On Monday, Reform UK's home affairs spokesperson Zia Yousuf committed to a policy of "prioritising" the placement of migrant detention centres – with a proposed capacity of 24,000 individuals – specifically in constituencies and council areas that vote for the Green Party. Reform says it has "guaranteed" that areas electing Reform UK representatives will not host its mass-deportation camps if the party wins power nationally in a general election.

Byline Times has seen multiple complaints to the official elections watchdog arguing that the proposal from Reform UK amounts to undue influence of voters – in effect threatening to punish those who back the Greens.

Reform's Zia Yousuf said on Monday: "Given the Green Party advocate for open borders and for an infinite number of undocumented men to come here, we will prioritise Green constituencies and Green-controlled councils to locate these detention centres."

In a post on X, he was more blunt: "If you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you. If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will."

One complaint to the Electoral Commission seen by this outlet reads: "I believe this constitutes 'Undue Influence' under the Representation of the People Act, as it uses the threat of infrastructure placement to pressure citizens into voting a certain way or to penalise them for their existing political affiliations.

"This tactic appears designed to intimidate voters by threatening negative local consequences for their democratic choices, [and] incentivise votes through the promise of specific geographic exemptions that are not based on administrative or logistical necessity, but purely on partisan alignment."

The complaint adds: "Threatening to punish specific geographical areas based on their voting record is a violation of the principle that elections should be free from coercion. I urge the Commission to investigate whether this policy breaches the Electoral Code of Conduct or the legal prohibitions against intimidatory behaviour in campaigning."

A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission told this outlet that complaints should be directed to the police, but noted: "Undue influence is an electoral offence under the Representation of the People Act 1983. It covers some activities intended to pressure a person into voting in a particular way, or to stop them from voting at all. This can include using or threatening violence, threatening financial loss, or any act designed to intimidate a person. It is not limited to physical acts and can extend to the content of campaign material."

The watchdog spokesperson encouraged those with concerns about undue influence to contact the police: "Electoral offences are criminal matters. It is for the police to consider any allegations made to them and determine whether an offence has been committed."

But Cary Mitchell, Executive Director of Operations at Best for Britain, which campaigns against populism and the far-right, said there was "no place for this kind of campaigning in our elections."

"Voters are right to make their disgust known loudly and clearly...Using threats as an election tactic is a disgraceful and dishonest attempt by Reform UK to pressure voters - playing the worst kind of politics with the lives of the most vulnerable," Mitchell told Byline Times.

A Green Party spokesperson hit back at Reform's plans on Monday, saying: "Reform keep making abhorrent announcements in attempts to distract voters from the fact they want to privatise our NHS, roll back workers rights and hand out tax breaks to their billionaire backers.

"Farage, the establishment stooge, filled his pockets with a secret £5m donation and then puts forward this disgusting idea as if it is a serious policy." A party source claimed that the "shine is coming off Nigel Farage" amid a wave of donation scandals.

Anna Turley MP, Chair of the Labour Party, also responded to Reform's new policy on migrant detention centres, branding it "grotesque."

She argued that it "reveals Reform's contempt for all voters – including their own."

"Threatening to punish places where people don't vote your way is a betrayal of basic democratic principles. Nigel Farage has sunk to a new low: he is clearly more interested in stoking division and anger than in serving the whole country," Turley said.

She added: "[We] need a fair, controlled asylum system that works in Britain's national interest – and that's what we're delivering…Nigel Farage doesn't care about fixing the system – he just wants to drive a toxic wedge between our communities."

Related reading: ‘Reform UK Wouldn’t Leave Me Alone’: My Experience Being Hounded to Stand for Nigel Farage’s Party

Complaint from a Voter

Dear Electoral Commission Regulatory Team, I am writing to formally lodge a complaint regarding the campaign tactics recently announced by Reform UK on 4th May 2026: Reform pledges to open migrant detention centres in Green-voting areas – BBC News

The Party's home affairs spokesperson has publicly committed to a policy of "prioritising" the placement of migrant detention centres – with a proposed capacity of 24,000 individuals – specifically in constituencies and council areas that vote for the Green Party. Conversely, Reform UK has "guaranteed" that areas electing Reform UK representatives will be exempt from these facilities.

I believe this constitutes "undue influence" under the Representation of the People Act, as it uses the threat of infrastructure placement to pressure citizens into voting a certain way or to penalise them for their existing political affiliations. The tactic appears designed to:

1. Intimidate voters by threatening negative local consequences for their democratic choices.
2. Incentivise votes through the promise of specific geographic exemptions that are not based on administrative or logistical necessity but purely on partisan alignment.

Threatening to punish specific geographical areas based on their voting record is a violation of the principle that elections should be free from coercion.

I urge the Commission to investigate whether this policy breaches the Electoral Code of Conduct on the legal prohibitions against intimidatory behaviour in campaigning.

I look forward to your response regarding the steps being taken to ensure the integrity of the 2026 local elections and future national elections.

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com 

The voicemail came out of the blue (or turquoise).

I'm a journalist and former actor with absolutely no affiliation to Reform UK whatsoever. I've never been a member, donor or supporter. So why on earth was I being asked to stand as a candidate?

The cold call echoed reports from The Guardian that they had been "begging" strangers to stand, including one of their own journalists.

The Conservatives later released a recording of a cold call from a Reform representative asking someone to stand in Birmingham. Nigel Farage denied that the party was doing it, saying calls had been made to "paid-up members of the party" and that "begging" people to stand in the local elections would be "very, very fruitless".

And yet, here I was, a non-member on the receiving end of a headhunting call from Reform UK, and I wasn't alone. Sam Webber, a Lib Dem councillor in Bromley, posted on X:

"I received a call from 0116 4930076 at 2pm today asking if I wanted to be a paper candidate for @reformparty_uk in the local elections & I had a similar voicemail a few months ago."

Just a few examples of the party calling unknown members of the public to be "paper candidates" despite knowing very little about them, seemingly unperturbed by their own colossal list of vetting failures.

As I write this, fresh stories about dodgy candidates emerge daily from the party set to sweep the local elections.

Farage is under mounting pressure to disown a string of candidates for unearthed racist, misogynistic, and homophobic social media posts, including Corey Edwards, who stood down last month after a photo resurfaced in which he appeared to be performing a Nazi salute. Corey, who condemned the "ordinary use of the appalling gesture", said that he was "imitating a Welsh footballer's use of it" according to The Independent.

"No disrespect but why can Black people use the word n***** but white people cannot? Seriously, why is this the case?" wrote Blackburn South East candidate Andrew Mahon, in a now deleted post.

The Telegraph reports one calling for "every Muslim" to be deported from Britain, claiming the public cannot distinguish them from terrorists, while The Times relays another accusing "the Jews" of "creating division by forcing other races on our societies" and complaining that immigrants breed "like rats". In a separate post, another alleged fan of the Führer wrote: "Whichever group of people built this must have been real visionaries!" referencing Berlin's Olympiastadion, built by Nazi Germany.

This is the party that wants to form the next government, yet its vetting process could be described as shambolic. If they are asking a total novice like me to stand for local election, could this explain the series of racists that have slipped through the net? Sure, I had never performed a Nazi salute in my life, but I could have been anyone.

More importantly, how did they get my personal data, and how were they using it?

I contacted their press team. They said my number, email, and postcode had been obtained two years ago, through a website submission in February 2024. At the time, I was a journalism student, emailing politicians and the like to appear on our version of 'Question Time'. Knowing that any contact from me would have been made in a press capacity (and not to sign up as a member… or potential candidate), I pressed for more detail, but they said they could not provide any more information on the nature of the submission.

Frustrated, I filed a Subject Access Request.

A Wider Pattern

I had reason to be concerned, conscious of the growing scrutiny around Reform's data practices, including accusations in Byline Times of falsifying evidence it provided to the Information Commissioner's Office, following allegations that it had breached data rules in a case involving a voter who had received unsolicited communications from them. An allegation rejected by Reform's spokesperson as "a case of cock up and not conspiracy".

According to The Guardian, the party had also faced criticism over how it conducted a campaign offering to pay for household energy bills, which experts warned could breach data protection laws by gathering sensitive political information.

To enter the competition, entrants had to disclose not only their name, email and telephone number, but also how they voted at the last election, and how they intend to vote at the next one. Political opinions are considered the most sensitive types of personal data, prompting calls for the Information Commissioner's Office to investigate. A Reform spokesman defended the contest, saying: "We are entirely confident that this competition is legal".

Will Farage ever learn? Allegations of data misuse seemed to follow him wherever he went. In 2019, when Reform was known as The Brexit Party, the ICO launched an investigation after complaints that it had failed to hand over personal data it held on voters.

Related reading: Reform UK’s Basildon Leader Accused of Bullying After Filming Council Staff and Residents With Meta-Style Smart Glasses

Not to mention his association with Leave.EU, which was accused of "rife" misuse of data in 2018 due to its links to Cambridge Analytica, something the campaign group denied at the time.

This year, there was a challenge in court by the Good Law Project, which alleged that Reform UK had failed to properly respond to requests from individuals asking what personal data was held about them.

Reform admitted it was slow to respond to the requests, but defended the claim and denied that it had failed to comply with its legal obligations.

Following Reform's barrister saying in court that they "delete electoral register data regularly in line with their Privacy Policy", the Good Law Project said afterwards that if Reform was deleting data after receiving a SAR and then sending a blank response, then this approach risked undermining transparency, and added that "intentionally deleting data to prevent disclosure to a person who has asked for that data can be a criminal offence under the Data Protection Act 2018."

"Reform say they want to profile millions of people, and then ignore them when they ask to see their data," they said.

'No Active Personal Data'

I was hoping to have better luck. But when the results from my SAR finally arrived, it only raised further questions.

The data protection officer stated they held "no active personal data" relating to me. The only information retained, they said, was a record on a "suppression list", used to ensure I would not receive further communications. Something they said was "standard practice" following a SAR.

How was that possible? When just days before I received this response, I received two further calls in succession:

"Hello, this is Leighton calling from Reform UK… we're looking for people to stand as candidates in your community..."

"Hi, my name is Ian from Reform UK… we're looking for paper candidates in your local area..."

I was called twice despite them having "no active personal data" relating to me?

Related reading: Reform UK Candidate Runs Firm Hired by Sanctioned Pro-Putin Bosnian Serb Leadership

When I challenged them on the phone calls, the data protection officer said they were made before my details were formally added to the suppression list. But my SAR had been confirmed over a week before I had received the calls, which raised questions about how their own "standard practice" procedures were being applied.

Their explanation left a glaring inconsistency: they acknowledged using my data to contact me repeatedly, yet said they did not hold an ongoing record of it, and could not fully account for how they had obtained it in the first place. This didn't feel like transparency to me. Their responses felt evasive. At worst, they could leave the impression of data being deleted after receiving a SAR, thereby resulting in no disclosure to a Subject Access Request.

Suppressing my data, rather than providing it in response to a SAR, would be a breach of Article 15 of GDPR – contravening guidance from the ICO that it's 'unacceptable' to delete information following receipt of a SAR.

Not only that, but failing to provide easy-to-understand information about how they've used my data would constitute a further breach of the GDPR transparency principle.

And, it's worth noting that suppressing data with the intention of preventing disclosure would be a further offence under s.173 of GDPR.

Fitness to Govern

I was once guilty of treating personal data as small details stored on a system somewhere, unlikely to affect my life. This experience showed me that it can determine how people are contacted, categorised, and targeted by political parties, even shaping who gets asked to take part in democracy.

When that process is unclear or inconsistent, it raises a basic question of trust. If Reform UK cannot clearly explain how they held or used my information, what does that say about their fitness as a serious political organisation?

Is this the party ready to lead the next government? Candidate selection is part of how a party demonstrates readiness for that role. Yet for Reform UK, it appears to depend on systems of data collection and outreach that remain opaque, and vetting procedures that continue to fail.

Reform UK insists all data processing is carried out in accordance with applicable data protection law and that it does not suppress personal data for the purpose of avoiding disclosure.

Jointly published with The News Movement.

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com 

Left-wing party Plaid Cymru is framing the Welsh Senedd election as the most significant since devolution began in earnest 26 years ago.

A YouGov poll released on 21 April suggested, that Reform UK and Plaid Cymru are effectively neck-and-neck, winning 37 and 36 seats respectively in Wales' now-expanded Parliament.

Labour's vote share is projected to fall to 13%, down 23 points on the 2021 election. The party has held the post of first minister since the Senedd's inception Dropping much lower than that, even under the proportional voting system, could herald electoral wipeout.

Plaid Cymru said that the latest analysis confirms that the election is "a straight fight" between them and Reform UK.

Speaking to this newspaper, leader Rhun ap Iorwerth MS – a former BBC journalist – argues that despite Wales' proportional voting system, only Plaid Cymru is mathematically positioned to stop Nigel Farage's party from crowning a first minister.

Ap Iorwerth makes an explicit tactical voting pitch to the left — saying a vote for Labour, the Greens or any other left-of-centre party "potentially" lets Reform in, sharpening Plaid's "squeeze" message for votes in the campaign's final days.

"The opportunity to have a party – again, 100 years old – that has put forward a vision for Wales, that has stood up for Wales all these years, potentially coming into government, changing the dial on the history of Wales politically, that significance is becoming clear to people," ap Iorwerth said.

While there's no formal legal threshold for party representation in the new Senedd voting system (as there is in Germany), there is a de facto threshold built in. Because Wales is split into 16 constituencies each electing six members under D'Hondt, a party (or independent) needs roughly 14–16% of the vote within a single constituency to pick up a seat there. So 13% everywhere could see Labour's representation disappear altogether.

On concerns about Reform UK topping the poll in a nation widely viewed as 'progressive' over the border, he added: "It's important not to somehow think we are immune from that in Wales. If it wasn't Nigel Farage, it would be somebody else…

"Politics in Wales hasn't been absent of the right. What has happened is that the Conservatives have now gone over to Reform. Reform is an embodiment of what used to be called the Conservative Party, but further to the right, arguably, and more populist in nature.

"Our job is to persuade people to vote for change, but not to vote for that alternative."

He added that potentially becoming first minister this month was "daunting," but that the party is "serious about the job of governing Wales well."

Independence and Net Zero

The party's manifesto has dropped a 2021 pledge to push for an independence referendum in the near term. Asked if the party was downplaying its independence support, ap Iorwerth said: "I am as enthusiastic about Wales taking all those powers as an independent nation as I have ever been, but I am also of the view that it is a political journey we are on as a nation. Everything in this manifesto is about building Wales."

The party has also moved back a pledge to hit Net Zero from 2035 to 2040. "I'm sad about it," ap Iorwerth said. "I'm sad that governments, both in Cardiff and in London, haven't done enough to allow us to confidently say 2035 is still on the cards. 2035 is nine years away. We believe it's better to have an ambitious target that we can aim towards and persuade people that it is a credible target to work towards. That is simply what has happened there."

"We would have liked to have seen more happening in recent years; it didn't. I'm a pragmatist."

He appeared to downplay the Green Party's prospects in Wales. The Greens are on the verge of winning their first ever seats in the Senedd – as many as ten according to some predictions.

But the Plaid Cymru leader said: "People are very aware that the first Green MP in Wales was a joint-ticket Plaid Cymru/Green MP, who sat as a Plaid Cymru MP – Cynog Dafis. This is a mantle that Plaid Cymru has carried in Wales."

"That goes a long way to explain why the Greens aren't getting the same level of breakthrough in Wales as they are in England. I watch with great interest what the Greens are achieving in England, in the recent by-election and so on.

"The positioning of the pro-environment progressive party that can beat Reform – the only one that can beat Reform – is clearly Plaid Cymru's position, and most people can see that in this election."

Related reading: Greens Could Be ‘Kingmakers’ in Wales as Leader Reveals Power-Sharing Demands

Prepared to Govern

A power-sharing arrangement seems likely as no party is likely to win a majority on its own in the Senedd this week.

Ap Iorwerth was upfront about the unlikelihood of winning a majority: "My preference [is] to be in a strong position so that we can lead a minority government. I have no doubt that through careful and mature cooperation with other parties, we can provide stability for government in Wales and ensure that an alliance, if you like, is built around a programme for government that delivers for Wales.

"It is inevitable in that kind of political context that you need an element of cooperation. Coalition, of course, is just one particularly formal form of cooperation. Minority government could work."

And while Plaid Cymru have avoided the Scottish National Party's rhetoric of 'vote SNP to sack Starmer', he added: "Were Plaid Cymru able to wrestle from Labour the leadership of Welsh Government for the first time, it would add to the already incredibly significant pressure on Keir Starmer's role as leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister of the UK."

He brands what is happening in Wales – both the collapse of Labour and the Conservatives – "the rejection of the old guard."

But there is a real fear among progressives of all stripes that a Reform Government, in Westminster or in the Senedd, could abandon devolution altogether.

"[Reform] may proclaim some limp support for devolution during this campaign, but that is purely because of political expediency. Nobody can trust Reform with the future of our political institutions in Wales," ap Iorwerth tells this newspaper.

"We have a few days left to build that trust with the people of Wales. We can take nothing for granted. But should it happen, we are prepared. We're ready to go to govern Wales…and to improve people's lives."

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com 

It finds that EU membership is the only sustainable policy position for this or any future government: more popular than joining a customs union or the single market, and delivering by far the most prosperity of any option under consideration. Read that again. Not single market access. Not a customs union. Full membership. That is where the evidence points, and that is where the public, ahead of the political class as ever, is already heading.

But the Brexit reckoning is not best measured in spreadsheets and GDP projections. It is measured in the texture of ordinary life and in the quiet, steady unravelling of things we were told were perfectly safe.

Ask the postgraduate student who watched her Erasmus+ placement evaporate overnight. Ask the marine biologist whose EU research consortium dissolved the moment Britain's membership did. Ask the young musician who can no longer tour freely across Europe without a blizzard of permits, carnets, and visa applications that price smaller acts out of the continent entirely. These are not abstract losses. They are the lived consequences of Farage's project, felt most acutely by precisely the curious, outward-looking, creative people that Britain has always depended upon to punch above its weight in the world.

Our universities have been among the most grievously wounded institutions. Britain was once a titan of European research collaboration, a magnet for the continent's brightest minds, and a launching pad for scientific work that improved lives far beyond our shores. Brexit did not merely complicate that relationship; it corroded it.

Related reading:

Associate membership of Horizon Europe, secured belatedly and at considerable cost, is a pale shadow of what full participation once offered. Joint bids are harder. Mobility is curtailed. The informal daily rhythms of international academic life, the conferences, the postdoc exchanges, the spontaneous collaborations that produce genuinely world-changing science have been quietly chilled.

We are a less intellectually open country than we were, and that impoverishment belongs entirely to Farage and those who march behind his banner.

And the damage is not merely felt at home.

This is where I find myself most frustrated by the narrowness of the current debate. When Britain walked away from the EU, it did not simply rearrange its trade relationships. It severed itself from the world's most powerful diplomatic bloc at precisely the moment when the world needed that bloc to be stronger, not weaker. Putin will have cheered when the British narrowly voted to leave. Brexit weakened the West, by diminishing the EU's military, diplomatic and economic potential. With an expansionist Russia on our eastern frontier and a volatile White House treating its allies as transactional irritants, Britain and the European Union need one another.

The great crises of our age, whether climate and nature breakdown, geopolitical instability, or the hollowing out of multilateral institutions, do not respect national borders. They demand collective responses at scale. On a whole range of environmental protection measures, for example, the EU has forged ahead.  Britain, alone, negotiating from outside the world's largest single market, is a diminished advocate for anything: for climate ambition, for human rights standards, for trade rules that protect workers rather than exploit them. Farage's Brexit did not make us sovereign. It made us smaller.

The Best for Britain report shows something politically significant: Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green Party supporters overwhelmingly support all options for closer relations with the EU, and support membership most of all. The progressive majority in this country has not forgotten what was taken from it in 2016. The question is whether our political leaders will finally stop being afraid of that majority and start representing it.

The taboo around the word "membership" has been maintained not by principle but timidity. Farage built his project on lies. The least we can do is have the courage to tell the truth about what those lies have cost us in our classrooms, laboratories, training colleges, concert halls, and our standing in a world that badly needs Britain to be more than a bystander.

The time for half-measures and managed decline is over. It is time to talk about membership.

Caroline Lucas writes an exclusive column for the monthly print edition of Byline Times

What he represented is a political culture that has dominated Labour for a generation. 

A culture forged under Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson that taught the party to be relaxed about extreme wealth, comfortable in the orbit of billionaires, lobbyists and corporate power, and increasingly detached from the lives of the people it was created to represent.

The Mandelson scandal matters because it exposes that culture in its rawest form. 

Proximity to wealth and power was not a by-product. It was the point. Access was normalised. Influence was laundered as ‘serious politics’. Moral judgement was dulled by the belief that being close to money and power was a sign of maturity rather than capture.

That mindset hollowed Labour out. 

It replaced a party rooted in working-class life with a professional political caste fluent in donor networks, private dinners, and elite reassurance – while communities were told to accept decline as the price of ‘responsible’ government. 

Politics became about managing optics and markets, not challenging vested interests or redistributing power.

But this culture did not emerge in isolation and it was not confined to Labour alone. It formed part of a wider governing settlement that has defined British politics for four decades.

The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and New Labour alike operated within the same broad economic and institutional framework: deregulated capital, privatised infrastructure, financialised growth, and a revolving door between political office and corporate power. 

They differed on rhetoric, on spending levels, on the pace of reform. But they shared a comfort with the architecture of wealth and influence that sat behind the state.

The Conservatives built that system. Reform UK now channels its most aggressive instincts. Labour’s historic purpose should have been to dismantle it.

Instead, under Blair, the party absorbed its logic. It concluded that the route to electoral success and governing credibility lay not in confronting elite power, but in proving itself the most competent steward of it.

Corporate proximity became proof of seriousness. Elite endorsement became a governing asset. Access became a currency in its own right.

It worked, electorally, for a time. But it came at a structural cost. 

Labour ceased to look, feel, or behave like an insurgent democratic force. It began to resemble the very establishment it had once existed to challenge.

A Culture of Complacency

This is the deeper reason mainstream parties across Europe are fracturing. 

Voters no longer see meaningful economic or structural difference between them – only tonal variation managing the same settlement.

Keir Starmer’s leadership sits squarely inside that inheritance.

He did not create this governing culture. But he chose to lean into it rather than break from it. His project foregrounded integrity and professionalism, but largely in managerial terms – standards, conduct, discipline – while leaving the surrounding political economy untouched.

In some respects, you can see why he might feel hard done by. Others travelled the same road without the ground collapsing beneath them.

Blair moved seamlessly into global consultancy. David Cameron into finance and lobbying. Nick Clegg into big tech. George Osborne into asset management and media. Boris Johnson into the global speakers’ circuit.

Each reinforced public cynicism, but the governing model itself held.

Then Starmer stepped forward, making the right noises about probity and seriousness, only to find the system itself losing legitimacy at speed. The wheels did not simply come off. The whole carriage went over the cliff.

That should not have been surprising. 

Not in a moment when living standards are stagnant, public services are visibly degraded, privatised utilities are extracting wealth while infrastructure decays, and climate pressures are driving up costs across the economy.

Against that backdrop, elite circulation between politics and corporate power no longer reads as competence. It reads as collusion.

Which is why Reform polling so far ahead is not an outlier but a warning. A signal that the governing politics of the past 40 years is reaching the end of its public consent.

Inside Labour, that reality is producing visible shock. 

Figures who assumed they were approaching a stable period of office now look blindsided by the scale of public anger and institutional distrust surrounding them.

Because one of the unspoken assumptions of this governing culture was that proximity to power would, in time, translate into influence, security, and opportunity beyond office. Advisory roles, consultancy pathways, corporate access: the quiet rewards architecture of the political class.

That ecosystem is now politically toxic. 

Corporate crossovers repel voters rather than reassure them. Lobbying networks damage credibility rather than confer it.

Even Mandelson’s global contacts book – once shorthand for access and authority – now looks less like an asset and more like evidence in the public mind.

McSweeney’s departure changes none of this on its own.

Unless Labour confronts the culture that rewarded closeness to wealth, blurred ethical lines, and treated democratic accountability as an inconvenience, this will amount to little more than damage limitation.

Remove one operator and the system that produced him remains.

And unless that system is dismantled – structurally, not cosmetically – Labour will continue to lose its moral authority, its social base, and ultimately its right to govern.

If that happens, the space vacated will not remain empty. It will be filled by forces far less interested in democratic renewal than in exploiting public anger for reactionary ends.

Which is why this moment matters.

Not as scandal management. Not as factional theatre.

But as a test of whether Labour is prepared to break from the governing culture that brought it here – or whether it intends to remain bound to it as the political ground shifts beneath its feet.

Clive Lewis has been the Labour MP for Norwich South since 2015

This article was first published in the March 2026 print edition of Byline Times

The party was forced to resort to increasingly desperate tactics to put Reform names on polling cards: full page adverts in the national press, sending pleading emails to members, and even cold calling journalists (including one Byline Times freelancer) asking them to stand.

Given the national polling, this begs the question of who will soon be running local councils up and down the country, responsible for billions of pounds of public spending.

And do these new candidates know what they've signed up to? This last year has seen a string of misconduct scandals at Reform led councils, resulting in over 74 councillors sacked or resigning in 12 months. Is this new crop of recruits aware of their party's questionable track record?

Finding out wasn't going to be easy. While Reform has positioned itself as the party of free speech, with Nigel Farage swinging behind X and Elon Musk in the row over AI nudification of women and girls, the party itself is often averse to rigorous scrutiny.

Reform recently withdrew from a BBC documentary filming behind the scenes at Kent council, the Reform leader of Nottinghamshire council banned local journalists from asking questions in 2025, and a candidate has admitted to us that "coming up to the local elections HQ have insisted that all media communications are approved by Reform press office."

To peer through the cracks, I engaged in some mild subterfuge to see how informed Reform's new hopefuls are about their new party. I set up a fictional right-wing news channel, Patriot News UK, and filled it with pictures of flags and polemics about the "woke liberal bias" at the BBC.

I got dressed up as a budding reporter in a cheap suit and a £10 tie from Oxfam, and filmed a few hammy news reports with my trademark signoff "Your country, your news!". I set up a fake X profile and followed a bunch of enthusiastic Reform supporters.

It was quite an eye-opener peering into the misinformation that surrounds these bubbles, with Reformers fuming over a Sikh kebab owner arrested for refusing to sell Halal meat (he wasn't), championing the Japanese government for banning Islam (they didn't), and seething over bizarre AI-generated images of a taxpayer-funded water park in Croydon (there isn't one). I dutifully engaged in the rampant swirl of nonsense circulating on X, and my follower count swiftly rose.

I reached out to around fifty Reform council candidates using their publicly available email addresses and X accounts. Three replied enthusiastically and agreed to take part in a Patriot News item on their campaign. I went along with a cameraman and openly filmed the interviews. I wanted to test how aware these new candidates were of Reform's record in local government, and whether they would condemn or condone their colleagues' misbehaviour if they believed it was carried out by their political rivals.

The Politics UK Guy

Bailey Nash-Gardner is a young, bright former Conservative who now runs the hugely popular 'Politics UK' social media accounts, one of which was previously banned from Twitter for gaming the algorithm. He's standing in his home town of Romford, and we met in a local park. He explained that his recent switch to Reform was triggered by Robert Jenrick's defection: "He was going to be the last hope for the Conservative party."

I put to him an instance of a political rival supposedly breaking transparency rules: "There's a Tory councillor that we found who owned a share in a local business for four years, but didn't declare it on their members' interests." Bailey's response was unequivocal: "Obviously that's absolutely wrong".

However, this was actually about the Reform councillor Leila Cunningham (who is now standing to be London mayor), who hid her shares in a Paddington Hotel from her register until it was exposed by the press. "You are serving the public," Bailey insisted, unaware he was talking about a colleague. "You should be open and transparent about the interest that you have and what conflicts that could present."

I gave him another case: "We found a Labour councillor who set up a private limited company in order to profit from an infrastructure project that they helped approve."

"Again, absolutely wrong," Bailey replied. "We're here to serve residents, not serve ourselves." This was actually relating to a Reform councillor, Rachel Reed, who stepped down as deputy group leader in Doncaster for establishing a company to capture contracts from Doncaster Sheffield Airport.

I then turned to the culture wars, telling Bailey: "There's a Lib Dem council that spent nearly £100,000 on rainbow flags for Pride Week." His response was scathing: "This shows where councils are going absolutely wrong. We're spending more time on the woke agenda… than we do on fixing potholes, cleaning up fly tipping and getting rid of graffiti." Quite right too – except this was about Reform Nottinghamshire, which has just spent £75,000 on Union flags.

While filming the "walk and talk" shots, Bailey expressed a surprising show of support for Labour's London Mayor Sadiq Khan: "We don't want to get rid of him, because he's a good asset. He's that unpopular, it's good to have him." Which might be news for Bailey's colleague Leila Cunningham, who is campaigning hard to replace Khan in 2028.

The 'Rising Star'

The next interview was with Sophie Preston-Hall, tipped as a "rising star" of the party by the i paper. She's very active on social media, posting heartfelt videos about important local issues in Rochford, but how much does she really know about her party's conduct at other councils?

I put to her some instances of authoritarian behaviour by opposition politicians: "A Tory councillor has issued another councillor with a 'Cease and Desist' letter, banning them from saying their name in public. There's another one who's banned local newspaper journalists from asking questions. This sounds like censorship, doesn't it?"

"Absolutely," she replied stridently. "I do believe in freedom of speech. So I might not agree with what you have to say, but I believe in your right to say it." Would she have been quite so critical had she known these were both the actions of Reform council leaders? (in Worcestershire and Nottinghamshire respectively).

'To the Right of Genghis Khan'

The third interview was with Mark Hall, who's been in local government in Harlow for over thirty years, and joked that he's often seen as "to the right of Genghis Khan". This might be why he wasn't invited to Nigel Farage's recent visit to the town. "I've only waited 12 years to get Nigel to Harlow," he complained. "Why would I want to see him when he's here?"

Mark was scathing about the two stories I put to him of rivals' transgressions. A Labour councillor fined for hiring an illegal immigrant? "They deserve to be caught like every other member of the general public and dealt with probably more severely." (A business owned by Andrew Harrison, a Durham Reform councillor, was fined £40,000 for employing an illegal worker.)

A Conservative councillor's business is collapsing owing over a million in taxes and covid loans? "Disgraceful." (Reform's Andrew Husband vowed to slash Durham council's £1.5bn budget while presiding over companies with massive debts.)

When asked about these apparent paradoxes, Sophie Preston-Hall, Bailey Nash-Gardner, Mark Gough and Reform UK all declined to comment.

Their responses all indicate that these Reform candidates are, at best, clueless about their own party's dismal record in local government over the last year, or at worst, are only happy to condemn political misdeeds when they are the responsibility of rivals.

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on tips@bylinetimes.com 

The fight with the Pope, started by Trump and carried on by his Vice President, JD Vance, is sure to alienate some of his conservative Catholic supporters. The AI-generated Trump-as-Jesus image, which the President posted on social media, managed to offend Christians of all denominations. (After all, as the writer John Fugelsang points out, the only thing Jesus and Trump have in common is they are said to have spent a lot of time with prostitutes and used ghostwriters.) And the video evidence that Crusader-tattooed holy warrior Pete Hegseth adheres to the gospel as revealed to film director Quentin Tarantino doesn’t seem likely to help with the white evangelicals who form the most enthusiastic bloc of voters for Trump and MAGA.

This isn’t twelve-dimensional chess by a cunning administration; it’s bad politics from an administration that long ago lost the plot.

Yet it’s not quite as bad as it should be, and that is the more interesting point about this latest episode of how-low-can-he-go. Because the trifecta exposes the nature of the so-called religion that animates the Christian nationalist movement that has sustained Trump in power.

Let’s start with Trump’s hostilities toward the Pope. According to JD Vance, the debate concerns the “Just War Doctrine” and its application to the Iran war. Augustine articulated this theory in the 5th Century and Thomas Aquinas formalised it in the 13th Century. Pope Leo, as a member of the Augustinian order, appealed to this long tradition when he decried “tyrants” who are “ravaging the world” and “cloaking their quest for domination in false religion.”

Just War Doctrine states, in a nutshell, that war may be waged only with a clear and just cause, such a self-defence, on a proper legal foundation and as a last resort. Trump’s war, which has had shifting stated purposes, is hardly in America’s immediate self-defence, and was hardly the last resort—but let’s leave that debate to the side. Trump’s provocations of the Pope have nothing to do with Just War Doctrine in this traditional sense.

Some of Trump’s lackeys have occasionally wrapped the Iran adventure in religious rhetoric, to be sure, but the rhetoric is that of a struggle for civilisational supremacy. When Trump posted his threat to commit war crimes— “A whole civilization will die tonight”—he managed for once to choose at least one word carefully.

The Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security has certainly grasped the relevant historical antecedents for such a view. It has taken to posting images reminiscent of Nazi propaganda posters, along with the infamous painting by John Gast, titled American Progress, an allegorical representation of Manifest Destiny.

Pete Hegseth gets it too. His tattoo—“Deus Vult” or “God wills it”—is a borrowing from medieval crusader rhetoric that has been taken up by white supremacist-aligned groups in the 21st Century. The argument for war here is not that it is a last resort taken in self-defence. It is a theory that appears to justify aggression towards pretty much anyone who doesn’t remind “us” sufficiently of ourselves.

This tribal theory is not at all unique to people who identify with Western civilisation. Indeed, Iran’s leadership has in turn long framed its war against “the West” and its supposedly decadent features, such as women’s equality, as a civilisational struggle and used this framing in its provision of military, financial, and weapons assistance to proxies over decades.

Related reading: Trump: ‘When You Think of It, We Shouldn’t Even Have an Election’

So, you might think that Christian nationalist sympathisers would have a problem with this body of theory. Maybe some of them do. But Trump’s views have been clear for the past ten years and have, in fact, cost him little of their support.

The Jesus picture, sadly, further exposes the nature of the kind of religion favoured by the MAGA movement. Many Christian nationalist leaders, including conservative Christian ‘rock star’ Sean Feucht and Tennessee Republican Representative Andy Ogles, denounced the image as blasphemous. They are surely right about that.

These anguished denunciations among Trump’s evangelical surrogates would have been more compelling, however, had these MAGA-aligned preachers not spent the past ten years extolling Donald Trump as “God’s man” divinely sent.

From a theological perspective, there is no good case in the Christian faith for deifying Trump. That’s about as pagan as things get. But it didn’t stop Trump’s Christian nationalist supporters before. Will it stop them now?

Pete Hegseth’s impersonation of Samuel Jackson’s fictional hitman in the film Pulp Fiction exposes the same underlying reality of Christian nationalism.  We are all supposed to think that Christian conservatives arrived at their politics through an intensive reading of the Bible. But the Bible is famously open to interpretation. And it is well established that many Christian nationalists arrive at their understanding of the Bible through intensive exercises in political partisanship.

In the case of Hegseth, it seems obvious that the lust for domination, conquest, and violence comes first, and the Bible comes after—and maybe it isn’t even the Bible at all.

Many theologians and lay Christians argue that this kind of bloodthirsty religion isn’t recognisably Christian. It surely isn’t the religion of some number of Trump supporters. But how many? And will it be enough to move them?

If we look at this as a numbers game, the trouble for Trump is likely on the Catholic side. Over 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump, but the evangelical vote is concentrated in deep red districts where MAGA can afford to lose a few votes. Catholics, meanwhile, who represent about 22% of the population, have generally lower levels of support for Trump; 60% of white Catholics voted for Trump in 2024. Moreover, Catholics are spread around the country in crucial battleground states. And Trump’s increase in support among Latino Catholics between 2016 and 2024 is now collapsing.

One way to gauge the reaction is to look at the response from Trump and his coterie. On the one hand, Trump deleted the Jesus post. On the other, he isn’t letting go of his beef with the Pope. After the Pope’s original statement, Trump posted an accusation that the Pope is “WEAK on Crime.” Which is really just a doubling-down on the ideological-tribal theory, refocused on the civilisational enemy within—namely immigrants who are supposedly destroying the American way of life.

JD Vance, whose upcoming book on his newfound Catholic faith features a picture of a Methodist church on the cover, has attempted to lecture the Pope on Augustine and theology, even warning him to “be careful.”

Fox News TV and radio presenter, Sean Hannity, a critical mouthpiece for the MAGA network, announced he is no longer Catholic and added, “Pope Leo XIV is now seemingly more interested in spreading left-wing politics than the actual teachings of Jesus Christ…where are the pointed words for Iran?”

In fact, Pope Leo had pointed words for Iran, too, condemning the regime’s murder of its own citizens. In recent weeks, Pope Leo has also condemned violence in the Sudan, said Ukraine has been “martyred” in a “senseless war,” and called for peace in Gaza. Leo also critiqued the “inhuman” treatment of immigrants shunted into detention centers across the US. Speaking in Cameroon, Pope Leo made the point that “the Holy name of God is being dragged into the discourse of death.” These actions are consistent with those of other Popes and other religious leaders, who have frequently called for peace around the world and throughout human history.

The real danger for Trump in these own goals is the politics of religion is not theological. It’s that they come at a moment when the stench of the loser is starting to cling to him. The mutterings about Trump’s blasphemy are of interest not for what they say about the religion of his newfound critics so much as their perceptions of the political moment. Maybe it has dawned on them that Trump will go down. Maybe they will see in these heretical missteps an opportunity to make a break.

A case in point would be the theocratic conservative writer Rod Dreher, who moved to Hungary years ago to support Victor Orbán’s efforts to pillage his own country under the banner of religious nationalism. Having spoken again with God, Dreher now seems to think that Orbán had to go. After years of support for Trump and the MAGA cause, he seems to be changing his tune on Trump, too. “He’s radiating the spirit of the antichrist,” Dreher now says of Trump.

It’s a very convenient thing, this hotline to God. To paraphrase another famous doctrine of war, religion in this instance, as in so many in modern America, is just a continuation of politics by other means.

Cllr Sam Journet, who is running for re-election for Reform, was arrested last September on suspicion of stalking, harassment and a public order offence after facing complaints from council staff and elected officials about his conduct.

In November, Essex Police announced there would be no further action taken against him, but this outlet has learnt that bail conditions were imposed (and later extended) in the aftermath to ensure he did not contact two councillors allegedly targeted. No bail conditions remain.

Journet was also asked to apologise and undergo council training following a separate incident in which he posted footage on social media of a young man with disabilities in Basildon Town centre in an alleged attempt to shame him. He does not appear to have apologised, has not undergone the training and the footage remains online.

His arrest, and subsequent release last September, came after Basildon Council reinstated a previously established policy restricting councillors' access to staff-only areas, following reports from concerned officials to the Chief Executive about his behaviour.

Journet was then arrested at Basildon Council offices on 8 September 2025.

A Basildon Council spokesperson said at the time: "Following repeated public disorder in the council offices, harassment of staff and councillors and trespassing into areas of the council they are not permitted to be in, a councillor [Sam Journet] was this morning arrested by Essex Police officers in the council building and taken into custody."

Shortly after his arrest, on 11 September 2025, he wrote on Facebook after the murder of Charlie Kirk: "This is the far left in its rawest form, unpredictable, hateful, and DANGEROUS. They cannot win the debate, so they try to destroy the person.

"That's why from today, I will be wearing a body worn camera every time I am on duty as your councillor, whether in the Council or on the streets. I will protect myself, because those in power have proven they won't protect people like me or Charlie."

One council source dismissed the safety rationale for wearing the camera glasses, saying Journet is a "6 foot 4 burly guy."

By 18th September, he had posted publicly a video of him filming in a meeting with the council leader and the council's monitoring officer. She tells him: "Can you please put your camera away."

Byline Times has spoken to residents, councillors and officials in Basildon, revealing a raft of concerns over Cllr Journet and his conduct.

On 31 January 2026, Journet published a video accusing the council leader, Cllr Gavin Callaghan, of being "stood outside my home" and characterising the alleged behaviour as "creepy" and "stalker-like". We have seen clear documentary evidence that Cllr Callaghan was miles away from Journet's home at that time, at Foxes Farm Fields in Billericay.

Byline Times has also learnt that three complaints were lodged against Journet on 12 August 2025 over an incident involving a young man with disabilities in Basildon town centre, with Journet accused of repeatedly calling him a "terrorist" and shaming him by posting a video of him on X as an example of "Broken Britain". On 27 November 2025 the council's Interim Monitoring Officer referred the matter to the Standards Committee. The committee asked Cllr Journet to apologise and attend training, which it is understood that he has not done.

Journet has also repeatedly posted inflammatory statements about the council leader, branding him "criminal", "breaking the law," "crooked, rotten, vile" and referring to him and his wife, Cllr Emma Callaghan, as "the crooked Callaghans." At least one of Journet's August 2025 posts attacking Cllr Callaghan included a photograph of Cllr Callaghan's home.

Cllr Journet also publicly refused to undertake a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check that all Basildon councillors are required to hold. He is now understood to have completed the checks.

Residents Speak Out

Kelly Horseley, a Basildon resident, has stated on the record that Journet falsely claimed on Facebook that she had chased Reform canvassers down the street, swearing at them. She was recovering from pneumonia at the time, and told this newspaper the claim is impossible. "It's a total lie…I would have loved to have been able to run," she said.

Horseley is deeply concerned by his use of camera-glasses, and told Byline Times: "I don't think he should be filming residents on the doorstep when they're answering their doors. People could be vulnerable. Have they given their consent to be filmed? It's not right. If you're recording people they should know."

"If it's a sunny day he should just wear a normal pair of sunglasses like everyone else. I don't know why he has to use these."

"I asked him if he is filming residents when out canvassing. He just kept deleting my comments."

Another Basildon resident, Katrina Tighe, reported Journet to the police over a Facebook post of his, under which a commenter said they would burn a house down if a "Muslim P*ki" lived there. The comment remained live in the week of publication. Tighe claims Journet has deleted other comments rapidly which have criticised his use of camera glasses.

Tighe, a Labour supporter, said: "He blocked me on social media, despite me never having interacted with any of his posts. About six months ago, he put a post up saying he has ADHD and is autistic, and that's the reason he behaves the way he does.

"I've got a daughter who is 15 and has both ADHD and autism, and she knows how to behave. I can always tell when she's having an autistic meltdown — that's how her brain is wired — as opposed to just being badly behaved. There was a gentleman who supported [Journet] quite a lot who actually commented saying that neurodivergence is not a green card to act the way he's acting. I simply liked that comment, and he blocked me."

One council staffer described Journet as a "bully" and claimed he has repeatedly tried to enter staff-only areas.

Of his camera glasses, Tighe added: "I genuinely don't think he believes he's doing anything wrong, but he is wrong." She is concerned when he posts pictures of elderly people on their doorsteps. One recent photo – not taken with his camera glasses – features an old woman in a dressing gown smiling with him.

Jewell Aspect

Journet's company, Samuel Perry Jewellery Ltd, was the subject of enforcement action by Companies House which could have dissolved the company, starting in March this year. This is legal action taken by the regulator, usually when a firm is in breach of its legal reporting obligations.

Journet attributed delays in filing required documents to an "administrative error" by Companies House, in an article focusing on his response published by the local Southend Echo and on social media posts.

A day after Companies House issued its notice for compulsory strike-off, the jewellers' first legally-required accounts in nearly two years were published.

Filing deadlines for a private limited company's accounts are nine months after the financial year-end, in this case 31 December 2024. The deadline was 30 September 2025. The signed, published accounts state: "Approved by the Board on 9 March 2026 and signed on their behalf by: Sam Journet, Director." They weren't filed until 18 March 2026, roughly five and a half months late.

He told the Echo: "Given acknowledged security vulnerabilities within the system affecting millions of director's data, I took a cautious approach until the position around the verification process and date handling was clarified. Once confirmed, the matter was completed promptly and correctly."

"As both a local business owner and councillor, I take compliance seriously and ensured everything was handled properly. It's very much business as usual."

Journet's firm also had outstanding business rates, which were paid off in September 2025 after Labour publicised questions over the issue.

Bullying Claims and Council Warning

Cllr Journet is also running to be elected onto Essex County Council. Reform are hoping to make significant gains on both authorities.

But one councillor elected for Reform in Basildon has quit. Cllr Sarah Shields publicly stated on 9 April 2026 that "Sam Journet has been bullying me", including over a "period of months", alleging he referred to her as "thick" because she is dyslexic. She has now left the Reform group. Cllr Shields did not respond to a request for comment.

Basildon resident Tighe says the political atmosphere is toxic in the area: "Two or three months ago someone might have quietly said they were going Reform. Now, [if] anything criminal happens, straight away, before any evidence or description, they're online blaming immigrants. And they won't be scared to say it openly."

In a recent Facebook post, another resident, Lee Cocker, wrote: "It is entirely reasonable for residents to ask questions about the use of recording-enabled glasses while engaging with the public. This is not about attacking a person. It is about a principle: people should know if there is potential for conversations to be recorded.

"If any other candidate including Cllr Gavin Callaghan was regularly wearing technology capable of filming and recording while canvassing, people, including Sam Journet himself, would rightly raise concerns too."

Cllr Sam Journet and Reform UK were contacted but did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Essex Police said: "A man who was arrested in Basildon on 8 September [2025] has been told he faces no further action."

A Basildon Council spokesperson told Byline Times: "The council is unable to comment on individual cases or ongoing matters, as this may involve confidential information.

"On the use of Meta-style camera glasses, the council's position reflects the general legal framework rather than any technology-specific policy.

"In public places there is no legitimate expectation of privacy and the use of body cameras or similar is permitted. There may be issues and discomfort felt by others if it is perceived to be used in an intimidatory manner. Data protection issues may arise if the images are stored or published.

"Within the council chamber and at public meetings, there is a right to record proceedings provided this does not disrupt the meeting, in accordance with the Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014.

"The council does not regulate political activities. The Electoral Commission has published its own guidance in relation to canvassing and electioneering. It recommends caution when engaging with electors on their doorstep.

"At an election count, the requirement to maintain secrecy has led the Returning Officer to restrict cameras to a designated space for the press separate from the counting area. Breach of S.66 of the RPA is a criminal offence."

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com 

The logistics proceeded without a hitch. The atmospherics were genuinely friendly. His personal gift to the President - a golden bell from a former British submarine, HMS Trump - was perfectly suited to appeal to the President’s love of shiny things and vanity. Above all, his two setpiece speeches on 28 April  - one to the Joint Houses of Congress, one at the State Banquet at the White House - were absolutely pitch perfect. 

His first address, to Congress, was packaged with a masterful blend of gentle humour, warm reflections on the deep ties of history, culture, shared values and sacrifice that have bound the US and the UK together and his repeated praise for the US, as a “citadel of democracy”, imbued with a “spirit of liberty.” These flattering remarks were all well received by his bipartisan audience, who collectively rose to their feet multiple times during the speech to give standing ovations - no mean achievement in America’s highly polarised political environment. 

But the heart of the speech contained a series of surprisingly pointed remarks addressing the issues which currently threaten to divide the US and the UK.  

Against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s frequent criticisms of NATO, the King’s strongest pitch was in defence of the alliance, arguing that the transatlantic  partnership between Europe and America was more important than ever in today’s volatile world. He drew on the words of British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to caution that “we should not disregard everything which has sustained us for the last 80 years, but build on it.” He argued that today’s challenges were “too great for any one nation to bear alone,” and said that he “prayed with all my heart that our Alliance will continue to defend our shared values, with our partners in Europe and the Commonweath, and across the world.”

In a direct rebuke of the isolationist tendencies of some in the MAGA movement, he also urged that “we ignore the clarion calls to become ever more inward-looking.”

The King additionally reminded his audience that in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, when NATO had invoked Article 5 and the UN Security Council stood united in condemnation of the terrorists, “we answered the call”, and that the UK had stood “shoulder-to-shoulder” with the US through two World Wars, the Cold War, the war in Afghanistan, and many other moments affecting shared security.  

Related reading: Hungary and Iran Are Where Trump’s Politics of Kleptocracy Went to Die

This was followed up by a direct appeal to apply the same “unyielding resolve” to support the defence of Ukraine “and her most courageous people”, in order to secure a “truly just and lasting peace” making it crystal clear where the UK stood on this conflict. 

The King stressed that the joint commitments of the US and its allies to each other’s defence were at the heart of NATO, helping to keep both Europeans and Americans safe from common adversaries. He noted in particular that UK-US defence, intelligence and security ties were hardwired together through “relationships measured not in years, but decades.”

In what was a standout line for me from the speech, to rebut those who contend that the so-called UK-US special relationship is purely a sentimental one which has outlived its practical  relevance, the King went out of his way to stress that the UK-US do not “embark on these remarkable endeavours together out of sentiment. We do so because they build greater shared resilience for the future.” 

The King also used his speech to make the case for interfaith dialogue, referencing his own Christian faith in the process, and for living up to our “shared responsibility to protect nature.” Though he did not call anyone out by name, these remarks were clearly directed at religious extremists in the US, whose passion for their own religion increasingly manifests itself in bigotry towards other faiths, and at right-wing climate sceptics. 

No Kings

However, the King’s bluntest remarks, though delivered in a subtle way, were a very clear expression of concern about the trajectory of American democracy under Trump, and will clearly have been understood as such by his audience. Noting that many of the US’s democratic traditions, including its Bill of Rights, stemmed from earlier British documents, such as the Magna Carta and the 1689 Declaration of Rights, he pointedly observed how these had been cited in many Supreme Court cases “not least as the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.” He went on to say that the spirit of liberty, and the promise of America’s founders were present in every session and every vote cast of the Congress “not by the will of one, but by the deliberation of many.” 

This was about as black and white as it can get - a deliberate reminder to Congress that America’s system is based on checks and balances, and that it has a duty to ensure that American government does not become beholden to the whims of one person. 

Though his speech was ostensibly well received by everyone present, his words will have been discomfiting for many on the Republican side, who have so cravenly abdicated their Congressional duty to hold the Executive branch to account.

The King’s second speech, at the State Dinner, was probably therefore carefully crafted to assuage any bruised feelings. This time, the speech was much more personal, directly addressed towards President Trump and the First Lady, and focussed on less contentious themes. There was a very heartfelt expression of sympathy and support for the President, his wife, and all those present at the recent White House Correspondent’s dinner where an assailant tried to attack the guests. There were references to President Trump’s own familial connections to the UK, and his golf courses in Scotland today. There were more reminders of the importance of NATO, supporting Ukraine, and other joint endeavours, such as the trilateral nuclear submarine deal with Australia, known as AUKUS. But the main focus of the speech was a repeated emphasis on the unbreakable bond and historic friendship between the UK and the US, which had survived differences in the part, and should continue into the future.  

As in Congress, the speech was punctuated with many good jokes - with the King even managing to get away with several sly pokes of fun at the President himself, such as about Trump’s massive new ballroom (“I can’t help noticing the slight adjustment in the East Wing”) and a riposte to Trump’s oft-made claim that if it was not for the US intervention in World War 2, all of Europe would be speaking German (But, if it wasn’t for us, you would be speaking French”). These were so gently delivered that they could not possibly cause offence, and the President appeared happy to laugh along as well. 

All involved in the King’s visit, particularly his speech writers, should therefore feel genuinely pleased with how it has gone so far. The King has succeeded in delivering some useful messages to America’s political leaders, and - by appealing to America’s finest traditions and historic shared values with the UK - will undoubtedly have reminded his audiences of the best aspects of the UK-US relationship. 

But, I do not believe it will translate into a dime of difference in relations between the current British government and American administration. President Trump personally has a remarkable ability to compartmentalize. Despite lavishing praise on the King, and expressing his own appreciation for the UK as a country, he will not feel any greater sense of goodwill or obligation to be nice to the Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In his mind, the Royal Family, and the nation of the UK, are distinct entities from the current UK Government. Trump even inadvertently blurted out this distinction in his mind during his own remarks at the State Banquet, when he suggested that the King shared his own views on Iran, implying, unlike the British Prime Minister. 

Indeed, it seems to elude many Americans that the King is here representing the British state, at the behest of the current British Government, and that everything he says, even if he uses his own choice of words, will have been at its direction.  

Related reading: Decoding the Technofascist Tendency in Palantir’s Manifesto

One Republican Congressman, interviewed about the King’s speech a day later, demonstrated this even more clearly, when he was quoted  saying “as opposed to Keir Starmer, who is looked at as a leftist weenie, we saw in King Charles someone that is proud of Britain.” 

Unfortunately, the problem also goes beyond just this administration, or just Republicans. Many Americans are genuinely fond of their shared history and traditions with the UK, admire many aspects of British culture, and feel affection for the British Monarchy, but still deplore the trajectory of British politics in recent years, or even actively dislike recent British political leaders and their policies. There is a shared concern, on both sides of the political aisle, that the UK, especially since Brexit, has entered a period of erratic political leadership, drift and decline. National security experts are particularly concerned about the decimated state of the British armed forces, which vastly reduces the UK’s value, influence and relevance to the US. 

For their part, many British citizens are appalled by the antics of President Trump, deeply offended by his insults towards the UK, and worried that under his leadership, America is not only no longer so reliable as an ally, but also heading in an illiberal direction, completely at odds with its original founding ideals. They also fear that Trump’s antipathy towards Europe is not a one-off, but symptomatic of a widening divergence of viewpoints and interests across the Atlantic. 

The current UK Ambassador to the US, Sir Christian Turner, was only speaking the truth, when remarks he gave to a private group were leaked on the eve of the visit, saying that the US’s real “special relationship” was with the state of Israel.  

It will take far more than the King’s visit, and some clever speechifying, to repair the underlying fraying of UK-US relations. 

On 18 April, Palantir posted its summary of a book by Palantir's CEO, Alex Karp, and his legal counsel, Nicholas Zamiska, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West.

Palantir's post to its X account began casually, as though it were responding to frequently asked questions: "Because we get asked a lot." What followed was a demonstration that the company is so confident in its position and influence that it believes it can say the unsayable without consequences.

The body of the post, a 22-point manifesto, dispensed with euphemism and presented its technofascist argument explicitly: below, translated below into layperson's terms:

The Palantir Manifesto - Decoded

1. "Silicon Valley owes a moral debt… The engineering elite… has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation" - is a direct attempt to convert the private tech sector of unelected engineers and founders into a political class with civic authority. Participating in defence sounds benign, but in practice, it means US dependence on firms whose incentive is the expansion of Palantir's unhinged ideology.
   
2. "We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps" - is intended to delegitimise consumer tech and give moral status to undemocratic "state-security" tech. For example, in the US, the DOJ demanded that Apple and Google remove ICE-tracking apps as the Government used Palantir to identify targets for ICE.
   
3. "Free email is not enough… decadence… forgiven only if… growth and security…" is pure authoritarianism, claiming legitimacy rests on output and security performance, not on rights, accountability, or democratic consent.
   
4. "Soft power… requires hard power, and hard power… will be built on software" is another way of saying, "Trust us, the black-box machine creators, to kill and imprison the right people."
   
5. "The question is not whether AI weapons will be built" This is the classic AI inevitability move that has become so familiar. Palantir claims it is necessary to normalise dangerous technology before a serious public framework exists, or we risk losing this race. Palantir has made up to justify embedding them as decision-makers.
   
6. "National service should be a universal duty" is not a normal point for a defence contractor ecosystem to promote. Private technocrats should not be opining on how society should distribute sacrifice. It raises the question: were Palantir influential in the policy change that, beginning on 18 December 2026, eligible men in the US ages 18 to 26 will be automatically registered for selective service using federal data?
   
7. "If a US Marine asks… we should build it… the same goes for software" Marines are not, and should not be, asking for the erosion of civil liberties. "Support the troops" becomes a shield for the adoption of opaque digital systems, including surveillance, targeting, analytics, and predictive tools.
   
8. "Public servants need not be our priests" They are obviously not our priests. This is an attempt to leverage people's dissatisfaction with government, but if people think they aren't being served by public officials, wait until they're part of a network state that's unelected and unstoppable, elected by no one. This is Palantir complaining that laws restrict them.
   
9. "We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life." They clearly don't mean public officials. They mean, stop making fun of Karp as he says, "I love the idea of getting a drone and having light fentanyl-laced urine spraying on analysts that tried to screw us." He has "subjected" himself for a net worth of $14 billion. What he wants is zero criticism of his unhinged ideas.
   
10. "The psychologization of modern politics" is another anti-democratic play. The claim is that politics should be run by serious strategic actors, not by citizens bringing moral and social needs into the public sphere.
    
11. "Our society has grown too eager… at the demise of its enemies" is a way of saying there should be no moral scrutiny of those who wield power.
    
12. "The atomic age is ending... a new era of deterrence built on AI is set to begin" This is actually one of the most dangerous claims in their document, which is a statement in itself. Nuclear deterrence, for all its horrors, at least came with visible material constraints, specialised stewardship, and a relatively legible doctrine. AI deterrence is vague, software-dependent, opaque, updateable, hackable, and vulnerable. In the hands of an unhinged group of seasteader lunatics, opposing this is the actual moral imperative.
    
13. "No other country… has advanced progressive values more than this one" is Palantir invoking the progressivism it mocks in order to mute structural criticism by appealing to American exceptionalism.
    
14. "American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace" is another American exceptionalism reading of the post-WWII order to justify Palantir's projection of power and domestic democratic erosion, while ignoring that US forces have been actively involved in armed combat 90% of the time since WWII.
    
15. "The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone" is similar to its point #6, wherein a private tech company feels it is appropriate for it to opine on the rearmament logic of major powers.
    
16. "We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed… Musk…" is more elite defence rhetoric. It frames tech billionaires' ambition as having the only noble public purpose and dismisses public scepticism as small-mindedness. The demand is for tech leadership to be admired rather than regulated because they know what's best for people.
    
17. "Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime" - should also set off alarms. A non-captured US Congress should be worried about the return of technocracy, and should view domestic surveillance, predictive policing, algorithm-based enforcement, mission creep, and civil rights risk in all of this.
    
18. "The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away…" - a reiteration of #9. Basically, "we should be allowed to surveil, know, and decide everything about you, but we shouldn't be subjected to any public scrutiny or we, the special, would be found out as blood-transfusing, longevity-obsessed, metformin-taking weirdos we are, and that will bum us out."
    
19. "Caution in public life… is corrosive... "- is just another way of saying that laws should not constrain them because they are special and know best.
    
20. "Intolerance of religious belief… must be resisted" - is an invitation to an alliance with religious conservatives by portraying liberal elites and any other critics as intolerant. (Note that Thiel was raised in an evangelical household.)
    
21. "Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive" - is an attempt to say something racist, but in inverted commas. It openly rehabilitates hierarchical civilisational judgment. When a tech company that wants to dictate domestic and international policy creates a manifesto that divides cultures into productive and regressive, it's openly stating that it believes in unequal treatment, paternalism, harsh domestic policy, aggressive foreign policy, etc., and explains Palantir's comfort with surveillance and policing tech.
    
22. "Resist… hollow pluralism… inclusion into what?" -- is the manifesto's capstone and gets us back to Thiel's 2009 statement, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." Palantir is asserting that pluralism has become an obstacle to cohesion around the ideals it is putting out here and therefore, an obstacle to power, fully ignoring the fact that America is already generally considered the most powerful country in the world.
    
    The idea is that democracy is messy, so we have to hand more moral and strategic authority to the tech elite. This is Technocracy. Drunk on their own Silicon Valley Kool-Aid. "We reject you, your desires for privacy and freedom. You can't be trusted. Just give us the reins, and we'll make it all work the way we know it should."

Palantir may have arrived at these ideas, at least in part, through its founder's relationship with Elon Musk, whom Thiel knows from the PayPal merger days in 2000.

Musk's grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, had been the head of the Canadian branch of Technocracy Inc., which shares a fundamental belief with the Palantir manifesto that traditional democratic institutions are structurally inefficient and must be replaced by a Technate of tech experts who use data-driven social engineering to manage the levers of state power.

Technocracy Inc. was declared an illegal, fascist, subversive organisation in Canada in 1940. The Canadian prime minister cited its objective as attempting to overthrow the government and the constitution of the country by force.

Haldeman was arrested and convicted for his involvement with the group and spent two months in prison.

In 1941, Haldeman founded the Total War and Defence movement, advocating for total conscription of all people aged 16 to 60, as well as all personal property and private holdings of money, to support the British war effort. See: Manifesto point number 6.

Related reading: Thiel Spokesman Denies Former Israeli PM’s Claim Jeffrey Epstein ‘Co-Owned’ Palantir Founder’s Venture Fund – But Confirms Epstein was a Limited Partner

How Embedded is Palantir?

In the UK

In keeping with its Lord of the Rings theming, Palantir refers to its Soho Square London office as Grey Havens, the final departure point for Elves leaving Middle-earth.

Louis Mosley, grandson of the former British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley, has headed UK operations since 2016, and Peter Mandelson's now-defunct lobbying firm, Global Counsel, listed Palantir as a client starting in 2018.

Palantir has had charge of the NHS's Federated Data Platform since 2023, running data, including patient records and hospital resources from across various hospital trusts through its Foundry product.

The MoD has used all of Palantir's known products, AIP, Foundry, Gotham, and Apollo, since a 2025 no-bid contract award. Of note, Gotham is marketed and sold as an intelligence and analytical tool capable of anticipating outcomes and identifying targets, which has been interpreted by many to indicate predictive policing in the style of the film Minority Report.

In addition to the use of Palantir's Foundry and Gotham products, the Met is nearing the conclusion of a 3-month trial of the AIP product, which has resulted in the investigation of hundreds of officers.

The US

In the US, Palantir is deeply embedded in the DoD, CIA, FBI, NSA, ICE, and the USDA, among other agencies.

Major US cities that have used, or currently use, Palantir for crime analysis, license plate tracking, or gang database management include Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Washington DC, and New Orleans.

New York City Health + Hospitals has used Palantir to manage revenue collection, though certain contracts have faced public opposition. In Florida, Tampa General Hospital is a current partner.

Elsewhere

Palantir provides Israel with operational support to the IDF in Gaza and Lebanon.

France serves as Palantir's main EU base, where they are embedded in national intelligence and commercial sectors with companies such as Airbus.

In Germany, various state police departments use the company for surveillance and data analysis.

Palantir's operations in South Korea are rapidly expanding, with CEO Alex Karp describing South Korea as the most interesting and innovative commercial market outside the US.

In total, Palantir is believed to be embedded in at least 12 countries in similar capacities.

Related reading: Dominic Cummings Lobbied Officials to Hand ‘Test and Trace’ Contracts to Palantir After Secret Meeting With Peter Thiel

Global Organisations

Palantir has provided NATO with its Maven Smart System, acquired through a landmark no-bid contract, since 2025.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has been working with Palantir since 2017, following an initial encounter at the 2015 World Economic Forum (WEF / Davos), through which it handles the data of 90 million beneficiaries.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has used the companies AI-powered software platform, MOSAIC, since 2015.

Palantir's corporate client list also includes but is not limited to:

• In Aviation & Aerospace: United Airlines, American Airlines, Textron Aviation, and Archer Aviation.
• In Retail & Food: Walmart, Amazon, Wendy’s QSCC, General Mills, Lowe’s, and Performance Food Group.
• In Energy & Industrials: ExxonMobil, bp, Kinder Morgan, John Deere, Eaton, and Panasonic Energy North America.
• In Healthcare & Insurance: CVS Health, UnitedHealth Group, Cleveland Clinic, HCA Healthcare, and Aspen Dental.
• In Finance & Consulting: Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Accenture, Jacobs, L3Harris, and PwC.

The Antithesis of Democracy

Under normal circumstances, Palantir would simply sound like a defence vendor who had gotten too far out over its skis. However, in defiance of society's better impulses, Palantir has been permitted to install its proprietary, all-seeing black boxes into an almost unfathomable number of crucial systems via a sprawling spiderweb of contracts that seat them within the deepest recesses of governance, healthcare, and supply chains.

From this perch, Palantir is telling us that it does not require the ballot to dictate policy. Karp and Thiel are no longer engaging in ideological debate, but are handing down their mandate as an expression of confidence that the Technological Republic has arrived.

Gary Klopfenstein, a Chicago-based investment professional, admitted the offence in July 2024 in connection with a major investment scheme prosecuted in California, in which investors were misled and funds misappropriated, according to the US Department of Justice.

In July and August 2024, prior to his defection to Reform UK, Jenrick received £100,000 in staged donations from The Spott Fitness, a UK-based company now known as The Manna Journey Ltd. The most recent accounts show the company had no employees and was heavily loss-making. The filings also show it owes nearly £2 million to, and is ultimately controlled by, an opaque British Virgin Islands-based entity. 

While the £100,000 donation was previously thought to originate from one Phillip Ullman – a self-described social business entrepreneur and political donor – Ullman reportedly informed the Electoral Commission in 2025 that £37,500 of the donation originated from Klopfenstein via his US company Innovyz. Donations from foreign companies and individuals are impermissible under UK electoral law. 

Ullman and Klopfenstein are understood to be embroiled in a legal dispute. 

Klopfenstein is said to have transferred the funds from Innovyz to Spott Fitness on July 8 and July 24, 2024. Between the transfers, on July 19, Klopfenstein pleaded guilty.

Klopfenstein served as Chief Wealth Officer at Zolla Financial, an investment firm linked to a wider fraud operation centred on its founder, Matthew Piercey. According to US prosecutors, the scheme involved soliciting funds from investors on the promise of high returns, before diverting money for unauthorised purposes and using new investments to pay earlier backers.

Related reading: Robert Jenrick Accepts Donations from ‘Family Friend’ Who Ships Arms to Israel

The operation, which ran between 2019 and 2020, resulted in millions of dollars in losses for investors. Piercey has been identified by federal authorities as the central figure in the scheme, which has been described in court proceedings as a Ponzi-style fraud.

Court filings show that Klopfenstein admitted to conspiring in the scheme and has since cooperated with prosecutors in the case against Piercey. His sentencing, originally scheduled for April 2026, has been delayed until August 2026 following a request to move it until after Piercey’s own sentencing.

Piercey was arrested in 2020 after attempting to evade FBI agents by fleeing across a California lake using an underwater submersible device, according to federal authorities. He pleaded guilty in 2025 to wire fraud, concealment money laundering, and witness tampering in connection with the $35 million investment fraud scheme.

Police are already assessing evidence in relation to the donation following a referral from the Electoral Commission. The Conservative party has said that it has referred Jenrick to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

The revelations echo previous Byline Times reports detailing Jenrick’s controversial donors including a Ukrainian government sanctioned billionaire Sir Leonard Blavatnik, an Israeli billionaire named in the Pandora papers Idan Offer, and companies that appear to be inactive in the UK.

Jenrick was forced to resign as Housing Secretary in 2020 amid a donations scandal, when it emerged that he had overturned a planning inspector’s decision to award planning permission for a £1 billion property scheme by media tycoon Richard Desmond – just two weeks before he donated £12,000 to the Conservative Party.

Jenrick’s team has denied any wrongdoing in relation to the donation from Spott Fitness, saying he complied with electoral law, cooperated with the Electoral Commission, and was unaware of any link to Klopfenstein.

Anna Turley MP, Labour Party Chair, commenting on news that police are to assess a donation to Robert Jenrick’s Tory leadership campaign, said: “Robert Jenrick is no stranger to donation scandals. As a Tory minister, he abused his government office by admitting he helped a donor swerve a staggering £45 million in tax.

“This latest troubling development once again calls into question whether Jenrick has any respect for the integrity of our politics.

“Reform have tried to dodge questions on the Richard Tice tax scandal. Their new recruit Jenrick must commit to immediately providing the police with the unvarnished truth on this matter.”

Gary Klopfenstein and Robert Jenrick were both contacted for comment.

Kate Bell, the deputy leader of the TUC, spoke to this newspaper after getting back from the Global Progressive Mobilisation conference in Barcelona.

The conference brought together progressive leaders across the world, as well as campaigners and trade unionists, to "offer a necessary alternative to conservative and far-right forces." The aim was to make "progressive solutions visible and credible."

Bell notes that far-right nationalists are – perhaps ironically – adept at working across borders to achieve their goals – and that progressives must do the same.

In an interview with Byline Times, she discusses the union body's plans to tackle the far-right, and why she is hopeful.

Josiah Mortimer: Let's start with the Global Progressive Mobilisation conference. What is it?

Kate Bell: It was an effort to bring together progressive movements internationally — participants from Spain, Brazil, and across Europe — to think about how we work together at a moment when nationalist movements are organising very effectively across borders, often funded by big money. With international law facing real setbacks, it felt vital to show there is a coordinated progressive effort too.

JM: What were you there to get across?

KB: That an agenda which centres workers' rights is massively popular. We've obviously got the rise of the far right in the UK, and we wanted to share that experience, but also to learn from countries delivering on a progressive agenda. When [Spanish PM] Pedro Sánchez came to our meeting, his key message — and I think it's the right one — was that this isn't just popular, it actually delivers results. Spain has moved quickly on renewable energy, and they've got strong economic performance now too.

JM: For union figures, the Employment Rights Act stands out as a flagship policy, but it doesn't seem to have cut through to the public — there's been no real poll bounce. Do you think the Government needs to sell it harder?

KB: I do. Every single measure in the Employment Rights Act polls off the charts in popularity. It is about a shift in power towards workers. Over the last decade, we've seen insecurity grow — 4 million people in insecure work — and this is something the Government should be really proud of. The job now is to keep promoting those messages, because we're not going to hear them being championed by far-right politicians.

JM: Is the reluctance about not wanting to look anti-business?

KB: We've seen aggressive pushback from business right through this process, from when it was first floated to every stage of the parliamentary process. There are concerns about the job market at the moment, but those are to do with global economic factors — Trump's tariffs, the illegal war on Iran — and business is trying to exploit that to create anxiety. This isn't an anti-business agenda. It's against an agenda from businesses that try to compete by undercutting workers. I'm not in the minds of ministers, but what we've seen alongside this is growing employment and a fast-growing economy.

JM: How would you characterise the TUC's relationship with the Government at the moment?

KB: There are areas where we agree and areas where we disagree. What's important to us is the issues we're pushing on. We're pushing them to go further and faster on employment rights, further and faster on taxation of the wealthy and bank profits. We've called for further increases in capital gains tax, and for support with the energy crisis — the Government moved on that [earlier this month]. Our focus is on the issues unions and workers are bringing to us, not on giving a mark out of ten.

Countering Reform

JM: Do you see this agenda as a key plank in the battle against Reform?

KB: Absolutely. If you strip it back, you can see in Hungary [under outgoing PM Viktor Orbán], in the US, and elsewhere that the far right tries to dismantle trade union rights, because trade unions are a powerful force connecting workers across lines of difference and standing up for equality. You also have to look at who funds these parties — they are not friends of workers' rights.

We've launched a campaign called Stop the Steal, about Reform's plan to roll back the Employment Rights Act and the Equality Act, which is pretty stunning. That's not what people want. People want a higher minimum wage, more security at work, the ban on zero-hours contracts, a voice at work. The sick pay changes are vitally important for millions of workers. We've achieved this by fighting hard, and there is a genuine threat it will be stripped away by Reform.

Related reading: ‘It’s Time for a Debate About Who Owns Our Media’ Says Leader of the UK’s Trade Union Movement

JM: Tell me a bit more about the TUC's anti-racism and anti-fascist work at the moment — it seems to be moving up the agenda.

KB: Trade unions have always had a responsibility to fight the far right. We've launched a campaign called Unity Works, which is about pushing a positive message. We understand people are concerned about economic insecurity, attacks on public services over the last decade, rising inequality, and the wealthy not paying their share of tax.

We want to put out positive messages about the change we need, and to demonstrate that we achieve change by working together — not by dividing workers from each other. Today's working class is diverse, and it's by working together as trade unions that we've won progress, and it's by working together that we'll win it again. It was very heartening at the conference to hear that message reflected — from Spain, from Brazil — that progressive forces are gaining in confidence.

JM: With local elections coming up and Reform expected to gain a lot of councillors, how should unions engage with Reform? Should they be talking to them at all?

KB: Every union will decide its own approach. Obviously, where Reform are in power and making decisions that directly affect our members, unions will have to attend meetings in that situation. But we certainly, as the TUC, won't be doing that.

JM: There's been some criticism, including from members, about Unite talking to Reform [in Birmingham] ahead of the May elections. Is it too early to be engaging while they're out of power?

KB: I'm not going to comment on the decision of any individual union. Our job at the TUC is to make the positive case for the kind of politics that will actually deliver for workers. That's what we're focused on. We've heard very clearly from Reform that they would repeal the Employment Rights Act and everything we've fought for, and we're focused on exposing that.

Related reading: ‘I’m Sad, Angry and Worried’: Sadiq Khan Fears Labour Will Be Punished for Peter Mandelson Scandal in Local Elections

What's Next for Workers' Rights

JM: Several unions are now pushing for a second Employment Rights Act — a phase two. Is that something the TUC might get behind?

KB: The priority is getting what's in the current Act over the line and implemented in the most ambitious way possible. There's a range of issues where workers are pushing for change, and we want to get the full ambition of what was in that whole new deal document — not just what made it into the final Bill.

Then of course we want to think about where we go after that, what we're still pushing for, and what the legislative vehicle would be. But the important thing to say is that the Employment Rights Act, while a real achievement, isn't done. It's about giving unions the chance to organise, to win recognition, and for workers to actually use those rights.

Related reading: Nigel Farage Promotes Reform UK Donor’s Pothole Repair Machine on Election Leaflets

JM: Is there a danger of thinking the Employment Rights Act has passed and so the job is done? There's a lot of organising for unions to do — using the new rights of access [to workplaces], for instance. Could we see a revival for the union movement if it's done right?

KB: We're holding a collective bargaining event at the beginning of May, which is about thinking strategically about how we use these rights. This is an opportunity to grow — and not just to grow, but to deliver what workers need, because we know unionised workplaces deliver higher productivity and more innovation for business too. There's a huge opportunity here, and we're thinking really hard about it.

JM: Union access to workplaces seems to be one of the things employer groups are pushing back hardest against. Are you still fighting to make that as open and robust as possible? What are the pitfalls?

KB: The Government has just published its response to the consultation on that. They have increased the level of fines against employers who breach the rules, we don't think they have gone far enough so there's some room to move there. It hasn't delivered everything we've wanted but it's delivered steps forward on our agenda.

JM: Can you tell me more about TUC plans to counter the non-Reform far right? Tommy Robinson is obviously planning another big demonstration. Is that something the TUC is mobilising around?

KB: We were really proud to support the Together demonstration, and we're also participating in Hope Not Hate's Million Acts of Hope. Those are really important events, which are about promoting our vision of a better future and attempting to address the very real challenges that people are facing across the country.

We know our key role, though, is in workplaces. So we are stepping up our training to make sure people have the tools they need to have those really difficult conversations in workplaces, and we're going to be rolling out action on that under the Unity Works banner throughout the rest of the year.

Related reading: Bereaved Covid Families Demand Nigel Farage Sack Conspiracy Theory Reform Candidates

JM: On the Global Progressive Mobilisation conference – there seems to be a kind of nationalist international – far-right movements seem very good at working together internationally. Do progressive movements need to get better at that? How hopeful are you?

KB: Yes, absolutely, I think it was a real moment of hope...We're going to be thinking, as a TUC, about how we continue to bring those progressive examples to the UK — how we work with sister trade union organisations in countries who are winning real change, to keep hammering home the message that it is possible to deliver better rights for workers, that it is possible to deliver a fairer economy and society not based on division and hatred.

That's what the trade union movement's role has always been, and that's what we're working on with our sister centres around the world. The conference in Barcelona was a really important step forward, and one we're really hoping to build on in the UK.

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com 

Kirk, Turning Point’s co-founder and chief executive, had been shot dead three months earlier on 10 September, on a stage at Utah Valley University by a sniper on a nearby rooftop.

More than 30,000 people turned up for the first event organised to commemorate Kirk’s murder. A replica of the tent in which he was shot was erected inside the convention centre, flanked by ring lights for attendee selfies. 

Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, opened the conference and used it to endorse JD Vance for United States President in 2028. Vance later gave the closing keynote speech.  

The speaker roster included a who’s who of ‘MAGA’ luminaries: Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Ben Shapiro, Donald Trump Jr, Robert F Kennedy Jr – and James Orr.

When he walked out on stage to a standing ovation from an audience of thousands in front of blazing lights and blaring music, the attendees might have been hard-pressed to imagine that this Orr was an academic, an Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Divinity, at the world-renowned Cambridge University.

But Orr was also more than that. Two months earlier, he had been appointed as a senior advisor to Nigel Farage, Leader of Reform UK.

As Orr emerged before the audience, a recording of one of his previous speeches was played: “What we recognise is that… freedom without constraints descends into tyranny, the tyranny very often of the minority over the majority. Freedom without fairness leaves people at the mercy of forces that divide a nation against itself.”

The audience roared as sparks and pyrotechnics surrounded Orr, who approached the podium and waved regally to his fans.

Why was he there?

Kirk on Race

Orr was well-acquainted with Charlie Kirk, having previously made appearances on his podcast show.

One of his most consequential contributions occurred on a show titled “Why is Europe choosing to replace itself?”, shortly before Kirk was killed. The interview was not published until January of this year.

Through Turning Point, Kirk had built a conservative youth empire on a particular kind of racial politics. On his own podcast, he had declared that, if he saw a black pilot, “I’m going to be like, ‘boy, I hope he’s qualified’.” He described George Floyd, the African American truck driver murdered by a white police officer in Minnesota, as a “scumbag”; and called Martin Luther King “awful” and “not a good person”. 

Kirk said the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – which provided equal rights to black Americans and outlawed racial segregation and discrimination – had been a “huge mistake”. He alleged that “prowling blacks go around for fun to go target white people”. He said black women in prominent positions – Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joy Reid, Michelle Obama – owed their status to having “stolen a white person’s slot”.

On Jewish donors, Kirk told his podcast audience that they were “the number one funding mechanism of radical, open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies” and that “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country”. He called on American Jews to stop “subsidising your own demise”, and accused Jewish philanthropy of controlling “the non-profits, the movies, Hollywood, all of it”. 

Kirk also sympathised with scientific racism. 

In October 2023, he hosted leading ‘race science’ advocate Steve Sailer, who coined the term ‘noticing’ to describe the act of recognising that racial disparities are rooted in biological and genetic differences, rather than social policies. Kirk described Sailer, who used Kirk’s show to promote white nationalist Charles Murray – co-author of The Bell Curve which claimed that black people are cognitively inferior to white people – as “one of the most talented noticers in the country”.

The Far-Right ‘Comintern’

Orr’s sit-down with Kirk was not merely friendly, but deferential. 

The Reform advisor began by telling Kirk that American conservatism was “changing the world”, that he admired the scale of what Kirk had built, and that he had flown in to learn. 

He also told Kirk something more specific.

“You’re doing extraordinary things in transforming America, recalling it to its founding ideals, promoting people of calibre and character and courage, particularly among the young,” Orr said. “This is a huge problem for us on the right in Britain. We’re working very hard on it. I felt both envious but also excited, because I thought: we can bottle some of that Kirk juice and take it over to Britain. We need to work out what the DNA is and try to replicate it as best we can.”

As a statement of Orr’s intent to import Kirk’s ideology into UK politics, his comments speak for themselves.

The interview, recorded before Kirk’s death, contained four crucial admissions.

The first – the most consequential – was in response to Kirk’s question on whether 2016 marked a real historical turn. Orr agreed, then widened the frame.

“It’s not just Brexit and Trump,” he said. “It’s also the rise of national conservative movements all across Europe. You’re seeing it with Vox in Spain, with Chega in Portugal, with the AfD in Germany, with the Rassemblement National in France, with Fratelli d’Italia in Italy, and in Austria and Hungary, all going at different speeds.”

He then highlighted his own role as a key lever in this network.

“One of the challenges conservatives always have is conserving what is our own,” Orr told Kirk. “So it’s very difficult to form what the communists used to call a Comintern. Marx could say ‘workers of the world, unite’ – progressives can say ‘wokesters of the world, unite’ – because it’s a fundamentally transnational ideology. Conserving our own nations means it’s much harder to have that sense of international solidarity. But various movements are trying to catalyse that. The National Conservatism movement – of which I’m proudly the UK chair – is helping to do that.”

National Conservatism, for Orr, is the transnational coordinating infrastructure for the European far-right. The seven movements he named include four parties with direct fascist lineage or formal extremist classification.

The AfD in Germany was classified by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution –  the BfV, Germany’s democratic immune system – as a “confirmed right-wing extremist endeavour” in May 2025, following a three-year investigation. 

The BfV’s 1,100-page finding described the party as a racist and anti-Muslim organisation incompatible with the German constitution. More than 10,000 AfD members are on the BfV’s register of far-right extremists. The party’s Thuringia leader, Björn Höcke, has been legally ruled by German courts to be accurately describable as a fascist. AfD-connected figures attended the January 2024 Potsdam meeting, exposed by Correctiv, at which the mass deportation of millions of people from Germany – including naturalised German citizens – was discussed.

Fratelli d’Italia is the living institutional continuation of Italian fascism. 

It occupies the same Rome headquarters as the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), the neo-fascist party founded in 1946 by veterans of Mussolini’s Nazi-collaborationist Salò Republic. Its tricolour flame emblem is said by party tradition to represent the flame on Mussolini’s tomb at Predappio. Its leader – now Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni – joined the MSI youth wing as a teenager and publicly praised Mussolini. Its co-founder, now President of the Italian Senate, has reportedly described himself and his colleagues as heirs of 'Il Duce'.

Austria’s Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) was founded in 1956 by Anton Reinthaller, an SS-Brigadeführer and former Nazi Reichstag deputy. His successor, Friedrich Peter, had served in the 1st SS Infantry Brigade – a unit responsible for the murder of civilians in the occupied Soviet Union. The party harbours intimate ties to neo-Nazi networks and German nationalist fraternities.

France’s Rassemblement National is the renamed Front National, founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen, a convicted Holocaust denier who described the Nazi gas chambers as “a detail” of the Second World War. The party drew on Waffen-SS veterans, the neo-fascist Ordre Nouveau, and veterans of the Algerian OAS.

‘Reversing’ the Great Replacement

Orr’s second significant admission was on migration, in a response to a question framed by Kirk in the language of the far-right ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory. 

Popularised by French writer Renaud Camus, it baselessly suggests white European populations are being systematically replaced by non-white immigrants through engineered mass migration. It has been cited in the manifestos of the terrorists who carried out the mass shootings at Christchurch, Buffalo, El Paso, and Poway.

The previous year, Kirk had declared on his show: “The Great Replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.”

The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism describes it as “one of the most dangerous white supremacist conspiracy theories out there” and notes that the conspiracy “often blames the ‘elite’ and Jews for orchestrating these changing demographics”.

In Kirk’s interview with Orr, he asked: “Why is Europe continually importing people who will replace core European identity and culture? Who is voting for this? What is the argument?”

Orr accepted the framing.

“In the last five years, one in 27 people in Britain has arrived,” he said. “One in 60 arrived in the last 18 months. In the first 25 years of this century, gross immigration has been somewhere between 12 and 15 million people – roughly four to five times as many people as arrived on our shores in the first thousand years of our history. This has had a profoundly traumatic shock on us Brits. A tectonic effect on the landscape of British politics.”

Then, speaking about free speech, he said: “Once you go through this extraordinary, unprecedented experiment in mass demographic reconfiguration – all the norms are dissolved.”

Orr had already told GB News that the task is now to “arrest and preferably reverse mass unvetted immigration” from countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan with “backward moral cultures”.

The Kirk interview underlined that stance and paired it with a specific figure. The UK cannot “reverse” 12 to 15 million arrivals since 2000 simply by closing its borders to new ones. Any reversal on that scale would, it appears, require the removal of long-settled residents, naturalised British citizens, UK-born children of migrants who are British from birth, and the breaking up of mixed-citizenship families.

This is the programme the Austrian far-right leader of the Identitarian Movement, Martin Sellner, calls ‘remigration’. It explicitly includes the expulsion of ethnic minority citizens deemed insufficiently assimilated. 

Orr closed his answer to Kirk by saying that the biblical model he offered for the integration of migrants is the Book of Ruth. “Even at the end of the book,” he said, “she’s still Ruth the Moabitess – her identity is still there. She’s incorporated into the people of Israel, but she remains a Moabitess.”

Ruth is incorporated but never becomes ‘an Israelite’. A few minutes later, Orr made the architecture explicit: “If anyone can become a woman, what is a woman? If anyone can become an Englishman, what is an Englishman?” 

An Englishman, in the analogy he draws, is presumably a biological person; a thing you are at birth. The suggestion that is reasonable to infer from Orr’s comment is that the nation belongs to the Englishman as one of the white – native – race.

Related reading: James Orr and the Messianic Transatlantic MAGA Alliance Trying to ‘Save’ Britain

“We’re not an idea,” Orr told Kirk. “We’re not a proposition. We’re people with a home, a history, a heritage.” This is the precondition for claiming that some people, regardless of citizenship, cannot truly belong.

On why he felt at home in Phoenix, Arizona, Orr added: “I can land somewhere like Phoenix and be surrounded by the English-speaking peoples – be in the Anglosphere – and that now carries an almost nostalgic quality. A sense of homecoming, a strange homecoming, because I can see glimpses of the old world in the new. Glimpses of the old world that are beginning to fade in the old world itself.”

On why British Muslims, in his telling, fail to integrate, he said: “There’s a wonderful book by my Cambridge colleague, Alan Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism, which shows that the English from the 12th and 13th Centuries onwards were constantly moving around, not very clan-based. Whereas our newer arrivals don’t take that approach at all.”

On whether a country’s claims require reasoned defence, Orr said: “I don’t owe you an argument for why my country is the best country in the world any more than I owe you an argument for why my mum is the best mum in the world.”

Taken together, these passages suggest a doctrine of the nation as lineage rather than idea; one that requires no reasoned justification. Englishness reaches back eight centuries and cannot be acquired by incomers. The Anglosphere is a civilisational community in which Phoenix is presumably more home than contemporary multi-ethnic England; and Englishness, like biological sex, is what you were born as.

This is ethno-nationalism.

The ‘Net Drains Myth’

Orr told Kirk that the claim that migrants are “net drains” on the British economy, has “been one of the myths” 

But the Office for Budget Responsibility’s 2024 modelling found that a migrant arriving at age 25 on UK average earnings contributes approximately £341,000 to public finances over their lifetime – more than a UK-born worker on the same salary, because the UK has not paid for their education. 

OBR forecasts consistently show higher net migration reducing the deficit and the national debt. Home Office earnings data for 1.7 million migrants who arrived on work visas between 2019 and 2023 show them earning, on average, slightly more than UK-born workers aged 16 to 64.

Orr also told Kirk that “something like 80 to 85% of Muslims vote Labour”, and used this as evidence that bloc voting had delivered the UK five MPs loyal to a foreign cause. The 80% figure was accurate in 2019. But, by the 2024 General Election, according to analysis by the UK in a Changing Europe group, Labour’s share of the Muslim vote collapsed to just more than 60%. In the 28 constituencies where more than a quarter of residents are Muslim, Labour’s vote share fell from 63.7% to 37.1%. Ironically, those five MPs ran as independents precisely due to their opposition to Labour’s policies on Gaza.

Orr did not respond to requests for comment.

A month after this interview was published by the Charlie Kirk Show, Farage promoted Orr to be his head of policy at Reform, where he sits in prime position to unleash “Kirk juice” into Westminster.

Following in his footsteps, as of April, his son Godfrey Orr – who accompanied his father on his Phoenix trip last year and watched him on stage at AmFest’s Charlie Kirk tribute event – is standing as a Reform candidate in East Chesterton in next month’s local elections.

“As of today, it has been 263 days, and we hope that he is alive,” she says. “We have no confirmation he was captured, but we simply hope, believe, and wait.”

On July 22, 2025, her 31-year-old son Denys went missing during a battle outside Izium. He had volunteered for the army on February 27, 2022, three days after the invasion began.

“The comrades who were with him said that he was alive, but then went missing. They left him at the position because there was no possibility of evacuation — the guys were also wounded and couldn’t get him out,” she explains. “I am from the Odesa region, Sarata district, the village of Pakhtivka. This is my first time at an exchange — I just couldn’t stay at home anymore.”

Svitlana is one of hundreds of mothers, grandmothers, wives, fathers, and others who have traveled to the Chernihiv Regional Clinical Hospital on this cold spring day in anticipation of the arrival of 175 Ukrainian soldiers freed from Russian captivity. It is April 11, the day before Orthodox Easter, and this is the latest prisoner exchange in the unrelenting war. For some, the day will bring relief; for most, it will only prolong the pain and uncertainty as they search for any information about their missing loved ones.

“All we have left is faith and hope,” says Svitlana, before disappearing into the growing crowd of family members adorned in shirts and flags emblazoned with the faces of their missing soldiers.

Related reading: ‘I’m Sad, Angry and Worried’: Sadiq Khan Fears Labour Will Be Punished for Peter Mandelson Scandal in Local Elections

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has brought levels of death and destruction not seen in Europe since the Second World War. High-intensity combat has left dozens of cities and hundreds of villages across eastern Ukraine in ruins, scarring the landscape and displacing millions in the process.

Though neither Ukraine nor Russia releases consistent casualty data, the losses are undoubtedly profound. A January 2026 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated that combined losses could be as high as 2 million people by the time spring arrived. Russian casualties are estimated at roughly 1.2 million killed, wounded, or missing, with around 325,000 soldiers killed since February 2022.

On the Ukrainian side, losses may have reached as high as 600,000 by December 2025 when combining estimates of dead, wounded, and missing. Estimates of Ukrainian military deaths have reached as high as 140,000. This past February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that roughly 7,000 soldiers are in Russian captivity and 55,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed.

Even these figures likely understate the true toll. The Ukrainian military records soldiers as missing until a body is recovered and identified through DNA testing — a process that is not always possible. More than 90,000 Ukrainian military personnel and civilians are estimated to be missing, and the French newspaper Le Monde recently reported that 66,000 Ukrainian soldiers are listed as missing. This uncertainty often brings immense psychological strain to families, though some continue to find strength through hope.

“I am searching, waiting for my husband,” said 37-year-old Anna, who traveled to Chernihiv from Khmilnyk in the Vinnytsia region.

“I’ve already lost my brother in this war, but I believe in miracles, and I believe my husband will come back,” she says. “He has been missing for 18 months. I don’t have any official information about him — only what I’ve found myself — but I believe with all my heart that he is alive, and I will wait for him. I love him very much — he is my soulmate.”

Accompanying Anna from Khmilnyk are 44-year-old Svitlana and 50-year-old Zoya. Svitlana and her husband Ruslan have two daughters together, but she has no confirmation that he has been captured.

“We have been waiting for him for three years and three months,” she says. “He was a regular worker who went to defend Ukraine from the very first days. Today is my birthday, and I hope I receive the gift of his return.”

Zoya’s husband Oleg also volunteered for the army, leaving in March 2022. “When he left, he said, ‘If not me, then who?’” she recalls.

Oleg went missing in 2024, but Russian volunteers later contacted her and sent a video message.

“In the video, he said that everything was fine, that he was being fed and not harmed — but you could see from his condition that it was the opposite,” she explains. “We are all waiting for every one of our men. We are waiting for each of them. I hope he comes back.”

After hours of waiting, the first ambulances arrived carrying those who required wheelchairs or other medical care. As they pulled into the hospital compound, chants of vitáyemo (“welcome”) erupted from the crowd. As the freed soldiers were wheeled into the hospital, relatives of the missing lined the path holding photos of their loved ones, hoping someone might recognise them and provide information.

Shortly afterward, a series of buses carrying the majority of the 175 returned soldiers arrived and parked outside two hospital entrances lined with metal barriers and roughly 2,000 people — all hoping their loved ones would be among those returning. Children in an apartment across the street watched from their balcony and waved.

As the soldiers exited the buses — with shaved heads, sunken eyes, hollowed faces, and pale skin — chants of vitáyemo again broke out. Those lining the path surged forward, calling out and showing photos, hoping for answers. Some of the returned soldiers smiled and waved; others moved in a daze, supported by medical staff. Many had been captured in 2022, spending years in a prison system widely documented for the systemic torture and abuse of Ukrainian prisoners.

After all the returned soldiers were escorted inside for medical and psychological evaluation, family members gathered at the windows, raising posters in another attempt to be seen. Others handed out pamphlets and photographs to soldiers and hospital staff, collecting them into large cardboard boxes that quickly overflowed.

For the majority present whose loved ones were not among the 175 returned, the waiting would continue. But one mother, Tamara, was able to breathe a sigh of relief — her 39-year-old son Serhii was among the returned.

“My son was captured at the beginning of the war at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, when it was occupied. I just saw him come off the bus and hugged him for the first time,” she said. “I’m so proud of him and very happy he came back,” she added before being quickly whisked away by friends.

As the day wore into the afternoon, the crowd began to dwindle as those unable to gather new information started to depart. With the fighting dragging on and the Russian government showing little interest in ending its war of conquest, the number of missing and captured will continue to rise, leaving families across Ukraine with little choice but to hope and wait.

“I’m sad, angry and worried about the May 7th elections,” he said.

“I've seen examples of great Labour councils doing great stuff - our ability to deliver free school meals, to build record numbers of council homes and reopen youth clubs with great Labour councils and some of those councils may not be Labour after May 7th, through no fault of their own".

Khan said that “mistakes” by Keir Starmer’s Government were overshadowing the good work of Labour-run councils in the capital and beyond.

“They have made mistakes, and so those mistakes mean, rather than over the last two weeks, they've been able to talk about the great delivery of Labour councils, they've instead been talking about Mandelson and that's not good when you're knocking on doorsteps.”

The London mayor said that Starmer needed to do more to "win over" progressive voters, rather than to attack those switching to the Greens.

Related reading: Sadiq Khan Urges New Yorkers to Reject ‘The Politics of Fear’ and Vote for Zohran Mamdani

The Prime Minister was accused of taking a dismissive attitude towards Zack Polanski's party in the wake of Labour's defeat to the Greens in the Gorton and Denton by-election, when he urged voters not to embrace the "extremism" he believed they represented.

Khan told Byline Times that he believed this kind of language was counter-productive

“Don't call green voters extremists. They're not” Khan told this paper.

“They're people who are progressives. They may not agree with us on all these issues, but we should try and court them and win them over.”

Khan also said that the Prime Minister had to be careful in his choice of rhetoric, given the possibility that Labour may need the support of the Green party after the next general election.

Citing his own work co-operating inside City Hall with Green party members of the London Assembly, he said: "I think you've got to very careful with language. After the next general election, I hope it doesn't happen, but there could be a hung parliament. You think somebody who is in a minority party is going to want to form a government with you if have been you've been offensive towards them?"

One area where the London Mayor believes the Government could go further to reach out to progressive voters is on Brexit.

"The Labour Government and I don't agree on the European Union. I think we should rejoin. I think it should be in the manifesto the next general election"

However, he backed Starmer to remain as Prime Minister, insisting that "Keir can fight the next general election as a successful and popular leader."

Khan was talking to Byline Times ahead of his ten year anniversary as London Mayor.

The full interview will be published here and on our YouTube channel, next month.