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The Royal British Legion has distanced itself from an anti-migrant group that has been accused of misleading the public through its fundraising, by using the charity's Remembrance poppy branding.

Rushmoor People First (RPF) is an activist organisation in Hampshire which has led a string of anti-asylum-seeker protests, including outside hotels. It is currently running a 'Raise the Poppies' fundraising campaign – using what appears to be Royal British Legion (RBL) imagery and language, without sign-off from the charity.

The group appears to have moved between at least three crowdfunding pages as earlier ones were taken down. After Byline Times contacted fundraising platform Crowdfunder, raising the Royal British Legion's comments, the latest page was taken down.

Rushmoor People First has also been accused of placing unauthorised poppy attachments on council-owned lamp posts.

The Royal British Legion has attempted to contact Rushmoor People First through its social media channels to discuss the nature of the Raise the Poppies initiative and its associated fundraising but has not received any response, Byline Times can reveal.

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Simon Kelman, an Aldershot resident, has been sounding the alarm about Rushmoor People First's apparent attempts to co-opt poppy imagery to raise cash for its controversial activities.

He has reported RPF's crowdfunding campaigns to several platforms, which led to one platform, Collection Pot, removing RPF's 'Raise the Poppies' pages. Kelman believes RPF has misrepresented itself as a charity. He has reported RPF to the Charity Commission, the Fundraising Regulator, and RBL's legal team, among others.

The fundraising campaigns claimed donations "support the Royal British Legion" and that money spent buying poppies "goes directly to support" it.

However, the Royal British Legion wants nothing to do with it.

Anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate has previously reported that RPF has attracted to its events a raft of Patriotic Alternative members, as well as former English Defence League and National Front activists. Searchlight magazine has also raised concerns over the group's use of the Remembrance poppy to raise cash.

RPF leader Jeremy 'Jez' Stocking (also known as Jeremy Charles) was an election agent for Reform UK councillor Sharon Harvey in this May's elections. Stocking has continued to campaign for Reform, including urging RPF activists to vote for Nigel Farage's party. RPF activists are believed to have campaigned for Reform candidates at the same elections.

Stocking was present when activists stormed an anti-racism meeting at Holy Trinity Church in Aldershot in December 2024, an event which led to the conviction of four far-right activists for assault (Stocking was not charged or convicted), as this outlet exclusively reported.

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The red poppy has been the UK's symbol of Remembrance since 1921, when the newly formed British Legion held its first Poppy Appeal. It is worn to remember members of the Armed Forces who have died in conflict – with money raised through the appeal supporting serving personnel, veterans and their families.

RBL owns several registered trademarks related to Remembrance commemorations, including the two-petal Poppy logo and the word POPPY in capitals, which appear to have been used by the anti-migrant group to raise cash for its organisation.

RBL does not have a record of purchases of poppies made by Rushmoor People First, though individuals linked to the group may have made purchases.

Where an individual or organisation...

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The US military "almost started a war" with China this spring due to a faulty AI-generated intelligence report that falsely concluded that China was transporting nuclear materials aboard a ship in the Middle East, according to an alarming new report.

Citing four unnamed sources, CNN reported on Friday that the US military was so confident in the information contained in the AI-generated intelligence report that it made plans to intercept the ship and even started carrying out those plans. Armed members of the military were reportedly getting ready to board the ship, and US military planes had been launched to support the effort.

However, at the last minute, military officials started looking further into the intelligence report and discovered that it had been created with an AI chatbot, which had erroneously identified the materials on the ship as components of a nuclear weapons program. The resulting report was "entirely false," one source told CNN.

It is unclear exactly what type of AI model was used in this incident, but CNN reports that a military analyst "queried a chatbot about some intelligence reporting on the ship's manifest that originated with US Special Operations Command Pacific, based in Hawaii." The chatbot then reportedly compiled information from open source intelligence (OSINT) and classified signals intelligence (SIGINT) sources, and delivered its erroneous conclusion about what the ship was carrying.

The analyst then reportedly also used AI to package that information in the style of a standard military intelligence report before handing it off for dissemination.

The revelation of the near-catastrophe comes amidst an escalating debate over AI safety, particularly in military contexts.

The Trump administration's rapid expansion of AI use in the military has generated significant controversy over how quickly the technology is being pushed into systems involving surveillance, targeting, and autonomous weapons before oversight and safety frameworks have caught up — or even been fully developed. There are few clear rules and standards for autonomous AI use, and even when a human is involved in the process, there is "no real guidance" for how having a human in the loop will prevent potentially catastrophic mistakes, a source told CNN.

In January 2026, the Trump administration's Department of War released a departmental AI strategy that established a mandate for the military to accelerate the use of AI by "aggressively" removing barriers and focusing on speed and scale over safety. Then, in June 2026, Trump released a national security memorandum ordering the adoption of frontier AI models across military and intelligence agencies, and mandating the termination of government contracts with AI developers that attempt to restrict how government agencies use their technology.

The Trump administration claims that if the US doesn't prioritise the rapid development of military AI capabilities — or if it even slows down to ensure the safety of those systems before deploying them — then China will outpace the US and erode the American military's technological advantage. But in order to stay ahead in the race against China, the administration has increasingly framed safety as an impediment and has cast those who voice concerns about the speed of AI development as critics trying to stifle American innovation.

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Brynn Tannehill explains how Trump's war has resurrected an Iranian regime that sanctions and drought had been on course to topple

Brynn Tannehill

In a series of social media posts just this past week, the DoW even went as far as portraying the AI safety movement as un-American, and in a bizarre post on Truth Social, Trump said that "the only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ)! PRESIDENT."

But that's not what independent experts say.

Human Rights Watch has conclud...

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The first time I met Bonnie Greer she was laughing with delight as she hurtled down the hill at our first Byline Festival nearly ten years ago. She thought she was coming to a journalism conference and was thrilled by the mix of comedy, music and talks in the middle of a forest. She became a close family friend, especially of my wife Hilary and daughter Lucy, who as women of colour found her an inspiration and often hung out with her over glasses of champagne at the Soho Union Club. I regret we never managed to get round to putting together a series of talks on old Hollywood films at the club as we had planned.

Bonnie's life was like a golden thread through the cultural and creative life of the America and Britain in the second half of the 20th Century and beyond; she had a unique understanding of the intersection of race, politics and culture. I will never forget the way she riffed like the very best jazz player as she reflected on how modern America had failed to live up to its ideals and fallen for Trump. Nobody else had her hinterland, knowledge, or love of life.

Bonnie's upbringing in Chicago was modest. Her grandfather was a Mississippi sharecropper and her father a factory worker. She paid her way through university as a waitress in a blues bar and studied theatre under David Mamet who she never forgave later for supporting Trump.

Then she moved to the West Village in New York to study at the Actors Studio, under Elia Kazan, famed as the home of Method Acting, with A-list alumni including Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe. Here she lived in the bohemian world of Andy Warhol, Keith Herring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, writing for the underground theatre scene, whose roots went back to the Beats, alongside playwrights and performers like Jackie Curtis, Wayne County, and Cherry Vanilla and hanging out in Max's Kansas City, CBGB and the Mudd Club.

This was a world that Bonnie and I often discussed, as we knew many of the characters in common and she helped give me background information for Punk: The Last Word, the book Chris Sullivan and I wrote together.

By 1983, there were more than a thousand AIDS cases in New York and many of Bonnie's friends and collaborators died, as she told Seb Morton-Clark in the Times in 2006: "The theatre scene in New York had been decimated, and with so many people dying around me I felt it was important that I made the most of my life. I needed to escape the shadow of death".

She found her escape when in 1986 one of her plays brought her over to the Edinburgh Fringe. She felt instantly at home in Britain even though she arrived with all her worldly goods in one suitcase and only £500. She never went back and ended up living longer here in Britain than in America.

After the West Village, there was only one place in Britain she could possibly live and that was in the heart of Soho. Bonnie loved Soho, with its mix of bohemian dodgy characters. Peter at the Union Club made Bonnie an honorary member and made her feel very welcome. She was incredibly popular – it was hard to get through lunch without her meeting at least a dozen friends. In many ways, Soho had remained much less gentrified than the West Village and kept more of its spirit alive.

In Britain, Bonnie achieved critical success in 1993 with her play Munda Negra about black women struggling with mental health. She followed up with more plays: Dancing on Blackwater about mother-daughter relationships and Jitterbug, a collection of playlets exploring cultural divides.

In 1994 she wrote her first novel, Hanging by Her Teeth. She worked closely with black community groups and theatre, including as Artist in Residence for the black community theatre Nitro and as patron of the SI Leeds Literary Prize for unpublished works by women of colour.

Bonnie soon adopted Britain as the country where she wanted to spend the rest of her life, marryin...

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The leader of Reform UK's flagship local authority, Kent County Council has denied man-made climate change exists and mocked climate science concerning the record-breaking extreme heat over the summer, in a fiery exchange on Thursday.

Reform's Kent County Council leader, Cllr Linden Kemkaran, was accused of dismissing widespread public concerns about the climate crisis in the council chamber.

The outburst occurred during a meeting of the full council in Maidstone, after Councillor Stuart Heaver (Green Party) asked Cllr Kemkaran if she had any second thoughts about the Council rescinding the KCC Climate Emergency Declaration, given the scale of heat-related deaths over the summer.

Cllr Heaver noted UK Health Security Agency figures showing a significant increase on the 1,504 excess deaths observed in summer 2025 this year. Over 2,800 people have died in England and Wales due to record-breaking extreme heat over the summer, according to the official estimates.

Kent Fire and Rescue service attended more than 130 grass fires since July, and 2026 is on track to be the worst harvest since records began.

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The leader simply replied: "No."

When pressed to expand on her answer, she was accused of "reeling off a list of debunked climate denial claims" by the Greens.

She told the chamber: "I will inject some much needed common sense into this conversation."

She added: "Grass fires are not caused by an increase in temperature, but rather issues such as arson, poor land management practice, etc."

While most UK wildfires are started by people rather than by the weather itself, what turns a spark into a serious fire is the condition of the vegetation, and that is driven by heat and drought. This summer much of the country was a dry tinderbox, with fires far more likely to combust and spread due to the extreme heat.

A Met Office study found that the damaging fires during the UK's record-breaking (at that point) 2022 heatwave were made at least six times more likely due to human-caused climate change.

The Reform leader then stated a list of debunked claims as fact.

She said: "[Greens] forget that the climate is always changing. It always has and it always will change. In Roman and mediaeval times the earth was two degrees warmer than it is today, for example. The earth is actually coming out of a mini ice age, Mr Chairman. There is only one way for temperatures to go."

The climate does change through history, but humans are now the overwhelming driver of temperature increases.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear that "human influence on climate has been the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20th century."

Glaciologist Jeff Severinghaus has told Carbon Brief that arguing natural change rules out human-caused change is "like saying that forest fires cannot be set by careless campers because lightning also causes forest fires."

On her claim about "Roman and medieval times", this is strongly disputed by most of the academic literature. The IPCC has found that in the last decade, global average surface temperatures have been higher than any multi-century average in the past 11,700 years (the Holocene). While there were warm periods in the eras that Cllr Kemkaran referred to, they were not global, and they were not 2°C warmer than today.

A major 2019 Nature Geoscience study found: "The largest warming trends at timescales of 20 years and longer occur during the second half of the 20th century, highlighting the unusual character of the warming in recent decades."

Cllr Kemkaran'...

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Reform UK's crypto billionaire donor Ben Delo financed a failed libel case brought by two writers who privately exchanged pro-Hitler messages and agreed between themselves that they should study Mein Kampf, Byline Times can reveal. Yet they lost their case against the defendant, Luke Turner, a Jewish artist who had publicly complained that the two writers had pursued him in a campaign of antisemitic bullying.

The pair backed by Delo, who is now Reform UK's second largest donor, contributed anonymously to a blog run by the man behind a neo-Nazi social media account whose posts celebrated the Holocaust and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories – a man they knew personally. Their private exchanges included discussions of such theories.

The claim was run by Mark Lewis of Patron Law, an honorary patron of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA).

Nina Power and Daniel Miller told each other they each kept a copy of Hitler's manifesto. "I keep a copy in my study of course," Miller wrote. "Well I have one too," Power replied. "I think maybe it is necessary." Minutes earlier she had been reading a conspiracy tract alleging a "Judeo-Masonic Plan to Conquer the World"; minutes later she asked what "the real deal" was with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion – a notorious antisemitic forgery and hoax first published in Russia in 1903 that falsely claims to reveal a secret Jewish plan for global domination.

The Financial Times reported this week that cryptobillionaire Ben Delo, Reform UK's second-largest donor, lent Power more than £300,000, secured against her London home, to help pay for the case. Byline Times can now reveal what that case involved.

The findings are based on court documents, WhatsApp messages disclosed in evidence, legal correspondence and Land Registry records seen by Byline Times, including an official decision of the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The allegations, and the messages underlying them, were set out in public court documents in June 2023. Delo registered his charge over Power's flat on 20 September 2023 – 13 days before the trial opened.

In a statement to the legal newsletter Per Incuriam, Delo's solicitors acknowledged the loan and confirmed that he knew of Turner's allegations against Power and Miller, but said the cryptobillionaire gave them "no credence whatsoever". A person close to him told the Financial Times he does not believe either Power or Miller is antisemitic.

In a judgment handed down in November 2023, Mrs Justice Collins Rice dismissed their libel claim and found their conduct towards Turner "could, on an objective basis, fairly be described as bullying" and "certainly aggressive, in register, language and imagery". They were ordered to pay 80% of his costs and were declared bankrupt.

Turner has still not been paid. Despite his court victory, Delo's loan gives him a prior claim on money recovered from Power's flat, ahead of Turner's claim for legal costs. The Financial Times reported that Delo enforced his security shortly before Power's bankruptcy and now receives monthly rent from her as a means of recovering the debt.

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Turner's ordeal began before he had any direct dealings with Daniel Miller or Nina Power. A high-profile art project he was involved with alongside Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf and artist Nastja Säde Rönkkö, launched on 20 January 2017 (Inauguration Day for President Donald Trump), invited passers-by in New York to say "He Will Not Divide Us" into a camera.

Far-right activists targeted the project. By the judge's account, this e...

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Nigel Farage has returned to hosting on GB News after a hiatus of six months – and spent most of his own programme defending his own party's mega-donors.

The Reform leader was handed the unparalleled platform to spin his side of the story about the £36 million each that the crypto billionaires Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo's gave Reform over the weekend – where it comes from, and whether it is legal.

There was no independent presenter or proper cross-examination on the show. It was Farage acting as defendant, prosecution and judge all at once, with long stretches of contestable monologue exonerating his donors and attacking Labour.

He told viewers on his primetime terrestrial show: "I've been away for a bit, but I'm back. And today we talk about, you'll never guess it, there's a row over party political donations. But where does it all lead? Does it lead in the end to state funding? And would that be any better than what we currently have?"

He added of the "row going on over party funding": "I seem to find myself somewhere in the middle of it."

Farage mocked Labour ministers' claims that donations via trade unions were different to those from crypto billionaires – since most donations from unions come from thousands of members who have actively opted in to contribute to a 'political fund', established precisely to shift the balance of power away from oligarchs.

Farage said: "Big donations are fine if they come to the Labour Party. But big donations are not fine, even though they're legal in every way, if they come to Reform."

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He thereby skirted over the fact that on March 25 – months before the two £36 million donations to Reform were made – Labour said it would ban donations over £100,000 made from overseas donors, which at the time included Harborne and Delo, then based in Thailand and Hong Kong respectively. Labour said it would apply from that date, implemented through the Representation of the People Bill currently going through Parliament.

Farage also issued a threat to Labour and the unions: "Labour want to attack us. We, in turn, might lash out back at the unions. This actually is a very, very bad place. If this continues…If you end private donations from individuals and companies, you finish up with state funding."

He also claimed that this would "preserve in aspic the big parties as they are today." This does not appear to have been the case in Canada or the many European countries which have systems of public funding. In fact, the UK already has public funding for political parties, known as Short money.

He told viewers "these donations are completely legal" and "this is very clean money"; stated flatly as fact by someone who benefits from them.

The Reform leader called the Rycroft Review, the official assessment of foreign interference in UK politics which has bolstered the Government's proposed electoral reforms, "a total stitch-up by one of the Prime Minister's mates." He offered no evidence for the claim about the respected former senior civil servant.

And when a Labour panellist pointed out the legislation actually predates the review, Farage didn't engage with the correction, he just repeated the "inventing law" framing seconds later.

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Farage never actually directly disclosed that he is, as party leader, a direct beneficiary of the donations he was defending, in that it could help him become Prime Minister.

And he used his airtime to present a bar chart comparing "total party donations since 2021" that shows Reform at £110m against Labour's ...

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Senate House sits at the heart of Cambridge University. It's the place you walk past most days as a student knowing that, when your time comes to put on the gown with the furry hood, it will be in this brilliant white bright building that becoming a graduate of the world-renowned institution will be marked.

Approaching it from King's Parade in the last of the late summer sun, past the iconic King's College Chapel, and tourists sitting here and there on the walls lining the street with ice creams, Senate House emerged behind its black gates. This time, flowers fresh and dead were taped onto the rails or left at their feet. People stopped to look at them, speaking and silent.

One woman explained to her young son who the flowers were for – a man who had "received some scrutiny that was justified but a lot that wasn't".

"We have to be really careful with our words," she told him. "He was absolutely hounded and he didn't deserve to be."

Jason Arday smiled warmly from the photograph at the centre of the tributes.

Until 5 August, he was Cambridge University's Professor of Sociology of Education. Following claims of serial plagiarism, first made by academics aligned with race science, and then a wider campaign of intense media scrutiny both in the UK and internationally – on many aspects of his life beyond academia, from his charity running to his childhood mutism – Jason Arday resigned.

Characterised in the right-leaning established press as "the nutty professor" and "the gift that keeps on giving", outlets on the left – the Guardian and Novara Media – also contributed to the reporting, and the speculative and dehumanising commentary.

With his resignation, it didn't stop, even if the public interest journalists subsequently used to justify their reporting appeared, at that point, to have. On 14 August, Jason Arday was found dead at his home in south London.

Just three years earlier, Cambridge University had celebrated the then 37-year-old's arrival, through the BBC and elsewhere, providing him with a considerable platform as the youngest black person to ever be appointed to a professorship at the institution.

His death raises uncomfortable and urgent questions about appearances and reality in Arday's story – and what it reveals about the harder, deeper work the institution has seemingly not done to meaningfully tackle structural inequalities around issues of race and class. Particularly now that these systemic issues are increasingly at the forefront of a 'culture war'.

"On behalf of every working-class person of colour student at this university past and present, your worth and dreams will not go unnoticed," one tribute to Arday read.

Another: "I wish I would be able to remove envy and racism from this existence."

Others said "hope this sad injustice leads to positive change in all walks of society. Lives should not suffer" and "I am sorry this system failed you".

I had last been in Cambridge some months before with my Byline Times colleagues investigating allegations around another Cambridge academic whose story appears to have evolved very differently.

Like Jason Arday, James Orr is unlikely to have been widely known to the public perhaps until very recently.

Byline Times' investigation into Orr, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Divinity, was published in July, when he was still Nigel Farage's Head of Policy at Reform UK. He stepped down from that role in September, following the broadcast of undercover footage by Channel 4 News, in which he appeared. It is now the subject of a criminal investigation by the Metropolitan Police.

Our reporting – produced over six months through 20 sources at the University – raised serious questions about the safeguarding of students (some of whom are resident at his private property in the city), their 'recruitment' as part of Orr's stated ideological 'pipe...

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Christopher Harborne's £36 million donation to Reform UK, announced at the weekend, looked at first like yet another story about opaque cryptocurrency money entering British politics.

Harborne, who is based in Thailand, made much of his fortune in crypto. He is also the most important individual financier of Nigel Farage's political career, sparking much controversy along the way.

But alongside his crypto interests, Harborne has also invested hundreds of millions of pounds into QinetiQ, one of Britain's leading defence companies.

What is far less commented on is that QinetiQ's biggest customer, by far, is the British Government and is a major source of Harborne's wealth.

Byline Times has examined Harborne's investments in QinetiQ against regulatory filings, share prices rises and dividend payments and estimate his investment has produced for Harborne an uplift of about £101.7 million.

QinetiQ says that roughly 58% of its group revenues over the relevant period came directly from Ministry of Defence contracts.

So, if you apply that proportion to Harborne's estimated gains, the portion corresponding to QinetiQ's MoD-derived revenues comes to £58.8 million.

Harborne has given £61.19 million to the Brexit Party and Reform UK.

The scale of Harborne's political giving is extraordinary.

Electoral Commission data show that he had given £25.19 million to Reform UK across 21 donations – and this is before his latest promise.

About £10.19 million went to the Brexit Party in 2019 and 2020, before it became Reform UK. Harborne then donated £9 million in August 2025, followed by £3 million in November and another £3 million in January 2026.

The latest £36 million takes his combined support for Farage's political vehicles to approximately £61.19 million.

This does not include the controversial £5 million Harborne gave to Farage in 2024, which is now under scrutiny by Parliament's standards authorities and which the Reform leader said was intended to help pay for his security.

Against this beneficent backdrop stands Harborne the arms dealer investor.

He began buying shares in QinetiQ – a UK company that manufactures military robotics, unmanned aerial drones, and specialised target systems – back in 2022.

A QinetiQ notification published on 30 May 2022 recorded that AML Global Ltd, a Hong Kong company ultimately controlled by Harborne, secured some 41,001,328 shares in the company between 06 and 25 May, equivalent to 7.08% of QinetiQ's voting rights. This would have cost about £144 million in trading.

A 6 June filing put that holding at 47.35 million shares. A 27 June disclosure saw it rise to 54 million shares. And by 11 July, a further notification saw the stake reach 57,905,817 shares, or just over 10% of the company.

Those shares were subsequently transferred from AML Global to Klear Kite LLC, another vehicle controlled by Harborne.

He later strengthened his position.

The latest disclosed notification, published on 24 August 2026, put Klear Kite's holding at 72,547,733 shares, some 14.07% of QinetiQ's voting rights.

EXCLUSIVE

A Reform councillor and campaign co-ordinater urged his followers to join and support the masked group

Katherine Denkinson

The precise value of each of Harborne's purchases is not public. TR-1 filings reveal when ownership thresholds are crossed, not the execution price of each trade. But historic market prices provide a reasonable basis for an estimate.

Using QinetiQ's closing price on each of the dates when Harborne crossed the relevant thresholds suggests that his original 57.9 million shares cost about £205.2 million, or roughly £3.54 a share.

The historic closing prices range from 340.6p on 6 May 2022 to 378p when the final threshold in the initial accumulation was crossed in July.

By 15 September 2026, QinetiQ shares were trading at £4.84.

Harborne has subsequently reduced his holdings. Across a serie...

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Masked men gathered in Dover and other coastal towns at the start of September, staging the first direct action from a network that spans at least 15 patriot groups and more than 40,000 followers built up over the past 18 months. Coastal groups within the network are now planning further protests outside local RNLI lifeboat stations.

Byline Times has identified seven Reform councillors who are listed as members of these groups on Facebook. Among them is Mark Thorn, Reform's campaign coordinator for Gateshead, who has repeatedly urged his own followers to join Patriot Platform. Patriot Platform, fronted by Danny Thomas – an acolyte of convicted fraudster and thug Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (known as 'Tommy Robinson') – is formed from members of dozens of local groups. Among them is Poole Patriots and Northeast Patriots, which draw together councillors and ordinary residents alike.

The network has also given rise to Frontline Alliance (FA), a veteran-led offshoot. Its founders have set out plans, in social media videos, for a body of unelected figures inside Parliament that would decide policy for whichever party is in power, alongside a British version of the US immigration enforcement agency ICE – with a threat to form a new political party if mainstream parties will not meet their demands. One of the founders denied any such plan when Byline Times put it to him directly.

The network has grown out of the collapse of the Flag Force movement, which Byline Times has previously exposed for hosting neo-Nazis posing as ordinary parents within it. It has capitalised on residents' fears, drawing otherwise peaceful people into mobilising against migrants under the belief they are protecting their communities.

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The British Brotherhood (BB) is a prime example. Birmingham man Anthony Davies renamed a pagan Facebook group he operated, rebranding it in July 2025 as a Christian military order. Davies replaced pagan content with AI-generated nu-metal anthems about imagined crusades and clips declaring a need for the return of "Paki-bashing" – though older pagan posts still remain on the page.

Questioned about this change by Byline Times, Davies said: "The majority of its members began to feel called to the Christian faith, so that Facebook group change its path and gave members notice of this change and offer them to stay… but many choose to leave and join a new group which we advestive [sic] for them at the beginning to help them out."

As many members left his group in disgust, hundreds more joined, looking to be part of what Davies called a "grassroots Christian fraternity of ordinary citizens standing together to make our streets safer, kinder, and stronger." In his comment to Byline Times, Davies added that BB "is not political… has no extremist agenda, and we don't seek power, our only aim is to make our local areas better places for everyone."

At least two men in the group have criminal records, one of whom was recently sentenced to three years and five months for burglary, while the other has historic convictions for manslaughter and domestic abuse. The former has shared images of himself on the BB Facebook group, while the latter appeared in a video on their TikTok page ranting about immigrants receiving benefits.

Growing steadily for the past year, BB now has a large presence on both Facebook and TikTok and is advertising for people willing to "walk into Hell no matter the outcome". For some, this seems to involve "patrolling" parks and attending the weekly pub quiz, but others have stated a desire...

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The Conservative Party has accepted a donation from the director of a company that used convicted fraudster and Nigel Farage aide George Cottrell as a stalking horse to place bets.

In the second quarter donation releases for 2026 with the Electoral Commission, it was revealed that the Conservative Party has taken £50,000 in three instalments from Adam Stephen Franks, a former director and current shareholder at the Star Lizard Consulting betting syndicate.

In court documents released late last year, reviewed by Byline Times, Tony Bloom, the founder of the syndicate, admitted to using Cottrell as a stalking horse. Bets that made $3.7 million profit were allegedly placed using betting accounts created under George Cottrell's name, according to Guardian reporting on the court case.

Tony Bloom, the founder of Star Lizard was sued by one of his former employees, Ryan Dudfield, over an alleged agreement to share the profits from the Cottrell account. Dudfield believed he was owed a sum potentially stretching into the millions from the profit, though this was denied by Bloom.

Gambling syndicates like Star Lizard often end up with their accounts getting closed down because of the size of the wins and the calculated nature of the bets. Instead they use high-spenders, known as 'whales' to place bets on their behalf. Cottrell had a reputation as a high-roller who was not particularly successful, which meant he was a whale that could be used by the syndicate.

According to the court document reviewed by Byline Times the arrangement between Cottrell and Star Lizard ended in October 2025.

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According to Bloom's defence, Cottrell's Sportsbet.io account, for most of the period that the syndicate controlled it, was in net loss. The losses peaked at a net loss of $13.7 million, one month after Star Lizard controlled it, before the syndicate then took it into a position of net win.

Adam Franks, the Conservative donor, was previously a director at Star Lizard Consulting, the firm that runs the syndicate, and now owns a substantial portion of the firm.

Companies House documents show that Franks first took a 25% stake in the firm in 2016, which later became 75% in August 2025, meaning that Franks had a stake in the firm while it was using Cottrell's accounts to place bets.

According to a 2016 profile of Star Lizard, Franks is integral to the Star Lizard operation. He is a friend of Bloom's from university and has worked as the financial director of many of Bloom's businesses. He also sits on the board of Brighton and Hove Albion football club alongside Bloom who is the owner and chairman of the club.

According to Bloom's defence in the case brought by Dudfield, Bloom was to keep 60% of profits from Cottrell's bets, Cottrell 33% and Dudfield 7%.

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During the court case, it was alleged that the Star Lizard syndicate agreed not to place bets through sites in which Cottrell had a stake, such as Tether Bet, though Bloom's defence denied that the syndicate had ever used Tether Bet at all. Cottrell has previously denied having any relationship to Tether Bet beyond being a customer.

Sportsbet.io advertises itself as the best crypto sports betting and casino site.

Franks' name also appears in the Paradise Papers leak of offshore investments in tax havens. He is listed in the papers as a shareholder of igame holdings P.L.C., a Malta based gambling company which focused on the Nordic and Central European markets before it was sold to Unibe...