in the Caerphilly by-election, which ended a Labour reign of 107 years in that seat, a local council by-election took place In Colchester. Bryn Griffiths, a local Labour activist, reports on a wave of relief in the East of England, but suggests there is little cause for celebration.
The Colchester City Council by-election was not as significant as the Senedd by-election in Wales but it can still give us a strong indication of what is going on in British electoral politics. The New Town and Christ Church ward by-election was called because our Labour Member of Parliament, Pam Cox, stood down as a local councillor having become Colchester’s first Labour MP since 1945.
Setting the scene
The New Town and Christ Church ward is both interesting and a trend-setter seat for numerous reasons. The ward is part of the wider Colchester constituency which was on Labour’s target list in the 2024 General Election. The ward contains one of the constituency’s biggest concentrations of Labour votes. The Labour Party Branch, chaired by myself, has the biggest Labour membership in the city. To add to the notable local factors, the ward is adjacent to the Castle ward Green Party stronghold. Reform had no local presence so we were about to discover the strength of the populist right as they had not stood here before. So, it is fair to say that all eyes in Colchester were on this hotly contested by-election.
City Council wards have three councillors with elections for each in turn taking place annually, with a year off for the County Council elections. The first ever ward election, after a recent boundary change, took place in 2016 and the Liberal Democrats won with 36.8% of the vote, leaving the Labour and the Tory candidates to vie for second place with around 22% of the vote each.
In 2017 there were no Colchester City elections due to the Essex County Council elections taking place. In May 2018, with Labour benefiting from Corbyn’s creditable 2017 General Election performance, Lorcan Whitehead, a prominent supporter of Momentum, delivered an outstanding result when he took Labour from 22.9% to a massive 41.7%. To put some numbers on that, Labour’s vote went up from 710 to 1,319 and Lorcan’s swing was 19.4%, one of the highest in the country!
Though subsequently we usually returned Labour candidates, in the ‘Get Brexit Done’ nadir of 2019, the Liberal Democrats held a seat. By 2024, Pam Cox, already our parliamentary candidate, retained the seat with a massive 1,639 votes, with the Tories trailing in second place with a derisory 468 votes. Colchester Labour had made New Town and Christ Church a rock-solid Labour seat.
You can find the full record of New Town and Christ Church elections here in Andrew Teale’s excellent local elections archive.
The result
So, with the ‘Starmer effect’ in full swing, how did we do in our by-election on 23rd October 2025 when Pam Cox MP stood down as our local councillor? The good news and the cause of a massive wave of relief all around Colchester is that Labour’s Richard Bourne saved the seat for Labour. So, congratulations to Cllr Richard Bourne. But as the result below suggests, there is no good reason to celebrate.
New Town and Christ Church ward Colchester by-election Thursday 23 October 2025
Party
Vote
Percentage (change in brackets).
Labour ELECTED
800
29.7% (- 27.6)
Liberal Democrat
657
24.4% (+12.1)
Reform
600
22.3% (new)
Green
401
14.9% (+5.3)
Tory
200
7.4% (-8.9)
Independent
38
1.4% (-3.1)
Turnout 24.01% compared to 29.71% in 2024
The turnout was 24.01% compared to 29.71% in last year’s city-wide elections. According to the Local Government Association, the average local by-election turnout across the country in 2024 was 30.8%, so our turn out was low. The weather on the day was horrible so this factor, combined with the electorate’s dissatisfaction with the two main parties, seems to have suppressed voter enthusiasm.
Moving onto the actual votes, the ‘Starmer effect’ lost us more than half of Labour’s vote as we dropped from 1,639 to 800. Some of the drop can be explained by the slightly lower turnout but most of it can be explained only by a flight from Labour. Labour’s vote dropped by 27.6% – so nothing to celebrate here!
Reform came from nowhere to reach 22.3% and third place, slightly behind the Liberal Democrats. We did not know what the Reform vote would be, so the local response is relief that they have not secured a foothold on the council. But given that New Town and Christ Church is a Colchester Labour citadel, it should give us no reason whatsoever for complacency.
So, what could all this mean for the General Election in 2029? The Electoral Calculus poll of polls projection (see picture below) suggests that Colchester as a whole will be a two-way fight between Labour and Reform. Given this daunting prospect, the last thing Labour wants to see is buoyant Green and Liberal Democrat performances. So, it is bad news indeed to see the Liberal Democrats up by 12% to 24% of the vote and the Greens hitting their national opinion poll percentage of around 15%!
The Electoral Calculus poll of pollsColchester constituency projection of Labour (45%) and Reform (40.1%) should create food for thought for those contemplating a left-wing electoral challenge in Colchester. In some areas of the United Kingdom, it will be nationalists, Greens, independent and leftists challenging Labour. But in Colchester a radical challenge to Labour could have the terrible outcome of landing Colchester with a Reform MP.
Electoral Calculus Colchester General Election Projection on the basis of the current poll of polls. Fourth column the Colchester General Election vote projection (25 October 2025). Source https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk
Fragmentation
So, what should we make of our Colchester result? I think one word captures the processes at work: Fragmentation, fragmentation, fragmentation.
Ever since the formation of the Labour Party and the near death of the old Liberal Party at the beginning of the last century, we have had a two-party system: that is, Labour versus the Conservatives. In the Colchester City Council by-election, the two main parties could muster only a total of 37.1% of the vote while back in 2018, when Momentum’s Lorcan Whitehead first won the seat, the two main parties commanded a total of 66.3% of the vote. A figure for the advocates of First Past the Post to think about is that this time Labour, the Party that won, only got 29.7% of the vote!
The fragmentation of United Kingdom electoral politics was very effectively mapped by Hannah Bunting, the Co-Director of the Elections Centre at the University of Exeter, when she wrote in The Conversation earlier this year that “UK local elections delivered record-breaking fragmentation of the vote”. In the 2025 local elections, the average two-party vote share was just 36.8%, so Colchester’s voter fragmentation is typical. In Hannah’s words “the 2025 council election broke records for the extent of fragmentation – a significant movement away from the dominance of the two parties that have dominated British politics for the past century.”
In a five-party (possibly soon to be six) fight, a First Past the Post system, which is premised on a two-party contest, is well and truly broken. Remember, the first-past-the-post electoral system only requires a plurality of votes, and not a majority.
McSweeney strategy failure
We can also see that Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney’s strategy of going for Reform votes while scaring people into voting for Labour is dangerous. Despite Labour running a local campaign that constantly focused on the need to vote Labour to defeat Reform, the Greens, as noted above, rose to their national level of about 15% and the Liberal Democrats surged by 12.1% to take second place. The threat of Reform did not seem to scare a large group of left of centre Colchester voters. The much-trailed arrival of a party created by Jeremy Corbyn will only further complicate matters.
The McSweeney scare strategy may work in the short term in places where we have a big majority but it will be shot through with holes where the contests are closer.
Get PR done!
Regular listeners to the Labour Left Podcast will be able to see where this argument is going. Labour has a policy of Proportional Representation backed by 79% of Conference delegates in 2021. If we are going to prevent Nigel Farage becoming Prime Minister, we need a Labour Leader who will embrace the Party’s policy. We cannot allow Nigel Farage to replicate our 2024 ‘wide but shallow’ Labour majority in 2029. Now is the time to get PR done!
Stop bleeding votes to the left
Compass have pointed out in their aptly named report Thin Ice – Why the UK’s progressive majority could stop Labour’s landslide melting awaythat an electoral strategy that leans heavily towards trying to out-Farage Farage on his own anti-migrant territory is fatally flawed as it undermines our own electoral base. Let me spell it out: when Lorcan Whitehead won the ward for Labour in 2018, we secured 41.7% of the vote and on 23rd October 2025 the vote was down to 29.7% of the vote.
A Labour Party which fails us on Gaza, child benefits, the winter fuel allowance and disability benefits is indeed skating on ‘thin ice’ and is running the risk under the First Past The Post electoral system of delivering a ‘wide but shallow majority’ but this time for Nigel Farage and the populist right.
John McDonnell MP suggested on the Labour Left Podcast that Labour is currently facing an existential threat to its very existence.
To our massive relief we beat Farage’s Reform in Colchester, for now, but the writing is on the wall for those that care to read it. Labour must embrace Proportional Representation and change course if we are to stop Nigel Farage winning!
Bryn Griffithsis an activist in the Colchester Labour Party. He is the Vice-Chair of Momentum and sits on the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s Executive. Everything he writes here is in his personal capacity.
Brynhosts Labour Hub’s spin off – the Labour Left Podcast. Labour’s electoral performance has recently been the subject of much discussion with Richard Burgon MP, John McDonnell MP and Mark Perryman of Lewes Labour Party. You can find all the episodes of the podcast here or if you prefer audio platforms (for example Amazon, Audible Spotify, Apple etc,) go to your favourite podcast provider and just search for the Labour Left Podcast.
We should have learned from Brexit, which weakened Britain in every sense. Now the same voices want to abandon the ECHR. We know where that road will lead.
The tide may finally be turning on Brexit. “The past doesn’t have to define the future, but we must acknowledge the damage Brexit caused,” said Rachel Reeves this week. The Chancellor even suggested Brexit’s economic impact has been worse than critics predicted at the time.
Reeves’ remarks are the latest in a series of interventions that signal a growing confidence among ministers in openly criticising Brexit. But while the government starts to finally acknowledge the damage, the right appear to be gearing up for the next big rupture, with potentially even more far-reaching consequences – leaving the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).
Hijacked by the immigration debate
On the eve of the Conservative Party’s annual conference, and under intense pressure from Reform, Kemi Badenoch announced that the Tories would withdraw the UK from the ECHR, if they win the next election. Seeking to toughen the position she inherited from Rishi Sunak, Badenoch, like many on the party’s right, blames the ECHR for blocking tougher measures on migrant deportations. The Tories are likely still reeling from the embarrassment of June 2022, when their controversial plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was halted at the last minute by a ruling from the ECHR, dealing a major blow to Boris Johnson’s government.
“I have not come to this decision lightly,” Badenoch said. “But it is clear that it is necessary [leaving the EHCR] to protect our borders, our veterans, and our citizens.”
After all, Kemi Badenoch can’t afford to be appear weak on immigration, especially when Nigel Farage has vowed that his first act as prime minister would be to pull the UK out of the ECHR.
Yes, Reform UK has gone all-in on the claim that the ECHR is the key obstacle to fixing the UK’s immigration system. Farage argues that leaving the ECHR, and other international treaties, would allow the government to crack down harder on illegal immigration.
In August, Farage announced that a Reform UK government would introduce an Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill, and to make it law, would withdraw from the ECHR altogether. In its place, he pledged to introduce a new British Bill of Rights. For now, however, there are no details about what Farage’s proposed Bill of Rights would actually contain.
The Reform leader also insists that “three quarters of the country would cheer to the rafters,” at such a move.
Public opinion tells a different story
But Farage’s claims are not backed by public opinion. A recent YouGov survey shows that the public are opposed to leaving the ECHR, with 46 percent saying we should remain a member compared to 29 percent saying we should withdraw. The remaining 24 percent are unsure.
Support for leaving is highest among Reform UK voters, with 72 percent in favour. Among Conservative voters, that figure drops to just 44 percent. In contrast, 82 percent of Labour supporters, 76 percent of Lib Dems, and 85 percent of Green voters want the UK to remain a member.
The European Convention of Human Rights came into force in 1953 as part of the post-war creation of a rule-based international order in place of brute force international politics. It was established by the Council of Europe to protect fundamental rights and freedoms across the continent. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) was established by the ECHR to enforce the rights guaranteed in the Convention.
Drafted largely by British lawyers in the aftermath of World War II, the ECHR has strong British roots, with Winston Churchill being a key architect. It aimed to enshrine a “never again” commitment to prevent the atrocities seen under fascist regimes. Since then, it has protected people in the UK from torture, unlawful killing, slavery, and arbitrary detention. It also safeguards freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and privacy. Existing to safeguard all of our rights, leaving this Convention risks the rights of all of those who live in the UK.
The ECHR is not part of the European Union. It’s a separate legal framework under the Council of Europe, of which all 27 EU countries are members, but so are others, including post-Brexit Britain.
A country can leave the Convention by formally denouncing it, but it would likely have to also leave the Council of Europe, as the two are dependent on each other.
But only two countries have ever left the ECHR.
Russia’s ECHR expulsion
Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe in March 2022, following its invasion of Ukraine, which ended its membership in the ECHR. Greece withdrew from the ECHR in 1967 under its right-wing military dictatorship, a regime marked by the suspension of civil liberties, widespread censorship, and the jailing, torture, and exile of political opponents, but was readmitted in 1974 after democracy was restored.
Ed Davey, leader of the Lib Dems, who have long opposed right-wing calls to leave the ECHR, noted that Russia remains the only country to have withdrawn from the Convention.
“Kemi Badenoch has chosen to back Nigel Farage and join Vladimir Putin,” he said, adding “this will do nothing to stop the boats or fix our broken immigration system.”
Yet in the summer, Davey, who fought a general election on a promise to cancel Brexit, suggested a different position, saying he wouldn’t be opposed to rewriting the Convention. “If you could do it collectively, working with the court, with European colleagues, yes, one could look at that,” he said. This suggests that there is a much wider perception that it is important to periodically revisit any historic international settlement to test its validity in current circumstances which is, of course, a long way from what the right are looking for.
What about Labour?
Labour, meanwhile, is, typically, treading a far more cautious path. Rather than challenging the right’s framing of the issue, the party is focused on reviewing how the ECHR is interpreted by the courts and even floating the idea of amending it. Keir Starmer told the BBC he doesn’t want to “tear down” human rights laws, but does support changing how international law is applied to prevent unsuccessful asylum seekers from blocking deportation.
It’s classic Starmer, the former barrister who edited a textbook on European law in 1998, trying to avoid alienating voters on the right while clinging to progressive credibility.
And Labour’s positioning on the ECHR has grown more complicated over the past year. In March, then-home secretary Yvette Cooper said the party was reviewing how the Convention was being interpreted by the courts, particularly Article 8 concerning the right to family life, and how it was being applied in immigration cases.
A few months later, two ambitious Labour backbenchers, Jake Richards and Dan Tomlinson, joined the chorus, penning a joint article in the Times, calling for “reform” of the Convention to deport more foreign criminals.
Nigel Farage claims that he has changed the terms of the debate, that the liberal establishment is panicking because of his campaign against the ECHR.
Though this is perhaps a bit naïve – or hopeful – from Farage. It is certainly a wild over statement of his influence. Nothing new in that though.
In May, nine EU leaders, led by the far-right prime ministers of Italy and Denmark, published an open letter to launch an “open-minded conversation” about the “interpretation” of the Convention.
It’s safe to assume, that the open letter from Giorgia Meloni and Mette Frederiksen, the latter having taken a hardline stance on immigration, outflanking parties traditionally to the right of her Social Democrats, was not prompted by Reform’s success in British opinion polls. At the end of the day, we all know that any changes to current legal frameworks motivated by anti-immigrant sentiments, will look very different from those which proceed on the basis of a shared humanity.
Would leaving ‘stop the boats’?
In the UK, there is also the Human Rights Act, which means ECHR cases can be dealt with by its own judges.
A University of Oxford study by the Bonavero Institute for Human Rights found that fewer than 1% of foreign criminals appealing deportation in the UK succeeded on human rights grounds. When cases reached the ECHR, most were thrown out.
Lord Sumption, former Supreme Court justice, says the ECHR is “certainly an additional difficulty, but not as great a difficulty, as is suggested.”
The real challenge, he told the BBC, is “finding a place which will take them [deportees] and which is not unsafe,” alongside obligations under the Refugee Convention, which requires the UK to assess asylum claims and grant rights to those who arrive, “even if they got here illegally.”
The cost to human rights
UK in a Changing Europe warns that leaving the ECHR, would strip individuals of a final avenue for justice when domestic courts fail, and remove international scrutiny of Britain’s human rights record. The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement also requires the ECHR to remain part of Northern Ireland law, and withdrawal would breach the agreement and risk destabilising the peace process, damaging relations with Ireland, the EU, and the US.
And as Professor Vernon Bogdanor of King’s College London notes, both the ECHR and the 1951 Refugee Convention protect asylum seekers from being sent to countries where they risk persecution. “Would anyone wish to deport women to Afghanistan or dissidents to Iran?” Even Farage seems to have had second thoughts on that one after initially seeming to suggest that women and children could be returned to Afghanistan.
Human rights lawyer Harriet Wistrich warns that leaving the ECHR would undermine vital protections, such as Article 2, the right to life, which enabled inquiries like the Hillsborough inquests to expose state failings. “If we withdraw fully… it’s those rights that are going to suffer,” she says.
Yet hostility to the ECHR is becoming a new badge of toughness on immigration. As Dr Alice Donald, professor of human rights law at Middlesex University, observes, “calls for withdrawal vastly overestimate the marginal effect that the ECHR has on immigration decisions.”
We should have learned from Brexit, which weakened Britain in every sense. Now the same voices want to abandon the ECHR. We know where that road will lead.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author Right-Wing Watch
Today Right-Wing Watch The legendary vegetable has been formally recognised as a part of British cultural history.
October 20 marked three years since Liz Truss resigned after just 49 days in office. While most national outlets ignored the anniversary, the Daily Star, the tabloid behind the infamous lettuce meme, made sure it didn’t go unnoticed.
The newspaper became globally synonymous with Truss in 2022 after it livestreamed a 60p Tesco iceberg lettuce placed beside a framed photo of the embattled PM, asking: “Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce?” When Truss resigned on October 20 that year, the Star triumphantly declared the lettuce the victor.
Now, that legendary vegetable has been formally recognised as a part of British cultural history. The Daily Star celebrated the news that “Lettuce Liz” is being preserved for posterity by the British Film Institute (BFI) as part of its national archive.
The tabloid’s front page marked the occasion with the crowned lettuce under the headline: ‘The Only Way is Lettuce.’
“Our video of the 60p Tesco lettuce that out-lasted Prime Minister Liz Truss has been immortalised in the BFI National Archive,” the newspaper announced.
The livestream went viral in 2022, racking up 2.9 million views on X, 2.3 million on YouTube, and shared hundreds of thousands of times. It generated a wave of memes and became a symbol of the chaotic political moment that was Truss’s brief premiership.
In recognition of its impact, the BFI has selected the lettuce footage as one of 400 key pieces of British online moving-image content for preservation, as part of the BFI National Archive’s 90th anniversary celebrations. The chosen content, the BFI said, includes pieces that have “entertained, inspired or struck a chord” with audiences over the past 30 years, reflecting the digital-era story of Britain.
“When people talk about the Daily Star, they talk about the lettuce, and that is still the case, it hasn’t left public consciousness,” said Ben Rankin, Daily Star editor-in-chief.
“So three years to the day since Liz Truss resigned, it is testament to the impact a 60p Tesco lettuce had… At the Daily Star, we have always had a unique way of covering big stories. We tell the news with a wink and we are always on the lookout for the next viral lettuce.”
Ellie Groom, BFI National Archive curator, said: “The Daily Star’s video livestream was a seminal moment in British political history and in the story of online moving image.
“It was a brilliantly conceived satirical stunt that went viral and beyond, and over the course of a few short days as pressure mounted on Liz Truss to resign, it had a real influence.”
As for Truss’s legacy, it’s hard to separate it from the economic fallout of her premiership. Her disastrous mini budget, featuring unfunded tax cuts and large-scale borrowing, triggered market panic and sent mortgage rates soaring. While many of her policies were swiftly reversed, the aftershocks continue to be felt by ordinary Britons today.
Mortgage rates had already been rising in response to interest rate hikes starting in late 2021, but the mini-budget pushed them higher still, with the average five-year fixed-rate deal peaking at 6.51 percent on October 20, 2022.
So, for anyone who had to lock in a mortgage after that point, it’s fair to say, “darn that lettuce” may still sum up their sentiment.
Racist and Mendacious Australia: Cowardly and Unethical ABC Under-counts Gaza Deaths
by Gideon Polya / October 26th, 2025
The core ethos of decent Humanity is Kindness and Truth but this is grossly violated by the racism and mendacity of US-, UK-, Apartheid Israel- and Zionist-perverted and US lackey Australia. War is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate in racism. Australia has been involved in all 1950 onwards US Asian Wars, atrocities associated with 40 million Asian “deaths from violence and deprivation” (Google this phrase), with the Right-Far Right Coalition (presently in Opposition) involved in all and Centre-Right Labor (presently in Government) being involved in all except for the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. Australia ignores the horrendous extent of this carnage.
An international team of expert epidemiologists published in The Lancet found that 64,260 Gazans had been killed violently by 30 June 2024 (Day 269 of the Gaza Genocide). Assuming the same rate of killing, this translates to 174,625 Direct (violent) deaths by 7 October 2025 (Day 731 i.e. after 2 years). However other expert epidemiologists published in The Lancet and elsewhere have “conservatively” estimated that deaths from deprivation (Indirect deaths) are 4 times the Direct deaths, this implying 174,625 x 4 = 698,500 Indirect deaths and a total of 873,125 “deaths from violence and deprivation” (Google this phrase) by 7 October 2025. Australia ignores the horrendous extent of this carnage too.
Similarly, experts estimated 64,260 violent deaths by 30 June 2024 (Day 269 of the killing) which translates to 136,000 violent deaths by 25 April 2025 (Day 569 of the killing). They “conservatively” estimated 4 non-violent deaths from deprivation (indirect deaths) for every violent death (direct death), this indicating 544,000 indirect deaths, and hence a total of 680,000 deaths by 25 April 2025, Anzac Day, Australia’s war dead memorial day.
However Google 680,000 with “ABC News” and you will discover the ABC reporting “more than 65,000” in response to audience complaints about a broadcast assertion that “680,000 people have been killed in Gaza”: “ABC NEWS | News Breakfast | Death toll in Gaza | 23 September 2025 | Resolved. Two audience members raised a concern that a guest interviewed on News Breakfast said that 680,000 people have been killed in Gaza which was not challenged by the presenters. That figure is unverified and no context about the source was provided in the interview. To address the concern, during the live program on 24 September 2025, News Breakfast made an on-air clarification stating that: “And we just want to clarify something said on the program yesterday. We invited Reem Burrows from the Palestine Australia Relief and Action Group on the program to discuss Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN. During that interview, she said it’s reported over 680,000 people have been killed in Gaza, the current death toll from Gaza’s Ministry of Health is more than 65,000″ (ABC, Resolved complaint, 24 September 2025).
Indeed if you Google “ABC News” with 65,000, 66,000 or 67,000 you will find that the ABC “likes” such estimates that under-count the estimates of expert epidemiologists by a factor of 13-fold.
I responded to the ABC “Resolved complaint” report by publishing a detailed rejoinder in Gideon Polya, “Mendaxocracy, Kakistocracy, Murdochracy & Corporatocracy Australia: Lazy ABC Grossly Undercounts Gaza Genocide”, Countercurrents, 23 October 2025: “The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC, Australia’s taxpayer-funded equivalent of the UK BBC) has an appalling record of under-counting Indigenous deaths in US wars. When a Palestinian activist referred to 680,000 Gaza deaths the ABC responded to complaints and offered 65,000 deaths. In reality Gaza deaths from violence and deprivation after 2 years of the Gaza Genocide and Gaza Holocaust now total 873,000 based on data in The Lancet…
The ABC has an extremely bad record when it comes to reporting the Indigenous death toll in US wars. Thus, on the occasion of the (incomplete) US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, the ABC reported that “The withdrawal ends a war that left tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,500 American soldiers dead”. However, the horrible reality is otherwise: 2.7 million Iraqi deaths from violence and deprivation in the 2003-2011 Iraqi Genocide and Iraqi Holocaust (Gideon Polya, “US-imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide”). There are 5 million orphans in Iraq – go figure…
The ABC permitted me to make 3 nation-wide broadcasts but then rendered me “invisible” for 20 years despite my thousand huge articles and 10 huge books. I have individually addressed thousands of carefully-researched Letters to Mainstream media but only a dozen have evaded the censor. Recently Pearls & Irritations published 10 of my submitted Letters in a row but then applied total censorship. For revelations Google “Australian Mainstream media lying & censorship.”
Some useful suggestions:
(1). All ABC managers should be literally kicked out of the ABC because censorship of the Truth is a betrayal of trust.
(2). I would be happy to manage the ABC for the lowest salary of a full-time ABC employee. The ABC should be about urgently reporting the Truth and I can bring a mountain of Elephant in the Room things from a thousand articles and 9 huge books that the present emasculated and subverted ABC ignores.
(3). A modest suggestion: that the ABC reports the Truth at least 2 days each year – I would nominate Anzac Day and Remembrance Day and suggest possible licence on those days from legal constraints on truth-telling.
(4). Although I have been rendered “invisible” to Mainstream Australia I am proud to have defended in print (necessarily outside Mendaxocracy Australia, “ruled by liars”) about 40 truth-telling Australian writers variously importuned by the liars and bullies. A decent ABC should honour and court these truth-tellers.
(5). Journalists working for commercial media are pressured to lie by omission and commission by the owner-imposed culture. However ABC journalists are taxpayer-funded and such lying can be akin to betrayal, treason and theft.
(6). Censorship is anathema to the core academic ethos of commitment to Truth and free speech but this has been grossly perverted by grossly over-paid managers (“refugees from scholarship” according to my late father) (see Gideon Polya, “Current academic censorship and self-censorship in Australian universities,” Free University Education). The same restitution of Truth and free speech is demanded of both universities and the ABC.
(7). For 2 years the world has looked on while Zionist Israelis unforgivably perpetrated a Gaza Massacre, Gaza Genocide and Gaza Holocaust. The ABC should report the Truth (for a detailed and exhaustively referenced account see Gideon Polya, “Unforgivable 2-Year Gaza Massacre, Gaza Genocide & Gaza Holocaust By 50 Appalling Numbers,” Countercurrents, 14 October 2025). Please inform everyone you can – lying Mainstream media and politician presstitutes certainly won’t.
Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He has published the following huge books Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950, Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History, US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide (2020), and Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions (2020). Read other articles by Gideon.
Fake Boats and Bogus Admirals: Peter Cowell’s Fictional Mercy Fleet
by Binoy Kampmark / October 25th, 2025
The wish to be credulous is central to the fraudulent scheme. The one playing the fraud can always rely on some connivance and collaboration from the tricked and the gulled. Many an art curator is bound to turn scarlet at the prospect that their expertise was utterly subverted by a counterfeiter of Picasso and Matisse. The Hungarian painter Elmyr de Hory, immortalized in Orson Welles’s F for Fake, is but one such example. Claiming to be a dispossessed aristocrat with a lucrative stash of originals, he could whip up a Matisse in a matter of minutes. The rest was seduction. And you can hardly blame those who purchased his masterful forgeries, which were, in some cases, arguably the equal of the original masters whose style was so sincerely imitated.
Peter Cowell is yet another one of these figures of the conjuring trick. For 25 years, he was able to pose as an admiral of a fictional fleet. Hardly odd, given that the defense forces of the world are stuffed and oiled on fantastic assumptions and inaccurate assessments of threats and exaggerated notions of insecurity. In the industry, people fell for “Admiral Cowell”. There was nothing off about him, even when there was. A picture published by the ABC shows a uniformed buffoonish character with ill-fitting spectacles on a full, expansive face, suggesting that he might be taking his role just a bit too seriously. But that is in the nature of these projects: an appreciation for the costume and the custom. Wear the costume well, and you might get away with murder.
The central project of deception was the mercy fleet dubbed the IntSAR (International Sea/Air Rescue), pitched as a scheme requiring an annual contribution of A$25 million from partner nations. The sheer scale of the project seemed to resist questioning: in the realm of charlatanry, it makes sense to go big.
In 2022, Cowell found himself in the company of then Fijian opposition leader Sitiveni Rabuka, the High Commissioner for Fiji Ajay Amrit, and retired Colonel Sakiusa Raivoce, one of the founders of the People’s Alliance Party. The ABC news report notes the agenda of the discussion: the hatching of possible plans to establish a base of operations for the mercy fleet that would operate in the region. A defence contractor pseudonymously named “Joel” was also in attendance. Cordial as the meeting was, nothing was etched.
But another meeting was scheduled to take place in March 2023, this time with Rabuka as Fiji’s prime minister. Interest in the IntSAR program had lingered, and a letter acknowledging Cowell’s urgings to pursue the project revealed Rabuka’s agreement to meet him along with the Admiralty delegation in the capital. That meeting never took place, Cowell being, by that point, stranded in Thailand and short of cash for a fare to Fiji. Well and truly deceived, Rabuka was terse in responding to questions put to him by the ABC. “I recall attending a meeting in Fiji around 2022 with a delegation from Australia regarding a proposal to establish a search and rescue operation in Fiji,” he stated. “However, nothing concrete resulted from that discussion – no agreement was signed, and neither were any funds or land handed over, or promised.” Notice, in these words, the false note of circumspection and prudence that evidently failed to manifest in 2023.
In 2021, Cowell sought to interest the Federal Coalition government in the IntSAR project. While it is not clear if the brief outlining the proposals was received, let alone taken seriously, it made grand claims of having secured A$800 million in funding from 30 member states, with the ultimate goal of obtaining contributions from a further 120. “We request that the Morrison Government as a cabinet fully support this diplomatic initiative as the Primary Diplomatic Sponsor Nation and Host to the IntSAR Commission,” it read. Were this to happen, Cowell and his team would “happily support Australia taking the credit for the initiative”. In May 2022, we find a frustrated Cowell lamenting a lack of government interest in his enterprise, a missed opportunity costing thousands of “Aussie jobs”. IntSAR would therefore take “its ship building needs to Asia. Our water bombers too. [A$]3.7 billion per year missed from the economic recovery.”
The Bathurst Regional Council also confirmed that representatives of the the IntSAR commission approached it in 2020 with a proposal to develop an empty parcel of land at the Bathurst airport in central New South Wales. From it would spring a private airport and training facility. Cowell even sought to recruit a few individuals for his phantom effort. One of them, former NSW police detective Scott Rogan, now claims to have detected something smelly. “There were a few things that just didn’t feel quite right about it all.”
Even now, Cowell flashes as a poster boy for the fooled, an advertisement for the deluded. On LinkedIn, that platform where the lie becomes digestible fiction, he advertises himself rather grandly as the former chairman of the IntSAR Admiralty Board. In his listed experience about a fantasy, we get such offcuts as “diplomatic coordinator” in efforts to establish the “IntSAR Commission by Treaty”. We see him promoting himself as the “original theorist of asymmetric industrial relations”, thrown in with the flatulent title of “geostrategic military consultant”. This is the gold gibberish that makes sense in a social media world of ennobled mediocrity and marked flattery. In the end, you are almost impressed by the man, having given legs to a fictional scheme that lasted for a quarter of a century with virtually no demurral.
Work was frozen after jihadists launched a deadly attack on the site of the project near the Tanzanian border in March 2021 - Copyright AFP/File Simon WOHLFAHRT
France’s TotalEnergies said Saturday the consortium it leads to build a $20-billion liquified natural gas project in Mozambique has decided to lift a suspension on the work imposed in 2021 because of jihadist violence.
TotalEnergies said in a statement the “force majeure” halt to the Mozambique LNG project would be lifted but added that Mozambique’s government would need to approve the move before work could restart.
It said Mozambican President Daniel Chapo had been notified of the decision on Friday.
The statement confirmed a news report from local outlet Zitmar.
The Mozambique LNG project, the largest private investment in Africa’s energy infrastructure, is expected to generate thousands of jobs and help make the country one of the world’s biggest LNG exporters.
Work was frozen after jihadists launched a deadly attack on the site of the project near the Tanzanian border in March 2021, resulting in around 800 deaths.
No further attacks on that level have happened since, but the jihadist insurrection has not stopped — the UN said there had been some 633 attacks against civilians this year.
Chapo, on a visit to the United States on Saturday, was to go to the headquarters of US oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, which is weighing a different gas project in Mozambique.
The head of ExxonMobil’s operations in Mozambique said in September that the US company’s decision on the Rovuma LNG project was linked to TotalEnergies lifting its halt.
The French oil and gas company is the lead partner in the Mozambique LNG consortium, with a 26.5 percent stake. The consortium has said it could start making the first LNG deliveries four years after the project is started.
The African Development Bank in 2018 estimated that Mozambique has more than five trillion cubic metres of gas — enough to supply Britain, France, Germany and Italy for 20 years.
