Byline Times Audio Articles

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Tuesday was the two year anniversary of Hamas's barbaric assault on Israel, and the launch of Israel's devastating military response on Gaza.

The disaster has played out most immediately for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and the families and friends of the Israeli citizens killed or kidnapped by Hamas.

'I Pray to God to Save and Guide Us'

This includes my friend, Nabil, in Gaza, who has just been forced to move his entire family, for the umpteenth time, from Gaza City, to a new shelter further south, following the Israeli Defence Force's instructions for everyone to evacuate Gaza City.

Over the course of the war, Nabil has lost his home, his job, many members of his extended family, and countless friends. He has had numerous close calls with death himself - with bombs frequently missing his shelter by frighteningly close margins. His children's education has been disrupted. At times, they've had barely more than some pitta bread to eat. This summer, his oldest daughter had to be hospitalised due to acute malnutrition.

This week he messaged to tell me that his barber "a kind, humble and innocent man who is 72 years old, was killed with shrapnel as he was walking along a residential street."

Despite all the trauma, he has tried to stay positive, and maintained notes of grace and hope. His deep religious faith has been a constant source of strength. In messages, he has told me how he has prayed "day and night for the war's end", for "the Lord to grant us patience and resilience", and for God to "save and guide us."

'Donald Trump's Plan Will Not End the Gaza Genocide'

The author of The New Age of Genocide, Martin Shaw, on why Trump's 'peace' plan will allow the ongoing destruction and replacement of a Palestinian Gaza

Martin Shaw

'There are No Winners In War'

It also includes former Israeli hostage, Eli Sharabi, who I heard being interviewed on US public radio this morning, describing his hellish experience in captivity, shackled in a subterranean tunnel, with no light, air, running water or sanitation. The most heartbreaking aspect of his kidnapping was that, as he was being taken, he promised his wife and teenage daughters that "I will come back". The hope of seeing his family again kept him strong during his detention. But when he was released earlier this year, he found out that they had all been killed on October 7.

And yet, he has emerged with moral and spiritual strength. In the interview, he said "I love life. I want my life back. Given how much others have endured, and how hard people fought for me, I don't have time to lie in bed feeling sorry for myself." Asked for his views on the current Trump peace plan, he said "after two years, it's time for the war to end. There are no winners in war."

ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE

Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.

PAY ANNUALLY - £39.50 A YEAR

PAY MONTHLY - £3.75 A MONTH

MORE OPTIONS

We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe.

'Which Side of History Will You Be On, Prime Minister?'

The conflict has also caused wider regional upheaval, protests and demonstrations between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian supporters around the world, and grotesque incidents of anti-semitism and Islamophobia, whipped up and exploited by extremists.

As governments grapple with how to respond to the crisis - torn between genuine revulsion at Hamas's atrocities, and cavalier disregard for its own people, and horror at the brutality of Israel's response, and its cavalier disregard for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza - even ordinary citizens, far removed from the conflict, and...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Who were the real patriots in London on 13 September - the day of both the 'Unite the Kingdom' protest rally and the Last Night of the Proms?

It wasn't the supporters of far-right convicted criminal Stephen Yaxley-Lennon ('Tommy Robinson') flooding central London, but those waving flags just a short distance away at the Royal Albert Hall - not just British flags, but those of the European Union, and of other nations too.

And yet it was the violence that grabbed the front pages, wall-to-wall broadcast coverage, and thousands of column inches that day.

There were no arrests and no broken teeth at the Royal Albert Hall, but it was dubbed a "major Brussels love-in" by one TV channel that also reported the contents of an open letter sent to the Prime Minister by campaign group, 'Thank Eu for the Music', which is behind the distribution of thousands of EU flags and berets at the BBC Proms every year.

In the letter to Keir Starmer, the group argued that the presence of the EU flags at the event "drowned out the politics of division" and were "symbols of solidarity and internationalism".

"During the Last Night of the Proms, the Royal Albert Hall is a sea of blue and gold flags, flying alongside our British flag", it read. "That is the patriotism of integrity and hope. That is Britain at its best.

"Our freely taken EU flags carry a louder truth: millions of us will not be silenced. We want a Britain that looks outward, not inward. A Britain that builds bridges, not borders. A Britain that leads with courage and principle, not 'realpolitik' and racist dog-whistle".

While the UK needs to have a conversation about Englishness, we also need to talk about the elephant in the room: Brexit.

Many in the Last Night of the Proms audience carrying the EU flags will likely be aware that freedom of movement for musicians has been eroded by the hard Brexit implemented by the Conservative Governments, with artists' ability to earn a living in the UK hugely impacted. The EU flag-waving was a show of solidarity. Is this unpatriotic? Tommy Robinson, Reform UK, and the Conservatives would probably all say it is.

From Maggie to MAGA: The Transformation of the Conservative Mind

James Bloodworth examines how the rise of the radical-right is not a sudden aberration but the product of decades of neoliberal policy and the collapse of alternatives

James Bloodworth

Starmer has recognised that musicians and artists from the UK are still finding it too difficult to work in the EU. As an industry that makes a huge contribution to the economy, we believe that the Chancellor would approve of improving the situation. Rachel Reeves' recent Labour Party Conference speech was encouraging on the benefits of a youth mobility scheme with the EU as part of a wider reset of relations with the European Union. This will be hugely welcomed by the younger generations.

A 2024 survey by the Musicians' Union highlighted the urgency of the issue more widely:

75% of respondents who had previously worked in the EU prior to the UK's departure said their bookings had declined

79% said they had been unable to make up for the loss of that work by touring elsewhere in the world

59% said touring the EU was no longer financially viable

72% said their income from work in the EU had decreased

"Bands at the top of the pyramid can overcome the obstacles, but for musicians further down the pyramid, the additional costs are making tours unviable for many musicians", according to David Martin, chief executive of the Featured Artists Coalition. "The number of shows played by UK artists in Europe fell by 74% between 2019 and 2022".

While Oasis could easily have employed an army of people to deal with all the red tape for a European leg of its recent comeback tour, it is interesting that it has chosen not to tour on the continent. Liam Gallag...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

In early 2006, Jack Dorsey - a 29-year-old tech entrepreneur at a San Francisco podcasting company called Odeo (which was later renamed Obvious Corporation) - told his boss Evan Williams about a very simple idea.

The firm was struggling and employees needed a faster way to share information with each other online, so Jack suggested creating an SMS-like group platform where team members could quickly update each other in real time.

The green light was given and the side-project was duly developed.

The new system needed a name and Jack's colleague, Noah Glass, suggested 'Twitter' because it neatly summed up the chattering nature of the application. The domain name, however, was taken so they removed the vowels and dubbed it 'Twttr' instead.

At 12.50pm on 21 March 2006, Dorsey posted what would become history's first 'tweet'. "Just setting up my twttr", he wrote. Soon, Odeo employees were spending every spare moment exchanging humorous banter online.

Realising its wider market potential, in July 2006, Odeo launched the product to the waiting world. Michael Arrington, a journalist at Tech Crunch in California, observed that "people are using it to send messages like 'cleaning my apartment' and 'hungry'". But he also noticed a rather glaring privacy issue.

Everyone on Twttr had a public page, which meant that all their posts could be read by complete strangers. As Arrington mused in a classic case of 'how wrong can you be': "I imagine most users are not going to want to have all of their Twttr messages published on a public website."

In fact, people did not mind one little bit - and, with the domain name 'Twitter' now purchased, the microblogging website soon took off.

The timing could not have been better.

The Good Old Days

Three months later, on 9 January 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs took to the stage at the Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco and declared that, as of "today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone".

The new device would not just be a mobile but a media player too, and when the iPhone went on sale in June that year, it was nothing short of a revolution. Smartphones swiftly became ubiquitous and, as they did, Twitter and its rivals grew.

In 2005, just 5% of Americans were using some form of social media. By the start of 2010, the figure had spiralled to 65%. And just three years later, 75% of all Americans were looking up old friends on Facebook, or watching cats fall out of trees on YouTube, or arguing with complete strangers about the shape of the Earth on Twitter.

In fact, Twitter grew more slowly than its rivals - and there was a reason for that. The platform required concentration and practice. Users needed to distil their musings to a maximum 140 characters and there was a haiku-like art to writing the perfect tweet.

As such, it attracted a more discerning crowd.

A 2013 Pew Research study found that nearly half (45%) of Twitter users were between the ages of 18 and 29, and about the same number had a higher education qualification.

Research by Oxford University in 2016 found much the same result in the UK, where Twitter users tended to be younger, better paid, and better educated.

From Maggie to MAGA: The Transformation of the Conservative Mind

James Bloodworth examines how the rise of the radical-right is not a sudden aberration but the product of decades of neoliberal policy and the collapse of alternatives

James Bloodworth

The site quickly developed a reputation for being the place where intelligent discourse happened and, in those very early years, it had a strong sense of community.

The introduction of the hashtag - # - as a means of filtering conversations in 2007 not only allowed people with common interests to find each other, but also served as an easy way to curate content. More importantly, it soon became apparent that it provided a...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Ukraine is facing one of its most precarious winters since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion. Now entering its fourth cold season, with temperatures in some regions dropping to minus 20 degrees Celsius, Russia's campaign of deep strikes against Ukraine has left structural scars on the country's weakened energy system.

Strikes on gas fields, compressor stations and high-voltage substations have steadily eroded production and storage capacity. Domestic gas output, already reduced last year by attacks in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions, has yet to recover, while renewed strikes threaten a deepening energy crisis in the months ahead.

A System Under Siege

As of mid-2024, the Kyiv School of Economics estimated the direct losses to Ukraine's energy sector as being more than $16 billion, with production and transmission assets suffering the heaviest damage. Underground storage in August stood at roughly 10-12 billion cubic metres, short of the 14 bcm regarded as the bare minimum for winter readiness. Analysts at ExPro say storage levels this summer reached their lowest point in 12 years. To close the gap, Kyiv may need to import up to two billion cubic metres of gas at short notice. Even then, officials warn that a severe cold spell or further Russian attacks could leave the country dangerously exposed.

Import routes between Hungary, Poland and Ukraine have also been disrupted by strikes, forcing Kyiv to rely more heavily on gas routed through Romania and European LNG terminals. That shift carries a steep price. Spot LNG sourced through European hubs comes with high premiums, especially in winter when competition intensifies. Reuters reporting suggests that covering the shortfall for basic heating alone could cost as much as $1 billion.

The Government and Naftogaz, Ukraine's largest oil and gas supplier, plan to use state funds and donor-backed credit lines to buy gas from European partners, but the financial squeeze is severe. The World Bank's latest Recovery and Reconstruction Needs Assessment identified a multibillion-dollar shortfall in energy financing for 2025, even before emergency gas purchases are factored in.

The difficulty Ukraine faces in keeping the lights on this winter underscores the impact of Washington's withdrawal of USAID funding earlier this year. By the end of 2024, USAID had funnelled more than $40 billion to Ukraine, 90% of it in direct budget support used in large part to repair the country's decimated energy infrastructure.

Ukraine's Other War: The Battle Against Drug-Resistant Bacteria

The black earth trenches on the battlefield are not only producing casualties. They are breeding superbugs, reports Iain Overton

Iain Overton

Infrastructure at Breaking Point

As of summer 2024, more than 70 percent of Ukraine's thermal generation infrastructure had been destroyed, severely damaged or fallen under Russian control. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which supplied about a quarter of Ukraine's electricity before 2022, has been occupied ever since.

Ukraine's emergency response systems have improved, with engineers finding workarounds, often rerouting power through modular substations and turbines. But the underlying problem remains the systematic destruction of key energy assets. Data from the Kyiv School of Economics indicates that damage to generation facilities, from thermal power stations to combined heat and power sites, represents the single largest category of infrastructure losses. While Ukraine has managed a fragile balancing act to keep the grid stable, restoration timelines are measured in months or years, and there is little opportunity to attempt full reconstruction while attacks continue.

ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE

Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journal...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Donald Trump's Gaza plan could end Israel's large-scale killing and destruction, if the US President can prevent Benjamin Netanyahu from resuming it after Hamas surrenders the remaining Israeli hostages.

However, it is a big 'if', since Netanyahu unilaterally broke the last ceasefire and Trump is not known for his consistency. But for the suffering people of Gaza, this seems the best chance in two years for a general cessation of Israel's bombardment.

Yet even if this does happen, it will not be the end to Israel's genocide. So far around 90,000 people have been killed, if we accept the widely-argued case that the Gaza health ministry's count understates the toll by 40 per cent, as well as 170,000 injured. These quarter of a million people, amounting to one in nine of Gaza's original 2.2 million citizens. The consequences for the survivors - lifetime disability for children whose limbs have been amputated, widespread widowing and orphaning - alone represent a devastating legacy.

And Israel's violence has not only crippled many tens of thousands of individual Palestinians; it has also crippled Palestinian society. As I wrote for Byline Times on 13 October 2023, there were already then - six days after Hamas's massacres - unmistakeable signs that this was Israel's intention. Raphael Lemkin, who coined the idea of genocide, defined it as "the destruction or crippling" of a group, and this has been Israel's record over the last two years.

It is hardly necessary to itemise the means, beyond killing and wounding, through which Israel has carried this out. It has destroyed almost all the homes, hospitals, schools, farms, workplaces, mosques, churches, universities - almost everything. It has deliberately starved the population, expelled international aid agencies, and killed people seeking food. It has claimed to be fighting Hamas, but long after it reduced the Islamist group to a rump, it escalated the systematic bulldozing of whole urban areas, most recently in Gaza City. None of these terrible harms can be easily remedied - even providing adequate food will not be enough for those in the advanced stages of malnutrition.

EXCLUSIVE

BBC Laura Kuenssberg Show Accused of Anti-Green Bias After Cancelling Zack Polanski Interview

The new Green Party leader was the only major party leader not to have been granted a conference interview on the flagship BBC show

Adam Bienkov

For a long time the charge of genocide was banned from most Western mainstream media, which censored reports from Gaza while Israel murdered Palestinian journalists. Even today Israel retains Western military and political support of a kind that would never be given to any other genocidal state. Yet at least half the population of the UK, USA and other countries now accepts that Israel is committing genocide. The liberal press finally talks about it. But few are talking about the lasting implications of this genocide, committed in plain sight by a Western state with the active US, UK and other support.

Consolidating the Genocide

If the Trump plan works, despite the signs that Netanyahu may wreck it, many will believe that the genocide is over - but it won't be. Lemkin wrote that genocide was a way of 'winning the peace even though the war itself is lost', and the Nazis, despite their defeat in 1945, succeeded in removing almost all the Jews from central and eastern Europe, both through murder and forcing them to flee. But Israel hasn't lost. As Trump reportedly said to Netanyahu, "I don't know why you're always so f***ing negative. This is a win. Take it."

Even if Netanyahu doesn't want to end the bombing, any ceasefire will be largely on his terms. No Palestinians have been involved in Trump's proposals, which were heavily doctored by Israel after being agreed with Arab leaders. Israel will still control much ...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

The Green Party of England and Wales' new leader plans to stand to be a Member of Parliament at the next General Election, he has told Byline Times.

Zack Polanski, elected to the leadership with a landslide in September, is currently a London-wide Assembly Member on the devolved London Assembly, and is based in the borough of Hackney. He has now told this outlet he will run in a London constituency for Parliament in 2029.

In an interview with this paper at the party's conference in Bournemouth over the weekend, he said: "We've had literally hundreds and hundreds of applications from people who want to be future MPs…A large bulk of them are from ethnic minority people [around 30%], and also people from working class communities. So I'm excited about what this cohort, this Pathway to Parliament, looks like."

He added that the party is accepting would-be candidates into a residential course to run for Parliament. "I'm so excited about looking at 300 people, knowing that potentially 30 - maybe more - of our next MPs are there, and we're going to grow from there." A Green party staffer says the number of applicants for the training scheme is now around 500.

ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE

Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.

PAY ANNUALLY - £39.50 A YEAR

PAY MONTHLY - £3.75 A MONTH

MORE OPTIONS

We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe.

The Greens currently have four MPs, just shy of Reform UK's five, and are polling around 10% in support (compared to Reform's roughly 30% backing and 20% for Labour).

The growing ambitions for the left-wing party "do all require investment", he noted. "It all requires fundraising, but the new membership and the new money that's bringing will certainly help." Polanski will have a role selecting the candidates alongside the party's executive.

He says they must "align" with the values of the party: "Not just not being racist or transphobic or homophobic, but being actively anti-racist, actively anti-homophobic, actively anti-transphobic. And the same with misogyny and any forms of hate crime.

"I want to see people who get that environmental and social justice are entirely interlinked, and I want to see people who can represent our policies in a way that's enthusiastic and inspires their communities," he told Byline Times, from a balcony overlooking the packed conference hall.

The new Green leader also said he was interested in "unusual" candidates to be an MP. "if every single MP looks like the MPs from the other parties that we have and speaks like them, then that's not putting our country in the best place right now."

Don't miss a story

SIGN UP TO EMAIL UPDATES

Asked if he planned to be a candidate, he replied: "Absolutely."

He said he would stand "in London". Pressed on whether it would be in Hackney - where Greens polled strongest in 2024, he said: "I haven't decided. I think the big thing is I was elected under proportional representation, so I already represent every single Londoner." He said there was "coherency" to running anywhere in London.

Speaking in the third person, Polanski added: "I'm also really keen that this is not about Zack getting elected in London. Zack is in a group of MPs who are going to be the first MPs elected in London."

The Green Parties came in second place in 40 constituencies in the 2024 General Election - 18 of which were in London. "In all but one of these seats it was second to Labour. The Greens came second in three seats in 2019, none in 2017 and five in 2015," according to a House of Commons briefing.

The former actor told this outlet the party was also...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

The BBC has been accused of "extraordinary" anti-Green bias, after the party say a long-promised conference interview with new leader Zack Polanski was cancelled by the Laura Kuenssberg Show just days before going to air.

Every major political party leader, aside from Polanski, was interviewed on the show in recent weeks during their party conferences.

However, Green Party sources say the BBC scrapped their interview with Polanski, which they say was pencilled in for the flagship Kuenssberg Show on Sunday, citing the need to cover last week's Manchester synagogue terror attack.

Polanski, who is both Jewish, and from Manchester, was bumped by the show just days prior to airing, say the party.

Bemoaning the decision, Polanksi wrote on X on Sunday that "I'm Jewish. I'm also Mancunian. Every other national party leader was interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg during their conference. Maybe the BBC thought as someone who also supports Palestine - I had nothing to say?"

The decision not to interview Polanski this week came after the Green Party also requested a previous interview on the show following Polanski's election as leader on September 2.

No such interview took place, with the show, instead featuring interviews with Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch on the following Sunday.

Green Party sources told Byline Times that the BBC refused this interview, which normally follows the election of a new party leader, saying that they planned to interview him during the party's conference in Bournemouth instead.

However, this interview was then cancelled last week, with Green Party sources saying that requests for Polanski to do a quick down-the-line interview with Kuenssberg instead of an extended sit-down interview, were also refused by the BBC.

FEARLESS, INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM & INCREDIBLE VALUE

Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and support quality, investigative reporting.

SUBSCRIBE TO BYLINE TIMES FOR AS LITTLE AS £3.75 A MONTH

A Green party source told Byline Times that the decision to block Polanski from appearing on the show was "extraordinary" given that every other major party leader was granted a conference interview by the programme.

"We offered just to have a couple of minutes on the show, unlike the longer interviews given to Nigel Farage and Ed Davey but even that was denied," the source said.

The Greens have experienced a surge in new membership over recent weeks, with the party this weekend revealing that they have overtaken the Liberal Democrats in terms of members.

The party were told that Polanski would be interviewed on the show at a later date in the coming weeks instead.

A BBC spokesperson told Byline Times: "Zack Polanski has been interviewed across various BBC News programmes across the course of the Green Party Conference - during which he has been asked for his thoughts relating to the horrific attack at the synagogue in Manchester. He has been offered the chance to be interviewed on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg in the coming weeks - the invitation remains open."

Allegations of Pro-Reform Bias

The decision to cancel Polanski's appearance follows allegations of the BBC giving undue prominence to Farage's Reform UK.

As Byline Times revealed earlier this year, the BBC's Director General Tim Davie and other senior bosses at the corporation drew up plans to win over voters of Reform UK, due to their belief that their news and drama output is creating "low trust issues" with supporters of Nigel Farage's party.

Minutes of a meeting of the BBC's Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee in March, seen by Byline Times, showed that BBC News CEO Deborah Turness gave a presentation in which she discussed plans to alter "story selection" and "other types of output, such as drama" in order to win the trust of Reform voters.

EXCLUSIVE

BBC Bosses Draw Up Plans to...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Every picture tells a story.

After the former Welsh Leader of Reform UK, Nathan Gill, recently pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery for receiving money to promote Kremlin narratives, Zia Yusuf, head of Reform's Department of Government Efficiency, told the BBC that "most people in the senior leadership team have never really heard of the guy" and that he was just "one of tens of thousands of people" the party's leader Nigel Farage "meets on an annual basis".

Then the photos began to circulate.

Gill was pictured at the Leave.EU group's party on the evening of the EU Referendum in June 2016, and one of the top four figures celebrating the victory of Farage's campaign on College Green outside Parliament on the morning after the vote.

There are videos of Farage supporting Gill for the leadership of Welsh UKIP, saying that he had "worked closely" with him and that he was "hard-working, honest, and loyal". He told the BBC in 2016 that his fellow MEP had "never, ever let me down" and that Gill "was honest as the day is long".

Pictures emerged of Farage campaigning for Gill as a candidate for UKIP's successor, the Brexit Party - also led by Farage - in Merthyr Tydfil in 2019, with footage showing them both walking around as Farage is questioned by Channel 4 News' Matt Frei on his funding streams.

Nathan Gill, then, was not just one of the "tens of thousands of people" the Reform Leader met every year.

And Byline Times can now reveal that, during the crucial period when Gill was most active, working directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin's most senior ally in Ukraine, he was also one of Nigel Farage's closest confidantes.

No Bit-Part Player

Nathan Gill's Old Bailey guilty verdict followed his being stopped by counter-terrorism police at Manchester Airport in September 2021. A series of WhatsApp messages on Gill's seized devices revealed that he had been taking bribes, from December 2018 to July 2019, from a pro-Russian Ukrainian MP, Oleh Voloshyn.

Six months earlier, in May 2021, Gill's close associate, the Polish activist and lobbyist Janusz Gabriel Niedźwiecki, had also been detained by Poland's Internal Security Agency on charges of espionage for Russia.

Gill had made at least four trips to Ukraine and Moldova in 2018 under Niedźwiecki's auspices, speaking at parades and forums organised by pro-Russian separatists and Russian businessmen, with travel arranged by a Moscow travel agency.

But, according to the prosecution at the Old Bailey, the WhatsApp orders issued to Gill were part of a separate project: to support Viktor Medvedchuk.

Known as 'Moscow's Man in Ukraine', Medvedchuk is a senior Ukrainian politician and a personal friend of Putin, who is the godfather of his child Nadia.

Medvedchuk was sanctioned by the US and EU in 2014 for his role in supporting Russia's annexation of Crimea and backing separatist movements in eastern Ukraine. In 2019, he was already facing charges of treason in Ukraine.

In July 2019, only two weeks after Nathan Gill returned to the European Parliament representing Farage's new Brexit Party, he hosted a roundtable with other MEPs, in which Medvedchuk (filmed like other Gill hosted meetings by Medvedchuk's TV channels News One and 112 Ukraine) announced a new "peace plan" that would bring an end to the war that had been raging in eastern Ukraine - on Russian terms and by keeping the country firmly under Kremlin control.

This announcement was so important that Medveduk travelled the next day to Moscow to meet Putin, where the Kremlin recorded him as saying: "I presented my peace plan to the newly-elected European deputies from Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Bulgaria and Slovakia."

Though the plan failed and was followed by a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, Medvedchuk remained so key to Put...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Since 6pm on Wednesday evening, I have spent every waking minute documenting Israel's illegal abduction of 455 international passengers on board the Global Sumud Flotilla, people I was forced to leave behind after my boat broke down on the final stretch.

You may have seen it mentioned in the British press: "Israel's naval ships intercept Gaza-bound flotilla" (BBC News). "Israeli navy intercepts and reroutes Gaza aid flotilla" (FT). One word was conspicuously missing from all headlines: "Israel illegally intercepts Gaza flotilla".

What occurred was unambiguously criminal. In 38 hours, 42 civilian boats were commandeered in international waters by machine gun-wielding soldiers. The unarmed passengers were taken against their will into Israeli territory, denied diplomatic access for over 24 hours and driven to a prison in the desert. They had been exercising lawful rights: to navigate the high seas under maritime law, and to carry aid towards famine under humanitarian law. They never entered Israeli waters, nor would they have, had they not been dragged there.

Piracy. That is how maritime law defines what happened. Under humanitarian law, blocking aid during famine falls under the remit of a war crime. But instead of calling it what it was, our media euphemistically dubbed it an 'interception'. If that is not whitewashing, I do not know what is.

ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE

Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.

PAY ANNUALLY - £39.50 A YEAR

PAY MONTHLY - £3.75 A MONTH

MORE OPTIONS

We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe.

This is exactly why people sailed: much of our news media, like our governments, has become so implicated in the moral stain of Gaza's genocide that their crumbling defence is to normalise Israel's crimes. Now the global public have lost so much faith in them, that they have literally sailed into the arms of a genocidal army.

I can speak personally to the UK Government's spinelessness, as a passenger on-board the fleet while it was pummelled with drone attacks in high seas during the midnight hours spanning Tuesday to Wednesday last week. My mother called the Foreign Office in the days that followed, begging them to pledge protection for their citizens on the water; they said no.

Three weeks ago when I wrote this column from on-board, my main complaint was that there weren't more journalists with me, leaving news outlets free to diminish such attacks as 'alleged' and 'unverified'. But today I see our media's failings are far greater. Today I see how they legitimised the very propaganda that laid the groundwork for my fellow passengers' abduction.

The day before the midnight drone attacks, Israel's Government and media began referring to the aid ships as the "Hamas flotilla", launching a series of tweets containing what they claimed to be "evidence" that the movement had "terrorist" organisers and intent. In reality, these were petty smears seeking to prove guilt-by-association, rather than documentary proof that the fleet carried anything other than aid and civilians. Nevertheless, baseless lies were elevated to the status of household news by Western journalists.

FUND MORE INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

Help expose the big scandals of our era.

SUBSCRIBE TO BYLINE TIMES

LBC ran the headline: "Greta freedom flotilla 'partially funded' by Hamas, Israel claims". The Telegraph wrote: "The Israeli government has repeatedly said the flotilla is a Hamas operation" tailing it with the telling caveat: "without evidence". As if it isn't fatally dangerous to publish such slander when Israel maniacally hurls "Hamas" ...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

There was much about Labour's conference in Liverpool this week that was shocking, if not entirely surprising. The unbalanced ratio of party members to myriad corporate lobbyists, the lack of meaningful votes, the surface level chirpiness hiding a much deeper gloom below the surface and the absence of any real plan to get Labour and the country out of the mess it's now in.

Sure, Keir Starmer gave a better speech than his previous efforts, but I doubt a line of it will be remembered and virtually none of it will be built on in any systematic way, because this is not a leadership that does systematic thinking other than in the most tribal and hyper-factional way. The DNA of the Starmer project simply won't allow it.

The party's problems goes back to the origins of the Starmer project. Over long one-to-one conversations about the future of the Labour Party back in 2018 Morgan McSweeney, now the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, then the Director of Labour Together think tank, would explain that the future of the party was 'Corbynism without Corbyn'.

The rationale for this was that the 2008 global financial crash had changed everything, a more vigorous social democracy was needed, just one that was far more professional than Jeremy Corbyn could seemingly ever manage. It sounded both plausible and genuine.

But more than once McSweeney would go off on a tangent about an obscure radical left online publication called The Canary, which he seemed to feel had an overbearing and dangerous influence on the mood of the Party and the left, and needed to be shot down. It seemed a strange obsession which then seemed unworthy of much attention. However, in hindsight the signs of what was to come later were already in place.

ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE

Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.

PAY ANNUALLY - £39.50 A YEAR

PAY MONTHLY - £3.75 A MONTH

MORE OPTIONS

We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe.

As the years have passed the real focus of McSweeney and his small clique of hyper factionalists has become clear. And that focus is to not to change the country for the better, but to destroy the whole of the left in Labour for good.

Here the Canary becomes both exemplar and metaphor. Canaries are outriders, used to anticipate and warn of danger lurking ahead. In taking out everyone but their narrow and therefore brittle hyper-faction, they've created a Labour Party and a Government with almost no breadth, no air to breathe, no creativity, little imagination, almost no challenge and virtually no accountability.

Keir Starmer was jumped on as the candidate who could front up McSweeney's plan, with Labour Together funding exhaustive polling of the party membership to show they wanted a left wing but professional leader, he was able to fool them into voting for 'Corbynism without Corbyn'.

Once victory was secured, they could turn on the very people they had wooed. Members would be kicked out of the party on an industrial scale, candidates would be vetted to fit only their mould and supported with huge amounts of money and rules and positions would be twisted for any factional advantage.

This level of factionalism is unprecedented in the party's history. Labour has always had factions jockeying for influence. From Blairites to Corbynites, both of whom had a strong sense of vision for the party and the country and therefore the confidence to tolerate competing views, there was a clear desire to press agendas but never based on the total exclusion or all other voices. Labour has always been plural and better for it.

Today's pathological fac...