RENEGADE: Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary David Lammy on a visit to Downing Street briefing on Monday February 9 2026
AS ONE of the first black MPs elected in post war Britain, Bernie Grant was in the thick of the fight for justice and for his defence of the rights of people, especially young black people, he was extensively traduced and misquoted.
Every year tribute is paid on the anniversary of his election as MP for Tottenham. One tribute described him as an all-round Tottenham legend and pioneering campaigner for social justice and equality.
These words were written by his successor as MP for Tottenham David Lammy — presently justice secretary in Keir Starmer’s Cabinet — who went on to say: “His legacy will never be forgotten.”
It would have been impossible for Lammy to have been selected as Bernie Grant’s successor if the electorate had even the faintest sense that Lammy’s professed admiration for his predecessor hid a rank opportunism that today distinguishes him as perhaps the minister most servile to the imperatives of the Establishment.
We can measure Lammy’s abandonment of such principles as he once espoused by taking a look at his proposals to end jury trials for a huge number of defendants in Britain’s chaotic and underfunded justice system.
The ostensible reason for this drastic diminution of our human right to be judged by our peers is the backlog of cases in the courts system with many cases scheduled for years ahead.
Successive governments have diminished funding for the justice system so that — from the probation service to prisons, from reduced court staffing numbers to cuts in legal aid — the class bias of the legal system, which puts those with limited financial means under pressure to abandon their right to due process, is ever more intense.
But, opinion is hardening that introducing judge-only trials for many criminal cases would further increase the risk of miscarriages of justice.
Lammy proposes limiting jury trials to accusations of rape, murder and certain “public interest” cases. His plan is for most defendants to be tried by a single judge able to pass sentences up to five years in prison.
This is a direct repudiation of the point made just last year by the minister for courts and legal services, Sarah Sackman, who told Parliament: “Let me be clear: jury trials will always be a cornerstone of British justice. This government will do whatever it takes to protect the fundamental right to a fair trial.”
She went on to argue that: “The vast majority of cases in our courts are already heard without juries. Around 90 per cent of all criminal cases are dealt with robustly and fairly by magistrates, with no jury.”
This rather begs the question, what is the necessity to further reduce the role of juries in delivering justice if restoring proper funding could restore the timely delivery of justice?
The answer lies in the recent tendency of juries to take a common sense and principled approach and acquit in cases where citizen action against war and enterprises servicing genocide falls victim to overweening state power.
“Jury trials are fundamental to the justice system … fundamental to our democracy. We must protect them.” These words of Lammy were quoted against him in a parliamentary debate just before Christmas by the then shadow justice secretary who told MPs that Lammy was “plotting to discard centuries of jury trials without so much as a by-your-leave.”
It is a measure of this government’s political disarray that a valid, if cynically hypocritical, criticism of Lammy’s illiberal measure — designed to strengthen the power of the state against its citizens — can be so easily gifted to a right-wing Tory defector who now sits among Boris Johnson’s Cabinet as a Reform UK MP.
Lord Peter Mandelson is seen leaving his home in Wiltshire, England, on February 20, 2026, days before his arrest by UK police on suspicion of misconduct in public office. (Photo by Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images)
“In the UK, they are prosecuting the Epstein class…” said Rep. Ro Khanna. “We need accountability in the United States.”
After a second prominent associate of Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in the UK, calls are growing louder for those in the US who may have been complicit in his crimes to face similar accountability.
Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the US, was arrested by police on Monday on “suspicion of misconduct in public office.” The arrest is reportedly in connection with an investigation opened into the former minister earlier this month.
Mandelson was dismissed from his ambassadorship by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in September after leaked emails showed that he’d maintained a close friendship with Epstein long after the financier had been convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008.
A criminal probe was opened last month after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) released more files, suggesting that in 2009, Mandelson—then a member of the UK government—had passed Epstein sensitive internal economic information that could have affected international markets.
Bank statements also show Mandelson accepting $75,000 from Epstein over several years for an unknown purpose.
He is the second powerful figure in British society to be arrested amid scrutiny of his relationship with Epstein this month. Last week, former Prince Andrew was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in office, after emails showed him forwarding trade reports to Epstein, which were produced during his role as an official UK envoy.
Epstein had been charged with the sex trafficking of dozens of underage girls before his death in jail in 2019, and connections with the financier have led prominent individuals across Europe to be shamed out of office or out of influential corporate positions.
Neither Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor nor Mandelson has been criminally charged with any sexual misconduct related to the billionaire. However, at least two women have publicly accused Mountbatten-Windsor of having sex with them while underage after procuring them through Epstein.
In 2022, Mountbatten-Windsor settled a civil suit for about £12 million with Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that the former prince had sex with her when she was 17.
Peter Mandelson, the former British Ambassador to the US, was arrested today on suspicion of misconduct in public office. This is after files revealed Jeffrey Epstein sent $75,000 to accounts connected to him. As we have said before: no one is above the law. We will make sure… https://t.co/Sjf8FjnWSu
The arrest of yet another British government official for inappropriate dealings with Epstein has only heightened the contrast with the unaccountability of American elites, who have thus far emerged from the Epstein scandal unscathed despite damning connections.
“Peter Mandelson, the former British Ambassador to the US, was arrested today on suspicion of misconduct in public office. This is after files revealed Jeffrey Epstein sent $75,000 to accounts connected to him,” wrote the official social media account for the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, which oversees the release of the files. “As we have said before: No one is above the law. We will make sure accountability and justice come to everyone in Epstein’s world.”
Files released by the DOJ in January, in compliance with a law passed last year, showed that at least one woman had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the 1980s after being introduced to him by Epstein, and that the FBI considered her to be credible, speaking to her on at least four occasions. It is not known what happened as a result of the investigation, and the DOJ slideshow referencing her allegation has since been scrubbed from the department’s website.
Meanwhile, at least six other members of the current Trump administration have documented ties to Epstein revealed by the files.
Most notably, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was revealed to have lied when he claimed to have cut off connections to the billionaire in the early 2000s. In fact, Lutnick maintained a relationship with Epstein for nearly a decade after the billionaire registered as a sex offender and even visited his infamous Caribbean island with his family.
Many other figures in the upper echelon of American society also maintained close relationships with Epstein despite his criminal conviction, including former President Bill Clinton, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Following news of Mandelson’s arrest, US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)—who has led the charge for the release of the files in full to the American public, along with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)—said he wanted to see similar investigations and charges against Epstein’s American associates.
“In UK, they are prosecuting the Epstein class [Massie] and I have exposed,” Khanna wrote on social media. “We need accountability in the United States.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Keir Starmer discusses the UK Labour Party’s tradion of excusing and protecting child rapists.
Funerals are held at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza , for eight Palestinian first responders massacred by Israeli forces in Tel al-Sultan on March 23, 2025. (Photo by Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“What this investigation reveals is that there was a shoot first policy, and that is unlawful under international law,” said one legal expert.
An investigation published Monday meticulously dissects last year’s killing by Israeli soldiers of 15 Palestinian aid workers in southern Gaza and the Israel Defense Force’s subsequent efforts to cover up the massacre, which the Palestine Red Crescent Society called “one of the darkest moments” of the US-backed genocide.
IDF soldiers fired nearly a thousand bullets—at least eight of them at point-blank range—during the March 23, 2025 attack on a convoy of Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and Palestinian Civil Defense ambulances and a PCD fire truck in Tel al-Sultan north of Rafah, according to the investigation by Forensic Architecture and Earshot.
“Our investigation confirms that Israeli forces attacked the aid workers while they were traveling in clearly marked humanitarian vehicles, in the absence of any threat or exchange of fire,” a summary of the report states. “Spatial and audio analysis conducted in partnership with Earshot reveals the positions from which Israeli soldiers fired on the aid workers—in at least once instance within one to four meters of their victim—over a period of more than two hours.”
Our new report in collaboration with Forensic Architecture (@ForensicArchi) is now live. In the early hours of March 23, 2025, the Israeli Army conducted a series of attacks on clearly marked emergency vehicles and personnel in Tel al-Sultan, Gaza. Fifteen aid workers from the… pic.twitter.com/SK98alnYOl
Eyewitness and survivor testimonies and analysis of various recordings showed that some of the aid workers—who included eight PCRS workers, six PCD employees, and one staffer with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. They are among the hundreds of Palestinian humanitarian aid workers killed by Israeli forces since October 2023, including more than 370 members of UNRWA, according to the agency.
The new report shows how IDF troops ambushed and attacked the convoy, firing on its vehicles. IDF spokesperson Col. Nadav Shoshani claimed that unmarked convoy vehicles “were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals” and that nine of the first responders were “terrorists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.”
However, as is often the case, IDF officials could not support their claim with evidence, and video recorded by PRCS worker Refaat Radwan before he was killed shows clearly marked ambulances traveling with lights on and sirens wailing.
The IDF’s lies poured fuel on the fire of international outrage over the massacre. Trey Yingst, chief international correspondent at staunchly pro-Israel Fox News, said that Israel’s version of the massacre story was “clearly not true.”
New video shows Israeli forces open firing on medics in Gaza.
I’ve spoken with the IDF multiple times about this day and was told “several vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights, or emergency signals.”
Gaza authorities previously reported that some of the victims had apparently survived the initial attack and were handcuffed and executed before being dumped together into a deep hole and buried along with their destroyed vehicles.
Survivors Munther Abed and Assad al-Nassasra testified “that Israeli soldiers opened fire on the rescue convoy as the aid workers exited their vehicles and approached the ambulance on foot,” according to the new investigation.
“Asaad recalled crawling toward an ambulance where two colleagues—Muhammad Bahloul and Saleh Muammar—had taken shelter,” the publication continues. “Muhammad had been killed, and Saleh was severely wounded. Muhammad al-Hila crawled up behind Asaad, and as the two men embraced, Muhammad was shot and killed.”
Autopsies revealed that some of the slain aid workers were shot in the chest and head, with one doctor who examined the bodies calling the “specific and intentional location of shots at close range” indicative of an “execution-style” killing.
Of the bodies found in the mass grave of victims, “one was beheaded,” according to PRCS spokesperson Mahmoud Basal, who said that “the least harmed among them had at least 20 bullets fired at him.”
Jonathan Whittall, who headed the UN humanitarian affairs coordination office in Palestine at the time, toldDrop Site Monday that “following our discovery of the mass grave, the narrative from Israeli forces shifted multiple times; we were fed several versions of a blatant lie.”
The IDF cover-up attempt was underway. The new investigation says that the IDF “deliberately concealed and disturbed evidence, and in the weeks after repeatedly mischaracterized the incident and denied any wrongdoing.”
Meanwhile, survivor al-Nassasra was captured by Israeli troops and taken to the Sde Teiman military prison in Israel’s Negev Desert, where he was jailed for 37 days and tortured during interrogations. Sde Teiman gained global infamy following reports of torture, rape, and murder of detainees. The IDF is investigating the deaths of at least 36 Palestinians at the lockup, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
Israeli soldiers pulled Abed, the other survivor, from his ambulance, bound his hands, beat him, and detained him on the ground near where the other vehicles had been ambushed. Abed testified that he was stripped, beaten, threatened with death, and interrogated before being released later that same day.
Katherine Gallagher, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, told Drop Site that the new investigation “presents a very compelling case, and honestly, a very devastating one.”
“What this investigation reveals is that there was a shoot first policy, and that is unlawful under international law,” she continued.
“When you zoom out and look at this in the context of the way the Israeli assault has been carried out over many months and years in Gaza and we see that there is a pattern and practice of attacks on medical personnel—similar to journalists and other groups that are explicitly and uniquely protected as classes of civilians in international humanitarian law—it raises even more questions and deep concern about the lack of accountability, because what we know is that impunity breeds repetition,” Gallagher added.
There has been no accountability for those who ordered, carried out, and tried to cover up the paramedic massacre, for the killers of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza—most of them women and children—or for the countless victims of Israeli arbitrary imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, and other thoroughly documented crimes.
Adding insult to injury, the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation—whose aid sites have been called “death traps” where more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed—established a distribution center atop the mass grave where the massacred paramedics were buried.
“Now, the US, under the so-called Board of Peace, plans to build a ‘New Rafah’ over this crime scene,” Whittall told Drop Site. “Without meaningful accountability, ‘New Rafah’ will be a monument to impunity.”
Genocide 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/O74hZCKKdpAKeir 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.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.
Police officers watch as people take part in a national march for Palestine on Whitehall in central London, January 18, 2025
CHRIS NINEHAM, who along with Ben Jamal, is one of the activists facing trial over a Gaza demo last year, talks to Ben Chacko about the state’s increasing use of force against peaceful protest, and the significance of increasing imperial aggression around the globe
ON MONDAY, protesters will rally outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court at 9am calling for all charges against Chris Nineham and Ben Jamal to be dropped.
The Defend the Right to Protest rally will be addressed by MPs including Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, trade union leaders including Fran Heathcote and Maryam Eslamdoust, and leading voices from the arts and entertainment world such as Brian Eno, Juliet Stevenson and Khalid Abdalla.
It’s the morning Nineham and Jamal face trial on charges relating to a protest over a year ago — the January 18 2025 national march for Palestine.
Police had imposed restrictions on the march, saying it could not proceed to lay flowers in memory of Gaza’s murdered children outside the BBC as planned. Instructions were confusing, with demonstrators told they could and could not be in certain parts of central London depending on the time. Mass arrests followed alleged breaches of these conditions and Jamal, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and Nineham, the chief steward of the march, found themselves charged with public order offences.
“This is only happening because of the restrictions put on this demonstration in particular and on Palestine demonstrations more generally,” Nineham explains.
“Since October 2023, we’ve seen an unprecedented change in the way peaceful protests are policed.
“I’ve been involved in organising demonstrations since the beginning of the century, and we’ve never had every single demo slapped with restrictions on where people can and can’t go.
“We’ve never had a situation where police are so intrusive on demos — looking not just at what placards people are holding but the T-shirts they’re wearing, the books that are on the stalls.
“This is political policing. And if police are the arbiters of where you can march, when you can march, how often you can march, which is in the pipeline — then you need state permission to demonstrate, and are approaching a situation where this isn’t a democracy at all, especially in association with all the cases around Palestine Action and the arrests there of people for holding the wrong placard and so on.”
Chris Nineham: “This is the most authoritarian government in living memory”
Genocide 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/O74hZCKKdpAKeir 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.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.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Israeli army conducts a raid into Yamun town with armored vehicles carrying out an operation at a house to detain a Palestinian in Jenin, West Bank on February 18, 2026. [Nedal Eshtayah – Anadolu Agency]
The Israeli army has detained more than 100 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a Palestinian rights group said Sunday, Anadolu reports.
Several women and children were among the detainees since Ramadan began on Feb. 18 in most provinces of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a statement.
The arrests were marked by “severe beating, organized acts of terrorism against detainees and their families, along with widespread sabotage and destruction of citizens’ homes, and confiscation of vehicles, money, and gold jewelry,” the group added.
More than 9,300 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, including 350 children, and they face torture, starvation, and medical neglect that has led to the deaths of dozens, according to Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations.
Israel has intensified operations in the occupied West Bank since launching its military campaign in Gaza on Oct. 8, 2023.
At least 1,117 Palestinians have been killed and around 11,500 others injured in attacks by the army and illegal settlers in the West Bank during that period.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide 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/O74hZCKKdpAKeir 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.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.
RENEGADE: Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary David Lammy on a visit to Downing Street briefing on Monday February 9 2026
