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Nigel Farage has announced plans - or rather, vague hopes - to reopen shuttered coal mines in Wales. It is an unusual stance from a millionaire supporter of Margaret Thatcher.

In a speech today, the Reform UK leader will propose reopening coal mines in Wales to revive British steel-making at Port Talbot, where the coal-powered blast furnace shut in October 2024.

The move from Tata Steel brought an end to the highly intensive and polluting method of steelmaking in south Wales. It was part of a restructure leading to the loss of around 2,800 jobs.

Now in a bid to boost support ahead of Wales' Senedd elections next May, Farage is proposing reviving coal mining and reopening the blast furnace - a proposal likely to cost billions if it is even possible. Reform is currently polling second to Welsh independence backers Plaid Cymru, followed by Labour which has governed in Wales since devolution began at the turn of the millennium.

The plan would involve mining coking coal from nearby pits in south Wales to power old blast furnaces, ostensibly as a "cheaper" alternative to electric furnaces. But former blast furnaces are extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, to restart.

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Port Talbot previously imported its coal from as far as Australia before closing. Reform sources told the Mail it was as a "long-term" plan, acknowledging it "won't be quick nor easy".

But The Times reports the proposals are to present Reform as "a credible party of Government" and an attempt to win over working-class voters from Labour.

Only last month a note from Britain's largest miners' gathering, the Durham Miners' Gala, included a quote from Farage saying: "I supported Margaret Thatcher. She was right.. [Pit closures] may have caused a little pain for some, but it had to happen."

The General Secretary of the Durham Miners' Association (DMA) "launched a scathing attack on Reform UK, saying that the party will "never" be invited to the historic event, and that he would boycott the event if they were asked to attend," LBC reported.

It is not clear who the real audience is for Reform's coal nostalgia.

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Speaking to Byline Times, Shav Taj, General Secretary of the Welsh Trades Union Congress (TUC Cymru) said: "Reopening coal mines isn't a serious plan - it's a political stunt. Wales TUC has long supported an energy policy based on diversity and flexibility, including clean technologies like carbon capture and storage, but not a return to deep or opencast coal. What communities need now is a just transition - not empty promises.

"This proposal comes from someone who admired Margaret Thatcher - the very Prime Minister who closed the pits - and who counts Donald Trump among his closest allies. Communities in Wales remember the devastation caused by those policies. They deserve better than recycled rhetoric from people who supported the dismantling of our industrial heartlands."

She called for "long-term investment in skills, infrastructure, and fair work - not false hope and instability from those offering headlines instead of solutions."

Anthony Slaughter, leader of the Welsh Green Party, told me the idea was "opportunistic nonsense" from Farage.

"It can't happen, it won't happen and it shouldn't happen…He's right to highlight how badly Port Talbot was dealt with. But the transition to green steel production should have happened ...

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The BBC has dropped its previous commitment to broadcast the Gaza documentary Gaza: Medics Under Fire "as soon as possible", Byline Times has learnt. It constitutes a shift that comes after weeks of mounting criticism and controversy.

The documentary, produced by Basement Films, captures the harrowing experiences of Palestinian medics working under Israeli bombardment. It has been "fact checked, complied and signed off multiple times within the BBC" according to the filmmakers and yet remains shelved pending an internal review.

Meanwhile on 7 June, Ben de Pear, the former Channel4 news editor and executive on the film, wrote on LinkedIn that "the (film), for the BBC, on the destruction of the Gazan health care system, has been on production for 15 months now and was supposed to be released four months ago. In the months it has been delayed another 500 medics have been killed. Its release has been repeatedly delayed and postponed several times; now indefinitely."

Until recently, the BBC had insisted that the delay was temporary. In a statement issued in April, the corporation said: "This documentary is a powerful piece of reporting and we will broadcast it as soon as possible. We have taken an editorial decision not to do so while we have an ongoing review into a previous documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone."

However, in a new statement to Byline Times, the BBC removed the phrase "we will broadcast it as soon as possible". It now reads: "We have taken an editorial decision not to broadcast this documentary while we have an ongoing review into a previous documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. We understand the importance of telling these stories and know that the current process is difficult for those involved."

EXCLUSIVE

BBC Bosses Draw Up Plans to Win Over Reform Voters by Changing News and Drama Output

The Director General Tim Davie and other executives discussed altering BBC "story selection" in order to secure the "trust" of supporters of Nigel Farage's party

Adam Bienkov

The omission of a timeline or firm commitment to broadcast has raised fresh concerns among supporters of the film, who argue the change signals a retreat from the BBC's earlier pledge to air it.

The shift comes as the BBC faces growing pressure from both inside and outside the organisation to explain why the film has not been shown.

The decision to delay Gaza: Medics Under Fire has prompted accusations of political censorship. More than 600 figures in the arts and media, including actors Susan Sarandon, Harriet Walter, and Miriam Margolyes, signed an open letter criticising the BBC's handling of the film.

The BBC Must Be Mutualised to End Its 'Pro-Establishment Bias' Warns Report

It finds that BBC reporting is overwhelmingly focused on the concerns of senior politicians and business people around Westminster, rather than the country at large

Olly Haynes

The letter claims: "Every day this film is delayed, the BBC fails in its commitment to inform the public, fails in its journalistic responsibility to report the truth, and fails in its duty of care to these brave contributors. No news organisation should quietly decide behind closed doors whose stories are worth telling. This important film should be seen by the public, and its contributors' bravery honoured."

Basement Films says it is "deeply disappointed" by the BBC's continued delays.

In a statement, the company said: "We gathered searing testimony from multiple Palestinian doctors and healthworkers who had survived attacks on hospitals and their homes that killed both colleagues and loved ones.

We also spoke to multiple medics who had been detained and testified they had been tortured, and we...

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The BBC's Director General Tim Davie and other senior bosses at the corporation have drawn up plans to win over voters of Reform UK, due to a belief that their news and drama output is creating "low trust issues" with supporters of Nigel Farage's party.

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

The committee also identified "the importance of local BBC teams" to their plan to win over supporters of Farage.

EXCLUSIVE

The BBC's Road to Appeasement

As Theresa May's former Communications Director Robbie Gibb is re-appointed to the BBC board, the new retail edition of Byline Times' reveals the inside story of how the corporation was cowed by the Conservative party machine

Adam Bienkov and Patrick Howse

Members of the committee, which includes former GB News executive Robbie Gibb, discussed the presentation and agreed to give an "update on progress" towards their aim at a later date.

"The CEO, News and Current Affairs provided the Committee with a presentation on plans to address low trust issues with Reform voters" the minutes state.

"The Committee discussed the presentation. Committee members recognised the importance of local BBC teams in the plan, given their closeness to audiences.

"Directors discussed how story selection and other types of output, such as drama, also had a role to play. An update on progress would return to a future meeting".

Farage has repeatedly used his own GB News platform to attack the BBC, calling it a "political actor" and threatening to boycott the corporation. In language also used by the BBC Editorial Committee, the Reform leader suggested that BBC editors were using "story selection" in order to target his party.

The BBC Must Be Mutualised to End Its 'Pro-Establishment Bias' Warns Report

It finds that BBC reporting is overwhelmingly focused on the concerns of senior politicians and business people around Westminster, rather than the country at large

Olly Haynes

The Editorial Guidelines Committee has also been the source of significant internal disquiet at the BBC, due to concerns over the influence of BBC Board Member Robbie Gibb.

Gibb was appointed to the board by former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2021.

He was identified by former BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis in 2022 as an "active agent of the Conservative party" and also drew controversy for his role at the Reform-supporting GB News.

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BBC staffers spoken to by this paper privately expressed their concern about the new plan to win over Reform voters, due to the risk of increasing allegations of bias at the corporation.

The BBC has previously been criticised by some viewers for heavily featuring Reform UK politicians on its programmes, despite the party only having five elected members of Parliament. Previous research has identified Nigel Farage as being among the most invited guests on the BBC's flagship Question Time discussion programme.

The BBC were asked by this paper whether there had been any similar discussions about secur...

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Thinking is important. Before speaking, before acting… and definitely before writing. This week's column took a lot of thinking. More than usual. And at first, I thought that was a problem. Writer's block? But perhaps the very problem is me thinking there's a problem because I don't immediately have something to say.

This week's Media Storm guest thinks for a living. And when I asked AC Grayling about my current predicament, he said: "You've identified a real problem there. The best pushback to it is to try to encourage everybody to start thinking slowly."

The predicament I shared with him was that I believe in free speech, and I really want to live by that. But I'm scared. I write every week about how on the internet, lies spread faster than the truth, and how our professional news media is incentivised to publish divisive clickbait.

Power, Visas, and the Politics of Exclusion: How Borders Are Being Used to Silence Dissent

Borders are now being used not just to prevent the passage of people, but of ideas too, argues Iain Overton

Iain Overton

Last year in the UK, a fake news tweet about the Southport Stabbing triggered racist disorder on our streets; yet rather than leading to introspection about the scapegoating of migrants and Muslims, this week alone we've seen a visibly racist travel ban in the US, a UK PMQs about banning the burka, and two bogus front pages about non-Muslims being convicted for 'blasphemy' in the UK (which we'll get onto).

I'm left wondering, in a world where hate spreads faster than the truth, how can we fight fascism without censorship?

Germany and Austria have anti-fascist censorship laws that make it an imprisonable offence to downplay Nazi crimes. It might seem out of place in modern democracy to outlaw reinterpretations of history, but these laws were introduced through hard-learned lessons.

Nevertheless, they often backfire.

The far-right AfD (some of whose leaders have been convicted under these laws) could have legally been banned last month when German intelligence classified them an 'extremist party'. But the government rapidly backtracked when faced with fury they could be censoring opposition.

A similar backlash occurred when the Holocaust denier David Irving was arrested and imprisoned in Austria for his now-discredited rewritings of Nazi history. Paradoxically, this saw him become something of a free speech hero, later invited to Oxford University to speak on the topic.

Far more effective in discrediting his ideas, was the work of historian Deborah Lipstadt and her legal team, who proved in a famous libel trial that Irving was indeed a Holocaust denier - and that the Holocaust had incontestably occurred.

'How the Media is Cashing in on the Rise of Nigel Farage'

News organisations are failing the country at the moment when responsible independent journalism is most needed, argues Mathilda Mallinson

Mathilda Mallinson

Free speech advocates take the example of Irving v. Lisptadt as proof that it is better to let bad ideas be aired and defeated, than to force them to simmer in the shadows. But our media does not operate like a courtroom.

In a courtroom, two sides present their views, in a civil manner, under oath, and with the opportunity to cross-examine.

By contrast, in our media, "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes," as Mark Twain famously observed.

X owner Elon Musk removed fact-checking on the grounds it was equivalent to censorship (he also removed AC Grayling, which tells you all you need to know about today's 'free' marketplace of ideas).

Meanwhile, professional news editors often opt for clickbait over accuracy.

Which takes me back to that Da...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

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On Tuesday morning, Dutch democracy survived - just. At 9 o'clock sharp, Geert Wilders waved away his secretary when she entered his office to serve coffee. On the table in front of him was a 22-page document containing 'the strictest asylum policy ever'.

He ordered the three ladies facing him to sign the papers.

They refused.

Eight minutes later, Wilders, the leader of the Freedom Party (PVV), the surprise winner of the national elections in November 2023 and the largest party in Dutch parliament, muttered: "I don't want this anymore."

He stood up and left the room.

The government had fallen.

Fighting Back Against National-Populism

Jon Bloomfield and David Edgar consider what the progressive Left can do to counter dangerous hard-right thinking on the great social issues of our era

Jon Bloomfield and David Edgar

With him in that room were Dilan Yesilgöz, leader of the liberal-conservative People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD); Caroline van der Plas, leader of the populist Farmer-CitizenMovement (BBB); and Nicolien van Vroonhoven, leader of the centrist New Social Contract (NSC).

Together, they had formed the governing coalition that ruled the Netherlands for eleven months and one day.

'Leader' is a tricky word here. None of them were actually in government: last year, after four months of negotiations riddled with suspicion, insults and press leaks, they could only agree on ruling the country together on the condition that the four party bosses would not themselves have a place in the cabinet.

In the meantime, each party has plummeted in the polls: NSC, for example, would currently count for one seat in parliament, down from twenty on election night.

Most importantly, all three have been held hostage by Wilders all this time. From his seat in parliament, surrounded by 36 hand-picked followers, he dictated the trajectory of the cabinet (which included nine PVV ministers and deputy ministers) through X.

The man who is the sole member of his party decides everything on his own.

His aggressive, malicious and often downright dictatorial tweets overruled proceedings. He reduced Prime Minister Dick Schoof, a seasoned civil servant who was acceptable to Wilders only because he carried no party membership, to fumbling irrelevance.

Schoof was not invited to the meeting on Tuesday morning. He had spent Monday night calling all four of them, begging them to inform him if the cabinet were to fall: "Please don't make me hear that it's over through the media."

'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

In the end, he got the news when Wilders tweeted it on X.

There are more tricky words here: liberal-conservative, populist, centrist.

Back in normal times, these epithets were commonly used by the parties themselves, the press and the general public.

Today, they serve as camouflage for collaborating with the neo-fascist, racist, misogynist, queer-bashing, xenophobic, climate-denying Islamophobic politics of Wilders and his party.

Take the 22-page document that the three ladies refused to sign- not out of heroic resistance, by the way, but because they believed it would simply be passed and stamped where policy is traditionally approved: in parliament.

That Wilders' solution to the refugee issue - having the army close the borders and turn back all asylum seekers - was unconstitutional and incompatible with European and human rights agreements didn't strike them as a problem in itself.

Or take the parliamentary motion that was propo...

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The team set up by Reform UK to slash spending in the local authorities it now runs across England already appears to be falling apart.

On Monday, the party's flagship council in Kent was the first to receive a visit from the team of self-appointed 'auditors' sent in by the party to supposedly slash the authority's "wasteful" spending. Within days, the grouping has suffered two senior resignations.

The Reform HQ team visited the council to meet officers and party representatives, including the council leader - led by (then) Reform chair Zia Yusuf. He conducted media interviews in the council chamber, despite not being elected there, nor, it would appear, being a Kent resident.

Zusuf quit the party on Thursday saying he no longer believes, "working to get a Reform Government elected is a good use of my time".

Nathaniel Fried, hired to run Reform's DOGE program, also resigned just a week after being appointed to the role. He was one of a handful of Reform 'auditors' - including Brexiteer Arron Banks - present at Kent County Council (KCC) on Monday.

One opposition source said Yusuf and Fried were "strutting around like they owned the place".

The new administration at Kent County Council (KCC) has established a "DOLGE" (Department of Local Government Efficiency) initiative involving unelected party volunteers, appointing a cabinet member with that remit, alongside the separate 'DOGE' team of officials and activists from HQ sent in on Monday.

But it has been rocked by the resignations, soon after its launch, which came after Yusuf's role as party chair was reportedly side-lined in recent weeks.

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His resignation came hours after he criticised newly-elected Reform MP Sarah Pochin's call at PMQs for a ban on burqas as "dumb" and not party policy.

Yusuf, a practicing Muslim, was reportedly "very upset" by the burqa comments and public backing of Pochin from MPs Lee Anderson and Richard Tice.

Kent Green party councillor Stuart Heaver told Byline Times: "Mr Yusef was only holding court in the Council Chamber on Monday extolling the virtues of DOGE - now he isn't even a member of Reform UK. It's a complete shambles and the residents of Kent deserve a lot better."

The Kent council leader, Reform's Linden Kemkaran, recently wrote a stark warning to Kent County Council staff alongside Yusuf - saying anyone who might "obstruct" party officials' demands for information would be considered guilty of "gross misconduct" and sacked - despite the partisan team having no apparent legal status.

'Misinformation' Claim

Shortly after the 'DOGE' visit, but before his resignation, Yusuf claimed in a tweet that KCC had tendered a four year recruitment contract at a cost of £350m.

He wrote: "[It's] £87.5 million per year of taxpayer money being spent on 'advertising vacancies' and 'interviewing' people. That's a staggering 22% of their annual payroll. What a racket."

However, another opposition councillor, who declined to be named, said the story was "complete misinformation".

"It only goes to underline the concerns many councillors have about giving unelected volunteers with no knowledge of the council's services access to large volumes of sensitive data."

Political commentator Bearly Politics noted on X that the contract was "a national framework agreement, hosted by Kent but open to every public body in the UK - councils, NHS trusts, schools, civil service arms-len...

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The collapse of KKR's planned rescue of Thames Water has exposed something even murkier than the sewage flowing into our rivers: the ideological bankruptcy at the heart of Britain's privatised water model.

Thames Water, burdened by £20 billion of debt and escalating pollution fines, now teeters on the edge of a special administration regime. Done the wrong way, that could morph into a taxpayer-funded bailout.

This fiasco isn't just corporate mismanagement; it reveals profound flaws in the Labour Government's timid approach to water reform. One vividly underscored by the narrow technocratic remit of the recent Cunliffe Review, which recently published its interim findings.

When Sir Jon Cunliffe, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, was tasked last year with leading "the largest review of the water sector since privatisation," cautious optimism emerged.

Perhaps, after decades of catastrophic underinvestment, ecological ruin, and public outrage, Labour ministers had finally grasped the nettle. Instead, they ensured the Cunliffe Review explicitly restricted itself to "reforms within the privatised regulated model," excluding any meaningful exploration of public ownership - despite overwhelming public support.

This deliberate limitation was both predictable and tragic, highlighting Labour's broader political timidity - one born, in part, of No10 and 11's unimaginative, technocratic approach to governance.

Prospective Thames Water Private Equity Buyer 'Sent Bills Soaring' in UK and US

Campaigners say the preferred buyer of the failing UK water firm has a record of "rampant profiteering and financial abuse of service users" on both sides of the Atlantic

Olly Haynes

The interim Cunliffe report repeatedly admits that decisions around water governance are inherently political. Paragraph 85 explicitly states, "only Government can set overarching strategic goals," acknowledging the profound, systemic issues facing the industry extend beyond technocratic solutions.

Cunliffe effectively told Environment Secretary Steve Reed: 'This is a huge sh*t sandwich, filled with strategic-level decisions, and it's you - with societal backing - that must take a big bite.'

Time to Show You Really Keir

Keir Starmer's Government now faces a stark choice: confront this challenge decisively or continue stumbling from crisis to crisis.

This attempted technocratic evasion is likely to leave profound questions unanswered about ownership, accountability, and the very nature of public services in an era of political and ecological crises.

The approach is symptomatic of a deeper malaise. From paralysis over Gaza to a vacillating stance on welfare, the Starmer Government seems adrift - defined less by vision than by caution.

It offers little more than empty gestures toward "growth," while quietly discarding long-held principles and inching closer to the authoritarian right on social policy. What we're left with is not leadership, but management - Government by spreadsheet and soundbite, devoid of moral compass or political courage.

New 'Emergency Board' Puts Pressure on Thames Water and Government Amid Court Chaos

Activists tap into public anger over 'fundamentally broken' water industry

Josiah Mortimer

Unsurprisingly, defining oneself merely as "not Jeremy Corbyn or the Tories" has proved inadequate as a governing philosophy.

Yet, with its strong mandate for transformative change, this was avoidable. The public are hungry for change. On water, opinion has been clear: consistently over 80% of the English public support returning water to public ownership.

Organisations like Compass, Up Sewage Creek, Ilkley Clean River, and Henley Mermaids submitted compellin...

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On the night of 2 June, more than 120 Ukrainian drones carried out the largest strike on Russian-occupied territories since 2022, targeting military infrastructure in the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, according to Petro Andryushchenko, Head of the Center for the Study of Occupation of Ukraine.

Ukrainian drones hit ammunition depots and destroyed substations supplying power to Russian military facilities. Up to 44 Russian military sites, bases, and storage facilities were damaged. The attack caused widespread blackouts across occupied Zaporizhia and parts of Kherson, and postponed the reconnection to the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant by at least a month, significantly disrupting Russian logistics and complicating offensive operations in the south.

In response, Russian forces launched strikes not on military positions, but on civilian infrastructure in Ukrainian-held Kherson.

Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed head of occupied Kherson, said Russian President Vladimir Putin was "closely monitoring the situation" as Russian troops fired guided aerial bombs, FPV drones, tanks, and artillery at Kherson's city center. Grocery stores, the central post office, residential buildings, and administrative offices were destroyed

While Ukraine targeted military infrastructure, Russia escalated deliberate attacks on civilians, under direct Presidential oversight. Putin praised "the effective actions" of the Russian military, saying they made it possible "to reduce the possible consequences."

Under international humanitarian law, political and military leaders may be held criminally responsible for war crimes if they knew or should have known such crimes were being committed and failed to prevent or punish them.

UPDATE

How Ukraine Used Cheap Drones and a Lot of Ingenuity to Strike a Major Blow Against Russia

"I spent most of the early hours of Saturday in my hallway feeling the walls shake as the ballistic missiles exploded", Chris York reports from Kyiv

Chris York

Combined Arms Attack on Kherson City Centre

On the evening of 4 June, a major grocery store was damaged and the city's central post office was destroyed by fire during a round of artillery shelling. At 05:20 on 5 June, Russian forces struck again. Within fifteen minutes, four guided aerial bombs (KABs) hit the city center.

"The whole city woke up, the beds jumped up in the air," said Victoria, a business owner, in an interview with Byline Times. Her restaurant was hit by a heavy shock wave that damaged the most iconic building on Freedom Square.

The Kherson Regional State Administration building had been heavily damaged in previous strikes before Kherson was liberated in November 2022, and had remained vacant ever since. It became symbolic after mass protests against Russian occupation took place in Freedom Square in March 2022, and again during celebrations of the city's liberation in November 2022.

A Russian military-affiliated Telegram channel claimed the strikes were carried out by Russian aviation using FAB-500 bombs. Shortly afterwards, Russian tanks and artillery shelled the area, followed by FPV drone attacks on cars and pedestrians.

Later in the day, at approximately 15:30, a second airstrike targeted the Kherson Regional State Administration building, this time completely destroying it. Russian sources stated that an FAB-1500 aerial bomb was used. No military personnel were present, but several local journalists were reporting from the site.

Oleksandr Andrushchenko, a photographer for local news outlet V Hory, had just finished filming and was waiting at a bus stop about five minutes' walk from Freedom Square when the second bomb struck. He rushed back to find the build...

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Jordan is bracing for a nightmare scenario in which Israel is expected to annex much of the occupied West Bank and thereby torpedo an already fragile peace treaty between the two countries that has lasted for more than 30 years.

The stakes could hardly be higher.

For Jordan the latest alarm bell was Israel's decision last week to approve the building of 22 new settlements in the West Bank, the largest extension in decades. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

Some of them will be constructed in the Jordan Valley, separating the West Bank from the Kingdom, along a 400 Km (245-mile) border with Israel. Others will be in areas deep inside the West Bank, which in all negotiation frameworks have been considered areas for a designated Palestinian State, along with Gaza.

In Jerusalem Defence Minister Israel Katz said the move "prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel."

Labour Minister Defends RAF Gaza Surveillance Flights Amid Growing Scrutiny of UK-Israel Relationship

Defence Minister Maria Eagle spoke at a private Israel Independence Day meeting and said the UK would continue to back the country

Olly Haynes

However, Jordan sees it as a further step towards annexing Judea and Samaria, biblical names for the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967.

It fears that such a move would be followed by the forced expulsion of huge numbers of Palestinians into Jordan, risking massive political destabilisation and destroying all remaining hopes of a two-state solution.

The government in Amman would not sit by and let that happen. As one official told me: "Any forced expulsion of Palestinians and we will mobilise the army."

It is unlikely, though, that such rhetoric will deter Israel and its Far Right ministers whose influence has increased steadily under Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and who have frequently referred to Jordan as Palestine.

If Israel pushes ahead with annexation, as expected, Jordanian officials believe it would initially take over around 60% of the West Bank (the so-called Area C) followed by Area B, giving them a further 22% of the territory.

Area A would then be subject to negotiation, with the Palestinians represented by a corrupt and moribund authority. Any emerging entity would be forced to seek support from Jordan to survive.

Jordan has long called for a two-state solution to ensure lasting peace.

The debt-riddled country is grappling with yawning poverty and unemployment. Amman has repeatedly said it would reject such an arrangement out of hand.

There will be no Palestinian State in Jordan and no tampering with Jordan's historic role in guarding both Muslim and Christian shrines in East Jerusalem.

And, while anxious not to create panic, the Government has quietly sent reinforcements to the Jordan valley.

It is monitoring the number of Palestinians crossing the rickety Allenby Bridge, linking the Kingdom with the West Bank.

In Amman the hope is that Donald Trump will become ever more frustrated with Netanyahu, whose hardline policies are ruining the President's dream of economic prosperity for the oil-rich region - and of course for his country and family.

Jordan is also counting on Saudi Arabia to stick to its promise to reject normalization with Israel, unless Israel opens a clear road to Palestinian statehood.

But the Arab states have never been much interested in unity, more so these days.

Gulf heavyweights Saudi Arabia and the UAE appear to have cut their own business deals with the US to buy stability - including heaping lavish presents on Mr Trump himself.

And the new Islamist leader in Syria, Ahmed Sharaa, has been welcomed into the American fold, despit...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

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"Nations depend on rules, fair rules. Sometimes they're written down, often they're not. But either way they give shape to our values, guide us to our rights of course, but also to our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to each other. Now in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important. Without them we risk becoming an island of strangers".

This speech, made by Prime Minister Keir Starmer last month, marked the moment when it became clear that the Labour Party leadership believes Reform UK is now the main obstacle to its reelection in four years time. With the Conservatives as their main opponents, Labour could always point to 14 years of decline in order to see off criticism, but Reform have never held power, so the Government, reportedly acting on the advice of Morgan McSweeney, has decided to instead mimic Reform UK in an attempt to defeat it.

This predicament, of a mainstream political party panicking at vote losses to the radical right, is not new. Indeed it is a story that has been replicated across most of Europe over the last decade. Byline Times spoke to four European-based political experts to discuss what happened on the continent when other centrist politicians decided that the path to defeating the far right lay in copying them.

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Josiah Mortimer

France

Macronism was never particularly popular, achieving just 24% in the first round of the presidential election. For a long time French politics has been split between three blocs; left, "centre" and far right since 2017. This meant Macron's electoral strategy has been one of "en meme temps" (at the same time) as he put it during his 2017 campaign. According to Ugo Palheta, a lecturer at the University of Lille and author of the forthcoming Why Fascism is on the Rise in France, "In Macron's first campaign in 2017, he was pretty liberal - on immigration, but also on Islam and Muslims" he had not yet started using the far right language of 'islamo-leftism', 'immigrationism', 'de-civilisation' that he would go on to pick up later.

But, "in 2017 when he became president he understood that his electoral and social base […] was very narrow and to stabilise his power he would have to expand his electorate and go on the right wing. Because Francois Fillon, the candidate of the traditional right got 20% with very radical right positions".

This "post-Sarkozyist" turn for Macron was consistent with his program of cutting public spending. Palheta says that Macron has presided over a process of "fascistisation" and that his presidency has largely been characterised by a "hardening of the state", in "terms of police repression of [protests], preventing the National Assembly from voting on certain things notably about pensions, and a series of laws around immigration, Islam and Muslims' rights".

These laws include the ending of birthright citizenship in Mayotte, the French overseas territory (with a further hardening to come), the botched attempt to introduce national preference, meaning only French citizens could access certain forms of welfare - including non-emergency healthcare and the 'seperatism law' which gave the state significant power to dissolve religious organisations and civil society groups if they did not sufficiently "respect the principles of the republic". Critics such as the Human Rights League say the seperatism law has been used to dissolve and deprive of funds, groups that op...