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One of the most remarkable things about the current backlash against the Online Safety Act (OSA) is that it is emanating from the very same newspapers that have agitated for internet censorship ever since the World Wide Web became accessible to the public in 1993.

The press campaign against the internet had already reached such a pitch by 1996 that the Observer's technology correspondent, John Naughton, felt impelled to write a column headed 'Monsters from cyberspace' in which he complained that, to judge by British press coverage of the internet, there are basically only three stories about the online world: 'Cyberporn invades Britain', plus its variant 'Police crack internet sex pervert ring'; 'Net addicts lead sad virtual lives'; and 'pupils get bomb info on Net'.

Such stories, he claimed, were produced by journalists who were "hell bent on misrepresenting it [the internet] in the interests of sensationalism and easy news bytes. Where there is ignorance, they sow fear; and where there is fear, they sow technophobia".

He also argued that they deeply disliked the arrival of competing sources of news, which "enable people to get whatever they want rather than whatever pap an editor or a proprietor deigns to give them, which liberates rather than enslaves its users".

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One of the flood of stories that Naughton could well have quoted to illustrate his point appeared in The Telegraph, 13 September 1995. Headed, 'Electronic porn floods network', it complained that "paedophiles and pornographers are becoming the biggest users of the Internet" and claimed, without any convincing evidence, that "half the non-academic material in the 'global village' is pornographic".

Jumping forward to 10 June 2018, less than a year after Theresa May's Government had launched its Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper, The Telegraph was agitating for what would eventually become the OSA by launching its campaign for a statutory duty of care, administered by Ofcom, to be placed on all social media companies that allow young people access to their systems.

This on the grounds that the internet "allows content, images and opinions that would once have been curtailed or forbidden to be easily available at the touch of a button. Whereas children in the past could not access pornography, watch violent films or join adult communities without great difficulty, now it is commonplace for them to do all three". And, confirming that nothing had changed since Naughton's malediction, it linked to a contemporaneous Telegraph story, headed 'Sexting, suicide and addiction - the children whose lives have been ruined by the Internet'.

The Online Safety Act is Forcing Brits to Hand Over Personal Data to 'Unregulated' Overseas Corporations With Questionable Privacy Records

The age verification services used by social media platforms include a company funded by a Trump-supporting billionaire and a firm set up by former Israeli intelligence officers

Matt Gallagher

A Screeching U-turn

However, since 25 July, with the coming into force of the parts of the OSA requiring companies to introduce safety measures to protect children from online content deemed harmful to them, measures which include pornographic sites having to put in place rigorous age-checking procedures, those papers that once so enthusiastically demanded internet censorship have considerably changed their tune.

And, The Tele...

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A former British Army commando and defence attaché has accused the Government of acting like a "dictatorship" after he and over 500 others were arrested protesting against the ban on Palestine Action.

Retired colonel Chris Romberg, 75, was at the Defend Our Juries protest outside Parliament on Saturday, alongside hundreds of others.

Romberg served in the Army for 33 years, including in 29 Commando Regiment, and was defence attaché for Britain in Egypt and Jordan until 2007. He is the son of a Holocaust survivor, with his father, grandparents and aunts having to flee from Austria in 1938 after the German takeover as they were of Jewish descent.

After holding up a sign saying: "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action" - which now carries a potential prison sentence of 14 years - Romberg was arrested and escorted by officers to be processed in a make-shift facility near Whitehall, where hundreds were arrested and handed bail conditions not to attend similar demonstrations.

He told Byline Times: "Of those who were arrested as terrorists on Saturday - about half of them were pensioners…You had disabled people in wheelchairs. Right next to me, an 89-year-old woman was arrested and carried off.

"Are these really the terrorists that the Government is supposed to be fighting? This may continue, more people will join. People are seeing this not as a determined movement by the Government to stop terrorists, but as criminalising pensioners."

The Prime Minister's spokesman told journalists on Monday: "Palestine Action was proscribed based on strong security advice following serious attacks the group has committed involving violence and injuries and extensive criminal damage.

"This follows an assessment from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre that concludes Palestine Action has committed three separate acts of terrorism…You'll understand we can't go into all the detail at this stage. However, further evidence and security assessments have been provided in closed court, and the assessment supported the proscription."

Chris Romberg responded to the claims of secret evidence against Palestine Action, saying: "I feel it's all too easy to start claiming national security, claiming you have secret information, slightly frivolously.

"Years ago, Monty Python did a sketch about gangsters called the Piranha Brothers, and one of the characters in this had his head nailed to a coffee table by the Piranha Brothers. When asked why, he said, "Oh, they said I'd broken the unwritten law." They said, "What was it?" "I don't know. They wouldn't tell me."

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"We feel the Government is getting into this sort of situation. In the court case, they also produced supposed evidence, for which everybody had to leave the court and neither the claimants nor their lawyers were allowed to know what it was, or even be present, and this was then put before the judge without any [cross-examination].

"This sounds like what we would normally expect from an absolute dictatorship."

On Tuesday (12th August) organisers Defend Our Juries said a Telegram channel that was set up prior to their 'Lift The Ban' campaign launch was taken down without prior warning. The channel was used for 'sharing information on peaceful protests and legal advice'.

A spokesperson for the group said the 'latest interference' with the organising tools for the Lift The Ban protests followed the Defend Our Juries website being taken down last Wednesday, and an open call being cancelled by Zoom just one minute before it was due to start last Thursday, apparently at the request of the Met Po...

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A few weeks ago, the authors of a study from the British Runnymede Trust wrote that in political debate and media coverage in the UK on the topic of immigration, the pattern was one marked by "hostile language" and that, "the defining characteristic of migrants has been cemented as illegality over the past decade."

Just a week later, a YouGov poll asking UK residents about immigration revealed what can only be described as catastrophic levels of ignorance.

When asked if there are more immigrants staying in the UK legally or illegally, 33% of all YouGov poll respondents said there were "much more" in the UK illegally, while 15% said there were "somewhat more." 14% said the opposite: that there were "much more staying legally than illegally."

For respondents who said they want large numbers of immigrants to leave the UK, the levels of ignorance were even more dramatic, with 55% who said there were "much more" in the UK illegally and 17% answering "somewhat more." Just 4% of those who want to deport immigrants answered that there were "much more staying legally than illegally."

The actual numbers?

According to the 2022 UK census, there were 10.7 million legal immigrants in the UK, while Oxford University's Mirrem Project on migration put the number of illegal immigrants at 750,000. In other words, there are roughly 14 times as many legal immigrants in the UK as there are illegal. In other words, "much more staying legally."

This should ring alarms bell about political rhetoric, media focus and media silence.

These numbers are all the more disturbing because they come after a Brexit referendum that revolved almost entirely around immigration. For years running up to the vote, and for almost a decade after the vote, UK media broadcast thousands of hours and published thousands of articles about immigration.

It has been nothing short of an obsession, particularly on the part of right-wing media such as the Daily Mail, Daily Express and GB News. And, yet, despite the avalanche of coverage, half of the country are completely wrong in their assumptions about immigration to the UK.

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One explanation could be that the UK media that pushed for Brexit have absolutely no interest in facts or context on immigration that contradicted their line. For over 20 years, that same press has written countless emotional pieces about "swarms" and "floods" of "illegal migrants" coming to the UK. It's no coincidence that the target audience for these media - those in the UK who favour deporting immigrants - were 50% more likely to be completely misinformed about immigration than a general population that is itself misinformed.

But the deep lack of knowledge about immigration also suggests a broader failure of journalism beyond just outlets favouring the political right. It is also a failure of mainstream journalism that often amplifies immigrant stereotypes or fails to provide proper context.

Consider another poll conducted by Ipsos in 2016 (the year UK voters opted for Brexit), where respondents were asked to estimate the current Muslim population, and to then estimate what that percentage would be four years later in 2020.

In 2016, UK respondents estimated that Muslims made up 15% of the UK population, which would equal 9.9 million residents. The actual number was 5%, or 3.3 million. The same respondents then estimated that by 2020 Muslims would make up 21% of the UK population, or 14.1 million people. The actual percentage by 2020 was 6.5%, or 4.4 million.

Thi...

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Reform UK's Director of Local Government declared a company he owned insolvent two months before the local elections, leaving hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of unpaid debts - including a £31,000 Covid Bounce Back Loan.

Cllr Jaymey McIvor, who now represents Ongar in Epping Forrest (Essex), became Reform UK's first county councillor last year after being expelled by the Conservative Party over allegations that he sent an "unsolicited picture of his genitals".

He is an up-and-coming figure in Reform UK, regularly representing the party on TV and speaking at protests against an asylum seeker hotel in Epping. He was recently appointed as Reform's national "Director of Local Government".

But in March this year, Infinitus Group, a Florist run by Cllr McIvor with him as the sole director, entered liquidation after the firm voted to voluntarily wind itself up.

A liquidators report shows that Infinitus owes £141,025 to creditors. This includes £42,370 to "trade creditors", £31,000 of a Covid Bounce Back Loan and £5,154 owed to HMRC in corporation tax.

McIvor founded the company in 2018 and remained director until October 2020. He returned as director in June 2021.

The emergency Bounce Back Loans are state backed, leaving taxpayers footing the bill if companies holding the loans default on their debts.

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The scheme is credited with saving thousands of businesses during the pandemic. The latest government figures show that £11.9 billion has been paid by the government to banks to cover Bounce Back Loans. But officials estimated in 2021 that nearly 40% are unlikely to be repaid. A further £1.94 billion worth of the loans have been flagged as suspected fraud.

Under the Bounce Back Loan Scheme rules, companies could receive up to 25% of their annual turnover in loans, or no more than £50,000. The scheme ran until 31 March 2021. To receive £31,000 in a Bounce Back Loan, Infinitus would have to have had a turnover of £124,000 the previous year.

However, the unaudited financial statements filed on Companies House for the year ending November 2019 show the company making a loss of £-367 with total assets of £7,635 and liabilities of £8,002. It is not clear if the firm had the required £124,000 turnover needed for a £31,00 Bounce Back Loan.

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Further unaudited financial statements for the year 2020 show that the company registered a profit of just £1,621, while holding £51,335 in "bank loans and overdrafts".

The company appears not to have filed any accounts with Companies House since 2021. It is possible that a compulsory strike off order was withdrawn in order for creditors - including the taxpayer - to claw back any possible debts..

In this position at Reform UK, McIvor has railed against waste of taxpayers' money and promoted Reform's Department of Local Government Efficiency or DOLGE, named after the DOGE unit formerly hea...

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JD Vance has berated Europe for its free speech record again. In conversation with the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary David Lammy, he said we "got a little too comfortable with censoring rather than engaging with a diverse array of opinions". He's right. We have.

But here's the kicker - Vance failed to address the key issues of the administration of President Donald Trump.

Vance said he worried about free speech in the USA, only he linked it to the years 2020-2024 when the country was led down a "very dark path under the Biden administration", thereby sidestepping what Trump's administration is doing to free speech in the present.

Let's be clear here - free speech in the supposed land of the free is far worse today than under President Joe Biden. It has become so dire that at Index on Censorship - an organisation established in 1972 within the context of the Cold War, when the USA was more friend than foe - we have made the country the focus of our latest Index on Censorship Magazine.

The attacks are happening across the board, impacting all the central pillars that support free speech.

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Trump's Targeted Attacks on Free Speech

Let's start with the press, an institution specifically name-checked in the First Amendment, Trump has spent years calling journalists and broadcasters who challenge him "fake news" and "enemies of the people".

One can become inured to his attacks. It's important not to be. I often remind myself of the words of Nina Khrushcheva, Nikita Khrushchev's great-granddaughter, who wrote for Index in 2017 about her horror at hearing such Stalinist words repeated in the USA. "When I was growing up in the 1970s, not even Pravda used such ominous language for Kremlin critics," she said.

Trump doesn't just call the press enemies - he treats them as such. Journalists are barred from the Oval Office press pool for not renaming the title Gulf of Mexico; they're targeted with billion-dollar defamation lawsuits. A Damocles' sword hovers overhead; Trump has called for the overturning of the Supreme Court's 1964 ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, legislation that reaffirmed the media's essential role in US democracy.

Some say journalists are the canary in the coalmine; others say it's writers more broadly. That's partly why we harp on about book bans at Index.

Of course there have always been efforts to censor literature. It's just that today it's happening at scale. Consider this: in 2014, there were 183 titles targeted for removal from public and school libraries; in 2023, that figure rose to 4,240, according to the American Library Association.

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Most of these challenges come from politicians and parents in Republican states, and there's a tiresome predictability to the titles singled out - Margaret Atwood and Jodi Picoult books, ones with queer and race-related storylines, for example. The calls are expanding, too.

In early April, the Navy removed 381 books supposedly promoting DEI from the US Naval Academy Library following an order from Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth's office. And the attacks go beyond the page. When we interviewed Kim A Snyder, director of the film The Librarians, she told us some librarians even had stalkers.

As for protest, it does still exist in the USA. The No Kings rallies across the country saw millions turn out. Except they came at the ...

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Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told a right-wing US podcast that there is "no money in politics" before running to be a Member of Parliament last year.

In newly-resurfaced comments from June 2024, while he was still reportedly weighing up whether to stand in the July election, Farage appeared on a pro-Trump online show, 'Ash Wednesday' with MAGA pundit Steven Crowder.

Crowder's platform has been repeatedly sanctioned by YouTube for use of racist and homophobic slurs (2019), false claims about the 2020 election (2021), and for violating the platform's harassment, threats and cyberbullying policy (2022).

Speaking freely to Crowder, Farage explains that as a broadcaster with GB News he's been earning 'good money' for the first time in 30 years. He is paid around £2,300 per hour with the controversial channel, according to his current register of interests.

Farage adds that "people laugh when you tell them this": "There's no money in politics, there's no money if you're straight [i.e. not corrupt]…There's no money in politics."

"[I] had four kids to bring up, dependents etc…So for the first time in 30 years, right, I'm earning good money [and] I'm enjoying life".

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But he then told Crowder: "Maybe there's a historical opportunity in British politics…if anyone can re-galvanise the forces of conservatism in something that is coherent, consistent, bold, but ambitious in terms of the vision, then maybe I'm that soldier. So I've got a big decision to make."

The Brexiteer's constituents may raise an eye-brow at the thought of there being "no money" in an MP's annual salary. The MP wage rose to £93,904 this April, from £91,346 when the anti-migrant politician was elected, and they can claim generous housing and travel allowances. The average salary in Farage's Clacton constituency is around £35,000 a year.

Nigel Farage, who was recently crowned as Britain's highest-earning MP due to his plethora of outside interests, frequently rails against "the political elite". It tallies with his apparent avoidance of Parliament: a recent Hope Not Hate investigation found that in the past year, Farage has spoken fewer times in parliament than any other leader of a British political party with a seat in Westminster.

Farage spoke just 45 times, compared to 226 for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, 97 for Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, and 152 and 86 respectively for Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, according to the analysis.

The Reform UK leader has also missed a swathe of crucial votes, including key divisions on planning reform, renters' rights, and the winter fuel allowance.

And in May, Farage went on an overseas holiday while parliament was sitting, meaning he missed a debate on the government's post-Brexit EU negotiations.

The former financier has made nearly £135,000 from making personalised C...

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When Donald Trump sits down with Vladimir Putin in Alaska this week, the ghost of 1938 will be in the room. Not because Trump is Chamberlain, but because Greater Europe faces the same fundamental choice: assert agency by punishing aggression, or live with the consequences.

The Kremlin's objectives have not shifted: wipe Ukraine from the map, break NATO, and erode American power. To grant legitimacy to such an agenda in talks with a wanted war criminal is to betray peace - not bring it closer.

European leaders understand this, but it merits relentless repetition: there is no conflict in Ukraine, no tension between two sides with competing claims. There is a war of choice that Moscow wages - a criminal act under the UN Charter. It will end, not when Ukraine stops defending, but when Russia stops attacking.

In March, Ukraine accepted an unconditional ceasefire proposed by Washington. Moscow didn't just reject it, but escalated its wanton violence. April. May. June. July. Schools, hospitals, kindergartens, apartment blocks, even a sleeper train - bombed. The latest attack on Kyiv took 31 innocent lives, twelve children among the injured.

But let's be frank: if you live in Western Europe, you may support Ukraine and scorn Russia, but this is not your war. It is their war. And if they - the Russians, the Ukrainians, whoever they are - could just abandon their savage ways, we, the dignified and enlightened, could go back to our normal, peaceful lives.

It's a natural reflex to disassociate from horror, to avoid the burden of reckoning with genocide in plain sight. Russians are killing Ukrainians for daring to exist, and Europe - fully capable of stopping it - has chosen not to for over eleven years now. Layered on top is the ever-present orientalism, dividing the world into the civilised and the uncivilised.

But this latent othering of Ukrainians - the first to die beneath an EU banner that still counted Britain among its own back in 2014 - is a moral failure, a historic regret in the making, and a one-way ticket to a much bigger war. One that has been at Europe's door for years, knocking louder with each passing season.

The moment we realise that Ukrainians are not them but us, the imperative becomes clear: mobilise every resource to drive the aggressor out of Europe, out of Ukraine that is.

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Here's how: seize Russia's frozen assets and put them to work defending Ukraine. Arm Ukraine not in dribs and drabs, but fully - with the long-range missiles and precision tools needed to expel the invaders. Extend Europe's protective shield over Ukrainian skies. And finally, stop talking about resolve and show it - raise defence spending not because America is losing its patience, but because European security demands it. Not because Europe is spoiling for a fight with Russia, but so it won't have to fight.

None of this is charity. In fact, Kyiv is a deeply underappreciated security provider for Europe, if not the ultimate guarantor. The uncomfortable truth is this: if Ukraine falls, Europe won't be debating whether to confront Russia, but when.

Until this realisation takes hold among the public, European politicians will struggle to act decisively in the face of criminal aggression. Wars of conquest don't end until a winning coalition emerges to hold the revanchist belligerent to account. A capitulation dressed up as diplomacy - while Russia still occupies Ukrainian land - will not bring peace. Half-measures will invite more war. That's not conjecture; it's how we got here.

In 1938, Neville Chamberlain...

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It took a dumb minute staring at the email for the penny to drop: we'd been hacked. It was a request for two-factor authenticated access to a confidential research document to do with Byline Times' 2023 exposé of the GB News star presenter Dan Wootton as a serial sexual catfish.

Just two other people ought to have known the sensitive cloud-shared file - a small part of an exhaustive three-year investigation - even existed. And the name on the screen was neither of them.

I rang my colleague Tom Latchem for our usual (encrypted) morning catch-up: "Hello mate - erm, have you noticed anything strange going on?"

"Well, someone smeared blood on my car windscreen last night. But apart from that…"

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Things had taken a turn for the unusual the day before. Wootton had given a six-minute prime-time live TV monologue in response to a Byline Times exclusive unmasking him as the fictitious showbiz agents Martin Branning and Maria Joseph - two online identities connected to more than 10 years of catfishing activities targeting a large number of men and women, many in the public eye, with attempts to obtain sexual images by deception.

Wootton addressed the story by admitting to unspecified "errors of judgement in the past" - but denied criminal behaviour. He said: "Who doesn't have regrets? Should I be cancelled for them many years later, or do you accept I have learned and changed?"

Wootton then went an unexpected step further. He told the GB News viewers that our reporting was politically-motivated - a "smear campaign" by a "hard-left blog" and an affront to "free speech" orchestrated by "dark forces out to try and take this brilliant channel down".

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"We have all found ourselves under attack," Wootton said. "And that's because GB News is the biggest threat to the establishment in decades, and they will stop at nothing to destroy us."

Now, there is no evidence Wootton could have foreseen - or was any part of - the events that followed this extraordinary broadcast, which propelled the story on to the ITV national news bulletins and turbocharged it on X. But things did get interesting afterwards.

'Blood Will Flow'

For the record, Byline Times is neither 'dark force' nor 'establishment'. It is, however, a staunch defender of lawful free expression and a fan of good journalistic values.

Yet here was a billionaire-funded, Ofcom-regulated broadcaster with mainstream pretensions framing legitimate reporting on a public figure falsely as an act of Culture War.

The worrying episodes multiplied in the days after broadcast. Alongside the hack attack - 'stealer' malware masquerading as "information that you may find useful for your investigation" - and Tom's bloody windscreen, a further anonymous email arrived to the newsroom headed: "Over Dan Wootton".

"See you at your office and blood will flow," it promised.

There was also a phone call to the personal mobile number of an executive editor. "You're going to regret this," said an anonymous northern British male voice; an alleged act of intimidation that remains a police matter today (and on which Byline Times will be reporting in due course).

New...

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Digital rights advocates, legal experts, and online content creators have told Byline Times that the Online Safety Act's new age authentication measures are "censoring" public interest activism online - as well as sweeping up unrelated content far beyond the Act's stated scope.

Byline Times has confirmed that posts about war crimes, genocide, and humanitarian crises have been age-restricted on Elon Musk's 'X' (formerly Twitter) and Reddit. But so too have more benign corners of the internet, hidden from unverified users behind opaque moderation systems.

The Act imposes a series of new duties on platforms, including an obligation to shield children from "harmful" content. To access restricted posts, users must verify their age - effectively dividing the internet into two tiers. But companies, interpreting Ofcom's guidance and the law's broad definitions, are left to determine which content gets gated.

"The scope for so-called 'harmful content' is subjective and arbitrary," Paige Collings, Senior Speech and Privacy Activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said.

"Because the OSA threatens large fines or even jail time for any non-compliance, platforms are forced to over-censor content to ensure that they do not face any such liability. Reports are already showing the censorship of content that falls outside the parameters of the OSA," Collings adds.

Digital rights groups warn that these systems are not only compelling platforms to filter content for children - they're reshaping the overall experience of the entire internet. The new default web will impact how users of all ages communicate and collaborate online.

A growing number of posts, forums, and news content related to Palestine, queer identity, or harm-reduction practices have quietly been age-gated. Sometimes it's graphic content, and sometimes it isn't.

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'Platforms Already Have a History of Over-Moderating Pro-Palestine Voices'

Byline Times has identified multiple examples of Palestine-related content - including protest footage and news commentary - being locked behind age-gates.

Some of these feature graphic imagery, which may trigger moderation protocols. Reddit communities like /r/israelexposed and /r/ukraineconflict have been restricted. So too have videos on 'X' showing police clashing with pro-Palestine protestors.

But others appear more innocuous. Footage from a televised speech about genocide by Dutch-Palestinian author Ramsay Nasr was age-gated. The Reddit community /r/aljazeera - a news aggregation page unaffiliated with the broadcaster - was also blocked.

"All the evidence I've seen on my timeline suggests that the Online Safety Act has nothing to do with porn and everything to do with restricting information on Palestine," Rangzen, a vocal activist with over 40,000 followers on 'X', told Byline Times.

An 'X' screenshot sent in by Rangzen, which he explained shows age-gated comments on a video he posted about a Palestine protest.

Campaigners at Open Rights Group and journalists at BBC Verify have both confirmed numerous other examples of political and public interest content being censored behind age gates. In some cases, their investigations prompted companies to take age-gates down - implying that they may have been done erroneously or via fallible AI tools.

The European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), which aims to end arbitrary restrictions and criminalisation of Palestine advocacy in Europe and Britain, has been following the Act's implementation closely.

"Pro-Palestine content often involves sharing graphic images or videos to highlight violence and humanitarian crises, such as the ongoing situation in Gaza, said Carolina Xavier ...

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One of Britain's biggest trade unions faces claims of financial mismanagement embroiling the current leadership, amid heavily increased spending on strikes and staffing.

The Unite union's dispute's fund - a war-chest for funding strike pay during industrial action and which grew to over £40 million under former General Secretary McCluskey - has been drastically depleted, in part due to high-profile recent disputes such as the long-running Birmingham bin workers' strike, Byline Times can reveal.

Spending on strike pay and staff wages has soared at the Unite union - while the official regulator has just imposed an unprecedented £5,000 fine for impeding access to financial records.

The union, which covers Britain and Ireland, has over a million members and arguably carries the largest industrial clout, as a union unafraid to strike.

It comes amid a bitter internal row over the union's finances, after leader Sharon Graham released a report last week alleging cronyism and potential corruption in the union under its former leadership. Graham was elected on a platform focused on winning collective disputes through organising and industrial action, rather than targeting the Labour Party.

But after heavy spending on disputes including the Birmingham bin workers' walk-out, strike pay from the union is now likely to be pulled from Unite's 'general' fund.

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Under the Bonnet

Every financial quarter for the union over the past year now shows a deficit compared to the union's income from members, with the union's substantial investment portfolio no longer providing the gains needed to balance books, as spending on strikes accelerates.

In 2024, the union reported an underlying operational deficit of nearly £20m, according to an internal March 2025 memo. In contrast, in 2020, the union posted an operating surplus of nearly £27 million (though financial accounts for that period are contested).

The union's internal June 2025 financial report, seen by Byline Times, states: "Dispute payments were £6m in Q4…Branch contributions to disputes remain at a rate of around £0.8m a quarter. The Union can and will make additional payments for disputes from general funds, of which we have plenty, and as we have in the past."

Spending on disputes also appeared to be running at £6m in the first quarter of this year - strongly suggesting spending will far outstrip the £11.8m which has been budgeted for the whole year.

Internal documents seen by this newspaper show a £5.4m deficit for the union for the first quarter of 2025 alone, up dramatically from a £0.2m deficit in the same period in 2024.

The £5.2m deterioration in just one year suggests a severe downward swing in the union's finances.

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The June 2025 internal report stated: "Expenditure in Q1 was higher in frontline services, with increases in dispute payments, membership activity and members legal representation costs particularly seeing higher spend than the same period last year. Salary costs are higher than the same period last year, however, they have reduced compared to quarter."

The union's strike fund balance was reported in the third quarter of 2024 as £7.7m. Accounting for regular contributions from Unite branches, and dispute fund spending of over £10m since Q3/2024, it would now appear to be totally depleted.

And Unite's core operations are now significantly loss-making, with an operating deficit (before investments) of £4.6m at the start of the year, up from £4million in Q1 2024. When a recent decline in the value of the union's investments are taken into account, the total deficit is ...