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

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Democracy campaigners have, on the whole, enthusiastically welcomed the Government's political reforms outlined in a major new election strategy today.

As has been widely-reported, 16 and 17-year-olds will be given the right to vote in all UK elections, bringing UK-wide elections in line with Scotland and Wales.

It represents the biggest change to UK democracy in a generation and delivers a key manifesto commitment of the Labour Party.

Long-called for reforms to voter ID rules will also allow UK-issued bank cards to be accepted as valid voter ID at polling stations, to help more people exercise their democratic right.

And, in what is likely to become even more important, digital versions of accepted IDs (like digital driving licences) will be permitted when they become available. Having ID on your phone should mostly eliminate - eventually - the problem of leaving one's identification at home.

A new digital Voter Authority Certificate will also be created for those who don't have any of the permitted IDs. Without abolishing voter ID altogether, these changes remedy many of the problems that voter ID creates: mass disenfranchisement for those who lack it.

Keir Starmer's Government Says Elon Musk's X AI Chatbot Endorsing Hitler Is a 'Matter for the Company'

The Prime Minister's spokesman dismisses calls to leave the social media platform, despite its official 'Grok' bot posting a series of antisemitic comments

Adam Bienkov

We'll also see an increasingly automated voter registration system to make it easier for people to register to vote. There are currently an estimated eight million people missing from the electoral roll, and the problem is particularly bad for renters, young people, and those from lower-income groups. Letting people register to vote when they engage with Government services - like benefits, the DVLA or the Passport Office is likely to be a welcome first step.

But it's the measures on political funding which mostly catch anti-corruption campaigners' eyes - and us here at Byline Times.

Amid fears of foreign funding of our political parties, the Government has pledged to close loopholes that allow foreign donors to influence UK political parties through 'shell companies' - in other words, registered firms which exist solely to pump money into our politics.

Unincorporated Associations are loose groupings like political dining clubs, which have traditionally been able to funnel huge sums into our parties without saying which individuals are stumping up the cash. They will face new requirements with mandatory checks on donations over £500.

As the election strategy makes clear, Unincorporated Associations (UAs) don't currently need to disclose the source of their funding for donations under £37,270 a year. That makes them a potential route for "foreign or otherwise illegitimate money to enter electoral campaigns," as the Electoral Commission and almost every anti-corruption group has been shouting for years.

There is therefore a move towards a 'Know Your Donor' policy, making clear the onus on parties to check donors are eligible, and to lower this (bizarrely high) threshold for UAs to disclose their funders. UAs will be required to "undertake checks on donations with a value of over £500, similar to the checks on donations undertaken by political parties."

The Electoral Commission will be able to impose heavier fines of up to £500,000 on those who breach political finance rules (a massive jump up from the current £20,000 max fine, seen as the 'cost of doing business' for dodgy donors). As the policy doc makes clear, £20k is less than 0.5% of what many political parties (including the Tories and Labour) spent in the 2019 election. Previously you could fail to declare a multi-million pound, rule-breaking suitcase of cash and get barely a slap on the wrist.

E...

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

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

When the Scottish Parliament introduced votes at 16 for the 2014 independence referendum, there were those who argued that 16 and 17-year-olds weren't mature enough to think seriously about the world. Some Conservatives complained that this was a partisan move, designed to drive-up support for the 'Yes' side.

But during the referendum debate, everyone in Scottish politics witnessed the profound way that older teenagers engaged, taking the subject seriously and coming to their own conclusions.

High schools and colleges hosted debates, and the politicians who attended, on both sides, often reported back that they had been involved in some of the most rigorous grillings they'd had.

A year later, when the Scottish Government proposed that the voting age for Holyrood and local elections here should be permanently reduced to 16, the vote passed unanimously - even the previously sceptical Conservatives accepting that the experience had proved them wrong.

Wales followed a few years later, and, in the 2021 Senedd elections, 16 and 17-year-olds were able to vote for the first time. The fact that it's taken England and Northern Ireland - and so Westminster elections across the UK - so long to catch up is a shame. The fact that the Government has finally done so is excellent news.

The principled case for lowering the voting age is obvious - 16 and 17-year-olds have a stake in society, and should get to shape it. Since, on average, they will live longer than the rest of us, they arguably have more of a stake. It's often said that they can pay taxes and join the army, and, of course, that's true, but even those who don't do either are part of the community.

Those who worry that they don't have enough experience of the world miss the point, too. Democracy doesn't demand that we are experts in anything but our own experience - it functions by pooling our collective perspectives.

Stark Figures Reveal How Many Londoners were Turned Away Due to Voter ID in General Election

Well over a thousand people 'denied a vote' due to issues with mandatory photo ID rules in the capital

Josiah Mortimer

Every 16-year-old is more of an expert in what it's like to be 16 in Britain today than I am. And that's the only qualification they need. Forcing politicians to ask for votes from those currently in the school and college system, or the care system, is a good thing. Arguably, it's helped increase the prominence of education and care in Scottish political debate.

Academics who have studied voting habits in Scotland since the change didn't just find that older teenagers are perfectly well equipped to engage in the political process, they've also discovered that those given the right to vote at 16 continue to be more likely to vote than the cohort before them were at the equivalent life stages.

Voting is a habit you either get into or don't. If you form that habit when you're likely still living at home and, often, going to school or college, you will take it with you into the world. If you acquire the right to vote at exactly the moment when you (in many cases) leave home and life becomes precarious, you are less likely to get into the habit, and less likely to ever get around to forming it.

Of course, there's a question about why not to go further - York University professor Martin O'Neill has argued (convincingly, I think) that it should be cut to 12. Cambridge don David Runciman stumps for six. But that's an argument for another day.

Because age is only one way that we exclude people from voting in Westminster elections. Alongside older teenagers, there are two other large groups of adults in the UK who we currently disenfranchise.

Scale of Votes with 'No Impact' in General Election Revealed as Campaigners Demand Electoral Reform

Record 'distorted' election result raises question marks' for new Gov...

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

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

A group claiming to be an independent grassroots critic of Britain's Equality Act is actually being bankrolled by a charity spun out of Tufton Street's right-wing Centre for Policy Studies think tank, Byline Times can reveal.

Don't Divide Us (DDU) claims to be a "grassroots movement" composed of "all sorts of people who first came together in the summer of 2020 to contest the idea that Britain is systematically racist", while suggesting that it campaigns against a "racialised approach being rolled out across our institutions, and schools in particular".

On its 'beliefs' page, Don't Divide Us calls itself "the UK's Common-Sense Voice on Race", and claims "Today's so-called anti-racism sees group identity before it sees a person and risks reinforcing prejudice by dividing us into a world of victims and oppressors".

It has been cited in over half a dozen news articles throughout the last year, and many more times during 2023 and 2024, including appearances in leading newspapers such as The Times and Telegraph, as well as in the Spectator and Spiked Online.

The group has come out against pro Diversity, Equity and Inclusion measures in workplaces, and has targeted schools for teaching about systemic racism, often landing favourable coverage in the right wing press.

Until now, no funding to this "grassroots" organisation has been revealed, but this outlet found that a recent cash injection has come from a charitable vehicle spun out of the Conservative Party-linked Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) as a means of attracting anonymous donations.

Don't miss a story

SIGN UP TO EMAIL UPDATES

Funding Revealed

The most recent accounts filed by the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) - a registered charity - show a £20,000 donation for the year ending 2024 went to Don't Divide Us.

Companies House documents for 'Don't Divide Us Group Ltd' list its net assets for the year as £21,789. The only employee is director Alka Cuthbert, a contributor to Spiked Online and former Brexit Party prospective parliamentary candidate for Eastham.

The accounts for the Institute for Policy Research also reveal the names of some of the papers it has funded over the last 12 months, including one titled 'The Equality Act - Is It Fit for Purpose or Time for an Overhaul?'.

In June 2025, Don't Divide Us released a paper titled 'The Equality Act Isn't Working', which was the report later cited in the right wing press. In it, DDU argues that the Act isn't "fit for purpose", has led to an increase in race-based discrimination claims, and is creating issues in the workplace, ultimately calling for the subjective element to be stripped from equality law tests. Ultimately the report calls for the "eventual repeal" of all protected characteristics under the EA.

Neither DDU nor the IPR confirmed whether this was the same paper or not, or who was ultimately behind the research donation.

The IPR is a longstanding funding vehicle for several Tufton think tanks. Money is donated from the charitable trusts and foundations of Tufton's backers, and is then distributed anonymously back out to a host of different organisations, almost all of which don't declare who funds them. As such, the true source of the DDU donation is still kept hidden.

EXCLUSIVE

Reform's Darren Grimes Accused of Lying After Police Deny Telling Him Not to Hold Council Surgeries for 'Security' Reasons

EXCLUSIVE: Local police have rejected the Reform UK deputy council leader's claim that they advised him not to meet his constituents

Josiah Mortimer

What is known is that the IPR received £357,239 in 2024, and spent over £300,000 donating to 'research projects, conferences, seminars, and publications' delivered by the Centre for Policy Studies, Civitas, Politeia, the Taxpayers Alliance, and Don't Divide Us. These are almost entirely organisations viewed as ...

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

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Two serving members of the House of Lords are under fire for serving on Hong Kong's top court - despite China imposing ever-tightening control over the province.

House of Lords members David Neuberger and Leonard Hoffmann - both former senior British judges and now crossbench peers - serve as foreign judges on Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal, despite growing calls for them to stand down as the region rounds up democracy activists and journalists.

Judges there must swear allegiance to Hong Kong, which was previously a largely-autonomous zone of China following its handover from the Brits in 1997.

Now, however, Beijing is exerting enormous influence over governance there - not least through the draconian National Security Law passed five years ago this June.

It means that the two still-serving British peers on the court swear allegiance both to the British Crown as Lords, and to an area under the grip of the Chinese Communist Party.

Last August, Lord Neuberger stood down as chair of a legal advisory board to an international media freedom coalition he founded, after he sat on the court panel which unanimously dismissed a bid by British Hong Konger Jimmy Lai and six other pro-democracy activists to overturn their convictions for taking part in a peaceful protest in August 2019. However, he and Lord Hoffman still serve on that same panel - and remain voting members of the House of Lords.

Don't miss a story

SIGN UP TO EMAIL UPDATES

Dual Allegiance

A May 2024 report by the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation highlighted that the Chinese authorities on the mainland have the power to "interpret" the Basic Law and National Security Law, allowing it to overturn supposedly "final" decisions of the Court of Final Appeal.

"Beijing has repeatedly used this power to interfere with court rulings. Additionally, the Beijing-appointed Chief Executive has authority over judicial appointments and promotions, a power that has been used to ensure that the Courts reward those who support the regime and sideline those who do not," the campaign group points out.

When approached by Byline Times, Lord Neuberger denied there is a conflict between his dual allegiances, and doesn't believe he needs to register under Britain's new Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, which is designed to track agents of foreign influence.

But the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation says conflicts of interest are "not hypothetical", as China and Hong Kong are often discussed in the House of Lords. In November 2022, the Lords debated the question of "what assessment His Majesty's Government have made of allegations of human rights abuses in China."

"The debate repeatedly invoked the ongoing human rights abuses in Hong Kong - some of which the Lords who are Overseas [judges] had directly participated in," the foundation argues.

They argue these judges provide a veneer of international legitimacy for Beijing's tightening control over Hong Kong.

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.

House of Lords rules permit members to work for foreign states - and merely require them to disclose that work and income. They are not told to share what cases they rule on, and nor is their salary published by the Lords authorities.

The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHKF), in its report last year, claimed that Lord Hoffmann was "instrumental" in reinstating the conviction of a man "only accused of filming...

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

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

In an era where British Muslims face rising levels of hostility - from hate crime in the streets to institutional discrimination - one might expect that a Government working group tasked with producing a definition of Islamophobia or 'anti-Muslim hate,' might be a good-faith effort.

Unfortunately, the recent call for evidence by the UK Government's working group on an Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim Hatred definition has left activists disappointed, and with the impression that it is not a sincere effort.

In fact, the process appears to be little more than a farcical box-ticking exercise, leading to the conclusion that the procedure has been structurally rigged to avoid engagement with the very communities whose rights it claims to serve.

'Reform UK and the Rising Threat to Muslims and Minorities in Britain'

The rise of Reform should worry all of those who value justice and equality and the democratic fabric of this country

Dr Sabera Bhayat

Firstly, the process for submitting evidence on how to define Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim Hate appears to have been designed to avoid actual engagement. Anyone who has submitted evidence to a standard Parliamentary inquiry knows the word count for consultations tends to be around 3,000 words.

It would have made sense for this process to have been the same, for the obvious reason that Islamophobia is a multi-faceted and nuanced sociological and political problem that requires in-depth analysis. Such work requires evidence drawn from the lived experiences of ordinary Muslims, academic literature, case studies, legal precedent and data analysis.

However, the amount of evidence that can be submitted to the working group is constrained by tight limits, in some cases disallowing answers that exceed 70 to 100 characters. To put that into perspective, this is barely more than one tweet's worth of letters.

One cannot even scratch the surface of a problem like Islamophobia, covering legislative gaps, media biases, hate crime trends or workplace discrimination, within such restrictive limits. This does not appear to be an open and sincere invitation to share knowledge; rather, it has the look of a bureaucratic muzzle disguised as a public consultation.

Excluding the Experts

If the format of the inquiry were the only issue, then perhaps the working group may have been able to retain some legitimacy. Unfortunately, there are much deeper and more disturbing problems, which, arguably, completely undermine its efforts.

Reports claim that the working group was prohibited by the Government from engaging with grassroots civil rights Muslim bodies like the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).

MCB and other Muslim bodies, like Muslim Engagement & Development (MEND), are the very organisations that have been working for years, decades even, to combat Islamophobia across the UK - they are the experts in this field. They have deep ties to, and the trust of, British Muslim communities up and down the country.

'Why We Must Call the National-Populist Far Right by Its Name'

The centre left should stop being afraid of accurately describing and countering the global far right threat we now face, argue Jon Bloomfield and David Edgar

Jon Bloomfield and David Edgar

How can the Government expect to be given an accurate understanding of Islamophobia if it is shutting out the very organisations that represent the communities suffering this abuse daily? Again, it would appear that the negation of grassroots, credible Muslim voices has been built into the very structure of this process, with the intention of reaching a predetermined outcome as to how prejudice against Muslims should be defined.

However, concern around how this has all been managed should turn into consternation and alarm when considering who actually has been consulted. Investigations allege that the Government's w...

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

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

The Labour Party? You can't live with it, and you can't live without it. Debate about whether progressive change happens with or without Labour is as old as the hills. Since its formation, from the Independent Labour Party onwards, socialists have debated whether to change Labour or replace it.

This eternal debate has been given a shot in the arm by the possible, or even likely, creation of a new left party based around Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. What's happening, why and what's likely to be the result?

Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. Since 2020, under Keir Starmer, or more precisely under Morgan McSweeney, Labour hasn't just veered right in values and policy terms in search of now mystic 'Red Wall' voters, but more importantly in terms of their narrow factional goals, have waged a relentless war not just to defeat the left in the party but to eradicate it.

By a miracle of political organising and determination, a tiny faction of hard right operators in Labour's ranks, who were facing extinction under Corbyn and Momentum, tricked the party into backing their 'Corbynism without Corbyn' candidate before turning their fire on the very party members they had cynically courted. Now the job was to ensure that nothing like Corbynism could ever happen again - the tomb would be sealed.

If you are on the left, why would you stay in such a hostile environment? Not least when Greens and Muslim independents have shown what is possible at the last election, and left-wing Labour MPs we're having the whip withdrawn for voting against government policies that would make the poor even poorer. But while a vacuum in politics is hard to ignore, it's still a difficult space to fill effectively.

Our democratic system is built around a two-party model. The voting system is designed explicitly to punish any party outside of the duopoly by making it almost impossible for minor parties to turn votes into seats.

'Progressives Must Unite Against Nigel Farage and National Populism or Reform Will Win'

Neal Lawson on the series of numbers that really matter in UK politics right now

Neal Lawson

This duopoly is further embedded through the way parties are funded by the rich, the way parliament recognises and rewards His Majesty's Loyal Opposition and the way the media reports on politics as a battle between only two adversaries. It all adds up to party brand regime that looks more like Coke versus Pepsi than a genuine democratic choice.

It's therefore no surprise that since Labour replaced the Liberal Democrats as the main centre-left alternative to the Conservatives almost 100 years ago, that no other party has broken the stranglehold.

The SDP came close in the 1980s but wilted under the pressure of first past the post. Change UK couldn't resist what they saw as the vacuum to the right of Corbyn and flowered in the polls for a number of weeks before disintegrating. Scotland is of course different; there the SNP have made a historic breakthrough. And of course, Faragism in its various guises of UKIP, the Brexit Party and now Reform has dramatically impacted our nation, but is yet to lead a government.

So, what does this tell us? That the parliamentary two-party nut is very difficult to crack. And to do it requires remarkable levels of persistence and a big enough single issue to galvanise a substantial base in the country, Scottish independence for the SNP, Brexit for Nigel Farage. But then how to build from their gets really tough.

Where would the new left-wing party fit today? There is undoubtedly space to the left of Labour as is, in a host of cosmopolitan seats stocked with uber-liberals, public service workers, the precariat and racialised voters. This could be organised into a voting bloc. But breaking the stranglehold is not easy, not least because of course any new party adds to t...

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

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

This coming weekend is the third anniversary of UK temperatures hitting 40C hit for first time ever. Since then, countless new records have been broken. In 2023, some areas had a quarter more rainfall than normal, making the year one of the ten wettest for England and Northern Ireland since 1836. May 2024 was the warmest on record and that Spring was the wettest and warmest ever too - until this year smashed that last record. There have been three heatwaves already this summer and June became the warmest month for England.

These facts and figures can sometimes feel as relentless as the heat, but put simply, as a new Met Office report on the state of the climate puts it, record-breaking and extreme weather has become increasingly commonplace over the last decade.

For the majority of us here in the UK, a nation notoriously obsessed with the weather, the effects of this change still feel relatively benign - sunnier days and longer, drier summers, what's not to like? However, headlines about Wimbledon running out of water and fans collapsing in the sweltering heat might hint at what's to come. So too might the extreme wildfire and drought warnings - reservoir levels fell at nearly three-quarters of sites in June and are below average in all regions.

Revealed: The £264 billion Price Tag of the UK's Carbon Capture Strategy

Critics argue the technology is a "dangerous distraction" to the real measures required to tackle catastrophic man-made climate change

Stuart Spray

But with the Government mostly silent about what we need to do to adapt to the ever-shifting new normal, most of us can be forgiven for thinking everything's under control.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The Government's own climate watchdog has warned that the UK's preparedness for extreme weather events is inadequate, disjointed and piecemeal. Despite that 40-degree watershed moment back in 2022, the Government doesn't even have a heat strategy in place. It hasn't introduced a maximum safe temperature for our workplaces, to mirror the minimum below which it's considered unsafe to work. And that has consequences for us all - for our communities, our public services and our economy.

Researchers at UCL and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have warned that extreme heat could lead to an extra 30,000 deaths a year in England and Wales by the 2070s, putting an already strained NHS under immense further pressure. London alone saw an estimated 263 people dying in the 23 June - 2 July heatwave. We are clearly in the midst of a public health crisis, and one that's barely being acknowledged by the Department for Health.

The fire services are having to respond to a much higher number of fires this year than normal, yet their funding is still being cut in real terms.

And when the Chancellor is so fixated on driving up growth as the sole way to fund those public services that are crucial when it comes to helping us all stay safe, there's precious little comfort in the findings of central bankers and financial experts that reckon climate change-driven extreme weather events could wipe almost five per cent off Europe's projected GDP over the next five years.

Alongside urgently ending our reliance on the fossil fuels that are driving climate breakdown, it's clear we should be making it much more of a priority to prepare properly for the impacts. We should be making decisions now that lock in resilience rather than vulnerability.

Take schools, for example. Most of us can remember sitting exams in stuffy gyms or assembly halls, desperate to be anywhere else. As temperatures continue to rise, it makes no sense to subject our children and young people to this ordeal at times of peak heat. We should instead be reimagining the school year so they can perform to the very best of their abilities befo...

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

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

MPs today criticised UK tax authorities for failing to chase billionaires to ensure they pay their taxes, and not even knowing how many are failing to do so.

The report from the Public Accounts Committee comes as pressure mounts on the Government to introduce a wealth tax, and as Chancellor Rachel Reeves desperately tries to find new revenues to bridge the gap in public finances.

Despite creating 100 datasets to tackle people with high spending life styles who are not paying all their taxes, HMRC's one missing data set is the one that keeps records on billionaires.

HMRC defines the wealthy as anybody earning over £200,000 a year and with assets totalling over £2 million. But billionaires have huge wealth and can be worth 500 times more than those classified as wealthy by the tax authorities.

Fraud-Spotting Data Analytics and AI Could Close £6 Billion Black Hole In Government Finances

The technology has already recouped hundreds of millions of pounds and could be extended right across Government, according to a new report by the National Audit Office

David Hencke

Lloyd Hatton MP, Member of the Public Accounts Committee, said: "We already know a great deal about billionaires living in the UK, with much information about their tax affairs and wealth in the public domain.

"So we were disappointed to find that HMRC, of all organisations, was unable to provide any insight into their tax affairs from its own data - particularly given that any single one of these individuals' contributions could make a significant difference to the overall picture.

We found a similar apparent lack of curiosity in how wide the tax gap is both for the very wealthy and for wealth stashed away offshore

Lloyd Hatton MP, Member of the Public Accounts Committee,

Hatton continued: "Our report shows that, however you slice it, there is a lot of money being left on the table. HMRC must, under its new leadership, begin collecting the correct amount of tax from the very wealthiest - and this must include wealth that is currently squirrelled away in tax havens. There is certainly room for improvement. We hope that HMRC uses both our recommendations and the new funding it has secured in this area to do so."

The report states that the number of wealthy people in the UK jumped from 700,000 to 850,000 in the last five years - but it has lumped together those earning £200,000 annually with the super wealthy.

It has raised more money from the wealthy - rising from £2.2 billion to £5.2 billion in the last five years but there has been a big drop in prosecutions and penalties applied to the very wealthy.

Hundreds of Local Authorities Remain on the Brink of Bankruptcy, Despite Government Bailouts

An ageing population and successive cuts by the last Conservative Government have left local council budgets on the brink, reports David Hencke

David Hencke

In 2022-23, there were 1747 penalties applied to the wealthy but this dropped to 456 last year. The number of people prosecuted by HMRC dropped to 25 last year.

The report states: "It is particularly disappointing that HMRC has issued no penalties to enablers of tax evasion, despite acknowledging unscrupulous advisers often play a key role in helping the wealthy evade tax. We are also unconvinced that HMRC fully utilises the deterrent effect of publicising successful prosecutions, despite it acknowledging the value of publicising high value, high-profile cases."

Nor does it rely on all sources of public information on the wealthy. It follows disclosures in Forbes magazine but ignores The Sunday Times rich list.

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...

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

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Reform's Durham County Council deputy leader Darren Grimes, who has previously described the European Convention on Human Rights as "utterly bent" is now planning to use it in a move which will make it easier to dismiss complaints by voters.

"Beard removal is now 'torture' under the ECHR", Grimes complained on June 25. He's also claimed that "the ECHR still runs our borders" and has mocked Keir Starmer as "the ECHR's biggest fanboy on the world stage".

Grimes has made no secret of his desire to quit the human rights framework, writing in 2024: "Leave the ECHR! Please wake up to how serious this is for democracy!"

But, it now seems Grimes is the ECHR's biggest supporter on the council stage. At least, when it suits.

EXCLUSIVE

Reform's Darren Grimes Accused of Lying After Police Deny Telling Him Not to Hold Council Surgeries for 'Security' Reasons

EXCLUSIVE: Local police have rejected the Reform UK deputy council leader's claim that they advised him not to meet his constituents

Josiah Mortimer

On July 16, at the full council meeting, Grimes will present a motion which will:

Incorporate a principle that there is "no right to not be offended by lawful speech" into the council's Code of Conduct.

Argue that as councillors are "democratically mandated representatives" with constitutional duties, they are not subject to workplace restrictions on (hateful) speech.

Prevent supposedly "vexatious" standards proceedings against councillors for controversial but lawful political views.

Amend complaint procedures to give "particular regard" to enhanced protection for political speech when assessing complaints against councillors.

Call on other North East councils to adopt similar measures to prevent "misuse of standards procedures to silence legitimate political debate"

But the provision which really stands out is this: "When assessing complaints involving freedom of expression, particular regard shall be given to the enhanced protection afforded to political speech under Article 10 ECHR and the democratic mandate of elected members to represent diverse viewpoints within their communities."

Article 10 of the ECHR protects people's right to hold their own opinions and to express them freely without Government interference. The convention is overseen by the Council of Europe and enforcement undertaken by the European Court of Human Rights.

As Byline Times has reported, Grimes has already faced complaints over his inflammatory social media posts - though at least one was swiftly dismissed, with the council claiming it was posted in a personal capacity. Reform swept to power on the council in May.

In the same council meeting this week, Reform will vote to rescind the Climate Emergency Declaration made by the council on 20 February 2019. It will become the first council to do so.

Don't miss a story

SIGN UP TO EMAIL UPDATES

Protesters will gather outside Durham's County Hall on Wednesday, with local campaigners calling on others to "bring your flags, banners and placards along to Durham County Hall from 9am before the full council meeting".

"Let's show Reform the strength of feeling about their decision making so far and how we feel about their agenda for the meeting which includes motions to change the councillor code of conduct to allow more heinous divisive rhetoric and one to deny the climate crisis," a Stand Up to Racism organiser said.

A Green councillor said that while the motions are set to pass given Nigel Farage's party's domination of the council, it will "expose the real Reform".

holding farage to account #reformwatch

While most the rest of the media seems to happy to give the handful of Reform MPs undue prominence, Byline Times is committed to tracking the activities of Nigel Farage's party when actually in power.

BREAKINGEXCLUSIVE

Reform's Darren Grimes Seeks Help From Euro...

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

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Elon Musk's X platform continues to be a breeding ground for violent anti-Muslim & anti-migrant hate, according to a new report from counter-hate researchers.

Analysis by the the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) - an organisation despised by far-right billionaire Musk - found that in the aftermath of the Southport murders last July, high-profile hate figures on social media platforms like Elon Musk's X "falsely linked the attack to Muslims and migrants, leading to widespread disorder and violent riots across the UK."

Now one year on from the 2024 riots following the Southport stabbings, new CCDH research finds that little has changed.

Research from the monitoring group found that "hateful influencers" garnered millions of views per day on X, with the platform "utterly failed to moderate this explosion of dangerous, violent content."

CCDH's findings led the UK's online safety regulator Ofcom to conclude that there was a "clear connection" between posts on social media and the eruption of the 2024 riots.

Worryingly, the group finds that the "same forms of violent and murderous rhetoric that precipitated and inflamed the 2024 riots" are still widely circulating, with scant moderation by the platform.

The findings are likely to add further pressure on the Labour Government to act, and to review its heavy use of X.

EXCLUSIVE

Reform's Darren Grimes Accused of Lying After Police Deny Telling Him Not to Hold Council Surgeries for 'Security' Reasons

EXCLUSIVE: Local police have rejected the Reform UK deputy council leader's claim that they advised him not to meet his constituents

Josiah Mortimer

The research shows how posts from six far-right or extremist influencers - Tommy Robinson, Paul Golding, Ashlea Simon, Andrew Tate, Laurence Fox and Calvin Robinson - are the initial "parent" posts in an "intensely violent" series of replies from platform users.

Reply posts "encourage extreme acts of violence against Muslims and migrants: to shoot, to maim, and to kill."

And X then amplifies and monetises the influencers - and the engagement they generate on the platform - despite "continued breaches" of platform rules.

During the summer riots in England last year, X emerged as a "crucial vector of false information and hate," CCDH finds.

"Rather than taking steps to mitigate harmful and illegal content, Elon Musk, owner of X, personally amplified conspiracy theories, warning of an impending "civil war" in Britain to his hundreds of millions of followers," the authors write.

"Hate preachers" who had been banned from Twitter before being reinstated by Musk are still receiving millions of views per day.

Of the six prominent accounts identified by CCDH in the wake of the riots (Tommy Robinson, Paul Golding, Ashlea Simon, Laurence Fox, Andrew Tate, and Calvin Robinson), CCDH found that each remains active on X. All are 'verified' Blue Tick users, meaning their posts are actively promoted by the X algorithm. They are highly likely to generate income from X through their posts, through the platform's Creator Revenue Sharing programme, which channels ad revenue to high-engagement users.

Generating large numbers of replies boosts posts' engagement, and hate-filled content appears particularly likely now to generate high-engagement.

Keir Starmer's Government Says Elon Musk's X AI Chatbot Endorsing Hitler Is a 'Matter for the Company'

The Prime Minister's spokesman dismisses calls to leave the social media platform, despite its official 'Grok' bot posting a series of antisemitic comments

Adam Bienkov

Three of the six accounts analysed (Fox, Robinson and Tate) are also allowed to offer paid subscriptions to their content on the platform, enabling them to profit further from their content.

The report finds: "Today, [these influencers'] posts are still routinely followed by streams of rep...