Children playing football on the street in Luton, August 1, 2025
MINISTERS were urged to go further to tackle child poverty as MPs voted on lifting the two-child benefit cap today.
Labour has faced calls since they came to power in summer 2024 to scrap the Tory policy that restricts child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in most households.
Seven Labour MPs were suspended by the party after a backing an SNP motion to scrap the welfare measure in a vote in Parliament that year.
The government had at the time cited spending controls as a reason for not being able to ditch the policy immediately, indicating there would be no change without economic growth.
But following repeated calls from charities, campaigners and many of the party’s own MPs, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in the autumn Budget last year that the government would move to scrap the policy from April.
Addressing the Commons for the second reading of the Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill today, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said that the policy used children as pawns and was “all about the politics of dividing lines” between the “deserving and undeserving poor.”
But Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside Kim Johnson said that she feared the Bill to remove the cap would never have happened without the campaigning of the End Child Poverty Coalition (ECPC) and National Education Union (NEU).
She said: “It’s a shame that it has taken so long to reverse this draconian cap that was driving hundreds of families into poverty every single month.
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.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 benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.
Plans to delay access to the universal credit health element until age 22 have triggered fierce opposition from disabled people’s groups, who warn it would deepen poverty and entrench discrimination against young disabled people under the guise of ‘encouraging work.’ DYLAN MURPHY reports
IN A MOVE that has sent shockwaves through disabled communities across the country, the Labour government is considering a policy that would slash vital financial support for young disabled people aged 18 to 21.
As the campaign group Benefits and Work has pointed out, “One of the proposals in the Pathways to Work green paper was to delay access to the UC [universal credit] health element until age 22, meaning that younger people would not be eligible. The claim is that this would make it less likely that young people would be trapped in a life on benefits. The proposal is pencilled in for 2027/28.”
This has sparked a firestorm of criticism from disabled people’s organisations (DPOs), which warn of a “devastating financial impact” that will push a vulnerable generation further into poverty and away from the very employment opportunities the government claims to be promoting.
The government’s rationale for this drastic measure is to prevent young people from being “trapped in a life on benefits.” However, this narrative has been widely condemned as a gross misrepresentation of the reality faced by young disabled people.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.
President Donald Trump makes phone calls to US troops on Christmas Eve, from the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on December 24, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump—who calls himself “the most anti-war president in history”—has now bombed more countries than any president in history.
President Donald Trump—the self-described “most anti-war president in history”—has now ordered the bombing of more countries than any president in history as US forces carried out Christmas day strikes on what the White House claimed were Islamic State militants killing Christians in Nigeria.
“Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!” Trump said Thursday in a post on his Truth Social network.
“I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was,” the president continued. “The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.”
“Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper,” Trump added. “May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”
.@POTUS “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and… pic.twitter.com/ct7rUW128t
A US Department of Defense official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Associated Press that the United States worked with Nigeria to conduct the bombing, and that the government of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu—who is a Muslim—approved the attacks.
It was not immediately known how many people were killed or wounded in the strikes, or whether there are any civilian casualties.
The Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “terrorist violence in any form, whether directed at Christians, Muslims, or other communities, remains an affront to Nigeria’s values and to international peace and security.”
The US bombings followed a threat last month by Trump to attack Nigeria with “guns-a-blazing” if the country’s government did not curb attacks on Christians.
Northwestern Nigeria—including Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, and parts of Kaduna State—is suffering a complex security crisis, plagued by armed criminal groups, herder-farmer disputes, and Islamist militants including Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP/ISIS) and Boko Haram. Both Christians and Muslims have been attacked.
Since emerging in Borno State in 2009, Boko Haram has waged war on the Nigerian state—which it regards as apostate—not against any particular religious group. In fact, the majority of its victims have been Muslims.
“According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, more Muslims than Christians have been targeted in recent years,” Chloe Atkinson recently wrote for Common Dreams. “Boko Haram has massacred worshipers in mosques, torched markets in Muslim-majority areas, and threatened their own coreligionists.”
“The crisis in Nigeria is not a holy war against Christianity.”
“It is true that Christian communities in the north-central regions have suffered unimaginable horrors as raids have left villages in ashes, children murdered in their beds, and churches reduced to rubble,” she said. “The April massacre in Zike and the June bloodbath in Yelwata are prime examples of the atrocities taking place in Nigeria.”
“The crisis in Nigeria is not a holy war against Christianity,” Atkinson continued. “Instead, it’s a devastating cocktail of poverty, climate-driven land disputes, and radical ideologies that prey on everyone and not just any distinct group.”
“By framing Nigeria’s conflict as an existential threat to Christians alone, Trump is not shining a spotlight on the victims,” she added. “Instead, he is weaponizing right-wing conspiracy theories to stoke Islamophobia, the same toxic playbook he used to fuel his ban on Muslims, and which left refugee families shattered at America’s borders.”
Former libertarian US Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.) noted on X that “there’s no authority for strikes on terrorists in Nigeria or anywhere on Earth,” adding that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)—which was approved by every member of Congress except then-Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—“is only for the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.”
“The War Powers Resolution doesn’t grant any authority beyond the Constitution,” Amash added. “Offensive military actions need congressional approval. The Framers of the Constitution divided war powers to protect the American people from war-eager executives. Whether the United States should engage in conflicts across the globe is a decision for the people’s representatives in Congress, not the president.”
What constitutional authority supports these strikes without a Congressinal declaration of war?
In addition to Nigeria, Trump—who says he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize—since 2017 has also ordered the bombing of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, as well as boats allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Trump has also deployed warships and thousands of US troops near Venezuela, which could become the next country attacked by a president who campaigned on a platform of “peace through strength.”
That’s more than the at least five countries attacked during the tenure of former President George W. Bush or the at least seven nations attacked on orders of then-President Barack Obama during the so-called War on Terror, which killed more than 940,000 people—including at least 432,000 civilians, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
Trump continued the war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria started by Obama in 2014. Promising to “bomb the shit out of” ISIS fighters and “take out their families,” Trump intensified the US campaign from a war of “attrition” to one of “annihilation,” according to his former defense secretary, Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis. Thousand of civilians were killed as cities such as Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria were flattened.
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.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves speaks to the media about the October inflation statistics from the Office of National Statistics, during a visit to a Tesco supermarket in Earl’s Court, west London, November 19, 2025
CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves must scrap the two-child cap “in full” at the Budget as seven in 10 of the 4.5 million children living in poverty in Britain have at least one working parent, the TUC has warned.
The union body called on Labour to ditch Tory cruelty on Wednesday, with its analysis published today revealing that working people are just £12 a week better off in real terms than they were when the financial crisis hit in 2008.
Public service workers, meanwhile, are no better off compared to 2008, with real pay the same.
TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said the Chancellor must tackle the child poverty emergency by delivering a “living standards Budget.”
He said: “Households up and down the country are still suffering a painful Tory pay hangover — leaving this Labour government with lots of ground to make up.
“That’s why Wednesday is a crucial moment to show ministers are on the side of working people by making affordability a top priority.
“That means a clear plan to bring down energy bills for households. It means action to make work pay by showing ambition on the minimum wage.
“And it means tackling the child poverty emergency by scrapping the two-child benefit cap in full.”
Polling by the TUC also reveals 83 per cent of the public believe no child should be living in poverty in Britain.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk at Trump’s inauguration ceremony on 20 January 2025. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Oxfam warns Trump policies risk driving inequality to new heights – but Democrats have also exacerbated wealth gap
The collective wealth of the top 10 US billionaires has soared by $698bn in the past year, according to a new report from Oxfam America published on Monday on the growing wealth divide.
The report warns that Trump administration policies risk driving US inequality to new heights, but points out that both Republican and Democratic administrations have exacerbated the US’s growing wealth gap.
Using Federal Reserve data from 1989 to 2022, researchers also calculated that the top 1% of households gained 101 times more wealth than the median household during that time span and 987 times the wealth of a household at the bottom 20th percentile of income. This translated to a gain of $8.35m per household for the top 1% of households, compared with $83,000 for the average household during that 33-year period.
Meanwhile, over 40% of the US population, including nearly 50% of children, are considered low-income, with family earnings that are less than 200% of the national poverty line.
When pitting the US against 38 other higher-income countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US has the highest rate of relative poverty, second-highest rate of child poverty and infant mortality, and the second-lowest life expectancy rate.
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 how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Children playing football on the street in Luton, August 1, 2025
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves speaks to the media about the October inflation statistics from the Office of National Statistics, during a visit to a Tesco supermarket in Earl’s Court, west London, November 19, 2025
