Climate activists from Greenpeace and Uplift during a demonstration outside the Scottish Court of Session, Edinburgh, on the first day of the Rosebank and Jackdaw judicial review hearing, November 12, 2024
CLIMATE campaigners slammed Tony Blair’s think tank today after it published a report advocating new oil-drilling projects which only “increase Shell and Equinor’s profits” and have nothing to do with our security.
The green energy advocacy group Uplift said that the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) was wrong again in its assessment of drilling projects in the Jackdaw gas field and the Rosebank oil field.
Uplift director Tessa Khan said the surge in energy prices due to the US war in Iran “does nothing to change the facts” and will not adequately address “the most pressing concern for the British public — how affordable our energy is.”
“The TBI has made previous calls to drill in the North Sea – and they were wrong then and they’re wrong now,” she said.
Ms Khan explained that Britain “has burned most of its gas and most of what is left in the North Sea is oil, the majority of which is exported.”
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsGreenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)Traitor Tony Blair receives the Congressional Gold Medal of Honour from George ‘Dubya’ Bush for being a good boy
Members of the National Education Union (NEU) hold a rally at Old Palace Yard, in Westminster, London, January 29, 2025
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It is no exaggeration to say, as National Education Union (NEU) leader Daniel Kebede does, that “the classroom has become the front line of every unresolved crisis in our society… hunger walks in with the children. Anxiety takes a seat at the back of the room.”
Schools are community hubs, and their intrinsic links across each community make teachers both receptive to local feeling and persuasive local voices.
So if a union the size of the NEU finds 65 per cent of its members who voted Labour less than two years ago would not do so again, MPs need to take note — especially since every opinion poll confirms this collapse in support for the party is general.
That it also found the most popular party among NEU members is now the Greens is another warning.
The conceit that the working class has nowhere else to go, that Labour can offend every one of its natural constituencies in turn while exclusively courting Tory — and more recently Reform UK — votes, should have died with the Scottish election wipeout of 2015, but remains the default setting of the zombie Blairites — whose long domination of the party has seen a steady decline in its vote, concealed at first by the initial size of the majorities that were shrinking but now threatening its future as a party of government. Peter Mandelson, a key author of that strategy, is gone: can the party escape his influence, and listen again to working-class people instead of the filthy rich?
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.Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage’s chasing the racist bigot vote.Keir starmer warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog.
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) speaks during a press conference with families of Americans killed by Israeli forces on September 16, 2025, in Washington DC. (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“We are witnessing the same genocidal playbook used against Palestinians in Gaza, now in Lebanon,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib said.
As Israel ramps up its devastating invasion of Lebanon, Rep. Rashida Tlaib has introduced legislation in the US House of Representatives aimed at blocking US support.
Israel’s latest onslaught against Lebanon, launched after the militant group Hezbollah retaliated against the joint US-Israeli attack against Iran at the end of February, has already killed more than 1,100 people, including at least 121 children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Many pieces of civilian infrastructure—including hospitals, schools, and residential buildings—have been attacked, and Israel has issued forced evacuation orders that have led more than 1 million people to be displaced from their homes.
“Thousands of families in our district with strong ties to Lebanon are living through immense pain,” said Tlaib, who represents a district that includes parts of Detroit and surrounding suburbs. “Many have lost loved ones, watched their grandparents’ towns and villages be completely destroyed, and seen relatives uprooted from their homes, not knowing if they will ever be able to return.”
Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, introduced two resolutions on Friday. The first calls on the US to use its leverage to end Israel’s land and air assaults against Lebanese territory, denounce efforts at territorial expansion, and investigate alleged crimes against humanity.
The second, cosponsored by Reps. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) and Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), is a war powers resolution that would require President Donald Trump to remove US forces from participation in all military actions in Lebanon that have not been authorized by Congress.
I'm introducing two resolutions standing with the people of Lebanon against the U.S.-backed Israeli invasion. The first resolution calls on the United States to force an end to the Israeli military invasion, reject threats of the illegal occupation of Lebanese territory,… pic.twitter.com/qgrtNhOkxq
— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) March 27, 2026
In recent days, Israel has expanded its ground operation, aiming to control the entire territory south of the Litani River indefinitely. Leaders of the military campaign, such as Defense Minister Israel Katz, have suggested using the genocidal war in Gaza as a “model” for Lebanon, including the full destruction of residential areas.
“We are witnessing the same genocidal playbook used against Palestinians in Gaza, now in Lebanon,” Tlaib said. “Israeli leaders are openly celebrating it. This ethnic cleansing campaign is only possible because of US support, funded by our tax dollars. We must act now to stop these crimes against humanity and illegal invasion of Lebanon.”
Nathan Thompson, a senior analyst at Just Foreign Policy, which advised Tlaib on the legislation, told Common Dreams that although the US military and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are “deeply operationally integrated, and have only become more so since October 7, 2023,” the extent of direct US involvement in Lebanon has been kept secret from the public.
“Military officials wouldn’t say whether or not they provided targeting assistance for Israel’s airstrikes on Hezbollah in 2024, and that’s exactly the type of action Congress has considered to be unauthorized ‘hostilities’ under the War Powers Act in the past,” Thompson said.
However, he said, “We know that the IDF and the US military are linked at the hip—on weapons sales, missile defense, targeting assistance, everything.”
Tlaib’s resolutions come as another war powers resolution to limit Trump’s ability to launch more attacks against Iran appears to have gained enough support to pass the House, although Democratic leadership has chosen to delay the vote until mid-April despite warnings that Trump may soon dramatically escalate the war, including with US ground troops.
That bill remains viable due to limited Republican support, including from Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.), Warren Davidson (Ohio), and Nancy Mace (SC). While Massie has been a consistent anti-war vote, it’s unclear whether other Republicans, as well as some pro-Israel Democrats, would similarly sign onto a resolution concerning Lebanon.
Thompson said the Lebanon-related legislation is an “urgently necessary tool to end US complicity” as Israeli officials are “talking about functionally annexing southern Lebanon and recreating Gaza-level destruction there.”
He said, “A war powers vote forces all of Congress to go on the record: Do you want the US to enable this genocide, or not?”
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.
Tony Blair’s think tank and consulting firm is proving to be highly influential with Labour in government | (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Exclusive: Tech firms such as TBI are embedding staff in government, sparking fears AI policy is being ‘outsourced’
The Tony Blair Institute and the Ellison Institute of Technology sent senior staff members to work in the government department tasked with developing AI policy, openDemocracy can reveal.
UK tech firm Faculty, which has links to the TBI, also embedded a member of staff in the Department of Science, Information and Technology (DSIT).
In one case, the TBI hired a senior civil servant tasked with leading the government’s AI programme, then seconded them straight back to their old job in the department – a potential loophole in rules intended to stop former civil servants from using their connections to lobby old colleagues.
In another, a different TBI staffer wrote on LinkedIn that he had played a key role in drafting the government’s flagship AI Opportunities Action Plan, its far-reaching blueprint for AI policy, during an 11-month secondment to DSIT.
The government is not required to declare secondments, meaning there is no public record of the companies that gain significant access and influence through these arrangements – nor the policies their secondees advocate for.
But openDemocracy has found that arms firms Thales and Qinetiq, tech consultancy Capgemini, and pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca have also sent staff members to work in DSIT.
Responding to our findings, Kamila Kingstone, programme lead at said: “When individuals with close ties to vested commercial interests are embedded at the heart of policymaking, it creates real risks of conflicts of interest. It enables Big Tech to capture and help set the very rules that should regulate it.
“At a minimum, the government should publish annually a list of who has been brought in on secondment, their conflicts of interest, and any mitigations in place. At a time when public trust in politics is at rock bottom, the government should be going the extra mile to be sure it is transparent about who is influencing policy behind the scenes”
Green Party deputy leader Rachel Millward told openDemocracy: “Starmer’s Labour Party has no values or vision, so it has outsourced its policy development process to corporate interests. Unethical companies have funnelled dirty money through ‘think tanks’ and agencies to shape the government’s positions in favour of Big Tech.”
A government spokesperson told openDemocracy: “We make no apologies for bringing cutting-edge expertise from UK academia and industry into the heart of Government.”
‘Smooth transition’
Dr Laura Gilbert left her position as the director of the UK government’s Incubator for Artificial Intelligence programme in December 2024, ending a four-year career in the heart of government.
Less than four weeks later, she was back in the Department of Science, Information and Technology – the department tasked not only with developing the regulation of AI tech in the wider economy but also with its rollout across government.
This time, though, Gilbert was not on the civil service payroll, but working for the Tony Blair Institute, a consultancy founded by the former Labour prime minister to advise governments on various policy areas – particularly tech – and the Ellison Institute of Technology, an organisation founded by US billionaire tech mogul Larry Ellison, reportedly the world’s second-richest man.
The two firms had recruited her to run their joint AI for Government project before immediately seconding her back to her old office.
Gilbert’s secondment suggests a loophole in the business appointment rules, which state that senior civil servants leaving government to work in the private sector should “not become personally involved in lobbying the UK government on behalf of your new employer and/or its clients” for two years.
But there is no rule preventing their new employers from sending them straight back to work in government, where they can directly influence policy.
Gilbert told openDemocracy she was sent back to the department “to support the smooth transition of my dedicated and talented technical AI team into DSIT… working with my (interim) replacement to hand over for a short period via a secondment from the Ellison Institute”.
The TBI said Gilbert had “agreed to help oversee the transfer of her team into DSIT”, while the Ellison Institute did not respond to a request for comment.
After four months, Gilbert left DSIT again to take up her current role as head of AI in the TBI. But openDemocracy has uncovered that her secondment is part of a broader pattern of tech firms sending staff to shape Labour’s tech policy – a pattern that began when the party was still seen as the government-in-waiting.
In 2023, the Tony Blair Institute paid for Labour’s shadow tech secretary, Peter Kyle, to travel to Brussels to attend its programme on science and tech policy. The following year, he visited the US on a trip paid for by Lord Sainsbury, a Labour donor, and consulting firm Hakluyt & Company, which has interests in AI through an investment fund. There, Kyle met with tech giants, including Ellison’s Oracle.
Kyle also benefited from tech companies seconding staff to him. During the 2024 election campaign, Faculty, a company that provides software and consultancy on AI, sent a staff member to support his work.
While Labour reported that the staffer was in Kyle’s office on one day a week for two months, it valued the arrangement – a donation-in-kind – at £36,000. Based on a standard seven or eight-hour working day, this suggests their hourly salary was around £600.
Tech consulting firm Public Digital also seconded a senior member of staff to work for Kyle before the election. Emily Middleton, the staffer in question, was later brought into DSIT as a senior civil servant on a salary of between £125,000 and £208,000 after Kyle was appointed to lead it. She had previously been seconded to Labour Together.
In October 2024, Faculty sent a mid-level staffer to Kyle’s Department of Science, Innovation and Technology on a four-month secondment. It is not clear whether this was the same person who had been seconded to Kyle’s office earlier in the year.
Faculty has grown its government business since Labour took office, including winning its two largest ever public contracts: a £6m deal with the Department for Education and another worth £4.5m with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
The government declined to answer openDemocracy’s questions on the nature of the Faculty staffer’s work, while the firm did not respond to our request for comment.
The following month, in November 2024, the Tony Blair Institute paid for its senior policy adviser, Tom Westgarth, to be installed in DSIT.
Westgarth remained in the department for 11 months, with his LinkedIn page suggesting he held significant influence over public AI policy. It says he advised the government “on delivering the AI [Opportunities] Action Plan” and provided “strategic steer across a range of AI Action Plan priorities”.
“Labour are currently doing everything they possibly can to bring predatory Big Tech into the UK economy, on Big Tech’s terms,” said Jim Killock, the executive director at Open Rights Group. “They have collapsed competition regulation, shifted data protection to favour business needs over personal data, and promised Big Tech all the help they need to establish themselves at every level of government.
“Adding in senior officials who know how to do Big Tech’s bidding is just one more sign that the UK is being asset-stripped and locked into a future of permanent rent extraction by Big Tech. There is an alternative – a strategy for digital sovereignty that prioritises UK open source. We won’t get that by asking staff from the TBI and Ellison Institute to help write UK tech policy.”
A government spokesperson said: “We make no apologies for bringing cutting-edge expertise from UK academia and industry into the heart of government. We are determined to drive momentum on policies supporting some of the most important research and technologies of the future, by drawing on Britain’s wealth of science and tech expertise, and our secondment schemes are a key part of this.
“This government is a champion for our science and technology sectors across the board – not individual companies. The usual propriety and ethics rules apply for all of our secondees.”
The TBI said: “Tom Westgarth’s secondment is public knowledge, he announced it at the time.”
Keir Starmer explains that UK is participating defensively in Trump and Israel’s criminal war for Israel’s genocidal expansion in Iran and states that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Starmer said it here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/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.Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefiting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity.
Former Labour Party leader co-founder and leader, Jeremy Corbyn, takes part in the protest against the war with Iran in Parliament Square, as the USA and Israel launch attacks on Iran. Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
“Blair dragged the UK into an illegal war that triggered a spiral of hatred, conflict, and misery,” Corbyn said. “Twenty-three years later, another Labour prime minister is doing his best to follow in Blair’s footsteps.”
As UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer allows British bases to be used as part of the US-Israeli war against Iran, the former leader of his Labour Party says he’s making the same mistake that another Labour PM made 23 years ago.
Jeremy Corbyn, the socialist member of Parliament who led Labour from 2015 to 2020, said on Tuesday that Starmer was “echoing Tony Blair’s obedience to Washington”, referring to the then-prime minister’s decision in 2003 to join US President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.
“Ignoring the wisdom of ordinary people who could see the catastrophe ahead, Blair dragged the UK into an illegal war that triggered a spiral of hatred, conflict, and misery. More than a million Iraqi men, women, and children paid the price.” Corbyn wrote in a Tuesday piece for the democratic socialist publication Tribune.
Infamously pledging to Bush, “I will be with you, whatever,” Blair helped to promote the false claims that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. And despite a lack of support from the United Nations, he joined Bush’s “coalition of the willing,” committing 46,000 British troops to the war.
“This was the last time a Labour prime minister blindly backed the wishes of the US and its warmongering president,” Corbyn said. “Twenty-three years later, another Labour prime minister is doing his best to follow in Blair’s footsteps and drag us into a catastrophic, illegal war.”
Unlike Bush, US President Donald Trump has not yet put boots on the ground in Iran, instead waging a destructive campaign of aerial bombings and missile strikes that have taken out the nation’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other senior Iranian officials.
As of Monday, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a US-based monitor of human rights in Iran, reported that at least 742 civilians had been killed since Saturday by US and Israeli attacks, with nearly 1,000 injured and more than 600 deaths still under review.
While Starmer has stressed that the UK “had no role” in launching the war, he has lent credence to the questionable case the US and Israel have made to justify it, including emphasizing that Iran “must never have nuclear weapons.”
Iran has always contended its nuclear program was not for military purposes, and it had no desire to produce a nuclear weapon. Prior to Saturday’s strikes, reports indicated that Iranian negotiators had offered to give up the nation’s entire stockpile of enriched uranium.
And though he has accused Iran of launching “indiscriminate strikes” across the Gulf, Starmer has been reticent to criticize similar actions by the US and Israel, which have had vastly larger death tolls, including the bombing of a girls’ school that reportedly killed 165 people, most of them girls between ages 7 and 12, and attacks on several hospitals.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says that “Britain will not” join forces with strikes on Iran carried out by the US and Israel.
The UK is allowing American forces to use its bases in the region to help launch attacks, but stresses the UK military will only act defensively. pic.twitter.com/8fqPOxPLMp
One day after the first strikes were conducted, and following mounting pressure from Trump, Starmer announced that he’d given the US approval for “specific, limited defensive” use of three Royal Air Force (RAF) bases—Fairford in England, Akrotiri in Cyprus, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean—in order to destroy Iran’s missiles “at source” after a drone hit Akrotiri, causing minimal damage.
However, Starmer continued to claim that the UK had learned the “mistakes of Iraq,” and “will not join offensive action now.”
Corbyn said that Starmer’s insistence that bases would only be used “defensively” was merely “meaningless vocabulary that reveals Starmer’s contempt for the intelligence of the British people.”
In Parliament on Monday, Starmer said that “the use of the bases is to allow the US to use its ability to take out the ability of Iran to launch the attacks in the first place.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday used similar reasoning to justify launching the war, explaining that Iran was likely to retaliate against a planned Israeli attack and that it therefore posed an “imminent threat” to US personnel even though that threat was contingent on Israel attacking first.
Corbyn described the idea of a “preemptive strike” as a contradiction in terms. “Under this convoluted reasoning,” he said, “almost any attack on anybody can be classified as a defensive measure. Starmer’s words are Newspeak—and cannot shield his government from complicity in the devastation ahead.”
Mark my words: Starmer’s decision to drag Britain into another illegal war will prove to be a catastrophic, historic mistake. pic.twitter.com/2iSFpnDHdw
Like in the United States, the British public has expressed low support for American and Israeli actions against Iran. According to a YouGov poll published on Monday, 49% disapprove of US military action, compared to 28% who support it. Fewer than 1 in 5 Labour voters said they supported it.
Voters also said they oppose their government’s involvement. Compared with just 32% of Brits who said they supported letting the US use British bases, 50% said they opposed it.
“For too long, Britain has blindly followed the US as it indulges in disastrous imperial fantasies,” Corbyn said, noting the UK’s continued support for Israel over two years of US-sponsored genocide in Gaza.
Corbyn is now an independent MP who co-founded a new political party after being thrown out of Labour in 2020 over dubious accusations of antisemitism, which he has alleged stem from his strong criticism of Israel.
“It’s time to forge a different path. Now is not the time to try to rescue a ‘special relationship’ characterised by impunity, genocide, and war,” he said. “Now is the time to forge an independent foreign policy based on international law and peace.”
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.Donald Trump explains why he established his Bored of PeaceOrcas discuss rotting brain. Front Orca says “Wish someone would lock him up”.
Members of the National Education Union (NEU) hold a rally at Old Palace Yard, in Westminster, London, January 29, 2025
