Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers his keynote speech during the Scottish Labour Party conference at the Scottish Exhibition Centre (SEC) in Glasgow, February 23, 2025
PRIME Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s plan for a massive boost to military spending funded by slashing overseas aid was slammed as “grotesquely awful” by peace campaigners today.
He faced a wave of opposition after telling MPs that arms spending is to rise by more than £13 billion a year by 2027, with the aim of a further £30bn-plus hike in the next parliament.
The first tranche of this new arms race is to be funded by a huge cut to the overseas development budget, from 0.5 per cent of GDP to just 0.3 per cent, all justified by the three-year-old Ukraine war.
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Save the Children UK chief executive Moazzam Malik said: “We are stunned by this decision to cut the aid budget in order to increase military spending.
“It is a betrayal of the world’s most vulnerable children and the UK’s national interest.”
And Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now called it “a day of shame for Britain.”
He added: “Starmer’s announcement today is politics at its most base.
“To appease Trump, he will cut aid to its lowest level in a generation, forcing the poorest to pay so he can push taxpayer money into the coffers of arms corporations.”
PRIME Minister Sir Keir Starmer was told to apologise after Ofgem approved a surprise 6.4 per cent rise in average energy bills set to hit working families and pensioners the hardest yesterday.
Sir Keir was accused of breaking general election pledge to slash bills by £300 after the energy regulator announced a rise of £111 from April to £1,849 a year for the typical household.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said the third consecutive increase in the cap on gas and electricity charges “is a cruel increase which is going to hit the elderly and low-paid workers the hardest.
“How can this be acceptable when energy companies are making billions in profits and millions of people are struggling to keep warm?
“The government should be making sure that everyone in the UK is able to stay warm, not making it harder.
“It can start by reversing its disastrous policy of cutting the winter fuel allowance and by returning key energy companies to public ownership, starting with the National Grid.”
More than 20 doctors are believed to remain inside detention facilities. Right, doctors being detained near Kamal Adwan hospital, including Dr Khalid Hamoudeh (left) and Dr Wadee Qasem (right). Composite: Guardian
At least 160 healthcare workers from Gaza, including more than 20 doctors, are believed to still be inside Israeli detention facilities as the World Health Organisation expressed deep concern about their wellbeing and safety.
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A lawyer representing Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital, whose detention by Israeli forces in December sparked international condemnation, recently said he had been allowed to visit Abu Safiya in detention in Ofer Prison in Ramallah for the first time and that he said he had been tortured, beaten and denied medical treatment.
The Guardian and the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) have alsoheard detailed testimony from seven senior doctors who claimed they were taken from hospitals, ambulances and checkpoints in Gaza, illegally transferred across the border into Israeli-run prison facilities and subjected to months of torture, beatings, starvation and inhumane treatment before being released without charge.
“Frankly, no matter how much I talk about what I experienced in detention, it is only a fraction of what truly happened,” said Dr Mohammed Abu Selmia, director of al-Shifa hospital, who was detained for seven months in Israeli prisons before being released without charge.
“I am talking about clubbing, being beaten with rifle butts and being attacked by dogs. There was little to no food, no personal hygiene, no soap inside the cells, no water, no toilet, no toilet paper … I saw people who were dying there … I was beaten so badly I couldn’t use my legs or walk. No day passes without torture.”
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Israeli army enters the city with tanks for the first time since 2002 following after the ceasefire and prisoner and hostages swap agreement in Gaza entered into force in Jenin, West Bank on February 23, 2025 [Nedal Eshtayah – Anadolu Agency]
Calls to displace Palestinians from Gaza are already being translated into action in the occupied West Bank, where the occupation army has forced tens of thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes, Haaretz reported today.
The Hebrew edition of the newspaper referred to the statements of the Israeli Defence Minister, Israel Katz, who proudly announced yesterday the goal of the operation that the army is waging in the occupied West Bank: the expulsion of the residents of the refugee camps.
The newspaper added that in the context of the Gaza Strip, they dream of transfer, but in the West Bank they are actually implementing it.
The minister added that “it is assumed that the 40,000 Palestinians who have already been expelled from the refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams will not be allowed to return there for at least a year.”
The newspaper said: “Katz’s statements completely contradict the official claim of the Israeli army since the beginning of the operation in the West Bank, which is that it is not evacuating the residents of the West Bank.”
According to the newspaper, “the residents of the refugee camps who were evacuated from their homes are taking refuge in the villages and towns in the area.”
Dozens of them sleep on the floors of temporary shelters run by local volunteers, while tens of thousands of them were forced to evacuate their homes quickly, without enough clothes, medicine or money. Children have not been to school for weeks.
It added that “the army is demolishing homes in refugee camps to widen roads, and has decided to tighten the atmosphere even more, as the army has brought its tanks into the Jenin refugee camp – for the first time in 20 years.”
The newspaper considered that “the army’s practices in the West Bank are the fruits of a campaign led by the settler leadership that has been pushing in these directions for more than a year, as the settlers have succeeded in turning the West Bank into a war zone in every sense of the word.”
Palestinians have reported being forced out of their homes by Israeli occupation forces, while others were used as human shields, then ordered to leave the refugee camp. One elderly blind man recounted how the army took over a building, brought him inside and locked him in a room with another family for two days without being able to communicate with anyone.
The newspaper stressed that
the rapid escalation in recent weeks – is compensation for the Israeli far-right for the disappointment and grief caused by the prisoner exchange deal.
The newspaper said that “Israel, as usual, instead of solving the root problems of the conflict, is proving that it only understands force, and that it is only capable of short-term thinking.”
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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
