Tag: tony blair

  • Blair’s fossil fuel ideas ‘bizarre’ in face of energy and climate crises, experts say

    Spread the love

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/28/tony-blair-fossil-fuel-advice-bizarre-energy-climate-crises-experts-say

    A solar park in Deeside, Wales. The UK broke records for solar energy generation this week. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

    Energy specialists say abandoning net zero and increasing oil and gas drilling would cause more instability for Britons

    Abandoning net zero and drilling for more oil and gas in the North Sea would be a massive setback for the UK and would not help the economy, leading experts have said in response to claims by the former prime minister Tony Blair.

    “This is a bizarre intervention to make during the worst May heatwave on record and when the Iran crisis is providing yet more evidence of the enormous costs of oil and gas,” said Ed Matthew, the UK programme director at the E3G thinktank. “Clean energy is cheaper energy – it protects our bills from prices skyrocketing, its running costs are virtually zero, and it doesn’t cause climate change which threatens economic collapse … The government should ignore Blair’s ideological nonsense and focus on what works.”

    In an essay published on Wednesday, Blair argued that the UK should exploit its remaining oil and gas reserves and abandon its long-set target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Blair, who has links to petrostates and whose institute takes money from technology companies that want a large build-out of AI data centres, has made these arguments for fossil fuels and against net zero many times in the past two years.

    …

    Calls to maximise production from the UK’s rapidly dwindling North Sea reserves have also been made by the Conservative and Reform parties.

    The head of the International Energy Agency, and one of the world’s most respected energy economists, Fatih Birol, said last month that opening new fields would have little impact, and more drilling by the UK would not bring down the price of oil and gas for British consumers.

    …

    Last week, the UK’s Climate Change Committee warned that the impacts of global heating of 2C by 2050 were likely to wipe billions from the UK’s economy, in the form of damage from heatwaves, droughts, floods and storms, but that acting to reach net zero would bring economic benefits.

    …

    See the original Guardian article at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/28/tony-blair-fossil-fuel-advice-bizarre-energy-climate-crises-experts-say
    dizzy: Blair should not be regarded seriously

    Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
    Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
    Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
    Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
    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 Richards
    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 Richards

  • ‘No records’ from meetings between top officials and Mandelson’s lobbying firm

    Spread the love

    Article by Ethan Shone republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

    Peter Mandelson was Keir Starmer’s pick for US ambassador, but was forced to resign following the release of the Epstein Files (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

    Government failed to declare meeting with top Global Counsel clients, and says no notes were taken at several meetings

    The government has no official records of meetings that top civil servants held with senior figures and clients from Peter Mandelson’s lobbying firm last year, including an undeclared meeting with oil giants and private equity firms, openDemocracy can reveal.

    Global Counsel went into administration earlier this year after details of Mandelson’s close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein were revealed in the Epstein Files, including emails showing how he sought the billionaire paedophile’s advice on establishing the firm.

    But before its collapse, Global Counsel’s business was booming as it and its founder established close ties to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. 

    Ahead of the 2024 election, the company donated a member of staff to support Labour’s work on financial services policy development and produced promotional materials, which openDemocracy has seen, touting its significant access to the party. “Our clients’ engagement pays dividends in the long run,” it promised, adding that it was “uniquely placed” to help corporate clients “establish relationships that outlive the election and deliver policy dividends on the other side”.

    By the end of that year, Starmer had appointed Mandelson as the UK’s US ambassador, and Global Counsel had seen its UK revenue surge by 75% since 2022, from £7.9m to £13.9m. The business also took on over 20 new clients in the first quarter after Labour’s win – more than in the previous five years combined – including Palantir, Shell and TikTok.

    Now, openDemocracy can reveal that the most senior civil servant from the Department for Business and Trade and a senior Treasury official met with Global Counsel’s representatives several times last year, including at a roundtable the firm hosted for its clients.

    No records from the discussions – including notes or minutes – exist, the government told openDemocracy in response to a Freedom of Information request.

    Our investigation comes as parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee takes the rare step of voicing “grave concerns” about the government’s failure to keep proper records from official meetings, following its review of documents set to be published relating to Mandelson’s time as US ambassador.

    ISC chair Lord Beamish wrote to the government expressing a number of concerns, including over a “lack of an audit trail – in terms of agendas, minutes and records of conversations,” which he described as “unacceptable in government.”

    Shadowy meetings

    In January last year, Gareth Davies, then permanent secretary at the Department for Business and Trade, met Global Counsel’s most senior adviser on business and trade, Geoffrey Norris, at the exclusive Royal Horseguards Hotel in Whitehall. 

    The meeting was useful enough that four months later, in May 2025, the pair returned to the same hotel to chat some more. 

    Yet little is known about what they discussed. The department quite vaguely recorded the purpose of these meetings as “to discuss latest business updates” and “discussion on growth”, respectively.

    When openDemocracy asked for more information, the government said it had none.

    Davies then spoke at a Global Counsel dinner event in early June and attended a client roundtable event that the firm hosted, which Norris chaired, at its offices weeks later. 

    There, the senior civil servant spoke with executives from several Global Counsel clients, including oil giants Shell and Equinor, plus JP Morgan and Blackstone. But you wouldn’t know that from the government’s published transparency requests, which fail to mention that clients were present. Their attendance was revealed to openDemocracy only in documents obtained via Freedom of Information requests.

    Norris was not the only Global Counsel member Davies was in touch with. In July last year, he met with Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, the company’s co-founder and CEO, “to discuss the industrial strategy”. 

    Both Norris and Wegg-Prosser are New Labour alumni. Norris was a top business aide in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments, and later advised Mandelson while he was business secretary, while Wegg-Prosser worked as an adviser to Mandelson before becoming Blair’s director of strategic communications. 

    When Labour lost power at the 2010 election, Mandelson and Wegg-Prosser established Global Counsel, which Norris joined soon afterwards, remaining at the company until its collapse in February. 

    Wegg-Prosser was reportedly offered a peerage and a role as Labour’s investment minister in September 2024, but declined to avoid stepping down as Global Counsel’s CEO. He eventually quit in February of this year after it was revealed that he’d had extensive contact with Jeffrey Epstein, including traveling to New York to meet Epstein in 2010, two years after Epstein was convicted for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Global Counsel went into administration weeks after Wegg-Prosser’s exit.

    Davies is a long-serving civil servant who recently left DBT to become the top official at the Home Office. He began his career in government alongside Davies, Wegg Prosser and Mandelson, as a Downing Street adviser during the New Labour years. 

    A DBT spokesperson said: “Transparency returns are published in line with Cabinet Office guidance, and the Civil Service Code has not been broken.”

    ‘We need full transparency’

    Global Counsel also enjoyed significant access to the Treasury under Labour – in some cases with no record of what it lobbied ministers and officials about. 

    A Global Counsel lobbyist specialising in financial services was seconded to the office of Labour’s first City minister, Tulip Siddiq, before she resigned in January 2025 over alleged corruption links to her aunt’s ousted government in Bangladesh. The staffer’s secondment was a registrable donation-in-kind valued at more than £35,000, and not against parliament’s rules.

    In November 2024, Siddiq, who was also economic secretary to the Treasury, met with one of Global Counsel’s most senior figures, its financial services lead, Rebecca Park, to discuss “growth and competitiveness of the financial services sector”. The government declined to provide any details of what was discussed after openDemocracy submitted an FOI request last year.

    Later, in July 2025, the Treasury’s director general of financial services, Gwyneth Nurse, met Global Counsel’s Benedict Brogan, a former journalist-turned banking lobbyist, at the Wolseley to “discuss the UK regulatory environment”. Again, the government told openDemocracy it held no further record of what was discussed at the meeting. 

    Follow-up correspondence obtained by openDemocracy shows Brogan invited Nurse to a client roundtable event in the autumn, with the suggested date of 20 October. Government transparency data shows Nurse attended a Global Counsel dinner event on 20 October, though the records do not show which of the firm’s clients were in attendance. 

    Financial deregulation has been a significant feature of Labour’s policy offering to the City, which has won the party rare public shows of support from some of the world’s most influential financiers, notably JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon and Jon Gray of Blackstone. Both firms have, incidentally, worked with Global Counsel. 

    The lobbying firm was also reportedly contracted by other financial giants as part of an ultimately successful campaign against an increase in ‘carried interest,’ the reduced rate of tax that dealmakers pay on their profits from private equity deals, which can often save them millions.

    Mick McAteer, a former regulator and the director of the Financial Inclusion and Markets Centre, said the finance sector should “serve the interests of the real economy, environment, and society”. 

    “But, finance sector lobbyists now exercise undue influence over finance sector policy. As a result, we are seeing a programme of deregulation and corporate welfare designed to promote finance sector growth, which could ultimately harm our interests. We need full transparency on meetings between policymakers and finance lobbyists.”

    The government has previously faced significant criticism over its failure to declare a meeting in early 2025 between Starmer, Mandelson and Palantir.

    Now, its failure to keep records of the meetings it has had with Global Counsel and its clients appears to breach the Civil Service Code, under which all civil servants are legally required to “keep accurate official records”. 

    Separate guidance on managing records in ministers’ private offices states explicitly that officials are “bound by the government’s commitment to keep records of meetings with outside interest groups”.

    Duncan Hames, senior director of policy at Transparency UK, said: “When government transparency is treated as a tick-box exercise, or ignored altogether, this undermines our right to know how decisions are made and leaves room for undue influence. 

    “In this case, as in so many others, it is clear that the current system is not working as it should. It’s time for the UK government to follow Scotland’s lead and publish a comprehensive register of those lobbying government.”

    openDemocracy contacted Ben Wegg Prosser and Benedict Brogan but neither responded.

    Article by Ethan Shone republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

    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 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 confirms that he doesn't know anything about democracy.
    Keir Starmer confirms that he doesn’t know anything about democracy.

    dizzy: Busy this morning.

  • Top civil servant boomeranged between government and Tony Blair Institute

    Spread the love

    Original article by Ethan Shone republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

    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.”

    Original article by Ethan Shone republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

    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".
    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 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.
    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.

  • Corbyn Accuses Starmer Government of ‘Echoing Tony Blair’s Obedience to Washington’

    Spread the love

    Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    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.

    RECOMMENDED…

    Donald Trump and Keir Starmer

    Lashing Out at Starmer, Trump Says ‘It May Be Necessary’ to Use UK Bases to Attack Iran

    War on Iran ticker

    ‘The Behavior of Rogue States’: Global Revulsion as US and Israel Launch War on Iran

    “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.

    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.”

    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.”

    Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    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.
    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 Peace
    Donald Trump explains why he established his Bored of Peace
    Orcas discuss rotting brain. Front Orca says "Wish someone would lock him up".
    Orcas discuss rotting brain. Front Orca says “Wish someone would lock him up”.

  • Trump appoints Blair, Kushner and Rubio to Gaza ‘board of peace’

    Spread the love

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/16/trump-gaza-board-rubio-blair

    The beach in the Gaza Strip has become a makeshift camp for displaced people whose homes were destroyed. Photograph: Omar Ashtawy/APAImages/Shutterstock

    White House says seven-strong board, chaired by Trump, will steer Gaza through next phase of reconstruction

    Donald Trump has appointed the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and former British prime minister Tony Blair to a newly created Gaza “board of peace”, a body he claims will steer the next phase of reconstruction and governance in the war-ravaged territory.

    The White House said the seven-strong “founding executive board” will also include Trump’s special envoy, the property developer Steve Witkoff; the World Bank president, Ajay Banga; and the president’s son-in-law and long-time adviser Jared Kushner. Trump himself will serve as chair, with further appointments expected in the coming weeks.

    “Each executive board member will oversee a defined portfolio critical to Gaza’s stabilization and long-term success, including, but not limited to, governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding, and capital mobilization,” a White House statement said.

    …

    Blair’s inclusion is likely to prove contentious in the region. The former Labour leader remains a divisive figure in the Middle East for his role in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

    Soon after leaving office in 2007 he became special representative of the Quartet, a group composed of the US, EU, Russia and the UN seeking peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But he became seen as too close to the Israelis and stepped down in 2015.

    …

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/16/trump-gaza-board-rubio-blair

    Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
    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/O74hZCKKdpA
    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.
    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.
    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.
    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.