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In another attempt to delay the moment of reckoning, the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on 22 July 2025 in Bradshaw and Others v. United Kingdom seems to serve as an attempt to protect the legitimacy of governments in European countries where Russian interference in democratic processes has been particularly effective.

The case was brought by (now former) British MPs Ben Bradshaw of Labour, Caroline Lucas of the Greens and Alyn Smith of the SNP. It maintained that by denying the country a proper investigation into Russian interference - which would have allowed Parliament to take informed and adequate measures to protect sovereign democracy from foreign manipulation - the UK Government breached the fundamental right, as voters, to free and fair elections. In particular, the case centred on the 2016 EU Referendum and the 2019 General Election.

The Court, composed of seven judges, found no violation of the right to free elections under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights. But could it be that their ruling on this UK claim actually reflected the extent to which the rest of Europe has been affected by Russian interference over the past decade or more?

The Truth About Russia's Campaign of Interference in British Democracy

Sergei Cristo is the main protagonist of the chart-topping podcast "Sergei and the Westminster Spy Ring" that exposed a highly successful covert Russian interference operation in the UK between 2010 and 2020. The podcast has recently received three nominations in the British Podcast Awards 2025.

A Europe-Wide Decision

The ECHR's judgment was not merely a ruling on UK procedures. The Court itself designated this claim as one of its "impact cases", which can lead to "a change or clarification of international or domestic legislation or practice" across the 46 Council of Europe member states.

Had the Court ruled that the UK failed in its positive obligation to investigate foreign interference, it would have established a legal precedent. Pro-democracy groups, for example, could then have taken legal action against their own national governments to force investigations into Russian interference in those countries.

There is always a chance that such investigations could publicly expose the precise mechanisms of Russian covert disinformation and political funding operations across Europe - their effectiveness, and the roles played by politicians, bloggers, commentators, academics, journalists, international businessmen and others in enabling them.

Such exposure would have had tangible ripple effects across the Continent. European states, from France to Slovakia, would have been forced to scrutinise their own failures. Intelligence and security agencies could have come under increased pressure to release files on Russian meddling, including potentially embarrassing details about the behaviour of political and business elites. Some governments might even have had to face situations similar to Romania, where the Supreme Court ordered a re-run of elections in 2024 following blatant Russian interference.

In countries where Kremlin-linked elites still operate freely, it could have pushed governments towards meaningful transparency and exposed corruption - or even treason - at the highest levels of political and corporate life.

Instead, without much probing, the judges accepted the UK Government's claim that its actions - including two parliamentary reports and subsequent legislation - constituted a sufficient response. But the judgment conceals a deeper institutional failure, with the composition of the chamber raising serious questions of geopolitical impartiality.

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While Britain initially put up a united front, clapping for the NHS during the pandemic and continuing to show support as pressures on the healthcare system persisted, public solidarity was abruptly withdrawn when the British Medical Association (BMA) announced its latest plans for doctors' strikes.

Following a 90% vote in favour of industrial action, on a 55% turnout, the BMA announced a five-day walkout that led to a public outcry.

Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, accused the BMA of "holding the country to ransom", arguing that the strikes would "throttle" NHS progress on waiting lists, which recently hit a two-year low - the first April drop since 2008 (excluding the first year of the pandemic).

Members of the public I've personally interacted with angrily questioned why the BMA had accepted a 22% pay rise awarded between 2023-2024, only to strike again. They also pointed to the fact that resident doctors are set to receive an additional 5.4% pay award in August 2025, comprising a 4% uplift and a consolidated £750 payment, backdated to April 2025.

The issue has even created a generational rift among doctors. From retired GPs on my LinkedIn feed announcing their resignation from the BMA, frustrated that resident doctors are unwilling to endure the "paltry" pay they once did, to consultants labelling the strikes as "unrealistic and unreasonable", the backlash reveals just how divided medical staff have become.

The most notable BMA resignation came from Professor Lord Robert Winston, an IVF pioneering doctor and household name thanks to his popular BBC documentaries. Winston announced the end of his 60-year membership in an interview with The Times in July, branding the strikes as "highly dangerous".

The sentiment behind this disapproval is sound: they're worried about patient safety, which rightly should always be the top priority. In the short term, strikes seem counterintuitive, but in the long term, they serve the very system critics are trying to protect.

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Supporting doctors now means building a stronger, safer NHS in the future and eradicating preventable tragedies, like those seen in the high-profile Dr Bawa-Garba case, that happened due to unfair and unsafe pressures on health care staff.

Even Streeting admitted that this time, strike disruption - which ended Wednesday - "was not that bad" thanks to the "heroic efforts of frontline staff". More operations and procedures were protected than in previous years, and A&E response times improved during the period of industrial action.

Why Resident Doctors Want More - When They Just Got More

But despite efforts to minimise disruptions, the underlying question remains: if resident doctors have already received the highest pay increase across the public sector for the second year in a row, why isn't it enough?

According to the latest analysis by the BMA, doctors have suffered a pay erosion of 21% in real terms since 2008, which means that resident doctors - previously known as junior doctors - are still working more than a fifth of their time for free.

While a 29% pay-rise figure has been widely circulated, the most up-to-date figures published by the BMA show that a slightly less pay uplift of 26% is needed to restore pay to 2008 levels in 2025/6.

Streeting has pushed back on this, asserting that doctors have already received a pay rise of 28.9% over the last three years. However, Dr Emma Runswick, deputy chair of the BMA, told the BBC that this figure only amounts to an 8% increase in real terms when taking inflation into account.

The reasoning behind the strikes, according to BMA...

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Reform-led Durham County Council has been accused of dodging democratic accountability after removing LGBT+ and Ukraine flags from council buildings without any formal decision-making process or paper trail.

In May, shortly after being elected, the Reform UK council - like others run by the party - took down the Pride flag and a Ukrainian flag from its HQ. However, no formal decision has been recorded to enact the move, a Freedom of Information Request (FOI) has revealed - despite the council having an official protocol on flags.

Former lawyer Syd Bolton had requested, "copies of the formal recorded decision of the council to determine which flags may or may not be flown on Durham County Council buildings, including any and all minutes and transcripts of the relevant meetings of councillors and or executive officers at which such a decision was taken by the newly elected Reform-led council".

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The Council responded, saying: "This information is not held…The flag protocol was changed at the request of the Leader of the Council in line with the protocols of the new administration. This did not require a formal decision of the authority."

Bolton, who no longer practices law in the UK, said: "In Durham it's flags, in Kent it's 'DOGE' [Department for Government Efficiency], in Staffordshire, it's book banning [removing LGBT+ books from library displays] and other issues elsewhere like stopping 'woke' equality schemes etc.

"It is predictable posturing in many ways but as we know, it is used effectively by (Nigel) Farage to promote his MAGA-copying agenda into the UK mainstream.

"Needless to say almost nobody has questioned the vires [legal authority] of these actions, instead just walking into the trap of engaging with the latest issue Farage chooses."

Bolton said Durham County Council's response to his question is "even more problematic than I foresaw", explaining: "Not only does the council administration say that it is within the powers of Reform's council leader to change published policy [on flags] by decree, they claim there is no record of any decision making process and no record of the amended policy."

This is remarkable as it means public policy is in effect whatever Reform says it is and even council executive staff don't have written records of the policies they are meant to enact

Syd Bolton, former lawyer

Bolton added the "lack of any transparent records of how and on what basis policy is changed and how the public is unable to see what such policies contain, save for the assertion by Reform of what they say it is", is the most concerning part.

Reform controls 12 councils in England, according to Open Council Data.

Following the May elections, it was Reform HQ who sent letters to Reform-run authorities saying they were sending in so-called DOGE teams of activist auditors to identify potential cuts. Reform-run council staff have faced difficulties since in deciding what data to hand over to these politically-led teams.

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Durham's response to Bolton included its last Flags Protocol, which mirrors national legislation in recognising the Pride flag.

The document states that is not due for review until 2026, however, it also notes that it was recently changed by executive powers.

The fact no records of the decision, or any amends to the...

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Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced that the UK Government will unilaterally recognise the State of Palestine. However, the announcement was tainted by a grim caveat: that his Government will move down this path unless Israel takes "substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza" and commit to a two state solution, effectively making the recognition of Palestine contingent upon Israeli good behaviour.

This is of course obscene, considering that Israel has already massacred well over 55,000 Gazans, and is now subjecting them to what the World Food Programme has described as a "man-made famine," in which "more than 500,000 people - nearly a quarter of Gaza's population - are enduring famine-like conditions, while the remaining population is facing emergency levels of hunger."

Israel's leader Benjamin Netanyahu - who, let us not forget, has an ICC arrest warrant out on him for crimes against humanity - has openly stated his intention to ensure the people of Gaza have no homes to return to.

For decades, successive UK Governments have insisted that recognising a Palestinian state must wait until the right political conditions emerge, as part of a negotiated peace deal. Indeed, Starmer's spineless announcement - in the face of what UN experts have called a genocide - is but a continuation of that same policy.

The Palestinians - who are being relentlessly bombed in their homes, hospitals and streets, and now starved to death en masse - must wait for the "right conditions" before their dystopian nightmare ends and they are finally given what they have been calling for since 1948: a state of their own.

There are, however, some signs of a rising tide of morality among British politicians: more than 200 MPs from across the political spectrum publicly called on the Government to recognise the State of Palestine.

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Starmer's weak-kneed policy looks a lot like an attempt to placate those voices, while at the same time not frustrating the Trump administration which would likely oppose any immediate recognition, as it has with France's decision to recognise Palestinian Statehood in the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting in September.

While Starmer's aides are said to have dismissed the French move as mere "symbolism," this is trivial and misses the point. Across Europe, the tide appears to be turning: Spain, Ireland, Norway and others have given recognition and 147 of the UN's 193 member states - that's over three-quarters - now recognise Palestinian statehood. Canada is the latest UK ally to announce its intention to formally recognise Palestine.

Change at Home

There is of course an almost incomprehensible brutality fuelling this urgency. Alongside the famine itself, since Israel canceled the UN's aid delivery mechanism into Gaza in May, the IDF has shot dead over 1,000 Palestinian civilians trying to access the little bit of food that has managed to enter the war-torn strip.

A leading expert on food health recently said, "there is no case since World War II of starvation that has been so minutely designed and controlled," as what Israel is currently doing in Gaza. Cases of malnutrition among children have increased by over 300% since May of this year.

In the face of this unbridled barbarity, British Government equivocation must end. The British public is no longer fooled by arguments that this is all in the name of Israel's "self-defence". Poll after poll shows that a growing majority among Britons want their Government to stake a morally decisive stance.

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As the country basked in the afterglow of the Lionesses' triumph - a team that has come to embody a new kind of sporting heroism grounded in merit, solidarity, and freedom from the male gaze - the Prime Minister cut-through the public mood with an announcement.

In the same breath as celebrating women who have redefined what power, skill, and leadership can look like, Keir Starmer appointed David 'the dinosaur' Dinsmore - a man whose career was built on The Sun's Page 3 sexism, phone-hacking denialism, and media intrusion - to a civil service role as his chief communications advisor.

It represents less a fresh start and more a return to the worst clichés of Fleet Street. Akin to asking Roy Chubby Brown to keynote the Women's Equality Party conference, Starmer's choice was not just jarring - it was insulting.

This isn't a political mis-step but a deliberate signal.

A regressive statement of priorities that places a man with a criminal conviction (related to his editorship of The Sun) and a catalogue of ethical failures in a position of considerable power and influence - at precisely the moment the public is crying out for change, decency, and progress.

Dinsmore is no harmless media veteran. In 2016, he received a criminal conviction under the Sexual Offences Act after publishing a pixelated image of a sexual abuse victim without consent - a serious legal and ethical breach that would disqualify someone from most professions.

His editorial legacy is littered with similar lapses.

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A decade before, in 2006, as Editor of the Scottish Sun, Dinsmore bore editorial responsibility, in part, for the publication of a highly-controversial and sensitive story containing private medical information about a senior public figure. That information had been sourced from a highly unethical source - a deeply invasive act that raised serious legal and ethical questions, never satisfactorily answered. Dinsmore was then involved in the cover-up about the sourcing of that story in 2011.

Dinsmore's senior role at News Group Newspapers (NGN) during the height of the phone-hacking scandal placed him squarely in the frame of a media empire built on the industrial-scale violation of privacy.

Under his leadership, The Sun issued years of false denials about its role in unlawful information-gathering. However, the truth was finally admitted by NGN last January in a High Court settlement with Prince Harry and former Labour Minister Lord Tom Watson. The historic admission stated that private investigators working for The Sun had engaged in unlawful information-gathering.

Rather than a clean house, Dinsmore presided over a newsroom that denied wrongdoing and smeared its critics. He didn't reform the culture - he defended it.

He also famously clung to The Sun's degrading Page 3 feature - championing the publication of topless images of women as "what readers wanted" long after public sentiment had moved on. While others in journalism recognised the need to challenge sexism and modernise, Dinsmore held the line - not out of courage, but out of commercial cynicism and a smidge of smutty personal preference thrown in.

As someone who worked alongside men like Dinsmore at The Sun, I know that these fossilised attitudes to women don't just change: misogyny isn't incidental it is woven into the culture.

Yet, here he is stepping into a significant unelected position in British politics. The man forced to resign from the board of Parkrun in 2023 after a public outcry over his appointment - backed by more than 20,000 signatures - now gets a desk at the heart of government. How is it...

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Privacy campaigners have told Byline Times of their concern that millions of Britons are being forced to hand over sensitive personal data to opaque overseas firms with questionable privacy records, due to the new Online Safety Act.

From 25 July 2025, social media companies operating in the UK have been compelled to block under-18s from content deemed unsuitable for children - a process known as age-gating. The Government claims that the measures will make children safer online, preventing them from accessing pornography, self-harm and eating disorder-related content.

However, social media companies and dating apps often outsource the age-gating process to third-party providers. These firms collect biometric data (facial scans), passport and personal identification documents, and even banking and credit card information to verify users' identities.

The third party age verification companies used by leading social media platforms, include a firm tied to Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel, and another firm set up by former Israeli intelligence officers.

Some of the firms used by the social media companies have been criticised in the past for presiding over privacy breaches.

Campaigners say that the lack of regulation and oversight of these third party companies could be putting the public's data privacy at risk.

Digital rights activists at Open Rights Group called on the Government to further regulate the age verification industry.

"Thanks to the Online Safety Act, people in Britain are being compelled to use unregulated age verification tools in order to access content online," Platform Power Programme Manager James Baker told Byline Times.

"Many of these providers are based outside of the UK and have questionable privacy policies. But users don't have a choice if they want to have full access to social media sites such as X, Reddit, and Bluesky, or to use dating apps like Grindr.

"The risks from handing over sensitive data are real and people are understandably worried about what could happen. The government needs to take these privacy concerns seriously by regulating the age verification industry and ensuring that providers have high standards of privacy and security. But they also need to limit the scope of the Act so that people aren't forced to risk their privacy whenever they go online."

'Free Speech for the 0.1%: Why the Online Safety Act Is Failing'

This broken law isn't only failing to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation, it's actively protecting the ability of the most powerful and privileged to do so, argues Kyle Taylor

Kyle Taylor

Who Are the Age Verifiers?

Several of the companies involved in age verification have chequered histories, including data breaches and controversial ties.

AU10TIX (Used by 'X')

Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) has used Israeli firm AU10TIX for ID document and selfie-based checks since 2023 - originally to verify premium 'blue check' users, and now to comply with age assurance requirements. The company, spun out of ICTS International - founded by former Shin Bet (Israeli domestic intelligence) officers - also employs engineers with backgrounds in Israel's military cyber-intelligence unit, Unit 8200.

In 2023, digital rights activist and MENA specialist Mona Shtaya described the partnership as "alarming."

"Hiring a company with ties to former secret intelligence, Shin Bet, puts us all at risk," Shtaya said. "This move threatens to fortify and weaponise our digital realms. A fate Palestinians already endure due to the ongoing military occupation. It's a disaster in the making for all its users."

AU10TIX's privacy policy lets it process data under the broad umbrella of "legitimate interests," potentially allowing reuse or sharing beyond age checks.

In 2024, 404 Media revealed a major data breach: administrative credent...

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A new UK parliamentary report has confirmed what many of us in civil society have been saying for years: the Online Safety Act isn't working. But it's not just failing to stop harmful misinformation and abuse - it's failing to even understand how those harms spread.

Here's the crux of it: 0.1% of users are responsible for 80% of the disinformation circulating online. That's not a free speech problem - that's a virality problem. And yet, our laws treat every user, every post, and every platform interaction as if it carries equal weight and risk, carving out special exemptions for those users who are most likely to share demonstrably false information. Pretending this isn't the case is why the Act is falling short.

The Illusion of Equal Speech

The idea that all users are created equal online is seductive - and yet completely detached from reality. In practice, influence on digital platforms is wildly unequal. A tiny minority of accounts generate the vast majority of views, shares, and clicks. These users aren't just louder - they're structurally amplified by algorithms that reward outrage and attention.

But the Online Safety Act doesn't account for any of that.

It applies obligations to platforms based on content type, not content impact. A hate-fuelled post seen by ten people is treated the same as a near-identical post seen by ten million just because the latter was posted by a prominent political figure or commentator. And that's before you account for the fact that some of the most harmful content comes from voices the Act goes out of its way to protect.

UPDATE

Keir Starmer's Government Still Hasn't Reviewed Use of Musk's X Despite Platform 'Amplifying Hate Speech and Misinformation'

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Josiah Mortimer

The result is a law that fails to distinguish between an anonymous troll with 11 followers and a tabloid with a multimillion-person reach - despite the fact that one is far more likely to go viral and do real-world harm.

This isn't about whether someone can say something online. It's about whether those "free speech" rights extend to the structural incentivising and algorithmic boosting for maximum reach and, by extension, maximum profit. That's what these platforms do best. That's also what the law ignores.

Instead, the Act leans heavily on individual content moderation. But that kind of whack-a-mole approach is hopeless against modern information ecosystems. The real threat lies in the systems themselves that allow, and even encourage disinformation, hate speech, and conspiracies to spread at scale.

The most viral content online isn't necessarily the most true, the most thoughtful, or the most important. It's the most clickable - and often the most harmful. The Online Safety Act should recognise that amplification is what turns harmful ideas into societal threats. But it doesn't. And that's a systemic failure.

A Two-Tier Internet

Worse still, the Act doesn't just overlook structural power - it actively entrenches it. Even the completely insufficient rules in the Act still have three key carve-outs which create what can only be described as a two-tier internet:

A media exemption means that content published by outlets meeting low and easily gamed criteria is shielded from takedown - even if it's harmful and even if it targets children.

A journalism exemption ensures that anyone claiming to be publishing "for the purposes of journalism" gets added protections - with no obligation to demonstrate responsible practice or editorial oversight.

A democratic importance exemption gives special status to content that contributes to political debate - which, in practice, privileges politicians and party-affiliated voices....

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The Government's use of X - formerly Twitter - hasn't been reviewed since well before Labour came to power last year, it has emerged.

A parliamentary question from Liberal Democrat peer Mark Pack asked whether the Government has considered creating official accounts on the smaller open-source rival Bluesky, set up by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and launched publicly last February.

The minister, Ruth Smeeth (Baroness Anderson), replied that there had been no Government review of its use of X since April 2023. Some major platform changes and controversies have exploded over the site since then.

The Government frontbencher also said it does not pay for ads on the platform. But Government figures have shown little sign of reducing their usage of X, despite the Elon Musk-owned company standing accused of 'profiting from hate', as a recent Centre for Countering Digital Hate report argued.

The April 2023 review date given by the minister is particularly striking, Lord Pack says, given what's happened since then:

The platform's comprehensive rebrand from Twitter to X

The launch and integration of AI-tool 'Grok' into the platform, which has repeatedly spouted conspiracy theories, and called itself 'Mecha-Hitler' recently, in a reply that appeared to encourage genocide

The platform's role in spreading incendiary misinformation during last summer's anti-migrant riots in England

Owner Elon Musk's own predictions of 'civil war' in Britain, and many users' apparent backing for racist strife being amplified by the platform

The move from official verification of notable users to gain 'Blue Tick' status - to it being available to anyone who pays, and handing them a disproportionate engagement boost via the algorithm

Major advertisers pulling out due to owner Elon Musk's conduct and lack of moderation on the site

Bluesky's explosive growth (from around 580,000 users in April 2023 to nearly 36 million by April 2025)

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Critics have questioned why there's been no official review into the use of X, despite its dramatic shift towards the far-right under Musk's ownership.

There are growing concerns about public sector organisations' continued presence on X, though few have dropped use of the platform altogether.

Lib Dem peer Mark Pack, who asked the question and who is prominent on Bluesky, told Byline Times: "It is surprising and disappointing that at the same time as the Government is saying it is taking a 'test and learn' approach to improving how it does things, the Government is failing to acknowledge the major changes for the worse at X under Elon Musk.

"With so many people moving from X to other places, such as Bluesky, the Government should be embracing the variety of social media rather than sticking so tightly to X."

Imran Ahmed, CEO & Founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, also told this newspaper: "Not only has X changed significantly since April 2023, with developments such as the introduction of Grok and a change in leadership, our latest research also shows that X has done nothing to address violent incitement and threats against Muslims and migrants.

"These calls have already led to serious consequences across the country. Given the platform's broad influence on communities, it is fair to question whether an assessment that has not been conducted in over two years is truly sufficient."

A Year Since the UK Riots, Elon Musk's X Is St...

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For decades, London's courthouses have served as cherished hubs for powerful Russian interests seeking to advance their business, shield their assets, silence critics, and shuffle dirty cash around.

Drawn by the UK legal system's reputation as a global leader in dispute resolution, coupled with the capital's less illustrious role as veritable haven for illicit finances, many are the Kremlin allies who've turned to the British courts with "collusive litigation" over the years, suing one another on secretly pre-agreed terms so as to launder their wealth through the resulting settlement fees.

Others still have taken advantage of the nation's punitive defamation laws, bringing vexatious claims against critical journalists and activists so as to both intimidate them from further reporting or campaigning, and to drain their resources through lengthy and costly legal proceedings.

Perhaps the most spectacular cases of such 'lawfare', however, are those that have seen Russian oligarchs engaged in the vicious pursuit of strategic lawsuits as part of wider wars of attrition waged against their business rivals, with the promise of handsome profits for the droves of lawyers, consultants and litigation funders only too willing to help them along the way.

Byline Times' new investigation delves deep into the latest of these bitter and winding legal sagas, laying out how Russian businessman Alexander Gorbachev's litigation against former Kremlin politician Andrey Guriev for lucrative shares in a Moscow fertiliser company was bankrolled by a controversial Israeli businessman, a UK group owned by "enablers" of Georgia's autocratic regime, and a scandal-ridden Miami firm that once held sizable investments in several European football clubs.

That these actors held a stake in the lawsuit is no secret to Guriev himself, who was sanctioned in 2022 for his control of assets generating significant revenue for Russia's war in Ukraine. But the Vladimir Putin ally now believes that another, perhaps more powerful set of hands may ultimately have been behind Gorbachev's claims - and he is determined to find out who.

Assets, Dirt Cheap

With holdings worth more than $7.6 billion, PhosAgro is one of the world's largest producers of phosphate fertilisers. Based in Moscow, its roots go back to the early 1990s, with oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky's purchase of a lucrative mining complex in Russia's far northwest during the anarchic privatisation of state assets that followed the Soviet collapse.

Better known by his reputation now as one of Putin's harshest critics, Khodorkovsky would eventually flee Russia in 2013 for exile in London, having served eight years on fraud, embezzlement and money laundering charges he says were politically motivated.

Guriev, a co-director at Khodorkovsky's holding company and a member of the Russian Federation Council who built PhosAgro during the wildcat years of Russian capitalism, was joined there by Gorbachev, an old friend from his days as a Communist Party youth secretary, as vice-president of the new firm.

After prosecutors seized Khordokovsky's mining interests following his 2003 arrest, PhosAgro moved swiftly to purchase those assets from the state at below-market rates. Guriev went on to become a wealthy man - with a current net worth of roughly $9.5 billion, he was at one point the owner of the $450 million Witanhurst estate in Highgate, London's second largest private residence after Buckingham Palace.

He eventually stepped back from politics in 2013. While some of his shares in PhosAgro have since been sold back to the Kremlin, he and his family continue to control a sizable portion of the group through an offshore trust, which saw them targeted with Western sanctions following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine for ownership of assets feeding Russia's war machine.

By...

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"You have to assume that at some point something's going to be cooked up about you - some sort of smear - or there will be another vote, and then they will suspend you."

I'm speaking to a Labour MP who voted against the Government's recent disability benefit cuts and now fears they will be the next victim of what they describe as the "punishment beatings" being dished out to Labour rebels suspended from the party.

"I'm on a hair trigger. I know that".

"And you can go around worrying about it, but I think there's a sense now that it's going to happen, and it probably doesn't really make much of a difference what I do."

"Either I'm going to come out of the room dead, or a made man. You just have to assume that. It's the only way, psychologically, that you can continue to operate."

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We're speaking after Starmer's Government, following the reported advice of Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney, green-lit the suspension of four more Labour MPs for their roles in recent parliamentary rebellions.

The suspensions, which included the well-liked moderate soft-left MP Rachael Maskell, have been a clarifying moment for many in the party.

"I think when it was only happening to the hard left, most MPs thought 'oh it's fine, it's not my problem'", the MP says,

"But now with what they did to Rachael, the soft left are beginning to realise what's really going on here."

A day after Maskell's suspension, veteran left-winger Diane Abbott was suspended for a second time over comments she made about race and minority groups.

Taken together, it adds up to what looks to many like a campaign of revenge for the recent series of U-Turns forced on the Prime Minister by his MPs.

"When something like [the U-Turns] happen, you can do one of two things. You can either say, 'what do I learn from this? How do I make sure that doesn't happen again? What can positively come out of this?' Or you go away, lick your wounds and plot your revenge" the Labour MP tells me.

"They chose the latter".

McSweeney Unleashed

The suspensions appear to carry all the hallmarks of McSweeney.

In the run up to the recent welfare vote, Starmer's chief of staff reportedly pushed for mass suspensions of Labour rebels - ten an hour - in order to force Labour MPs back into line.

It was strategy that was only abandoned by the Prime Minister after it became clear it could have led to the Government losing their parliamentary majority altogether.

In the wake of the vote Starmer promised to forge better relations with his party and described the new consensus on welfare as being "common sense".

The Prime Minister also signalled a broader intention to change course, apologising for his "island of strangers" speech, and dialling down his rhetoric on immigration.

However, while Starmer may have briefly retreated, some of this closest advisers did not.

And with some Labour MPs already signalling their intention to vote against the Government about other upcoming cuts, the Prime Minister appeared to have been persuaded to let allies of McSweeney off the leash.

The timing of the resultant suspensions could not have been worse, however, coming as they did on the same day that news emerged of the Conservative party's involvement in spending hundreds of millions of pounds covering up the Afghan leak scandal, along with the revelation that their leader Kemi Badenoch had refused an official security briefing on the issue earlier this year, because she thought it wasn't important enough to bother turning up to.

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