Starmer under pressure over cruel plan to slash welfare budget
… KEIR STARMER came under pressure from MPs across the Commons over his cruel plan to cut benefits today.
Labour announced on Tuesday that it will slash £5 billion from the welfare budget by the end of the decade.
In the Commons, Labour’s Diane Abbott told Sir Keir to stop pretending his cuts were moral.
“There is nothing moral about cutting benefits for what may be up to a million people,” she said.
“This is not about morality, this is about the Treasury’s wish to balance the country’s books on the back of the most vulnerable and poor people in this society.”
Colum Eastwood from the SDLP told the prime minister of a constituent “who needed help, she had a disability. It meant that her children have to cut up her food, they have to help her wash between the waist, they have to supervise her when she goes to the toilet.
“Under the Tory welfare system we were able to get that lady on PIP. Under the Prime Minister’s new proposed system she will get zero, nothing.
“And after 14 years of the Tory government — and many of us wanted to see the back of them — can the Prime Minister answer one question – what was the point if Labour are going to do this?”
Green co-leader Carla Denyer urged a wealth tax instead of cuts, a policy quietly supported by many Labour MPs.
“We have a deeply unfair, unequal economic system where vast numbers of people are struggling yet billionaires are getting richer and richer,” she told Sir Keir.
“Does the Prime Minister really think that the way to tackle this is to put the onus onto older people, children and now sick and disabled people rather than on the shoulders of the super-rich with a wealth tax, those people who could most easily afford to pay?”
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
U.S. President Donald Trump salutes his supporters at a political rally at Charleston Civic Center in Charleston, West Virginia on August 21, 2018. (Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP)
“Donald Trump is not concerned with Americans’ health or economic wellbeing. He is only concerned with helping out his billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry,” said one climate advocate.
After U.S. President Donald Trumpdeclared on Truth Social on Monday night that he is ordering his administration “to immediately begin producing Energy with BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL,” a leader at the grassroots environmental group Sierra Club quickly hit back, calling the move “completely delusional.”
Trump said he was announcing the move as a means to counter China’s economic edge. The announcement comes “after years of being held captive by Environmental Extremists, Lunatics, Radicals, and Thugs, allowing other Countries, in particular China, to gain tremendous Economic advantage over us by opening up hundreds of all Coal Fire Power Plants,” Trump wrote.
It was not immediately clear what Trump’s directive was referring to or how his announcement on social media would impact U.S. policy, according to Bloomberg.
“There is no such thing as clean coal. There is only coal that pollutes our air and water so severely that nearly half a million Americans have died prematurely from coal in the last two decades,” said Sierra Club director of climate policy Patrick Drupp in a statement Tuesday. “Donald Trump is not concerned with Americans’ health or economic wellbeing. He is only concerned with helping out his billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry.”
Trump’s cabinet includes a number figures who are friendly to the fossil fuel industry, such as Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who was a fracking industry CEO, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a known ally of oil and gas companies.
On his first day in office, Trump declared a national energy emergency to ensure “an affordable and reliable domestic supply of energy,” called for expedited “permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska,” and withdrew the United States from the the world’s main climate pact.
The U.S. is mulling using emergency authority to bring coal-fired plants back online and halt others from shutting, Burgum told Bloomberg Television in an interview last week.
“Under the national energy emergency, which President Trump has declared, we’ve got to keep every coal plant open,” Burgum said while at the energy sector gathering CERAWeek. “And if there had been units at a coal plant that have been shut down, we need to bring those back.”
Meanwhile, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin earlier this month announced a new effort to rollback a host of EPA regulations, including some that will impact coal producers.
The coal mining company Peabody Energy saw their stock rise 3.5% after Trump’s Monday post on social media about “clean coal,” according to Tuesday morning reporting from Schaeffer’s Investment Research.
As of 2023, coal accounted for 16.2% of U.S. electricity generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That year, 21.4% came from renewables.
In its statement released on Tuesday, Sierra Club took issue with Trump’s assertion that investing in coal has provided an economic boost to other countries. “Trump refers to the ‘Economic advantage’ that burning coal has afforded other nations. In reality, renewable energy is quickly becoming more affordable and reliable than coal,” they wrote.
In 2023, the think tank Energy Innovation Policy & Technology released an analysis which found that 99% of coal plants are more expensive to run compared to replacing their generation capacity with either solar or wind power, when taking into account credits that were made available through the Inflation Reduction Act.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
16 days ago, Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza, preventing any humanitarian aid of any description from getting in – food, medicine, you name it. That’s caused the price of some staple foods to surge by 200%.
This is a straightforward crime. Indeed, Israel had already repeatedly deliberately starved Gaza and prevented the essentials of life from entering and then from getting to the people who need it – but kept claiming otherwise. This time, they just went and said it – boasting of their criminal violation of international law. Indeed the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister centre on the crime of starvation.
This criminality was apparently finally recognised by the British government. When asked about this siege, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Parliament that Israel is “in breach of international law”.
You might be relieved that, after all this time, the British government has said the obvious.
Not so fast with any kudos for Lammy. The government came out and promptly rebuked him and instead said that Israel was only “at risk” of violating international law. Lammy – a self-aggrandiser devoid of principle or backbone – declared he “could have have been clearer”, backtracking on the truth.
But this was nonetheless a confession. Lammy admitted Israel is violating the law, something he obviously knows is true, which means continued arms sales and diplomatic support for Israel constitute willing and knowing complicity in Israel’s crimes.
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWREGenocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
The shrouded bodies of victims of renewed Israeli aistrikes on Gaza are seen outside Al Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Palestine on March 18, 2025. (Photo: Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“All of this is made possible by the U.S. government, which has funded and fueled these atrocities,” said Jewish Voice for Peace.
Once again, entire families are being wiped out by Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip after U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly gave the green light for the key American ally to resume its assault on the Palestinian enclave.
Israel unilaterally abrogated the crumbling eight-week cease-fire early Tuesday, unleashing a wave of ferocious strikes on the already flattened Gaza Strip, killing at least 404 people—including 174 children, 89 women, and 32 elders—and wounding at least 562 others, with the death toll expected to rise, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
“Today marks one of the largest one-day child death tolls in Gaza in history,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish at DCIP. “Israeli forces have signed a death warrant for Palestinian children in Gaza…this is nothing short of genocide.” https://t.co/n8XjGhSjQt
“We were shocked late at night to see strikes and attacks on Gaza like in the early days of the war,” Momen Qoreiqeh, who lost more than two dozen relatives in an Israeli airstrike on their Gaza City home, told Al Jazeera. “I was with my family and suddenly there was a huge attack on our residential block. The attack killed so many people from my family, some of them we still haven’t recovered from under the rubble.”
“So far we’ve managed to recover about 26 bodies from my family and 20 other people who were with us,” he added.
Ramy Abdu, founder and chair of the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor—which has published numerous reports on alleged Israeli war crimes and acts of genocide in Gaza—said his sister’s family was killed in an Israeli strike on their home in Gaza City.
“This morning, Israel killed my sister, my heart, Nesreen, and her beloved sons and daughters: Ubaida, Omar, and Lian, along with Ubaida’s wife, Malak, and their children, Siwar and Mohammed,” Abdu said on social media.
Israel killed my sister and her children tonight, along with her entire family.
Israel may kill us at will, burn us alive, and tear us apart, but it will never succeed in uprooting us from our land.
According to Al Jazeera, the family had survived many Israeli airstrikes over the years.
“Israel may kill us at will, burn us alive, and tear us apart, but it will never succeed in uprooting us from our land,” Abdu wrote in a separate post. “Justice and accountability await—no matter how long it takes.”
Al Jazeera also reported that Dr. Majda Abu Aker, an OB-GYN at a Rafah clinic run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and more than a dozen other people were killed in a strike on her house in Rafah’s al-Jenaina neighborhood. At least 10 of the dead were from the same family; the youngest victim was a girl who was just three days old.
In Rafah, the israelis kill this father, both the girls, mother, grandparents, uncles & aunts, wiping out the entire Garghoon family — all 17 members pic.twitter.com/dunmU2ufzb
Fifteen people, most of them members of the Barhoum family, were reportedly killed when Israeli forces bombed al-Mawasi.
Six members of the same family were also reportedly killed while trying to flee in a car in Abasan, east of Khan Younis.
Ahmed Abu Rizq, a teacher who survived Tuesday’s airstrikes, described to Al Jazeera the horror and chaos he witnessed at a local hospital, where he saw “blood everywhere” and arriving families carrying the “remains of their children.”
Al-Shifa Hospital director Muhammad Abu Salmiya said that “every minute, a wounded person dies due to a lack of resources,” as Israel has imposed a ” complete siege” on Gaza since October 2023 that has been blamed for widespread starvation and sickness. The South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice cites the siege, which has been called a “genocidal act” by an independent United Nations commission and human rights groups.
Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, said later in the day that Tuesday’s strikes are “only the beginning” and will continue until Hamas frees all the remaining hostages it took on October 7, 2023 and is destroyed.
During a meeting with the U.S. Zionist lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar affirmed that Tuesday’s bombings were not a “one-day attack.”
Palestine defenders around the world took to the streets to protest the renewed Israeli onslaught. In London, thousands of demonstrators turned out for an emergency protest organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Protests also took place in cities including Ramallah, Dublin, Berlin, Jerusalem, Manchester, and Belfast, and are planned for Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York, and elsewhere.
"The police are forcibly dispersing a small protest against the continuation of the war in central Jerusalem."
Not in our name. We mourn with the people of Gaza. It’s time to act—this war MUST end now. https://t.co/CdgvxANlig
United Nations officials condemned Tuesday’s strikes, with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres writing: “I am outraged by the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. I strongly appeal for the cease-fire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian assistance to be reestablished, and for the remaining hostages to be released unconditionally.”
As the world wakes up to the harrowing images of children slain by Israeli bombs across the entire Gaza Strip AGAIN, we cannot bear witness to global leaders JUST. DOING. NOTHING. This is an acceleration of the genocide that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people as… pic.twitter.com/WV8Tt0ehgM
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) March 18, 2025
Human rights groups also condemned Israel’s renewed aggression, with Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard calling Tuesday “a desperately dark day for humanity.”
“Israel brazenly resumed its devastating bombing campaign in Gaza… again wiping out entire families in a matter of hours,” she said. “Palestinians in Gaza—who have barely had a chance to start piecing together their lives and continue to grapple with the trauma of Israel’s past attacks—have woken up once more to the hellish nightmare of intense bombardment.”
“Today, we are back to square one,” Callamard lamented. “Since March 2, Israel has reimposed a total siege on Gaza blocking the entry of all humanitarian aid, medicine, and commercial supplies, including fuel and food, in flagrant violation of international law. Israel has also cut off electricity to Gaza’s main operational desalination plant. And today the Israeli military has once again started issuing mass ‘evacuation’ orders displacing Palestinians.”
Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director, said: “The reported killings of hundreds of Palestinians amid Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza is alarming. The Israeli authorities have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, including forced displacement and extermination, and acts of genocide during the assault on Gaza.”
“Other countries should urgently act to prevent further mass atrocities, including by suspending arms transfers to Israel, supporting the International Criminal Court and executing its arrest warrants, and imposing targeted sanctions on officials responsible for laws-of-war violations,” Shakir added.
Israel has shattered the ceasefire, killing over 413 people in a single night. The genocide never stopped, just rebranded. Trump’s promise to give Israel “everything it needs” has fueled mass murder, and now he has blood on his hands. The U.S. continues to bankroll this… pic.twitter.com/YhZjz5HOc6
The American Human Rights Council (AHRC) condemned “the restart of the Israeli genocidal policy of starving and bombing the Palestinians in Gaza” and noted that “the victims of the Israeli genocidal acts are primarily infants, children, women, and the elderly.”
“AHRC urges the Trump administration to uphold its peace promise,” the group added. “The current Israeli escalation of war crimes and the ongoing Israeli weaponization of food, water, and medicine are resulting in avoidable deaths and suffering. The U.S. can put a permanent end to this war but for political expediency is choosing not to.”
Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest U.S. Muslim civil rights group, said that “President Trump must stop the madness after the government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu renewed its genocide and slaughtered hundreds of Palestinians, including women and children, during the holy month of Ramadan.”
“Without strong actions to push back against this renewed orgy of slaughter, mass destruction, forced starvation, and ethnic cleansing, the Israeli government will continue to act with impunity and our government will remain as complicit with genocide as it was under the Biden administration,” Awad added.
The U.S. group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—which has organized numerous protests against the assault on Gaza—said: “This is a campaign of extermination. This is genocide.”
“All of this is made possible by the U.S. government, which has funded and fueled these atrocities,” JVP noted. “Over the last 17 months, the U.S. has spent over $17 billion in military funding to the Israeli government’s campaign of extermination and apartheid against the Palestinian people, and continues to sell the Israeli military more weapons.”
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—a Quaker organization that has worked in Palestine for decades—said that “there are no words adequate to express the devastation of watching bombs rain down again on people who have already endured more than 17 months of a U.S.-backed genocide.”
“Our hearts are with AFSC staff, families, partners, friends, and all Palestinians in Gaza—we are holding you in the Light and we will continue the relentless struggle to end these atrocities,” the group added.
Progressive U.S. lawmakers also denounced the renewed Israeli assault and demanded an end to American armed aid, with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress, writing on social media that “the Israeli apartheid regime has resumed its genocide, carrying out airstrikes all across Gaza and killing hundreds of Palestinians.”
“This comes after a complete blockade of food, electricity, and aid,” Tlaib added. “They will never stop until there are sanctions and an arms embargo.”
Netanyahu has not allowed any food, water, or fuel into Gaza in two weeks. Now he has resumed bombing, killing hundreds of people and breaking the ceasefire that had given Gaza a chance to live again. NO MORE MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL.
The Gaza Health Ministry says that at least 48,964 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces over the past 529 days. At least 112,481 others have been wounded, and an estimated 14,000 more are missing and believed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings.
