When Will We Learn?

No less than fiscal policy, monetary policy needs to be under democratic political control, as it used to be, and as no Government was ever elected with a mandate for it not to be. We now see the alternative, if it can be so described, as identified by Richard Murphy:

The Bank of England has raised interest rates to 4%, supposedly to tackle inflation. There is just one problem with this decision. The Bank knows that much of the inflation we are suffering is being driven by rising oil and energy prices, largely resulting from conflict in the Middle East. It also knows that raising interest rates cannot reduce those prices.

So why is it doing this? The answer is that the Bank believes it must suppress demand elsewhere in the economy to compensate for rising energy costs. In other words, it is deliberately making mortgages more expensive, increasing business borrowing costs, discouraging investment and reducing household spending power. And all this when people are already struggling with higher energy bills. That is problem number one.

There is, however, another problem. Higher interest rates increase costs for businesses, which can then feed through into higher prices. They can, in that case, add to inflation rather than reduce it. The Bank is imposing economic pain to address a problem its chosen policy cannot directly solve. That is not sound economic management. It is the consequence of an economic dogma that refuses to recognise the difference between inflation caused by excessive demand and inflation caused by supply shocks. When will we learn?

Instead of this, anyone wishing to emulate Nigel Lawson, who never did it, should be calling for the taxation of wealth at the same rate as earnings, which he restored in 1988. But in 1998, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown put the clock back to the Chancellor of the Exchequer who had gone on, as First Lord of the Treasury, to introduce monetarism to Britain 50 years ago next month. On that as on Bank of England “independence”, Blair and Brown were much less social democratic than Lawson or, therefore, than Margaret Thatcher. Must the same be said of Andy Burnham and John Healey?

Family Values, Indeed

There has been whining that certain mind-boggling categories of pornography had today become illegal in England and Wales, a ban that proved the technical possibility of a total ban. There cannot be a “free” market in general, yet not in drugs, or prostitution, or pornography, or unrestricted alcohol, or unrestricted gambling. That is an important part of why there must not be a “free” market in general, which is a political choice, not a law of nature. Enacting and enforcing laws against drugs, prostitution and pornography, and regulating alcohol, tobacco and gambling, are clear examples of State intervention in, and regulation of, the economy. Radical change would be impossible if the workers, the youth and the poor were in a state of stupefaction. Contrived in the past, that baleful situation is being contrived again.

For example, pornography is now being legalised in Ukraine to pay for the war. It had been legally prohibited and practically unknown in the Soviet Union, but post-Soviet Russia was flooded with it, to placate the young male population during the larceny of their country by means of the economic “shock therapy” that created today’s oligarchs. “Sex work” of various kinds has always been encouraged when the young men have needed to be stupefied, and it still is. The corporate capitalist pornogrification of our own society is no accident. In welcoming the endorsement of Bonnie Blue, Reform UK has picked its side, the same side as the Green Party on this as on the war.

One complaint from people with the indignity to make them is that “incest porn” has been criminalised while marriage between first cousins was legal, and we all know who goes in for that, eh, eh, eh. But in point of fact, sex between first cousins is not incestuous under the law of this land. Although earlier this year, Dr Luke Evans presented the First Cousins (Prohibited Relationships) Bill, which would ban not only marriage and civil partnerships between first cousins, but also sexual relations between them. At last, someone in this debate has got to the point. Cousin marriage is unconditionally legal in 18 of the United States plus the District of Columbia, and conditionally legal in a further six. Proponents of a ban here should ask themselves why there was not one already. There did used to be. Until the Reformation, the Late Roman ban on marriage to the fourth degree of consanguinity had obtained, extended to affinity because in marriage, “the two shall become one flesh”. Catholic Canon Law has therefore always banned cousin marriage, at one time to the seventh degree, although with possibilities of dispensation since the ban was not in the Bible.

Such dispensations did the Habsburgs no good, but our own Royal Family would agree with NHS England that cousin marriage, not least where one party was an immigrant, had “benefits” that included “stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages”. Queen Victoria and the immigrant Prince Albert were first cousins. By descent from that marriage, the King’s parents were third cousins, while they were also second cousins once removed through a different line. Prince Philip was not only an immigrant, but an asylum seeker who took refuge in Britain because he had relatives here, one of whom he married. Britain intervened militarily in his native land to restore his family to the Throne. Talk about bringing their troubles to our door.

It was not a happy marriage between Victoria and Albert’s granddaughter, Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and their grandson, Grand Duke Ernest Louis of Hesse and by Rhine, although rather more successful was the union between Ernest Louis’s sister, Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine, and another of Victoria and Albert’s grandsons, Prince Henry of Prussia, even if two of their three sons were haemophiliacs. The other one did not die until 1978. Did Queen Elizabeth II never meet him? At any rate, cousin marriage was the most uncompromisingly Protestant thing about her public life. Ernest Louis and Victoria Melita were known in the Royal Family as Ernie and Ducky, but she was not the only ducky in the marriage, which was dissolved after only six years in 1901.

That brings us to the fact that the legality of marriages between first cousins was a product of the Reformation. Its prevalence until the First World War, and as recently as that, was a badge of Protestant honour, since Henry VIII had legalised it when he had wanted to marry Catherine Howard, who was Anne Boleyn’s first cousin, and since although William and Mary never had children (there’s that Ducky thing again), the intention had been that they would, and they were first cousins whose marriage would not ordinarily have been possible in the Catholic Church. Does the Orange Order, named after a fruit, now wish to ban a marriage such as William of Orange’s? Would the four stripes of Northern Irish Unionist in the House of Commons vote for that ban? We may be about to find out.

This seems to be about the Two Cultures. Although Charles and Emma Darwin were first cousins who had 10 children, and although Albert and Elsa Einstein were both maternal first cousins, and paternal second cousins such that her maiden name was Einstein, the mere thought of this practice is profoundly shocking to scientists. But to people formed by the study of literature and history, then, while that is where it belongs, that is where you will find it routinely. Mainstream British society was educated out of it, and not very long ago, so that can obviously be done. South Asians are hardly unreceptive to education.

Anglo-Saxons and Scotch-Irish still regularly marry their first cousins in several of the parts of the United States that voted for Donald Trump, and they did so as a matter of course into the very recent past. But if the argument is that this was something that certain other ethnic groups did, then it may be better to treat the matter as one of health education rather than of criminal law. After all, that was what worked with everyone else. Nineteenth-century novels are full of marriages between first cousins as the most normal thing in the world.

In HMS Pinafore, Sir Joseph Porter marries his adoring Cousin Hebe. Between 1979 and 1981, the makers and viewers of To the Manor Born took it as read that Audrey fforbes-Hamilton’s late husband had been her cousin. Although Coronation Street does not, both Emmerdale and EastEnders still feature such arrangements between white characters whose families were supposed to have lived in Emmerdale or Walford since time out of mind, and that seems to raise no eyebrows. Still, the King is a last great hurrah of that sort of thing. His mother was one of the least inbred monarchs ever, and his son and grandson are not at all inbred. Educate people, and it will mostly or entirely die out. That worked with everyone else. Even the Royal Family.

Yet since the intention would apparently be to prevent genetic defects, which is not the only reason to oppose cousin marriage, then it would be pointless without the criminalisation of sex between first cousins. So be it, but we have already raised the age of marriage to two years above the age of consent, a literally preposterous arrangement. It is now legally impossible to do the decent thing, but not to do the indecent thing. Pity poor Imam Ashraf Osmani of Northampton, who in January was handed a suspended sentence of 15 weeks’ imprisonment for having performed a nikah, which has no legal status whatever, so that two 16-year-olds could have a perfectly lawful sexual relationship without sinning. The second time as farce.

Something similar applies to polygamy. As you could marry your cousin by nikah, with no legal standing, and the two of you could then have children perfectly legally as you could have done anyway, so you can take three more wives alongside your legal one by nikah, with no legal standing, and have children with all of them. Or you could take all four wives by nikah alone. In fact, any man can have children with four different women simultaneously if they will let him. Doing so with two, often in arrangements that lasted decades, has never been especially uncommon, and nor has sending the bill to the DWP or its predecessors. Whatever else that may be, it is certainly not un-British.

Batch Cooking

At Alton Towers, did The World of David Walliams feature Sebastian Love? If not, why not? Whatever Thomas Markle or Russell Brand may have done, neither of them handpicked the enormous 2024 Labour intake of MPs, nor did either of them conduct the 2025 Ministerial reshuffle as the de facto Deputy Prime Minister for the third time. On the man who did both of those, Kate Whannel writes:

The government is preparing to publish more documents about the appointment of Lord Mandelson as US ambassador. Batches of papers were published in March and June - but others were withheld because they were part of a Metropolitan Police investigation. The Cabinet Office has now said a number of extra documents will be published, likely before Christmas. Some will still be withheld at the request of the Met. Cat Little, permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, said that some of the documents could "now be published without prejudicing their investigation".

The Met Police had launched an investigation over allegations that, while he was serving as a government minister, Lord Mandelson had passed on market-sensitive government information to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Writing to the chair of Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, Little said: "The Cabinet Office is now beginning the process to prepare these documents so that they may be laid before the House in response to the humble address motion as soon as possible." She said the documents would be reviewed and in some instances may need to be redacted "for the purposes of avoiding prejudice to national security or international relations". 

The process is expected to be completed before Parliament rises for the Christmas recess on 17 December. Lord Mandelson was arrested on 23 February on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He has repeatedly let it be known that he believes he has not acted criminally, did not act for personal gain and is cooperating with the police. "Our investigation into alleged misconduct in public office is ongoing," the Met Police said in a statement.

The lifelong Labour politician became the British ambassador to the US in February 2025, but was sacked in September after Downing Street said new information about the extent of his relationship with Epstein had emerged. After his sacking, the government - then led by Sir Keir Starmer - was heavily criticised for giving Lord Mandelson the job and in February MPs voted to force the government to publish papers relating to his appointment. Mike Wood, shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: "We still haven't got to the bottom of the Mandelson scandal. "Labour did their utmost to hold this information back and it was only released because of the Conservatives' humble address."

While Connor Stringer and Benedict Smith write:

Democrats will try to force the department of justice to hand over the unredacted Epstein files needed by Scotland Yard to prosecute Lord Mandelson, The Telegraph can reveal. The party plans to use its forthcoming control of Congress to compel the Trump administration to release the documents that may help bring a charge. There have been calls to charge Lord Mandelson with misconduct in public office. Democrats also want to make a “renewed push” to hear evidence from the peer after he declined invitations to speak to Congress as part of their investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, sources said. The move could be a lifeline for the Met’s case against the peer, which has stalled because the department of justice has delayed handing over the unredacted files.

A senior source on the House oversight committee, which has been investigating Epstein’s links to the rich and powerful, said it might also provide the London force with never-before-seen documents from the late paedophile’s estate. “We would be pushing the DoJ to be at least cooperative to the UK law agencies as a minimum,” the source said. Lord Mandelson was sacked as Britain’s ambassador to the US last year over his relationship with Epstein. He was later placed under criminal investigation for misconduct in public office after the files appeared to show that he passed market-sensitive documents to Epstein during the 2008 financial crisis. He has always denied any wrongdoing.

The original files are considered crucial for any prosecution case because Lord Mandelson’s lawyers could argue that the partially redacted emails published online lack context and do not tell the full story. Neither the DoJ nor the FBI has responded to the Metropolitan Police’s request for the documents, which was initially made under an informal agreement to share information between the law-enforcement agencies. The Met escalated the request through the formal mutual legal assistance process, but this could take years. It is widely believed that the impasse has come about, in part, because the US administration is reluctant to release files that may embroil Donald Trump further in the Epstein saga and set a precedent for other cases that could reignite the scandal.

Democrats swept to control of Congress in the midterms on Tuesday, giving them expansive legal powers through control of the committee system, including the powerful house oversight committee. The party concedes that its power to force cooperation between the DoJ and the Crown Prosecution Service is limited, as the decision ultimately lies at the discretion of Todd Blanche, the US attorney general. While they can push for the files to be handed over, they do not have any guarantee of success. They could, however, hold hearings into why the DoJ had limited its cooperation with British police, subpoena communications between the US and Britain, and demand explanations from top officials. 

Democrats are also hoping for cooperation with other foreign police forces once they take control of Congress from January, as they intend to scrutinise Epstein’s inner circle and connections with Mr Trump’s allies. “We would want people to cooperate with us ... if we needed documents from the UK, France or the Virgin Islands,” the senior official added. Lord Mandelson declined the request to appear before the House oversight committee last year. His lawyer responded to politicians, saying it was impossible while he was under police investigation in Britain. He cannot be legally compelled to testify before Congress because he is not an American citizen.

Lord Mandelson resigned from the Labour Party and quit the House of Lords in February after the files appeared to show he leaked information to Epstein while a minister under Gordon Brown. His arrest followed a tip-off shared by Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, suggesting that Lord Mandelson planned to fly to the British Virgin Islands. Lord Mandelson’s lawyers dismissed the claim as baseless. He has never been charged, and denies any wrongdoing.

We Do Not Want Or Need A British FBI

The Morning Star editorialises:

Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley’s demands for an FBI-style National Police Service are in line with plans set out by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in January. Like the fact Mahmood remains in office, this reflects a worrying continuity with the repressive agenda of the Starmer government — and even a failure of imagination. Some fresh thinking is required if Andy Burnham’s government is to attempt the reshaping of the British state and economy he promised. Like Mahmood before him, Rowley presents centralisation as a necessary modernisation, citing rapidly developing cross-border-organised and cyber crime. Yet the Met already wields a range of national powers to tackle such crimes — and it is not obvious that further centralisation is the best defence against them.

Last month’s cyber attack on supermarket freezers across 11 European countries, seeing their temperature controls overridden remotely and spoiling tons of food, was only possible because food retail is too centralised — corporate supermarkets outsourcing control of in-store functions to large third-party providers to cut labour costs and increase profit margins. That’s outwith the scope of policing powers, but like Rowley’s complaint that police resources are diverted to tackle mental health problems, it illustrates the need to approach the question of security — which does include resilience of food and energy supplies disrupted by climate change and war — with a wider eye to increasingly urgent social and economic reform. Our government cannot think beyond military and policing “solutions.” 

For policing that solution is no neutral response to technological change (even if the application of new technologies were neutral, which it isn’t) but political. Mahmood’s January white paper tied the proposed national police service to “the largest-ever rollout of facial recognition” technology and increased use of AI, despite privacy, accuracy and race-bias concerns. Advocates of greater surveillance and repressive power for state agencies seek support from popular exasperation at neighbourhood crime and anti-social behaviour, though the causes lie less in an underpowered police than a hollowed-out public realm: the lack of conductors and guards on public transport, the reduction of staffing in retail and public services, remove barriers to problematic behaviour itself rooted in the Thatcherite destruction of community.

Nor should we ignore the records of those advocating major restructuring of the British police when considering their motivation. Rowley has been a very political Met Commissioner, imposing unprecedented restrictions on the mass mobilisations for Palestine — regularly obstructing planned routes, for example — on the basis of lies, such as the claim that organisers sought to march past synagogues. He also consulted pro-Israel lobby groups on the policing of such protests while refusing to meet the Palestine Coalition that organises them. And the connections of US surveillance-tech firm Palantir to violent racist repression in the United States through its use by the Ice agency in mass arrests and deportations, and to war crimes by the Israeli military, did not deter him from contracting it to help police British citizens — until blocked by the mayor of London, something likely impossible in a national police service set-up.

Mahmood’s plans explicitly include giving the home secretary the power to sack chief constables — a further politicisation of policing by a minister who helped force the resignation of West Midlands Chief Constable Craig Guildford for entirely political reasons. His ban on fans of an Israeli football club with a history of violent disorder, Maccabi Tel Aviv, attending a match against Aston Villa could conveniently serve the government’s strategy of smearing Israel critics as antisemites, so Labour ministers led a character-assassinating witch-hunt. We do not want or need a British FBI. The rationale for one does not withstand scrutiny, and its advocates are demonstrably enemies of our civil rights. Nor does such centralisation tie in with Burnham’s stated ambition to devolve and localise power. He should face pressure to disown this Starmer-era scheme.

Camp of the Saints

Neither Russell Brand nor the other one has ever claimed to be gay, and straight queens are a thing in themselves.

But not everyone read Theology at Durham, so not everyone can tell the difference on sight.

A Chill of Apprehension

Peter Hitchens writes:

The power in my house died, with a faint groan, like the ghost of electricity trying to tell me something. Was it the boiler, the fridge, or the freezer that made that sad, alarming, desolate sound? Or was it the desktop computer, or the laptop? Or the kitchen fan? It was early morning and just about light, so at least we were not groping for a torch. But almost everything I rely on to live as I do – especially, nowadays, computers – depends utterly on a reliable power supply. I thought the moment I had long feared had arrived.

Britain’s power system trembles all the time on the edge of a disastrous blackout which could take days to repair and could send our economy stumbling over the precipice. Anybody who pays attention knows this. But here I was, like any fool, unable to work, facing who knew how long without the spark of energy which makes our world keep rolling. Soon, all the batteries would run down too. I cursed myself, as I often do, for ignoring my own fears for years.

In Baghdad and Mogadishu I had seen what happens to modern life when the power goes. I knew that the long-running Net Zero attack on what was once a solid and reliable National Grid had left us in danger of darkness and silence. But I still hadn’t done anything about installing a back-up. In Baghdad, war, neglect and looting had made the power hopelessly unreliable, but in my small hotel you could count on the generator snarling into life within seconds of the main system failing. If you were working on a computer you just had to keep saving your stuff over and over again to avoid losing your work. In Mogadishu, those in the darkened, nightmare city who had their own power were aristocrats amid the powerless poor – powerless in both senses of the word.

So what was this? I live in a 1930s suburb of Oxford and I suspect the cabling and substations must be getting a little tired. Perhaps they were just conking out. So I called my power suppliers, who are called something like Welsh and Eastern, though I am nowhere near Wales or the East, and cannot actually remember how I ended up buying my volts amps, watts and ohms from them. Aren’t these privatised utilities supposed to be more helpful than the old state ones? Miraculously, I got through. A voice demanded my postcode. I provided it. Then it demanded the first line of my address. I gave it. Then it wanted my name. Had they, I wondered, only cut off the power of people whose names began with ‘H’? I said I couldn’t see how that could help. I knew that if I asked the voice’s name, he would decline to give it to me under data protection rules.

But after a short pause, he weakened on the name issue and informed me: ‘You have a power cut.’ Well, there, you see – privatisation has definitely made the utility companies more user-friendly. I still don’t entirely know why the power failed. I pursued the matter later, and was told that somebody had cut into a mains cable. Was this just one of my neighbours, digging for potatoes, or perhaps for coal? Or was it one of those broadband cable companies who excavate the streets and pavements almost every day, chewing up the roots of mature trees as they go, providing yet more ways of welcoming trashy streaming channels into my home? I do not know.

As it turned out the power came back on a few hours later. And the closedown was wholly local. But at any time, the British grid is highly vulnerable, far more than it used to be. On June 23, there was definitely a crisis in power transmission in this country. Experts argue about how bad it was, but it was undoubtedly a warning. When a power grid trips and collapses, the effects are huge; when it doesn’t, nobody notices outside the control rooms.

On that date a major nuclear station, Sizewell B, was offline. The amazing ‘electric mountain’ at Dinorwig in Snowdonia – which can produce high power at high speed by pouring millions of gallons of stored water into hydro-electric generators – was partly offline for maintenance. A large chunk of the usually reliable gas generation was struggling because of the same hot weather which was causing high power demand. Some internal power lines were already too heavily loaded, so they could not be used to switch energy from Scotland to the south. Huge batteries, which astonishingly can now provide emergency electricity in large quantities, can supply it only for short periods.

It turned out to be easier, in the end, to avoid a meltdown by importing power under the Channel from France. Some of this was nuclear, thanks to that country’s long-ago decision to build a huge network of nuclear stations, and some of it from French equivalents of Dinorwig’s magic mountain. It worked. But we went nearly all the way through the multiple safeguards and back-ups. What if one more thing had gone wrong, or France had not been able to help? These conditions, or something like them, could happen again. It might not work out so well the next time.

My own view is that this risk is a direct result of dogma. Britain had – until recently – a reliable fleet of coal-fired power stations, much as China, India and America do now. Like nuclear, gas and hydro-power, coal-based generation provides what is called ‘inertia’, a steadiness in current which prevents the power system from tripping and failing when things go wrong. Wind and solar power do not provide this. On August 9, 2019, this problem almost certainly played a part in a serious blackout which cut off a million British customers and halted many trains.

But, driven by the anti-carbon dogma long ago adopted by this country, we have not just mothballed our coal-burning fleet in case we need them one day. We have totally closed and, in most cases, demolished 19 coal-fired power stations, capable of providing 40 per cent of the country’s electricity needs. Several, including Didcot A, not far from where I live, have actually been blown up with high explosives.

I heard the Didcot blast from ten miles away and felt a chill of apprehension which has not left me since. I thought then and think now that this was an act of dogmatic self-harm, meaningless when set against the vast and continuing expansion of coal-burning in China. I will never be surprised to hear that soft, sinister, ghostly groan as my electricity dies and I am shoved out of the modern world into a sort of apocalypse where everything we rely on has become a lifeless piece of plastic or metal. I really must do something about getting that generator.

Beginning with the full exploitation of the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields, let us harness the sovereign power of the State, to deliver an all-of-the-above energy policy based around civil nuclear power and this country’s vast reserves of coal. Around those twin poles of nuclear power and of clean coal technology, let there be oil, gas, lithium, wind, solar, tidal, and everything else, bathing this country in heat and light. This is why we have a State. There is always climate change, and any approach to it must protect and extend secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, encourage economic development around the world, uphold the right of the working class and of people of colour to have children, hold down and as far as practicable reduce the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and refuse to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich. We must be unequivocal about regretting the defeat of the miners in 1985. Is Kemi Badenoch? Is Nigel Farage? Is Ed Davey? Is Zack Polanski?

We sent our manufacturing to India and China, yet we have the gall to criticise their carbon emissions. And we expect to depend for energy on the Sun, the wind and the tides, precisely because it is beyond our power to stop them from doing what they do and we just have to live with it, yet we also expect to be able to stop climate change rather than finding ways of living with that. China manufactures most of the  world’s solar panels, which should be on buildings rather than on farmland and which we need to start making here, but let there be solar, wind and tidal energy in the mix. The base of that mix is nuclear and coal. The coal without which there can be no steel, and thus no wind turbines or tidal turbines, just as there could be no rigs, pipelines, or power stations. Britain stands on one thousand years’ worth of coal, and was the world leader in clean coal technology until the Miners’ Strike. Again, do not vote for anyone who will not say that the miners were right. Does Andrew Rosindell, whose constituency office is called Margaret Thatcher House, say that? Does Robert Jenrick, who gave his daughter the middle name Thatcher? Not Margaret. Thatcher.

Fracking? There is no problem with any energy source in principle, but none of that shale gas has turned up yet, and if it is anywhere, then it is in heavily populated areas that could do without the earthquakes, the poisoned water, and all the rest of it. Any economic arrangement is a political choice, not a law of physics, and the “free” market cannot deal with climate change while defending and expanding our achievements. That is precisely why it is being promoted. But instead, we need the State, albeit a vastly more participatory and democratic State than has often existed. The energy sources to be preferred are those which provided high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs.

The standing charges on gas and electricity are 50 times the cost of maintaining the networks, and although they are supposed to protect the suppliers from going bankrupt, not only have they repeatedly failed to do so, but they have never come down when those suppliers have been eye-wateringly profitable. Thanks to the all-of-the-above energy policy, just abolish them. And thanks to the all-of-the-above energy policy, let there be an all-of-the-above transport policy based around public transport free at the point of use, including publicly owned railways running on the electricity that public ownership would also supply to charging points in every neighbourhood and village. Astonishingly, and yet not, the fewest charging points for electric vehicles are in the coalfield areas. Also, never forget that, when we can catch them, buses carry far more passengers than trains do, but those passengers tend not to be politicians or the “opinion-forming” sort of journalists. And so on. Let a thousand flowers bloom. In a garden well-tended and well-watered as an expression of democratic sovereignty.

Pro Bono Publico

After a 14-year-old boy was recently freed from one of them, Dr Valentina Molodaya exposed the network of torture chambers run by the Nazi Azov Brigade on behalf of what, since its constitutional term of office has long expired, can only be called the regime in Ukraine.

She was immediately placed on the obscenely misnamed Myrotvorets list. In 2015, the writer Oles Buzina and the former MP Oleg Kalashnikov were murdered as soon as that website had published their home addresses. And now, Dr Molodaya has been arrested.

George Galloway has just joined Substack.