View image in fullscreen Farage with his partner, Laure Ferrari, in Westminster on Wednesday. He received the £5m gift shortly before announcing he would stand in the 2024 election. Photograph: WPA/Getty Images
Watchdog to examine whether Reform UK leader should have declared sum he received before entering parliament
Nigel Farage is facing a formal investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog over a £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.
The Reform UK leader received the money weeks before announcing he would stand as a candidate in the 2024 general election.
Farage has said the gift, first revealed by the Guardian, was intended to cover his personal security costs and therefore did not need to be declared. However, other parties argue that the money from the Thailand-based businessman falls within rules requiring MPs to declare any potentially relevant gifts or donations received in the 12 months before entering parliament.
Daniel Greenbergh, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, is understood to have begun an investigation under rule 5 of the code of conduct obliging MPs to “fulfil conscientiously” requirements relating to their registration of interests.
It states that new MPs must register all their current financial interests, and any registrable benefits (other than earnings) received in the 12 months before their election. This must be done within one month of their election, and they must register any change in those registrable interests within 28 days.
If the investigation finds Farage committed a particularly serious breach of parliamentary declaration rules, he could be suspended from the Commons. A suspension of 10 days or more could trigger a recall petition, potentially forcing him to fight again for his Clacton seat.
Climate science denier Nigel Farage explains that it’s simple to blame asylum-seekers or Muslims for everything.Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage’s chasing the racist bigot vote.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
This government chose not to bring in wealth taxes, not to implement rent controls, not to make the kind of public investment in council-housing that is needed to tackle the housing crisis, and chose not to redistribute resources from those who wield it to those who need it. It chose to give a top political job to a man with an established relationship to a convicted sex offender — a man who just so happened to pride himself on his opposition to our mass movement for social justice and peace.
Rather than rewriting the rigged rules of corporate Britain, the government also chose to blame a different group of people for the problems in our society: migrants and refugees. It went after the rights of migrants who have contributed so much to this country and demonised human beings seeking asylum. It mimicked the politics of Reform UK and rolled out the red carpet for Nigel Farage.
There is perhaps one political decision that will leave the greatest stain of all. As Israel embarked on the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza, this government could have defended international law and called for peace. Yet it chose to facilitate war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. And it chose to launch a systematic assault on the civil liberties of those who protested against the government’s complicity (alongside its outrageous decision to erode jury trials, the cornerstone of our justice system). This government’s enduring legacy will be its complicity and participation in the greatest crime of our age. And we will never, ever forget.
These decisions are the root cause of the chaos that Starmer is now trying to temper — and unless these root causes are addressed, we will continue to lurch from one political crisis to the next. It’s not enough for Starmer to go. What needs booting out is the politics he represents: corporate greed, anti-migrant policies and endless war.
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I haven’t heard anything from his main contenders about the need to end corporate greed, the need for rent controls, or the need for a mass redistribution of wealth and power. I certainly haven’t heard any calls for an investigation into British complicity in genocide — presumably because that investigation would implicate them as well.
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Keir Starmer … managed to hide the real record beneath his rhetoric: child poverty, inequality and genocide. Those are the government’s big decisions. And that is how this government will be remembered.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
The health secretary wants to keep us in the dark about Palantir’s systems for handling sensitive health records, so we’re taking legal action with Democracy for Sale to fight back
As Palantir’s global surveillance empire expands, Wes Streeting is building a fortress of secrecy around the firm’s £330m NHS contract. The health secretary is currently refusing to publish vital briefing documents sent to Streeting and health minister Karin Smyth – papers that will provide the truth about the risks of Palantir’s data platform.
Streeting’s team argues that he doesn’t have to publish this material because it was used for “policy development”. But this is not a speculative proposal – Streeting is already rolling out Palantir technology across the NHS. He’s asking the public to accept vague reassurances while denying us access to the facts on the ground.
This secrecy is even more alarming given Palantir’s track record. Doctors and the British Medical Association have warned against handing sensitive health infrastructure to a company with deep ties to defence and intelligence agencies. Palantir’s role in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza has sparked a public backlash. And unease also appears to be growing within government as well, with the Financial Times reporting that ministers are exploring whether they can trigger a break clause in Palantir’s contract.
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This isn’t the first time the health department has tried to keep its business with the tech giant behind closed doors. When the government first published Palantir’s contract, 417 out of its 586 pages were completely blanked out. We fought for greater transparency – and won. Now the fight continues.
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Iranians gather at Enqelab Square to protest against the United States and Israel in Tehran, Iran, on April 12, 2026. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]
Iran will not enter a second round of negotiations with the United States unless five trust-building conditions are met, Fars News Agency reported Tuesday, citing an informed source, Anadolu reports.
The source said Tehran considers the conditions to be “minimum guarantees” necessary for starting any new negotiations with Washington.
According to the report, Iran’s conditions include “ending the war on all fronts, especially Lebanon,” lifting sanctions, releasing frozen Iranian assets, compensating for war damage and recognizing Iran’s sovereignty rights over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran also informed Pakistani mediators that the continuation of the US naval blockade in the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman after the ceasefire has further reinforced Tehran’s distrust toward negotiations with the United States, the source said.
The report added that the conditions were defined solely within the framework of creating minimum confidence for returning to talks and that Tehran believes new negotiations cannot begin without their practical implementation.
According to Fars, Iran presented the five conditions in response to what it described as a 14-point US proposal.
The report claimed the US proposal was “completely one-sided” and aimed at securing through negotiations objectives Washington failed to achieve during the war.
The US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, triggering retaliation from Tehran against Israel as well as US allies in the Gulf, along with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
A ceasefire took effect on April 8 through Pakistani mediation, but talks in Islamabad failed to produce a lasting agreement. The truce was later extended by US President Donald Trump without a set deadline.
On Sunday, Iran sent Pakistan its response to a US proposal for ending the war, but Trump dismissed it as “totally unacceptable.”
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.Keir Starmer confirms that he doesn’t know anything about democracy.
While independent and alternative media wrought a change in US public opinion since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, mainstream media provided Israel with a coverup for its crimes. “This book does not make for easy reading,” Rashid Khalidi wrote in the introduction to Robin Andersen’s The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza (OR Books, 2026). While legacy media justified genocide and acted as a mouthpiece for Israel and the US, independent media illustrated genocide as it happened. As Israel’s genocide continued without political opposition, legacy and mainstream media framed Palestinians in Gaza and anyone opposing the genocide as “the villains of the story, rather than the war criminals who perpetrated these murders, and this destruction and starvation.”
Mainstream media portrayal of Israel’s genocide in Gaza followed not only a predictable sequence, but also one that became ingrained and fortified despite the countless times such reporting was debunked by facts.
One notable discrepancy, Andersen writes, is the readily available information from Israeli media itself on the start of the genocide. While Western journalism simplified the start of the genocide through Hamas’s infiltration and attack on Israel, Israeli media noted the military’s role in the killing of Israeli civilians, with testimonies from Israelis expressing anger at the military. Andersen notes that if US media had included Israel’s killing of its own citizens while implementing the Hannibal directive, “the rudimentary narrative structure would have lost a good deal of its persuasive value.”
Indeed, the simplistic narrative emphasised by US mainstream media required a starting point. October 7 provided the peg not only for supporting Israel’s genocide, but for obliterating the entire Zionist colonial history and appropriation of Palestinian territory. Without context, news became a series of events obfuscated and far removed from history. However, language still played an important role. As Andersen states, “Genocide does not happen without a language to incite it.” From the initial statements by Israeli officials, the media hastened to demonise Palestinians also by choosing to omit the accurate terminology which would have described Israel’s genocidal actions.
Leaked memos from legacy media showed the extent to which news was disseminated in a manipulated manner. Editorial directives controlled the narrative omitting genocide, even as genocide was livestreamed through alternative and social media.
Israel’s kill toll was questioned as rhetorical propaganda, while outlets such as CNN and the New York Times failed to attribute airstrikes to Israel. Language depicting Palestinians’ living conditions during the genocide also eliminated how Israel forcibly displaced Gaza’s population – neighbourhoods, instead of camps. Evidence of dead bodies was framed in assumptions that questioned realities, while Israel’s massacres at the so-called aid sites were described as “food-aid related deaths” by the Guardian, for example. The New York Times fared no better: “Death of Gazans Hungry for Food Prompt Fresh Calls for Ceasefire”.
Similar tactics were employed by mainstream media’s discussion of Israel’s bombing of Al-Shifa hospital. Focusing on Israel’s propaganda justifying the strikes – a Hamas command and control centre beneath the hospital – mainstream media linked Al-Shifa to war crimes, but not Israel. As happened during the start of the genocide, when many statements were debunked by alternative media, Israel’s narratives on al-Shifa proved to be false. However, mainstream media still relied on Israel’s official narrative, which were altered several times as independent investigations progressed. When Israel targeted a refugee camp and burnt Palestinians to death, CNN reported on what Israel told the Biden administration. “It’s what Israel said to us,” a US official stated to CNN. Language, in the context of Israel’s attacks on al-Shifa hospital, was even more ambiguous. Andersen quotes the New York Times, which frames the attacks within the language of natural disasters – al-Shifa “stood in ruins on Sunday, as if a tsunami had surged through it following a tornado.”
Andersen notes that for every instance of mainstream media’s manipulation of genocide for Israel’s benefit, alternative and independent media carried the investigations and answers to the public. From the initial disproven claims of beheaded babies that unleashed a frenzied support for Israel’s genocide, to claims of rape attributed to Hamas, independent media provided not only the proof of untruths, but also the network that supported the disseminated lies. Independent media also established the targeted killing of Palestinian journalists in Gaza, creating a sharp contrast between journalists covering genocide in real time, and mainstream reporters whose priority was to impart the Zionist narrative. Mainstream media’s refusal to mention targeted assassinations of Palestinian journalists contributes to Israel’s efforts to silence journalists reporting from Gaza – the only sources available also considering that Israel refused entry to international journalists. The tacit silence from mainstream media in the US contradicts the essence of journalism, all for preserving the continuation of genocide.
“The many examples of journalistic malpractice include in this book expose corporate media’s acquiesce to power and their abandonment of independence and the mandate to inform,” Andersen writes in the conclusion. Israel’s genocide in Gaza exposed the extending parameters of incitement, and the reach Zionism has at an international level. Mainstream media in the US contributed to a growing divide not only between media sources, but also in disrupting clarity – those that advocate for justice are now equated with terrorists, and those that defame people calling for justice are thriving in impunity.
The numerous examples Andersen cites in her extensive research of media reporting on Gaza call for a sobering scrutiny, not only on intent, but on the violation of language and its repercussions on Palestine, on Gaza, and on all people opposing colonialism and genocide.
Andersen notes that the manipulation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza had other precedents, such as the US war on Iraq which was based on fabricated claims of weapons of mass destruction. Within the Iraq context, however, mainstream media had issued public apologies for their propaganda. Andersen notes that none have been forthcoming so far with regard to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Keir Starmer confirms that he doesn’t know anything about democracy.
