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Every picture tells a story.
After the former Welsh Leader of Reform UK, Nathan Gill, recently pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery for receiving money to promote Kremlin narratives, Zia Yusuf, head of Reform's Department of Government Efficiency, told the BBC that "most people in the senior leadership team have never really heard of the guy" and that he was just "one of tens of thousands of people" the party's leader Nigel Farage "meets on an annual basis".
Then the photos began to circulate.
Gill was pictured at the Leave.EU group's party on the evening of the EU Referendum in June 2016, and one of the top four figures celebrating the victory of Farage's campaign on College Green outside Parliament on the morning after the vote.
There are videos of Farage supporting Gill for the leadership of Welsh UKIP, saying that he had "worked closely" with him and that he was "hard-working, honest, and loyal". He told the BBC in 2016 that his fellow MEP had "never, ever let me down" and that Gill "was honest as the day is long".
Pictures emerged of Farage campaigning for Gill as a candidate for UKIP's successor, the Brexit Party - also led by Farage - in Merthyr Tydfil in 2019, with footage showing them both walking around as Farage is questioned by Channel 4 News' Matt Frei on his funding streams.
Nathan Gill, then, was not just one of the "tens of thousands of people" the Reform Leader met every year.
And Byline Times can now reveal that, during the crucial period when Gill was most active, working directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin's most senior ally in Ukraine, he was also one of Nigel Farage's closest confidantes.
No Bit Part Player
Nathan Gill's Old Bailey guilty verdict followed his being stopped by counter-terrorism police at Manchester Airport in September 2021. A series of WhatsApp messages on Gill's seized devices revealed that he had been taking bribes, from December 2018 to July 2019, from a pro-Russian Ukrainian MP, Oleh Voloshyn.
Six months earlier, in May 2021, Gill's close associate, the Polish activist and lobbyist Janusz Gabriel Niedźwiecki, had also been detained by Poland's Internal Security Agency on charges of espionage for Russia.
Gill had made at least four trips to Ukraine and Moldova in 2018 under Niedźwiecki's auspices, speaking at parades and forums organised by pro-Russian separatists and Russian businessmen, with travel arranged by a Moscow travel agency.
But, according to the prosecution at the Old Bailey, the WhatsApp orders issued to Gill were part of a separate project: to support Viktor Medvedchuk.
Known as 'Moscow's Man in Ukraine', Medvedchuk is a senior Ukrainian politician and a personal friend of Putin, who is the godfather of his child Nadia.
Medvedchuk was sanctioned by the US and EU in 2014 for his role in supporting Russia's annexation of Crimea and backing separatist movements in eastern Ukraine. In 2019, he was already facing charges of treason in Ukraine.
In July 2019, only two weeks after Nathan Gill returned to the European Parliament representing Farage's new Brexit Party, he hosted a roundtable with other MEPs, in which Medvedchuk (filmed like other Gill hosted meetings by Medvedchuk's TV channels News One and 112 Ukraine) announced a new "peace plan" that would bring an end to the war that had been raging in eastern Ukraine - on Russian terms and by keeping the country firmly under Kremlin control.
This announcement was so important that Medveduk travelled the next day to Moscow to meet Putin, where the Kremlin recorded him as saying: "I presented my peace plan to the newly-elected European deputies from Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Bulgaria and Slovakia."
Though the plan failed and was followed by a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, Medvedchuk remained so key to Put...

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Since 6pm on Wednesday evening, I have spent every waking minute documenting Israel's illegal abduction of 455 international passengers on board the Global Sumud Flotilla, people I was forced to leave behind after my boat broke down on the final stretch.
You may have seen it mentioned in the British press: "Israel's naval ships intercept Gaza-bound flotilla" (BBC News). "Israeli navy intercepts and reroutes Gaza aid flotilla" (FT). One word was conspicuously missing from all headlines: "Israel illegally intercepts Gaza flotilla".
What occurred was unambiguously criminal. In 38 hours, 42 civilian boats were commandeered in international waters by machine gun-wielding soldiers. The unarmed passengers were taken against their will into Israeli territory, denied diplomatic access for over 24 hours and driven to a prison in the desert. They had been exercising lawful rights: to navigate the high seas under maritime law, and to carry aid towards famine under humanitarian law. They never entered Israeli waters, nor would they have, had they not been dragged there.
Piracy. That is how maritime law defines what happened. Under humanitarian law, blocking aid during famine falls under the remit of a war crime. But instead of calling it what it was, our media euphemistically dubbed it an 'interception'. If that is not whitewashing, I do not know what is.
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This is exactly why people sailed: much of our news media, like our governments, has become so implicated in the moral stain of Gaza's genocide that their crumbling defence is to normalise Israel's crimes. Now the global public have lost so much faith in them, that they have literally sailed into the arms of a genocidal army.
I can speak personally to the UK Government's spinelessness, as a passenger on-board the fleet while it was pummelled with drone attacks in high seas during the midnight hours spanning Tuesday to Wednesday last week. My mother called the Foreign Office in the days that followed, begging them to pledge protection for their citizens on the water; they said no.
Three weeks ago when I wrote this column from on-board, my main complaint was that there weren't more journalists with me, leaving news outlets free to diminish such attacks as 'alleged' and 'unverified'. But today I see our media's failings are far greater. Today I see how they legitimised the very propaganda that laid the groundwork for my fellow passengers' abduction.
The day before the midnight drone attacks, Israel's Government and media began referring to the aid ships as the "Hamas flotilla", launching a series of tweets containing what they claimed to be "evidence" that the movement had "terrorist" organisers and intent. In reality, these were petty smears seeking to prove guilt-by-association, rather than documentary proof that the fleet carried anything other than aid and civilians. Nevertheless, baseless lies were elevated to the status of household news by Western journalists.
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LBC ran the headline: "Greta freedom flotilla 'partially funded' by Hamas, Israel claims". The Telegraph wrote: "The Israeli government has repeatedly said the flotilla is a Hamas operation" tailing it with the telling caveat: "without evidence". As if it isn't fatally dangerous to publish such slander when Israel maniacally hurls "Hamas" ...

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There was much about Labour's conference in Liverpool this week that was shocking, if not entirely surprising. The unbalanced ratio of party members to myriad corporate lobbyists, the lack of meaningful votes, the surface level chirpiness hiding a much deeper gloom below the surface and the absence of any real plan to get Labour and the country out of the mess it's now in.
Sure, Keir Starmer gave a better speech than his previous efforts, but I doubt a line of it will be remembered and virtually none of it will be built on in any systematic way, because this is not a leadership that does systematic thinking other than in the most tribal and hyper-factional way. The DNA of the Starmer project simply won't allow it.
The party's problems goes back to the origins of the Starmer project. Over long one-to-one conversations about the future of the Labour Party back in 2018 Morgan McSweeney, now the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, then the Director of Labour Together think tank, would explain that the future of the party was 'Corbynism without Corbyn'.
The rationale for this was that the 2008 global financial crash had changed everything, a more vigorous social democracy was needed, just one that was far more professional than Jeremy Corbyn could seemingly ever manage. It sounded both plausible and genuine.
But more than once McSweeney would go off on a tangent about an obscure radical left online publication called The Canary, which he seemed to feel had an overbearing and dangerous influence on the mood of the Party and the left, and needed to be shot down. It seemed a strange obsession which then seemed unworthy of much attention. However, in hindsight the signs of what was to come later were already in place.
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As the years have passed the real focus of McSweeney and his small clique of hyper factionalists has become clear. And that focus is to not to change the country for the better, but to destroy the whole of the left in Labour for good.
Here the Canary becomes both exemplar and metaphor. Canaries are outriders, used to anticipate and warn of danger lurking ahead. In taking out everyone but their narrow and therefore brittle hyper-faction, they've created a Labour Party and a Government with almost no breadth, no air to breathe, no creativity, little imagination, almost no challenge and virtually no accountability.
Keir Starmer was jumped on as the candidate who could front up McSweeney's plan, with Labour Together funding exhaustive polling of the party membership to show they wanted a left wing but professional leader, he was able to fool them into voting for 'Corbynism without Corbyn'.
Once victory was secured, they could turn on the very people they had wooed. Members would be kicked out of the party on an industrial scale, candidates would be vetted to fit only their mould and supported with huge amounts of money and rules and positions would be twisted for any factional advantage.
This level of factionalism is unprecedented in the party's history. Labour has always had factions jockeying for influence. From Blairites to Corbynites, both of whom had a strong sense of vision for the party and the country and therefore the confidence to tolerate competing views, there was a clear desire to press agendas but never based on the total exclusion or all other voices. Labour has always been plural and better for it.
Today's pathological fac...

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The Labour conference fringe event was billed as an audience with the peer and 'Blue Labour' guru Lord Glasman about how the movement he founded had taken over the party.
The problem was Lord Glasman told them unequivocally that he didn't think it had.
Instead he suggested that while Keir Starmer's Government might be having a "Blue Labour moment" it had fallen well short of proposing the radical change that would be required if Labour was to retain power and regain the votes of working class people from Reform.
The event had been organised by Unherd, the media organisation founded by Conservative hedge funder and GB News co-owner Paul Marshall, which promises to "give a platform to the overlooked, the downtrodden and the traduced."
What the audience of Labour members, lobbyists and journalists got from the Blue Labour peer was a tour de force of what he saw as the failures of British governments from the times of Thatcher to the present day.
Blue Labour on MAGA Square: Maurice Glasman's Journey to Trumpism
Jon Bloomfield and David Edgar look at the nationalist populist drift of Labour's anti-progressive tendency
Jon Bloomfield and David Edgar
His told his audience that his political awakening came when he was 18 and Thatcher won the election. "What people have forgotten is that the first 18 months of her Government was a catastrophe" citing rising unemployment and inflation only to be turned round later by the Falklands War.
He was similarly scathing about Tony Blair's Labour Gobvernment, warning his audience that anybody using the word 'New' to describe the party under Blair was not to be trusted as there really wasn't anything new about it - more a continuation of a longstanding political consensus.
Glasman blamed Thatcher and Blair equally for the globalisation and deindustrialisation of the UK, saying that while Thatcher started it, "Blair consummated it".
As for New Labour's song slogan "Things can only get better" he described it as "idiotic optimism". No wonder when I mentioned his name to Alastair Campbell, one of the architects of New Labour, who was wandering nearby after the session, I got a very frosty reception about a man he thought had lost his way.
While Glasman had little positive to say about recent governments and the ministers, the one exception was the new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who he praised for her commitments to stop the boats, "secure the borders" and deal with the implementation of the European Convention of Human Rights, adding that while he was "in favour of the rule of law" he was not in favour of "the rule of lawyers".
He also praised Mahmood, who has been tipped on the right of a party as a future leader, for what he described as her interest in developing a ten year industrial strategy - something well outside of her current brief.
This all brought Johnny Ball, Unherd's political journalist interviewing him, to ask the question "Would he join Reform?" to which Glasman replied that he wouldn't - citing the Farage's sympathies for "the despot Putin" and his actions in Ukraine.
However, while he refused to endorse Reform, he did condemn Starmer for calling Nigel Farage a racist. Indeed after the fringe finished he went as far to apologise personally on GB News to Nigel Farage for what he called Starmer's "disgraceful slur" of the Reform leader.
Insisting that any politician who calls people racist or sexist is in the world of name-calling 'student politics', Glasman also took aim at the current media obsession with who should lead the Labour Party. In his view this is irrelevant and the real question is about which strategy is needed to save and revive the country. As a result, he told his audience he would not be voting in Labour's ongoing Deputy Leadership contest.
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In front of the Parliament building in Chișinău, a monumental white concrete structure built during the Soviet era and designed to resemble an open book, several hundred protesters wave Moldovan flags. On this autumn afternoon, their cries echo down the central avenue: "Freedom!" and "Moldova!" Many have come to support Igor Dodon, the former, pro-Russian, President, who disputes his defeat in the parliamentary elections on Sunday evening.
Close to the Kremlin and regularly accused of being Moscow's mouthpiece for discrediting the ruling power in Moldova, Dodon embodies an opposition that makes no secret of its sympathies for Vladimir Putin. His supporters denounce electoral fraud, but for the Moldovan authorities, the real and massive interference took place elsewhere: online.
Disinformation articles, fake videos of politicians, cyberattacks, Russian-funded bots on social media - throughout the weekend, the country was bombarded with content designed to undermine confidence in the election.
To no avail. President Maia Sandu's center-right Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), in power since 2021, won 50.20% of the vote, according to figures from the Electoral Commission. In this country of 2.4 million inhabitants, wedged between EU and NATO member nation Romania, war torn Ukraine, and the pro-Russian separatist region of Transnistria, the vote was seen as a test for Russian hybrid warfare.
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Ballot Battle Fought on Cell Phone Screens
To gauge the extent of online disinformation, all you have to do is accompany Mirula Burcalu. A foreign language student under a long beige coat and square glasses perched on her nose. As she crosses the center of Chișinău, she sits down on a bench in the cathedral park, and takes out her phone.
"Look at this one," she says, opening TikTok. After only five videos, her news feed is covered with pro-Russian content. On the screen, a man films himself in his living room, confidently denouncing President Maia Sandu, "He is saying that President Sandu has hidden million-dollar luxury properties on the East Coast," Mirula translates. She swipes. "On that one, they are calling Maia Sandu a liar."
For Mirula, the mechanism is relentless. "Moldovans are exposed to this narrative, no matter what they do," she sighs. She describes a succession of sequences in which the algorithm highlights accusations against President Sandu: embezzlement, betrayal of the country's interests. "It's like a nightmare," she says, "because Moldova deserves to be in the European Union, but these videos are trying to convince people otherwise."
Moldova - Testing Ground for Russian Hybrid Warfare in Europe
On September 9, Maia Sandu, invited to speak before the European Parliament, estimated that Moscow had "spent the equivalent of one per cent of Moldova's GDP to influence the 2024 presidential elections," or approximately €166 million.
"The Kremlin's goal is clear: to take over Moldova through the ballot box, use it against Ukraine, and turn the country into a springboard for hybrid attacks against the European Union," she explained to MEPs. Although nothing has been quantified for these elections, Maia Sandu believes that Russia's influence campaign for Sunday's elections was "unprecedented".
For many analysts, Moldova has become a prime testing ground for Moscow in its hybrid warfare in Europe. In his office in central Chișinău, Valeriu P...

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Whatever becomes of Trump's twenty-point peace plan, it marks an important turning point in the conflict in Gaza.
It's been two long years since Hamas fighters crashed through the borders into Israel, attacking attendees at a music festival and local kibbutzim and towns. This was not a spontaneous act of desperate individuals who had given up hope. Instead, it was a planned raid that was disastrous not just for their victims but for the organisation itself. Not only has Hamas itself been virtually destroyed as a fighting force, but its main allies and backers in Lebanon and Iran have also suffered serious blows. And as for the Palestinian people in whose name Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, the price they have paid for Hamas' miscalculation is almost unimaginably terrible.
From the very beginning, there was a way out. Calls for a ceasefire and the return of hostages were made within the first few weeks of the fighting. There were some early hostage releases, with Israel releasing Palestinian prisoners in exchange. There were brief ceasefires. Both sides almost certainly knew what the eventual deal would be to end this chapter of the longer war between Israel and the Palestinians. Many countries, including nearly all the Arab countries, were keen to help negotiate an exchange of hostages. But until this week, there was little hope that this would happen anytime soon.
This is, on the face of it, quite strange. The vast majority of Israelis have been demanding that their Government make a deal to bring the hostages home. Enormous street demonstrations are held on a regular basis in Tel Aviv and elsewhere. The slogans the demonstrators adopted were not about calling on Hamas to do anything. The demand of the tens of thousands of Israelis in the streets was always that their government do what it takes to bring the hostages home. Increasingly, that demand was accompanied by a call on Netanyahu to end the war as well.
And despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Israelis now support the 'end the war' demand, Netanyahu still did not budge. The war went on, week after week, with no end in sight. Why? Probably because as soon as the war ends, Netanyahu will likely face elections in which his coalition will be defeated - as nearly all the polls show. He's being challenged not only by the usual crowd of centre-leftists and centre-rightists, but also by a resurgent Israeli Left. The two historic parties of that Left, Labour and Meretz, were on the cusp of disappearing from the scene, but have united and grown much stronger during the last couple of years.
And Netanyahu will also face the Israeli criminal justice system, which he distrusts and detests. He risks winding up, like at least one former prime minister and one former president before him, spending some time in a prison cell. This is something he is keen to prevent - at almost all costs.
There is a historical precedent for what might happen next.
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Hamas timed their attack - almost certainly intentionally - to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of what Israelis call the "Yom Kippur War". Back in October 1973, the Egyptian and Syrian Governments, still stinging from their defeat in the 1967 Six Day War, launched surprise attacks on Israel's southern and northern borders.
Like the Hamas raids, those armies crashed through Israeli defence lines that seem, in retrospect, to...

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A "mass action" against the Palestine Action ban will take place in Trafalgar Square this Saturday (4th October), with 1,500 people having signed a pledge making to join the action and risk arrest by pledging their support for the banned organisation.
They will, as in previous protests, hold signs saying "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action." Organisers Defend Our Juries believe hundreds more will join the action on the day without registering in advance - making it the largest such protest yet.
Over 1,600 people have been arrested for peaceful sign-holding under the Terrorism Act 2000 since the Palestine Action ban came into effect on 5th July - more than six times the total number of counter-terror arrests in the whole of last year, according to Defend Our Juries. The mass action in Trafalgar Square could therefore see the total number of people arrested so far nearly double.
Responding to Byline Times at a press conference on Wednesday (1st October), Saeed Taji Farouky, a Palestinian filmmaker and journalist, said: "The level of anger, the level of despair amongst the British public, is unlike anything I've seen in 30 years of activism for Palestine. So I have no doubt that Defend Our Juries can continue as long as it takes."
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"It's very clear that the government has said they won't back down. It's very clear that Defend Our Juries have said they won't back down - not only about Palestine in particular, but about the foundations of British democracy, about the right to freedom of speech in this country."
He added: "Defend Our Juries plan to continue the protests and escalate in terms of numbers, if that's necessary."
And the Palestinian activist believes that if Defend Our Juries was banned or stopped their campaign, "you'd still see 1,500 to 2,000 people show up at Parliament Square once a month, taking action."
"It has become almost an autonomous movement in itself. It's a bottom-up civil disobedience movement that is more steadfast than anything I've seen in years in this country."
Martin Cavanagh (PCS Union National President) also attended the press conference. He told a clutch of reporters: "We have been pushing [for unions] to attend the general Palestine protests. We've been pushing the trade union movement to take a far more proactive and more vocal stance over the last two years.
"We were there at the very beginning - on day one, ourselves and Unite were the only two trade unions represented at that very first national demonstration, and it has been growing since."
Asked if he believed union chiefs should risk arrest by attending, he added: "Are we as a union pushing general secretaries to take part in the action? The answer is that unions and general secretaries will make their personal choice about what action they can take in pursuit of getting the government to stop the arms sales."
The Met Police has been contacted for comment.
'BBC's Language Around "Palestinian Journalists" Is an Egregious Double-Standard'
Usually reporters close to a story and source are celebrated for their insight - in Gaza, it is framed as 'bias', argues Karishma Patel
Karishma Patel
Defend Our Juries argues Palestine Action was banned "not because it posed any threat to the public, but because it threatened the profits of the arms companies enabling Israel's genocide." Arms firms were among those recently revealed to have lobbied for th...

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A key sponsor of Tommy Robinson's large far-right 'Unite the Kingdom' rally in central London is a convicted fraudster alleged to be behind two cryptocurrency scandals - so-called 'rug-pulls'.
Rug-pulls are schemes in which the owner of a cryptocurrency inflates the value by hyping up the currency's potential, only to pull the rug by cashing out their coins for a profit, causing the value to plummet and leaving everyone else with worthless tokens.
The far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, otherwise known as 'Tommy Robinson' recently gathered between 110,000 and 150,000 people on the streets of London for the 'Unite the Kingdom' rally on September 13th. The rally featured speakers from far-right movements around the world, including far-right billionaire Elon Musk and the French politician Eric Zemmour, whose party Reconquest is considered more extreme than Marine Le Pen's National Rally.
Robinson's rally was "sponsored" by two cryptocurrency firms, Athena Bitcoin Global and Just FOMO, as well as V Social, a social network promoting "free speech" itself owned Just FOMO's director, and Advance UK, Ben Habib's right-wing split from Reform UK.
Byline Times can reveal that Ashley Ward, the owner of Just FOMO, is a convicted fraudster alleged to be behind two so-called cryptocurrency rug pulls.
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Ward appears to have been previously involved in scams operating under his birth name Ashley Keable in his hometown of Leicester, before his foray into crypto.
Various website bios including a Tumblr blog, a Flickr account, and a profile on the website Stage 32 suggest Keable was working as a filmmaker. The websites have photos of Ward under the name Ashley Keable.
In an interview promoting his other (seemingly dormant) cryptocurrency Roo Coin, Keable claimed that he had previously been a filmmaker. On Companies House, he is listed as the owner of Film Peeps Media Group a video production and web services company that dissolved in 2021, and as the owner of Blighty Media, a creative agency which dissolved in 2014.
Keable had previously been jailed for 12 months after admitting to 15 eBay frauds involving jewellery and digital cameras. In 2010, Judge Simon Hammond told Keable: "It was a carefully worked-out scam and carefully planned - a serious form of confidence trick."
In 2012, the Leicester Mercury reported that Keable had been convicted for the second time of fraud after scamming a professional photographer out of £1,800 by advertising a camera on eBay that he did not have.
Operating under his new name Ashley Ward and the username Toshi, he launched crypto firm FOMO Network in 2024 and built hype for the project on Discord and Telegram, while people invested in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and the FOMO cryptocurrency behind it.
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The process of building hype for the currency also involved sponsoring a Tommy Robinson protest on 1st June 2024, with Ward/Keable (as we shall refer to him from now on) bragging on Telegram that he had access to "the biggest names in politics". Footage of the 1st June protest shows Robinson speaking in Parliament Square on a stage bearing the Just FOMO logo on either side.
But on 10th July last year, the value of FOMO crashed as liquidity was withdrawn from the currency in a move that the site Holy Coins described as a suspected rug pull.
Messages in the FOMO network's Discord an...

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There are still four years to go until the next general election, but for anyone attending Labour's conference in Liverpool it has often felt like Nigel Farage is already comfortably in Number 10.
At fringe events and on the conference stage Cabinet Ministers have spoken endlessly of the Reform leader and his four Members of Parliament, while the thoughts and wishes of Labour's 400 elected MPs have firmly taken a back seat.
In her first conference speech Labour's new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood declared that she would have to get "tough" on migrants in order to fend off Reform, telling Labour party members that they "may not like" what she had to do.
So just days after the Prime Minister declared that Farage's mass deportation plans were "racist" and "immoral", Mahmood instead unveiled her own toned-down version of those plans, in which migrants will now be forced to wait ten years and conduct compulsory "voluntary" work, in order to avoid also being expelled from the country.
Unveiling what was billed in the press as a "major crackdown on migration" Mahmood announced that migrants would also be barred from claiming any benefits whatsoever if they wanted to ever be given leave to remain in the country.
The only way to beat the racists in Reform, we seemed to be told, was to give them almost everything they wanted.
And yet while the threat of Reform was repeatedly raised on stage, the Prime Minister himself appeared to reserve an almost greater level of disdain for what he described as the "extreme" left, who he labelled "snake oil merchants" who hated their country.
Speaking on Sky News, the Prime Minister's right hand man in Downing Street, Darren Jones, warned that "the progressive movement outside of the Labour Party" must understand that "populism on the left… risks taking us down a much darker path for our country".
When Downing Street briefed the press last week that he would launch a "progressive fightback" it wasn't clear that what he really wanted to do was to launch a fightback against progressives.
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An Alternative Path
Not everyone appeared to agree with this strategy. Across the conference fringes Labour's Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham beguiled Labour members with the suggestion that, just perhaps, the Government could be doing a few things that they, rather than Nigel Farage, wanted them to do. Perhaps it would be possible for a Labour Government with a huge landslide majority and several more years to play with, to actually cut living costs, change the electoral system and move back towards the EU.
Such "snake oil" was not warmly received, however, with Cabinet Ministers and Downing Street aides pouring bile into journalists' ears about Burnham's preposterous suggestion that a Labour Government could actually do some things that Labour MPs, members and voters wanted.
In his speech, the Prime Minister strongly resisted such calls for what he described as "unfunded tax cuts or unfunded spending" saying that the "fiscal rules" holding them back from doing the sorts of things Burnham and others were calling for were "non-negotiable".
Instead Starmer offered vague promises to "rewire the economy" in order to give voters "agency over the state" at some indeterminate point in the future. Unlike back in the Blair era, when ministers used conference speeches to announce and promote popular new schemes and policies, there was n...

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What is the idea behind the podcast and why are you launching it now?
My dear friend and colleague, Mairi Clare Rodgers, said I should experiment with a podcast that creates a space for people to discuss, in long-form, in a comfortable, non-combative way. We are at this moment, culturally, politically - a scary moment - that feels a little bit too much like the 1930s, and that is where the concept of the 'speakeasy' came from. There are some very, very polarising things happening on the streets, in mainstream politics even, and people who are interested in resistance need a place to be themselves, to talk critically in a comfortable environment, and that's the concept behind the podcast.
Do you think there is any exaggeration in comparing this moment to the 1930s? Why do you believe that politics and society are at such a point again?
I hope I am exaggerating but, to my mind - I'm 56 years old and have been quite politically aware since my childhood - I think this is the scariest moment in terms of the rise of the far-right, not just in the UK but internationally.
The populist hard men can beam themselves in from Silicon Valley to a demonstration in central London, can inspire and organise online. Wealth and power is more concentrated than ever - and if you have got wealth and power, and you want to hang on to it in the face of legitimate grievance on the part of millions and millions of people on the planet, the far-right strategy is to divide. It's an old trick, which helps the wealthy and the powerful - but it doesn't end well for anybody else.
When you see a pattern developing around the world of these hard, supposedly charismatic, leaders who claim a direct line to the 'will of the people', and therefore want to cut across institutions which they consider elite and corrupt, whether it is parliaments and other legislatures, this is what makes it feel like the 1930s to me. And it is not just rhetoric anymore - it is not just the attack on these institutions and on 'activist lawyers' and 'unelected judges' and 'the blob' - we are now seeing it on the streets, spikes in hate crime, and a toxicity of discourse where there isn't room for reasonable disagreement or discussion.
There isn't enough of a consensus about the rules of the game. In the end, for me, the difference between a democrat and a populist of left or right is whether you respect fundamental rights and freedoms and the rule of law. When you don't, anything goes.
You talk to people of different political persuasions in the podcast. Why is this so important at a moment like this?
The podcast is a series of interviews with people with different democratic political persuasions from me. We've got [former SNP Scottish First Minister] Nicola Sturgeon. I'm obviously not a Scottish nationalist - I believe in self-determination, but I would be very sad to see the fracturing of the United Kingdom at a time when, it seems to me, that the planet needs more collectivism rather than fragmentation - but she also speaks about progressive politics, her belief in human rights, her concerns about the climate emergency. So hopefully listeners will hear a reasonable discussion between people with different politics, but with things in common.
She speaks personally about the price of being a very senior woman in politics, which I felt quite moved by because I've seen it with other friends and colleagues, like Diane Abbott. The price that people pay for choosing that path, which is not a path I've ever been on because I'm an unelected peer… They pay a price in the bruising hatefulness, the misogyny.
We have Charlotte Owen [the then 30-year-old who was appointed as a Conservative peer in 2023] who had a terribly bruising experience when she was first appointed to the House of Lords by Boris Johnson as a former Number 10 specia...

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Anti-corruption campaigners and the Liberal Democrats are calling for fresh investigations into Russian interference in British politics, after Reform UK's former leader in Wales admitted to taking bribes to make statements in favour of Russia.
Last Friday's guilty plea in the trial of Nathan Gill, Reform UK's former leader in Wales, demonstrates the "real risks of foreign interference and corruption" in Britain's politics, according to the monitoring group Spotlight on Corruption.
Appearing at the Old Bailey last week, Gill admitted he accepted corrupt payments in exchange for making pro-Russia statements in 2018 and 2019 as a UKIP Member of the European Parliament when Nigel Farage was leader. Gill also represented north Wales in the Welsh Parliament for the Reform predecessor party. The prosecution successfully argued he received bribes from Oleg Voloshyn, a former Ukrainian official under ousted pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Nathan Gill pleaded guilty to eight out of nine counts under the Bribery Act, admitting receiving financial advantages in the form of money between December 2018 and July 2019 which constituted "improper performance" of his role as an elected official. He is due to be sentenced on 21st November.
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The Liberal Democrats' Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Calum Miller has now said a new investigation should be launched looking into potential ties between Nigel Farage, Reform UK and Russia following the latest revelations. The party has said that a review by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee should be completed and laid before Parliament before the next General Election.
News outlet Nation.Cymru revealed in 2023 that Gill had been on multiple trips organised by people suspected of being Russian agents, including Ukraine and Moldova.
Susan Hawley, Executive Director of Spotlight on Corruption, said the UK must ensure that it has "robust, and well-resourced law enforcement response across the board to tackle corruption and electoral interference."
"The Government also needs to be far more transparent about the levels of foreign interference that the UK faces, and what it is doing to tackle it. It should be reporting annually to parliament on this," she added.
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Keir Starmer's Government's refusal to explicitly condemn the Reform leader's plans to tear thousands of families and communities apart is only clearing his path to Downing Street, argues Adam Bienkov
Adam Bienkov
It comes after Reform boss Zia Yusuf appeared to dodge questions about the issue on Monday morning after BBC Breakfast showed a series of photos of Nigel Farage campaigning with Nathan Gill during previous Welsh elections.
Farage was previously paid to appear on Russia Today before it was banned in the UK in 2022. The Reform UK leader also previously declared that Putin is the world leader he admires the most. Farage led UKIP and served in the European Parliament with Gill, though there is no suggestion the former was involved in illegality.
Calum Miller, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, said: "The revelations in recent days show the lengths to which Russia will go to subvert our democracy and influence our politics. There is a strong case for the Intelligence and Security Committee to launch a new inquiry into Russian interference in our politics,...

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It will be very easy for some to dismiss US President Donald Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza, and there are dozens of reasons why the plan could fall apart.
Hamas probably won't accept it. Even if they do, they might not be able to deliver on all of the commitments expected from them - for example, they claim that they no longer know the whereabouts of all the Israeli hostages. Some of their members, or members of other militant factions in Gaza - such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad - may prefer to fight on, defying their leaders' wishes.
In Israel, right-wing extremists will be willing it to fail, and will pounce upon any opportunity to proclaim that Hamas has breached the terms. They may be willing to bring down Benjamin Netanyahu's Government, rather than give up on their dream of annexing all of Gaza and the West Bank. They might demand a high price for their support, such as a commitment to more settlements on Palestinian land.
The Israeli Prime Minister himself probably only went along with the proposal following his meeting at the White House in order to please Trump, and buy himself political time.
He has already reneged on certain aspects of it, for example reiterating his opposition to Palestinian statehood, which is mentioned in the plan as a possible long-term outcome, and declaring that Israeli Defence Forces will be allowed to stay on in Gaza, contrary to what is stated in the plan.
Netanyahu will doubtless be delighted to latch onto any foot-dragging by Hamas to declare that the plan has failed.
There are also dozens of elements of the plan which are less than satisfactory.
Trump is not known for his attention to detail or patience - making it doubtful whether he is best suited to be the head of the proposed "Board of Peace" overseeing the process.
Some will question the proposed involvement of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
There is no explicit commitment to a two-state solution.
There are many unanswered questions which have always bedevilled previous peace attempts - for example, the future status of Jerusalem, the size and shape of any future Palestinian state, the status of settlements in the West Bank, the future role of the Palestinian Authority, and whether Palestinians abroad will be given any 'right of return'.
Anyone with knowledge of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is probably right to be pessimistic about the chances of success.
And yet, what alternative do we have?
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Anyone like me, who is sickened by the bloodshed and destruction of the past two years, must yearn for a way to bring the conflict to an end.
America is the only player with the power and connections to bring all the sides together. Trump personally has forged unusual ties with leaders across the region, which he can leverage to secure support for the deal.
And I believe that there are many core aspects of the deal which make it a good starting point.
Points in Support of Trump's Gaza Plan
It is right to insist that Hamas must give up the hostages. Their seizure and prolonged detention has been illegitimate and barbaric. It is unrealistic to expect Israel to agree to any kind of permanent end to the conflict without their release.
It is also right to insist that Hamas is no longer allowed any future role in the governance of Gaza. Their horrific actions on 7 October 2023 made it unacceptable for them to stay in power. But, even before that, their rule has been oppressive, undemocratic, and disastrous for Gazans. By their own actions, they have shown themselves completely unconcerned for the welfare of either...

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For two weeks, the skies over Kyiv have been quiet. Too quiet. Each day, the silence feels heavier, like something pressing down. Everyone knows it won't last. So when the attack finally comes - loud, violent, expected - there's no panic. Just a kind of grim relief. At least it's not hanging over us anymore.
For close to ten hours, the staccato hammering of heavy machine guns rattled the windows in downtown Kyiv. Their targets, the black, delta-winged Shahed drones, with the high-pitched whine of their two-stroke engines, have earned them the nickname 'mopeds'.
Every so often, a thunderous boom rolled through the flats. Plaster flakes sifted from the ceiling; the acrid tang of cordite clung to the cold night air. Iskander ballistic missiles - 700 kilograms of high explosive packed into each warhead - tore into sleeping blocks with surgical brutality. The mopeds and the Iskanders aren't hunting soldiers; they stalk kitchens, bedrooms, playgrounds. Their aim is simple: terror and death.
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When daylight broke, I drove across town. Autumn rain mingled with the smoke, settling on weary residents who shuffled through the ruins. The night's chaos was over; It was time to count the cost.
In a quiet suburb of western Kyiv, my stomach churned. The sounds were achingly familiar: diesel engines straining, steel tracks grinding, buckets tearing through concrete and brick - sifting through the rubble of people's lives.
The scene was devastation, absolute. Rubble and walls bled together until the street itself had vanished. The neat line of family homes was gone, replaced by a tide of brick dust, splintered beams, twisted aluminium and glass that cracked beneath every step. On the roof of a blackened car sat a child's surf boot - absurd, tragic - above panels crumpled like cheap foil.
On the second floor of a shrapnel-scarred building, an elderly woman stood at a glassless window. Our eyes met for a moment. Still in shock, she didn't register the camera - her gaze drifted back to the wreckage of what had once been her life.
Radios crackled as search and rescue teams in orange boiler suits tried to impose order on chaos. Against ruin on this scale, the broom seemed absurd. Yet, while earthmovers clawed at the wreckage, civilians pressed forward with brushes in hand, beginning the impossible task of sweeping up the remnants of Putin's ire.
A solitary figure in neat trainers, a black raincoat and orange gardening gloves stood staring over the wreckage, as if the enormity of it had just struck him. I watched. The moment passed. He bent again to his broom, shifting rubble into tidy piles.
It is difficult to see what Putin thinks he gains from these attacks. If the goal is to grind civilians into submission through exhaustion, he has already failed. The strikes are devastating, but their effect is to harden resolve and weld communities together against him. On the front lines, Ukrainian soldiers are tenacious and formidable. In their homes and cities, they are unbreakable.

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Europe is watching a perfect storm unfold on its doorstep. Ukraine's fertile black earth, enriched by centuries of manure, is teeming with microbes. To add to this, drones hover above the trenches, preventing swift evacuation of the wounded. This causes wounded soldiers to lie longer in dirt, suffering multiple infections that antibiotics can no longer banish. The result amongst Ukrainian troops is more than troublesome: a surge in amputations, sepsis and deaths.
What is emerging is being described as nothing less than trench warfare in a post-antibiotic era, where hygiene practices are forced back to those of Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War.
This was the warning sounded in London this week at the Lessons From the Frontline conference, held at the Sir Michael Uren Hub, Imperial College's White City campus. Doctors, historians and policymakers spoke of Ukraine as the world's first "post-antibiotic war".
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Scientific data is offering up little in the way of comfort. Ukraine was already battling high antimicrobial resistance (AMR) before 2022. The full scale invasion multiplied the scourge.
And now, with soldiers falling wounded on soil alive with bacteria, their injuries pressed into fields fertilised for centuries, the subsequent infections are proving impossible to treat.
"Ukraine is farmland that has had manure dug into it for hundreds of years," says Emily Mayhew, a medical historian at Imperial College.
It is highly bacterially active, and people fall onto the ground, much as they did on the Western Front. Infected wounds now resemble those of a pre-antibiotic era. I look at Ukraine and I see a post-antibiotic war
Emily Mayhew, medical historian at Imperial College.
Hygiene has also, in parts, collapsed as Ukraine's medical infrastructure has buckled. Hospitals are overcrowded, nurses overstretched, sterilisation crippled by bombardment and power cuts. Transfers of patients scatter microbes across the country.
"The war has amplified this exponentially," says Hailie Uren, an Australian-born consultant for the Ukrainian Ministry of Health. "By the time they reach western Ukraine, many carry six completely resistant bacteria. Around 30% cannot be treated with antibiotics at all."
The pathogens are formidable. Klebsiella pneumoniae, responsible for one in five AMR deaths worldwide, has in Ukraine mutated into strains impervious to every drug.
Eight in ten wounded soldiers now carry the NDM-1 resistance gene, ten times Europe's average. Acinetobacter baumannii, once nicknamed "Iraqibacter," has resurfaced, unbowed even by carbapenems, the last line of defence. Together with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, these form the dreaded "extensively drug-resistant" category.
For patients, the consequences are long-lasting.
Oleksander Bezverkhny, a soldier, lost both legs and endured five bouts of sepsis after treatment in three hospitals. His survival required 100 operations and rare imported drugs. Many others are not so fortunate: mortality rates for such infections can exceed 50%.
Singurgeons are increasingly turning to amputation as the only viable option, with as many as 100,000 amputations estimated amongst the war wounded.
As Dr Danylo Turkevych, a Ukrainian trauma surgeon who works at the Superhumans rehabilitation center in Lviv, Ukraine, says: "If you have a patient treated for six or twelve months and you still have continuous infectious complications, often the only solution is amputation. People get tired, the risk of sepsis grows, and sometimes it is simply easier for the patient to lose the limb an...

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For years, the political centre has comforted itself with a story: that public mistrust is irrational. It is the product, we are told, of populism, social media echo chambers, bad-faith actors on the far right.
But look more closely and you will find a different story. This mistrust is not irrational at all. It is rooted in the lived experience of a public that has seen too much, been told too many half-truths, and been left to bear the cost when the promises of government have failed to materialise.
In my recent Robin Cook Memorial Lecture, I called this the "integrity gap" - the widening gulf between what governments say and what people believe. Cook's resignation over Iraq was one of those moments when the gap became undeniable. Two decades later, it has become the defining feature of British political life.
The public see a political class whose proximity to wealth has corroded its independence and whose language of public service has become a hollowed-out ritual. It is the same political culture which, now dominates No 10, which insisted Peter Mandelson's 'qualities' outweighed the risks.
This is not paranoia. It is the reality of a system where the dividing line between the state and wealth, oligarchs and corporate power has been systematically erased.
Consider the boards of government departments under this Labour government - the very bodies responsible for setting strategy across Whitehall. Two-thirds of their "non-executive directors" or NEDs, are drawn from corporate backgrounds. A third come from finance and professional services - including senior figures from Barclays, Europe's most fossil-fuel-invested bank, and PwC, the consultancy caught passing secret government documents to clients to help them avoid tax.
The lead NED at the Department for Transport is the former CEO of BAE Systems. The chairman of Ineos sits on the Ministry of Defence board. The lobbying director of British Airways - Britain's biggest polluter - sits at the heart of the Cabinet Office even as his company leads efforts to weaken climate regulations. Across the Department of Health, not one NED is a medic. Two are corporate lobbyists for private healthcare.
This is not a glitch. It is how the system now works.
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And it does not stop there. The New Statesman's recent investigation into the Tony Blair Institute shows how deep this integration now runs. Since 2021, the institute has taken hundreds of millions from Oracle founder Larry Ellison. Its staff now sit inside government. Its proposals - from a national data library to the restructuring of NHS systems - read less like disinterested advice and more like a business plan for Oracle's global health ambitions.
This is not lobbying at the edges. This is corporate power wired into the state's decision-making architecture.
Against this backdrop, the government's drive for digital ID cards is more than just another technocratic reform. It is a decision that would permanently change the relationship between citizen and state. The arguments against are well known: function creep, weak oversight, disproportionate harm to marginalised groups, and the normalisation of what Gaby Hinsliff has called a "checkpoint society." Combine an ID register with facial recognition, predictive policing and AI-driven data profiling, and you have created an infrastructure that any authoritarian successor could weaponise at the fl...

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Nigel Farage's "billions of pounds worth of unfunded spending commitments" comes out top in analysis of weak spots which could hit support for the party hardest in future elections, according to a new mega-poll of voters.
YouGov research for progressive group Best for Britain found that potential Reform backers rated a message criticising Farage's spending plans and economic credentials as the 'most convincing' almost 3-in-5 (57%) times.
Best for Britain note that Farage has "previously voiced strong support for Liz Truss' disastrous 2022 minibudget, [while] Reform UK [have] made billions in un-costed spending commitments."
In June last year, the Institute for Fiscal Studies noted that Reform UK's plans implied spending an extra £141 billion a year on tax cuts and other pledges, paid for by a supposed £156bn of savings in Government spending, and assuming vastly increased tax revenue from economic growth. The IFS thinktank said the party's plans were based on "extremely optimist assumptions" and the sums "do not add up".
Farage's hints about moving to a privatised health care system, and his push for a hard Brexit are also effective messages, among those considering or intending to vote Reform but who are most likely to be persuaded to vote for other parties.
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The findings also signal a potential roadmap for the Conservatives to win back support from Reform UK, progressive group Best for Britain says.
It comes as the Labour Party and Keir Starmer appear to be taking a tougher line on Reform UK in recent weeks following discontent from members and their MPs, and as the party meets in Liverpool for its annual conference - amid rumblings of a potential leadership challenge to PM Starmer in future from Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham.
Over the weekend, Keir Starmer told the BBC he believes Reform's plan to scrap Indefinite Leave to Remain was "racist" and "immoral". ILR is the settled status allowing people many who have come here and already been granted permission to stay, and Reform's plans would place hundreds of thousands of those who believed their position here was secure at risk of deportation.
The YouGov polling did not test whether this was an effective line of attack for opponents of Reform.
The YouGov survey of over 3,000 people who said they were intending or considering voting for Reform UK commissioned by Best for Britain presented respondents with a random pair of messages from a selection of eight, criticising Nigel Farage and his party on separate issues.
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Adam Bienkov
Respondents were asked to select which of the two messages they found most convincing and presented with another randomly selected pair until they had seen all eight messages.
Among those considering or intending to vote for Reform UK, a message suggesting Reform UK would do away with employment rights was almost as effective (56%) as that of the economy, as were critiques of Reform UK's plans to cut social security and public spending by £140 billion (55%), and highlighting Farage's previous comments on moving the NHS to a US-style insurance-based system (54%).
The findings are the latest from a major ongoing study into people who are considering voting for Reform UK at the next general el...

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Some £200 billion of major Government infrastructure projects left by the Conservatives are classified as "unachievable" and need to be scrapped or reconsidered, a Whitehall report has revealed in advance of the spending review.
Altogether, the Government inherited £996 billion of major projects, but a record proportion - £198 billion - are now given a red classification by a new quango set up by the Labour Government, the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, which reports to the Treasury.
In the past 12 months, the value of unachievable projects nearly doubled - rising by £101 billion to £198 billion. This is the highest figure and proportion of projects since annual monitoring by Whitehall of progress on infrastructure schemes began in 2013.
The disclosures in the authority's first annual report may well explain why the Government has delayed developing the Northern Powerhouse rail project - a fast rail line linking Liverpool with Hull - which is estimated in the report to cost £30.9 billion and has been classified as a "red" project this year. It had been proposed by the Conservatives since 2015.
A red project "means successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable. There are major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable. The project may need re-scoping and/or its overall viability reassessed."
It is the same rating that has been given to the stub of HS2 from London to Birmingham, which is also seen as poor value for money.
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Altogether, 31 out of 213 schemes, are classified as "red". Three of them, including the Northern Powerhouse project, are new this year. The other two are plans for Sellafield to build a deep level underground nuclear waste facility in Lincolnshire which could cost anything between £20.3 billion and £53.3 billion because of technical and geological problems. Since Reform UK won control of the county council it has said it would block the scheme and refuse planning permission.
The third programme in trouble is one by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which costs £24.875 billion. This is the Farming and Countryside Programme which aims to deliver by 2028 "a renewed agricultural sector, producing healthy food for consumption at home and abroad, where farms can be profitable and economically sustainable without subsidy and Farming and the countryside contributing significantly to environmental goals including addressing climate change".
Other programmes that are classified as red are Defra's tree planting and peat restoration programme; plans for a computerised national police database and a £2 billion redevelopment of Devonport naval base to maintain Astute submarines.
A substantial number of Ministry of Defence projects also overrun but Darren Jones, now chief secretary to the Prime Minister in the cabinet, says in the foreword to the report:
It is important to recognise that not every project in the portfolio is measured by direct monetary benefits - particularly those led by the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Justice. We are living in an increasingly volatile world, facing new and complex threats that require a robust and modern response. MoD projects alone account for £327 billion of the Government Major Projects Portfolio and, ultimately, the safety and security of the nation are beyond price
He has also promised that the new Labour Government will do things differently from the Conservatives and "learn lessons from past mistakes".
"...

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A key part of the successful scapegoating of an entire group is to create fear. Nigel Farage and his Reform party supporters have been following the scapegoat playbook by pointing the finger at immigrants, and blaming them for the very real crisis of women's unsafety.
It's a path well-trodden: point to a group, say they're a threat, and present yourself as the defender of the threat. But if this path is so well-trodden, why can't our media seem to see it?
At a press conference in August, Reform MP Sarah Pochin suggested that migrants and refugees have a "warped view of their right to sexually assault women". She claimed that men from "predominantly Muslim countries like Afghanistan" hold a "medieval view of women's rights" and that "women are at risk of sexual assault and rape from these men".
There is no evidence to suggest that asylum seekers are more likely to harm women and girls than British citizens. Most studies find they are not overrepresented among perpetrators.
But facts and stats rarely break through in a news cycle of manufactured outrage. Unless, of course, the stats come from the Centre for Migration Control, a think tank run by the Reform UK activist Robert Bates, which successfully managed to get their muddled figures onto BBC Radio 4's Today programme, parroted by the shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick (no, 40% of sexual crimes in London last year were not committed by foreign nationals).
These long-held myths are of course, racist, and harm communities of colour - especially Muslim communities. But these myths also actively harm women and girls, by perpetuating the 'stranger danger' narrative of sexual violence.
The idea that sexual violence is only committed by scary, foreign, evil men who jump out of bushes and attack women is a convenient narrative to believe in. But the truth is much darker, one that many people struggle to rectify internally.
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Christian Christensen
In reality, most rapes are carried out by former or current partners, and 90% of femicide killers are known to the victim. And children? The vast majority of children who experience contact sexual abuse are abused by someone they know.
When Farage and his MPs use attacks on women to stoke an anti-migrant agenda, they are ignoring, and actively diverting away from, the real crisis of violence against women in the UK. It is the media's job to recognise this and call it out - but our ingrained societal views of gender-based violence are stopping this from happening.
"As a society, we fail to understand that domestic abuse is a public health problem," says Janey Starling, co-founder of gender justice organisation, Level Up, on Media Storm. "So much of domestic abuse is about power and control, and that's psychological. These things are less easy to put in a picture. You can't take photos of someone constantly belittling their partner, somebody checking their partner's phone, having access to their emails. And the end goal, ultimately, is to have total control over another person".
Level Up created the Dignity for Dead Women campaign, which aims to change the way the press reports on fatal domestic abuse. They developed media guidelines, backed by press regulators, for newsrooms to follow when reporting on gender-based violence. Because the way news organisations report on the deaths of women directly influences public understandings of domestic abuse - and how we can prevent it.
"There are very strict media regulations on the reporting of suicide, because the media knows that it has a preventive duty when it comes to suicide", Starling explains.
The press understands that if they report on, for example, a celebrity death, the...

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The Government is being urged to urgently 'close the loopholes' which could allow hostile states and malicious actors to donate to political parties via untraceable cryptocurrencies.
Reform UK became the first party earlier this year to allow donations via cryptocurrencies, despite anti-corruption campaigners fearing they leave the door open to anonymous donations from criminals and Britain's adversaries.
Nigel Farage and Reform deputy Richard Tice MP met the Governor of the Bank of England on Thursday and reportedly lobbied for looser regulations on crypto while branding the Bank a "dinosaur" when it came to rules on the largely unregulated financial assets.
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While donors have to go through a portal and submit an official ID to donate using cryptocurrencies, the ultimate source of the funds remains difficult to trace. There is no suggestion that Reform UK has broken any rules.
Last weekend, a Lib Dem MP condemned the gaps in UK election law and the fact that cryptocurrency was barely mentioned in the recent Government's elections strategy, which is set to lead to a new Elections and Democracy Bill in the coming months.
The comments came in a session organised by the UK Anti-Corruption Coalition titled 'Brave New World: Fighting Corruption and Oligarchs in an era of Trump'.
Mike Martin MP explained crypto vulnerabilities in UK electoral finance, saying: "The way thresholds are set, you can break big donations down into small ones and then give them and they fall below the thresholds and don't get registered.
And that is now being driven using crypto and crypto wallets. So you break down huge amounts of money into tiny donations - micro donations …You can inject huge amounts of finance into political parties without them appearing on any return, without anyone knowing what's going on
Mike Martin, Lib Dem MP
In July, senior Labour MP Liam Byrne said a "better solution" than tightening up existing rules "would be banning crypto donations outright". He noted that Ireland and Brazil had already done so due to the perceived risks of foreign interference.
The Electoral Commission has told Byline Times that no donations via crypto have yet been registered with the Commission, which is likely to add to concerns donations are going unreported or split into smaller batches to dip below the reporting thresholds. The current rules are meant to guard against this, but the origin of cryptocurrencies are much harder to trace than bank transactions.
Martin noted the potential sophistication of rule-evading methods, saying cryptocurrencies have a "ledger that is perfectly traceable - however, if you move stuff into crypto out of crypto, into this coin, into that coin, into that wallet…and then you split it into micro-donations…It's perfectly [possible] to effectively disappear money and then reappear it again in the bank accounts [of] political parties, and it's impossible to tell where it's coming from."
The Lib Dem MP pointed to other gaps in the law, claiming that Farage's GB News salary while still a serving MP should be understood as a political "donation".
"[You have a media organisation that happens to pay a prominent politician £900,000 a year…That's effectively a donation for work in return. It's declared, it looks like a job.
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Following the disturbing pictures of Indian Prime Minister Modi, leader of the world's biggest democracy, chumming it up with authoritarian leaders, Chinese Premier Xi and Russian President Putin, at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit in Tianjin, China, in late August, one political wag in the US joked that it could have been worse: "Donald Trump could have been there as well!"
More serious commentators worried that the gathering of the trio, representing three of the world's nuclear powers, and almost half the world's population, was deliberately intended as a message - that the US-led world order was no longer the only show in town, and that they were determined not to be pushed around by the West.
In the US, national security experts interpreted Modi's warm embrace of Xi and Putin as a deliberate display of displeasure over Trump's decision to impose hefty tariffs on India over its continued purchase of Russian oil, and Trump's clumsy handling of the military flare-up in May between India and Pakistan.
India has always resented outside efforts to mediate in its longstanding conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir, and rejected Trump's claims that he had ended the latest clashes by threatening to cut off trade with either party if they continued fighting.
They also took great offence at Trump's decision to invite Pakistani army Chief of Staff, Field Marshall Asim Munir, to the White House in June.
According to former National Security advisor John Bolton, this was the first time a Pakistani military leader has been hosted at the White House with no civilian leaders present.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bolton described how Trump's approach outraged India, because it harked back to the era of a "hyphenated" US India-Pakistan policy, rather than each country being treated on its merits, without reference to the other.
US foreign policy experts worry that Trump's continued efforts to pressure India to stop buying Russian oil and gas, most recently by lobbying European countries to impose up to 100% tariffs on trade with India, will push India away from the US, into the arms of China, undermining Washington's biggest strategic goal, which is to contain rising China.
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Another example of Indian defiance of Washington came last week, when India decided to send 65 soldiers to take part in the quadrennial Russian-led military exercises with Belarus, known as ZAPAD, in mid-September.
I recently spoke to two national security analysts living in Asia to get their perspective on events. How serious was the rift between the US and India? What was driving US policy in Asia? Following the recent declaration by Trump on a Truth Social post that he would meet Xi at a regional summit in Korea in October, followed by a visit to each other's country next year, could there even be a bait and switch, whereby the US would abandon its traditional allies, and forge a separate "G2" partnership with China?
Indrani Bagchi, CEO of the Ananta Aspen Centre in India, and former Associate editor of the Times of India, said Indians viewed the second Trump administration with deep dismay.
In his first term, Trump had taken several welcome steps from their perspective, including raising the level of the Quad (a strategic partnership between the US, India, Japan and Australia) to leader level, imposing tariffs on China, and calling out China's unfair trading practices. They knew there was a risk of tougher US policies on tariffs and immigration, but all had still seemed well when Modi ...