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  Is Andy Burnham About to Create a British Constitution? Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Burnham Wins in Makerfield: Can the 'Politics of Place' Now Offer an Antidote to the Poverty of Possibility? ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE 19.08.2026 11min

  Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen On Friday 31 July, Andy Burnham made history, even if he did so in his trademark style. He triggered a process that points in a genuinely radical direction. Yet its destination remains unmapped and uncertain, leaving potential supporters broadly sympathetic yet sceptical. He was speaking in Sheffield. The occasion was the launch of his far-reaching, seven-page Cabinet Statement that proposes to decentralise power across England. It promises legislation that will empower regional mayors to raise their own income as well as having a share of tax revenues as a right. Its ambition is to "fundamentally re-wire the way our country works". The Prime Minister acknowledged that the Cabinet paper points towards "a new constitutional settlement" and "will increase the case for … a written constitution", and "a new clear set of principles about how this country should be run." In saying this Burnham unlocked the safety-catch on the fundamental feature of British rule: that the totality of its arrangements remains uncodified and informal. A feature that ensures our government belongs to those who govern us and not to the people as citizens. It's important to say that Burnham did not pull the trigger. But until that July day, no British prime minister when in office has ever endorsed the possibility of a "written constitution" in a positive fashion – a fact which makes this a watershed moment. Indeed, from what I can work out, no prime minister when in office ever used the phrase 'written constitution' until 1989, when Margaret Thather was obliged to respond to a letter sent to her from the constitutional and electoral reform campaign group Charter 88. Its lead signature was Lady Ewart Biggs. I should admit that I drafted it. Having been on Reform UK's target list as a winnable seat, Andy Burnham's new constituency is a microcosm of Brexit Britain and the failed legacies of Thatcher and Blair. Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu paid a visit ahead of its seminal by-election Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu Our request: "Basic rights to be entrenched in law; accountable and open government; electoral reform; regional power and a written constitution." Thatcher replied that, "The government consider that our present constitutional arrangements continue to serve us well…" with her unmistakable sense of a Royal 'we'. She added: "the government does not feel that a written constitution in itself changes or guarantees anything: Everything depends on how constitutional guarantees, whether written or unwritten, are interpreted and applied in daily life." An important observation I will return to. Prime Minister Burnham faces a barrel-full of major issues: economic, diplomatic, military, environmental and social. Why should he add to these by unleashing the historic process of a written constitution? What is the problem to which it is the answer? The problem has three parts: First, how do we decentralise the British state to release and empower regional judgment and creativity? Or, to put it negatively, how do we stop what is now the husk of an Empire State throttling our democracy in the all-too-familiar way it is programmed to do? Second, how do we protect and enhance our rights and freedom as citizens? Or, to put it negatively, how do we reverse the attacks on, for example, our right to protest, to privacy on the internet, and to vote? Third, and crucially, how do we restore popular consent to how we are governed? All constitutions, whether written or not, contain the rules for changing the rules. In so doing they establish three things: 1. Relations of power between different part of society: who can do what to whom 2. The liberty and rights of citizens 3. What kind of society the country aspires to be The British state is undergoing a breakdown on all three fronts. Burnham seems most concerned about the first. Many activists care most abo...
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  Jason Arday: We Must Rage – Rage Against the Journalism of Cruelty Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system There Will Be Another Jason Arday The Peter Thiel-Linked Race Science Network that Penetrated Cambridge University and Targeted Jason Arday 19.08.2026 13min

  Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen The death of Jason Arday has prompted an uncomfortable question for British journalism: when does legitimate scrutiny become something cruel and destructive? The 41-year-old resigned from Cambridge University as Professor of Sociology of Education after allegations of plagiarism and questions about aspects of his public biography. Arday denied plagiarism, while acknowledging errors in his work. He described "an unrelenting level of public scrutiny and personal attack", saying that the "relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love". In the days before his death, friends described a man overwhelmed by what had happened. Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of Cambridge University's Autism Research Centre, said that Arday told him "they've destroyed my life". He said that "the personal attacks on him have been so immense". Academic and author Kehinde Andrews said that Arday "felt that there was no way out". Arday's family has said that a "campaign of misinformation" became too much for him. London Mayor Sadiq Khan described what happened as "an unacceptable public hounding and campaign of abuse" – "a pernicious public shaming". The Prime Minister called for "a moment for reflection". In that reflection, perhaps we might contemplate the author George Eliot's comment that "cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside itself; it only requires opportunity". And there was plenty of cruelty; white hacks lining up to outdo each other in their cruelty towards Arday. The volume and tone of the attacks on the man were quite shocking. There is no check to fetter power when unfettered power resides in the check Hardeep Matharu In the fortnight before his death, the Spectator published a succession of articles in which its writers repeatedly turned Jason Arday into an object of personal ridicule. On 31 July, Toby Young wrote that "the more I read about Jason Arday… the more convinced I am he's [Sacha Baron Cohen's] greatest creation". He later imagined him as an "Ali G-like character". On 6 August, John Power penned a purported fact-check of Arday as a guide to the claims of "our modern-day Walter Mitty". That same week, the Spectator's Commissioning Editor Lara Brown described Arday as a "charlatan" and wrote that "even in the world of racial grievance peddling, Arday was mediocre". On 10 August, Owen Matthews called him "the serial fantasist poster cry-bully of our times" and dismissed his work as "twaddle". That same day, Peter Wood put Arday in the tradition of "imposters", "tricksters", and "cozeners". On 11 August, Julie Burchill called him "daft Jason Arday" and "the nutty professor". Together, it took on the appearance of a gang of leering, bullying faces crowded over a cowed man, each eager to be the next to weigh in, each finding clever ways to turn their anger and violence into something that might, in a London salon, sound even witty. Clearly, it wasn't to Jason Arday. To add injury to their insult, the Spectator published a piece after it was announced that Arday's body had been found with the headline 'The tragedy of Jason Arday.' In it, Melanie McDonagh said that "in death we all should be remembered in our humanity, even in our flawed humanity. And Jason Arday was very human; he bled". She did not note that it was the Spectator that was there doing the stabbing, the cutting, the slashing, and the gouging. It was not just The Spectator. In the three weeks before Jason Arday's death, the Telegraph published dozens of articles, columns, and news reports about him. "Cambridge's diversity poster boy in plagiarism row" on 24 July. "The Cambridge fantasist is proof that stupid intellectuals…" on 4 August. "Jason Arday reflects a much deeper rot within universities" on 5 August. "Jason Arday is living proof that you reap what you sow" on 6 Aug...
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  The Peter Thiel-Linked Race Science Network that Penetrated Cambridge University and Targeted Jason Arday Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system 'A Random Black Person' There Will Be Another Jason Arday The Book that Wasn't Published Charity Runs and 'Seven Up' 'Enjoying Vengeance' The Pioneer Fund Rebrands The Sanctuary Unanswered Questions 18.08.2026 29min

  Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen Jason Arday, a 41-year-old academic who resigned as Cambridge's Professor of Sociology of Education, was found dead on Friday following intense scrutiny of many aspects of his qualifications and personal life by the majority of the established press. His coordinated targeting by an explicitly anti-black race science network did not come out of nowhere, Byline Times can reveal. Backed by the pro-Trump Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, this network has spent a decade penetrating Cambridge University before reaching Reform UK, Restore Britain, and the pan-European far-right. This phase of the campaign against Jason Arday began when academic and anti-black racist Nathan Cofnas raised claims of plagiarism in Arday's work in a Substack post last month. The story it fuelled was then dissected in more than 200 articles across the majority of the British press in the weeks that followed, both in print and online. It was striking that many of these articles did not acknowledge that the central accusations were being made by a man who believes that inherited racial differences make black people less intelligent and would leave black people absent from virtually every elite position in public life outside of sport and entertainment. They also did not mention that Cofnas had used the terms "retarded", "illiterate", and "mentally disabled" to describe Jason Arday, while noting that he was "black". Cofnas said that an unidentified male Cambridge faculty member had supplied him with information about Arday. Before even examining Arday's PhD thesis, completed at Liverpool John Moores University, Cofnas had dismissed him as "just another DEI hire", referring to 'Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion' schemes. At the ideological centre of the network is Aporia, an online magazine which serves as the public-facing arm of the Human Diversity Foundation – now known as Polygenic Scores. The Human Diversity Foundation was a rebranded and relaunched version of the Nazi-era Pioneer Fund, which sought to mainstream its eugenics doctrines through Aporia. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel has cultivated ties to key actors in this network: to Cambridge Professor James Orr, through whom he channelled a donation to Cambridge; to Orr's Cambridge circle; to online magazine Quillette which published attacks on Arday; and directly to Nathan Cofnas and Aporia senior editor Noah Carl. Orr linked this infrastructure to politics. Reform UK's Head of Policy, and an advisor to the Free Speech Union organisation, he invited Aporia into national conservatism. At The Sanctuary, a right wing hub in Westminster, Aporia and the Orr-backed Cambridge Scrutonian Society have separate offices provided by cryptobillionaire Ben Delo. Delo gave Reform £4 million in early 2026. He has also sponsored the Free Speech Union. By understanding this network and its ideology, a more accurate picture can be developed of the motivations behind the disproportionate attacks on Jason Arday that continued even after his resignation from Cambridge University. On 21 July, Nathan Cofnas published the article which launched the campaign against Jason Arday. Titled 'DEI Fraud and Cover-Up at Cambridge', he portrayed Arday's appointment to Cambridge University in 2023 as evidence that it had "grabbed a random black person" and abandoned academic standards in pursuit of diversity. On 9 August, Cofnas said that a male faculty member at Cambridge University – who he said he was not allowed to name – had contacted him on 13 June with information about Jason Arday. He referred to this person as a whistleblower who feared professional retaliation. Cofnas then examined Arday's PhD thesis and published his allegations about alleged plagiarism. Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) had already formally tested the central allegation about Arday's PhD the previous year, following claims by The Times an...
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  Chairman Farage: How Reform UK Operates as a Democratic Party in Name Only Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE Don't miss a story The Chairman's Gatekeeping Powers Reform's Nadhim Zahawi Accused of 'Fantasy' After Falsely Claiming Labour-Backer Dale Vince Bankrolled Count Binface An In-Built Majority Reform UK Tells Its Activists 'Don't Drink and Tweet' Because 'The Biggest Threat to Reform Is the People in It' A Snapshot of Nigel Farage's Powers Within Reform UK holding farage to account #reformUNCOVERED Chairman Farage: How Reform UK Operates as a Democratic Party in Name Only Reform's Nadhim Zahawi Accused of 'Fantasy' After Falsely Claiming Labour-Backer Dale Vince Bankrolled Count Binface Reform UK Paid £440,000 to Firms Linked to Party Insiders Nigel Farage Reported to Met Police Over Alleged Misconduct in Public Office Reform UK Tells Its Activists 'Don't Drink and Tweet' Because 'The Biggest Threat to Reform Is the People in It' Reform Council Leader's Firm Advised £95 Million Project Which His Own Council Is a Partner In Subscribers Get More from JOSIAH 18.08.2026 13min

  Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen In February 2025, Reform's then-Chairman Zia Yusuf wrote: "We are pleased to announce that, as promised, Nigel Farage has handed over ownership of Reform UK to its members. "Reform UK is now a non-profit, with no shareholders, limited by guarantee." Previously, Nigel Farage literally owned Reform UK. He held the vast majority of shares, in a highly unusual arrangement for a political party. Farage pledged to change that. The party remains a company, but the majority-shareholder model is gone, and a formal constitution, member conferences, and voting rights are now in place. Up to a point. Byline Times has got hold of a copy of Reform UK's constitution, adopted in September last year, and it shows that Reform UK is still not the member democracy its leading lights have suggested. Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account. SUBSCRIBE TODAY We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe. The resolution adopting Reform's new constitution states that it "robustly democratises participation within the party by the membership." What the actual constitution itself suggests however is that Reform UK is a DINO – Democracy in Name Only. While the new governing document introduced a party Board, containing (some) elected members, and formalised member ballots for the leadership, Nigel Farage retains an extraordinary degree of power. Some of the arrangements will be familiar to frustrated members of other parties. Motions carried at Reform's conference are advisory only, and simply have to be discussed by the Board. Members vote in internal elections – but those are at the whim of the party Board. Article 4.3 of the constitution notes the Board has absolute discretion over party ballots. But the democratic sheen comes off completely when we look at how Farage could be removed. The answer is: it's almost impossible. To call an emergency general meeting or to issue a vote of no confidence in the leader, requires written requests to Farage's appointed Chairman, currently ex-Conservative MP Lee Anderson, from at least 50% of all members "in good standing" (There is another mechanism to call such a vote, but only once Reform has over 100 MPs). Reform has around 270,000 members, according to recent tallies, meaning around 135,000 members would have to write to Anderson, within 60 days, to demand a no-confidence vote in the Chairman's boss. Imagine, if you will, Lee Anderson combing through 135,000 hand-written letters and deciding if each of the writers are a) members and b) in 'good standing'. SIGN UP TO EMAIL UPDATES Members are deemed of 'good standing' if their subscriptions are up to date, they are not subject to any suspension or exclusion by the party, and they owe no debts to the party older than 30 days and more than £100. The leader-appointed Chairman has extensive powers over what counts as 'good standing'. He can refuse new membership and renewals, revoke membership in specified circumstances, exercise emergency disciplinary powers "in cases of exceptional gravity and urgency", suspend candidates (subject to Board approval after the fact), oversee the membership database and exercise overall responsibility for party organisation. The Discipline Committee of the Board, composed of serving members, calls most of the shots on member suspensions or expulsions – and it is chaired by the party secretary. That role is appointed by Nigel Farage. (There is an appeals process which is more independent, for those who want to keep fighting). Should a no-confidence motion in Farage be called – after meeting that impossibly-high bar – the decision goes to the Board. Farage sits on that Board, and there's no requ...
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  UK Government Sues Conservative-Linked VIP Lane PPE Firm for £90 Million Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Uniserve and the Conservative Connection Matt Hancock and Three Conservative Peers Referred 60 Suppliers Onto the PPE COVID VIP Lane UK Government sues Uniserve for £90m A History of Waste 18.08.2026 16min

  Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen The Department for Health and Social Care has launched a legal challenge against Uniserve for tens of millions of pounds, claiming the company, which has close ties to the Conservative party, supplied 11 million faulty gowns during the pandemic. The legal action comes as new documents obtained by Byline Times, reveal how Uniserve, and a Conservative MP linked to the company, successfully lobbied ministers to push through the deal, which ultimately left the Government tens of millions of pounds worth of unusable PPE. The deal was hugely controversial due to the involvement of a Conservative peer and the fact that the firm owns an office complex which houses the constituency office of Conservative Party MP and ex-Cabinet Office minister Julia Lopez. The company, owned by businessman Iain Liddell, prides itself on being the "UK's leading logistics & global trade management provider. However, despite the company having no track record of supplying PPE to the NHS, they were awarded multiple contracts in 2020 to provide vast quantities of masks, gloves, aprons, face shields and goggles. Uniserve saw its turnover and profits surge during the pandemic as a result of the contracts, which generated payments of £1.15 billion from the DHSC, up to April 2023. The contracts, valued at £303 million, were made possible after Conservative peer and Cabinet Office minister, Lord Agnew referred Uniserve onto the so-called 'VIP lane' for preferential contracts. It was subsequently discovered that huge volumes of PPE supplied by Uniserve under these deals were not fit for purpose. According to data obtained by Spotlight on Corruption, 182 million items of PPE supplied by Uniserve, totalling £178.5 million were assigned into the 'do not supply' category. Uniserve was also handed a £572m contract in March 2020 to provide freight services to the DHSC. The deal required the firm to assist the Government in delivering PPE located in China and South-East Asia to the UK and included the management of sea freight arriving at Felixstowe – where container storage was causing a major headache for officials due to the shear volume of PPE ordered by the DHSC. A spokesperson for Uniserve said they procure products for customers, and had a global network of contacts that specialise in PPE. "We did not actively sell our procurement services to the DHSC, we were asked to help". New documents released to Byline Times following a lengthy Freedom of Information battle with the Cabinet Office can reveal the true extent of the political lobbying between Conservative party Ministers and Uniserve in the build-up to the huge VIP lane deals being awarded. Despite having no track record of supplying PPE, the lucrative deals were awarded to Uniserve without any competition. The company does however share the same address as former Cabinet Office Minister Julia Lopez MP and is based in her constituency. Liddell and Lopez, who continues to rent an office space from Uniserve, spent years denying they were in contact with each other regarding the PPE deals, in 2020 Uniserve explicitly told reporters at the Guardian, "Uniserve or Mr Liddell were never in contact with Julia Lopez regarding bidding for these contracts." A statement echoed by the then Conservative-controlled Cabinet Office. However in late 2025 the pair finally came clean and admitted that they were in email contact prior to the VIP lane deals being awarded. Lopez declined to explain to the Guardian whether or not she acted on Liddell's email. However, for the first time, Byline Times can reveal what happened next. By March 2020 DHSC and Uniserve were already in discussion over the transportation of medical goods, however attention soon turned to the supply of PPE. Uniserve lobbied Lopez on 02 April 2020, complaining that PPE procurement needed "serious thought" and officials were "taking too long" to deal...
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  'Republicans Pushing the 'Red Scare' About Democrats Should Look First at Trump' Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Trump Went to War In Order to Break Iran and Left It More Powerful Than Before – US Defence Analyst ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE 17.08.2026 11min

  Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen With their party's popularity in freefall, leading Republicans have identified a new message to unite around. The Democrats, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson, will lead America down "the dark road of death to communism." President Donald Trump, Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with religious right leaders such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's spiritual leader Doug Wilson, have made equally histrionic claims. The Red Scare has returned to America, only this time it is pure farce. Definitions of "communism" are a bit like definitions of pornography: hard to pin down but everyone is pretty sure they know it when they see it. For the Republicans echoing this new midterm strategy, communism just means Democrats. For the donors who fund Trump and the MAGA movement, communism means anything that hints that the gargantuan fortunes they have acquired are anything less than the righteous reward for their genius. For the MAGA faithful, communism happens whenever some big-city or brown progressive person says something critical about the cost-of-living crisis or Papa Trump. For many immigrants from formerly communist regimes, along with those whose political identities were forged by the Cold War, it means rule by thuggish authoritarians claiming to represent 'the people'. Because the term is such a vague catch-all for 'everything that scares me' it proves so useful for the demagogues who now control the Republican Party. The messaging strategy is also circulating in some of the more conservative circles in the UK and the EU. At this year's Alliance for Responsible Citizenship gathering, which drew about 4000 attendees to London's Olympia conference center last June, several speakers merged their praise for Western civilization with dark threats about the spread of communism and its apparent equivalent, socialism. EXCLUSIVE Brynn Tannehill explains how Trump's war has resurrected an Iranian regime that sanctions and drought had been on course to topple Brynn Tannehill "It is almost universally recognised that the West shows the world the way of economic development," said Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a pianist and composer and the son of Aleksandr, the famous Soviet dissident and Nobel laureate. "Socialism of any style and hue leads to a comprehensive destruction of the spiritual essence of man." Like Christian nationalists in the US, he laid the blame on humanism. "The turn effected by the Renaissance," he asserted, led to a "headlong dash from the spirit toward matter" and a "dangerous tilt toward worship of man and material goods." Tell that to the well-dressed attendees who flew business class to this £1500-per-ticket event. The American video producer and podcaster John Papola similarly invoked "communists," "Marxists," and "New Jacobins," along with the insufficiently pious, as the supposed enemies of fathers and families. Where precisely can you find these nefarious types? At the "woke madrasas" otherwise known as America's educational institutions. The history of Red Scares is grim. In the scare of 1918-1920, the federal government under President Woodrow Wilson criminalized political dissent, engaged in warrantless searches as a matter of policy, and put thousands of individuals, many of them immigrants, under detention without due process. (Does any of this sound familiar?) In the 1950s, too, red-baiting deprived thousands of individuals of their civil rights and careers. More than that, Red Scares were used to undermine American movements for civil rights and labor rights, allowing reactionaries to sideline and silence opponents without having to engage with the facts. The Red Scares of earlier times always came wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. It is no accident that they often invoked the language of religious authoritarianism. If God is on our side, according to the paranoid style of Ameri...
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  Reform's Nadhim Zahawi Accused of 'Fantasy' After Falsely Claiming Labour-Backer Dale Vince Bankrolled Count Binface Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE Don't miss a story holding farage to account #reformUNCOVERED Reform's Nadhim Zahawi Accused of 'Fantasy' After Falsely Claiming Labour-Backer Dale Vince Bankrolled Count Binface Reform UK Paid £440,000 to Firms Linked to Party Insiders Nigel Farage Reported to Met Police Over Alleged Misconduct in Public Office Reform UK Tells Its Activists 'Don't Drink and Tweet' Because 'The Biggest Threat to Reform Is the People in It' Reform Council Leader's Firm Advised £95 Million Project Which His Own Council Is a Partner In Nigel Farage Funder George Cottrell's Accountant Co-Invested With Russia-Linked Indicted Cocaine Trafficker Subscribers Get More from JOSIAH 17.08.2026 7min

  Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen Reform-backer and former Conservative chairman Nadhim Zahawi has been accused of peddling falsehoods on national TV after claiming Farage-rival and comedy candidate Count Binface received "£180,000" from Labour donor and Ecotricity founder Dale Vince. On Friday 14 August, Reform UK's Nadhim Zahawi appeared as a guest on ITV's Good Morning Britain, discussing the Clacton by-election result. The vote saw Reform leader Nigel Farage return to Parliament last Thursday, following the by-election he called to counter standards investigations into his funding. Host Kate Garraway noted that the anti-Farage candidate received 9,455 votes, securing over a quarter of the vote in an election where the main opposition parties did not stand. Reform defector Zahawi replied: "Yeah and he got, by the way, he got I think £180,000 from Dale Vince, who is a big Labour supporter. He got activists from the Conservative Party and from Labour going out to try and knock on doors for him." His statement follows a report in the Telegraph on 9 July stating: "One of Labour's biggest donors has pledged to fund Count Binface in his Clacton by-election battle with Nigel Farage…[Dale Vince] could donate up to £180,050 to Count Binface to spend on campaigning materials during a by-election." However, no donation appears to have been made from the businessman and activist. Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account. SUBSCRIBE TODAY We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe. In a statement on social media, Count Binface – real name Jon Harvey – wrote on Friday Zahawi's claim was "untrue." "Dale Vince has never donated any money to me, and at no point have I asked activists from any other party to knock on doors for me. If anyone did so, it was not at my direction and was of their own volition. "I'm sure Mr Zahawi will want to correct the record at his earliest convenience." Dale Vince told Byline Times Zahawi's claim was: "untrue, totally false, a fantasy." He claimed it was "unconnected with reality and unchecked by anyone at Reform (no-one asked)." Vince added: "Who does that?" The entrepreneur's team is set to contact Zahawi. He confirmed he had donated nothing to Count Binface. "Reform plays fast and loose with the truth, not just dodgy donations. There are five million (secret) reasons why complaining about someone else's funding is just plain daft. Even if it were truth as opposed to fantasy," the green entrepreneur added, referring to crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne's pre-election 'gift' of £5 million to Nigel Farage. SIGN UP TO EMAIL UPDATES A spokesperson for ITV told this outlet it had already issued a clarification on this morning's GMB programme at 6:28am. Presenter Ranvir Singh said: "Before we get into today's stories on Friday's programme, Nadhim Zahawi said that Count Binface had received £180,000 from the businessman Dale Vince and had asked Labour and Conservative Party activists to go and knock on doors for him. While Mr Vince did offer financial support to Count Binface, it was never accepted. Count Binface also says he has never asked activists from other parties to knock on doors for him. We are happy to clarify that position." Zahawi defected to Reform UK this January, claiming he did so to protect free speech. The former Conservative was briefly Chancellor in the dying days of Boris Johnson's premiership, calling for Johnson to resign less than 48 hours after being appointed to the top economic role. Johnson then did resign, only for Zahawi to later endorse calls for the former PM to return to the top job. Zahawi had previously strongly criticised the Reform leader. In 2015, Zahawi told LBC ...
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  There Will Be Another Jason Arday 17.08.2026 6min

  There will be another Jason Arday. We know this. Because the media knows this. We are told the press 'isn't free' if it lacks the impunity to do anything it likes. It is how power protects itself. By declaring it has none. That is why there will be another Jason Arday. It doesn't matter that a 41-year-old took his life after days of disproportionate media coverage even after his resignation from Cambridge University. It doesn't matter that this mass exercise in hate-drenched fury, sneering, and self-righteousness was fuelled by his race and his class – and whether anyone wants to admit this or not. (No one argued that Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, elected politicians no less, weren't qualified enough to take the economy to the brink). Those in the media know that someone white and/or posh wouldn't be denigrated in the same way. Because none of their actions are treated in this way. No matter the 'truth' of what they say. It doesn't matter that media outlets across the spectrum have had nothing much to write now that his children are without their father. That is not respect. That is the point. News cycles move on. Algorithms attract other eyeballs. Business as usual. It doesn't matter that columnists at a few of these outlets are now writing of their own 'failure' of Jason Arday. Because they will continue to take the money these outlets pay them. And, in doing so, shield these outlets of any blame. It doesn't matter that the rage-bait has moved on on social media platforms designed to ensure that other rage-bait takes its place. Some continue in their attacks. Hate pays. It doesn't matter that a human being was reduced to an object of lustful frenzy upon the instincts of the mob. Not when division and desensitisation is the operating system our dehumanising political-social-media culture runs on. That is why there will be another Jason Arday. Because there is no check to fetter power when unfettered power resides in the check. There is no 'neutral arbiter'. Only a media invested in its own status to shape how we see the world; who is 'up' and who is 'down'; who is 'in' and who is 'out'; what happens to people's lives. Only a media that cries 'public interest' even when it is not: it is the exercise of unchecked power. There was a public interest seven years ago when this publication first reported on the questionable finances of Reform UK's predecessor party and Nigel Farage and his association with a convicted fraudster who is "like a son". No outlet followed up. Now they are fearless watchdogs. After nearly a decade in which Farage has been elevated as the next prime minister-in-waiting, it is time to turn up the scrutiny so as not to get caught out backing the wrong horse. No matter that the horse long bolted because they opened the gate. The media's own interests; and the public interest: different stories, indeed. That is why there's not yet any media interest, enough to establish a public interest, in a follow-up of the six-month investigation, spanning some 20 sources, published by Byline Times last month about the institution the press has been fixated with day after day: Cambridge University. There is not yet any public interest, it seems, in the activities of another – white, middle-class, right-wing – professor there, James Orr, who is simultaneously a public figure in political life as Farage's Head of Policy at Reform. When this publication put to Cambridge the extensive findings of his activities at the university, including concerns around the safeguarding of students, the press office of my alma mater had nothing to say. It passed our questions straight to Orr's lawyers. When we asked it why, its only response – which it said we couldn't publish – was to state that "we are unable to engage with the approach as a legitimate media enquiry". You can read the full investigation here and decide for yourself. (It redacts the name of the property from which Orr operates, and in which he houses students, in Cambri...
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  Advance UK's 'Great British' Successor Group Refuses to Rule Out Foreign Funding Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE Who Are GB PAC? Don't miss a story A Police Report, Legal Threats and a Splinter Party: Inside the Demise of Advance UK Money and Mergers Reform UK Tells Its Activists 'Don't Drink and Tweet' Because 'The Biggest Threat to Reform Is the People in It' Talk TV Host André Walker Found Guilty of Assaulting Climate Protester at Pro-Trump Dinner holding farage to account #reformUNCOVERED Reform UK Paid £440,000 to Firms Linked to Party Insiders Nigel Farage Reported to Met Police Over Alleged Misconduct in Public Office Reform UK Tells Its Activists 'Don't Drink and Tweet' Because 'The Biggest Threat to Reform Is the People in It' Reform Council Leader's Firm Advised £95 Million Project Which His Own Council Is a Partner In Nigel Farage Funder George Cottrell's Accountant Co-Invested With Russia-Linked Indicted Cocaine Trafficker How George Cottrell's Reform UK Network in Montenegro Is Tied to Sanctioned Russian Oligarchs Subscribers Get More from JOSIAH 14.08.2026 16min

  Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen The campaign group replacing Advance UK – a party registered only in December – has refused to rule out foreign funding for its 'Great British' efforts. It comes amid a fiery conflict over the remains of Advance UK, the far-right Reform competitor party that formally deregistered with the Electoral Commission in July. Advance UK was established by Ben Habib, who was the co-deputy leader of Reform UK from October 2023 until he was removed and replaced by Richard Tice in July 2024. Habib quit the party in November 2024, after falling out with leader Nigel Farage and then chairman Zia Yusuf – with businessman Habib backing a hardline stance in favour of mass deportations. Habib, who was born in Pakistan, had also called on far-right MP Rupert Lowe to be readmitted to Reform. On 30 June 2025, Habib took over what was then the Integrity Party, relaunching it as 'Advance UK'. That same day, former Reform MP Rupert Lowe launched his own project, 'Restore Britain' – which soon outflanked the party in every respect. Restore began as a 'pressure group' but formally registered as a party this February, and secured 9% of the vote in the recent Greater Manchester Mayoral election. Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account. SUBSCRIBE TODAY We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe. It is polling around three per cent across Britain and is seen by Reform as a threat to its chances of securing a majority – with Lowe and Nigel Farage recently engaging in a very public spat over potentially working together. This July, Ben Habib announced his intention to merge Advance UK with the non-party campaign group 'Great British PAC', which he chairs. He launched a ballot of members to certify the move. Around 8,000 members voted from the 38,000 potential voters, with the vast majority eventually backing the transfer. Advance UK will continue to exist as a company – with, this outlet understands, around £250,000 in funds – but will no longer be regulated by the Electoral Commission. And it will give cash to GB PAC on a case-by-case basis. GBPAC was set up in 2024 as a pressure group, "in the mold of American political action committees", as Hope Not Hate puts it. The group writes: "GB PAC spends much of its time opposing the government's Chagos Islands deal with Mauritius. It has also supported Tommy Robinson events and a protest opposing puberty blockers for trans youth. "Plans to launch an academy to teach future right-wing leaders, host a conference, and publish a list of legislation it wishes to overturn appear to have stalled," the anti-hate group said in a February briefing. Its advisory group includes far-right activists like Carl Benjamin (AKA YouTuber Sargon of Akkad). Despite Habib's stated aversion to 'ethno-nationalism', a regional director of GBPAC has previously shared a website containing Hitler's speeches and pointed his online followers towards a video asserting Hitler "never ordered the extermination of a single Jew". Another, the group's England director has also bemoaned the supposed decline of the British "gene pool", writing on X: "By importing loads of sub Saharan Africans plus Muslims that inter breed the IQ is in severe decline." GBPAC's founder and sole director Claire Bullivant told this outlet Advance UK's funds were "not being transferred to GBP Corporation Limited or to Claire Bullivant personally, nor is the Great British PAC acquiring that sum [£432,000 outlined in the last accounts] as part of the arrangements between the organisations." "We understand that Ben Habib and the Advance UK College will determine how any remaining funds should properly be applied, including potentiall...
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  Reform UK Paid £440,000 to Firms Linked to Party Insiders Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE Don't miss a story Oak Hall Studios and David Bull Goon Squad and Archie Manners Nigel Farage Reported to Met Police Over Alleged Misconduct in Public Office Loans and Past Revelations holding farage to account #reformUNCOVERED Reform UK Paid £440,000 to Firms Linked to Party Insiders Nigel Farage Reported to Met Police Over Alleged Misconduct in Public Office Reform UK Tells Its Activists 'Don't Drink and Tweet' Because 'The Biggest Threat to Reform Is the People in It' Reform Council Leader's Firm Advised £95 Million Project Which His Own Council Is a Partner In Nigel Farage Funder George Cottrell's Accountant Co-Invested With Russia-Linked Indicted Cocaine Trafficker How George Cottrell's Reform UK Network in Montenegro Is Tied to Sanctioned Russian Oligarchs Subscribers Get More from JOSIAH 14.08.2026 12min

  Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen Reform UK paid at least £440,000 to firms with directors linked to the party since 2023, Byline Times can reveal. 'Electoral Commission filings show that Nigel Farage's party paid over £72,000 to Touchpoint Strategy, a 'media strategy and crisis consulting' firm for 'market research/canvassing' work around the 2024 general election. Companies House filings show that Touchpoint was only founded in March 2024. Within three months, Reform UK spent £72,000 with the firm.' Touchpoint has never filed any accounts, and its most recent filings were due in December 2025 but are still not published. The firm also received a compulsory strike-off notice in February 2026, which has now been suspended. The firm has two directors, Josephmarie Gerard John Dulston and Tess Wheldon. Dulston is a Reform Party activist who stood as a local Reform candidate in the May 2025 elections for Market Drayton South, under the name he commonly goes by – Joseph Robertson. He was appointed as a director in July 2024, after the June spending by Reform. Robertson is a key figure in Liz Truss's CPAC Great Britain (CPAC-GB), a conference group attempting to import MAGA-style politics via its home-grown largest annual conference to the UK. Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account. SUBSCRIBE TODAY We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe. Robertson is also a former member of the anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion Orthodox Conservatives, and appeared alongside Nigel Farage at the 2025 UK launch of the Heartland Institute, an American climate denial think tank. Tess Wheldon, who has also worked as an analyst for rural policy at the Orthodox Conservative group, was an influential voice during the farmers protests during the early days of the Labour government. Touchpoint was behind the organising of the recent CPAC-GB conference, which, in bringing together members of the global far right, vowed to "Save Britain, save the West". Both Robertson and Wheldon are listed as its only directors on Companies House. Robertson has previously said in interviews with a Swedish media outlet that "there are essentially parts of the UK where Sharia Law is being enforced", and Wheldon has described abortion as murder on Instagram, as well as perpetuating the debunked claim that recent reforms to abortion legislation in the UK legalise "abortion up to birth". Filings also show that Reform has paid another firm, Jupiter Visual Communications Limited, over £125,600 for work on 'rallies and other events', 'campaign broadcasts', and other general administration costs between August 2023 and July 2024. Jupiter Visual Communications itself later went on to become a Reform donor, with the company giving £50,000 to the party in January 2026. It is, this outlet understands, the first time it has emerged that a supplier paid by Reform UK has then gone on to donate to the party. However, this isn't its only link to the party. One of the directors, Bennett Ingram Harley Moss – AKA Ben Moss – also sits as a director of another Reform-donating business, Prema Properties, which between September 2024 and April 2025 gave £50,000 to Reform. Ben Moss has also promoted CPAC-GB on his LinkedIn page. SIGN UP TO EMAIL UPDATES Another firm that Reform has paid for campaign broadcasts and 'overheads and general administration' costs, to the tune of £202,000 between January 2023 and July 2024, is Oak Hall Studios. The sole director of the company is Dr David Bull, who was party Chairman between June 2025 through to May 2026, also formerly sitting as deputy leader from 2021 to 2023. Bull was also a former Brexit Party MEP and is a regular fixture as a commentator on GB ...
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  Talk TV Host André Walker Found Guilty of Assaulting Climate Protester at Pro-Trump Dinner Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE No Evidence of Threat to Art Don't miss a story Ill-Judged YouTube Videos News UK Keeps André Walker on Air Despite Talk Presenter's Assault Trial Over Trump Dinner Clash Talk TV Presenter Dragged Climate Activist Into Room and Assaulted Him During Pro-Trump Dinner, Court Told 'You Should Rightly Be Ashamed' TalkTV Presenter Accused of Assault After Dragging Climate Protester From UK Trump Dinner holding farage to account #reformUNCOVERED Nigel Farage Reported to Met Police Over Alleged Misconduct in Public Office Reform UK Tells Its Activists 'Don't Drink and Tweet' Because 'The Biggest Threat to Reform Is the People in It' Reform Council Leader's Firm Advised £95 Million Project Which His Own Council Is a Partner In Nigel Farage Funder George Cottrell's Accountant Co-Invested With Russia-Linked Indicted Cocaine Trafficker How George Cottrell's Reform UK Network in Montenegro Is Tied to Sanctioned Russian Oligarchs Elections Watchdog Assesses Reform UK's £30,000 Private Flights Donation Subscribers Get More from JOSIAH 13.08.2026 13min

  Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen Presenter André Walker, who works for the Rupert Murdoch-owned Talk station, has been found guilty of assault, after dragging a protester into a room without CCTV at a Republicans Overseas dinner during Donald Trump's state visit. The pro-Trump dinner at Windsor Guildhall on 16 September 2025 saw two Fossil Free London activists stand up at the front and chant "If you drill baby drill, how many will you kill?" while holding banners. While the female protester was led to a nearby entrance, Mr Walker dragged NHS doctor Kush Naker through the middle of the room and into a side room — which, in a YouTube video after the incident, he mentioned had no CCTV, while putting his thumbs up and grinning. Dr Naker accused Mr Walker of pinning him on the ground and attempting to punch him, knee him in the groin and strangle him, efforts Dr Naker told the court he had to overpower. Mr Walker repeatedly said "I'm nearly 50" while visibly out of breath when a camera did eventually enter the room. At a judgment hearing at Reading Magistrates' Court today, District Judge (Magistrates' Court) Pankhania told the pro-Trump YouTuber and News UK presenter: "I am satisfied that the defendant attempted to punch Dr Naker." The judge found of the attempted punches: "I am not satisfied that any of those landed" — but Mr Walker's actions amounted to assault nonetheless. Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account. SUBSCRIBE TODAY We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe. In a hearing on 30 July, which this outlet also covered, Mr Walker and his defence, former Conservative justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland KC, attempted to claim the Talk host was trying to defend the paintings from the protesters. But no evidence was given that they would attempt to do so. The judge found: "Dr Naker didn't have a bag or anything in his hands when he stood up. His back was to the painting. At no point before his approach does he turn to the many pieces of art." "There is no evidence that any of the protesters threatened to cause damage… There is no evidence in the Mayor's Parlour [the private side-room] that Dr Naker moved towards the art or threatened to move." The judge found that Mr Walker "did not reasonably hold the belief that he needed to defend the artwork" — and that this defence only emerged strongly three months after the incident. SIGN UP TO EMAIL UPDATES Mr Walker appeared to have added to his problems by publishing prolifically on YouTube about the trial and the incident. The judge found: "The YouTube video is instructive about the defendant's mind." In one video immediately after the assault, Walker described "having a fight with the protesters", mentioned the artwork briefly but nothing further, grinned with a double thumbs-up about the lack of CCTV, called the protesters terrorists, and asked for donations to his Patriot Fund. "I do not find that the artwork threat was genuinely held," the judge said. The judge also noted that Mr Walker "admitted in his police interview that he may have used unreasonable force." The prosecution stated that Walker "dragged Dr Naker into the Mayor's Parlour, held him down, kneeling on him, and made some punches which did not connect". She submitted to the court that the dragging and kneeling on Dr Naker — neither of which was contested — amounted to substantial force. EXCLUSIVE EXCLUSIVE: André Walker, accused of assault by beating over a clash with a Fossil Free London activist during the President's state visit, continues to front shows for the Murdoch-owned station Josiah Mortimer Dr Naker reported having a sore wrist, a sore jaw and a sore tongue after the incident, as well as...
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  A Police Report, Legal Threats and a Splinter Party: Inside the Demise of Advance UK Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE Don't miss a story Nigel Farage Reported to Met Police Over Alleged Misconduct in Public Office Habib's Defence Reform UK Tells Its Activists 'Don't Drink and Tweet' Because 'The Biggest Threat to Reform Is the People in It' Who Owns the Remains? holding farage to account #reformUNCOVERED Nigel Farage Reported to Met Police Over Alleged Misconduct in Public Office Reform UK Tells Its Activists 'Don't Drink and Tweet' Because 'The Biggest Threat to Reform Is the People in It' Reform Council Leader's Firm Advised £95 Million Project Which His Own Council Is a Partner In Nigel Farage Funder George Cottrell's Accountant Co-Invested With Russia-Linked Indicted Cocaine Trafficker How George Cottrell's Reform UK Network in Montenegro Is Tied to Sanctioned Russian Oligarchs Elections Watchdog Assesses Reform UK's £30,000 Private Flights Donation Subscribers Get More from JOSIAH 13.08.2026 13min

  Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen The wind-up of Advance UK has led to legal threats and recriminations between former activists and senior figures – with Byline Times able to reveal that party founder Ben Habib reported his own Chief Operating Officer to the police. Advance UK, a competitor party to Reform and Restore Britain, formally deregistered with the Electoral Commission in July, amid fears it would only haemorrhage support to Rupert Lowe MP's Restore Britain. It was set up by businessman Ben Habib, who was the co-deputy leader of Reform UK from October 2023 until he was removed and replaced by Richard Tice in July 2024. Habib quit Reform in November 2024, after falling out with leader Nigel Farage and then chairman Zia Yusuf – with Habib backing a hardline stance in favour of mass deportations. Habib, who was born in Pakistan, had also called on far-right MP Rupert Lowe to be readmitted to Reform. On 30 June 2025, Habib took over what was then the Integrity Party, relaunching it as 'Advance UK'. That same day, former Reform MP Rupert Lowe launched his own project, 'Restore Britain' – which soon outflanked the party in every respect. Restore began as a 'pressure group' but formally registered as a party this February, and secured 9% of the vote in the recent Greater Manchester Mayoral election. This July, Ben Habib announced his intention to merge Advance UK with the non-party campaign group 'Great British PAC', which he chairs. He launched a ballot of members to certify the move. In an extraordinary intervention, Tim Power, the party's Chief Operating Officer, wrote to all members shortly after the ballot went out, saying: "I am writing to inform you that the membership ballot launched on 5 June 2026 has been cancelled… Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account. SUBSCRIBE TODAY We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe. "The ballot was not conducted in accordance with that Constitution…Any decision to de-register the Party or merge it with another organisation requires a special resolution – a 75% supermajority – of a properly constituted College of Electors under Articles 1.7 and 2. The College has never been properly constituted." He added: "Advance UK is a company limited by guarantee. This means the Party's assets – its funds, its membership database, its intellectual property and its brand – are held for the benefit of the Party's objects as a registered political party. They do not belong to any individual and cannot simply be transferred to another organisation" – i.e. Great British PAC. "GBPAC is not a registered political party. It does not stand candidates in elections. Its objects are materially different from those of Advance UK," Power wrote. He also claimed "any transfer of member personal data to GBPAC would require the individual consent of each member under UK GDPR. No such consent has been obtained." Power told Advance UK members: "What has happened over the last few days has exposed serious governance failings within this Party – failings that should have been addressed months ago and were not. "A Board of Directors should have been properly constituted. A Treasurer should have been appointed. A College of Electors should have been properly elected by you, the membership, for the first time. None of that happened. And the result is that the Party arrived at this moment without the governance structures it needed to handle a decision of this magnitude properly." SIGN UP TO EMAIL UPDATES Ben Habib soon restated the ballot, claiming Power was "wrong on all points and should be ignored." He claimed the party was considering the "legal position." Around 8,000 members voted from the 38,000 potenti...
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  How Ukraine Is Now Targeting the Russian Economy Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Nigel Farage Funder George Cottrell's Accountant Co-Invested With Russia-Linked Indicted Cocaine Trafficker ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE 12.08.2026 9min

  Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen In the last month, Ukraine has set its sights on a new target in Russia, a business by the name of Wildberries. This company is an e-commerce giant, the largest of its kind in Russia, with a market share of almost half of all online retail. At the heart of its business is a network of massive warehouse facilities. When the warehouses burn in the aftermath of Ukrainian drone strikes the footage shows smoke plumes that billow for miles. There are many valid reasons behind why Wildberries became a focus of Ukraine long-range drone warfare, alongside the continuing attacks on oil and gas infrastructure and strikes to military facilities manufacturing parts for Russia's deadly ballistic missiles. As the sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska recently said, "the old maxim is that if you owe the bank a million, that's your problem. If you owe the bank a billion, that's their problem." Wildberries has borrowed heavily to build its business, it owes not a billion, but lots of billions. $18.4 billion, more or less. Put simply, the intent of Ukraine's Wildberries strategy is to ratchet up pressure on the banking sphere. Much of the lending to Wildberries has come from VTB Bank, a state-owned bank, indicating the strategic importance of this company to the Kremlin. If a business is strategically important to the Kremlin, it is strategically important to Ukraine too. EXCLUSIVE The accountancy firm that administers George Cottrell's Montenegro company, has invested in a property development with the alleged ringleader of the country's largest money laundering cartel Nafeez Ahmed So far, the attacks on the warehouse network have destroyed 10 of the 15 largest warehouses that the group operates, another 3 in the top 15 have also been severely damaged and are offline. With such a significant impact on its operations (another 5 of the next tier of 15 warehouses by size have also been destroyed) there's no doubt that this company will be facing difficulty servicing its mountain of debt. This, and a combination of other factors, are leading towards a crisis in the wider banking sector. While the main business cannot repay its debts, Wildberries acted as an incubator for many small and medium-sized businesses. Approximately 500,000 individual traders use the services (storage, delivery, hosting of their stores, payment processing, etc.) of Wildberries, and many of them face bankruptcy with their goods having gone up in smoke. Interestingly, a week before the Ukrainian strike campaign began, the company changed their Terms & Conditions to state that they would not be liable for losses caused by drone damage. Maybe they'd been tipped off. But entrepreneurs across Russia have lost their incomes. Those potential new bankruptcies will likely all have bank exposure too. They'll certainly not be contributing to the tax revenue that the state depends on. Bankruptcies in Russia were already up 30% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, a sign of the pressures Vladimir Putin's "Special Military Operation" is putting on the economy as a whole. In fact, the only part of the Russian economy that has shown any sign of growth over the last few years has been the war economy. Wars are expensive things, but where does the money come from for the war economy? Well, again, the answer is the banks. At the beginning of the war, Putin signed an order instructing banks to extend loans to defence contractors on preferential terms established by the Government. As a result, the war-linked loan book amounted to 58% of all commercial lending in 2025. While financing of consumer-related businesses fell from 31% pre-war to 20% of the loan portfolio in 2025. At some point those loans are going to mature, or will require refinancing. How much – considering the high probability of the contractors themselves being picked clean of anything of value by their owne...
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  Tommy Robinson and the London News Website Linked to a Putin-Backed Propaganda Network 02.02.2026 14min

  Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY In February 2020, far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon ('Tommy Robinson') travelled to Moscow and St Petersburg, giving interviews to Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT and meeting figures linked to Russian nationalist movements. Since then, questions have long swirled about his Russian connections and the sources of his funding amid mounting legal debts. Byline Times can now reveal that years before that trip to Russia, Robinson was hired as a "goodwill ambassador" for an unregistered charity fronting a secretive Russian propaganda network that worked directly for President Vladimir Putin's administration, and has ties to a sanctioned Russian state-linked oil giant. The unregistered charity – the MMBF Trust – is part of a network centred around the London Post. At first glance, the London Post resembles a local news website covering UK gambling regulations and London restaurant reviews. It has featured articles about Borough Market's grocery ordering service, and good spots for ramen. But sources who spoke to Byline Times described it as part of what intelligence analysts call a 'black PR' operation: coordinated disinformation campaigns designed to manipulate public opinion while concealing their true sponsors. Robinson's appointment to the unregistered charity was first reported by anti-extremism organisation Hope Not Hate in 2017. Last year, Press Gazette revealed that the London Post – which had announced the appointment – had surprising Russia links. Byline Times can now reveal further details about the suspected funding behind the website, including cryptocurrency payment trails to Russian 'black PR' agents, and ties to major Russian state enterprises. The site's Russian backers operate through a company called Moscow Media Group. Its subsidiary, MMG Brainstorming, has publicly advertised its work for Putin's presidential office, the State Duma, the Federation Council, and various Russian Government ministries and agencies. Moscow Media Group also has ties to a wide range of Russian state-backed energy and infrastructure enterprises, including to the sanctioned Russian oil company Gazprom Neft. 'Domestic Terrorism': ICE Contractor Palantir's Tools for Tracking Dissent Peter Thiel's controversial data firm – which holds contracts with the UK's NHS and Ministry of Defence – researched protest prediction for the US Army before agreeing to build ICE's data platform to conduct mass deportation. Are its tools now targeting democratic dissent as well as illegal immigration? Nafeez Ahmed The Unregistered Charity The public face behind the London Post is a Zimbabwean-English film producer named Matthew C Martino (also known as Mathetes Chihwai). Martino runs a UK-based entity called the Matthew Martino Benevolent Fund (MMBF Trust), the website of which states that it is a charity supporting filmmakers and others who wish to study or work in the performing arts. However, the organisation neither registered with the UK's Charity Commission nor provided any notable support to filmmakers. In 2017, the MMBF Trust made waves on social media when the London Post announced Tommy Robinson as its new goodwill ambassador. Robinson, the co-founder of the English Defence League, is a convicted fraudster whose disinformation helped fuel the 2024 Southport riots which involved unprecedented racist violence. According to the London Post's announcement, Robinson was hired by the MMBF Trust to help oversee a £100,000 arts grant programme that would launch in February 2018. The nature of the work Robinson undertook for the MMBF Trust is unclear. But the charity appears to have been a front to provide legitimacy to a Russian-backed propaganda operation. The 2Trom Network The London Post is part of a media consortium of ostensibly British news organisations, operating under an entity called 2Trom News Group. Although inco...
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  Keir Starmer's Brutal Treatment of Andy Burnham Has Destroyed All Illusions About His Premiership 30.01.2026 6min

  Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY "The enemy has only images and illusions… behind which he hides his true motives. Destroy the image and you will break the enemy." — Shaolin Master to Bruce Lee, Enter the Dragon That line appears at the very start of Enter the Dragon, delivered before a punch is thrown. It frames the entire film. The struggle it describes is not one of brute force, but of credibility. Power, Bruce Lee's Shaolin master suggests, rarely confronts you directly. It shelters behind images. Strip those away, and what remains is exposed. It is difficult for me not to think about that line when looking at what has just happened inside the Labour Party. For years, the Labour right under Sir Keir Starmer's leadership has carefully cultivated an image. The staging is familiar: the Union Jack backdrop, the language of seriousness, duty, restraint and responsibility. Even the careful emphasis on titles and institutional roles plays its part. The claim is not merely of competence, but of public duty. That power is exercised reluctantly. That decisions are taken in the national interest, not out of factional advantage. That this is public service, not politics as usual. That image has mattered because it has functioned as legitimacy. It reassured voters, quietened dissent and disarmed critics. It suggested that whatever internal disagreements existed, those in charge were acting from a higher sense of responsibility. But images only work if behaviour sustains them. Freebiegate and repeated policy U-turns have already eroded that credibility. But the decision to block Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from the Gorton and Denton by-election did something more profound. It did not simply remove a political obstacle. It punctured the image itself, publicly and unmistakably. Keir Starmer's Labour Government Is Much Better Than the Media Admits There is a deep disconnect between the Government's actions to improve the country and its standing in the polls, argues Professor Chris Painter Professor Chris Painter This was not persuasion. It was not democratic judgement. It was not even subtle strategy. It was the open deployment of bureaucratic power to neutralise a figure whose authority rests on precisely the things the leadership claims to value: electoral success, public trust and a strong local mandate. In that moment, the illusion failed. When power reaches for administrative force rather than argument or consent, it reveals its true priorities. What was exposed here was not country before party, but self-preservation. Not public service, but control. Not national interest, but institutional self-interest. Once that becomes visible, the language no longer works. The symbolism no longer covers the act. Claims of seriousness and duty ring hollow when set against naked factional enforcement. This is not simply about Andy Burnham as an individual. It is about what happens when a political leadership becomes more invested in managing threats to itself than in advancing a project rooted in democratic confidence. When maintaining control becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to serve a wider purpose. MPs may spend much of their lives inside the Westminster bubble, but we are never fully enclosed by it. We return each week to our constituencies. We sit in surgeries. We hear frustration, anger and disillusionment unfiltered. We see how political decisions land beyond the chamber and the lobby briefings. What Keir Starmer Should Have Done With Andy Burnham The PM's decision to block Burnham from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election risks handing the seat to Nigel Farage, and ultimately triggering his own downfall. It didn't have to be this way, argues Adam Bienkov Adam Bienkov It is in that space, between Westminster and the country, that legitimacy is tested. When MPs themselves begin to conclude, alongside the public, that th...
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  Reform UK's Plans For a British ICE 30.01.2026 8min

  Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY Read latest edition Reform councillors Joseph Boam and Michael Squires faced a wave of backlash on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, this week for posting favourably about ICE, the US immigration enforcement agency which is accused of operating like a paramilitary force, following the killing of nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The footage of Pretti's death showed him intervening to help a protester being assaulted by an ICE agent, before being pinned to the floor by several agents who then realised he had a holstered gun (for which he had a license) on his hip. Pretti's hands were pinned to the ground, with one agent shown reaching for the holstered weapon, then another pushing that agent away and firing his own gun into Pretti's prone body. The killing occurred just two weeks after ICE agents in Minneapolis shot Renee Good dead as she drove away from them. The posts from Boam and Squires appeared in immediate reaction to Pretti's shooting, with Boam reposting an image from the US Department of Homeland Security bearing the slogan "I stand with ICE". Squires then shared the image and added his approval: "100% chance of ICE forecast. Well done and huge congratulations to ICE for their heroic work saving the United States of America". The men were accused of endorsing the killing. Squires has since deleted his post, and Boam hurriedly clarified that it was not the killing that he stood by, saying: "When I said I support ICE's work, I mean that I support the enforcement of immigration law, which is the task of Immigration Control and Enforcement, aka ICE. That is what I stand by". 'Domestic Terrorism': ICE Contractor Palantir's Tools for Tracking Dissent Peter Thiel's controversial data firm – which holds contracts with the UK's NHS and Ministry of Defence – researched protest prediction for the US Army before agreeing to build ICE's data platform to conduct mass deportation. Are its tools now targeting democratic dissent as well as illegal immigration? Nafeez Ahmed Boam has got form. According to the anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate, he used to endorse Andrew Tate on Twitter. However, it would be wrong to dismiss support for the agency as merely the outbursts of two renegade provocateur councillors. Indeed, support for ICE, and the desire to create a British equivalent, runs deep in the Reform UK project. At Reform UK's conference last September, Professor James Orr, a senior advisor to Farage, said on a panel about preparing Reform for government: "We know what needs to be done, we know what needs to be repealed. We need a new borders taskforce, a British ICE and so on". Orr is a key player in Reform, acting as a trans-Atlantic bridge to the Trump administration. He is a mentor to Vice President JD Vance, who memorably described the Cambridge don as his "British sherpa". In the same speech, Orr argued that the party should hold its cards close to its chest before entering government, keeping certain operational decisions under wraps before governing, to prevent a backlash from political opponents. Other prominent figures in Reform are also signalling their approval for the creation of a British version of ICE, even if concrete policy proposals have not yet been published. In an interview on GB News, Reform rising star and candidate for London Mayor, Laila Cunningham, was asked if she thought there needed to be a British equivalent to ICE. She replied: " I think we need a deterrent and we need law and order and we need to protect our borders", before adding that the men of ICE "are just enforcing" deportation orders and that the UK needs a "strong border force, like ICE, to be a deterrent [to irregular migration]". Trump's Violent Assault on Minnesota Is an Operation in 'Reflexive Control' The President is using Soviet-style redirection to wage an information war across America,...
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  'Domestic Terrorism': ICE Contractor Palantir's Tools for Tracking Dissent 29.01.2026 11min

  Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY Read latest edition The Trump administration's immigration and customs enforcement agency, ICE – which sparked outrage after killing US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on the grounds of them being "domestic terrorists" – is using digital surveillance for its mass deportation scheme built by the data firm Palantir, which previously developed tools to track protestors for the US Army, Byline Times can reveal. Palantir, the giant US analytics firm co-founded by pro-Trump billionaire Peter Thiel, has major contracts with the UK's Department of Health and Social Care, and the Ministry of Defence. The company has a £330 million contract as the lead supplier of the NHS' federated data programme, and a £240 million contract to provide analytics for the MoD. London is home to the company's biggest office outside of the United States. In the US, the company's contracts with ICE stretch across a number of years, with obligations already exceeding $139 million and procurement documents describing future work worth hundreds of millions more in its mission to track down illegal migrants as part of President Donald Trump's mass deportation policy. Both killings in the past month have been of protestors against ICE activity. Good, a 37-year-old American citizen and mother of three, was fatally shot three times by ICE agent Jonathan Ross after she monitored his activities. Witnesses reported that agents gave conflicting commands – one told her to move her vehicle, while another shouted for her to exit. Pretti, also 37, an intensive care unit nurse at a specialised medical centre operated by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, was holding his phone to film the activities of ICE officers and was trying to protect a woman who had been pepper-sprayed when he was shot on his knees in the back of the head. It has since emerged that ICE agents reportedly had prior contact with Pretti a week earlier when he was protesting against ICE efforts to detain others. On that occasion, ICE attacked him and broke his ribs. Sources told CNN that ICE officers have been collecting private information about protestors in Minneapolis and that the agency had "documented details" about Pretti before he was shot to death – raising the question of what information ICE is compiling about protestors. The US Department of Homeland Security – of which ICE is the largest investigative arm – has denied creating a "database" of "domestic terrorists" or of having any record of the previous incident involving Pretti. But analysis by Byline Times of official ICE procurement documents shows it has the capability to move from immigration enforcement to the suppression of protest – with Palantir first developing such technology for the Pentagon. Domestic Surveillance Two years into the first Trump administration, the Pentagon was revealed to be funding research to predict where anti-Trump protests would occur. This work, led by the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), involved scraping social media, tracking geolocation data, mapping social networks to identify influencers and organisers, crowd dynamics modelling, and building AI models to forecast dissent before it emerged. One of the scientists behind the research, Lance Kaplan, working at the ARL, also published papers on the use of sensor fusion and network science to predict human behaviour from data streams. Another, Claire Bonial, listed research interests including "predicting social unrest using social media", "event detection", and "modelling emergent behaviour". In 2018, Palantir began working directly with the US Army Research Laboratory. In 2020, the company was awarded a $91 million contract for "artificial intelligence and machine learning development". In 2021, the US Army claimed that ARL scientists had built models to "detect events from open-source information" a...
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  Keir Starmer's Labour Government Is Much Better Than the Media Admits 29.01.2026 9min

  Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY The most striking aspect of Keir Starmer's Government has been the disconnect between its actions on policy and it's standing in the polls. The Government has received far too little credit for much of these. Both its child poverty strategy, a centrepiece of which is the scrapping of the two-child cap on universal credit, and its national youth strategy, including young futures hubs, signify its willingness to tackle inter-generational fairness. The same applies to rolling out Best Start family centres. Even its means-testing of winter fuel allowance can be justified on the same basis, albeit with a qualifying threshold that was initially drawn far too tightly. Major changes to employment law begin a redress of the imbalance between capital and labour so entrenched since the 1980s. Likewise, advances in renters' rights rebalance landlord-tenant relations. These reforms are complemented by increases in taxation on capital gains, inheritance, high-value properties and non-domiciled status. They are all significant redistributive measures, whether of power or wealth. Similarly, changes to the formulae used for local government funding geared to relative need, providing latitude too on how resources are deployed, a harbinger of whole place strategies as opposed to funding silos. A new violence against women and girls' strategy also placed gender vulnerabilities at the heart of public policy, in circumstances where domestic and online abuse has reached epidemic proportions. Then there was the Government's industrial strategy designed to enhance the competitiveness, resilience and security of the UK economy, with associated sectoral plans. Complementary is its upgrading of public infrastructure, including transition towards low-carbon energy, with fiscal rules adjusted accordingly. Admittedly, not all these policy initiatives will be game-changers. Rachel Reeves' tax reforms have been piecemeal rather than systematic in aligning levies on different revenue streams. Stretched funding for the most deprived areas and extent of deep poverty remain scourges on the country's conscience. Nonetheless, the directions of travel is clear. So, why the poor popularity ratings? Weaponizing Words: How the Trump Administration Used Language to Distort the Truth in Minnesota Government and media organisations used the power of words to shift moral responsibility for the ICE killings, argues linguist Dan Clayton Dan Clayton Polls Apart The first thing to acknowledge is that the Government faces a deeply hostile media. This hostility is arguably worse than ever given the character of those owning and controlling legacy media, combined with the algorithmic biases built into the main digital platforms that so readily accommodate far-right disinformation and imagery. The Government's dire inheritance of a lethal cocktail of taxes at relatively high levels for the post-1945 era; deteriorating public services; depleted civic assets; atrophying high streets; and cumulatively high levels of public borrowing leaving the UK economy seriously exposed in international markets, have also contributed. However, such a defence inevitably wears thin with the passing of time. Another explanation for the lack of popularity centres on its failures of political leadership in developing a compelling over-arching narrative for how its policy will change the country for the better. This has led to calls for an overhaul of the Government's whole communication strategy. However, much of Starmer's time and energy as Prime Minister has had to be devoted, in co-ordination with other European and Commonwealth leaders, to managing the security threats posed not only by Vladimir Putin's state terrorism, but also from a rogue President in the White House susceptible to Russian propaganda and impulsive actions on the global stage. A Populist Revolt Polit...
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  Weaponizing Words: How the Trump Administration Used Language to Distort the Truth in Minnesota 29.01.2026 14min

  Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY If you – like me – have spent far too much time recently looking at a phone screen, replaying from different angles and from multiple different sources the last moments of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, as their lives were snuffed out by masked ICE agents in Minneapolis, then you probably already have a clear idea about what you saw. So, when such murders, or summary executions, as many might see them, are referred to as 'officer-involved shootings' in media reports, it certainly feels that the language being used is not doing justice to the events we see unfolding in front of our very eyes. And when Greg Bovino, the US Border Force Commander whose sartorial choices are not the only thing that have a whiff of Gestapo about them, says that the shooting of Alex Pretti was "a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement", it feels like a moment of jaw-dropping mendacity. Let's remember what the multiple videos of Pretti's shooting show: a man using his phone to film an ICE action on a street, stepping between the masked ICE agents to shield another observer who had been pushed over and then being pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground by several agents, apparently having his (legally owned and licensed) handgun removed from his belt while on the ground before being shot multiple times and killed. Any attempt to retell or write an account of an event will by its very nature encode a version of events that reflect different perspectives – both literal and ideological – and while I have tried to be as neutral as possible in my account above, I have made several significant vocabulary, syntax and punctuation choices, because I cannot attempt to mask my revulsion for the actions that I've seen, nor shake the sickening feeling that this is part of a wider authoritarian crackdown that is being sanctioned, encouraged and celebrated by those at the very top. We are all entitled to recast events in a way that reflects our own take on what happens, but what – I hope – most of us agree on is that we have to convey the events, actions and participants in a way that is at least truthful to a shared grasp of reality. Trump's Downfall Will Come Much Quicker Than Anyone Thinks The growing backlash against ICE's killing of Alex Pretti will be a turning point in public opinion towards the President, predicts Alexandra Hall Hall Alexandra Hall Hall Orwellian Language In a press conference shortly after Pretti's killing, Kristi Noem, Trump's Homeland Security Secretary claimed that "an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a nine millimetre semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm the suspect, but the armed suspect reacted violently". Meanwhile, White House adviser Stephen Miller posted on X that Pretti was a "would-be assassin" who "tried to murder federal law enforcement", a claim retweeted by Vice President JD Vance. Orwell gets overquoted all the time, but if you can't quote "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears" now, then when can you quote it? None of the videos show Pretti holding, let alone 'brandishing' a handgun (as Noem also claimed). In fact, the only people holding guns are the ICE agents, one of whom appeared to take Pretti's own handgun from his belt or holster shortly before the fatal shots, using it later in a picture shared by Government social media accounts to present evidence of the victim being armed and dangerous. As we know, Pretti's was not the first death in this current ICE crackdown, nor even the first in Minneapolis this month. Two weeks before, Renee Nicole Good, a woman involved in observing and attempting to head-off ICE snatch squads, was shot at almost point-blank range by another ICE agent. She died only a couple of blocks away from where George Floyd was murdered by the police in ...
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  Trump's Violent Assault on Minnesota Is an Operation in 'Reflexive Control' 28.01.2026 11min

  Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY The Trump administration chose Minnesota as ground zero for an operation that can best be described in the parlance of Washington DC as 'counter-programming'. That's shorthand for the use of Government power in an intentionally newsworthy way to change the media narrative away from another inconvenient story. In this case, they are executing a complex political approach which echoes a sophisticated Russian military strategy called 'reflexive control'. Developed in the Soviet Union, the primary goal of this strategy is to dominate the information space in order to force your opponent to voluntarily make bad decisions. When the US Government floods a major city with law enforcement agents, people with cameras on their cellphones are going to be there to oppose the movement, news outlets are going to cover the chaos. Soon after will follow the organizers, the activists, and the provocateurs who amplify these narratives. Reflexively, the media narrative will move towards this stimulus – and rightfully so – given the Government's illegal actions. EXCLUSIVE 'Trump Has Already Rigged the 2028 Presidential Election': US Defence Insider Regardless of how people vote, the chances of a Democrat Government coming to power in 2029 is now virtually nil, argues Brynn Tannehill Brynn Tannehill However, the voluntary bad decision Donald Trump wants to trigger is simple. He wants for the information space to stop focusing on his sex trafficking cover-up, his trillion dollar healthcare cut to fund equally massive tax cut to his elite political donors, and the White House's enormous consumption tax levies while dictating by Executive Order the transformation of America's heretofore strong economy into right-wing socialist paradise for loyal oligarchs. And that is how the Trump administration is using its counter-programming efforts to achieve reflexive control over the media narrative, the discussions of activists and the broader national conversation about politics. Trump and his regime are desperate to move away from their cover up of the Jeffrey Epstein files exposing a trans-Atlantic pedophile ring, desperate to deflect from their multiple major policy failures that are economically oppressing hundreds of millions of Americans. And this is the White House's only plan. Distraction Tactics What we are witnessing in Minnesota is the deadly use of counter-programming on a level not even seen during the first Trump administration. Minneapolis, surrounding the banks of the mighty Mississippi River, is part of its thriving Twin Cities metropolitan area, including the Minnesota state capital city of St. Paul lying just to its east along a bend of the river. Home to about 3.8 million residents, the Minneapolis region holds a global political relevance far greater than the size of its population owing to its concentration of the headquarters of 14 prominent companies in the Fortune 500 from 3M to Ecolab Inc to Target. Minneapolis is globally known for its notoriously awful relations between police and citizens of color, in the wake of international protests set off by one of its officers' murdering George Floyd, while his co-workers complicity watched for nine long minutes. What we are seeing in Minneapolis and throughout Minnesota is nothing short of using the full might of the American federal government's law enforcement powers to just redirect the national political narrative. How big has the operation grown? Recently, I learned from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey – who went viral for saying "ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis" – that the city only has roughly 600 sworn law enforcement officers on its city police force, and the ICE task force occupying the city numbers over 3,000 federal agents. Trump's Downfall Will Come Much Quicker Than Anyone Thinks The growing backlash against ICE's killing of Alex Pretti will be ...