Dogged By Doubt

Essa Suleiman was released from the Maudsley Hospital only days ago, so ask Wes Streeting about that. The Swindon Advertiser called Suleiman "a crazed knifeman" after he had attacked a fellow Somali before stabbing two Police Officers and a dog. Was the dog Jewish? And that was in January 2008. Was that the work of Iran, too, or has Suleiman only subsequently risen through the ranks of the mysterious Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia?

Was Suleiman acting on behalf of the Revolutionary Guard Corps at around 8:50 yesterday morning, when he inflicted minor knife injuries on an occupant of an address in South East London? The Police were called, but they had clearly let him go by 11:15. Yet they have the gall to break pre-election purdah, not to say the Police Regulations 2003, by making public Mark Rowley's letter to Zack Polanski.

Not least, that was for Polanski's embarrassment of Ed Balls, which may yet be the end of the spectacle of a Labour former Cabinet Minister who interviewed current Labour Cabinet Ministers including his own wife. If it were, then the Epstein Class's punishment beating of Polanski may well be literal. Even after he had been Tasered. The Orgreave defendants were acquitted, but none of their assailants has ever been charged, and nor has anyone who tried to frame the miners on behalf of those domestic terrorists, the Enemy Within. The Hillsborough 97 were apparently unlawfully killed by no one. And so on.

Prevent is based on a proven hoax, but be that as it may, when Suleiman was referred to it, then the responsible Ministers were Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, so Nigel Farage can wind his neck in as surely as the party of which Braverman and Jenrick were then members. Farage and Jenrick are Reform UK's candidates for First and Second Lord of the Treasury, but neither of them could bring himself to vote to refer the present First Lord to the Privileges Committee because Farage's own funding was about to be referred to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, with the Electoral Commission also weighing in today, while Jenrick's funding already had been.

Everyone sounding off about Golders Green ought to be paying close attention to the trial of the Ukrainian rent boys. Today, we learned that El Money spoke perfect Ukrainian as well as Russian, meaning that he was almost certainly a Ukrainian, since, unlike the reverse, very few Russians are fluent in Ukrainian. An EL, who may or may not have been El Money, sent Stanislav Carpiuc four photographs of Islamic centres in London with their doors circled, and El Money offered to pay Roman Lavrynovych to put up posters in a Southall calling, in a font stylised to look like Hindi, for Islamic centres to be banned while bearing a QR code and the legend, "London will be free when we learn the lessons of Ayodhya." If you need to, then look it up.

But as when Hindu and Muslim youths fought pitched battles on the streets of Leicester in the summer of 2022, or as with last year's anti-Romanian pogrom in Ballymena, or any other example that you cared to cite including the grooming gangs, then do not hold your breath for a COBRA meeting or for any talk of a national emergency. And when it came to banning hate preachers, then be careful what you wish for. Those would be hate preachers as defined by Keir Starmer.

Starmer Arson Trial: Day Two

Paul Knaggs writes:

“My Grandmother Lives There”: Lavrynovych’s Defence of Fear in Starmer Arson Trial

Officers found him in bed. His trainers tested positive for accelerant. Yet Roman Lavrynovych told police he was only ever a man checking for cameras at night, paid for nothing, threatened by a voice he never saw, terrified for a grandmother he could not protect.

Old Bailey, London | 30 April 2026

IMPORTANT: All three defendants deny every charge against them. The defence case has not yet been presented to the jury. Nothing reported here constitutes any indication of guilt or innocence. Roman Lavrynovych, Petro Pochynok, and Stanislav Carpiuc are innocent until proven guilty. The jury will determine what the evidence means.

There is a particular quality to a dawn arrest. The door comes in. The lights go on. The world tilts. Whatever story you have been constructing in the interval since the events in question, whatever account you have prepared for the moment of reckoning, is now being tested against a reality that does not wait for you to wake up properly.

In the early hours of 13 May 2025, counter-terrorism officers broke down the door of a property in Sydenham, south-east London. Inside, they found Roman Lavrynovych, 22, asleep in bed. They also found a petrol can, a bottle of white spirit, and a pair of Fila trainers. Forensic examination of all three items returned the same result: the defendant’s DNA. The white spirit, the jury at the Old Bailey has now been told, was detectable on the trainers.

The second day of this remarkable trial, sitting before Mr Justice Garnham, was given over to the mechanics of detection. How the police found what they found. What the defendants said when they were asked to explain it. And, most significantly, what one of those defendants eventually admitted when the explanations began to run out.

FIRST THE DENIALS, THEN THE ADMISSION 

In his initial police interview, Lavrynovych denied everything. He was at home on the night of 8 May, when a Toyota RAV4 formerly owned by the Prime Minister was set alight on Countess Road, Kentish Town. He was at home again on the night of 11 May, when a front door in Ellington Street, Islington, was set ablaze. On the night of 12 May, when a second property, this one still owned by the Prime Minister and occupied by his sister-in-law, was also set alight, he claimed to have been visiting his friend Petro in Camden.

Officers placed his phone at the locations. They showed him the data. He maintained his story. Then, at the close of the interview, an officer asked a direct question. Had someone asked him to set fire to the three addresses? Lavrynovych paused. He said: “I think you need to speak to a different person.” Asked who that person might be, he replied: “I don’t know, I never saw this person.” The officer pressed again. Was he saying that someone had asked him to set fire to the three addresses? “Yes,” he said. “He threatened me by saying that I would have to do the job as he knew where I lived. I was scared as my grandmother lives at the same address.”

A PREPARED STATEMENT AND A DIFFERENT STORY 

When Lavrynovych returned to the interview room, he had a prepared statement. The tone had changed entirely. The account he now offered was not of a man who had set fires, but of a man who had been manipulated, used, and left unpaid by a figure he knew only as “El.” 

The contact, he said, had offered him £1,500 to check two addresses for CCTV cameras. Just that. Nothing more. He was to go at night, send a message confirming no cameras were present, and wait for money that never arrived. 

“He sent me the instructions on the same day that I had to go and instructed me that I go at night,” Lavrynovych stated. “He said that once done, he would pay me and I trusted him. I needed the money. He has not paid me though.” 

As for the white spirit on the Fila trainers: he thought he might have spilled it while decorating. He told officers that “El” had threatened him. Knowing where he lived, the contact had made clear the job would be done whether Lavrynovych wanted to do it or not. “I felt threatened,” he said in his statement. “He threatened me by saying that I would have to do the job as he knew where I lived. I was scared as my grandmother lives at the same address and I could not be sure that he would not do anything.” 

He insisted, plainly and clearly, that he “did not commit arson at any address” and that he did not know who had.

THE AIRPORT, THE SILENCE, AND WHAT THE PROSECUTION SAYS IT PROVES 

While Lavrynovych was being processed and charged on 15 May, events elsewhere were unfolding with their own significance. Two days later, on 17 May, Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, the Ukrainian-born Romanian national from Chadwell Heath in east London, was found in the departure lounge at Luton Airport. He was about to board a flight to Romania. He was stopped. In subsequent police interviews, he made no comment.

On 19 May, Petro Pochynok, 35, the other Ukrainian national charged in this case, was detained in Chelsea, west London. He too made no comment in his police interviews.

Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC told the jury that the evidence, taken as a whole, points in one direction. All three defendants, he said, agreed to set fires in a residential area, knowing property might be destroyed and understanding that the lives of the people inside those buildings might be put at risk.

Carpiuc’s attempted departure from the country hours after the charges were filed will no doubt be placed before the jury as a significant fact. The prosecution is not yet required to say precisely how it characterises that moment, but the timing speaks for itself.

THE SHADOW OF ‘EL MONEY’ 

What the jury has been given, across two days of prosecution evidence, is a case that is in some ways straightforward and in other ways deeply peculiar. The straightforward part is the forensic trail: the phone data, the CCTV, the Telegram messages, the DNA on the accelerant-stained trainers, the image of a figure standing before a burning car.

The peculiar part is the figure at the centre of all of it who remains entirely invisible. The person communicating in Russian, in contrast to the Ukrainian used between the defendants. The person who promised cryptocurrency and issued the codeword “geranium.” The person who told the defendants they had attacked the home of “a very high-ranking individual in Britain” and instructed them to leave the city. The person who remains, as far as this trial is concerned, without a name, a nationality, or a face. 

The jury has been directed that identifying “El Money” is not their task. The prosecution does not need to prove who gave the orders, only that the three men in the dock agreed to carry them out. But the unidentified figure at the top of this alleged conspiracy is the question that no one in this courtroom, and precious few in the media covering it, is yet willing to ask aloud. 

This case is not prosecuted under counter-terrorism legislation. The Metropolitan Police have not attributed the attacks to any foreign state. Those remain the official positions. They deserve to be stated plainly, as they have been throughout Labour Heartlands’ coverage of these proceedings. 

But a Russian-speaking Telegram contact, directing a covert operation against properties linked to a sitting British Prime Minister, promising cryptocurrency, issuing safe-word protocols, and instructing the executors to destroy their communications and flee the city, is a set of facts that carries its own weight regardless of how the charges are framed. 

A Russian-speaking contact, safe-word protocols, cryptocurrency, and a standing instruction to destroy every message. The charges may not mention terrorism. The facts do not care what the charges mention. 

WHERE THE TRIAL STANDS 

The prosecution has now completed two full days of evidence. The jury has heard phone location data, CCTV footage, encrypted Telegram messages, a filmed attack, a return to the scene to photograph the damage, DNA evidence, an airport interception, and a defendant’s own admission that someone directed him to act. 

Against that, the defence has not yet spoken. Lavrynovych’s account, that he was a man hired to check for cameras and threatened when he hesitated, that he was never paid and never set a fire, will now need to be tested under cross-examination and measured against the volume of prosecution evidence the jury has already absorbed. 

That testing has not yet happened. No verdict has been reached. No conclusion can be drawn. The defendants deny the charges. The trial before Mr Justice Garnham is expected to continue until the end of May. Labour Heartlands will continue to report each day’s proceedings.

Every trial has a defendant in the dock. This one has a more important figure who is not. According to the prosecution, “El Money” ordered the fires, promised the payment, and disappeared into the encrypted dark. Scotland Yard does not know who he is, or will not say. Military intelligence has offered nothing. The defendants may be convicted or acquitted. But who is the man at the other end of the phone remains the question.

Grave

Professor Kevin Yuill writes:

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which began life in October 2024 as a private member’s bill, has finally collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions after 18 torturous months.

Why did it fail? The narrative from supporters of the bill is that it failed due to dirty tricks by opponents. They claim that the democratic will of the people was thwarted by the unelected and evil House of Lords (think men in top hats twirling their moustaches and women draped in Dalmatian fur).

Since more than half of the 1,200 proposed amendments to the bill were introduced by only seven peers, supporters of assisted suicide accused these few of deliberately attempting to block the bill’s passage, instead of fulfilling the unelected chamber’s role of revising and improving legislation passed by the House of Commons.

In a press conference that resembled the sad café meetings of losing teams on The Apprentice, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, the bill’s sponsor, said ‘this isn’t what democracy looks like’. She complained in a piece for The Guardian that the bill had faced ‘a relentless campaign of misinformation’.

On that we can agree. The bill did face a relentless campaign of misinformation, but most of that came from those on her side – and they are continuing to misinform anyone who will listen to them. Now, they are desperately scrambling to get an MP gullible enough to reintroduce the bill and ram it down the throat of parliament using the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, which would circumvent the Lords’ opposition.

In fact, whether one thinks an unelected chamber is a good idea or not (spiked would abolish it), it would be untrue to accuse peers, in this case, of simply being blockers. They pointed to the bill’s many problems and suggested solutions.

Many pro-assisted death figures mocked some of the amendments, such as one put forward that would require all those opting for assisted suicide to take a pregnancy test – seemingly including men and the elderly. But the vast majority of amendments were straightforward and humane. They included preventing doctors from raising the subject of assisted suicide with patients, inserting the phrase ‘conscientious objection’ so that doctors could opt out, and allowing care homes and hospices to opt out of having assisted suicides take place on their premises.

The truth is that even the most ardent supporters of assisted death felt that the bill was simply not good enough. As The Times – long supportive of legalising assisted suicide – said in an editorial, the Lords ‘spoke to the fact the bill is not fit for purpose’.

The lucky – or lunatic – MP who brings back a zombified resurrection of the bill will face formidable obstacles. For one thing, the public simply does not prioritise this issue, even if polls show soft support for it. Besides, how do those complaining that ‘this is not what democracy looks like’ explain Scotland, where a very similar bill fell in its democratically elected chamber, 69 votes to 57?

Supporters of the bill have the air of football fans who, after accepting VAR as an arbiter of when the game began, demand its removal after it’s used to award the opposition a penalty. Alastair Campbell has complained bitterly about the ‘conduct of a tiny minority in the House of Lords who have used every tactic imaginable to make sure the assisted-dying bill fails’. ‘I have long believed the Lords is simply not fit for purpose as a second chamber. This has cemented my view’, he said. This is the same Alastair Campbell who, in 2018, praised the Lords for placing obstacles in front of Brexit. Nor is he alone in his hypocrisy. Indeed, at the third reading in the Commons, wavering MPs were urged to back the bill by assisted-suicide campaigners, who insisted that it could be tidied up by the Lords…

The political climate has also changed since the bill’s introduction. UK prime minister Keir Starmer was an early champion, but his interest appears to have waned amid his political woes and plummeting popularity. In 2024, he could soft-whip the more than 200 new Labour MPs into supporting Leadbeater’s bill, trading on their gratitude for delivering them a seat in the Commons. He dare not risk raising such a divisive issue today. Indeed, the PM has made clear that no additional time will be given to this bill by the government.

Reintroducing the bill would also be far from straightforward. As the Hansard Society has noted, it would take an unusual combination of circumstances for a private member’s bill to be passed using the Parliament Acts. It would also be unprecedented. A backbench MP would need to get it through the Commons in the limited time available. MPs would then have to vote again on identical – and identically inadequate – legislation. The chances that a bill with a majority of just 23 at third reading (down from the 55 at second reading) will pass, particularly after the level of criticism it has received, are low.

The bill failed – just as it did in Scotland – in part because of the strategy of Dignity in Dying, the main force behind both pieces of legislation. Rather than brave political discussion, rather than campaign for a referendum like the one in Slovenia last year (which was also rejected), Dignity in Dying sought to schmooze important celebrities, journalists and, ultimately, politicians. They tried to glamourise death, and it simply did not work.

What the bill’s defeat really reveals is that the more people hear about and discuss assisted suicide, the more they dislike it. It tells us that politics works, that campaigns attempting to push important legislation over the heads of the people, using policy capture strategies and lobbying techniques, will ultimately fail.

Let us hope that this zombie bill, which seems to rise from the dead again and again, at least stays in its grave for some time yet.

A Manifest Error

Dr. Brendan Whelan writes:

In Kafka’s distressing work of fiction, The Trial, Joseph K, a bank clerk with an unremarkable life finds himself accused by a faceless, totalitarian authority of a crime he did not commit; a crime that was not revealed to him. On the eve of his 31st birthday K was taken to a quarry and executed, ‘like a dog,’ still ignorant of the charges against him.

I have had my own Kafkaesque ‘trial’ moment, albeit, without the fiendish consequences that befell Kafka’s antihero. Mine wasn’t at the hands of some authoritative regime or even a corrupt local prosecutor. My accuser, sentencer and executioner was my employer, the Organisation for the Prohibition for Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a Nobel Peace Laureate and the world’s watchdog for the planet’s most deadly chemical warfare agents.

The Right to Know 

My ordeal began in 2019 when an engineering study of two industrial chlorine gas cylinders, purportedly dropped from a helicopter in an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, in April 2018, was leaked from inside the OPCW. The unauthorized release contradicted the findings of the OPCW’s official Douma Report of March 2019, which concluded there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ a chemical attack had occurred. The report, according to the US Department of State, vindicated the reprisal missile attacks launched against Syria at the behest of US President Donald Trump before OPCW inspectors could enter Douma to investigate.

In response to the embarrassing leak, the OPCW Director-General instigated a major inquiry. Two OPCW inspectors involved in the Douma probe were in the crosshairs. I was one of them.

I was told by the OPCW that ‘Information ha[d] come to light indicating that [I] may have been involved in the breach,’ and despite having left the Organisation some eight months before the leak, that I was a suspect.

I asked, repeatedly, to be told the precise allegations against me; a right not only enshrined in law but in the Organisation’s protocols. They refused to elaborate or specify any charges. At that point I ended any collaboration with an investigation that was contemptuous of the requirements for due process. The investigation proceeded regardless.

The Show Trial

On 6 February 2020, the OPCW took the unprecedented step of publicly broadcasting its findings. Again, in breach of their obligations, they refused me a copy of the Full Investigation Report, which would, or should, have specified the allegations against me and the evidence to support them. Before a congregation of ambassadors and delegates from Member States of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the OPCW Director-General—in what the veteran British journalist, Peter Hitchens, described as a Show Trial– staged an overtly political and often defamatory briefing.

The official investigation report, for lack of evidence, had formally exonerated Inspectors A and B (as my colleague and I were referred to respectively) from leaking the sensitive document. Yet the Director-General was adamant that we were, nonetheless, not blameless. According to him, I had ‘deliberately and in premeditated’ fashion enabled the leak by failing to comply with the ‘specified procedures for the handling of confidential information so as to create a clear risk of unauthorised disclosure.’ This risk, he said, ‘materialised with the publication of [the] assessment on the [internet].’ Notably, he didn’t explain what the purported infraction was or how it could have led to the leaking of the engineering assessment.

A Deceptive Cover-story

By simultaneously clearing me for the leak while still impugning me over it, the Director-General laid bare his real motive.

It was no coincidence that I and my colleague—the only individuals investigated for the leak—had protested against bias and malpractice in the conduct of the OPCW’s Douma investigation, and, in my case, had been sidelined from the investigation for doing so. The OPCW had refused to address our concerns, which had since become a public controversy. The aim of the leak inquiry, therefore, was to attack our credibility without having to refute our scientific arguments.

‘Firstly, Inspectors A and B are not whistle-blowers,’ the OPCW Chief declared. ‘They are individuals who could not accept that their views were not backed by evidence. When their view could not gain traction, they took matters into their own hands and committed a breach of their obligations to the Organisation… As could be expected, their conclusions are erroneous, uninformed, and wrong.’

I, for my ‘wrongdoing,’ was issued with a letter of censure and a lifetime ban from future employment with the Organisation I had served diligently for seventeen years.

As the legacy media had been heavily invested in maintaining the Western line that Syrian forces had used chemical weapons in Douma, the OPCW’s ad hominem attacks on the two dissenting inspectors were treated as a vindication of the official narrative.

Reducing valid concerns about a cover-up scandal to a Russian disinformation campaign, The Guardian declared that: ‘Inquiry strikes blow to Russian denials of Syria chemical attack.’ Reuters spun their own fictional version of the findings, with a piece erroneously headlined ‘Chemical weapons agency employees leaked information, inquiry finds.’ Bellingcat, a NATO state-funded group that promoted its sponsors’ Douma allegations, declared that the investigation had laid to rest the OPCW cover-up scandal once and for all. ‘It is fitting that the last word on this subject should go to Mr Fernando Arias, the Director-General of the OPCW,’ Bellingcat wrote.

As it turned out, it wouldn’t.

Pushback

I wasn’t prepared to let this egregious attack on my person and my work go unopposed. I took the case to the Administrative Tribunal of the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILOAT), the only legal recourse available to staff of global organisations. There, I challenged the OPCW to be specific about the charges against me and to present the evidence.

The OPCW did respond to the Tribunal. But it was a response that brought an unexpected and bizarre twist.

The Organisation casually abandoned the vague charges they’d made publicly and argued that I had not been sanctioned for anything related to the leaked engineering assessment. The narrative that I’d somehow enabled the leaking of the engineering assessment was now being swapped out for an entirely new account of how I’d supposedly breached my confidentiality obligations.

New Allegations

It was well known inside the Organisation that in June 2018 I’d sent the Chief of Cabinet an email to protest the suppression of the team’s Douma report and a secretive attempt to publish a doctored version. The Chief of Cabinet replied, denying any involvement and agreed to postpone publication. I forwarded his reply (containing my original protest email) to a senior Director with whom I’d expressed concerns the previous day about the conduct of the Douma investigation.

This was now my apparent crime. ‘The Appellant forwarded an email exchange between himself and the former Chief of Cabinet to Director-OSP which contained specific and detailed information about evidence gathered by the FFM [Fact-Finding mission] investigators in Douma,’ the OPCW told the Tribunal.

The ‘specific and detailed information’ they were referring to was a statement in my email to the Chief of Cabinet protesting the fact that the doctored report made the unsupported claim that ‘the team had sufficient evidence to determine that chlorine was released from two cylinders.’ This statement, despite being without basis, was ‘highly protected’, they said, and shouldn’t have been shared with the senior director. They said ‘The D-OSP was not part of the FFM investigation and therefore did not have a need- to-know.’

In other words, by informing the Director of Office of Special Projects of a phoney claim that had been fraudulently inserted into the team’s Douma report, I was committing a ‘serious breach of confidentiality.’ It is worth noting that, because it was challenged, this unfounded assertion was omitted from the final Douma report.

The fresh allegations didn’t end there. Sharing concerns directly with the Director-General was also criminalised. ‘On 25 March, the Appellant wrote a letter to the Director-General, challenging the findings in the Final Report on the Douma incident,’ the Tribunal was told. ‘[T]his letter, which the Appellant admits to sending, contained specific and detailed information gathered by FFM investigators from toxicology experts. In creating and disseminating this letter, he failed to comply with the specified procedures for the handling, protection, release, and dissemination of confidential information so as to create a clear risk of unauthorised disclosure.’

The confidential information I’d supposedly failed to adequately protect in this case referred to an official visit I and other OPCW experts made to Germany in June 2018 to seek the expert opinion of some of the world’s most renowned toxicologists regarding chemical warfare agents. These specialists had ruled out any possibility that the victims of the Douma incident were killed by chlorine gas, thereby lending significant weight to the prospect the attack might have been staged. This expert opinion was suppressed by the OPCW in its final Douma report, and had been a key concern I’d shared in my letter to the Director-General. Sending this letter to the head of the OPCW was a breach of my confidentiality obligations, they told the Tribunal.

What was also significant about this new allegation was that it was the first time management has officially acknowledged this meeting with the German toxicologists. Even mention of it was excluded from the inspection timelines in official reports. By extension, it was the first tacit admission that this crucial piece of evidence was censored from the Douma investigation.

The only rational explanation for all this bait-and-switch was that the OPCW couldn’t defend sanctioning me for supposedly enabling the engineering leak (because I didn’t). But rather than acknowledge the mistake, fresh spurious allegations were conjured up to broadly fit the fuzzy narrative of my guilt, and they proceeded as if these had always been the allegations.

Thought Crimes

If this about-turn in the allegations against me reeked of desperation, the newfound justification for the severity of the sanction meted out is disturbing.

My lifetime baring from future employment for forwarding an unclassified internal email thread to a senior Director was merited, they assured the Tribunal. ‘The effect of the breach of confidentiality was assessed as detrimental to the Organisation,’ because ‘[I’d] sowed discord within the Organisation.’ By sharing information “within the Secretariat [emphasis added] [I]caused a staff member to call into question the integrity of the Organisation’s findings in Douma.’

I had, it seems, gotten inside the mind of a senior OPCW Director. It could hardly get more Orwellian.

Vindication

Following a protracted legal process lasting six years, the Tribunal issued its ruling:

‘‘No disciplinary proceedings may be instituted against a staff member unless he or she had been notified of the allegations against him or her, as well as the right to seek assistance in his or her defence, as well as be given a reasonable opportunity to respond to those allegations. These steps were not taken [by] the Director-General [t]o the extent that the complainant was not provided with the charges [emphasis added] … The violation of the complainant’s due process in the disciplinary process was a manifest error.”

The Tribunal also faulted the OPCW for having “not provided [me] with a copy of the full investigation report.” Tellingly, despite claiming all the evidence for their new allegations was contained in this full investigation report, neither would they provide it to the Tribunal despite my challenge to them to do so.

After a lengthy struggle, I’d finally been vindicated. Personally, and professionally. The sanction had to be lifted. I could work again for the OPCW; an unlikely prospect, but at least possible. And they were ordered to pay substantial moral damages and legal costs. Now, they just need to take down from their website the offending report impugning me. And hopefully, Reuters, The Guardian, and others who parroted the OPCW’s falsehoods about a dissenting inspector will correct their errors.

Severe

If every stabbing that arose out of untreated mental illness were a terrorist act, then the threat of such might very moderately be called severe. Watch out for yet further attacks on what few civil liberties we retained, accompanied by absolutely nothing in relation to the real problems. Can you march against the banning of a march? I suppose so. Until they banned that, too. Prevent is based on a proven hoax. And the name that rhymes with “Harmer” is the gift that keeps on giving.

Now, was there a Prime Ministerial statement when three flag-waving supporters of Reza Pahlavi, at least one of them an asylum seeker, stabbed a British citizen of Iranian background near Downing Street on 22 April, so only one week ago yesterday? Or over John Ashby, sentenced last week? Or after the Southport attacks, which had resulted in three deaths? Make your own list, because everything on it would be legitimate. For example, the repeated kicking in the head of a Tasered suspect with known mental health problems, by two Police Officers and a passing member of the general public, even though the Tasering had made it impossible for him to open his hands due to muscle contraction. Or the cosy interaction over this incident between the Twitter account of the Metropolitan Police and those of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and other such characters.

The national emergencies in this case are knife crime and the lack of mental health provision. A man who would once have been institutionalised, and who was well-known locally for his violent outbursts, stabbed two random strangers in the street. Since that street was in Golders Green, then there was a high chance that one or even both of those strangers would be Jewish, and so they were. Take out that detail, though, and this kind of thing happens all the time, except that the victims did not always survive, as thankfully they have in this case. Keir Starmer should attend to that. As should Wes Streeting, who has been doing the rounds today ostensibly to talk about mental health, and who has initially been asked instead about Golders Green, yet whom no interviewer has invited to make the connection.

We must not conflate British Jews with Israel, so why must criticism of Israel be antisemitic? And has not our darling Prime Minister told us that Iran was “not our war”? Why, then, would Britain be a target for retaliation by Ashab al-Yamin, previously noted for talking both in English and in Arabic about “the Land of Israel” and for using the very specifically Zionist Hebrew word “aliyah” for immigration to that Land? Schoolboy errors, lads. Here as in relation to late night teenage arson attacks on North London’s decommissioned ambulances and its empty buildings, as if the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps had nothing else to do. Those suggesting such involvement do not believe it, but they do expect us to. They think that little of us, which is why they also imagine that we would be open to the suggestion that the FSB, the GRU or the Wagner Group called itself “El Money” on Telegram so as to transfer cryptocurrency to Ukrainian rent boys in return for their setting fire to Keir Starmer’s private house, to his old home, and to his old car. All in response to the codeword “geranium”. Geranium!

I suspect that El Money is in fact La Money. Louise Haigh? Angela Rayner? Emily Thornberry? Victoria Starmer? It could be any of them. There is an assumption that among the clothes purchased for Sir Keir by Lord Alli, the lady’s undergarments were for Lady Starmer. But buying lingerie for one’s kept man’s estranged wife? No, no, no, there is a far more plausible explanation. Ponder what might lie beneath those dull suits as, like Lord Alli, you called him Lady Alli. Or Geranium.

Elsewhere in the courts today, the jury has been deliberating in the trial of the Filton Six, following yesterday’s barnstorming closing statements. It has sent to the judge for several clarifications, and it has now gone home having yet to reach a verdict. See also the Royal Courts of Justice, Court of Appeal (Civil Division), Court 68, with Court 71 being used as an overspill court. Until the conclusion of the Filton Six trial, then nothing more had better be said. But if this were still on tomorrow, then there should be 65 or so seats in the public gallery.

And then to the long overdue libel actions that should at last be brought by Jeremy Corbyn. The most basic of checks would have confirmed that the mural, and the wreath, and the “not understanding English irony”, and the “friends from Hamas and Hezbollah”, and all the rest of those, were complete dross, as everyone who did bother to check did find out. The Equality and Human Rights Commission found precisely two cases of anti-Semitism in its entire report into the Labour Party, neither of them involved Corbyn or indeed anyone who was still a member of that party, and even in relation to those, it was found in court that it was, “arguable that the Defendant [the EHRC] made an error of law in relation to Article 10 ECHR.”

Rather than defend that at judicial review, the EHRC settled with Ken Livingstone, whom it had continued to pursue despite knowing that he had Alzheimer’s disease, and with Pam Bromley. As a matter of record, “Labour anti-Semitism” never existed. But it does now. Labour has expelled more Jews under Starmer than under all its previous Leaders put together, most or all of them for what has been found to be the protected characteristic of anti-Zionism.

Peter Mandelson: The Untold Israel Connection

A brilliant investigative journalist who nearly removed Jess Phillips from Parliament last time and who should do so next time, Jody McIntyre writes:

After new, public revelations that Labour Party grandee Peter Mandelson failed security vetting but was appointed ambassador to the United States anyway, figures across the political spectrum are calling for the resignation of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

But as the debate surrounding who knew what and when about Jeffrey Epstein’s “best pal” continues, many in the mainstream media have failed to interrogate Mandelson’s links to the pro-Israel lobby.

The initial tranche of the Epstein files have already caused a political earthquake within the British establishment. For many years, the media and political class have willfully ignored the relationship between the convicted pedophile and Mandelson.

But photographs of the man who revelled in the nickname, the “Prince of Darkness,” standing in his underpants may have proven to be the straw that broke the back of Starmer’s Labour government.

Mandelson’s long-time protégé and Israel lobby favorite Morgan McSweeney has already resigned in disgrace after insisting on his mentor’s appointment as US ambassador last year, even in the face of British security service warnings.

And the Mandelson scandal only seems to escalate. In February, he was spectacularly – yet briefly – arrested by police on suspicion of misconduct in public office. The same month, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince and another Epstein accomplice, was also arrested and is being investigated for the same reason, after emails in the latest Epstein releases suggested that both men handed over sensitive government information to the convicted pedophile and likely Mossad intelligence asset.

In April, continued questions about how Mandelson came to be appointed ambassador despite failing security vetting threatened Starmer’s tenure as prime minister.

Loyalty to Israel

The Mandelson-Epstein relationship goes back decades.

Ian Maxwell, the brother of Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, revealed in a September 2025 interview that Mandelson worked in their father’s Mirror Group headquarters in the 1980s as a consultant.

Their father was Robert Maxwell, himself a former Labour MP and – according to investigative journalists Martin Dillon and Gordon Thomas – a key Mossad asset.

After his body was found floating in the sea, Maxwell received an Israeli state funeral attended by the Israeli president, prime minister, and at least six serving and retired intelligence chiefs.

Not bad for a British newspaper owner. In the early 1990s, working in Labour headquarters, Mandelson enjoyed a salary paid by Brian Basham – Ghislaine Maxwell’s public relations adviser. According to Ian Maxwell: “Epstein was always interested in having interactions with people with influence and Peter Mandelson was certainly influential.”

By the time Tony Blair won the 1997 general election, Mandelson was in the cabinet.

The relationship endured. Newly released files reveal an email sent by Ghislaine Maxwell to Peter Mandelson on 14 September 2002. Maxwell writes: “Clinton … will do what you want at the conference.” Two weeks later, former US president Bill Clinton addressed the Labour Party conference in Blackpool.

Leaked documents show that Jeffrey Epstein funded Friends of the IDF and the settlement-financing Jewish National Fund, toured Israeli military bases, and was visited in his New York apartment by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak over 30 times.

However, as with media coverage surrounding Epstein that so often refuses to acknowledge his most obvious foreign link, the British press are determined to convince us that “bad luck” Mandelson’s biggest mishap was offering to help his “best pal” Epstein obtain a Russian visa.

My research suggests that the media are hiding a bigger story: Peter Mandelson has a history of service and loyalty to the Israeli state.

Epstein’s UK source

In June 2024, less than a year before his inexplicable appointment as US ambassador, Mandelson addressed an event at the Israeli embassy in London to celebrate “Israel Independence Day,” also known as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” which saw the wholesale displacement, murder, rape and ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s indigenous population.

Mandelson, who once admitted endeavoring to sabotage Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the party “every single day,” said at the embassy that he now believed that the “overwhelming majority” of the Labour Party had an “unwavering” belief “not only to Israel’s right to exist, but its right to defend itself against those who want to extinguish the state today.”

Mandelson also referred to former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin as his “hero,” a man famous for ordering Israeli soldiers to break Palestinians’ bones.

Mandelson went on to burnish his credentials in defending the settler state from anti-Zionist critics. He recalled that, “in the 1980s I became increasingly aware of the need to defend Labour’s support for Israel from ultra-left militants and forces both inside the Labour Party and outside. Those who had climbed on and who were pushing the ‘Zionism is racism’ bandwagon that had initially been created by the United Nations General Assembly.”

Mandelson presented himself that day as a British statesman standing up for an “ally,” but his actions tell a different tale. After the 2010 UK general election, as Labour leader Gordon Brown attempted to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Mandelson, who was First Secretary of State at the time (a position senior to other ministers in British politics), was feeding sensitive government information to Epstein, likely an Israeli spy.

On 9 May, just three days after the election, Mandelson appears to inform Epstein of covert talks between Brown and the Liberal Democrats. Their relationship is so close that Epstein feels able to give the second most senior figure in the British government political advice, saying, in reference to the Conservatives: “why not let tories govern.”

Then, on 10 May, at 9:07am, Mandelson tells Epstein: “Finally got him to go today.” Hours later, Brown resigned as Labour leader.

In light of Mandelson’s historic support for the Israeli state, however, perhaps his role as Epstein-informant came as a natural progression.

Mandelson and ELNET

In January 2024, politicians from 22 European countries traveled to meet with Israeli president and genocide inciter Isaac Herzog and military spokesman Peter Lerner, a London-born “commander of IDF social media activities.”

The delegation was led by Peter Mandelson, at the time a Labour member of the House of Lords, Britain’s unelected upper chamber. It was taken to Kfar Aza, a settlement near Gaza. The group also had dinner with Gideon Saar, who became Israeli foreign minister just two months after the visit.

The Mandelson-led trip was paid for by ELNET, a shadowy lobby group that refuses to reveal its donors, but names the Israeli foreign ministry as one of its “partners”. Past attendees of their events include former Conservative UK prime ministers David Cameron and Rishi Sunak. ELNET’s UK branch is led by ex-Labour MP Joan Ryan, a former chair (and now honorary president) of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and vice-president of the All-Party Britain-Israel Parliamentary Group.

Ryan was also a key figure in the struggle to overthrow Corbyn, as well as a close ally of fellow LFI supporter and now Labour’s “Safeguarding Minister” Jess Phillips.

In one of ELNET’s online briefings, Mandelson told Lerner: “The [Israeli] government might be better off if it listened more to the IDF … If you can pass on that one.”

Another ELNET briefing was attended by John Woodcock, now the Starmer government’s adviser on political violence and disruption, a position he was appointed to by former Conservative PM Boris Johnson in 2020.

Woodcock resigned from Labour in 2018 while being investigated for sexual harassment. He described Mandelson’s appointment last year as “an inspired choice.” Like ELNET chief-executive Joan Ryan, Woodcock is a former chair of LFl, and accepted a trip to Israel funded by ELNET while preparing a government report into Palestine protests in the UK.

The year before Mandelson’s delegation, ELNET took a group of Labour Party advisers on a similar trip. The 2023 delegation included an adviser to then shadow minister and long-time LFI supporter Wes Streeting – now health secretary – who has been frantically deleting Mandelson-related posts from his social media, but whom he previously described as a “legend” who should not be considered “guilty by association”.

Perhaps due to the closeness of their relationship, Streeting has gone further than most Labour parliamentarians in attempting to distance himself from Mandelson. In a recent interview with Sky News, Streeting even released a selection of WhatsApp messages between himself and Mandelson to show he had “nothing to hide,” and rejected the suggestion that the messages revealed an “intimate relationship.”

However, rather than clear his name, the release may have implicated him as an accessory to genocide. The most telling revelation came when the WhatsApp conversation turned to the Gaza genocide. Streeting tells Mandelson: “Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes. Their government talks the language of ethnic cleansing and I have met with our own medics out there who describe the most chilling and distressing scenes of calculated brutality against women and children.”

This was a genocide which his own Labour Party supported, by flying RAF flights over Gaza to provide intelligence for the Israeli state. Starmer’s government and Wes Streeting specifically had refused even to call for a ceasefire for the first few months of the slaughter. But now, in private talks with the “Prince of Darkness,” a Labour minister was willing to acknowledge the illegality of the Israeli assault on Gaza.

Knowing about crimes but ignoring them anyway is becoming a feature of the Starmer administration.

Israel connections

Mandelson’s ties with Israeli government officials go back a long way. In 2005, when acting as EU Trade Commissioner, he met the Israeli finance minister, one Benjamin Netanyahu.

Rupert Murdoch, the media baron whose initial endorsement of Tony Blair paved the way for New Labour’s – and Mandelson’s – rise to power, is a close friend and suspected financial backer of Netanyahu. In 2023, Peter Mandelson said that during the Blair years, “upsetting Rupert was definitely a no-go area.”

Murdoch still has influence in the UK. Last year, Mandelson’s protegé Morgan McSweeney sat next to Murdoch at a state dinner hosted by King Charles for US president Donald Trump. Just as he had insisted on Mandelson’s appointment, McSweeney, the Israel lobby’s “man in No. 10,” had successfully lobbied for Murdoch to be invited, notwithstanding the fact that the Australian media mogul’s Wall Street Journal was being sued by Trump at the time over an article the newspaper ran about Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Mandelson also met with Ehud Olmert on the 2005 trip, who was Israeli trade and industry minister at the time and would later become prime minister. Olmert is another convicted fraudster, having been sentenced to six years in prison in 2014 for accepting bribes and obstruction of justice while in office.

And then there is Ehud Barak, apparently Epstein’s favored Israeli prime minister. In 2013, Epstein instructed Barak to get Mandelson to oversee the sale of the largest Israeli fuel firm at that time, Paz Oil Company. Mandelson replied: “Am interested in Paz. Also in how Israel is planning to transport its offshore field gas to Europe and elsewhere.”

The same year, Mandelson asked Epstein to connect him to Barak for help with a background check on an Israeli “political consultant” named Asaf Eisin: “Can you ask Ehud whether he knows/thinks of this Israeli guy living in London.”

Meanwhile, in February of 2013, Epstein had suggested that Barak consider working with Palantir. By 2015, the “tech firm” specializing in dystopian, AI-powered military and surveillance systems had opened a headquarters in Tel Aviv, from where they play an active role in Israeli military operations. / In 2018, Palantir hired Mandelson’s lobbying firm Global Counsel, in a bid to win UK government contracts. When Mandelson was appointed as US ambassador last year, he officially ended his involvement with Global Counsel, but retained shares in the company.

Palantir’s UK operations have skyrocketed since, and they now hold $905 million worth of UK government contracts, including deals to handle data from Britain’s national health service, its Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. There is also a $20 million contract with AWE Nuclear Security Technologies, the company that designs and manufactures British nuclear warheads.

Few qualms

On an investor call last year, Palantir CEO and co-founder Alex Karp said that “we are dedicating [Palantir] to the service of the West and the United States of America.” He added that it was sometimes necessary “to scare enemies and, on occasion, kill them.”

In February 2025, in a meeting facilitated by Mandelson, Keir Starmer visited the Palantir headquarters in Washington DC, while they were still a client of Mandelson’s Global Counsel firm.

The British government now refuses to reveal what was discussed at the meeting.

Mandelson has rarely had qualms about defending shady or even criminal individuals, especially when it comes to promoting the interests of the Israeli state.

In a 2010 interview, Mandelson said he “didn’t think twice” about speaking alongside Benjamin Netanyahu at a “huge rally in Trafalgar Square.” He reminisced about his father, a long-time advertising director with the Jewish Chronicle who “became very militant and really emotional when Israel was under attack. In a sense it was the same for me.”

Mandelson also referred to his “friend” David Alliance, who passed away last year, and who was a central donor of the Liberal Democrats Friends of Israel lobby group.

In November 2023, he dismissed calls for Starmer, then opposition leader, to back a ceasefire in Gaza as “ridiculous”.

And as far back as December 1998, addressing the annual dinner of the British-Israel Chamber of Commerce, Mandelson waxed lyrical about “Israel as another Silicon Valley in the making.”

After losing Morgan McSweeney, and embroiled in a mess of his own making over the Mandelson appointment that might yet see him forced to resign, Starmer is running out of people to blame.

In a desperate last attempt to salvage his image, the prime minister has agreed to publish government communications with Mandelson. But the release of the Mandelson files will be overseen by Kevan Jones, also known as Lord Beamish, a former Labour parliamentarian nominated by Starmer for a peerage in 2024.

Jones is a parliamentary supporter of Labour Friends of Israel, and has accepted LFI-funded trips in 2003, 2014 and 2015, with travel and accommodation costs in some cases recorded as being paid for directly by the Israeli foreign ministry.

In other words, Jones is not a neutral adjudicator.

In addition, the government has already qualified its release of Mandelson communications on national security grounds. When questioned in Parliament in early February about his knowledge of the Mandelson-Epstein relationship, Starmer suggested that the release of the files would be limited to protect the interests of the United States and an unidentified “third country.”

“[T]here are very sensitive issues of security, intelligence and trade that cannot be disclosed without compromising the relationship between the two countries [the UK and the US], or a third country,” he said.

It seems almost certain that this mysterious “third country” is Israel.

Mandelson and McSweeney may be gone – for now – but the Israel lobby, it seems, continues to dictate the actions, or perhaps inaction, of Starmer’s government.

Enough Is Enough

On 7 April, the Rafi'-Nia synagogue in Tehran was completely destroyed by Israeli bombing. On 1 April, the Americans had bombed their own once and putatively future embassy compound, and while that may sound funny in view of the date, that attack broke the doors and windows of the nearby Orthodox church while collapsing the roof of its nursing home. On Tuesday, a nun working at the French School of Biblical and Archeological Research in the Old City of Jerusalem was beaten by one or more Israeli settlers, leaving her with this injury.

Zack Polanski, with whom I disagree about a lot, is being blamed for the attacks in Golders Green despite being the only Jewish Leader of a major political party, and despite the lack of evidence that those attacks had any motivation beyond the suspect's locally well-known psychosis. And on her Sky News ratings flop by comparison with The Mother of All Talk Shows in the same slot, Cathy Newman, as Establishment a journalist as one could possibly imagine, said of antisemitism that, "the rot in this country started under former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn," as if there were another Jeremy Corbyn, thereby declaring open season on him, on the Left, and on opposition to the wars in Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, and who knows where else.

Damn right, enough is enough.

Ground Force

"We will act where the Conservatives have failed and finally bring the feudal leasehold system to an end," said the Labour manifesto. On 27 January, the Minister of State for Housing and Planning, Matthew Pennycook, told the House of Commons that the Government would, "end the leasehold system in its entirety and in a single Parliament." Yet Pennycook has assured some Epstein Class junktank or other that such abolition was "almost certainly impossible".

At best, ground rents are going to be frozen, or capped at £250 per annum. The Government says that in 40 years' time, £250 will be worth nothing, anyway. If anything, that is far too long a timetable. What can you buy for £250 now? But the principle still stands. Ground rent is money for nothing. Get rid of it. As you promised.

Anything less would be less than the Conservatives had been in the process of doing before the General Election was called early. Against everyone who was making trouble now, Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove had been set to cap ground rents at £250, but only as the initial measure of the process of phasing them out to peppercorn. The Conservative manifesto promised to follow through with that. The MPs elected on that manifesto should table it as an amendment. By voting to save the ground rent racket, Labour would expose itself as truly the party of people who wanted money for nothing.

Thaied And Tethered

There is being right-wing, and then there is having two kings. But do you have to take a Thai name to be naturalised in Thailand? If not, then why does Christopher Harborne have “Christopher Harborne” on his British passport, but “Chakrit Sakunkrit” on his Thai one?

Harbone’s generosity has made Nigel Farage the political spokesman for cryptocurrencies, and specifically for Harbone’s Tether. He set Farage up for life so that he would return to politics, in contrast to the unpaid energy bills of several of the neighbours of “June from Wigan”.

First the Conservative Party reported the overseas donations to Robert Jenrick, who was so bent that even Boris Johnson had felt obliged to sack him, and now it has referred this to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. However bad next week’s elections are going to be for the Conservatives, the gloves are off.

Guarantee The Safety?

Sarah Sackman cannot guarantee the safety of Jews because she cannot guarantee the safety of anyone. In London and elsewhere, people are stabbed all the time, and they do not always survive. Three flag-waving supporters of poor, deluded Reza Pahlavi stabbed a British citizen of Iranian background near Downing Street on 22 April, so only one week ago today. That was a clear act of terrorism, but I do not recall a COBRA meeting about it. Or about the crime for which John Ashby was imprisoned last week. The Southport attacks, which had resulted in three deaths, were not declared a terrorist incident. And so on.

Leaving aside the known mental health problems of the Golders Green suspect, his Defence brief would have a field day with the footage of the Police, at least assisted by a member of the general public, kicking him repeatedly in the head after he had been Tasered. He is probably a user of illegal drugs in general and of cannabis in particular. If he is a Muslim, then it will be of only the most nominal or cultural kind. He will probably never have heard of the Gaza peace marches, banning which would incite riots, which would provide the excuse for further curtailments of civil liberties. In view of how far those had already been curtailed, imagine that anyone else these days were to dare to heckle a Chief Constable and a Government Minister on television. They would be lucky to get only the Palestine Action treatment. They might well end up in Belmarsh with the Ukrainian rent boys.

Just as the FSB, the GRU or the Wagner Group does not call itself "El Money" on Telegram so as to transfer cryptocurrency to Ukrainian rent boys in return for their setting fire to Keir Starmer's private home, old home and old car, so the IRGC, which Donald Trump has made the undisputed ruler of an Iran that his actions have given unchallenged control of the Strait of Hormuz, is behind neither the New IRA, which if anything is more likely to be funded by readers of the New York Post, nor arson attacks by teenagers in the middle of the night on North London's decommissioned private ambulances and its empty buildings. See also nonfatal stabbings by a well-known local, what, schizophrenic? Something like that, anyway. Whether or not such occurrences ought to be considered a national emergency, they are not.

Reign of Error

If they have indeed apprehended the gang that handled half the phones stolen in London, then that must be good news for Morgan McSweeney, of whom Jonny Ball writes:

In February, after Morgan McSweeney was forced to resign in the wake of the Mandelson-Epstein scandal, effusive tributes began pouring into a WhatsApp group for Downing Street staff. “There wouldn’t be a Labour government without you Morgan”, messaged one colleague. “Thank you for not only being a leader of this team and a confidante for so many of us”, said another emotional staffer, “but for everything you did over so many years to bring the party back from the brink of destruction”. Another chimed in to thank McSweeney for his “political genius”.

The No. 10 aide had fallen on his sword, sacrificing himself on the altar of Keir Starmer’s continued reign of error. The press, the public, and even the Parliamentary Labour Party, with one eye on its dismal polling, demanded someone’s head on a plate — and it certainly wouldn’t be the man who was ultimately responsible for the decision to appoint the thrice-disgraced friend of a convicted paedophile as US ambassador. Advisors advise and ministers decide, yes. But who in their right mind would want to see an otherwise successful PM, delivering essential reforms, resign over such a trifling matter?

The feeling was by no means universal. One aide told me that they wanted to reply with “[waving emoji] Off ya fuck”. That aide will be pleased that McSweeney is being hauled over the coals for his alleged role in pressurising Foreign Office officials to expedite Peter Mandelson’s appointment, with or without due process. To the McSweeney sceptic, yesterday’s pitiful Foreign Affairs Select Committee performance would have been no surprise. Here sat a man whose image, as a Malcolm Tucker-esque fixer, had for years been carefully cultivated, not least by his allies’ incessant briefing to journalists. By this telling, “Morgan” was the real power behind the throne, a latter-day Thomas Cromwell steering the government while Sir Keir was plonked obliviously at “the front of the DLR”.

But who among us isn’t tempted to believe in an enigmatic Rasputin, the political éminence grise to which we have recently become so accustomed? Bumbling Boris lacked political consistency, but Dominic Cummings would provide operational rigour, as well as an overarching vision: a lean state, shorn of the constraints of European law and recalcitrant bureaucracy, using science and technology to facilitate post-Brexit growth.

McSweeney was supposed to be cut from similar cloth — the consummate political fixer and wily operator on whom the PM relied for his organisational, political and ideological moorings. But in the cold light of Emily Thornberry’s camp, incredulous questioning, he wilted. Here was a diminutive, shy Cork man whose answers to the committee were anodyne deflections and polite, sometimes flustered, denials. He began with a profuse apology for recommending Mandelson as ambassador. At one point in the proceedings he had to correct himself after initially seeming to claim that he had always doubted the Prince of Darkness’s answers to questions posed in his vetting. “In September I realised I didn’t get the truth back”, said McSweeney. “At the time I thought I got the truth back. I might have mumbled my words. I got the answers back to him. I thought he was telling the truth. I thought he answered truthfully”. Clear as day.

On display was none of the panache, the charm or even the quiet menace that we might have associated with an ultra-effective operator, Labour’s backroom svengali. That isn’t to say that the dark arts of political skulduggery and intense factionalism haven’t taken place on McSweeney’s watch and at his behest. They have. The Irishman’s rise to the top is a story of furtive dinners, calculated untruths, strategic sleights of hand and discreet inner-party campaigns whose funding broke electoral law. But it’s all been done in a way that mirrors the political project that he and Starmer personify. The essence of that project is inner-party, internecine factional warfare carried out by people without any idea of their ultimate political purpose, without any conception of their ideal Britain.

With Cummings, there was an ethos behind the mythos. Whatever one thought of the Vote Leave guru, he had a theory of change, and a set of coherent, radical proposals that he had concluded would work in the national interest. His was a move-fast-and-break-things approach, to be delivered by small, accountable teams full of “weirdos and misfits” and Leninist fervour, committed to a Whitehall package reversing the influential reforms of Northcote-Trevelyan report. In contrast, McSweeney’s philosophy seems to have lacked substantive weight. What were his efforts in service of? Five ditched missions that nobody vaguely normal can recite? Or was it the six milestones, or three foundations?

Perhaps the paucity of ideas reflects McSweeney’s familial politics in the mother country. The McSweeneys are a Macroom clan of Fine Gael supporters. His aunt was Fine Gael councillor, and his cousin has been an advisor to two recent Fine Gael Taoiseachs. This kind of grounding in the anti-revolutionary, pro-Treaty traditions of one of Ireland’s conservative parties lends itself not to grand narrative or transformative agendas, but to quiet pragmatism in the service of established institutions. From rural Ireland to London, McSweeney is the college dropout who found purpose in Labour’s backroom. There, around the turn of the millennium, he punched information on New Labour’s political enemies into a primitive database, “Excalibur”, for use in Mandelson’s own Blair-era machinations. It was then that McSweeney learnt the tricks of the trade, under the tutelage of the epoch’s factional enforcers.

But his emphasis on discipline outmatched anything that came before him. McSweeney oversaw a Stalinist approach to party management. He purged political rivals and suspected malcontents; he was all too willing to remove the party whip from recalcitrant MPs. But this is Stalinism without the five-year plans. It’s authoritarianism for authority’s sake. Dirty tricks must be employed, power must be exercised and maintained, simply to stop the Corbynites, to “rescue the party” from all the parasitic tendencies of the loony Left. But there was no vision for the country. Pure means, with no ends, beyond sinecures for your allies, what Thornberry called “jobs for the boys”.

In Starmer’s image, a new Parliamentary Labour Party has been created. Out of the 403, not a single one of them represents a plausible alternative Prime Minister. This is the only thing that keeps Starmer in place, in spite of his unprecedented unpopularity, itself about to collide with a coming recession and inflationary spiral. McSweeneyism, in pursuit of political professionalisation, has produced a Labour-dominated House of Commons packed with legislators whose chief achievements centre not around representing workers, rising through the ranks of trade unions in a variety of sectors, and sit still less upon building organisations or creating successful institutions with national impact. Instead, it is a hollowed-out parliament of junior managers armed with humanities degrees, specialising in internal slideshows for corporate public affairs departments or the third sector. Gone are the organisers, the rabble-rousers, the barnstorming autodidacts, and in are the dull young things, delivering speeches in the manner of weekly updates on Microsoft Teams. Once it was a party of labour; today it is a party of LinkedIn.

And now, languishing in the polls, mired in scandal, hit by economic crises, and about to lose Wales and much of London to insurgent parties, even the LinkedIn PLP is restive. The putative footsoldiers of Starmerism are unmoved by claims that they owe their jobs to the Irishman. A No. 10 insider texts to say that “everyone says he’s a genius” but that McSweeney was “just a kinda sensible pair of hands… no real narrative, just data-driven.” The insider concludes: “That’s fine for winning but not for leading the country”. McSweeney’s construction of a historic majority rests on the thinnest of margins of support. This was the shallowest of victories — winning by appearing as a default option, as simply “not Tories” after the years of Partygate, Trussonomics and stagnant living standards. For all the clever vote-to-seat efficiency, it’s likely that any leader of the Labour party, a team of monkeys in red rosettes, would have fought a hard campaign against a hapless Rishi Sunak. McSweeney and Starmer’s efforts in 2024 garnered fewer votes than a Hamas and IRA-adjacent old hippy-dippy Leftist could muster in Labour’s 2019 wipeout, and significantly less than the same bearded radical won in 2017.

Without McSweeney, Starmer is less anchored. He has burnt through all his goodwill and political capital. There will be no recovery. A timetable for his exit, imposed on the Prime Minister by his own Cabinet, is not out of the question. In January, Starmer blocked Andy Burnham from contesting a Denton and Gorton byelection; this time, the Prime Minister will be too weak to repeat the trick. If Starmer is given an exit timetable, Burnham will have time to gain a seat and to launch a challenge in time for party conferences in September. Among many MPs who previously gave Starmer the benefit of the doubt, the general feeling that the PM is a good man doing a bad job has given way to near-universal contempt for him on a personal level. He has shifted blame and thrown colleagues under the bus rather than take responsibility. Operation Save Keir could yet claim more scalps.

For all the fawning goodbyes crediting McSweeney’s “genius” with saving Labour “from the brink of destruction”, it may all be too late in any case. If trends continue, his legacy won’t be saving Labour, but overseeing its slow self-destruction. He may have proved adept at conquering a party machine, but far less capable of maintaining the political coalition that the machine was meant to serve — an electoral bloc currently being torn apart by competing populisms of Left and Right. McSweeneyism treated power as the destination rather than the instrument, and a party and a Prime Minister that forgets the difference rarely survives for long.

Excluded From The Environs?

As if Northern Ireland were not a strange enough place already:

A US citizen accused of creating and lodging forged legal documents allegedly wanted to raise an army to invade and reclaim the United States for the late Queen Elizabeth, the High Court in Belfast has heard.

Ryan Fros was said to have disclosed his intentions during a previous appearance before a senior judge.

Details emerged as the 36-year-old was granted bail on multiple charges of forgery, fraud by false representation, and possessing articles for use in fraud.

Police arrested Mr Frost after staff at the Royal Courts of Justice were alerted to the suspected deception last August.

The defendant, who is seeking asylum in Northern Ireland, had allegedly issued and lodged a number of bogus writs over a two-month period.

Mr Justice McAlinden confirmed that Mr Frost had also appeared before him in court as a personal litigant.

On one occasion, he produced a seal, stating it gave him jurisdiction and required the judge to comply with his orders.

During that hearing, a close protection officer feared "a situation was unfolding" when Mr Frost pulled the document from his jacket.

"It was an interesting experience," the judge recalled.

Originally from San Antonio in Texas, the defendant had lodged a writ against a US-based lawyer over claims of being cheated out of proceeds from a family estate.

"Mr Frost volunteered the reason why he was entitled to the money and needed the money was to raise an army intended to invade the United States and reclaim the United States for Queen Elizabeth II," the judge revealed.

"This was obviously after Queen Elizabeth had unfortunately died."

He expressed surprise at being informed that a psychiatric assessment had given Mr Frost the all clear.

However, with the accused insisting he does not require mental health services, prosecution counsel Charlene Dempsey stressed he cannot be compelled to seek help.

"He presents as intelligent, with no clear evidence of thought disorder or psychosis," she added.

Mr Frost was previously granted bail, but remanded back in custody amid claims that a further writ was served on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, in January.

Defence counsel Michael Boyd argued that his client behaved naively but has experienced the consequences of spending months behind bars "as a literal stranger abroad".

"There is not a gloss I can apply to the bizarre, wacky statements which have been made by Mr Frost," the barrister added.

"He has been dropped into an environment that was completely alien to him."

Granting bail, Mr Justice McAlinden acknowledged that Mr Frost has a right to process his asylum claim.

"The behaviour is bizarre (and) administratively chaotic, but he hasn't harmed anyone physically," he pointed out.

The judge ordered Mr Frost to live at an address in Newtownabbey, Co Antrim, banned him from possessing any seals or stamps, and directed that "he is excluded from the environs of the Royal Courts of Justice".

Avenues To Pursue

Dynamite from John McDonnell:

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. As you know, I am the secretary to the National Union of Journalists parliamentary group, and I raised earlier this week a point of order concerning the role of the US agency APCO in undertaking the investigation of journalists for Labour Together, which resulted in the smearing of those journalists. I explained that as a result of concern about the reach of APCO’s investigation, a number of hon. Members have submitted subject interest requests to the company and to Labour Together. There has been a delay in the response from Labour Together to those requests, but APCO has confirmed, in a very redacted form, that information on MPs was being collected.

I referred this week to information from a whistleblower—a freelancer involved in the Labour Together inquiry—indicating that APCO had instructed this person to destroy files and material related to the inquiry. Only hours ago, we had it confirmed online by the Financial Times that tapes exist that include conversations by APCO’s head of media relations for Europe, Tom Harper, discussing the deletion of an email account and saying

“they will be able to see that through digital forensics or something like that”

with regard to references and this inquiry. He also refers to processes to “muddy the waters” and the audit trail.

I can also report—[Interruption.] I am sorry for the delay. I can also report that evidence was submitted to the inquiry being run by Sir Laurie Magnus, the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser, by Paul Holden, one of the journalists and victims of the smears, but evidence was not supplied by the Cabinet Office to the secretariat to the Sir Laurie Magnus inquiry.

On behalf of the NUJ parliamentary group, I express our concern—[Interruption.] This is important. The NUJ parliamentary group is concerned about the smearing of journalists. We need to know what surveillance, if any, was taking place of hon. Members and for what purposes. We call again for an independent inquiry into the role of APCO and Labour Together in this issue.

Mr Speaker replied:

This is a very serious allegation, and I take it seriously. Members of Parliament are here to carry out their duties. What is being alleged is very serious, and I believe that it needs to be investigated thoroughly. The right hon. Gentleman has been here for a long time, so he will no doubt use the Table Office as part of the avenues to pursue what he has said—there may be other ways. There may be serious security implications for this House, which I will take up via other avenues.

Communicating The Principle

The Canary reports:

For a third time over the last week the Met police have made arrests outside Woolwich Crown Court of people holding signs communicating the principle of jury equity. The group of six people arrested on 29 April were sitting peacefully displaying the signs:

Jurors have an absolute right to acquit according to their conscience.

And:

Even without legal defence jurors can still acquit on conscience.

Meanwhile inside Woolwich Crown Court, there has been a shocking development in the Filton case. Five of the six defence barristers have left the trial following judicial rulings which cannot be reported until the end of the trial.

A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said today:

In recent years we have seen judicial rulings that banned climate campaigners from saying the words ‘fuel poverty’ and ‘climate change’ in their trials.

Today we understand a judicial ruling has been given that goes even further, and as a response the legal professionals representing five of the six defendants on trial in the Filton case have no choice but to leave the trial because they have been left with literally nothing they can say in closing arguments.

We should all be alarmed to hear that the legal process has been so corrupted that, today we have lawyers in the UK walking away from a trial because it is impossible for them to do their job of defending their clients.

The trial of the first six defendants from the group known as the ‘Filton24’ has reached the stage of closing arguments. Five of the six defendants will now be giving their own closing speeches as they have no legal representation.

In her closing address to the jury today, defendant Charlotte Head said:

Sadly, despite how unbelievably kind and smart and wise my barristers are, after some decisions made by the court, I no longer feel like they are permitted to represent me in a way that does us all justice. So I’ve had to represent myself.

I recently found out that it wasn’t until 1898 that a person who was charged with a crime in the UK could speak to the jury under oath during their trial…

Under those conditions, me and my co-defendants would have had to sit quietly in the dock and await our fate, unable to tell you in our own words who we were and why we were sitting before you.

I was unsurprised to learn that, in 1898, when the first person was allowed to answer the charges they faced from the witness box and testify to their own defence, many people, including prosecutors and judges, were worried about what would happen.

Not because they feared that the defendants would lie but because they feared the jury sympathising more with normal people than the elites of the legal profession.

A long time has passed since then but it might be said that some prosecutors and judges still share that fear. A fear of the jury’s ability to be compassionate, to question the motives and integrity of the state, and to act as a barrier to the outcomes they want to achieve – namely to convict defendants…

They are frightened that you will listen to us, the defendants, when we talk to you and afraid of the power you hold as a jury. It’s entirely possible you may be one of the last juries to get to make decisions in a case like this before even that right is taken away from ordinary people.

17 arrests outside Woolwich Crown Court

Today’s arrests outside Woolwich Crown Court bring the total number of people arrested outside the court this week to 17.

Today’s arrests were made under the charge of Aggravated Trespass whereas the previous 11 arrests related to an alleged breach of Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986.

It is understood that the change in the police’s approach to their powers of arrest may be because neither today’s, nor the two previous actions outside Woolwich Crown Court were in breach of the terms stated by the police as justification for the Section 14 being in place, namely, to prevent noisy demonstrations taking place within a one mile radius of the court.

This week’s sign-holding actions, as with all Defend Our Juries sign-holding actions, were held as a silent vigil. The grounds for arrest this week appear to be a cynical attempt to bypass the terms of the High Court ruling in Warner.

This has attracted international attention, such as here, in The Grayzone:

Desperate to secure a conviction of Palestine Action defendants, a draconian British judge has forbidden them from referring to the principle of jury equity in their closing speeches. It is one of countless restrictions aimed at blocking the activists from mounting an effective defense.

Since the retrial of six Palestine Action (PA) activists began on April 13, the defendants have been barred under court order from using terms like “genocide” or discussing the target of their direction action protests. Meanwhile, supporters of PA have been arrested outside the court for holding signs advising jurors of their right to acquit the defendants based on conscience.

Now, a draft court order reviewed by The Grayzone reveals how the presiding judge has sought to comprehensively neutralize the PA activists’ ability to defend themselves by imposing crippling restrictions on what can be said in closing speeches. Under threat of secret contempt of court charges, the jury may be improperly swayed to convict them of serious crimes, not knowing harsh “terrorism”-related sentences will be attached.

PA was formed in 2020 to challenge the presence of Israeli weapons factories on British soil through hundreds of direct actions which focused exclusively on inflicting property damage. The group’s tactics have proved remarkably effective, causing millions in damage to Israel’s Elbit Systems and the closure of numerous factories across Britain. After Elbit appealed to the British state, it began conspiring with the weapons manufacturer to crack down on the activists.

The six PA activists currently on trial – Samuel Corner, Jordan Devlin, Charlotte Head, Leona Kamio, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, and Zoe Rogers – were acquitted of aggravated burglary in February. As The Grayzone exposed on April 12, a biased presiding Judge Jeremy Johnson sought to engineer a legal stitchup before the retrial to ensure the defendants were convicted. A former barrister for the MI6 and Metropolitan Police, Johnson has forbidden the jury from knowing that he can sentence the defendants on “terrorism” charges if they are convicted on lesser criminal charges.

During last February’s trial, Judge Johnson employed countless connivances to limit what evidence jurors could hear, while limiting the defenses they could consider when ruling on defendants’ guilt. PA lawyer Rajiv Menon used his closing remarks to remind jurors of their historic legal right to acquit based on conscience, known as jury equity. In multiple previous trials, PA activists had secured acquittals by arguing that their actions were necessary to prevent the much more grave crime of killing of civilians from taking place.

After the February trial of the six activists failed to produce a conviction, Judge Johnson initiated unprecedented contempt of court proceedings to punish Menon, the defense lawyer, for his successful closing arguments.

In the rigged retrial, the activists could be sentenced to as many as eight years in prison on criminal damage charges alone, and without jurors being aware of the penalties involved. Imprisoned activists would not be eligible for early parole, and their eventual release would have to be approved by a dedicated board for terror cases. They would be subject to control orders and police surveillance when freed.

To secure these convictions, Johnson has imposed a new secret gag order on defendants and their lawyers. If they dare to violate it, they risk prison for contempt of court.

A copy of the order obtained by The Grayzone exposes Judge Johnson’s egregious weaponization of contempt of court charges to sway jurors. Defendants and their lawyers are prevented from mentioning the principle of jury equity, which holds that a judge is forbidden from “[directing] a jury to convict.” They are also prohibited from inviting jurors to acquit the six activists based on conscience. That the activists believed “they had a defence to a charge of criminal damage” under British law likewise cannot be uttered.

Judge Johnson’s order furthermore bars the defendants and their lawyers from doing the following:

Providing any reference to “Elbit’s activities in manufacturing weapons and supplying them to Israel; the nature of the property that the defendants damaged or destroyed; the defendants’ beliefs that weapons and other technology at Elbit’s factory would be used to kill or injure others, including children.”

Discussing “the history of the Middle East, including events…since October 7 2023,” or “Israel’s activities in Gaza” at any time.

Probing the jury’s “background knowledge and/or view about those events.”

Mentioning that the six defendants “were arrested for terrorism offences,” subsequently remanded in custody for up to 18 months – under conditions so onerous several went on hunger strike, while one defendant attempted to commit suicide – then “acquitted of offences of aggravated burglary and violent disorder” in February.

Johnson’s naked attempts to rig the trial do not end there. At least nine people have been arrested for camping outside Woolwich crown court, where the six PA activists are being retried. Their crime was to have held signs reminding anyone entering the building – including jurors – of the principle of jury equity. Their signs read, “Jurors have an absolute right to acquit according to their conscience,” and “Jurors deserve to hear the whole truth.” They face contempt of court charges as a result.

The restrictions are so onerous that the activists are left with few legal means to defend themselves. They risk jail for contempt of court for providing the most basic context on their actions challenging the presence of the Israeli arms industry on British soil.

Having failed to stamp out PA’s activism or limit its popular support, the British national security state has delegated Judge Johnson with securing its proscription as a terrorist group on par with Al Qaeda. To fulfill the elusive goal, he has prohibited activists and jurors alike from acting according to conscience, obliterating the remnants of British democracy to preserve a safe space for Israeli weapons firms.

Also from The Grayzone is this, which was reported under parliamentary privilege here:

• Six Palestine Action activists face a retrial after being acquitted in February following over a year in prison. If convicted, the six Palestine Action activists and 18 others will likely be sentenced as terrorists, facing long prison terms.
• The jury has not been notified about the ‘terrorist’ designation, and the British media cannot report this information under a court order. Activists will also be prohibited from telling jurors how their efforts sought to impede the Gaza genocide.
• The prosecution followed a meeting between government officials and counter-terror officers, where designating Palestine Action as terrorists was discussed. Those officials admitted the group’s activities were “mostly confined to criminal damage,” not terrorism.
• By falsely alleging Palestine Action deliberately targeted people with violent acts, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper committed contempt of court – but a court order prohibits British media from reporting this. UK outlets are also barred from telling the public that Palestine Action’s lawyer, Rajiv Menon, faces contempt of court proceedings for reminding jurors of their rights.
• Under normal circumstances, the defendants would face a maximum of four years if convicted, and serve less than half their sentences. Under the draconian terror designation — which jurors have not been notified of — the activists could spend as many as eight years in prison. Their release would have to be approved by a dedicated board for terror cases.

A retrial of six Palestine Action (PA) activists acquitted of aggravated burglary in February will begin this April 13. Having failed to secure convictions during the last round, the prosecution is colluding with a biased judge to stack the deck against the defendants before proceedings even begin. Known as the Filton Six, their names are Samuel Corner, Jordan Devlin, Charlotte Head, Leona Kamio, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, and Zoe Rogers.

From 2020 until its 2025 proscription, Palestine Action was a thorn in the side of the British wing of Israel’s global ‘defense’ matrix. The factories and headquarters of the Israeli state weapons company, Elbit Systems, were frequently targeted for destruction by the group. With Elbit incurring millions in damage as it was repeatedly forced to cease production, it appealed to the British state, which began conspiring with the weapons manufacturer to crack down on the activists.

The six Palestine Action defendants in the upcoming trial are not yet being publicly accused of terrorist crimes, and will be tried collectively for criminal damage, with one facing separate charges of causing grievous bodily harm with intent. But if they are found guilty, Judge Jeremy Johnson has been granted the authority to decide unilaterally whether they should be sentenced as terrorists. Having previously represented MI6 and the British police, Johnson has charged Palestine Action’s lawyer with contempt of court for successfully defending his clients.

Johnson was appointed to preside over the case after the previous justice was dropped for granting a Filton defendant bail in March 2025. Intensive restrictions imposed on the media by the British state have prevented the public from learning about the shocking dismissal of the first judge in the case.

British media has also been blocked from reporting that the new judge, Johnson, refused to dismiss the prosecution despite prejudicial statements made about the case by government officials. The most notable intervention came from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who made numerous statements falsely linking the group to terrorism even after she was reportedly warned by British state lawyers not to comment on the Filton trial.

Furthermore, court-imposed restrictions will prohibit what the six defendants can say about the crimes of which they are accused. Expressly forbidden from informing jurors about their motivations for crippling a core component of Israel’s international killing machine, defendants will be deprived of a major prong of their legal strategy. In past trials, activists have successfully argued their alleged offenses were necessary to prevent far more serious crimes being perpetrated by Israel.

Defendants in the Filton case will also be barred from mentioning that their actions are to be treated as terrorism offenses. Despite not being charged with any crimes falling under that category, they were refused bail and left to rot in prison for 15-18 months — far in excess of the six-month standard limit. In violation of prison guidelines, their contact with the outside world was severely restricted, leading several activists to go on hunger strike. Conditions in jail were so onerous that one defendant attempted to commit suicide to escape.

Palestine Action recently learned that the unprecedented decision to treat Filton as a terrorism case was taken after a secret June 2024 meeting between government officials and senior counter-terror officers. During the meeting, national security operatives discussed designating Palestine Action as a terrorist faction, while mulling “the resource implications” of the move for counter-terror cops. The decision was made even as officials openly acknowledged that “PA’s previous activities… very rarely involve offences against the person and are mostly confined to criminal damage investigations.”

Prosecution disclosures made during the first Filton trial raise the obvious question of whether the entire case was transformed into a terrorism prosecution in order to place Palestine Action on par with Al Qaeda and ISIS. The independent British news outlet Declassified UK has revealed that behind closed doors, senior government officials and MI5 admitted that there was “no known precedent of an organisation being proscribed” as terrorists “due to its use or threat of action involving serious damage to property.”

The British state has a great deal riding on the case. After Palestine Action was formally proscribed as a terror group in July 2025, countless citizens have been arrested for expressing solidarity with the group. However, PA cofounder Huda Ammori led a historic High Court action to overturn the ban, which was found unlawful this February. If the defendants in the Filton case are found guilty, their convictions are likely to be cited in the government’s pending appeal.

The first use of a “terrorism connection” charge

On August 6, 2024, six Palestine Action activists drove a repurposed prison van into an Elbit Systems compound in Filton, near Bristol, England. After breaching security fences, they entered the facility and reportedly inflicted around £1 million ($1.33 million) in property damage. Media coverage of the incident focused on violent confrontations between the activists and security staff and police, which dominated headlines in the UK for weeks.

Detained under the 2000 Terrorism Act, the activists were charged with criminal damage, violent disorder, and aggravated burglary — a crime that carries a potential life sentence.

The group which came to be known as the “Filton Six” were held in solitary confinement, where they were subject to repeated interrogations and deprived of phone calls to family, friends and lawyers. UN rapporteurs harshly condemned their treatment, arguing it constituted “enforced disappearance.” Their charges were ultimately upgraded with a “terrorism connection” under the 2020 Sentencing Act.

That legislation has now fallen entirely off the mainstream radar, but it had a seismic impact on British law. Previously, a “terrorism connection” could only be applied to very serious offenses such as attempted murder and hijacking. However, the 2020 Act permits prosecutors to apply the designation to any offense with a maximum sentence of over two years.

Consequently, a criminal damage conviction could result in a near decade-long jail term. Meanwhile, “serious property damage” remains completely undefined, giving police and prosecutors significant leeway to interpret the law.

This is the very first case in British history where a “terrorism connection” has been applied to lower level offenses under the 2020 Act. And it’s not the only highly unusual prosecution being pursued against Palestine Action members.

When armed counter-terror cops violently raided and arrested 18 more activists in connection with Filton, the defendants were charged with the same offenses under the controversial and archaic concept of “joint enterprise.” As such, they could be found guilty of serious crimes, even if they did not take an active role in their planning or execution.

Those 18 activists were remanded to prison until the initial six defendants were all acquitted by a jury in February 2026. The jury acquitted the defendants of aggravated burglary and violent disorder, while failing to reach a majority verdict on the other charges, and the trial ended with zero convictions.

Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service announced it would seek a retrial before it had even filed the paperwork to do so.

All defendants were released on bail pending retrial, save for Sam Corner, who remains charged with grievous bodily harm with intent against a police officer. For a year and eight months, he has been jailed on remand, mostly in Belmarsh Prison, a high security complex dubbed “Britain’s Gitmo.” His trial has been heavily complicated by mainstream media outlets and Israel advocates on social media, who have clamored for Corner to be convicted of attempted murder. A typical headline, published in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, declared unequivocally that Corner “broke [a] police officer’s back with [a] sledgehammer.”

Highly selective footage and still images of the purported attack have been circulated widely. However, a very different picture of events emerged at the Filton trial, often without the media or jurors present in court. An account of proceedings by filmmaker Rikki Blue indicates police and Elbit Systems security alike offered descriptions of events during the action that conflicted wildly with CCTV footage.

It was also only during the trial that Palestine Action’s defense lawyers were provided unedited images captured by body-worn police and security guard cameras which presented a version of events that severely undermined the prosecution’s narrative.

Elbit and police conceal evidence from Filton trial

As the trial proceeded, it emerged that a map of CCTV cameras within the Elbit facility provided by the firm was incomplete. Several cameras – specifically, those well-placed to record disputed incidents, including skirmishes between Actionists and police and company security – were not listed. Secret communications between Elbit, which produces surveillance systems used in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and British police were released during the trial.

In one message, an anonymous Elbit representative warned that the “gaps and jumps” in the cherrypicked footage supplied to court by police presented a “huge opportunity” for Palestine Action’s defense. Unsurprisingly, Elbit and the Crown Prosecution Service resisted releasing the CCTV material in full.

Some footage revealed that an Elbit security guard had entered the facility armed with a whip, and instigated violent altercations with activists present. However, the jury was forbidden from viewing the missing video, or even being informed of its existence.

At the Filton trial, Corner testified how he had acted in a state of panic after being sprayed in the face with PAVA liquid. Similar to pepper spray, the prohibited substance – widely carried by British police – causes extreme pain, and leaves victims disoriented and unable to see clearly for several minutes. Having just witnessed an Elbit security guard strike a fellow Actionist in the face with the handle of a sledgehammer, he heard a female activist screaming after being tasered by police.

Corner believed she was being brutally assaulted by Elbit security. He testified he was completely unaware police – who did not announce themselves and wore similar uniforms to security guards – had entered the factory. He stated that acted solely in the defense of his associate, and never intended to use any weapon during the action against anyone, least of all a police officer.

At no point did British media report Corner’s account.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors and the court worked to prevent the defense from ever mentioning Elbit, or from discussing its role in facilitating the Gaza genocide. No witnesses from the Israeli company or its security firm, Minerva Elite, took the stand. Meanwhile, Judge Jeremy Johnson aggressively cajoled the jury into convicting all defendants.

As Corner was giving evidence, a juror passed a note to Johnson, asking if Palestine Action had been “performing life-saving action and were morally compelled to destroy weapons they believed were going to be used to kill civilians,” as this would amount to a “lawful excuse” justifying their acquittals. Johnson responded in the negative, and restated this position at the end of the trial.

In the end, however, the jury failed to reach a verdict on the charge against Corner for grievous bodily harm with intent. It was an extraordinary finding, given the obvious interference by Judge Johnson and the prosecution.

Palestine Action’s lawyer faces contempt of court for mounting effective defense

Despite the procedural constraints imposed on him by Judge Johnson, Filton Six lead defense counsel Rajiv Menon KC pursued lines of questioning throughout the trial which forced the issues of Elbit’s role in supporting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians into court. In his closing remarks, Menon took the opportunity to highlight Judge Johnson’s attempts to prevent jurors from hearing evidence. He went on to slam Johnson’s restriction of defenses jurors could consider, a move that gave the impression that the judge was ordering the jury to convict the Filton defendants.

“Not only is he not directing you to convict, but he’s also absolutely forbidden from doing so as a matter of law,” Menon reminded the jury, according to a transcript of his remarks reviewed by The Grayzone. “The law is crystal clear on this point. No judge in any criminal case is allowed to direct a jury to convict any defendant of any criminal charge, whatever the evidence might be. That is the law.”

Jurors were visibly moved by Menon’s speech. This rankled Judge Johnson, who went so far as to threaten to discharge the jury after the grueling six-week-long trial. While he did not make good on his threat, on February 18th, two weeks after jurors delivered their verdicts, Johnson announced at a pre-retrial hearing he intended to initiate contempt of court proceedings against Menon over his remarks.

This would be the first time a barrister has ever faced contempt of court for the contents of their closing speech. Menon now faces two years in prison for the high crime of reminding the jury of their centuries-old right to return verdicts without fear of punishment from the trial judge.

Judge Johnson was joined by UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in his legally questionable attempt to convict Palestine Action members as terrorists. Cooper sought to tie the Filton case to Palestine Action’s ban, and reported sub judice allegations against the defendants as confirmed crimes. Crown Prosecution Service lawyers purportedly warned Cooper not to mention the case at all, yet she ignored the advice. Legal experts believe her actions amount to contempt of court. Even Judge Johnson admitted to her transgressions at a pre-trial hearing.

In August 2025, weeks after Palestine Action was designated a terror group, Cooper defended the ban in an op-ed for The Observer which accused PA of an “escalating campaign” of “intimidation, violence, weapons, and serious injuries to individuals.” The Home Secretary repeatedly referenced the allegation of grievous bodily harm during the Filton action to strongly insinuate the activists had frequently perpetrated violence against human beings, and that these alleged actions justified the group’s proscription.

But this was false; Palestine Action had previously conducted hundreds of direct actions without ever harming a single person.

When announcing Palestine Action’s proscription, the Home Secretary mentioned Filton, but explicitly stated, “to avoid prejudicing future criminal trials, the Government will not comment on the specifics of these incidents.” Cooper’s distorted commentary for The Observer seemed explicitly designed to prejudice jurors, however.

If so, it would not have been the first time Britain’s Home Office had engaged in legally dubious tactics to slander Palestine Action, while concocting a bogus rationale for the group’s unlawful prohibition.

UK police collude with Israeli lobby to proscribe Palestine Action

On June 23 2025, the same day Cooper formally announced her intention to designate Palestine Action a terrorist group, The Times of London published an incendiary report claiming the protest group had secretly been receiving funding from “the Iranian regime, via proxies.”

Planted in the national security establishment’s favorite broadsheet, the article relied solely on the allegations of anonymous Home Office officials, with no direct quotes or evidence supplied. Authorities were simply said “to be investigating [Palestine Action’s] source of donations,” as “their objectives” were supposedly aligned with those of Tehran. The unsubstantiated, libelous headline claim was subsequently recycled by multiple mainstream outlets anyway.

British officials apparently felt they had no other option but to brazenly lie. A leaked March 2025 Foreign Office report explicitly advised against proscribing Palestine Action, citing a letter sent to Prime Minister Keir Starmer by UN experts in November 2024, arguing the use of counter-terror legislation against Palestine Action was “unjustified.” The UN had also raised concerns “about potential infringements of the fundamental rights of political prisoners and the treatment of activists” if they were tried as terrorists.

In May 2025, the British government published an ostensibly “independent” British government-commissioned report on “political violence and disruption.” While critical of Palestine Action, the report cautioned that “the consequences of proscription are severe and can entail both a lawful restriction of people’s rights to free expression and association.” It also stated Palestine Action’s activities did not meet the “rightly very high” bar for banning under the Terrorism Act.

Two years earlier, Britain’s then-Policing Minister Chris Philp had a secret meeting with high ranking police officers, government officials and Elbit representatives. Heavily redacted records of the rendezvous released under Freedom of Information law reveal that Philp received a background briefing clearly stating that Palestine Action “does not meet the threshold for proscription as they do not commit, participate in, prepare for, promote, encourage, or be concerned [sic] with acts of terrorism.”

The stakes are high

Even as British institutions concede that Palestine Action has never engaged in terrorist activity, the country’s courts are engaged in a devious process to convict activists of terrorist crimes. While the jurors will be told they are ruling on a criminal case, a judge who has demonstrated every intention of ruining the organization has been granted to latitude to sentence the defendants as terrorists. And the jurors have been blocked from knowing this.

If the jury fails to reach a majority verdict again on criminal damage, the Filton defendants cannot be prosecuted a third time. They will walk free, dealing a resounding blow to the Israeli killing machine, while legitimizing the strategy of direct protest action to remove Israeli weapons factories from British soil.

National security elites from London to Tel Aviv are desperate to prevent this from happening. They appear willing to disregard fundamental legal principles and protections to achieve their objectives.

On April 11, with the retrial two days away from commencing, Filton spokesperson Lisa Minerva Luxx was detained under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, returning to Britain.

With their last chance to deal a knockout blow to the activist group still within reach, British elites and their Israeli collaborators seem to have no intention of backing down.

But hope springs eternal, as Sam Tabahriti writes:

Britain's terrorism watchdog on Wednesday said the government risked stretching ‌counterterrorism laws beyond their original purpose by using such powers against activist groups, blurring the line between protests and national security threats.

In his annual report examining the use of Britain's terrorism legislation during 2024, independent reviewer Jonathan Hall said the subsequent banning of pro-Palestine group Palestine Action had exposed "real uncertainty" over whether serious damage to property alone should qualify as terrorism.

The law's broad wording ⁠could without clearer limits risk pulling protest activity into terrorism policing, even where there is ​no intent to harm people, Hall said.

"There is no legal authority on what 'serious damage to property' means," Hall wrote, saying the definition could extend beyond violent attacks to acts such as criminal damage, depending on how courts interpret the threshold.

While he said it was unthinkable to remove property damage entirely from the legal definition of terrorism, he suggested lawmakers could narrow the test, for example by requiring a risk to life, a national security dimension or exclusion for non-violent protest.

His report comes as the government appeals ‌a High ⁠Court ruling that found the banning of Palestine Action unlawful on the grounds of free speech. The ban, imposed in July 2025, remains in force pending the outcome of the appeal. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk warned at the time that using counterterrorism legislation to implement the ban ​on Palestine Action risked "hindering the legitimate exercise of ⁠fundamental freedoms across the UK".

Hall's report also highlighted growing reliance on counterterrorism laws to police online propaganda and political expression. The independent reviewer also looked at the 2024 banning of Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir and the extreme right-wing online ⁠Terrorgram network, describing both as cases where organisations were banned primarily for online rhetoric rather than operational violence.

Terrorism offences linked to proscribed organisations rose in 2024, driven in part by arrests following Britain's ⁠ban on Hamas after its October 2023 attack on Israel, with Hall saying that prosecution numbers would rise further after Palestine Action's ban in 2025.

Interior minister Shabana Mahmood said in a statement that she would review Hall's recommendations before responding.