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I've held back from commenting on the revelations about Nigel Farage's past racism. Not because the story shocked me. For many in this country, it merely confirms what we've suspected for years. But some will be hearing these allegations for the first time, and it's to you that I want to speak.

Over the past weeks we've seen a steady stream of former classmates and teachers describe Farage's behaviour at Dulwich College: Nazi salutes, chants, anti-semitic slurs aimed at Jewish pupils, racist taunts at anyone who was not white. Some recall him saying "Hitler was right" or making jokes about gas chambers. Others simply describe a pattern of targeted, persistent abuse.

These are not new concerns. A teacher's letter from the early 1980s warned school authorities that the teenage Farage should not be made a prefect because of what she called his "racism" and "fascism". What is new is the political context. Farage is no longer just a fringe protest figure. He leads a party riding high in the polls, and he openly talks about expecting to walk into Downing Street.

The Government's 'Integrity Gap' Is Leaving the Door Open for Nigel Farage

By offering watered down Faragist rhetoric combined with a programme of managed decline, Keir Starmer's Government has left a political vacuum which the Reform leader is now stepping into, argues Labour MP Clive Lewis

Clive Lewis MP

Most of us have said or done things when we were young that we look back on with regret. That is part of growing up. We make mistakes, we cringe at our former selves, we learn, we change. Some of those early attitudes fall away. Others become the foundations of who we later become.

What is now emerging about Nigel Farage is not a single stupid comment or one heated moment. Former classmates are describing a pattern of behaviour. Not just a bully, but a racist bully of the ugliest kind, directing hatred at black and Jewish pupils as a kind of sport.

That does not automatically mean he holds every one of those views today. People can change. But when someone tells you who they are, over and over again, it is wise to listen. So look at his politics. Look at his rhetoric. Look at the company he keeps and the division he trades in.

For decades Farage has built his career on singling out migrants and minorities, from the infamous "Breaking Point" poster that depicted desperate refugees as a threat, to repeated claims that we are being "overrun" or that parts of Britain are no longer recognisably British. Look at Reform's immigration policy, which even the Prime Minister has felt compelled to call "racist" and "immoral". Consider his willingness to stand alongside and give cover to people in his own party who make openly racist comments, only distancing himself when public outrage forces his hand.

Taken together, it paints a picture of a man whose worldview did not grow out of those teenage foundations, but from them.

So, what does that mean now?

If you already oppose Farage, these stories will only harden your resolve. If you adore him, nothing I say will shift you. But there is a group of people I do want to reach: those considering voting for Reform.

I am not going to patronise you. I understand why many are thinking about it. If you have watched your pay stall, your bills rise, your community decline and your politicians shrug for years, you might well think: what have I got to lose? Why not give the system a kick? Why not try something different?

You may feel the country has taken a wrong turn. That we have lost something precious and need to put it right. You may feel that people like you have been talked down to, ignored, or written off.

Those instincts are not wicked. They are not inherently racist. They come from frustration, disappointment and a desire for dignity and control in your own life. I meet people every week who feel that ...

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The UK Government's attempts to prevent migrants from crossing the Channel by small boat is leading to increased violence and death on the border, according to a new report published on Monday.

Humanitarian organisation Humans for Rights Network and charities working in the camps of northern France said that more than £650 million of British taxpayers' money is being used to fund police patrols and purchase surveillance equipment. This is then used to "instigate violent policies" on the UK's border with France, they said.

Last year was the deadliest on record, with at least 73 people dying on the border - more than in all other years put together.

NGOs working on both sides of the Channel say the French police routinely use flashballs, tear gas, including against children, and unleash police dogs to prevent migrants from boarding.

Chaos at the point of embarkation has been known to lead to people being crushed to death. Last year Sara, a 7-year-old girl, suffocated beneath a group of bodies while trying to board a dinghy bound for Britain. Campaigners say the UK is responsible for deaths like these because it is funding violence perpetrated by the French riot police.

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An anti-migrant movement backed by Reform and Conservative politicians and regularly invited onto news channels is funded by a far-right group and has platformed a Neo-Nazi activist

Nicola Kelly

Since 2018, Britain has spent more than £3.5 billion on private sector company contracts designed to 'secure' the border with France. A further £476 million was pledged in 2023, to provide surveillance equipment and personnel, including drones, helicopters and patrol officers. More than £100 million has already been given to France for the 'one in, one out' scheme to return migrants there, and to bring those who have been accepted to Britain.

Earlier this year, French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said that of 1,200 law enforcement officers at the border each day, 730 are paid for by the UK government.

Alongside the perils faced while boarding boats, the French Government's policy of arresting those in the camps on 'no fixed abode' charges also leads to widespread violence, the report states. One group, Human Rights Observers documented over 800 evictions at the border in 2024, affecting at least 16,365 people. Belongings confiscated during these operations include medication, prescriptions and asylum claim documents.

Organisations working in northern France say police brutality is commonplace, with one, Utopia 56, recording 680 incidents of violence outside of crossing attempts between March and September 2025.

Moussa, who lived in the camps of Calais until recently, said: "The police there are like soldiers but without guns - it's like a war."

Charities say migrants rarely report police brutality due to lengthy and unworkable processes.

"It's not right what the police did. But we're not going to complain. Who are we going to complain to?" said Jamal, who witnessed violence on the northern France coastline.

This year has seen the closure of several safe routes to the UK, including refugee family reunion and some resettlement schemes. Campaigners and charities argue that the lack of alternative routes makes it more difficult for those on the move to seek asylum, risking increased police violence. It also allows smuggling networks to proliferate.

At least four people are known to have been shot dead in and around Dunkirk so far this year. In one documented incident, an autistic 16-year-old boy had a gun held to his head by smugglers.

"What's complicated in Dunkirk is that the mafia is very present," said an employee of Medecins du Monde working in the camps. A climate of tension and violence has really been accentuated over the past two or three years. We regularly...

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Britain's Army is shrinking to its smallest size since the Napoleonic wars, struggling to recruit and unable to modernise at the pace its own commanders say is required. Yet despite this contraction, new Ministry of Defence (MoD) figures obtained by Byline Times suggest that the UK is quietly extending its global reach by sending military reservists into more countries than at any point in recent history.

The FOI disclosure reveals that 612 reservists were deployed overseas last year, entering what the MoD classifies as a "deployment theatre" for more than 24 hours in 51 countries and territories. It is an unusually broad global footprint for the modern Army Reserve - particularly for a force shrinking to its smallest size in two centuries - and one the Government has offered no public explanation for.

The MoD will not say what these part-time soldiers were doing, under whose authority they were sent, or why some missions took place in states that have no publicly declared UK military interest. When asked whether reservists had also been deployed to other, undisclosed countries, the department issued a "neither confirm nor deny" response - the phrasing normally reserved for sensitive or clandestine operations.

In a previous FOI disclosure, the MoD listed Iran as a deployment location before withdrawing the claim once Byline Times asked for clarification.

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It leaves a striking contradiction at the heart of British defence: as the Army contracts, its overseas activity appears to be quietly expanding, pushed into opaque theatres with little democratic scrutiny and few safeguards for accountability.

These revelations come at a moment when the military is facing scrutiny over a murder-rape case in Kenya and allegations that UK Special Forces carried out unlawful killings in Afghanistan - abuses senior officers stand accused of concealing.

This month, Kenya's parliament delivered a very clear warning of what happens when overseas deployments drift beyond scrutiny. A sweeping year-long inquiry into the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) has accused troops of decades of abuses, from sexual violence and fatal accidents to environmental damage and the negligent handling of unexploded ordnance. All of this seems to be shielded by a veil of diplomatic and military immunity that allowed grievances to fester for generations.

Kenyan lawmakers described BATUK's refusal to give evidence as showing an entrenched culture of impunity. This echoes patterns seen elsewhere in Britain's military footprint from Iraq to Afghanistan: allegations initially dismissed, investigations obstructed, civilian harm minimised, and accountability delayed and denied until the political cost becomes impossible to ignore.

Where They Went

The MoD's list spans NATO allies, conflict zones and several states where the UK has no obvious strategic interest. A handful of deployments follow familiar patterns of deterrence or alliance maintenance. Others sit far less comfortably, resembling the routines of a vanished Empire that persist more through inertia than declared strategy. The Gulf features prominently - unsurprising given long-standing security partnerships and the region's role as a major purchaser of British defence equipment. Eastern Europe also appears heavily on the list, consistent with the UK's efforts to signal resolve against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

Yet interspersed among these are countries where the UK's interests feel, at best, opaque.

Cape Verde, Djibouti, Lebanon, the Maldives: each appears on the MoD's ledger with no accompanying explana...

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In December 2025, the European Commission fined X €120 million under its new Digital Services Act (DSA) – the EU's flagship online safety law, which requires the biggest platforms to be transparent about how they amplify, advertise and police content. It was the first ever non-compliance ruling under the DSA, and it focused on three design choices at the heart of Elon Musk's version of X: a deceptive paid blue-check system, an opaque advertising archive, and the platform's decision to shut out researchers.

Those are not abstract compliance failures. They are exactly the structural weaknesses that covert foreign influence operations have been exploiting on X.

The recent exposure of covert foreign influence via imposter accounts on X is jarring enough as it is, but a closer look reveals an even more concerning reality: these accounts did not flourish in spite of the platform's policies, but because of them.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he promised a new era of "free speech," an end to bots, and a more transparent information ecosystem. Instead, the platform he renamed "X" has become a near-perfect environment for foreign-run political influence operations.

While these problems predate Musk, the architecture he built – notably the monetisation of engagement, the destruction of identity verification, aggressive cuts to trust and safety, and a recommendation system that amplifies right-wing outrage – has turned X into one of the most permissive, profitable, and low-risk environments in the world for foreign operators seeking to infiltrate US political discourse.

With the recent revelations about foreign-run MAGA and "patriot" accounts, we now have the clearest evidence yet that Musk's policy changes are facilitating – and in some cases, even monetising – foreign influence and disinformation.

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From Verification to Monetisation

Suddenly, the perception of legitimacy associated with the checkmark was available to anyone willing to pay a small amount of money. Among the recently-exposed fake MAGA accounts, many were willing to do just that. In a sample of 22 of the most influential foreign-run fake MAGA accounts, nearly all (19 accounts, or 86%) have a blue checkmark, indicating that they are paying to be Premium users and therefore are eligible to apply to participate in X's content monetisation program, which allows influencer accounts to earn money from their content based on the levels of engagement they receive from other Premium users.

Accounts with Premium subscriptions also get algorithmic priority, which in practice means their posts have greater reach and higher engagement than non-Premium users – so more people see their posts and more money can be made based on their greater reach.

The engagement-based monetisation system introduced by Musk incentivises outrage bait, disinformation, and other problematic content that large numbers of people react to and engage with. Under this unprecedented scheme, anyone, anywhere in the world, can profit from divisive or false content designed to drive wedges between Americans and Europeans, with no regard for things like quality or truthfulness. It's no coincidence that the fake MAGA accounts posted frequently about hot-button topics like immigration, isolationism, and culture war issues.

These same design choices are now at the centre of the EU's €120 million penalty, which found that X's paid blue-check system misleads users about who is "verified", exposes people to impersonation and scams, and undermines transparency around political and issue-based advertising.

Disman...

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Downing Street's electoral strategy is no longer a mystery. Labour's leadership has decided the safest route to power is to narrow politics to the smallest possible space: mimic just enough of Reform UK's rhetoric to neutralise them, reassure the bond markets, and run out the clock.

This is not a strategy of renewal. It is crisis management masquerading as competence. And the public can already see through it.

The latest polling from More in Common makes that unmistakably clear. When voters were asked which party they are most likely to vote against, Labour came first. For a governing party at the start of a term, this should set every alarm bell ringing. Voters are not rejecting bold reform or ideological ambition. They are rejecting the absence of it. They see a party that promised a decade of national renewal, but is offering a programme indistinguishable from managed decline.

The Autumn Budget only confirmed the problem.

In Parliament, I welcomed the necessary steps: ending the two-child limit, modest moves towards taxing wealth, a rise in the minimum wage. But these are tactical concessions, not a governing strategy. They do not confront the structural drivers of Britain's crises: monopoly extraction, climate-driven inflation, a decade of stagnant wages, and an economic model where unelected financial markets hold more authority over national policy than Parliament itself.

As I said in the Commons, repainting the wallpaper does not fix the walls. And this Budget did not even acknowledge the foundations.

The Integrity Gap: How We Built the Authoritarian Future We Fear

Labour MP Clive Lewis argues that the collapse of public trust in Government is the product of corporate power being wired into the architecture of the state

Clive Lewis MP

Meanwhile, the political landscape is shifting beneath Labour's feet. For the first time in years, Nigel Farage's carefully crafted public image is cracking. Former classmates describe not a momentary lapse in judgement, but a pattern of racist bullying so severe it shaped the culture of their school. Indeed, these accounts reveal a man whose teenage cruelty seems less like a phase and more like a blueprint for his future-self.

This should be an open goal. A moment to expose the gulf between Farage's performative plain-speaking and the worldview beneath. A chance to persuade those Reform-curious voters who feel abandoned by an economic system that extracts from them while political elites swap places and call it change.

But Labour's leadership cannot seize this moment - because it cannot credibly speak to the failures it has chosen to imitate.

You cannot call out Farage's divisive politics while borrowing his language on migration and asylum.

You cannot promise economic dignity while refusing to challenge the extractive model that keeps millions in insecurity.

You cannot build trust with disillusioned voters while clinging to the very managerialism they believe has failed them.

This is Labour's integrity gap - and it is now a structural weakness.

People feel something deep is wrong in Britain. They feel their wages stagnating while prices surge; their rent climbing while housing becomes ever more precarious; their energy bills rising while privatised monopolies post record profits. They watch water companies pollute rivers with impunity. They watch their children's futures shrink. They watch politicians change, but the model that fails them stay exactly the same.

These instincts are not ignorant or extreme. They are rooted in a decade of lived reality. And if Labour does not offer a coherent alternative, others will fill the void.

Because Britain's renewal depends on recognising who actually keeps the economy alive. SMEs, sole traders, co-operatives, family farms, local manufacturers and community enterprises have been crushed between rising costs and ...

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With her appointment in September as Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood has become one of the country's most senior politicians, responsible for tackling migration, refugees and policing, core challenges for the Starmer Government.

A self-declared social conservative - "If you were trying to put me in a box you would say social, small-c conservative," Mahmood admits to a "natural affinity for the faith, family and flag element of Blue Labour." Her appointment was seen as another triumph for Starmer's Chief of Staff and behind-the-scenes kingmaker Morgan McSweeney.

Unsurprisingly, her appointment was met with acclaim by the Blue Labour leadership. Maurice Glasman called the move "fantastic", compared Mahmood to Elizabeth I and declared, "she's now clearly the leader of our part of the party" while Jonathan Rutherford with hyperbolic exaggeration hailed her as "perhaps the most astute and able politician of her generation". Yet, until now, she had remained unknown to most Labour supporters and the wider public. So what do we know about her politics?

What is Her Background?

Mahmood's grandparents came to Birmingham for work from Azad Kashmir in the 1960s. Her father was a civil engineer who worked in Saudi Arabia where Mahmood lived for the first seven years of her life. She then lived and went to school in Birmingham before gaining a place at Oxford University, where she took a degree in law. She then worked as a barrister until her election as Labour MP for the safe seat of Ladywood in inner-city Birmingham in 2010. She had no discernible track record of political activity prior to her selection but her dad was the chair of the Birmingham Labour Party. In the words of one long-standing, local councillor, "she was manoeuvred into the seat."

In her maiden speech she proudly promoted the diversity of her constituency and gave a clear, positive definition of multi-culturalism. "…..while the people of my constituency might have come from different places, the destination they seek is the same - a place of greater opportunity and the same chance as everyone else to succeed."

She recalled how "My grandfather came to this country from Pakistan in the 1960s. He worked long hours on a low wage and made sacrifices so that his family could access greater opportunity." She paid tribute "…to the successes of the Labour party and the Labour Government, who created the opportunities that made my family's journey and that of so many ordinary hard-working families possible. I believe that opportunity and the chance to fulfil one's aspirations is the birth-right of every one of our citizens."

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An anti-migrant movement backed by Reform and Conservative politicians and regularly invited onto news channels is funded by a far-right group and has platformed a Neo-Nazi activist

Nicola Kelly

The Hostile Environment Revisited

As Home Secretary Mahmood had an opportunity to make her grandparents' aspirations come true for successor generations of migrants. Instead, she is aping recent Tory predecessors in her role - Theresa May, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman - by instituting a "hostile environment" for them. On 29th September as Home Secretary she announced a new contribution-based settlement model to reduce net migration, boost integration and reduce pressure on public services.

This stated that "To ensure people contribute to the economy and society before being able to settle in the UK, under the new model they will have to be lawfully resident in the UK for the minimum of 10 years, double the current period." Furthermore she set out tough new criteria for gaining indefinite leave to remain in the UK, including learning English to a high standard - defined in other briefings as equivalent to A level - not having taken any state benefits, and giving bac...

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For two decades, Jeffrey Epstein moved through the private networks that shaped modern Silicon Valley — even after his sex-offending conviction.

Newly released House Oversight Committee files, combined with a deep review of archived material, reveal how his money, ideas and relationships flowed into the founders, labs and political circles now defining America's new tech order.

Part One of this exclusive three-part investigation explores how Epstein was embedded in the Silicon Valley 'Broligarchy' brains trust. Part Two uncovers how Epstein intersected with pivotal moments in Bitcoin. Part Three, the channelling of an apocalyptic vision of climate 'culling' and eugenics.

Newly released Jeffrey Epstein files reveal that an apocalyptic worldview – blending racial hierarchy, genetic "optimisation" and even climate-driven population culling – was circulating inside the elite, founder-linked networks shaping Silicon Valley's rise.

These ideas appear most starkly in the convicted sex offender's private exchanges with the AI theorist Joscha Bach, and sit alongside the longtermist and transhumanist philosophies championed by other influential figures in the same circles.

Joscha Bach, whose work on cognitive architectures and machine consciousness has shaped advanced AI research and influenced figures such as Elon Musk, appears in the documents engaging Epstein in sweeping discussions about race, hierarchy, genetic engineering and the supposed 'utility' of mass death, including under conditions of climate stress.

Meanwhile, another philosopher whose ideas underpin much of modern longtermism and whose work helped shape Silicon Valley's early thinking on artificial general intelligence, Nick Bostrom, moved through the same intellectual and institutional ecosystem.

His published arguments on eugenics, selective population strategies and existential "optimisation" reveal a parallel strand of thinking within that milieu, financed and legitimised by many of the same networks.

Both men were also financed by Epstein.

Taken together, the Bach correspondence and the longtermist ideas circulating in this environment show that human hierarchy, population thinning and genetic destiny were not fringe provocations, but part of the ambient intellectual air inside the circles designing the next generation of AI.

How Trump's 'Reverse Algorithmic Capture' Is Creating the Unseen Curators of Our New Digital Realities

The US Government is shaping by – by stealth – the emergence of a privatised information infrastructure that serves its ideological aims. Caroline Orr reports

Caroline Orr

Epstein and the Radicalisation of the Silicon Valley Mind

Previous excellent reporting by the Boston Globe first brought to light Bach's exchanges with Epstein, but focused narrowly on some of Bach's comments in isolation. What has been missing – and what this investigation provides for the first time – is a clear view of how these ideas moved through Epstein-funded institutions, longtermist organisations and the AI networks now exerting growing influence over Silicon Valley's emerging political order.

One of the most revealing documents in the House Oversight Committee's Epstein archive is an email chain from the same month that Trump won the Republican nomination as presidential candidate in July 2016 – between Jeffrey Epstein and the cognitive scientist Joscha Bach.

This was eight years after Epstein's conviction for soliciting a child following a major criminal investigation into wider sex trafficking allegations. At this time, Epstein was in regular communication with Peter Thiel, who that month would endorse Trump at the Republican National Convention.

By this point, Bach was an integral member of the Edge Foundation – the network of Silicon Valley elites founded by John Brockman but principally funded by Jeffrey Eps...

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GB News presenters and guests have been accused of circling the wagons to protect their colleague Nigel Farage from allegations that he engaged in racism and anti-semitic bullying towards Jewish and other ethnic minority peers while a teenager.

An analysis from the campaign group Stop Funding Hate has found several instances of GB News presenters and guests downplaying the allegations against Farage or even going as far as to insult the alleged victims of his teenage bullying.

Allegations of schoolboy racism against Farage are not new, with the claims recurring throughout his political career, however Farage has been under fire over recent more detailed allegations of anti-semitic bullying against his schoolmates for the last few weeks, following a Guardian report which included new testimony from the film director Peter Ettedgui.

Ettedgui alleged in the Guardian that Farage "would sidle up to me and growl: 'Hitler was right,' or 'Gas them,' sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers," while they were both at Dulwich College in the 1970s. The Guardian reports that it has spoken to twenty people who recall racist and antisemitic remarks that he made during the ages of 13 and 18.

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Farage is a presenter on GB News and has pocketed £412,142 from his role at the broadcaster in the last year. Reacting to the allegations, GB News presenters and guests downplayed the allegations or insulted those making them, Stop Funding Hate found.

In an interview with Farage on 25 November, presenter and former MEP for the Farage-led Brexit Party, Martin Daubney stated: "the accusations of anti-semitism, isn't it fair to point out that you've been a very vocal supporter of Israel and the Jewish community since October the 7th, 2023?".

Following the interview Daubney then offered multiple defences of Farage. Responding to guest Jo Phillips highlighting inconsistencies in Farage's responses to the scandal he stated: "He's repeatedly said… it's categorically untrue. We know Jo, he denied it yesterday. He denied it today. He's denied it on camera tonight. If there was any substantiated evidence to corroborate these claims, surely it would have come to light by now. This is simply a case of one person's recollections against another".

While discussing the story with his guests Daubney also offered the defence that "didn't anybody and everybody say racist things?"

The next day presenter Bev Turner also appeared to defend Farage stating: "Nigel said there, Katie, you know, this is politically motivated". She suggested that the allegations were the result of "the uniparty" and collusion between the mainstream parties to attack Reform UK.

Turner then turned to her guest and said "when you watch this, Mally, do you think how ridiculous the British media is?".

The defences of Farage by GB News presenters, who are also his colleagues, has prompted criticism of the broadcaster. Tom Chivers, a Research Associate in Media and Communications, at Goldsmiths University told Byline Times: "This is a shameless campaign by GB News to dismiss despicable anti-Jewish racism, circling the wagons to protect their idols at the heart of the UK's right-wing media-political class. GB News' failure to take antisemitism seriously is another disgraceful example of the channel's built-in bigotry, shown time and time again with its attacks on Muslims, the LGBT community and other marginalised groups".

Chivers added: "For years GB News has baselessly accused left-wing politicians, public figures and peaceful protestors of racism against Je...

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Two British Prime Ministers gave foreign policy speeches recently. Only one of them was any good. Unfortunately, it was not the speech given by the current Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer.

Starmer's address to the Lady Mayor of London's Banquet at the Guildhall on Monday was a patchwork quilt of small ideas, sown together, like a student essay, with a few "buts", "becauses" and "moreovers", to make it sound coherent. It was a dog's breakfast. Mutton dressed as lamb. A litany of false boasts, ambitious claims, non-sequiturs, and dodges around the hard questions.

No matter how many times Starmer inserted the word "so" into his speech, the speech lacked persuasive logic, or honesty about Britain's current status on the world stage.

It did correctly acknowledge that the UK has to try to navigate its way between today's three global giants - the US, the EU and China. But in all three cases, Starmer exaggerated how well we are doing, and underplayed the extent of the challenges.

Starting with the EU, Starmer made perhaps his frankest acknowledgement that Brexit had been a mistake. He said "how it was sold and delivered was wrong. Wild promises were made to the British people and not fulfilled. We are still dealing with the consequences today, in our economy, and in trust - in the degradation of political debate."

The 'Pink Ladies' Laundering Anti-Migrant Views Into the Mainstream

An anti-migrant movement backed by Reform and Conservative politicians and regularly invited onto news channels is funded by a far-right group and has platformed a Neo-Nazi activist

Nicola Kelly

But, he framed the argument as if it was still merely how Brexit was delivered which was the problem, rather than the very decision to leave the EU itself. He also shied away from even his more limited argument's logical conclusion, which is that the UK should try to renegotiate major parts of the Brexit deal, to get better terms, including by lifting his own party's redlines on rejoining the Customs Union or Single Market.

Instead, he continued to claim that it was enough to tinker around the margins of the existing Brexit deal, making the exaggerated claim that the Government had successfully "redefined our bond with the EU, building a new partnership that benefits both sides, sticking to our red lines while supporting British businesses, making food cheaper, and slashing red tape."

This flies in the face of the mounting body of evidence that Brexit has been an economic disaster, even with the small modifications achieved by the government so far. The US think tank, the National Bureau of Economic Research, recently published a study estimating that the decision to leave the EU had reduced the UK's GDP by between 6 to 8 percent. Another recent analysis, by the House of Commons library, estimated that Brexit is costing the Treasury up to 90 billion a year in lost tax revenue, and that it has cost the average British resident between 2,700 to 3,700 pounds per year.

Even the Times and Telegraph are now publishing articles acknowledging Brexit has been, in the words of Jeremy Warner for the Telegraph "an unmitigated economic failure." In the Times, Ryan Bourne, who described himself as one of the members of the small band of "Economists for Brexit" argued that it was time to face facts. "Brexit did not cause Britain's growth malaise, but it undoubtedly deepened it. Nor did it create our fiscal woes, though it worsened them too. Denial about this helps no-one. Indeed, a successful sovereign economic policy demands taking responsibility and facing the world as it is, not as we wish it to be."

But despite these about-faces, Starmer continues with the pretence that the UK can make Brexit a success, as long as it just engages with the EU bloc more skilfully.

This denial of reality extended to his remarks regarding the US. Starmer hail...

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There was fervour in Chelmsford's Tindal Square - and a sea of pink. Hot pink berets. Baby pink Union Jack flags. Dogs with pink rain jackets. This was the 'Pink Ladies' protest, an anti-migrant group who portray themselves as being ordinary women trying to "save our kids".

The organiser of last week's rally was Orla Minihane, Reform UK's vice-chair for Epping Forest who previously shared a stage with a member of a neo-Nazi group. Taking to the microphone, she listed five women who she said had been murdered "at the hands of an illegal migration catastrophe". Behind her, pictures of the women were held up.

An incensed Minihane had a message for the Government. "We are not going to be sacrificial lambs to your multicultural nonsense anymore… They are coming in in their thousands everyday. Why should we have to live like this? We are under attack."

The Pink Ladies was set up in June, following a series of protests against the Bell Hotel in Epping. During one of those rallies, Minihane spoke on stage and shared a microphone with Callum Barker, a member of Neo-Nazi group Homeland, a splinter organisation from Patriotic Alternative, Britain's largest far-right group.

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In her speech, Minihane is heard saying "If I've got to wear a far-right title because that's what the narrative is, then so be it." The speech was then shared by prominent voices such as Mark Collett and Homeland itself. Minihane said she had no knowledge of Barker's views before appearing alongside him.

The Pink Ladies are also financed by Restore Britain, the far-right group founded by former Reform UK member Rupert Lowe, who was sacked following allegations of threats of physical violence against Zia Yusuf.

Lowe has said that Restore provides funding for all street protests including the stages, sound systems and speakers, with promotional material carrying joint branding with Restore. Pink Lady organisers also told Byline Times that Lowe helped to get the group trademarked and that his movement provides legal advice and support. Despite their links to Restore Britain, organisers maintain they are not a far-right organisation.

Last month a motion was brought forward by two Labour councillors in Tower Hamlets, Mufeedah Bustin and Abdi Mohamed, who stated that "far-right extremists "were leading this movement "under the banner of keeping women and children safe". In response, the Pink Ladies took to the streets again, this time in Whitechapel, in the heart of Tower Hamlets.

The organisation has consistently protested against Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, attempting to enter the building earlier this month during an investigation session into grooming gangs and blaming him for the rise in immigration.

Despite their links to the far-right, the group has also received the backing of prominent Conservative politicians.

At the time of their protest against Khan, Susan Hall, the leader of the Conservatives on the London Assembly and the party's former mayoral candidate posted on Facebook, saying the Pink Lady protests was "not hate crime and it's certainly not terror-related". Hall has previously been found supporting Enoch Powell on social media, engaging in Islamophobic posts about Khan, and sharing conspiracy theories about the 2020 American election. She is also on the advisory board of Restore Britain. At a recent protest, she said: "I am here because I am a Pink Lady."

Despite all this, The Conservative party did not respond to questions from Byline Times about Hall's activity.

The group has also been given multiple platforms by broad...