Byline Times Audio Articles

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.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Donald Trump's second US presidential term has been marked by voracious, sustained assaults on democratic values and institutions as his administration continues to impose a repressive regime that strips Americans of their constitutional right to free speech and freedom of assembly.

Currently at the centre of Trump's crosshairs are academic institutions. Education is knowledge, and with knowledge comes the confidence to question and challenge those in power - a risk this government is unwilling to take.

Following the autocrat's playbook, Trump and his MAGA cartel are attacking alternative sources of power; universities, the media, and the judiciary - all of which pose a threat to the unchecked power Trump seeks.

'Donald Trump's Disappearance of Abrego Garcia Is the Canary in the Coal Mine for American Freedom'

The United States is rapidly descending into authoritarianism under the Trump administration, argues Matt Gallagher

Matt Gallagher

More than 40 universities are reportedly under investigation by the Trump administration; investigation typically means that they are being targeted, threatened, and hollowed out of academic freedom and autonomy.

The first to fall was Columbia University. Facing a $400 million loss in federal funding, the university capitulated to alarming demands from the Trump administration including ceding control of the department that offers courses on the Middle East, empowering security officers to arrest students, and placing new restrictions on protest.

The symbiotic partnership between the federal government and research institutions formed a cornerstone of American innovation and academic structures since the Second World War, usually with bipartisan support.

The action is largely being carried out by the newly established multi-agency task force to combat antisemitism, which announced its priority would be to "root out antisemitic harassment in schools and on college campuses", using the 2023 anti-war protests as a foothold to pursue their agenda. The task force is led by the Department of Justice's Office for Civil Rights, deeply ironic considering the objective is to strip citizens of their rights.

Columbia's decision had a chilling effect on other institutions, with some seeking to evade Trump's attention by pre-emptively adopting the administrations demands.

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

Their efforts, however, proved ineffective, with universities like Northwestern still hit with investigations and funding freezes, as Trump's motivations were never about changing policies or antisemitism - the ghastly guise behind which the administration has shielded itself in order to stifle free speech - this, as it always has been with Trump, is about power.

I was speaking in the US at a university campus the day of the presidential election. There was an anxious electricity in the room and an expectation that a second Trump term would be worse. In the campuses I have since visited, all expectations as to how extreme the Trump agenda would be have been surpassed; "it is so much worse than anticipated" is the general sentiment I routinely hear from students and faculty alike - only the professors who teach autocratic regimes appear unsurprised.

In the weeks since Columbia's capitulation, over 1,800 international students have had their legal status changed, students and graduates have been arrested for espousing pro-Palestinian views, and academics have been denied...

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.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

A series of Facebook groups set up and administered by Reform UK officials are full of racist and Islamophobic posts and conspiracy theories, which have been left entirely unchallenged by the party, Byline Times can reveal.

One such group for the party's Kent supporters is listed as being "promoted by Carol Comey for and on behalf of Reform UK". Comey is the Kent County Organiser for Reform.

Posts in this group included the claim that it is "hardwired into [Muslims'] belief system to kill non-believers", that Israel is made up of "people who despise us and haven't done a single thing for us apart from take our money and dilute our country with foreign invaders", an iteration of the extreme right ideology of Great Replacement Theory which blames Jews for undermining the white race through migration.

How a 'Populist' Media Has Mainstreamed the Far Right

Right-wing daily papers in the UK do not represent 'public opinion' - they simply reflect the radical right views of those 'who own and run them', argues Julian Petley

Julian Petley

The same user posted that "Hitler was a good actor and played his part" and a post appearing to claim that Muslims "will face public lynching one day once everyone gets off the news and starts reading more books".

In the same group Byline Times also found posts claiming that "Keir Starmer has no control" over "subhuman Muslim child rapists" and the "rapid Islamisation of Britain", and that Keir Starmer does "have control over free speech and imprisoning offenders. Tommy Robinson is one of many examples".

Although Farage has ruled out any alliance between Reform UK and Tommy Robinson stating in January "I never wanted Tommy Robinson to join UKIP. I don't want him to join Reform UK", pro-Robinson sentiment is highly prevalent among Reform UK's online supporters.

Other posts in the group included claims that the pandemic and Southport murders were parts of a coordinated plot to cover up problems in the UK.

Reform UK Gloucestershire is another public Facebook group, which was established by Lee Bunker, Reform UK's Regional Coordinator for the South West. The group carries the digital imprint "promoted by Lee Bunker on behalf of Reform UK 124 City Road, London EC1V 2NX" the electoral commission confirmed to Byline Times that it appears to be in line with Electoral law as it is a public group and the presence of the party's address suggests that it is "party material".

The group contains a post shared from the page of the far-right Traditional Britain Group, of the Dutch influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek promoting the Great Replacement Theory. Vlaardingerbroek once claimed in an interview with Winston Marshall that she "would love to be the new Nigel Farage" and take the Netherlands out of the EU.

Also shared in the Reform UK Gloucestershire group was a video claiming that wherever they go Muslims "are the problem" as well as conspiracy theories claiming that fluoride in water is poisonous and that "climate change is a scam".

BREAKING

Nigel Farage Branded a 'Con Artist' by Green Party Leader Who Challenges Him to Climate Debate

Reform UK leader accused of being "bankrolled by fossil fuel interests, climate deniers, and major polluters" after he questioned the link between human activity and climate change

Olly Haynes

Byline Times identified more than two dozen Reform UK council candidates present in groups in which racist material or conspiracy theories were shared. In the Reform UK Cornwall group several council candidates act as admins for the group.

This did not stop the sharing of racist material. Candidate for Probus and St Erme in Cornwall, ...

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.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Labour's key election pledge to recruit 6500 new teachers will not be enough to prevent a serious shortage in secondary schools and further education colleges by 2028, the National Audit Office (NAO) says in a report published today.

The NAO estimates that in the worst case scenario, they may need 14,000 new teachers - the greatest shortage being in further education colleges to teach new T-line courses, and where teachers are paid, on average £10,000 less a year than in secondary schools.

The aim was to reverse the record of previous Conservative and coalition Governments since 2010, who met recruitment targets only once in 14 years. The number of teachers recruited in the last year the Conservatives were in office was the lowest ever - only 8,700 newly qualified teachers started work in 2023/24, while 8,200 teachers returned to the profession.

'This One London School Offers a Beacon of Hope for Transforming Our Education System'

This is a real time petri dish experiment on how to transform Britain's education system, argues Neal Lawson

Neal Lawson

The previous Government saw record numbers of teachers leaving the profession with 19,000 exiting in 2022-23, higher than the pre-pandemic level of 18,500 in 2018-19. Just over a third left secondary schools after five years, citing high workloads, stress, and lack of well being. The number of teachers in schools has risen by 3% to 217,600 over the last 10 years but the number of pupils has increased by 15%.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown, Conservative chair of the Commons Accounts Committee, said: "The Department of Education assesses that meeting the Government's pledge of 6,500 more teachers will be very challenging. Even if met, it is not clear that this will be enough to fix the nationwide shortage of teachers amidst growing numbers of students.

Targets for training new teachers have been repeatedly missed and over a third of teachers leave within their first five years. Teachers need to feel values and rewarded. There needs to be a new cross-sector approach to recruiting and retaining enough high-quality teachers otherwise, workforce challenges will continue to pose a real threat to young people's education and life prospects

Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown, hair of the Commons Accounts Committee

Labour decided to tackle the shortage by investing £700 million, providing incentives to recruit teachers in shortage subjects. These include training bursaries, opportunities for career development, and retention payments of up to £6,000 to those qualified to teach secondary school maths, physics, chemistry, or computing, who choose to teach in disadvantaged schools in the first five years of their career.

But the latest figures show that many of the attempts to recruit new teachers have failed. Targets to recruit new physics teachers were missed by 69%, computing by 63% and modern languages by 57%. Recruitment of new classics, English, biology and history teachers exceeded targets.

Special Needs Child Provision in Crisis as 40% of Local Authorities Risk Going Bust

There is a looming crisis of growing special needs requirements and threatened council bankruptcies, according to a damning new report by MPs

David Hencke

The Department for Education (DfE) told the NAO that Labour's target was extremely challenging and cited lack of competitive pay - despite the new Government giving teachers a 5.5% pay rise last year - as one of the reasons for the failure to recruit enough teachers in shortage subjects.

This was backed up by stakeholders who submitted evidence to the NAO, who identified competitive pay as the most effective way to i...

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.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

In March 2024, Richard Tice, then leader of Reform UK, complained to the BBC that an article in one of its news reports had referred to his party as "far-right" and that this was "defamatory and libellous".

The BBC immediately apologised and removed the offending sentence. Tice also claimed that his lawyers had warned other media organisations from describing his party in these terms, although this has not deterred independent outlets such as HOPE not Hate and Byline Times from doing so.

Of course, Tice is a presenter on rival channel GB News and regularly rails against the BBC, while Reform itself is committed to abolishing the licence fee, so his complaint was not exactly disinterested. It does, however, furnish a useful opportunity to consider the extent to which populism can be said to have entered the bloodstream of right-wing parties in the UK and the media that vociferously support them.

Mainstreaming the Radical Right

It is now a commonplace that, in both Europe and the US, recent years have seen an influx of radical right-wing ideas into the political mainstream.

Mainstreaming takes place because traditional right-wing parties increasingly address the same issues as radical right-wing ones, and do so in a similar way.

This is particularly the case given the increasing dominance of the political agenda by socio-cultural issues - multiculturalism, identity politics and culture wars. Sentiments that used to be exclusive to radical right parties have increasingly become the "common sense" of the more mainstream right, and the boundaries between the two have become increasingly blurred and porous.

'Total Information Collapse' and the Tribunal of Truth

Peter Jukes, Co-Founder and Executive Editor of Byline Times, on the urgent need for media accuracy and why joining Impress, the independent press regulator, is the best way for us to uphold those values

Peter Jukes

As Cas Mudde puts it in The Far Right Today (2019), the radical right "does not stand for a fundamentally different world than the political mainstream; rather it takes mainstream ideas and values to an illiberal extreme".

Enter populism

This process is frequently described as a turn towards populism, but before going any further, it's necessary to define the sense in which the term "populism" is being used in this article.

Briefly, populism valorises "the people", which it conceives as a unified and homogenous whole (as in, for instance, the "silent majority"). A good example of this in the UK context would be Nigel Farage crowing on Brexit night that "this will be a victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people".

ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE

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

PAY ANNUALLY - £39.50 A YEAR

PAY MONTHLY - £3.75 A MONTH

MORE OPTIONS

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

"The people" are defined in opposition to an out-of-touch, unrepresentative "Establishment", or more commonly in the UK, "liberal elite". This typically includes the mainstream media ("fake news" in Trump-speak, the BBC in the case of those vociferously lobbying against it); elected politicians (in it only for themselves); public functionaries (obstructive and unaccountable bureaucrats); intellectuals (pointy-headed inhabitants of the ivory tower); the legal profession ("lefty lawyers", judges as "enemies of the people"); a...

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.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Around the world, a troubling pattern seems to be emerging: governments are increasingly using immigration controls not simply to manage borders, but to suppress political dissent and freedom of expression.

From the United States to Israel, Hong Kong to Nicaragua, the use of visa denials based on political beliefs is fast becoming the favoured tool of exclusion. Politicians, journalists, and students who speak out - particularly in support of Palestinian rights - are facing revocations of status, refusals of entry, and, in some cases, deportation.

In the US, over 300 international students have reportedly had their visas revoked, many from well-known universities such as Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford. These removals are often justified under vague claims of posing a "threat to US foreign policy," a classification that increasingly appears to mean "pro-Palestinian speech".

Trump's Persecution Projection: the Tyranny Escalates

Alexandra Hall Hall exposes Trump's increasing attacks on free speech and his weaponising the judicial system against former officials who have been critical

Alexandra Hall Hall

Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate, had his visa revoked after joining pro-Gaza protests. The revocation, and that of others, draws upon a Cold War-era statute allowing visa cancellations on foreign policy grounds, even in the absence of any criminal wrongdoing.

Another student, Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian-born co-president of Columbia's Palestinian Students Union, was arrested by ICE agents during what should have been his US citizenship interview. And then there is the case of Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese doctor deported from the US (despite a federal judge's ruling to halt it) for attending the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, progressive Jewish groups and synagogues across the United States have rallied in support of students like Mahdawi, Khalil, and Rumeysa Ozturk - a Tufts University graduate detained after co-authoring an essay critical of Israel. They have condemned the government's actions as both unconstitutional and antithetical to Jewish values, warning of a creeping authoritarianism masked as national security.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, America's actions seemed to have emboldened others. Israel, on April 6, denied British MPs Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang entry while they were attempting to visit the occupied West Bank. The MPs stood accused of planning to spread "hate speech".

In Hong Kong, a similar story unfolds. On 13 April 2025, Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse was detained for several hours at Hong Kong airport before being deported. Hobhouse, a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), has been an outspoken critic of China's human rights record.

'The Free Speech Debate Has a Lot to Do With Race - But the Media Won't Tell You That'

The 'sheer hypocrisy' of the UK's right-wing media in celebrating Trump's 'free speech ultimatum'

Mathilda Mallinson and Helena Wadia

These actions, occurring across various nations and to those from the so-called 'Global North' is not - as in the past - against dispossessed and 'unwelcome poor' migrants.

This new turn represents not just the closing of borders but the deliberate exclusion of dissenting voices of power. It's a shift fuelled by counter-narratives that delegitimise truth itself ("journalists/academics can't be trusted") and signals a broader cultural and political move away from a rules-based order and open debate.

In an age where there is a veneered truth that freedom of speech is ubiquitous and ever-present on social media, the state is no lo...

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.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

I am fairly sure that I am not the only regular BBC listener who had no idea that Evan Davis, presenter of Radio 4's PM programme, has been hosting a non-BBC podcast about heat pumps since 2024.

In fact, the first I heard of this side-line was the news that the BBC had told him he couldn't do it anymore.

Davis hosted 20 Happy Heat Pump podcasts after being given permission to do so by his BBC managers.

The podcast explored how heat pumps work, their advantages and drawbacks, and the contribution they can make to net zero 2050 - the UK's drive towards the long-term reduction of carbon emissions.

The last edition of the podcast began with the news that the plug was being pulled.

Davis appeared sad but philosophical: "I take their shilling", he said, referring to his BBC managers. "They dictate the rules, they know they have to keep their presenters out of areas of public controversy, and they have decided heat pumps can be controversial".

Three Sensible, Non-Radical Things Labour Could Do to Reform our News Media

Nothing drastic is required if a new government is to tackle the obvious crisis in the way we get our news, while the benefits of change could be enormous

Brian Cathcart

He was quite explicit about the reasoning behind the BBC's decision to stop him hosting the non-BBC podcast: "I think the timetable set of net zero is slightly in play as an issue politically and so people who want us not to go full on for net zero 2050 will pick on problems with heat pumps… I had this argument with the BBC - it's more about net zero than about this particular form of heating."

His co-host Bean Beanland, of the Heat Pump Federation, put it even more starkly: "It does seem to me that, somehow, we've - the technologies that we espouse - have fallen victim to some sort of culture war."

The BBC's guidelines state that staff and regular presenters or reporters associated with its news or public policy-related output "may offer professional judgements rooted in evidence" - which would appear to provide Davis leeway to be involved in the podcast.

But they also state that "it is not normally appropriate for them to present or write personal view content on public policy, matters of political or industrial controversy, or 'controversial subjects' in any area".

It is clear that the BBC has been wrestling with the concept of "controversy", and what impartiality means and how it should be applied.

Sadly, it appears to often confuse impartiality with 'both-siding' - presenting two opposing views and allowing the audience to make up its mind. This is all very well when there is legitimate debate to be had - when there is a genuine difference of opinion between honest people of goodwill. The problem is that our public discourse is now dominated by dishonest people who lie routinely.

For figures such as Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump (and there are plenty of domestic examples in the UK), lying is a practical tool - the intention is to make people distrust everything; to confuse them about what the facts of an issue are; to doubt, in fact, if there is actually any such thing as the truth. People who cannot be sure of any objective truth are easier to control.

FREE PREVIEW

The Cosy and Comfortable Liberal-Democratic Political-Media Class and the Darkness Ahead

Who will - truly - hold the line with the prospect of a more extreme politics coming to Britain via the ballot box?

Hardeep Matharu

Its fuzzy notion of impartiality sees the corporation's output slip into 'he-says-this, but she-says-that' narratives that only intensify confusion, rather than calling out lies and telling its audience the...

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.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

A company that was placed on the 'VIP' priority route for COVID contracts under the last Conservative Government, saw their profits soar to £178 million after successfully lobbying a senior Conservative peer to help them secure a contract for hundreds of millions of pounds worth of coronavirus tests that were later deemed mostly unusable.

Financial records reveal that Southampton based company Primer Design Ltd, owned by French parent company Novacyt, had a bumper year during the first year of COVID. Its turnover in 2019 was £5.5 million, but following the award of two huge VIP contracts from the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) in 2020, this ballooned to £273 million of which £178 million was declared as profit . Two of the firms' directors received bonuses of £8.5 million and £3 million.

Accounts filed by Primer Design brag that sales "grew by over 4,800%" driven "principally" by its UK Government contracts.

The Sheer Scale of the COVID 'VIP Lane' PPE Scandal Has Still Not Been Revealed Five Years On

New evidence published by the COVID Inquiry suggests that at least 20 more politically-connected suppliers received contracts worth £1 billion

Russell Scott

Primer Design were awarded its first £63 million contract by the DHSC in April 2020, this was followed by a £406 million deal in September 2020 - a two year contract to supply PCR COVID tests.

According to analysis by Private Eye, Primer Design recorded a profit margin of 65.3% during the first COVID period, which led to them occupying the top spot in its league table of profitable pandemic contract winners.

Private Eye, noted that Primer Design's profit margins were "double the world's most profitable company and creator of the most in demand "intellectual property", Apple, and three times that achieved by Google".

The contracts ended in disaster, after the DHSC deemed the testing kits supplied by Primer Design to be "unfit for public use" and lacking the "robustness" required. The majority of the kits were never used - resulting in the UK Government attempting to seek a £145 million refund from Primer Design and its parent company, Novacyt, via the UK courts.

Matt Hancock Intervened to Help Conservative Donor's Pizza Firm Land Lucrative Covid PPE Contract

Two days before winning the contract, the company, which had no previous experience of supplying medical equipment, removed 'pizza' from its name

Russell Scott

Both firms rejected the claims made by the DHSC and tried to counter sue the Government, eventually reaching an out of court settlement in June last year.

Questions still remained about how the firm was able to secure its place on the VIP lane. However, documents released to Byline Times now shed new light on this matter.

Novacyt's cozy relationship with Lord Bethell.

Lord Bethell held three meetings with executives from Novacyt on 4 April 2020 and 6 April 2020 to discuss the firm's COVID-19 testing capabilities - meetings that the Conservative Peer failed to declare until June 2021, some 14 months later, as first reported by Byline Times.

However, emails disclosed to Byline Times via the Freedom of Information Act show that former Health Minister, Lord Bethell, was in regular correspondence with Novacyt and Primer Design in the days before the company landed its first VIP lane contract in April 2020.

Here's what the emails reveal:

Following a telephone meeting between Lord Bethell and Novacyt, the firm emailed Lord Bethell attaching a memo containing a series of requests where "the Government can help Novacyt" as it begins "scaling up of the COVID-19 testing requirements". The four-page doc...

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.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Democracy campaigners have called for urgent reform of UK electoral law, after Byline Times revealed that the UK's official elections watchdog keeps no records of how many overseas donors are bankrolling British political parties.

A Freedom of Information request from this paper asked how many reportable donations had been made to the major political parties by registered overseas voters since 2019.

Our request came after the last Conservative Government abolished the 15-year rule which previously barred British citizens who had lived abroad for more than 15 years from voting in UK elections.

Because being a registered voter in the UK also comes with the right to make political donations, this has increased the number of people able to donate from abroad. 191,338 people registered as overseas voters ahead of the 2024 general election.

However, the Electoral Commission responded that they do not keep any data on whether donations are from domestic or overseas voters.

EXCLUSIVE

Nigel Farage's Reform UK Funded by Tax Haven Linked Firms as Party Seeks Tax Exile Donors

The party is seeking overseas funding from those who are "unhappy with the amount of regulation and tax in the UK"

Olly Haynes

This means that major donations could have come in from Brits who have lived abroad for more than 50 years, including those living in hostile states with an interest in manipulating UK elections.

The Electoral Commission said "Anyone who is registered to vote in the UK can make donations to political parties and campaigners. This includes those British citizens living overseas and means they are also allowed to donate to political parties and campaigners in the UK.

Political parties must report relevant donations, those that are over the reporting thresholds, to the Commission and these are published on our register of donations. This is an important part of providing transparency to voters over the money donated to parties.

When reporting donations, parties must include the name of individual donors and their address. However, the legislation, the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, does not allow us to publish the address of individual donors, including if they are overseas."

The news that the Electoral Commission does not keep records of overseas donors comes as Reform UK announced that they are going on a donations drive among wealthy non-doms in Monaco, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland. Nick Candy, Reform UK's treasurer told the Financial Times that "You have to be on the UK electoral register or the overseas electoral register or have a UK trading company".

EXCLUSIVE

Reform UK's Murky Corporate Structure Raises Legal Red Flags, Experts Warn

Nigel Farage's party is structured around a series of opaque companies, but who is really behind them? Josiah Mortimer investigates

Josiah Mortimer

"There are plenty of people in Monaco, Switzerland, the Isle of Man, Guernsey, who can meet both of those criteria to donate".

Candy also told the FT that "We'll do events in restaurants, people's private homes and on yachts".

Rose Whiffen of Transparency International said "Concerns were raised when the rules on overseas voting were changed, that this would open the door to foreign funding of UK political parties. In such cases it may also be harder to detect individuals acting as a front for someone else and their money. Until the Electoral Commission discloses how much each party receives from overseas voters, the public will be in the dark about how significant this change has been. Without this data, our ability to monitor and safeguard our democratic processes ...

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.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

When Keir Starmer travelled to Washington DC to burnish the UK's global credentials last February, one of his first stops after his meeting with President Donald Trump wasn't a UN forum or humanitarian body. Rather, it was Palantir - a controversial American surveillance tech company, headquartered just a 10-minute drive from the Oval Office.

The visit was, as the Good Law Project revealed, arranged by Peter Mandelson - Britain's Ambassador to the United States and a long-time Labour power broker. Yet no official record was kept: no minutes, no transcript. Just a handshake, a quiet word, and - for many - a growing unease

Palantir is no ordinary tech firm. Rising to prominence out of the War on Terror, seeded with funds from the CIA's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, and raised on a diet of contracts with spy agencies and the US military, Palantir is arguably the bastard child of military-industrial intelligence gathering, co-founded by Peter Thiel, a self-described conservative libertarian.

Palantir's tools have been used to deport migrant families, enable drone warfare, and entrench policing systems later accused of fuelling institutional racism.

Recent reporting by 404 Media reveals that the company's collaboration with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deepened under the new Trump administration. Building on its previous involvement, the company is now actively supplying leads to help locate individuals targeted for deportation.

Now, Palantir is over here. It sits at the heart of the UK's NHS - its UK head recently boasted, "Every NHS hospital has its own instance of #Palantir software" - and has secured hundreds of millions in Government contracts with the Ministry of Defence (MOD), health service, police, local councils, and an array of other bodies.

What precisely Starmer and Mandelson discussed with Palantir remains unknown. The Cabinet Office insists it was merely an "informal visit". Yet the circumstances are far from casual.

At the time of the trip, Palantir was still a client of Global Counsel - the lobbying firm founded by Mandelson. Though Mandelson had stepped back from CEO duties, he remains president and chair of its international advisory board.

Then there is former MP and Labour peer Tom Watson, who The Times revealed had taken up a paid position on the company's 'public services advisory board'. Watson is also a senior advisor to PR firm Lodestone Oxford Limited, which listed Palantir as a client between October and December 2024.

So once again, we find a Labour leader aligning with certain men - and we must ask where do their loyalties truly lie: with shared political mission or with private profit?

Questioning this matters because Palantir's ambitions are unmistakable: it aims to become the default operating system for government. Its Foundry platform already underpins key parts of the NHS, thanks to its lead role in a £330 million consortium contract for the now widely implemented Federated Data Platform - an agreement so heavily redacted that three-quarters of its 586 pages were blacked out.

'What Is the Point of Labour Winning the Next General Election if It Governs as Reform-Lite?'

The political strategy being pursued by Keir Starmer and his advisers means that whichever party comes first in 2029, Nigel Farage wins, argues Neal Lawson

Neal Lawson

More information about the deal only came to light following legal action by the Good Law Project, which uncovered that Palantie was handed the contract before negotiations had concluded.

The Foreign Office says it has no emails about Mandelson's role arranging Starmer's visit. Elsewher...

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.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay has challenged Nigel Farage to a debate on climate change, calling him a "con artist", after the Reform UK leader hesitated to say he accepted the link between human activity and rising global temperatures.

BBC Radio 4 Today presenter Nick Robinson this week asked Farage if he accepted that climate change is at least partly man made.

Farage replied only that "it may well be". When pushed by Robinson, Farage agreed to start the conversation from the premise that manmade CO2 emissions "are having a detrimental or at least warming effect on the world".

Metastudies have shown that over 99% of climate scientists agree that we are experiencing anthropogenic climate change.

How the British Media Laundered a Far Right Conspiracist's Reputation

Parts of the British media have expressed outrage after Renaud Camus, who originated the far-right 'Great Replacement' conspiracy theory was banned from entering the UK

Olly Haynes

The Sixth Assessment report for the Intercontinental Panel on Climate Change states that "Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming" and that "every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards".

Farage stated during the interview that the UK "makes no difference whatsoever" to climate change and argued that the UK should expand its gas production to become self-sufficient. He contended that reductions in the UK's carbon emissions had made the UK poorer, and that the emissions had been exported to China and India through deindustrialisation.

Adrian Ramsay the co-leader of the Green Party told Byline Times that "Nigel Farage's interview highlighted just how out of touch and dangerously misguided he is on climate and the need for a liveable future […] There are huge economic opportunities for us if we improve public transport, support our farmers to produce more food locally, improve home insulation, which will bring bills down".

"Reform pose as the anti-establishment party. But nothing could be further from the truth. If you look at the fact that their leading figures are all rich millionaires, that they've got policies that are just designed to support the super-rich. They were very embodiment of the establishment and trying to pose as the friend of ordinary people".

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.

Ramsay suggested that Farage's views may be linked to the financial interests of his donors, labelling him a "con artist"

"Nigel Farage is a performer, a con artist. He will say or do anything. He will happily dance to a populist tune regardless of its impact. Let's not forget he's bankrolled by fossil fuel interests, climate deniers, and major polluters - taking in £2.3 million since the 2019 election."

Ramsay added that if Farage refused his challenge for debate that it "would say a lot wouldn't it that he's not willing to. He's not confident in being able to make his argument. It didn't stand up the scrutiny of the Today program and it wouldn't stand up to scrutiny in a debate".

Reform UK did not respond to a request for comment.