UK government

UK government secretly paid foreign YouTube stars for ‘propaganda’

Spread the love

https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-government-secretly-paid-foreign-youtube-stars-for-propaganda

Foreign secretary David Lammy. (Photo: Vincent Thian / Alamy)

Revealed: Media agency Zinc Network has contract to recruit social media influencers across Europe.

  • Videos are secretly funded and signed-off by UK Foreign Office
  • NDAs ban influencers from disclosing government involvement 
  • Contractor accused of election ‘interference’ in Slovakia against left-wing candidate

The UK government is secretly paying foreign YouTube stars to publish “propaganda” videos, Declassified can reveal.

A three-year investigation has found that online influencers are made to sign legal contracts banning them from disclosing the government’s involvement.

Whitehall officials give “feedback” on each video before the influencers are allowed to publish them. 

The work is coordinated by a London-based media agency, Zinc Network Ltd, on behalf of the Foreign Office in a deal worth nearly £10m of public money. 

Co-founded by a former Conservative Party spin doctor, the company has won lucrative contracts from the UK, US and Australian governments, becoming a major player in Western influence operations.

…

Details of Zinc Network’s projects for the government have been a highly guarded secret. In 2022, the company signed a £9,450,000 contract with the Foreign Office, which is due to end in December this year.

Usually, large contracts are published in full on the government’s website, but in this instance the contract was kept under wraps. 

For almost two years, the Foreign Office tried to prevent it from being released under the Freedom of Information Act, leading to three separate reprimands from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who ruled in favour of transparency each time. 

A heavily redacted version of the contract was eventually disclosed to Declassified, although the ICO is now assessing a fresh complaint over the Foreign Office’s refusal to release the document’s full annexes.

The documents show that Zinc was contracted to help counter disinformation in 22 countries across Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, and in the Baltics. This is done partly by “providing a greater variety” of reliable information, as well as by “increasing societal and general public resilience to disinformation”.

…

Continue ReadingUK government secretly paid foreign YouTube stars for ‘propaganda’

Our Médecins Sans Frontières staff are being killed in Gaza. Why are UK ministers enabling that?

Spread the love

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/14/our-medecins-sans-frontieres-staff-are-being-killed-in-gaza-why-are-uk-ministers-enabling-that

…

Médecins Sans Frontières joined other organisations in Westminster on 25 June 2025 to protest over the deaths of children in Gaza. Photograph: Andy Aitchison

We have warned the government repeatedly: the response has been pathetic. Britain has a duty to act morally, and stop supporting this genocide.

Dr Natalie Roberts is the executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières UK

…

At the beginning of April, we at MSF UK wrote to the foreign secretary, David Lammy, detailing our first-hand observations in Gaza. We described the massive influxes of wounded patients and dead bodies being received by MSF teams in medical facilities across Gaza on 18 March, as Israeli forces unleashed attacks of unprecedented intensity, shattering the short-lived ceasefire. We explained that MSF medical staff and their patients had already had to evacuate 17 health facilities and had endured a massive number of violent incidents, including airstrikes damaging and destroying hospitals and health facilities, tanks opening fire on humanitarian shelters, ground offensives being conducted in medical facilities, and humanitarian convoys and ambulances being fired upon by the Israeli military. We noted that not a single hospital in Gaza was currently fully functional, and that about half of them were no longer functioning at all. And we described the complete siege imposed by the Israeli authorities on Gaza.

We noted that this evidence was consistent with the description of ethnic cleansing and genocide provided by legal experts and human rights organisations. We requested a meeting to brief the foreign secretary further and to hear what concrete actions the UK planned, to hold Israel to account for its atrocities against the Palestinian people.

We did not receive a response.

So on 7 May, MSF wrote an open letter to the prime minister describing the use of starvation and collective punishment as weapons of war by the Israeli government against an entire population. We implored the UK government to uphold its obligations as a permanent member of the UN security council to act under international humanitarian law to protect all civilians in Gaza. We also called on the UK government to publicly condemn the Israeli government for the atrocities it is inflicting on the people of Gaza. We warned that failure to take immediate action and to adopt a clear position on these extensively documented and flagrant war crimes and breaches of international law would leave the UK government at high risk of charges of complicity.

We did not receive a response.

…

We can only conclude that the UK government just does not want to admit what everybody else can see: that genocide is being committed in Gaza, and it is being committed with the military, diplomatic and material support of the UK.

…

Vote Labour for Genocide.
Vote Labour for Genocide.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect 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 obect 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.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel's Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don't do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Continue ReadingOur Médecins Sans Frontières staff are being killed in Gaza. Why are UK ministers enabling that?

Shameful U-turn as UK and France abandon plans to recognise Palestinian state at peace conference

Spread the love

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech in front of humanitarian aid destined to Gaza, at the Egyptian Red Crescent warehouse in Egypt’s northeastern city of Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula, about 55 kilometres west of the border with the Gaza Strip, on 8 April 2025. [LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images]

Plans by the UK and France to recognise a Palestinian state at an upcoming international peace conference in New York this month have been shelved, marking yet another U-turn just weeks after both governments signalled support for Palestinian self-determination in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ongoing ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank.

The three-day conference, scheduled between 17-20 June and co-sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia, was initially framed as a diplomatic breakthrough that could see major Western powers recognise Palestinian statehood as a matter of principle. However, diplomats have now confirmed to the Guardian that the event will instead focus on vague “steps towards recognition.”

The reversal comes despite recent pledges by both London and Paris to re-evaluate their approach in light of Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza, which has killed over 55,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and the aggressive settlement expansion in the illegally occupied West Bank. Israeli officials have recently approved 22 new settlements, in what Defence Minister Yoav Gallant described as “a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Read: US warns UK, France against recognising Palestinian State

French President Emmanuel Macron had previously declared Palestinian statehood a “moral duty and political requirement,” but according to officials who briefed Israeli counterparts this week, recognition will no longer be announced at the conference. Instead, it is being repositioned as a distant outcome contingent on a series of conditions, including a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the release of Israeli captives, and the restructuring of the Palestinian Authority to exclude Hamas.

The UK government, which has faced increasing pressure from MPs to take stronger measures against Israel, has taken a similar position.

According to the Guardian, British and French officials now view recognition not as a moral position or legal obligation, but as a reward contingent on the compliance of Palestinians with a framework shaped largely by Israel’s priorities. The Israeli public, however, has largely abandoned the idea of a two-state solution. According to figures cited by the Guardian, just 20 per cent of Israelis support the creation of a Palestinian state, while a staggering 56 per cent of Jewish Israelis back the “transfer” of Palestinian citizens of Israel to other countries, an explicit endorsement of ethnic cleansing.

Meanwhile, public support for Palestinian statehood continues to grow across Europe. Ireland, Spain and Norway formally recognised Palestine last year, and several Conservative MPs in Britain, including former Attorney General Sir Jeremy Wright, have broken ranks to endorse recognition.

Read: Labour MPs push Foreign Office to back Palestinian statehood at French-Saudi UN summit

Saudi Arabia, the conference’s co-host, has repeatedly accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, and there appears little prospect of Riyadh normalising relations with Tel Aviv. Analysts note that France’s vision of mutual recognition, Western states recognising Palestine in exchange for Arab normalisation with Israel, is rapidly collapsing in the face of Israeli escalation and public outrage across the Arab world.

Palestinians and their supporters are likely to view this latest shift as yet another instance of Western duplicity, offering rhetorical support while continuing to shield Israel from accountability. The Elders, a group of former global statesmen, urged Macron in an open letter to treat recognition as a “transformative step toward peace,” and not to view the self-determination of Palestinians as a chip to be negotiated with Israel.

Read: 80% of Israeli Jews support US President Trump’s proposal to ethnically cleanse Gaza, survey finds

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Continue ReadingShameful U-turn as UK and France abandon plans to recognise Palestinian state at peace conference

UK government withholding details of Palantir contract

Spread the love

https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/uk-government-withholding-details

KPMG is being paid £8 million to promote Peter Thiel’s tech in NHS hospitals – but we’re being forced to fight for information about this public contract.

It’s been a good week for Palantir. The controversial spy-tech company, co-founded by Trump donor Peter Thiel, looks set to secure even more UK government work after the defence secretary pledged to expand the role of AI in the military.

Palantir already holds a £330 million NHS data contract. But as Democracy for Sale revealed last week, most hospitals in England are not using the software, with many complaining that it simply isn’t up to scratch.

To encourage hospitals to take it up, the government signed an £8 million deal with consultancy giant KPMG to “promote the adoption” of Palantir’s tech in the NHS.

We wanted to know more about how this money is being spent. How exactly has KPMG been promoting Palantir’s software to hospitals? And has it worked?

So, we submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), asking for reports produced by KPMG under its contract, as well as briefings prepared for Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who publicly supported the deal.

The government’s response? Silence. They’re refusing to release the information—so now we’re fighting for transparency.

Sue Hawley, executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, told us the government’s “impulse to secrecy around public money and public contracts” is “deeply concerning.”

“KPMG’s contract raises a real question: if [Palantir’s] software is so good, why does the government need to give £8 million of taxpayers’ money to a management consultancy to encourage NHS hospitals to use it?,” she added.

…

Article continues at https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/uk-government-withholding-details

Continue ReadingUK government withholding details of Palantir contract

Thoughts of the Day 2, 12 May 2025

Spread the love

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.

UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel's Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support. They explain that they don't do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Continue ReadingThoughts of the Day 2, 12 May 2025