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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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"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 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 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".

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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, argues Grant Stern

Grant St...

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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" and "identify patterns ...

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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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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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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.

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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 ...

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Members of a leading far-right and fascist organisation were radicalised via YouTube's 'autoplay' function, taking them from right-wing and libertarian content into a rabbit hole of neo-nazism, a new study has found.

A researcher in the criminology department at City St George's University analysed podcasts, interviews and articles by 40 members of the group Patriotic Alternative describing their "red pill moment" when they became members of the far right.

33 out of the 40 PA activists analysed by the study cited social media as important to their radicalisation, with three quarters citing YouTube as a key instrument in their political journey.

Patriotic Alternative was launched in 2019 by Mark Collett, a former BNP organiser who recommends Mein Kampf to his followers. At the core of the group's ideology is a belief in the concept of a "white genocide" and a "great replacement" of white people committed by Jewish and liberal elites, who they believe undermine the white race by allowing immigrants into European nations.

The study which sifted through 1000 hours of material from PA activists, found that the users eventually drawn to PA began their political journey as consumers of online content from the likes of British right wing YouTuber Sargon of Akkad and were moved on to content from Patriotic Alternative by YouTube's autoplay function.

A PA activist who went under the pseudonym "Hope on the Horizon" described his 'redpill' journey, stating that: "[Y]ou go through all the different Sargon era and Ben Shapiro and all that sort of nonsense, you know, the sort of civ nat rebellion sort of rubbish. And then eventually you come across the people like [PA leaders] Mark Collett, Laura [Melia]. And then you find things like [12-hour-long, neo-Nazi propaganda film] Europa: The Last Battle, that sort of stuff. And then, you know, you've hit the bottom of the rabbit hole, there's nowhere else to go".

Patriotic Alternative: The Threat from the Far Right

A revitalised Europe wide white supremacist movement is growing in the UK, gaining recruits through social media and online gaming

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James Owens, a PA activist who was branded "Britain's most racist YouTuber" by The Times, who used the pseudonym "The Ayatollah", noted that the "algorithm is definitely real", crediting it with his radicalisation and recalling that while he had been doing his washing one evening, YouTube fed him the six-hour pro-Hitler propaganda film The Greatest Story Never Told.

Dr Tony Karas, the researcher behind the study, told Byline Times that the members of PA he studied "narrate their [political journey] almost entirely in terms of content they consumed".

"PA sustains their involvement [in the far right]. The fact that they can chat to people in their little Telegram groups and meet up online. But I think the content and the power of the parasocial relationship is really important".

Sargon of Akkad, the pseudonym used by YouTuber and former UKIP candidate for the European parliament Carl Benjamin, was the most frequently cited gateway channel into Patriotic Alternative content, according to Karas.

Patriotic Alternative's recruitment tactics have targeted young internet users in the past. One report from Anglia Ruskin University found that the group had been attempting to recruit young members through video game live streams.

In 2019, Collett made £7,265.93 from his videos on YouTube, with the platform taking a 30% cut of his total earnings.

EXCLUSIVE

'Wipe Jews Off the Face of the Earth': Racism and Antisemitic Slurs of Viral YouTuber Exposed

A recording exclusively obtained by Byline Times exposes YouTuber and Infowars alumnus Paul Joseph Watson using racist, homophobic and antisemitic slurs

Byline Times Team

Patriotic Alternative has lost momentum since 2023, with several of its members defecting to the Homeland Party,...

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I predict that Donald Trump's fall from grace, when it comes, will be swift and definitive, just like former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's fall after partygate.

I remember living through Johnson's premiership in a state of permanent shock and outrage. Shock, that someone so puerile, self-serving, and manifestly unsuited for high office could be elected as Britain's Prime Minister. Outrage, that so many people around him who should have known better – Ministers, advisers, fellow MPs, senior civil servants, journalists – were willing to go along with his serial lying, cavalier disregard for the norms of British democracy, dangerous affiliation with Russian contacts, and wilful misrepresentation of the implications of Brexit, despite the massive danger all these things posed for every aspect of the British state, purely for the sake of their own careers and self-interest.

I have felt the same shock and outrage throughout the first year of Trump's second term as President.

It is not so much that I expected him to become a more competent and honourable leader second time round. His vanity, arrogance, bigotry, ignorance, dishonesty, and greed are too deep-seated for him to ever change.

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Nor did I expect those in his immediate orbit to attempt to curtail his worst instincts, as happened in his first Presidency. It was obvious that he was going to surround himself with sycophants and toadies this time round, to avoid being subject to any kind of restraint on his behaviour or actions.

I did, nevertheless, cling on to the hope that the other two branches of America's government – Congress, and the Courts, would continue to do their jobs properly, and insist on their rights and prerogatives being respected.

I did cling on to the hope that at least some in the Republican Party would find just enough spine to raise at least some objections, when he nominated utterly compromised or unfit individuals to critical positions in his cabinet, including Pete Hegseth as Defence Secretary, Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, Kash Patel as head of the FBI, Pam Bondi as Attorney General, and Robert Kennedy Jr as Health Secretary.

I did cling on to the hope that more than one or two of them might be willing to speak out when Trump's actions clearly crossed a constitutional line, or were actively harmful to America's interests, such as his crazy notion to seize Greenland at the cost of destroying NATO.

I did cling on to the hope that the battered, unpopular Democrat Party, might be able to shake themselves out of the doldrums, and conduct more effective opposition in Congress.

I did cling on to the hope that even in the compromised Supreme Court, the more serious judges would recognize the dangers of allowing the President to continue to accrue so much executive power without pushback.

I also, naively as it turns out, assumed that the major organisations most badly affected by Trump's erratic policy making – such as businesses damaged by his tariff policy, universities by his clampdowns on free speech, companies dependent on migrant labour, lawfirms and media companies bullied by his lawsuits – would not cave so rapidly to his demands, or remain so cravenly silent.

Though there have been some honourable cases, particularly within the Department of Justice, of people stepping down from their positions in protest at his administration's unlawful actions, I had also assumed that there would be far more mass resignations from his government, as his outrageous actions mounted.

Unfortunately, it turns out that, amongst America's elites, fear and self-interest are powerful ba...

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While the Labour leadership deploy their time and effort to block the best-placed candidate, in Andy Burnham, to win a crucial by-election and keep Reform at bay, normal people with normal lives struggle to get on and get by.

Labour's leadership claim that this is what they are focussed on – making our lives better. But the reality is quite different. This is the short story of who, what and why some in the party seem hell bent, under no pressure from anywhere, on actually making our lives even harder.

What is the good society and the good life? Too often we struggle to just keep up, to keep our heads above water, to survive the day, to have the luxury of time to even contemplate how life could be transformatively better. But without a lodestar, a utopian vision of what could and should be, progressives offer little hope or sense of direction. To be a dreamer, in a world ruled by scarcity, fear, insecurity, the clock, endless and mindless consumption, coercion and control, is deemed to be wasted idleness. But nothing good happens, has ever happened or ever will, without a dream.

Enter the Governments Non-Dreamer in Residence, Steve Reed the Secretary of State for Local Government, who took it upon himself to crush the dreamers in councils with his pre-Xmas Scrooge like rebuke to even consider a four-day working week. He said full time work for part time pay could be an indicator of "failure".

As such Reed joins his soul mates at that bastion of progressive campaigning the Taxpayers Alliance in their predictable and dreary campaign to stop people having more time and instead keep their noses to the grindstone.

Control over the working week is of course part of a centuries long battle between capital and labour. From the enclosures, through to the fabrication of the Protestant work ethic, the poor laws and the creation of the never ending turbo-consumption race that can never be won and should never have been started, people have battled for the right to spend more of their time how they want to.

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

"There are many definitions of the good society" wrote the American economist JK Galbraith "the treadmill is not one of them". But today we learn, to work, to buy. Many do more than one job to make ends meet. Parents pass like ships in the night with barely a moment to do the precious things in life, like the time to read a child a bedtime story.

The remorseless and relentless grind of growth without purpose, the so-called 'hard-working families', the denigration of the so called 'scroungers' as opposed to 'strivers', the politicians who kick down and kiss up are all symptoms of a governing system that has lost its connection to us as human beings.

Whatever Steve Reed says and does the demand for more time and greater freedom are only likely to grow as supply of work is likely to decline, while AI takes his grip on the vociferous and politically crucial middle class jobs of people who live in swing seats, and work in professions like law and accountancy. Every technological revolution leads to fears over systemic and permanent net job losses, only to see new areas of work arise. The AI revolution looks like it could be different, with a structural decline in the demand for mental labour, as opposed to the physical labour job displacement of the past. The option to work less should be available to everyone, even as it becomes a fait accompli for many.

The savings and benefits of a four-day week to individuals and society are almost incalculable, from mental physical health and well-being, care, volunteering retraining, the lis...