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Britain's biggest middle-market newspaper stands accused of phone hacking, landline tapping, burglaries, and the theft of medical records in a nine-week High Court trial which began on Monday.

But in a week that on Wednesday saw Prince Harry become emotional in the witness box as he talked about the impact of media intrusion on his wife Meghan, tensions are rising not just between the Mail and its critics, but between the publisher and its own bankers.

NatWest, the Mail's long-standing lender and the principal funder of the Telegraph bid, has the power to pull the plug if internal auditors conclude the legal risks are too great. And City scrutiny has intensified as allegations of industrial-scale criminality inside the Mail's newsrooms are tested in court.

Against this backdrop, the Mail on January 8 publicly attacked its financial backer with a story headlined "NatWest Dirty Money Farce". The two-page article recycled a five-year-old case in which Britain's fourth-largest bank paid a record £264.8 million fine for accepting criminal proceeds.

EXCLUSIVE

'Trump Has Already Rigged the 2028 Presidential Election': US Defence Insider

Regardless of how people vote, the chances of a Democrat Government coming to power in 2029 is now virtually nil, argues Brynn Tannehill

Brynn Tannehill

NatWest, however, is not the only party to the Telegraph deal facing allegations of serious wrongdoing. In the ongoing litigation brought by Prince Harry and Baroness Doreen Lawrence—whose son Stephen was murdered in a racist attack—more than £3 million in payments from the Mail to private investigators have been disclosed over the past three years.

Mr Justice Matthew Nicklin's verdict now hangs over Lord Rothermere's biggest ever newspaper acquisition.

His company, Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), has agreed to assume the debts of Telegraph Media Group's current investor, RedBird IMI, paying £400 million up front and a further £100 million within two years.

The deal must still pass detailed due diligence by City lawyers and accountants who are acutely sensitive to allegations of criminal activity while the impact of the proposed takeover on competition and the public interest will be investigated.

City public relations expert Brian Basham said: 'The timing of this deal, which comes in the middle of a nine-week trial for phone hacking, couldn't be worse.

'NatWest will not like this. The reputational damage to their client, of being on the news every night for months, about unlawful intrusion, is a risk.'

Mr Basham, who previously gave evidence in a phone hacking trial against the Mirror after warning its then chief executive of a cover-up, added: 'But it will the liability of future claims which the bank will be very worried about.'

City insiders say NatWest is weighing whether the Mail could survive a "contingent liability" running to as much as £1 billion if hundreds of additional claims are launched. The estimate is based on the scale of payouts made by Rupert Murdoch's companies following the News of the World hacking scandal.

Shares analyst Paul Scott has reviewed DMGT's accounts and concluded that a £1 billion hit 'would probably either bankrupt DMGT, or at least stretch it to the limit.'

DMGT has secured a funding package with NatWest, its preferred lender, and has finalised the terms of the transaction. But the City remains wary as the litigation approaches, set to begin in just over a week.

The case has already cost the Mail around £30 million, despite involving only seven "test" claims at the Royal Courts of Justice. Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), DMGT's main newspaper subsidiary, is defending actions brought by Prince Harry, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Sir Elton John and David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley, Sir Simon Hughes, and Sadie Frost.

EXCLUSIVE

'That Phone Could Hold the Truth': Levi Davis Family Say...

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The Home Office has been accused of treating asylum seekers like "lab rats" after moving to "warehouse" the first batch of migrants into a military barracks, despite opposition from campaigners and local politicians.

Twenty-seven men have been moved into the Crowborough military barracks, as part of the Government's plans to move migrants from hotels to military sites.

The site in East Sussex has a capacity of 500 bed spaces, allocated for single adult males, who will be housed there for up to three months while their claims are processed. If their asylum application is rejected, the department say they will be removed from the country.

The plans have already triggered anti-migrant protests in the local area, prompting fears about an increase in far-right activity.

Conservative MP for Sussex Weald Nusrat Ghani has warned of the "grave impact" of moving the men onto the site.

In a letter to Immigration Minister Alex Norris on Wednesday, seen by Byline Times, Ghani stated that there was "clear evidence that the site is not an empty army barracks, but a functioning and much used and loved training camp". Crowborough is currently used as a training facility for the local Royal Air Force Cadets and for fire, police and other public service agencies.

She added that the site was "unable to be signed off as safe, legal and compliant, and one of the reasons was the cost and displacement of services and the Cadets". Despite asking yesterday for a detailed assessment of how the Home Office intended to "square that circle", the first migrants were moved to Crowborough this morning.

Wealden District Council leader James Partridge has also voiced opposition to the plans, saying it was the "wrong decision". Protests have taken place around the site on a weekly basis since last October when the plans were first announced. "Despite our strong objections, the minister [Alex Norris] has not listened to us," Partridge said.

The latest move marks the start of the Government's plans to 'warehouse' asylum seekers in former military camps in an attempt to close hotels by the end of this parliament. More than 200 hotels remain in use, at a cost of more than £5.7 million per day. The Home Office has consistently said that hotels are a "pull factor" for small boat crossings.

Campaigners have described the use of former military sites to accommodate asylum seekers as a "sleeper issue", with the potential for protests starting at a local level to become more widespread.

"It's like they're using asylum seekers as lab rats," said Lou Calvey, Director of Asylum Matters. "The Government should be building policy in the interests of people in local communities – a fiscally-responsible policy – but they're not even doing that. When are they going to wake up? We know these sites are incredibly damaging and this will only mean more community tensions and problems."

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'They've Ruined Christmas': Nigerian Student Blocked By Home Office From Visiting UK Family for Holidays

British academic and his Nigerian wife repeatedly stopped from hosting family members, including at their own wedding, due to visa restrictions brought in by Keir Starmer's Government

Nicola Kelly

A report from the National Audit Office last year found that military barracks were projected to cost £46 million more than hotels over the next decade. A leaked forecast from the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) warned that the expected cost to house asylum seekers has tripled from £4.5 billion to £15.3 billion for contracts from 2019-2029.

In a statement released this morning, the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said that opening Crowborough camp was "just the start".

"I will bring forward site after site until every asylum hotel is closed and returned to local communities," Mahmood said.

In October, the Government announced it would also open Cameron barracks ...

Brynn Tannehill has worked for years for one of the largest US Government defence contractors in the country.

Writing pseudonymously for Byline Times, in November 2024 she predicted the astonishingly rapid militarisation of the homeland that Donald Trump would pursue; and in February 2025 she accurately forecast some of the most shocking turns of the Trump administration – including how serious it is about annexing places like Venezuela and Greenland.

Now she casts her eye on what pivotal presidential elections will hold in 2028 – and warns that Democrats are dangerously unprepared for what's coming.

The outcome of the election has already been determined: Democrats just don't realise it yet.

Donald Trump's first year in office has largely been an exercise in consolidating all power in the executive branch, and then wielding this power to punish his enemies, whether they are recalcitrant blue state governors, people who have angered him (like James Comey and Letitia James), and unpopular minorities (immigrants and transgender people), or the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

The Legal Coup

So far, the Project 2025 Heritage Foundation and Claremont Institute plan to codify the 'Unitary Executive theory' into law has been successful. Until recently, the Unitary Executive Theory was a fringe constitutional doctrine asserting the President holds sole authority over the entire executive branch, derived from Article II's vesting of "the executive Power" in one person, meaning Congress can't limit presidential control over executive officials or agencies. The US Supreme Court has now mostly embraced this idea, and has consistently removed Congressional oversight powers, or even the power to dictate where and how funds are spent.

The other two branches have yielded power willingly; the Republican controlled Congress has handed over the power of the purse to the executive branch, and the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has nearly universally accepted Department of Justice (DOJ) arguments that the executive branch cannot be countermanded via injunctions. SCOTUS also granted near-blanket immunity to the President to commit crimes while in office, so long as they are a part of "official acts."

The Republican Party is increasingly behaving like a party that believes it will never face a competitive election again, which I believe is exactly what is happening. The administration increasingly doubles down on unpopular policies and positions, including defending young Republican leaders who got caught admiring Hitler and looking forward to gassing and burning the bodies of their political opponents.

Trump is deep underwater in opinion polls across most of his signature issues, including tariffs, the economy, and immigration. Yet Republican leadership seems to assume they have the capability to decide Presidential elections in perpetuity, regardless of how people vote.

Trump's Greenland Delusion Runs Aground in Davos

For all his attempted bullying, taunts and threats, Trump's delusional Davos speech revealed a man who is far weaker than he appears, argues Alexandra Hall Hall

Alexandra Hall Hall

This doesn't apply to the 2026 mid-terms, but they do not matter anyway: SCOTUS has largely allowed the executive branch to bypass Congress, nor will the executive branch cooperate with a democratic Congress, and all the mechanisms to enforce actions by Congress are controlled by the executive branch anyway, such as the Department of Justice. At this point, the only election that matters is for President, and the results are already being determined by the incumbent party.

When you run a step-by-step analysis of what it takes to decide who is President, it rapidly becomes obvious that a great many things must happen for the process to evade subversion. Republicans have set things up such that it is nearly impossible for everything to go the way it was intended, and instead the process of selecting a President is almost guaranteed to be suc...

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Trump is a narcissistic, psychopathic bully. But a weak one.

I started listening to Trump's speech at Davos with anger and outrage. But as he went on and on, I slowly felt a growing sense of relief. I realised that all his bullying, taunts and threats reflected weakness. He sounded like a needy, spoilt child frustrated that he could not get his own way.

His deranged tendencies were on full display with repeated hints at all the damage he could cause to those who did not bend to his will – like a mafia boss threatening to cut off a former partner's fingers if he did not cooperate. "I really like you, actually. I don't want to hurt you. It's a shame. I tried my best to be nice. But, I gotta do what I gotta do."

His neediness was on full display with his repeated mentions of how much everyone loves him, and appreciates his achievements. Only someone unsure of his popularity needs to keep claiming he has lots of friends.

His childishness was on full display with his petty taunts and jibes at other global figures – such as French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Premier Mark Carney, California Gavin Newsom, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell, even as he simultaneously claimed that they were "great guys, actually" and that he liked them.

Mark Carney's Speech Showed America and Britain the Sort of Global Leadership They Have Now Abandoned

The Canadian Prime Minister's powerful response to the growing threat from Donald Trump has put other world leaders to shame, argues Simon Nixon

Simon Nixon

His vanity was on full display with his repeated boasts about how brilliant he was, and how great America had become under his leadership.

His insecurity was on full display with his continued need to lash out at defeated foes, such as Joe Biden. A truly self-confident person would not need to repeatedly big up his own alleged achievements in office, rather than letting them speak for themselves.

His self-delusion was on full display with his claims that he really cares about Europe and NATO, respects the people of Greenland and Denmark, and is only trying to do what's best for them. A genuine friend does not bully and threaten allies.

His dishonesty was on full display with his claim that he is only motivated to end the war in Ukraine because he is concerned about how many young men and women are dying there, when what he has actually been doing since returning to office is trying to extort Ukraine's natural wealth and force it into an unjust peace deal.

His bullying tendency was on full display with his repeated reminders of the strength of the US military and economy. Trump is not a man to "speak softly and carry a big stick" – but a schoolyard bully who inadvertently reveals weakness by over-emphasising his physical attributes. "Yah, boo, I'm bigger than you. I could beat you up if I wanted to."

His greed, and cavalier disregard for the fate of the planet, was on full display with his attacks on Europe for pursuing its "scam" green agenda, exhortations on the UK to do more more to extract oil from the North Sea, and boasts about how much oil the US was going to pick up from Venezuela.

His whiny tendency was on full display with his complaints about how NATO has treated the US "unfairly" and that he personally never gets enough credit for his achievements – such as allegedly ending eight wars – an obvious reflection of his continued frustration at not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

His ignorance, or is it deteriorating mental health, was on full display with his repeated reference to Iceland, when he meant Greenland, and his false claims that the US "gave back" Greenland to Denmark.

A Year of Living Dangerously in Trump's America

I no longer feel safe to speak or act freely in a country where people are being arbitrarily detained and killed and where the truth is becoming whatever Donald Trump says it is, repor...

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Mark Carney's speech in Davos on the end of the world order is rightly being hailed as one of the most powerful interventions by any political leader in the year since Donald Trump returned to the White House. My social media feed and WhatsApp groups have been filled with veterans of past Davos gatherings telling me it was the most important speech they had ever heard delivered in the Swiss mountain town – or indeed expect to hear this year.

The Canadian Prime Minister's argument tempered brutal realism— "we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition" —with optimism. He set out a way that middle powers such as Canada, Britain and other advanced economies can maintain some sovereignty and control over their own destinies in a new era of superpower rivalries. His speech was an eloquent call for middling powers to work together to face down the great powers whose trashing of global rules and weaponisation of dependencies had turned integration into a source of subordination.

Carney was better placed than anyone in the world to have delivered such a speech. As one of the high priests of the global financial system over the last two decades – having previously served as Governor of the Bank of Canada and then the Bank of England – he will have no illusions about the costs of the collapse of the old rules-based order. What's more, as Prime Minister of a country whose own territory it is the stated policy of the US president to annex- and which would be encircled by America if Trump succeeds in his ambition of seizing Greenland – he surely feels both the gravity and urgency of the moment keenly.

It's Time for an Apology From the Trump Apologists

The politicians and commentators who mocked those warning about the threat posed by the US President as being "hysterical" need to face up to their own role in the calamity now unfolding, argues Adam Bienkov

Adam Bienkov

But above all, Carney understands what is at stake with greater clarity than other world leaders because he has been thinking about these issues for longer. As Governor of the Bank of England, he watched as Britain committed what he privately considered to be a monumental act of stupidity with Brexit. He appeared to allude to the lessons he took from that experience in his speech, noting that "the cost of strategic autonomy and sovereignty can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortress. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive sums."

What is depressing is that it is almost impossible to imagine Keir Starmer or any other British political leader delivering such a speech, even assuming they understood the arguments. Starmer himself, no doubt, is keenly aware of the dangers of this moment and the risk to Britain's national interest posed by a rogue United States. But he is incapable of articulating them, paralysed by his own timidity and buoyed by overconfidence in his capabilities as a "Trump whisperer" who can convince the capricious US President to change course.

Besides, in his decade at the front rank of UK politics, Starmer has never delivered a single notable speech. Indeed, the only memorable phrase ever to pass his lips—a claim that Britain was becoming an "island of strangers"—had such obvious racist connotations that he was later obliged to disown it. As for the rest of the British political class, one detects little sign that either of the two parties currently leading in the polls – Reform and the Conservatives – have any understanding of the consequences of this moment of rupture for Britain, of the costs that Carney rightly warns countries will have to incur to boost their resilience, and of the trade-offs that will be required as the price of preserving some autonomy.

This is partly a reflection of what has happened to British politics i...

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The Home Office has been accused of failing to protect vulnerable LGBT+ people in immigration detention, in contravention of their own guidelines.

Rainbow Migration, a charity which supports lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the asylum and immigration system, found that not one of the seven immigration removal centres across the UK had strategies in place for staff to monitor or challenge homophobic behaviour.

The charity also found that the Government had not conducted any analyses of the prevalence of incidents across the detention estate. Four IRCs had failed to make any explicit reference to sexual orientation or gender identity in its anti-bullying information.

Home Office guidelines state that information about bullying and harassment must be displayed in a variety of languages where staff, detainees and visitors can see it. Each IRC must also include specified content on homophobia.

EXCLUSIVE

How Neo-Nazis Posing as 'Ordinary Parents' Embedded Themselves in Anti-Immigrant Protests

A year long investigation by Katherine Denkinson exposes the Neo-Nazi and far-right extremists operating openly inside anti-immigration protests

Katherine Denkinson

Around 70 countries worldwide criminalise same-sex relations, some with the death penalty, meaning that significant numbers odf asylum applications come from persecuted LGBT+ people.

"We know that immigration detention is unsafe and harmful for LGBT+ people," said Ayesha Aziz, Rainbow Migration's Legal Service Manager.

"These are people who have fled family members or governments because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. They may have already been detained in their home country because of who they are. Now they are in Britain to seek protection and the Home Office knows about their backgrounds because they have claimed asylum on that basis, but they are not doing anything to protect them."

Aziz points to the example of a South American man she visited at Harmondsworth detention centre near Heathrow, who was too fearful of being 'outed' to leave his cell.

Another man was isolated from the group by staff and told he needed to be checked for sexually-transmitted diseases. A third person reported being harassed for the way they dressed, experiencing suicidal thoughts and poor physical health due to stress and anxiety.

"We are seeing a significant uptick in the number of queries from LGBT+ people at IRCs due to the failures of the Home Office," said Aziz. "In an ideal world, we would say no to all LGBT people in detention. There are alternatives which are cost-effective, safe and secure."

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Rainbow Migration is calling for protections offered to trans and intersex people, who have been classed as 'at risk of harm' under the 'Adults at Risk in Immigration Detention' policy since 2016 and therefore should not usually be detained, extended to lesbian, gay and bisexual people. And for guidelines to be put in place for staff to ensure that vulnerable minority individuals are protected from homophobic abuse and attacks.

In June 2024, the charity, alongside Micro Rainbow, urged the Government to introduce a pilot scheme, which would allow vulnerable people in detention to be released and offered a place in Micro Rainbow's safe house, with support from legal aid lawyers.

The UNHCR warns in its guidelines that special measures may be required to avoid exposing LGBTQI+ people to 'risk of violence, ill-treatmen...

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Whatever the outcome of the civil trial between various claimants and Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the newspaper group behind the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, the legal claims shed light again on what former prime minister Gordon Brown called "the criminal media nexus" — a circle of dodgy journalists and corrupt police officers circulating around the hub of the private detective agency Southern Investigations.

These horrific murders may seem like ancient history, but they are at the centre of astonishing legal claims against the UK's largest newspaper publisher and owner of one of the world's most-read online news websites, which is currently bidding to increase its hold on the British media by buying the Telegraph group.

The Daniel Morgan Murder

The murders of Daniel Morgan and Stephen Lawrence took place six years apart, but only a few miles away from each other in south-east London. And they are connected by more than just geographical proximity.

Both murder investigations were stymied by the same cartel of corrupt police officers with gangland affiliations, and ready access to the British popular press.

Anyone who saw the recent TV drama The Hack, or has followed the podcast Untold: The Daniel Morgan Murder that I hosted and produced with Deeivya Meir ten years ago, will understand the centrality of Southern Investigations to the spread of the dark arts of "unlawful information gathering" (UIG) after one of its founders, Daniel Morgan, was slain with an axe in the car park of a Sydenham pub in 1987.

After Daniel's murder, his co-founder Jonathan Rees, and the man who took Daniel's place, former "King of Catford" Detective Sergeant Sid Fillery, went on to turn Southern Investigations into the hub of the dark arts — bribing police officers, hacking phones and computers, blagging financial and medical records, impersonation, surveillance and intimidation.

Press and Police Corruption: Mail Hearing Reveals More Connections between Murders of Daniel Morgan and Stephen Lawrence

Witness statements on behalf of the claimants against Associated News plunge us straight back into what Gordon Brown once described as the 'criminal media nexus'

Peter Jukes

They trained some of Britain's most feted journalists, like the "Fake Sheikh" Mazher Mahmood, who was convicted of conspiring to pervert the course of justice in 2016.

As well as billing for hundreds of thousands of pounds a year the now-shuttered News of the World, they worked for Piers Morgan's Mirror Group and (as laid out in my book with Alastair Morgan, Who Killed Daniel Morgan?) claimed to work for other newspapers, including the Daily Mail.

Though Rees and Fillery were both arrested on suspicion of conspiracy in Daniel's murder (Rees three times and Fillery twice), the multiple investigations finally came to a close at the Old Bailey in 2011 when the prosecution collapsed due to multiple flaws in disclosure. No further investigation was possible due to a quarter of a century of police corruption that made the evidence totally unreliable.

Technically, Daniel's murder remains "unsolved", but the details amassed by the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel, which reported in 2021, make it clear that the police are not looking for any further suspects.

Included in the panel report is a detailed account of how the original murder inquiry was stymied by the presence in the incident room, on the night before Rees and Fillery were arrested, of a former disgraced police officer, Jonathan Ross.

According to another police officer, Derek Haslam, who worked undercover for the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) for nine years gathering information on Southern Investigations and its network of connections with corrupt police officers, journalists and the underworld, Ross was a "corrupt policeman" who specialised in "selling information to the Mail and othe...

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Neo-Nazi and far-right extremist groups – including two flagged by the UK Government – have embedded themselves in anti-immigration protests across the Westcountry, operating alongside self-described "ordinary mums and dads" with little challenge from politicians, police or the local press.

Over the past year, Byline Times has identified activists linked to neo-Nazi organisations including the British Movement and Blood & Honour working with members of Britain First and other far-right networks. In January 2025, the UK Government froze the assets of Blood & Honour under counter-terrorism regulations. In 2024, the UK Government flagged British Movement as "a cause for concern" in relation to domestic extremism.

As their involvement has grown, protests have hardened, shifting from loosely organised gatherings into marches marked by intimidation, racist chants and hostility towards journalists.

Emerging from online campaigns framed as grassroots opposition to immigration, when those efforts failed to mobilise large numbers far-right actors stepped in, reshaping the movement and giving it a new direction.

In a county of 1.25 million people with fewer than 2,000 asylum seekers and only one asylum hotel, that transformation raises urgent questions about how extremist networks gain local footholds, and why their presence has been allowed to pass without challenge.

Far Right Influence

In the first week of December 2025, as shoppers browsed Plymouth's Christmas market, around 50 mostly male protestors marched through the city centre chanting "save the nation, deportation" and "you can shove your Palestine up your arse!" Initially met by a larger counter-protest organised by Stand Up To Racism (SUTR), police contained the counter-group in one area while allowing the march to continue for almost three hours.

Their final event in a year which saw monthly protests taking place in Plymouth and weekly protests occurring in Exeter, the December march underlined how far the movement had shifted towards organised far-right activism.

When asked about the presence of known extremists, police told Byline Times that provided people were protesting peacefully, officers had limited grounds to intervene. Yet this lack of intervention saw the movement become a safe-space for supporters of neo-Nazi music collective Blood & Honour, representatives of Britain First, members of the neo-Nazi British Movement, and far right members of local football firm The Central Element.

Sp how did organised far-right activists gain a foothold in a protest movement that presented itself as families concerned about their children's welfare?

The Beginning

Plymouth is the largest city in Devon with a population of around 264,000 people, 96% of whom are white. When their version of the Great British Strike – a nationwide anti-immigration protest organised by former soldier Richard Donaldson – took place in May 2025, protesters were pre-warned about violence in the local press linking it to the 2024 riot that occurred following the Southport attack.

Donaldson's plan was to force a general election by having "500,000 people [walk] out in protest". In reality, barely one hundred people turned out – waving flags and milling around in small groups – countered by a similar number from Stand Up To Racism. Visibly angered by SUTR referring to them as "Nazi scum", several protestors Byline Times encountered presented themselves as "just ordinary mums and dads" worried about their children. Reports emerged of similar scenes across the country.

Two months later, Donaldson's followers began protesting outside UK hotels housing asylum seekers. Still being presented in local media reports as ordinary people "in favour of stricter immigration laws and against the placement of migrants in hotels without communities being consulted", the coverage largely ignored...

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It's been clear for a very long time who Donald Trump really is, whose interests he really serves and why nobody should believe that he is a reliable friend of either the UK, or Europe.

Keir Starmer continues to be reluctant to face up to these realities. In a Downing Street press conference on Monday the Prime Minister insisted that he was "determined to keep that relationship [with Trump] strong, constructive and focused on results".

Such prevarication is understandable. The UK remains hugely reliant upon the United States for its security, with Trump also able to pile huge economic pain on this country, should he choose to do so.

Yet at best Starmer's strategy can only hope to dampen, or delay, what is a growing threat to our continent posed by the US President.

A Year of Living Dangerously in Trump's America

I no longer feel safe to speak or act freely in a country where people are being arbitrarily detained and killed and where the truth is becoming whatever Donald Trump says it is, reports Alexandra Hall Hall

Alexandra Hall Hall

So far it is a strategy that has yielded few tangible results. While the US has not yet completely abandoned Ukraine in its fight against foreign invasion, the President has now switched to threatening his own incursion into European territory, in Greenland.

This threat is in some ways even graver than the threat posed by Russia in Ukraine. If Putin were to take Kyiv then it would be a catastrophic development that would seriously raise the threat posed by Moscow to neighbouring countries, but it would not in itself lead to a wider collapse in pan-European security.

The threat to Greenland is of a different order. Denmark is a member of both the European Union and NATO. Were Trump to follow through on his threats then it would risk destroying the very bedrock of post-war European security. As EU defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius put it, seizure of Greenland would herald the "end of NATO".

Not everyone would be unhappy with such an outcome.

The end of Europe's main security alliance has long been the Russian President's number one geopolitical aim.

So far he has failed to achieve his aim, thanks in part to the resilience of the Ukranian people and the resolve of other European nations and the United States. Yet where Putin has failed, Trump now looks poised to succeed. An alliance that has saved Europe, and the wider world, from outright war for the best part of a century risks being torn apart due to the imperial dreams of an increasingly unhinged US President.

Of course under previous presidents, such a catastrophic threat to global peace would have prevented disaster. However, when you have a US administration which openly portrays European nations as a group of weak and contemptible "random countries" that scrounge off of America, and when you have a man in the Oval office who says he is willing to start a war with those same nations, in retaliation for not being given a peace prize, then we can no longer be sure that sanity will prevail.

A 'Global Peacemaker'

It's worth remembering that none of this is what we were told was likely to happen. When Trump last ran for office, there was no shortage of senior UK politicians and commentators who predicted that his re-election would lead to a new era of peace and prosperity for the world.

Nigel Farage, who is currently the favourite to form the next UK Government, claimed that Trump would be a "global peacemaker" who would make the world a "better, safer place".

Others, like former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said that Trump's return would make the world much more "safe and stable" and accused those who warned otherwise of engaging in a "whinge-a-rama".

In the UK media, Trump's British cheerleaders also loudly encouraged and then celebrated his return, with one presenter on GB News quite literally sal...

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A private investigator has been accused of 'hacking' and 'withholding' an iPhone considered critical to the ongoing investigation into the disappearance of rugby and reality TV star Levi Davis, Byline Times can reveal

Gavin Burrows took the device from Mr Davis's grieving family after volunteering his help in their search following the former Bath Rugby and X Factor star's unexplained disappearance in Barcelona in October 2022 – a case that remains one of Europe's most perplexing of recent times.

But after falling out with family and friends of the missing man, who say Burrows later became "highly abusive" toward them, prompting an official complaint to his trade body, the phone's whereabouts – and its secrets – remain a mystery three years later.

"That phone could hold the key to why Levi posted on Instagram before he disappeared saying his life was in danger," Davis's mother Julie said today, referring to a harrowing 15-minute film her son made alleging he'd been a victim of targeted drug rape and organised blackmail after appearing on reality TV shows in the UK.

Miss Davis added: "This is why the family are desperate to have the iPhone back. Myself and others have repeatedly asked Mr Burrows to return Levi's device since spring 2023 so it can be properly forensically examined by the police. He told me that he could not release it to me and then went silent. As far as we are concerned he is responsible for withholding potentially critical evidence."

EXCLUSIVE

Levi Davis – Murdered At Sea?

Part Two of a five part special investigation by Dan Evans and Tom Latchem into a missing person's case with dark criminal undertones

Dan Evans and Tom Latchem

New Version of Events

While the Davis family say Burrows has simply refused to give the iPhone back – and are now publicly calling for its return – Burrows offered a new version of events this week in response to questions from this newspaper.

He claimed that "to the best" of his knowledge a "Spanish consultant operative" gave Levi's phone to the Catalan authorities, although Byline Times can confirm there is no record to support this claim in the official reports of the Investigating Magistrate in Barcelona, Senor Francisco Miralles Carrio.

Burrows did not deny offering to bypass the iPhone's security in order to "help find" Davis and identify a mystery suspect the sportsman cut short a holiday in Ibiza to meet in Barcelona, arriving by ferry on 29 October, 2022, with just a small backpack of belongings before vanishing five hours later.

Instead, he justified the use of "any feasible means to help find a missing person," which he said would "naturally be utilised," insisting: "this is normal procedure in missing person cases," – potentially tainting what might have been a critical piece of evidence in the police's criminal investigation.

According to three witnesses, Burrows started making unsolicited offers to bypass the phone's security in order to access Davis's private information in 2023.

But his relationship with the family and others later deteriorated sharply following lurid and, it transpired inaccurate, tabloid stories that Davis was fleeing a Somali gang over an alleged £100,000 drugs debt and, separately, that police were going to imminently arrest people close to Levi – articles in which Burrows was a quoted source.

Julie Davis said: "Mr Burrows got in touch out of the blue right after Levi went missing. He offered to help us at a time of great need but very soon it became clear he was more interested in using Levi as a vehicle for self-promotion.

"He propagated a number of false and unhelpful allegations about my son to the press, muddying the focus of the search, and in my opinion cutting across police inquiries in the UK and Spain.

"There are many questions around activity on Levi's WhatsApp and other apps which may have records of peopl...