Sentence, Structure

If Nicola Sturgeon is “serving a sentence for a crime [she] did not commit”, then is she serving it on the same wing as a rapist? She put other Scotswomen in that position. She gave a “no comment” interview to the Police before, days later, sending them a written statement that was copied to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, headed by the Lord Advocate in the Cabinet, which without further examination by anyone promptly decided not to prosecute her. Will that now be standard practice? Someone must have the file that Police Scotland sent to the Crown Office. This is what the Internet is for.

Sturgeon had better hope to have concluded her sentence well before the next Conservative Government, since, in yet another sign of the restoration of Blairism, that party has adopted the old New Labour groupies’ idea of replacing cash benefits with payment cards that could be used to purchase only approved items. Chris Philp wants this to be only for people serving non-custodial sentences or released on licence. But of course that would be only in the first instance. Even for them, would it extend to the state pension? If not, why not? Likewise, Universal Credit payments to those in work, who are two in five claimants. The administrative costs of this whole thing would make it more expensive than the present arrangements, but that is never the point, just as no one who decided anything would care that this gimmick would drive people into the black economy so that they could buy a pint at a birthday party. So much for rehabilitation.

Rather fewer workers might be on benefits if work paid enough to live on. Agree or disagree with equalising the minimum wage regardless of age, but Pat McFadden told Trevor Phillips today that it was not the Government’s job to do. Then whose is it? And why was it in the Labour manifesto? “Labour will also remove the discriminatory age bands so all adults are entitled to the same minimum wage,” it said on page 45. McFadden also claimed that, “Today, around seven in 10 young people claiming health and disability benefits are still claiming a decade later.” That was a lie. Those people will have been on Disability Living Allowance for under-16s, the application form for which is 40 pages long and requires the support of numerous specialist reports. Nearly half of severely disabled children live in poverty, and nearly a third of DLA recipients in childhood have their claims for Personal Independence Payment rejected when they dare to live another day.

But neoliberalism is reaching its outer limits. There is far more tax fraud then benefit fraud, yet tax frauds get to cut deals with HMRC and pay back as much or as little as they pleased. When he is not endorsing Restore Britain, then Elon Musk is privatising space. And the latest antics of Bonnie Blue, whose endorsement Reform UK has welcomed, are enough to test anyone’s commitment to the “free” market in general and to the non-personhood of the unborn child in particular.

The Radical Centre?

What chance would Andy Burnham stand of winning a General Election if he had needed the Greens to stand aside for him at a by-election, or at least to have behaved as if they had done so? Likewise, if Caroline Lucas thinks that only Burnham can beat Reform UK, then why is she still in the Green Party? That is as much a question for it as it is for her. But Burnham, like Keir Starmer or Wes Streeting, has no intention of removing from the Labour Party the only British member of Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace.

To end the war in which Tony Blair did not want Britain to pretend to be less than fully involved, not that that pretence has ever convinced the Iranians or their allies for one moment, the proposed deal includes a $300 billion “international investment fund” for Iran. Yes, the Iranian regime is appalling. The Ukrainian regime has just reburied with full state honours the Nazi collaborators Andriy Melnyk and Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, and the former President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose constitutional term of office has long since expired, has purportedly conferred the title “Heroes of the UPA” on the Independent Special Operations Centre (North) of the Special Operations Forces. Israel and Poland are in understandable uproar. But just as big, bad Russia can take only a small of corner of Ukraine, so big, bad America has so completely failed to take Iran that it is going to have pay what were effectively reparations and richly deserved as such. Still, there will be contracts in it. Trump and Blair themselves will not be out of pocket.

Blair may also be having some luck in domestic policy, as the Government has announced, “300,000 new training and work experience placements across construction, social care and hospitality to tackle youth unemployment.” Hospitality? In the present climate? But anyway, with no promise of a job at the end of it, this is a Blairite revival of Margaret Thatcher’s old Youth Training Scheme, giving a year of two of free labour to private companies that clearly had the work to do, but which did not feel like recruiting at the rate for the job, not even now that that rate would be only the reduced minimum wage for those deemed too young to deserve the full one for the same work. The 2024 Labour manifesto promised to end that iniquity, but instead the State is to pay that rate so that politicians’ corporate donors and rather more generous future employers did not have to.

It is not worth considering the possibility that the Tony Blair Institute would have no lucrative role in this. But the former Prime Minister with seven living successors does not speak for the centre, radical or otherwise. That is we who seek to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. In the struggle for economic equality, the leading role belongs to those who suffer most from its absence, namely the working class, while in the struggle for international peace, the leading role belongs to those who suffer most from its absence, namely the working class and the youth.

Social solidarity is an expression of personal responsibility, personal responsibility is protected by social solidarity, international solidarity is an expression of national sovereignty, and national sovereignty is protected by international solidarity. Equality and diversity must include economic equality and class diversity, regional equality and regional diversity, the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law with the presumption of innocence, requiring that conviction be beyond reasonable doubt.

All of this is opposed by and to the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the anti-industrial Malthusianism and misanthropy of the Green agenda, the treatment of identity politics as equal or superior to class politics, the treatment of gender identity as equal or superior to sex (“biological sex”), the cancel culture of which our people have always been the principal victims, the erosion of civil liberties, the stupefaction of the workers or the youth, the indulgence of separatist tendencies in any of the three parts of Great Britain, the consideration of any all-Ireland settlement that failed to preserve the NHS and other such achievements, or the failure to recognise that a sovereign state with its own free-floating, fiat currency had as much of that currency as it chose to issue to itself, with readily available fiscal and monetary means of controlling any inflationary effect, means that therefore needed to be under democratic political control.

Right To Warn

John Pring writes:

New government research has proved disabled activists were right to warn that receiving employment advice on top of NHS talking therapy would push many people with mental distress further away from the jobs market.

Mental health system survivors, anti-cuts activists and allies have been campaigning for more than a decade to warn that linking NHS treatment with employment advice could have serious consequences for many people with mental distress.

And now a study by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows they were right.

The government-funded study examined the impact of providing voluntary sessions with employment advisers alongside NHS talking therapy, checking the progress of those taking part three years after they first received support.

The study shows that, for those already in work or off sick from a job, adding employment advice to talking therapy reduced average earnings and the probability of being in work, compared with those only receiving talking therapy.

It also showed that, for most groups who were not working, providing voluntary employment advice sessions on top of talking therapy led – on average – to increased earnings and a higher probability of being in work.

But crucially, for those who were out of work and had the highest barriers to employment – those described as “long term sick or disabled” – the addition of employment advice to regular talking therapy made it less likely that a disabled person would be in work and reduced average monthly earnings, compared with those only receiving NHS talking therapy.

For this final group of disabled people, three years on from starting the employment advice sessions, the probability of being in paid employment fell by four percentage points (3.6), while average earnings fell by nearly £150 a month (£148.30), compared with those who were just receiving talking therapy.

Dr Jay Watts, a disabled activist and consultant clinical psychologist, said: “For a decade, disabled people’s organisations and survivor-led groups warned about exactly this: that bolting employment support onto therapy doesn’t add help — it changes what therapy is.

“The therapy room is meant to be the one place a person isn’t appraised for their economic usefulness, and the moment the work-and-welfare system is let into that space, the therapy itself is contaminated.

“We were marching on jobcentres over this while the professional bodies equivocated, and now it is borne out in the government’s own data.”

She said the data showed the impact on people who were long-term sick and disabled was “the exact opposite of what was promised”.

Watts called on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to finally listen to disabled-led groups about the scheme’s impact on mental health.

She said: “Being handed ‘support’ and then watching one’s life deteriorate does not land neutrally; in the clinic it deepens shame and hardens the conviction of personal failure, and under a welfare system that equates worklessness with worthlessness, that is precisely the pressure that corrodes mental health rather than restoring it.

“None of this means employment support helps no-one – for people who were out of work [and not long-term sick or disabled] and actively seeking it, it did raise earnings and employment, and that matters.

“But an intervention that rewards those who choose it and harms those who are unwell is the very last thing you make compulsory.

“These were people who volunteered, who wanted the help and were harmed anyway.

“If something people actively chose can still worsen outcomes for sick and disabled people, then forcing similar interventions on almost everyone out of work, as [government adviser] Alan Milburn appears set to recommend, is ideology in the teeth of the evidence.”

Paula Peters, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, said that adding employment advisers to a mental health service “only pushes people in mental distress further from the workplace”.

She said: “Campaigners have said for years that people in serious mental distress and trauma need investment in mental health services, crisis management and time to deal with their trauma without the additional trauma of dealing with an employment adviser giving advice on top of talking therapies.”

She said that successive governments “keep getting it wrong” by under-investing in mental health services while “pressuring people in mental distress to think about employment outcomes when they are simply not ready to do so”.

Peters said this results in mental health services being seen as “an unsafe space” and “a place of coercion and pressure to improve work outcomes”, leading people to disengage with services.

The ONS study was published as former New Labour minister Alan Milburn is set to publish his interim report this morning (Thursday) into the rising numbers of young disabled people not in education, employment or training (NEET).

He told MPs last week that he believes work can be a cure for the “tsunami of distress” affecting young people, and he appears to be set to recommend, in his final report later this year, that nearly all young disabled people – including those with significant levels of mental distress – will have to engage with DWP employment support programmes.

The ONS study was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), which itself is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

The employment support tested in the study is funded by the Joint Work and Health Directorate, which is jointly sponsored by DHSC and DWP.

But neither ONS nor DWP nor NIHR would comment on the findings that showed the negative impact of talking therapy and employment support on long-term sick or disabled people.

ONS said the findings relating to those in employment suggest that “people in employment are moving to lower-paying jobs or reducing their working hours, among other lifestyle changes to manage their mental health”.

But ONS declined to comment on the figures showing the negative impact on those who were out of work and long-term sick or disabled, or on whether these findings suggest that adding employment advice to talking therapy can push disabled people with higher barriers to work further away from employment.

ONS suggested that NIHR, which funded the study, was better placed to comment.

NIHR told DNS that it was not appropriate for it to comment and questions should be directed to ONS and DWP.

DWP declined to say if it was surprised by the findings; how it explained them; whether adding employment advice to talking therapy can be damaging for many disabled people and push them further away from work; and whether ministers would take the findings into account alongside the reports from the Milburn review.

Instead, it said in a statement: “Employment advisors in NHS Talking Therapies is an innovative programme that ensures patients get the support they need to overcome barriers to work while receiving clinical treatment.”

It also said the following, which is not an accurate representation of the ONS findings: “We are pleased the ONS found it has had a significant impact on employment outcomes for those out of work – especially for those aged 18-35 – and we will apply these findings as we continue the roll out of WorkWell, which is due to help up to 250,000 people across the country.”

A Waypoint On The Road

Like the Derwentside of old, no one would ever say that they were from Makerfield. It is a collective name for several distinct suburbs of Wigan. Halfway between Manchester and Liverpool, Wigan is an old coal town, making it both fiercely independent, and part of the wider country-within-a-country of the coalfields. And it is “King of the North”, from Daniel 11. Not everything is from Harry Potter or Game of Thrones. But Andy Burnham is not the King of the North. Most of the North is north of Manchester, and almost all of it is either north of Manchester, or east of Manchester, or both. Burnham has done nothing for us, and as the Mayor of Greater Manchester, why should he? With all of that in mind, Aris Roussinos writes:

In his 2004 song “Irish Blood, English Heart“, the Manchester-Irish songsmith Morrissey proclaimed he was “dreaming of a time when/ To be English is not to be baneful / To be standing by the flag not feeling shameful” and “The English are sick to death of Labour and Tories.” It is a mark of Britain’s transformation since then that these sentiments, quixotic and cancellable two decades ago, now represent the driving force of national politics. To escape the harsh winds swirling around them, Westminster’s ruling party has been forced to huddle in fear around the saviour figure of Andy Burnham, the least hated candidate they can find, as the only force standing between them and electoral destruction. Like it or not, we live in Morrissey’s England now.

Yet in this battle between the two visions of the nation, it’s ironic that Burnham himself holds the rare distinction of having been directly scolded by his musical hero. The would-be prime minister, who once rather Pooterishly wrote that while “not in tune with his views now, I can’t deny how important Morrissey was to me”, faced the singer’s wrath for imprecisely characterising the 2017 Manchester bomber as merely “an extremist”.

The Manchester Arena bomb, for Morrissey “England’s 9/11”, and the subject of his unreleased song “Bonfire of Teenagers” — in which “the silly people sing: ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’… I can assure you I will look back in anger ’till the day I die” — came only two weeks into Burnham’s tenure as mayor of Greater Manchester, in what already feels like a different country. Were it to happen today, it is hard to imagine a restive public responding as warmly as it then did to the comforting platitudes of swaying “togetherness” rolled out by Burnham. In his 2024 political manifesto of no-nonsense Northernness, Head North, co-written with Liverpool mayor Steve Rotherham (whose own daughter was at the concert), Burnham discusses the atrocity more or less like an unfathomable act of God. Particular censure is reserved for the slow response of the emergency services, presented as yet another failure of Westminster state capacity.

That the bomber’s very presence in this country — as a member of a family granted asylum precisely due to their involvement in jihadist opposition to Gaddafi; who was himself returned to Britain from Libya by the Royal Navy while an object of interest to MI5 for his jihadist activity; and who paid for his bomb’s components with taxpayer-funded benefits doled out to his mother — of course represents an infinitely greater state failure. None of this figures in Burnham’s manifesto. Yet it is precisely this grievance — against the strange and cruel punishments that the British state, through a perverted sense of benevolence, wreaks against its own people — that has underwritten Reform’s rise and Labour’s catastrophic fall. Only in his 2025 postscript does Burnham note that, “One of the features of the age in which we live is its extreme volatility… The appalling murder of three young girls in Southport was sickeningly exploited and, for several days after, Britain felt like a country we have not known before… it feels as though we are approaching a political reckoning.” If the numbers are right, Burnham will soon find himself ruling this strange and unknown country. Yet uneasy lies the head that wears the Northern crown: according to the polls, if he enters power at all, it will only be because the threat from Reform, in this once dependable Labour heartland, has been dissipated by the electorate’s unexpectedly strong interest in the more radical Restore party.

Burnham himself warns of the “risk” that “a progressive government could serve only one term and be replaced in 2029 by the most right-wing one Britain has ever seen”, presenting his Northern manifesto as “the Left’s only viable answer to the radical Right.” Is Burnham’s localised success replicable nationwide? As others have noted in their dissections of Burnham’s self-proclaimed “Manchesterism”, presiding over a booming and dynamic citystate is not quite the same as being the cause of its success. That the Northwest, with its Irish links so lauded by Burnham, has become the epicentre of violent revolt against the asylum system and its unintended consequences, first in Knowsley in 2023 and then after the Southport murders, suggests other narratives are possible.

Yet Burnham’s contributions to Head North are more interesting than the Westminster discourse, focused on the economics of Burnhamism, would so far imply. Buried in the text is a one-line summation of the Nairn-Anderson thesis, in which the root of British decline, and latterly its political dysfunction, is traced to the Westminster state’s anomalous failure, when compared with peer nations, to have undergone a successful bourgeois revolution.

“Britain,” Burnham declares, “unlike other countries, has never had a moment of modern nation-building. Our system of governance has slowly evolved from the feudal state, the remnants of which are still clearly visible in Parliament today.” The result, Burnham writes, is that “Britain is one of the most politically centralised and economically unbalanced countries in the developed world.” Rather over-egging Manchester’s distance from the capital — we are led to imagine him like Robert Bruce sheltering from the rain in his cave, ruminating on London’s iniquities — Burnham declares that only in his Northern exile did he reach the conclusion that “the Westminster system was our problem and, in its current form, could never be our solution”.

While Farage and his Right-wing challenger Rupert Lowe echo, in southern English accents and perhaps unconsciously, the discourse of Britain’s peripheral nationalists, Burnham’s critique of the failing Westminster state is more startlingly explicit. The Celtic comparisons are fully intended: his “experiences outside of Westminster”, he tells us, have inspired “a much better understanding of the feeling long building in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland”. He rails against an “establishment prepared to play public opinion against parts of the North of England, Northern Ireland, Wales or Scotland whenever it has suited them”. He claims that “they do it because they fear nothing more than the regions and nations uniting in common cause against a system that doesn’t have their interests at heart”. The Hillsborough disaster is repeatedly likened, rather dubiously, to Bloody Sunday. Northern Ireland “has big similarities to the North West of England,” Burnham asserts, without informing the curious reader what these similarities might be.

Yet Burnhamism, in its constitutional sense, represents something that does not meaningfully exist in Northern Ireland: he is an Irish Catholic Unionist, a Home Ruler through and through. This Redmondite quality comes through most clearly in his 2025 interview with Tom McTague. Proud of his great-grandfather’s self-sacrifice in the First World War, “it is Burnham’s Irish roots that help explain his British identity,” we are told, fuelling “his insistence that he is British first rather than English”. Bearer of an identity more commonly found among non-white minorities and Ulster Protestants than Labour’s defected voter base, now merrily flagging their neighbourhoods with St George’s Crosses, “Being British rather than English”, Burnham tells McTague, “allows him to keep all the ‘layers’ of his identity intact: British first, north-west second, Liverpool third, and English fourth.” Or English last, Morrissey might archly note.

For having outlined the similarities between the North — and for Northern England, Burnham only ever really means the urban Northwest — and the Celtic nations, Burnham suddenly tacks in a different direction: insisting that “unlike some in those places, we would never advocate for the break-up of the UK”. He thus utilises the Nairn-Anderson thesis for novel Unionist purposes, using it to save what its originators believed could not be saved. The answer to Britain’s many problems, he argues, is a further round of devolution, breaking up England into powerful city-regions with their own hinterlands, each comparable in size to the Celtic nations. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, in turn, are to be encouraged to devolve more power away from their parliaments towards their towns and cities, which, “collaborating” across the UK’s internal borders in a hazy fashion, would weaken the “inevitably tense and political” relationships between their national governments and Westminster. For all that Tony Blair’s latest intervention in national politics is read as an assault on Burnhamism, Burnham’s own constitutional experimentation is a turbo-charged Blairism, both completing New Labour’s unfinished revolution and, Burnham believes, ameliorating the centrifugal pressures it introduced.

But it is here that we see Burnham’s characteristically Labourite weak point, his absence of national feeling except towards the very Westminster state he claims to oppose. Burnham’s assertion on the outdatedness of nationalism is not borne out by political events, as the May elections showed. The very building block of electorally ascendent Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism is their sense of national sentiment and the sense of political destiny it leads towards, a destiny its adherents believe to be frustrated by Westminster rule. Rather than cooperating with a Burnham government, won over by his misty-eyed Celtic reveries and performative distaste for the capital from which he must rule, Burnham’s proposed strengthening of Unionism through devolution would present peripheral nationalists with a mortal threat. Why would they give up their hard-won power to serve explicitly Unionist ends? Why would they abandon their political projects at the behest of Westminster’s latest (and surely short-lived) ruler, thrust to power only as a result of crisis and desperation in the political centre?

And what is true of the Celtic nations is also true of England. Burnham’s analysis of the urban Northwest as the artificially suppressed engine of British modernity, laid low by the rentier capitalism of Southeast England and a creaking and antiquated Westminster state, equally overlaps with that of Tom Hazeldine in his excellent 2020 book The Northern Question. Its history punctuated by occasional rebellions, its dialects divergent from the state’s prestige form, its governance marginal to distant London, Northern England in many ways presents an analogue to the Celtic nations. Yet it never developed its own comparable nationalism. The reason, Hazeldine never quite clarifies, is surely that the inhabitants of Northern England are, politically, English before they are Northern. As such, Northern English dissatisfaction has always expressed itself in trying to reform Westminster rather than seceding from it: and for all that he claims to be Northern first and English second, this is also Burnham’s chosen path.

Yet to save the United Kingdom, Burnham must carve up England, an instinctively conservative country, into a collection of urban metropoles whose cosmopolitan voters will outweigh their suburban and rural hinterlands in the exercise of power. Why would Reform, with its keen if unspoken appreciation of the demographic limits of its appeal, agree to such gerrymandering? Perhaps the march of history compels us, Burnham muses: “If the nineteenth century was the century of empire, and the twentieth was the century of the nation state, the new thinking was that the twenty-first would be led by a network of cities around the world,” he declares, revealing himself as less a daring avatar of national rebirth than as a provincial Sadiq Khan.

We can, no doubt, expect all manner of constitutional novelties from a future Burnham premiership. In its terminal throes, Labour is making the explicit choice to replace a leader who believes the Westminster state still fundamentally functions with one who demands “nothing less than a complete rewiring of Britain”: even Labour now accepts that Britain needs reform. Yet beyond England — for Burnham merely an unappealing menu option between dynamic city-states, the wider Union and an even greater European union still — none of the dominant peripheral nationalist parties have anything to gain from Burnham’s vision of “the regions and nations uniting in common cause”: unless it is to accrue more power, to be utilised in the service of secession. A Westminster creature through and through, to save the Labour project it is England Burnham must dismantle, whose own brewing bourgeois revolution he feels history commands him to suppress. If Northern England is now the engine of the nation’s politics, its voters’ ever more determinedly-expressed wishes present far more of a threat to Burnhamism than an endorsement.

Nevertheless, there is something, and potentially something of great power, to be found in appealing to shared conceptions of British identity beyond the reach or confines of the Westminster system. Yet attempting to do so from Whitehall, exerting power through the same system he condemns, will prove as challenging for Burnham as it later will for Farage. Once ensconced in Downing Street, he will no longer be the King in the North, but just another Labour prime minister, trying and failing to manipulate the broken levers of the state. More likely, the English revolt will soon do for Burnham as it already has for Starmer. Even so, Burnham is significant as a waypoint on the road we are condemned to travel: it is a marker of our political moment that to rule from Westminster, our next prime minister must claim to despise it.

On devolution to the areas that Burnham has in mind, how many councils does Reform UK have to take, or at the very least does Labour have to lose? Labour is tied with Reform for a distant second place at Holyrood, where it has not governed in 19 years, and it is in a very distant third place in the Senedd. There have been seven elections to the London Mayoralty, and Labour has only ever won four of them, three with Sadiq Khan and the fourth with a man who, having already wiped the floor with Labour as an Independent, would have done so again. The Greens are highly likely to take it next time.

Meanwhile, the arguments for Proportional Representation and those for First Past the Post are both rubbish in their own terms, so the case for change has not been made, while at the same time the change itself would not be the end of the world, even if organisationally it might very well be the end of the Labour Party. Under the supposed Holy Grail that is the Single Transferable Vote, every Taoiseach has been the Leader either of Fianna Fáil or of Fine Gael. In any case, Burnham is surrounded by people who would want to put it to a referendum. The electoral system for directly elected Mayors has changed twice without a referendum. There was no referendum on the introduction of STV for local government in Scotland, which entertainingly led to a reduction in the number of Liberal Democrat councillors, nor was there a referendum on the drastic alteration of the arrangements for electing the Senedd. But Burnham’s associates would insist on one. Call it the Stopped Compass.

And speaking of Compass, because it is still there, Caroline Lucas has today used its conference to endorse Burnham at Makerfield. She wanted an electoral pact with Change UK or whatever it was calling itself at the time, but there never was one, whereas this time she is calling for a vote for the Labour candidate when there is a Green candidate available. How is that compatible with her Green Party membership? We also learned today that appointments would be made this summer to a new “Council for a Progressive Majority”, comprised of two Burnham allies from each of the Labour Party, the Green Party, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, and the Liberal Democrats of Coalition infamy. That Council will meet four times per year to determine how to “mobilise the progressive majority”, including by means of electoral pacts. Five parties now need to review certain people’s membership, while potential voters for any of those five now need to have a word with themselves.

Water Marks

A water shortage in Britain is almost comically absurd even before considering how wet this spring was. Opposition to the renationalisation of water, leading to the National Grid that was proposed in the Labour manifesto of 1979, is as ridiculous as support for the nationalisation of every corner shop. Massively in control of drought-stricken Kent, does Reform UK agree? If not, why not?

Reform has never repudiated the endorsement of Bonnie Blue, who has made her own singular contribution to the water debate, and its candidate at Makerfield was a Remain voter, as was its candidate at Gorton and Denton. This is starting to look like a pattern, or even a policy. Still, it does compel Remainers to claim as their own the desire to smell and lick the backside of Carol Vorderman. What a rare and welcome point of unity between them and Reform supporters, with Remain voters now the majority of people who still voted Conservative. To be so broadly appreciated, how fortunate is Ms Vorderman.

Facing Robert Kenyon is Restore Britain's Rebecca Shepherd, whose husband is a Dutch-Indonesian immigrant. Is he a Muslim? At any rate, their business model is purely parastatal, consisting entirely of the provision of therapeutic equine activities to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Service of Wigan Council. To my mind, that is a noble pursuit. But would Restore voters agree? Would Rupert Lowe?

Restore has just given Reform control of Norfolk County Council after all, so how many local authorities have to be run by either or both of them before Andy Burnham reconsidered his Old New Labour fixation with regional devolution? Labour is also tied with Reform for a distant second place at Holyrood, where it has not governed in 19 years, and it is in a very distant third place in the Senedd. There have been seven elections to the London Mayoralty, and Labour has only ever won four of them, three with Sadiq Khan and the fourth with a man who, having already wiped the floor with Labour as an Independent, would have done so again. The Greens are highly likely to take it next time. Yet Burnham even wants to give councils responsibility for providing asylum accommodation, as if the relevant committees would still be made up of his dad's mates from the union and the Catenians.

If Burnham won Makerfield, though, then that would be a sign of the changing times. Palantir is still everywhere, which urgently needs to be addressed, and which would not be so by Burnham. But Peter Thiel himself has fled to Argentina, of course, while JD Vance has had to go so far as to issue an official denial that he was abandoning his hopes of the Presidency in 2028. When you have to say it. And Reformers and Restorers alike, what do you think of Thiel's new host, Javier Milei? He thinks that the Falkland Islands are part of Argentina. As, presumably, does Thiel. So that as, presumably, does Vance.

Court Correspondent

This man spent £750 on Dyson hairdryers.

Elsewhere in the courts, the first jury had already convicted Mohammed Fahir Amaaz of three counts of assault, and he is on remand awaiting sentence on 26 June, so there was no ethnic or sectarian politics at play when it was unable to reach a verdict on the actual bodily harm charge against him and Muhammad Amaad. Nor could the second jury, so the case for that must simply have been weaker. Who cares what might have been on television or the Internet?

Both trials were held in Liverpool, which is 77.3 per cent White British, five per cent Other White, a notably low 1.4 per cent White Irish, 0.2 per cent White Roma, and 0.1 per cent White Gypsy or Irish Traveller. A nice, round 80 per cent White. It is wildly unlikely that a blocking minority might have been by provided once by the Pakistani 0.8 per cent of Liverpudlians, or even by a combination of that, the Bangladeshi 0.4 per cent, and the Arab 1.7 per cent. For that to have happened twice on the same indictment would be vanishingly improbable. Two juries having failed to reach a verdict, a third trial would be for something with a maximum sentence a lot higher than five years, and an average sentence far higher than one and a half.

That said, last year, when there was literally no evidence against me, and the Police had sacked the investigating officer for his conduct of my case, my barrister told me that what has since been acknowledged to be my baseless record made me unacquittable by a jury that anyway just would not have liked a defendant who dressed well, spoke well, and read books, so I was going to have to go guilty even though the whole thing depended on blog posts that did not exist, purportedly detected by a policeman who had been drummed out. At best, I might have hoped for a hung jury, but my brief had already established with the Prosecutor that the CPS would have sought a retrial. The vendetta against me was that obsessive. I am very, very proud that the right-wing Labourites, liberal Catholics twice a year, considered me more dangerous than almost anyone charged with murder, never mind ABH.

Ah, yes, murder. That same CPS will not be seeking the extradition of Kenneth Law, despite his 79 known victims in the United Kingdom. Were they all in England or Wales? If not, then might an extradition to Scotland or Northern Ireland be possible? The CPS is serving notice. If it will not prosecute this, then it would not prosecute any assisted suicide. Is that also true of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service? Or of the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland?

Still, the CPS has successfully prosecuted Vickrum Digwa for the murder of Henry Nowak. Fresh from wanting to ban kosher slaughter, Rupert Lowe now also wants to alienate the strongest opponents of ritual slaughter by banning the kirpan. Yet Digwa's murder weapon was not his ceremonial kirpan, being far larger than those customarily worn at least in this country, where, moreover, they are usually dull-edged. And Lowe favours something like the Second Amendment for the Britain from which he advocated mass deportations. Think on.

NEET Spirit

The open attempt to kick people out of their wheelchairs could not even have passed on the votes of the Opposition as such things did under Tony Blair, so Alan Milburn was sent away to come up with the latest rubbish. The plan is to expand it to all ages within a year or two. But the truth is that youth unemployment at more than double the present rate was considered fine and dandy in the Thatcher years, that only seven per cent of out-of-work benefits go to those under 25, that half of NEETs do not claim benefits, that therefore only one in 14 16-to-24 year olds is on them, that the benefits bill now stands at a lower rate of GDP than it did under David Cameron, that cutting anyone’s benefits would neither cure them nor find them a job, that if you think that you can get PIP for “mild” mental health conditions then you should try it, that a politician or a journalist is not qualified to diagnose the severity of a mental illness, that a record 62 per cent of PIP claims are rejected, and that PIP is an in-work benefit, yet Rachel Charlton-Dailey writes:

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) released the interim report for the Milburn Review on Youth Unemployment yesterday. The report was an exercise in how the DWP has a compliant corporate media at its beck and call. But as always, we need to look at the parts of the report the DWP didn’t want shouted from the rooftops.

Corporate shills marching to the DWP’s beat

The corporate media, of course, had a field day yesterday getting to crow about the ‘lost generation’, especially those with mental health conditions. At one point, both the BBC and Guardian were running live rolling coverage. Yes, of an interim report into youth unemployment.

But what was missing is that the report is, in places, quite nuanced on disability. It actually acknowledges that there are many different reasons why the level of disability or poor health has increased in the last decade. This includes socioeconomic factors such as the cost of living, growing up in poverty, and lack of support.

It also mentions inadequate support in schools and that Covid had a huge part to play in both creating and exacerbating underlying conditions.

However, by only relating these factors back to how it stops kids from getting into work, Milburn ignores that disabled people deserve to be supported to have a good life regardless of whether they can work.

Milburn presents opinion as fact

Despite him actually setting out the logical reasons why disabled young people are much more likely to be unemployed, this is Alan Milburn, so he still has to blame them.

There are many examples of Milburn adding his own opinion disguised as fact, and by doing so, completely rubbishing the actual evidence provided.

After including a report on young people’s psychological distress, he says:

It confirms that what we are seeing is not simply a change in how young people talk about their mental health. It is a change in their capacity to participate. There is a difference between a generation that is more willing to name its struggles and a generation that is functionally less able to engage with education and work.

Basically, talk about it all you want, but do it at work or shut up.

Implying depression and ADHD aren’t real disabilities

What’s most interesting is that disability and health are split into separate sections. Disability is basically classed as something which does need support, and he accepts that many disabled people will never be able to work.

However, he then includes mental health and neurodivergent (which he calls neurodevelopmental) conditions in the health section. This states clearly that he thinks these aren’t real disabilities and shouldn’t be seen as an excuse not to work.

He also shows what he thinks about anxiety and depression by saying:

This explosion has primarily been in mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, rather than in serious mental illnesses.

Milburn also essentially blames the rise in ADHD and diagnosis for the strain on the NHS. Coincidentally, this is also what Wes Streeting is trying (and failing) to do with his review into overdiagnosis.

After giving the evidence of why more young people (especially girls) are being diagnosed with neurodivergent conditions now, he can’t resist contradicting the evidence again:

If the rise in diagnoses were simply the correction of historic under-recognition, the response would be straightforward: more assessment capacity and more clinical treatment.

If, as the evidence increasingly suggests, the current patterns are shaped as much by the design of systems as by underlying need, including the incentives those systems create and the tendency to medicalise forms of distress that may have broader social or developmental roots, then the response must be broader.

Basically, our systems weren’t designed for you to realise you’re not the problem. But instead of solutions to make the system better, he, of course, relates it back to kids just not getting off their bums and working.

He is so close to getting it, but can’t resist:

It must include earlier, more accessible forms of support that do not depend on long waits for specialist diagnosis. And it must address the social determinants producing the distress in the first place: poverty, family instability, social media.

Critically, as there seems to have been a widening of what is recognised as disability within the system – and with it an expansion of the range of diagnoses and conditions that legitimise non-participation – the key issue is not the label itself but the functional impact. Until the health – and wider – system gets to grips with that key distinction, too many young people will be categorised as unfit to work when, with help, support and earlier intervention, they would be able to do so.

Review isn’t proving Milburn’s foregone conclusion

Despite all this bluster about wanting to support young disabled people into work, Access to Work is mentioned just three times in this almost 68,000-word report. Once as part of a support package, then in the annex explaining what it is and then again as a footnote.

It’s a tale as old as time, the DWP pretends to care about getting disabled people into work, but wants as little attention brought to the support they’re trying to cut as possible.

Essentially, this is exactly the same problem Wesley had with trying to prove ADHD is overdiagnosed. Despite Milburn already deciding that kids are faking disability not to work, the evidence very much says that disabled young people need support. And no amount of his snide comments and DWP-induced media hysteria will change that.

And:

Yesterday saw the release of the interim report of the Milburn Review into youth unemployment. However, it completely contradicts everything the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is already doing to make life harder for unemployed and disabled young people.

A media circus instead of support

The long-awaited report was supposed to delve into why so many young people are unemployed. However, that was never going to be the whole story when it was run by Alan Milburn.

Once you got past the DWP-created media circus, the report was Milburn’s attempt to prove his foregone conclusion that young people were faking disability, despite the evidence saying otherwise. While the former health secretary was forced to acknowledge the actual nuanced reasons that kids struggle to get into work, he then contradicted all of them by presenting his own opinions on the topic as fact.

For example, after including a report on young people’s psychological distress, he said:

It confirms that what we are seeing is not simply a change in how young people talk about their mental health. It is a change in their capacity to participate. There is a difference between a generation that is more willing to name its struggles and a generation that is functionally less able to engage with education and work.

While the report pretended to set out all the evidence so Milburn could move forward and work on solutions, the DWP is actually already contradicting it.

DWP contradicts own report

The report claims to want to support young disabled people so they can get into work. However, the way the government is trying to keep them from accessing that support says otherwise.

Currently, the DWP is pushing ahead with the youth guarantee, which will force young people into any work. This applies whether or not it’s their chosen career. The scheme has been criticised for pushing young people into military and war-related careers. Most recently, the department celebrated McDonald’s joining the youth guarantee. As a result, young people will be forced into low-skilled jobs that are rife with harassment.

Alongside this, they’re also systematically stripping disabled people of benefits. The DWP chief Pat McFadden refused to rule out scrapping the health element of Universal Credit for disabled people under the age of 22. They’ve also cut Universal Credit for new disabled claimants. This means anyone who claims now will get half what a disabled claimant got last year.

All of this is despite the fact that the DWP’s own figures revealed that work poses a serious health and suicide risk for young disabled claimants.

Even though the DWP is forcing more disabled people into work, they’re of course doing absolutely nothing to support them. To the point where they’re actively cutting Access to Work (AtW) and stripping people of the support they’re already entitled to. There’s also a monumental backlog of people waiting for Access to Work, and in March, it was 66,000. Most recently the DWP crowed about hiring new AtW advisors, despite them being shamed into it.

DWP doesn’t care

What’s clear from all of this is that the DWP is hellbent on destroying disabled people’s lives. However, they know that in order to do that, they need to create a narrative of who deserves benefits. This is exactly what they’re doing by making themselves look like the saviour of unemployed disabled people.

Let Us Not Abandon Our Children

Aiden Abbott writes:

Keir Starmer is set to continue his valiant crusade against children using the internet, with a “game-changer” policy package reportedly in the offing. Though this won’t involve a total, Australia-style ban on social media for under-16s, the consensus among the civil society groups involved in the consultation, such as the Molly Rose Foundation and the NSPCC, is evidently in favour of further restrictions. These include calls for social media platforms to remove functions like disappearing messages and the ability to talk with strangers for younger users, as well as allegedly “addictive” features such as auto-play on videos and “infinite scrolling”. 

Readers may remember a similar spasm of prohibitionism during the twilight months of Rishi Sunak’s government, when the Tories attempted to put the kibosh on disposable vapes, nitrous oxide and mobile phones in schools. [There should have been an Oxford comma there. Or should there?] Starmer, apparently, has decided this is a winning strategy. Given the bipartisan support enjoyed by the Online Safety Act, it must look like an easy win. And, God knows, Starmer could use a win.

Yet while some of the incoming reforms have merit, much of the thinking behind them rests on the blithe assumption that social media has an addictive power comparable to crack cocaine or alcohol. That claim is routinely backed up by scary maps of brains lit up with dopamine. Of course, there are many other phenomena which produce dopamine, and one wonders whether we could draw up similarly scary maps of the brains of people holding a puppy or gazing at someone with whom they are in love.

For all that politicians stress how terrible phones and laptops are for us, the evidence is far more dubious than one might expect. According to 33 studies, analysed by 14 authors for a research paper by the American Psychological Association in 2021, screen usage apparently plays “little role in mental health concerns”. In any case, there is a far more straightforward explanation than so-called addiction as to why young people might spend their free time online: that modern life is cloistered and oppressive, and the internet is not.

A 16-year-old today will have lost a considerable chunk of their remembered life so far to Covid lockdowns. Looking ahead, they will see a grim employment market, with graduate job listings falling by 33% between 2024 and 2025. A rising cost of living is pushing the possibility of moving out further and further away. If the Government gets its way, nobody born after 2008 will ever be able to legally purchase a pack of cigarettes.

As young people’s lives become increasingly constrained, as the horizon of possibility closes in, the internet remains dazzlingly infinite: the largest, most readily accessible corpus of information mankind has ever compiled. From the picture painted by Starmer or Kemi Badenoch, one would assume there is nothing there except revenge porn and YouTube Shorts of household objects being put in a hydraulic press. That it is also the medium by which virtually all literature ever written has become freely available to all, that it has left the press infinitely safer from the kind of state thuggery to which it was once subjected by the likes of Alastair Campbell, apparently does not warrant a mention.

Though fellow party leaders Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski have rightly noted the authoritarian nature of Starmer’s attacks on online freedom, the underlying thesis has gone virtually unchallenged: that young people using the internet is dangerous and unhealthy. Until opponents of the Online Safety Act can bring themselves to articulate a positive case for the internet on its own grounds, we will find ourselves forever on the back foot. The stakes are too high. Think back to that supposed intellectual golden age before the algorithms turned our brains to mush — the age of the TV guide. Of Bargain Hunt and Fat Families. Of James Corden and onesie-clad Eurovision parties. Let us not abandon our children, on whom this country has been hard enough, to the clammy embrace of the Gogglebox sofa.

Kemi Badenoch and Jess Phillips are of one mind in wishing to ban under-16s from social media, lest they discover that, for example, Britain’s projected spending of 10.6% of GDP on welfare was lower than in much of Europe, with more than half of it going to the recipients of what was nevertheless the lowest pension of any comparable country, and with two in five Universal Credit claimants in work, such that the State was subsidising low pay by corporations that paid kings’ ransoms at the top. By such means as to avoid most or all taxation, of course.

If, as Wes Streeting would have it, social media were comparable to smoking, then would Phillips or Badenoch consider herself powerless to stop under-16s from smoking in her home? Would she have much sympathy with any adult who professed such impotence? These comparisons reinforce the point that the responsibility is parental. The technology is available, and few parents of under-16s grew up offgrid. They did, however, grow up without the digital ID that everyone would need to make this ban work. And that freedom is worth passing on.

1926: The BBC’s Original Sin

Daniel Lewis writes:

The BBC did not lose its impartiality. It was born with a government hand on its shoulder.

In May 1926, as millions of workers stood with the miners against wage cuts and longer hours, Britain’s young broadcaster faced its first great political test. It failed it. Not by accident. Not through confusion. But because John Reith and the BBC chose order over truth, government over labour, and establishment stability over working-class struggle.

One minute before midnight on 3 May 1926, the largest strike in British history began. Triggered by a dispute over coal miners’ pay and working hours, it drew millions into strike action, including workers in iron and steel, on the docks, in transport and printing, gas and electricity. But less than nine days after it started, the General Strike was called off, and representatives of the Trades Union Congress visited Downing Street to admit defeat.

Those nine days in May were important for the BBC, which was then in its early years. At the time, the ‘British Broadcasting Company’ was being run as a private commercial institution with John Reith as its General Manager. Because of printing workers being on strike, most national newspapers were shut down, making the BBC’s radio bulletins an important source of information for the public.

Throughout the strike, the BBC displayed an egregious bias in favour of the government and against the strikers. In several of Reith’s statements, he was quite frank about this bias: he was clear that, at the end of the day, the BBC had to be “for the government” and that he would not allow anything to be broadcast “which might have prolonged or sought to justify the Strike”. In his diary, he admitted that the government “know that they can trust us not to be really impartial”.

This lack of impartiality manifested in a number of ways. The BBC regularly gave a direct voice to government ministers and other anti-strike politicians while refusing to do the same for trade unionists, or even for Ramsay MacDonald’s far-from-radical Labour Party. It also spread misinformation, claiming that there was a trend of railway workers going back to work, when in fact 97% stayed out on strike. Strikers learned not to trust what the BBC said after telegramming in corrections which were never broadcast, and for some it earned the name of ‘BFC’ – British Falsehood Company.

Two instances are particularly revealing. On Friday 7 May, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, wanted to broadcast an appeal calling for the strike to end and for negotiations to continue. The Archbishop was no radical, having condemned the strike several days earlier. But because he called both for the strike to end and for negotiations to continue, rather than insisting the strike end first, the BBC refused to broadcast his appeal. The next day, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin addressed the nation at Reith’s invitation, speaking from Reith’s own home rather than BBC headquarters. Reith even helped Baldwin with the speech, suggesting what he should and should not say.

One reason for this biased behaviour, and the excuse Reith often gave for it, was the threat of government takeover if the BBC did not toe the line. Some, like then-Chancellor Winston Churchill, were keen to run it as a direct government mouthpiece, and Reith was convinced that the only way this could be avoided was if the government was assured that the BBC was clearly on its side.

But pragmatism was not the only factor. Reith was ideologically on the side of the establishment and against the labour movement. He described himself as having a “distaste for organised labour”, and saw part of the BBC’s job as the preservation of order. Decades later, he wrote that “if there had been broadcasting at the time of the French Revolution, there would have been no French Revolution”, and his reactionary politics even extended to admiration for Mussolini and Hitler. 

Reith’s view was that the BBC could best fulfil its role as protector of the establishment if it had a veneer of independence. He successfully avoided Churchill’s desired takeover in part because of the force of his argument that a takeover could lead to the loss of public trust and undermine the BBC’s “pioneer work of three and a half years”, weakening “an influence of almost unlimited potency”. Reith also recalled having told Churchill to his face that “if we put out nothing but government propaganda we should not be doing half the good we were”. In context, the “influence” and “the good” he was talking about clearly meant influencing the public to be against the strike.

In the aftermath of the strike’s defeat, coal miners were forced to go back to work for longer hours and lower wages than they had previously. All over the country, workers who had gone on strike were victimised, and anti-trade union legislation was enacted in Parliament. For John Reith, however, this period brought considerable rewards. He was repaid for his services to the state with a knighthood, and got his long-held wish for the BBC to become a public institution. It was renamed the British Broadcasting Corporation, with a Royal Charter and Reith as its Director-General.

The lesson is not that every BBC journalist is a liar. That is too crude, and too easy to dismiss. The lesson is more serious. Institutions built to appear independent can still serve power. They do not need daily orders from ministers. They learn the limits. They absorb the assumptions. They know which voices are respectable, which are dangerous, and which can be safely ignored.

One century after the General Strike, leading BBC figures still invoke its ‘Reithian spirit’. But the Corporation has lost much of the public confidence it once enjoyed. Its coverage of Gaza, where Israel stands accused of genocide before the International Court of Justice, has only deepened that distrust. A look at the BBC’s early history should show us that institutional bias should not be a surprise, and that its independence from the state was compromised from the very start.

But I Can Tell The Truth

Claire Abernathy writes:

Imagine getting put on testosterone at 14 years old because doctors convinced you that if you didn’t, you may be suicidal.

While I was physically very healthy, I was emotionally and mentally vulnerable — struggling with profound discomfort in my body after childhood sexual abuse. In the eyes of the medical system, that distress was enough to justify permanently altering my body before I was old enough to fully understand what was being taken from me. 

This is my story, and one that I look back on with regret and immense pain.

A week after my 14th birthday, I was prescribed testosterone and no one meaningfully explored alternatives. No one addressed the underlying trauma beneath my dysphoria. No one suggested that adolescence itself can be painful and confusing, particularly for girls dealing with abuse.

Eight months later, surgeons performed a double mastectomy on me. My entire life changed within months.

Now, at 21 years old, I live with the consequences every hour of my life, but I share my story to expose the dangers of irreversible gender transition procedures on minors.

The public conversation around pediatric gender transition is often sanitized beyond recognition. People speak in high-level terminology like “affirmation,” “identity” and “self-expression.” What they rarely discuss are the actual physical outcomes many of us now live with that we were painfully unaware of.

I suffer from severe urological complications. If my bladder becomes too full, I experience intense pain. Sometimes I bleed. Sometimes I lose control of my bladder entirely. There have been periods of my life when I had to wear adult diapers because of the damage testosterone caused to my pelvic floor and urinary system. I also suffer from vaginal atrophy, another common but downplayed consequence of testosterone exposure in female patients. Gynecological exams routinely leave me injured and bleeding. Penetration can cause tearing. Many female detransitioners and even women who continue identifying as transgender quietly endure these same injuries, often without doctors equipped to help them.

And then there is the pain most doctors barely warned me about at all.

Testosterone enlarged my clitoris to the point that it constantly chafes against clothing. Five years after stopping testosterone, the pain has never subsided. I structure my wardrobe, movement, and daily life around avoiding physical discomfort. My remaining option would be an invasive corrective surgery that carries the risk of permanently destroying sexual sensation altogether.

This was presented to me as healthcare.

One of the hardest side effects to grapple with is what was done to my voice. Before transition, I was deeply involved with choir and theater. I won awards for my performances. My voice was not incidental to who I was — it was one of the primary ways I connected with the world.

Testosterone permanently damaged it.

Today, I cannot project properly. I cannot scream without pain. If I speak for too long, my throat strains and weakens. I have recurring nightmares where I am in danger but physically incapable of calling for help. That fear is not symbolic but rooted in my reality.

This is before even getting to the surgical complications.

At 14 years old, surgeons removed my healthy breasts. I was too young to vote, rent a car, sign legal contracts, or understand motherhood in any meaningful way, but I was somehow considered capable of consenting to irreversible bodily mutilation.

The clinic specialized in “drains-free” mastectomies, a procedure associated with higher rates of nipple graft complications. Parts of my chest tissue turned black and died. I was left with open wounds and permanent nerve damage.

I never became a boy. No one can change sex. But I did permanently lose the ability to breastfeed any future children I may have.

That reality feels heavier as I get older.

I told medical professionals about my sexual abuse. I told them when my distress began. Three separate clinicians still signed off on my transition. Not one of them paused long enough to ask the obvious questions.

And the most horrifying part is that what they did to me was — and is — considered the standard of care.

Why was a young girl suddenly rejecting her body after trauma? Why was psychological suffering being treated with endocrine disruption and surgery instead of intensive therapy? Why were healthy organs being removed from a child who was clearly in distress?

The answer, increasingly, seems to be ideology and ideology only.

Healthy children should not be sacrificed to an ideology that treats self-reported gender distress as proof that a child was born in the wrong body. No fourteen-year-old is capable of understanding sterilization, lifelong sexual dysfunction, chronic pain, or the grief of losing bodily functions they were never mature enough to value in the first place.

The model of pediatric gender medicine operating in America today overwhelmingly prioritizes affirmation above caution. Children present with distress, discomfort, or confusion, and too often the medical system responds by placing them onto a fast-moving conveyor belt of hormones, surgeries and irreversible interventions.

There is no meaningful long-term evidence proving these interventions are safe for adolescents. There is no reliable tracking system for detransitioners or long-term complications. There are no adequate safeguards ensuring vulnerable children receive thorough psychological evaluation before life-altering medical interventions begin.

And as many of us grow older and realize we were harmed, we discover something even more devastating: almost no one in medicine knows how to help us recover.

I cannot restore what doctors removed from me. I cannot recover my original voice. I cannot undo the damage done to my body. 

But I can tell the truth.

To Sweat The Assets?

No, of course Jess Phillips did not threaten to resign over the appointment of Peter Mandelson. She did resign after having been gazumped by Harriet Harman, but even that was not because of the Paedophile Information Exchange, which has become background noise, like Kemi Badenoch’s having told LBC that she was “born in a country that was 50 per cent Muslim”, even though her British citizenship depended on her having been born in the United Kingdom before Margaret Thatcher had abolished birthright citizenship. Badenoch may have been naturalised, and as a Commonwealth citizen she would in any case be eligible to vote and stand in elections in this country and to hold office all the way up to Prime Minister. But that was not how she presented herself until 28 April 2026.

Far from the Conservatives’ having any objection to Commonwealth voting, their only gain in 2024 was Leicester East, Bob Blackman at Harrow East received the highest vote share for any Conservative candidate in the country, he was the only Conservative elected with an absolute majority, and he was one of only three Conservative MPs to be re-elected with increased majorities. Blackman has repeatedly been sworn in as an MP on the Bhagavad Gita, and at the House of Commons he hosted Tapan Ghosh, who was at least as violently opposed to Christians in Bengal as he was to Muslims.

Badenoch and Phillips are of one mind in wishing to ban under-16s from social media, lest they discover that, for example, Britain’s projected spending of 10.6% of GDP on welfare was lower than in much of Europe, with more than half of it going to the recipients of what was nevertheless the lowest pension of any comparable country, and with two in five Universal Credit claimants in work, such that the State was subsidising low pay by corporations that paid kings’ ransoms at the top. By such means as to avoid most or all taxation, of course.

If, as Wes Streeting would have it, social media were comparable to smoking, then would Phillips or Badenoch consider herself powerless to stop under-16s from smoking in her home? Would she have much sympathy with any adult who professed such impotence? These comparisons reinforce the point that the responsibility is parental. The technology is available, and few parents of under-16s grew up offgrid. They did, however, grow up without the digital ID that everyone would need to make this ban work. And that freedom is worth passing on.

Whether People Want It Or Not

There is no Tony Blair without Peter Mandelson, of whom Tony Diver and Janet Eastham write:

Lord Mandelson advised numerous Cabinet ministers during his time as ambassador to Washington, messages to be released next week are expected to reveal.

The Telegraph understands that the disgraced peer often messaged senior Labour politicians and officials with suggestions on how to conduct official business far outside his remit as Britain’s ambassador to the US.

The messages are expected to be published next week alongside thousands of pages of material about his appointment, vetting and communications.

Whitehall sources said the advice was “mostly unsolicited” and that Lord Mandelson was not usually consulted by members of Sir Keir Starmer’s Cabinet on policy issues unless they related to the US.

Any evidence of attempts by Lord Mandelson to lobby ministers or influence policy decisions will raise further questions about Sir Keir’s decision to appoint Lord Mandelson, whose close links to Jeffrey Epstein were known and who, it has since emerged, failed security vetting.

Sir Keir is facing the prospect of a summer leadership battle if Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, can secure a Westminster seat in the Makerfield by-election and challenge him for No 10. The latest release of the Mandelson files could upend the contest if serving ministers are revealed to have had a particularly close relationship with Lord Mandelson.

Mandelson gave advice ‘whether it was wanted or not’

A source familiar with the messages said it would become clear that Lord Mandelson “thinks his opinion should be heard and listened to”, adding: “He’s definitely someone who offers advice.

“There is a certain generation of politician who thinks they have something to offer. He does that whether people want it or not.”

The messages are expected to include exchanges with Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, who is understood to have kept her conversations with Lord Mandelson to official channels, rather than on WhatsApp.

They will also show conversations between the peer and Peter Kyle, then serving as science secretary, about their joint visit to a global technology conference in California in March 2025.

Wes Streeting has already released his messages with Lord Mandelson, in which the former health secretary criticised the Government for having “no growth strategy”.

Mr Streeting, whose partner is a former employee of Lord Mandelson, said their relationship was not “close” but they had spoken several times and had dinner together.

A senior government source said the Mandelson files release was likely to contain messages between the peer and Morgan McSweeney, Sir Keir’s former chief of staff, discussing Labour’s political and media strategy. Many messages were lost when Mr McSweeney’s phone was stolen in October.

It is not thought that many of Sir Keir’s senior advisers actively pursued conversations with the then ambassador, except about official diplomatic business, but that he often hoped to influence government decisions from Washington.

The Telegraph understands that MPs will also be given an update next week on an independent review by Sir Adrian Fulford, a retired senior judge hired by Sir Keir last month to investigate flaws in the vetting system.

Whitehall sources said the review had caused conflict between political officials and civil servants, who were concerned that Sir Adrian would describe the vetting system as “not fit for purpose”.

Officials are concerned that such a report would undermine the vetting system, which the Civil Service has used for decades.

Meanwhile, allies of the Prime Minister hope Sir Adrian will condemn the vetting process outright, which they believe would distance Sir Keir from criticism of Lord Mandelson’s appointment.

Peer’s links to Chinese minister

It also emerged on Wednesday that United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV), which recommended that Lord Mandelson be denied security clearance, raised concerns about his ties to a Chinese government minister.

The Guardian reported that Lord Mandelson spoke to Lan Fo’an, China’s finance minister, who was appointed in October 2023, several times a year, although the pair had not been in contact for 12 months prior to the peer’s vetting.

Sir Philip Barton, a former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, told MPs last month that Lord Mandelson received Foreign Office briefings while vetting was under way and that these “must have included” an update on the status of the Government’s audit of China policy.

The Guardian also reported that vetting officers flagged Lord Mandelson’s longstanding relationship with Oleg Deripaska.

Sources speaking to the newspaper said UKSV noted that Lord Mandelson regarded the sanctioned Russian oligarch as a friend and had remained in occasional contact with him, although they had not spoken for about 10 years.

Lord Mandelson’s links to Tamir Hayman, a former Israeli military intelligence general, and a £1m loan the peer received to invest in Moon Active, the Israeli start-up behind the popular mobile phone game Coin Master, were also reportedly flagged.

Lord Mandelson reportedly spoke with Mr Hayman, who led Israel’s military intelligence directorate between 2018 and 2021, on a bimonthly basis.

Lord Mandelson declared his investment in Moon Active in the House of Lords register of interests in July 2019. However, that declaration contains no reference to a £1m loan used to pay for any shares.

Sources added that UKSV also noted Mandelson had a very close relationship with a British man, which was thought to be potentially compromising. The identity of this man has not been made public.

The purpose of national security vetting is not to identify wrongdoing by an individual or their associates, and inclusion in a vetting document does not indicate misconduct.

Files heavily redacted

The newspaper also reported that officials had heavily redacted, and even sought to withhold, some of the files on Lord Mandelson set to be released next week in response to a Humble Address tabled by the Conservatives.

Whitehall sources told The Telegraph that Lord Mandelson’s nine-page vetting summary had been shared with the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), the body responsible for assessing and redacting sensitive files relating to the former ambassador.

The sources said that redactions were “mutually agreed” so that the file could be published. They added that all documents that had gone through the ISC “process” would be published in the second tranche, expected next week, except for material the Metropolitan Police requested to be withheld.

The Met is investigating Lord Mandelson over alleged leaks to Epstein while he was a senior member of Sir Tony Blair’s government, which could constitute misconduct in public office.

A government spokesman said: “We are committed to complying with the Humble Address in full.”

Representatives for Lord Mandelson, Mr Lan, Mr Deripaska, Mr Hayman and Moon Active have been contacted.

And of whom Paul Lewis, Henry Dyer and Pippa Crerar write:

Peter Mandelson’s associations with senior figures in China, Russia and Israel were among the concerns raised by the UK’s vetting agency when it concluded he should be denied clearance, multiple sources have told The Guardian.

Mandelson’s links to China’s minister of finance, Lan Fo’an, the sanctions-hit Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and a former Israeli military intelligence general, Tamir Hayman, were all flagged by the agency as areas of concern shortly before he took up his post as the UK’s ambassador to the US, the sources said.

They added that United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV) also noted Mandelson had a very close relationship with a fourth individual, who is British, that could be compromising.

Another concern identified by the vetting agency, the sources said, was a £1m loan Mandelson received to invest in an Israeli startup. And UKSV noted separately, the sources added, that he appeared naive about the risk that historical relationships with other individuals could be exploited.

These concerns were all contained in a nine-page UKSV summary of Mandelson’s vetting file in January 2025, according to the sources, all of whom spoke to The Guardian on condition of anonymity.

They said the concerns contributed to the agency’s conclusion that Mandelson posed a “high” overall concern and its recommendation to the Foreign Office that his developed vetting clearance should be denied.

After being briefed on the contents of the UKSV summary file, the then Foreign Office permanent secretary, Olly Robbins, granted Mandelson security clearance anyway.

Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs select committee, said the disclosures made her “very angry”. She added: “It becomes quite clear why UKSV saw [Mandelson] as a subject of concern who shouldn’t be granted clearance.”

Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said that responsibility for hiring Mandelson despite the concerns lay with Keir Starmer, saying that “glaring warning signs were wilfully ignored”.

The Conservative shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel said: “These shocking revelations underline just how reckless Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was. A man with these links to Russia and China should never have been handed one of our most sensitive diplomatic posts.”

The Guardian’s decision to reveal details of some of the concerns flagged by the vetting agency comes after a powerful parliamentary committee said the government was failing to fully comply with a parliamentary motion known as a humble address ordering the release of all papers relating to Mandelson’s appointment.

In an extraordinary intervention earlier this month, the intelligence and security committee (ISC) publicly accused the government of withholding some Mandelson vetting documents and implementing redactions “far too broadly”. During a debate in parliament last week, MPs from across the political divide criticised the Cabinet Office’s handling of the process, warning that public trust was being undermined by ministers who were challenging the sovereignty of parliament. Two MPs openly accused the government of a “cover-up” and one threatened to table a motion holding ministers in contempt.

The second tranche of Mandelson files is expected to be released in June. Ministers have said it will be one of the largest document releases of its kind in history.

However, multiple sources familiar with the Cabinet Office’s work said they believed officials had been heavily redacting and even seeking to withhold files to avoid political embarrassment. One source said UKSV’s nine-page summary, much of which the ISC believes should be released to the public, was due to be withheld by the government in its entirety.

On Wednesday night, a government insider disputed that. A spokesperson for the Cabinet Office said it was “committed to complying with the humble address in full”.

The Guardian’s revelations will put pressure on Starmer’s government to release all relevant files and explain what “mitigations” were put in place to manage the risks in relation to Mandelson, which appear to have been wide-ranging.

Ministers will also be pressed to explain if there was any harm done to national security during the seven months Mandelson was in Washington. Those questions will be most acute in relation to Lan and Deripaska, two senior figures enmeshed in the power structures of hostile states.

Starmer sacked Robbins last month after the Guardian revealed that Mandelson had been given clearance despite UKSV recommending it should be denied. Starmer said it was “unforgivable” and “staggering” that the senior civil servant did not tell ministers about the agency’s findings.

Robbins decided to grant Mandelson clearance on 29 January 2025, hours after his department received the UKSV file.

In evidence to MPs last month, Robbins claimed UKSV regarded Mandelson’s case as “borderline”. He repeatedly declined to tell the foreign affairs select committee what concerns UKSV had about Mandelson, although he did say they did not relate to his relationship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the issue that led to Mandelson’s sacking in September 2025.

Mandelson’s security vetting began on 23 December 2024, three days after Starmer announced him as the pick for US ambassador.

The purpose of national security vetting is not to identify wrongdoing by an individual or their associates, and inclusion in a vetting document does not signal misconduct of any kind. Instead, officials gather information and conduct background checks to enable the government to make an “objective risk assessment”.

Applicants are asked to disclose detailed information, including about personal finances, business connections and associates. Officials in UKSV then identify areas of concern, which can be ranked as low, moderate or high. Multiple sources said those concerns would then be listed in a nine-page UKSV summary file, which concludes with UKSV’s overall concern and a decision or recommendation.

Mandelson’s summary file was completed on 28 January 2025 and sent to the Foreign Office via a “secure portal” the next day at 1.52pm. Hours later, after being briefed on the contents of the summary file by a security official in his department, Robbins decided to grant Mandelson clearance – with, he has since said, mitigations to manage the risks.

Ties to China’s finance minister

Lan was appointed to the powerful role of finance minister in China in October 2023 after a career in the Guangdong department of finance and a stint as the provincial Communist party leader in Shanxi.

It is not clear how and when Lan and Mandelson became associates. According to sources, UKSV noted that the pair spoke several times a year but had not done so for 12 months before Mandelson’s vetting process began.

While the vetting process was under way in January 2025, Mandelson is understood to have received sensitive Foreign Office briefings on China. Philip Barton, Robbins’ predecessor as permanent secretary, told MPs last month that the briefings “must have included” the UK government’s audit of its policy on China.

Mandelson’s interest in China dates back to his time as an EU trade commissioner, when he made several trips there to negotiate trade policy and tariffs. He also courted China contacts through his now defunct lobbying company, Global Counsel, although it is not known whether Mandelson’s relationship with Lan had a commercial dimension.

Since his elevation to finance minister, Lan has played an important role in talks between China and the British government. Lan greeted Starmer on the runway in Beijing in January 2026 as he made the first visit to China by a British prime minister since 2018. Lan held meetings with the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in China in January 2025, when Mandelson’s vetting was ongoing, and again in Washington in April 2025, by which time Mandelson was in post.

The government will now be asked whether Mandelson was involved in any way in those meetings and, if so, how any conflict of interest was disclosed and managed.

Friendship with Russian oligarch

Mandelson’s controversial friendship with Deripaska has been known publicly for almost two decades. It dates back to before a notorious gathering on the billionaire’s 73-metre (238ft) yacht off the coast of Corfu in the summer of 2008.

Deripaska, once known as “the king of aluminium” because of his vast holdings in the metal commodity, is one of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs.

After the yacht gathering, it was reported that Mandelson was “dripping pure poison” about the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, to another guest of Deripaska, George Osborne, the then shadow chancellor.

Mandelson’s relationship with Deripaska is believed to have begun before the gathering on the yacht and continued long after.

Files released by the US Department of Justice show that in 2010 Mandelson sought Deripaska’s help in an attempt to secure a visa for Epstein to travel to Moscow. The emails, first reported by Bloomberg, show Mandelson and a Global Counsel colleague referring to Deripaska with codes such as “OD” and “Mr D”.

In 2016, Mandelson and Global Counsel helped executives of the taxi-hailing company Uber access Deripaska’s party at the World Economic Forum at Davos, according to a leak to The Guardian of Uber’s files.

In 2018, the US imposed sanctions on Deripaska, citing his close ties to the Russian state and allegations of money laundering, racketeering and extortion, which he denied. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Deripaska was hit with sanctions by the EU and UK over his links to Vladimir Putin and his regime.

According to sources, UKSV noted that Mandelson regarded Deripaska as a friend and had remained in occasional contact with him, although the pair had not spoken for about 10 years.

Links to Israeli spy chief and tech firm

Mandelson’s link to Hayman, one of Israel’s former top spy chiefs, was not publicly known. According to sources, UKSV noted that Mandelson spoke with Hayman bimonthly.

As the head of Israel’s military intelligence directorate between 2018 and 2021, Hayman oversaw a powerful apparatus of surveillance, espionage and cyberwarfare. He has previously claimed that on his watch the military intelligence directorate influenced the US’s decision in 2020 to assassinate the Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani.

Today, Hayman is the director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an influential security thinktank in Tel Aviv. How Mandelson came to be associated with a former Israeli spymaster is unclear.

An INNS spokesperson said Hayman had “no personal connection or familiarity whatsoever” with Mandelson. Before his appointment as ambassador, Mandelson had briefly taken part in an “external advisory framework” at the thinktank and “participated in several broad, multi-participant discussions”, they said. “This limited interaction constitutes the entirety of any contact between them.”

The other Israeli connection identified by UKSV relates to Mandelson’s stake in Moon Active, an Israeli company behind a lucrative and widely popular mobile phone game, Coin Master. The company, reported last year to have revenues of more than $2bn, has a reputation in Israel’s tech sector for being secretive.

Mandelson did declare his Moon Active investment in the House of Lords register of interests in July 2019. However, there is no reference in that declaration to a £1m loan used to pay for any shares, an omission that raises questions about whether the disclosure rules were complied with.

UKSV noted that the loan was given to Mandelson by a businessman, according to sources, and was used to acquire shares in the company that were due to be sold in 2026.

It is not known whether Mandelson disclosed the loan, or his associations with Lan, Deripaska and Hayman, in a separate Foreign Office conflict of interest form. The document, which has yet to be made public, requires officials to disclose financial interests and personal relationships that could raise a conflict of interest.

Why we have revealed the vetting details

The Guardian’s decision to publish details of UKSV’s concerns about Mandelson was taken after carefully weighing the public interest case for doing so.

In February, parliament passed the humble address ordering the government to release all papers relating to Mandelson’s appointment. The motion said the most sensitive documents should first be referred to the intelligence and security committee, which would decide whether redactions on grounds of national security or international relations should be made before public release.

However, in the weeks afterwards, there was a debate at the highest levels of officialdom over whether documents about Mandelson’s vetting should be sent to the ISC.

Those discussions have since been confirmed by the Cabinet Office permanent secretary, Cat Little, and Robbins, who told MPs he was among those arguing that the files should remain in a “hermetically sealed box” for national security reasons.

It was only after The Guardian revealed on 16 April that Mandelson had been given clearance against the advice of UKSV, and Robbins was sacked, that key documents were shared with the committee.

A source familiar with the ISC’s work said “a flood of materials” was released to the committee after The Guardian’s story, including the crucial nine-page UKSV summary file.

The Cabinet Office published a template of that file, while Starmer, addressing parliament, revealed some of the Mandelson file’s contents, noting that UKSV officials had ticked two red boxes to denote “high” overall concern in relation to Mandelson and a recommendation of “clearance denied”.

However, there have been growing concerns in recent weeks that the government is still withholding materials it is obliged to release, and indications it may even block the public release of the key summary file.

On 15 May, the nine-person committee of trusted MPs and peers took the highly unusual step of going public with its concerns. It said the government was withholding vetting documents despite not having the authority to do so.

During a debate in the House of Commons on 19 May, Jeremy Wright, a KC and former attorney general who serves as the committee’s deputy chair, revealed that ministers were withholding “some documents related to vetting in their entirety” and applying redactions unrelated to national security or international relations, using grounds such as commercial sensitivity of third-party data. He said the issue could pose a challenge to “parliamentary sovereignty”.

Thornberry said in the debate that she shared those concerns. “My committee and the ISC are trying our best to get to the truth, and we are having obstacles put in our way,” she said.

One government source familiar with the Cabinet Office’s redaction process said officials had been looking for legal arguments that would enable them to abide by the letter of the humble address while “bypassing its spirit”.

During the parliamentary debate, Darren Jones, the prime minister’s chief secretary, who is overseeing the Cabinet Office’s release of the Mandelson files, defended the government’s right to make its own redactions and withhold some of the most sensitive vetting files from parliament.

He told MPs the second batch of Mandelson files would be released after parliament returned from recess in June.

Jones denied accusations of a cover-up. “If there was any suggestion of a cover-up, I would not be standing at this dispatch box to defend the process,” he said. “I would resign.”

The Foreign Office and representatives for Mandelson, Robbins, Lan and Deripaska have all been contacted for comment.