UK Politics

Original research by Steve Akehurst.

The survey, conducted by pollsters Find Out Now, indicates that a Corbyn-Sultana party could significantly dent Labour’s share of the vote. Of the 650 people polled, 15% said they would support the new party, matching Labour’s 15% share.

The greatest level of support for a potential new party comes from those aged 18–29, with 33% saying they would back a new left-wing party — ahead of Reform UK (24%) and Labour (18%).

Sultana, MP for Coventry South, resigned the Labour whip earlier this month to focus on leading a new party with the former Labour leader. There has not yet been a formal launch, but Mr Corbyn has pledged the party will “be for justice”.

The voices of women who have died at the hands of a partner or former partner are being ignored and the government is failing to heed warnings from their deaths, a damning report from the domestic abuse commissioner reveals today.

An examination into how the government learns lessons from the deaths of domestic abuse victims has found that half of the national recommendations made in domestic homicide reviews (DHRs) are not put into action, with only a quarter fully implemented.

The domestic abuse commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, told the Guardian that a study of DHRs – carried out whenever anyone over 16 is murdered in a domestic setting – revealed a “deeply concerning” lack of oversight at the top of government.

An official inquiry has been launched after Declassified revealed that an Israeli state-owned weapons firm had funded a group of British MPs.

RUK Advanced Systems Ltd sells weapons including urban combat missiles and “hard kill” torpedoes. But records show it is part of the defence giant Rafael, which is owned by the Israeli government.

Our investigation found the company had paid at least £1,499 to partner with the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Defence Technology, which provides “opportunities to network with MPs”. The money was paid directly to the group’s secretariat.

But parliamentary rules say that APPGs should not “accept the services of a secretariat funded directly or indirectly by a foreign government”.

A BBC editorial policy representative said he thought a UN report on hospital attacks cited in our film should not be included because, he said, “the UN is not a trusted independent organisation”. The same had been repeatedly said about Amnesty International.

Later in the same meeting, we discussed another request from the BBC; that we use the testimony of two high-profile hospital directors who had been detained and allegedly tortured by Israeli forces. The use of interviews with prisoners under duress is not only a breach of the Geneva conventions, but breaks Ofcom’s code. We explained this at length in meetings and by email, citing numerous examples, and in the end we won the argument.

Script meetings were also dominated by references to what “Collier” might say – referring to David Collier, a social media activist who had discovered the omissions of the previous film. In one editorial meeting, after viewing our film for the first time, a senior BBC reporter told us we should not use certain information as this would not be acceptable to Camera, a pro-Israel media monitoring organisation.

We conducted an extensive financial analysis of 32 of these anti-rights organisations. Here's what we uncovered:

• Anti-rights groups have dramatically increased their spending by over 33% between 2019 and 2023, reaching £106 million
• The largest spenders are UK branches of US organisations (£34 million), ultra-conservative Christian policy/advocacy groups (£31.5 million), and anti-abortion organisations (£28.5 million)
• Groups promoting so-called "conversion therapy" have increased their spending by an alarming 165%
• The growth in expenditure of ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ – which work to dissuade pregnant people from seeking an abortion – has risen 46% between 2019 and 2023

Big spenders from the US

The Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian group that was instrumental in decimating abortion rights in the USA through the reversal of Roe v Wade, set up a UK branch in 2015. The ADF works to advance laws and policies that oppose access to abortion and LGBTI rights. In the UK they have been defending individuals charged for breaching Safe Access Zones around abortion clinics.

The ADF is spending more and more in the UK and its expenditure increased by 187% between 2019 and 2023, for a total of 3.9 million.

Anti-abortion groups and crisis pregnancy centres

We identified 25 anti-abortion organisations, including 13 so-called "crisis pregnancy centres". These unregulated centres pretend to offer impartial advice, but actually actively discourage abortion by spreading misinformation and stigma. For 9 of these 13 centres their spending rose by 46% from £4.4 million to £6.4million between 2019 and 2023.

Alarmingly, some of these centres receive funding from the National Lottery and government grants.

So-called ‘Conversion Therapy’ – a violation of human rights

We mapped 12 groups promoting the harmful and abusive practice of so-called "conversion therapy," aiming to ‘change’ or suppress people’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The spending of 4 of these surged by nearly 165%, marking the fastest growth of all categories tracked.

Despite the UK government announcing plans ban on conversion therapy in July 2024, no legislation has yet materialised.

Unite has announced it has suspended Angela Rayner from her membership of the union, in an escalating row over the long-running bin strikes in Birmingham.

The deputy prime minister has been urging striking bin workers to accept a deal to end the dispute tabled by the Labour-run city council.

In an emergency motion at its conference in Brighton, the union said it would also re-examine its relationship with Labour if the council makes any of its members redundant.
[…]
A spokesperson for Rayner said she is no longer a member of the union - although Unite is insisting that she is on its membership system.

Unite is affiliated to Labour, and is the party's biggest union funder.

It did not donate to the party's election campaign last year, but made donations worth £10,000 towards Rayner's campaign, according to her register of interests.

Members of the union walked out in January over plans to downgrade some roles as part of the city council's attempts to sort out its equal pay liabilities.

An all-out indefinite strike was announced in March, and a deal to end industrial action has not yet been reached.

They also suspended Birmingham Council leader John Cotton.

My view on this, for whatever it's worth, is that Corbyn's too old-school to want a proper party that isn't 'a labour party', i.e., one funded and run by trade unions (which is something he and I have in common). If it's not some sort of trade union party, how will it be any different from a version of the Greens, except with no rural appeal at all?

Parliament's standards commissioner has launched an investigation into ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe.

The BBC understands it is for allegedly failing to register hundreds of thousands of pounds raised in donations to fund his independent "Rape Gang Inquiry".

Seems America is summoning us.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/32936322

Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini - Opinion
9 July 2025 10:42 BST
Last update: ~5:45 EDT

"Across the UK and around the world, the tide has turned. From musicians chanting at Glastonbury, to students occupying campuses, to doctors’ unions passing motions of solidarity, public opinion has shifted. People are demanding an end to active participation in genocide and ethnic cleansing.

The votes two weeks ago at the British Medical Association’s annual representative meeting - the largest gathering of doctors in the UK - are a powerful symbol of that shift."