People take part in a Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally in Lewisham, south-east London, May 2, 2026
CAMPAIGNERS have hit back at Sir Keir Starmer’s latest threats to ban some pro-Palestine marches, saying restrictions would “strike at the root of free assembly and free speech.”
The Prime Minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today on Saturday “there are instances” in which he supports a moratorium on peace demonstrations.
“I think it’s time to look across the board at protests and the cumulative effect,” he said. “I think it’s time for, I would say, some people protesting to just reflect on what the Jewish community is going through and the overall impact that this is having.”
Stop the War coalition co-founder John Rees said the PM’s comments were a “threat” to the massive marches the coalition has helped organise since the start of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
A ban would “strike at the root of free assembly and free speech in this country,” he told Sky News.
He also warned the PM against “completely fallacious” conflations of pro-Palestine demonstrations and attacks on Jewish people, such as last week’s knife attack in Golders Green.
Mr Rees said of the man charged with three counts of attempted murder after last Wednesday’s north London stabbing: “These kinds of individuals are not attached to the Palestine movement.
“They are not attached to the marches. There’s no evidence that they’ve ever seen a march, let alone been on one, or that the organisers would for a second condone it.
“We have to be absolutely clear here, there is no threat whatsoever to the Jewish community from these marches.
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Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel (C) takes part in the “Anti-Imperialist” protest in front of the US Embassy against the US incursion in Venezuela, where 32 Cuban soldiers lost their lives, in Havana on January 16, 2026. (Photo by Yamil Lage/ POOL / AFP via Getty Images)
After the US president again threatened invasion, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez said he would only “find a people determined to defend sovereignty and independence in every inch of the national territory.”
President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez of Cuba on Saturday responded with stark and defiant words to the latest attacks coming from US President Donald Trump, who on Friday signed a new executive order authorizing even more aggressive sanctions against the island nation and later threatened to invade the country.
“The President of the United States escalates his threats of military aggression against Cuba to a dangerous and unprecedented scale,” said Díaz-Canel in a statement. “The international community must take note and, together with the people of the United States, determine whether such a drastic criminal act will be allowed to satisfy the interests of a small but wealthy and influential group, driven by desires for revenge and domination.”
“No aggressor, no matter how powerful, will find surrender in Cuba,” he added. If Trump were to attack the country, the Cuban president said, “he will find a people determined to defend sovereignty and independence in every inch of the national territory.”
“What does ‘No Kings’ mean when one man can snap his fingers and kill innocent Cubans on a whim?”
In addition “to blocking the US assets of foreign individuals and entities operating in Cuba’s energy, defense, financial services, metals, mining, and security sectors, as well as anyone acting on behalf of the Cuban government,” as Drop Site News notes, Friday’s executive order also “authorizes sanctions on foreign financial institutions that conduct significant transactions with designated Cuban entities, potentially cutting them off from US correspondent banking.”
As such, the outlet continued, the new sanctions “could further isolate Cuba from the international financial system, limit foreign investment, and exacerbate the island’s already severely restricted access to medicine, food imports, and basic goods.”
In addition to the signed executive order, Trump said during a Friday campaign-style event in Florida that the US “will be taking [Cuba] over almost immediately.”
Upon their return from Iran, where Trump has waged a deeply unpopular war, the US president told the crowd, “We’ll have maybe the USS Lincoln [aircraft carrier] come in offshore, and they’ll give up.”
In a floor speech earlier this week, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) rebuked the Trump administration for the humanitarian disaster it has unleashed in Cuba, which follows what he described as a “failed” policy towards the island country over decades.
As Trump ramps up his threats of war against Cuba, we must understand what led us to this point: 65 years of a bankrupt Cuba policy.
If we want to avoid war with Cuba, we must rein in this lawless President & learn from the failed, bipartisan policies that led us to this point. pic.twitter.com/H9MqviSe6d
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) April 30, 2026
“If we want to avoid war with Cuba,” said Van Hollen, “we must rein in this lawless president and learn from the failed, bipartisan policies that led us to this point.”
David Adler, the co-general coordinator of Progressive International, condemned the relative silence of US opponents to the Trump administration, who have not done, in his mind, nearly enough to challenge the blockade or condemn the administration’s repeated and ongoing threats to invade the island nation or overthrow its government.
“ Donald Trump has given [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio the green light to annihilate a peaceful nation and its people—and the ‘resistance’ is silent,” said Adler. “What does ‘No Kings’ mean when one man can snap his fingers and kill innocent Cubans on a whim?”
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Cubans hold a banner reading, “Knock Down the Blockade” during an International Workers’ Day rally near the US Embassy in Havana on May 1, 2026. (Photo by Magdalena Chodownik/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The president’s latest aggression toward Cuba comes amid his repeated threats to “take” the island.
Citing Cuba’s ties with its ally Iran, President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order expanding the already crippling US sanctions regime against Cuban officials, as the US administration has the island in its crosshairs after ousting Venezuela’s socialist leader.
Trump’s executive order cites highly dubious “national security threats posed by the communist Cuban regime,” including Havana’s alignment “with countries and malign actors hostile to the United States.”
The directive “imposes new sanctions on entities, persons, or affiliates that support the Cuban regime’s security apparatus, are complicit in government corruption or serious human rights violations, or are agents, officials, or material supporters of the Cuban government,” without identifying any of the affected groups or individuals.
🇨🇺 Trump signs executive order dramatically escalating "sanctions" on Cuba, targeting energy, finance, and security sectors
President Trump signed an executive order Friday, marking one of the most sweeping expansions of US economic pressure on Cuba in decades, blocking the US… pic.twitter.com/5d1mSc3We6
For 65 years, the US has imposed an economic embargo on Cuba that has adversely affected all sectors of the socialist island’s economy and severely limited Cubans’ access to basic necessities including food, fuel, healthcare, and medicines—with disastrous results. The Cuban government claims the blockade cost the country’s economy nearly $5 billion in just one 11-month period in 2022-23 alone. United Nations member states have perennially—and overwhelmingly—condemned the embargo.
The Trump administration also imposed a fuel blockade and reinstated Cuba on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list, from which former President Joe Biden removed the country before leaving office in 2021. Cuba was initially added to the list during the Reagan administration amid a decadeslong campaign of US-backed Cuban exile terrorism, failed assassination attempts, economic warfare, and covert operations large and small in a futile effort to overthrow the revolutionary government of longtime leader Fidel Castro.
Cuba says US-backed terrorism has killed or wounded more than 5,000 Cubans and cost its economy billions of dollars.
The Cuban government—which was celebrating International Workers’ Day on Friday—did not immediately respond to the expanded sanctions.
Experts warned that the new sanctions are worryingly broad, with Georgetown Law visiting scholar Peter Harrell writing on X that “basically any non-US person or company doing any business in/with Cuba could be sanctioned.”
Harrell noted that the edict “gives the Trump administration a fair amount of easy-to-deploy firepower to drive remaining international businesses out of Cuba.”
“The questions will be in implementation,” he added. “For example, will Trump sanction a Chinese firm installing renewable energy in Cuba?”
Trump’s edict comes months after the president ordered the invasion of Venezuela and abduction of socialist President Nicolás Maduro and amid the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran, the 10th country bombed during the course of Trump’s two terms in office.
Trump last month declared that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” referring to war on Iran that’s left thousands of people dead or wounded, including hundreds of children. The president has also said that he believes he’ll “be having the honor of taking Cuba,” language echoing the 19th century US imperialists who conquered the island along with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain in another war waged on dubious pretense.
“Whether I free it, take it—I think I can do anything I want,” Trump said of the island and its 11 million inhabitants.
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Demonstrators attend a May Day rally marking International Workers’ Day in New York, on May 1, 2026. (Photo by Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images)
“During the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations, we showed what we’re against. May Day is the day we’re making clear what we are fighting for,” said one organizer.
In thousands of locations across the United States, workers and students are taking off from work and school and swearing off shopping on Friday as part of a national May Day protest.
May Day Strong, a coalition of activist groups and unions organizing the events, said more than 4,000 actions, from marches to pickets to displays of peaceful civil disobedience, were underway.
It is yet another nationwide display of coordinated resistance to the Trump administration’s agenda, including its war in Iran and its use of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to attack immigrant communities, issues that were at the forefront of March’s “No Kings” protests.
Six young protesters with the Sunrise Movement were taken into custody after blocking a bridge in Minneapolis in what they said was an act of “nonviolent noncooperation” to “stand up to the war in Iran and against ICE terrorizing our neighbors and our cities.”
Dozens more Sunrise protesters in Portland held a sit-in in the lobby of a Hilton hotel that was housing top officials with the Department of Homeland Security, leading to eight arrests.
“It’s May 1st, it’s workers’ day,” one of the protesters was recorded saying while being led away by police. “Don’t forget that you have power.”
In New York, over 100 activists lined up outside every entrance to the New York Stock Exchange in downtown Manhattan, banging drums and chanting “No ICE, no war!” where they were met by a flood of cops.
“The rich get richer off the backs of poor and working class people.” A May Day protester outside the NY Stock Exchange calls for taxing the rich to fund healthcare and support for the most vulnerable.
In the spirit of May Day, a global day of solidarity among workers, Sulma Arias, the executive director of the social justice organization People’s Action, said Friday’s “Workers Over Billionaires” protests are just as much about confronting injustices as about building an alternative.
“During the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations, we showed what we’re against. May Day is the day we’re making clear what we are fighting for,” Arias said. “We are for affordable housing for low-income people. We are for free healthcare for all. We are for utility laws that ensure every home stays warm in the winter and cool in the summer at costs that a person on a fixed income can afford. We are for the right to a fair and equal vote for Americans from every race and in every state. May Day is our day to assert and defend our rights.”
“They want us afraid. They want us divided. But on May 1, we refuse.”
Despite claims by President Donald Trump that the US is entering an economic “golden age” under his leadership, a Gallup poll released this week found that 55% of Americans said their finances were getting worse, the highest number ever recorded in more than 20 years of polling, and even higher than in the doldrums of the Great Recession.
"Workers over billionaires!"
Chicago Teachers Union president @stacydavisgates urges workers to take back their power to assemble at the city's May Day rally.
A coalition of labor unions across several major cities, including Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles, has coordinated what has been called an “economic blackout,” which includes avoiding buying from private sector retailers.
“When we say ‘workers over billionaires,’ ‘billionaires’ is not just this amorphous figure, right? They’re real people,” said Jana Korn, the chief of staff for the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO, in an interview with The Real News Network. “In Philadelphia, we’re kind of a poor city. We don’t have that many billionaires, but we have one. The CEO of Comcast is the only billionaire that lives in the city.”
“So why should we, as a city, accept that they take and take from us? And then with that money, what do they do? They donate to Trump’s ballroom project,” she continued. “People in Philadelphia are struggling… Our transportation system barely works. We’re at risk of having 17 schools close down this year.”
Some labor organizers have described economic boycotts, undertaken as part of prior mass protest movements against the second Trump administration, as an act of building strength for something larger, such as a future general strike.
“I think really for us in the labor movement,” Korn said, “[the boycott is] about how do we build the capacity to really disrupt, to strike when necessary, to shut things down when we have to. And that’s something that we have not been called to do as a labor movement in a very long time.”
Happy #MayDay!☀️✊ It's a good day to speak out and show the power of working people.
Across the country, union nurses are standing up to say:
🧊 Abolish ICE, 💣 Stop war, ❌ End harm, and 🏥 Fund care!
— National Nurses United (@NationalNurses) May 1, 2026
Other unions have used May Day to confront their own employers directly. In New Orleans, hundreds of nurses at University Medical Center announced that they were beginning a five-day strike after attempting to negotiate a contract for more than two years.
In New York City, Amazon workers unionized with the Teamsters assembled on the steps of the public library before marching to Amazon’s corporate offices to demand the company cut its contracts with ICE, which has used its cloud computing services to target immigrants, including some Amazon workers and contractors.
Matt Multari, who has worked as an Amazon driver for a year and a half, told Mother Jones that he joined the protest to “demand the one thing that’s worth fighting for in this life: respect.”
Masih Fouladi, executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center, said, “May Day is a moment of reckoning.”
“Immigrant communities—from farmworkers in our fields to nurses in our hospitals, from refugees fleeing war to families who have built their lives here for generations—are under siege,” she said. “They want us afraid. They want us divided. But on May 1, we refuse.”
“Workers and immigrants—documented and undocumented, native-born and newly arrived,” she said, “will stand together in the streets because we know the truth: there is no workers’ rights without immigrant rights, and there is no justice for working people here while our tax dollars fund devastation abroad.”
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Keir Starmer speaks during a press conference – WPA Pool/Getty Images
Plus, the firm’s former boss Varun Chandra is entitled to six-figure payout, despite working for Starmer
A secretive corporate intelligence firm with close ties to the government saw its UK revenues surge by 30% in the first financial year after its managing partner left to become Keir Starmer’s most senior business adviser, openDemocracy can reveal.
Varun Chandra left Hakluyt & Company, a Mayfair-based firm that provides strategic advice to some of the world’s largest corporations on navigating governments and geopolitical risk, to join Starmer’s government in July 2024.
In January the following year, Hakluyt lost another senior staff member to the government: embattled former civil servant Olly Robbins quit as the firm’s lead on Europe, the Middle East and Africa to join the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
Despite these top personnel losses, Hakluyt’s UK business grew by 30% in the year to July 2025, according to our analysis of its financial records. This is its second-highest rate of annual growth in the UK in the six years since it started publishing regional breakdowns of its turnover.
The financial records also reveal that Chandra’s multimillion-pound stake in Hakluyt entitled him to a payout of around £112,000 last year, while he was serving at the heart of Downing Street. In 2024, it was reported that Chandra would get rid of his shareholdings in the company in order to join the government.
openDemocracy understands that Chandra’s shareholding is now around half its original size, in line with an agreement that will see the firm gradually buy back his shares at their July 2024 value.
While his stake is still being reduced, Chandra is eligible for annual payouts. Both Number 10 and Hakluyt both declined to comment on whether he accepted the money.
Our findings led Green Party leader Zack Polanski to call for an investigation into Labour’s relationship with Hakluyt & Company.
“This is yet another revelation raising serious questions about Labour’s cosy relationship with big business,” Polanski said. “Bringing a senior figure from an elite corporate intelligence firm into the heart of government is deeply concerning.
“When companies built on privileged access to political and regulatory insight appear to benefit from close ties to those in office, it undermines public trust.
“The public deserve proper answers. Labour’s relationship with Hakluyt, before and after the election, should be investigated. The revolving door between big business and Westminster is still spinning – and it’s a system a Green government would work to dismantle.”
Growing links to government
Hakluyt & Company is an elite corporate intelligence and strategic advisory firm founded by outgoing MI6 operatives in the mid-1990s, which serves some of the biggest companies in the world across most sectors, and works with major private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds.
The firm has developed an unrivalled network of thousands of contacts, having hired from the top ranks of government, intelligence services, banking and industry over the past three decades. It uses this vast network to produce reports for its clients, often on highly sensitive issues involving political and regulatory matters.
But rarely has the company had such a close connection to a sitting government as it enjoys under Starmer’s Labour.
Hakluyt reportedly worked unpaid with the party when it was in opposition before the 2024 election, helping its leadership to connect with the corporate elite, particularly in finance and tech.
A Harvard Business School case study written about Hakluyt, based on extensive internal access through 2023 – and whose author took up a paid role with the firm after its publication – noted Chandra’s close relationship to Labour’s leadership, and that colleagues widely expected him to pursue a career in government.
After Labour’s win, Chandra, the company’s managing director, was appointed Starmer’s top business adviser, and his influence has only grown since. He was recently appointed US trade envoy and has been involved with US trade talks, despite having worked for several years in Hakluyt’s US offices, where his clients likely included American big tech and finance firms.
Last year, Oliver Robbins also left Hakluyt to rejoin the civil service after a six-year hiatus, taking up the most senior civil service position in the Foreign Office in January 2025. Months earlier, it had been reported that Robbins had also applied to become cabinet secretary, the most senior civil service role in government.
Before joining Hakluyt in 2023, Robbins had worked at Goldman Sachs and, before that, was the government’s deputy national security adviser and Europe adviser. He maintained contact with senior government officials while at Hakluyt, meeting with the top civil servant at the Department of Business and Trade, Gareth Davies, on several occasions, as well as current cabinet secretary Antonia Romeo and officials from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, according to government transparency releases.
As Hakluyt’s connections to the government have grown, so has its business in the UK.
Accounts published this month show the firm turned over almost £150m last financial year, of which more than £60m was attributed to its UK operation. This was up from just over £130m turnover in 2024, with around £46m of that from the UK.
The company’s overall profits also increased, from £20m to £24m, though the firm does not publish a regionalised breakdown of its profits.
The last financial year is the only year in the past six where Hakluyt’s growth in the UK and Europe has significantly outpaced that in the US, and the only year in which it has significantly grown as a share of overall revenue.
Asked whether the firm has sought or received information from either Chandra or Robbins since they left the business, Hakluyt declined to comment. Downing Street sources pushed back against any suggestion that Chandra had shared information with the firm since leaving. openDemocracy reached out to Robbins for comment but had not heard back at the time of publishing.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: “The Cabinet Office has a thorough process on declarations of interest for special advisers to ensure any conflicts of interest are properly managed and mitigated, including through recusals where appropriate.
“While we do not usually comment on individuals, Varun Chandra resigned from his position at Hakluyt and has made all relevant declarations as part of this process.”
‘Weak lobbying rules’
As Hakluyt is not a consultant lobbyist, it is not required to publish a list of clients, despite maintaining regular contact with top-ranking officials across government and previously meeting with ministers, including with its clients.
The now-defunct ‘revolving door’ watchdog Acoba commented that this makes it impossible to assess potential conflicts of interest when people move between government and the company.
Though it is not strictly a lobbying firm, like many firms operating in the wider consulting and advisory industry, some of Hakluyt’s work brings it into contact with the government in a way that resembles lobbying.
Hakluyt was investigated by the lobbying watchdog last year over meetings hosted by Chandra with Conservative ministers dating back to 2022. The watchdog found its activities did not meet the statutory definition of consultant lobbying – a narrow definition with a number of exemptions, including for companies that carry out lobbying which is “incidental” to their primary business.
Kamila Kingstone, programme lead at Spotlight on Corruption, is one of many campaigners who has called for far-reaching lobbying reform, including an overhaul of the current consultant lobbying definition.
“Despite representing clients’ interests, the fact that Haklyut can meet senior officials without having to register as a consultant lobbyist shows yet again the weakness of the lobbying rules,” she told openDemocracy.
“There are serious risks that Haklyut could be financially benefiting from the revolving door between itself and the government. And there are serious questions to answer about how Varun Chandra’s conflicts of interest are being managed and mitigated.”
Kingstone also highlighted the government transparency rules, which mean special advisers, even those with significant influence like Chandra, do not have to declare their meetings with external companies.
“This story highlights the most glaring loophole, that meetings with special advisers do not need to appear in transparency releases or the lobbying register so the public do not know who is meeting some of the most influential people in government,” she added.
“With the Ethics and Integrity Commission conducting a review of lobbying rules, the government needs to get a grip on the dire state lobbying transparency in the UK before the next scandal breaks.”
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People take part in a Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally in Lewisham, south-east London, May 2, 2026
