The UK ‘Labour party’ government is defending it’s decision to continue granting licences to sell F-35 fighter jet components and other weapons to Israel in the High Court tomorrow. I doubt that there’s any chance of arguing that it’s not genocide, the Israeli government has all but admitted it, proud to murder children and other civilians, attack hospitals, mass-murder journalists and health workers. I wonder if it will be covered by corporate media.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/huge-victory-democracy
Police officers and protesters clash in Trafalgar Square during a March for Palestine in London, October 14, 2023CAMPAIGNERS celebrated a ”huge victory for democracy” today after the Court of Appeal ruled key anti-protest legislation was forced through unlawfully.
The Home Office had appealed a High Court ruling that struck down laws brought in by the previous Tory government in 2023.
The measures expanded police powers to interfere with protests, lowering the threshold from what is considered “serious disruption” to community life, from “significant” and “prolonged” to “more than minor.”
Civil rights group Liberty challenged the law change, arguing that the measures had been voted down months earlier and that then home secretary Suella Braverman had used secondary legislation, which requires far less parliamentary scrutiny, to implement them.Ms Braverman used so-called “Henry VIII powers” to introduce the laws by clarifying the definition of “serious disruption” under the Public Order Act 1986.
Liberty argued that the broad redefinition of “serious disruption” effectively granted the police “almost unlimited powers to impose conditions on protests.”
The High Court ruled it unlawful last May, but the previous government initiated an appeal, which was continued by Labour after it came to power.
Upholding the ruling today, Lord Justice Underhill, Lord Justice Dingemans and Lord Justice Edis said that ”the term ’serious’ inherently connotes a high threshold … [and] cannot reasonably encompass anything that is merely ‘more than minor’.”
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/huge-victory-democracy
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and actor Ross Kemp join the national phone bank at the Labour Party headquarters in central London, during campaigning for tomorrow’s local elections, April 30, 2025LABOUR MPs, trade unions and campaigners called on the government to urgently change course today after Reform UK overturned the party’s majority of 15,000 to win the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by six votes for its candidate, former Conservative councillor Sarah Pochin.
Thursday’s local elections saw the far-right party also take their first mayoralty in Greater Lincolnshire for ex-Tory MP and minister Andrea Jenkyns, and come close seconds to Labour in three other mayoral races, as well as taking hundreds of council seats from the Tories and winning control of many councils.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer responded to the losses by saying ”I get it,” and pledged to go ”further and faster” in changing Britain.
But veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott said: ”Labour leadership is saying the party will go further and faster — in the same direction.
”They don’t seem to understand: it is our current direction that is the problem.”
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell MP said: ”The message to ministers is: drop plans to attack disabled people.”
And Labour MP for Leeds East Richard Burgon said that Labour’s defeat in Runcorn was ”entirely avoidable” and a ”direct result of the party leadership’s political choices.”
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-mps-urge-starmer-change-course-after-reform-takes-runcorn-safe-seat
Palestinian children receive donated food at a distribution center in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, April 21, 2025THE UNITED Nations emergency relief co-ordinator urged Israel today to lift its blockade of aid into the Gaza Strip, saying the halting of humanitarian aid amounts to “cruel collective punishment.”
Israel has blocked any humanitarian aid from entering the territory since it broke the ceasefire agreement with Hamas in March, throwing Gaza into what is believed to be the worst humanitarian crisis in nearly 19 months of bombings.
Israel claims that the blockade and its renewed military campaign are intended to pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages it still holds and to disarm.Israel’s latest destruction of Gaza followed Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack, in which the militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251.Hamas is still holding 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.As Israel continued its strikes on the Palestinian enclave, another 18 people were killed and dozens more were wounded, Gaza’s Health Ministry said today.
Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator, said today that while the hostages should be released and should never have been taken in the first place, international law mandates that Israel allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/un-calls-israel-lift-its-blockade-aid-gaza-and-end-cruel-collective-punishment
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/we-cannot-walk-we-witness-gaza-genocide
Heba Shakura mourns her son Islam Abu Mahdi who was killed in an Israeli army air strike, during his funeral at the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip, April 28, 2025THE final session of this year’s STUC passed seven motions in solidarity with the people of Palestine and Gaza today.
After attempts at compositing the motions failed, each passed individually, meaning the STUC will now call on the British government to end arms sales to Israel and the Scottish government to ensure no more Scottish Enterprise grants are handed over to weapons manufacturers.
More than £3 million of Scottish government cash has been handed over to manufacturers such as BAE Systems, Leonardo and Raytheon since 2023, while the firms continue to supply the Israeli military’s assault on Gaza. PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote told delegates: “We cannot be bystanders, we cannot walk by on the other side as we witness what is now widely accepted as a genocide. “The ICJ has ruled there is a plausible case, and Amnesty International have now confirmed that.“Fifty-eight years of illegal occupation, decades of settlement building, an ethnic cleansing, Israel’s Gaza onslaught has killed at least 60,000 people since 2023, and the Lancet has estimated the real figure could be 180,000 dead.
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/we-cannot-walk-we-witness-gaza-genocide