Byline Times Audio Articles

Tommy Robinson and the London News Website Linked to a Putin-Backed Propaganda Network

Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY In February 2020, far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon ('Tommy Robinson') travelled to Moscow and St Petersburg, giving interviews to Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT and meeting figures linked to Russian nationalist movements. Since then, questions have long swirled about his Russian connections and the sources of his funding amid mounting legal debts. Byline Times can now reveal that years before that trip to Russia, Robinson was hired as a "goodwill ambassador" for an unregistered charity fronting a secretive Russian propaganda network that worked directly for President Vladimir Putin's administration, and has ties to a sanctioned Russian state-linked oil giant. The unregistered charity – the MMBF Trust – is part of a network centred around the London Post. At first glance, the London Post resembles a local news website covering UK gambling regulations and London restaurant reviews. It has featured articles about Borough Market's grocery ordering service, and good spots for ramen. But sources who spoke to Byline Times described it as part of what intelligence analysts call a 'black PR' operation: coordinated disinformation campaigns designed to manipulate public opinion while concealing their true sponsors. Robinson's appointment to the unregistered charity was first reported by anti-extremism organisation Hope Not Hate in 2017. Last year, Press Gazette revealed that the London Post – which had announced the appointment – had surprising Russia links. Byline Times can now reveal further details about the suspected funding behind the website, including cryptocurrency payment trails to Russian 'black PR' agents, and ties to major Russian state enterprises. The site's Russian backers operate through a company called Moscow Media Group. Its subsidiary, MMG Brainstorming, has publicly advertised its work for Putin's presidential office, the State Duma, the Federation Council, and various Russian Government ministries and agencies. Moscow Media Group also has ties to a wide range of Russian state-backed energy and infrastructure enterprises, including to the sanctioned Russian oil company Gazprom Neft. 'Domestic Terrorism': ICE Contractor Palantir's Tools for Tracking Dissent Peter Thiel's controversial data firm – which holds contracts with the UK's NHS and Ministry of Defence – researched protest prediction for the US Army before agreeing to build ICE's data platform to conduct mass deportation. Are its tools now targeting democratic dissent as well as illegal immigration? Nafeez Ahmed The Unregistered Charity The public face behind the London Post is a Zimbabwean-English film producer named Matthew C Martino (also known as Mathetes Chihwai). Martino runs a UK-based entity called the Matthew Martino Benevolent Fund (MMBF Trust), the website of which states that it is a charity supporting filmmakers and others who wish to study or work in the performing arts. However, the organisation neither registered with the UK's Charity Commission nor provided any notable support to filmmakers. In 2017, the MMBF Trust made waves on social media when the London Post announced Tommy Robinson as its new goodwill ambassador. Robinson, the co-founder of the English Defence League, is a convicted fraudster whose disinformation helped fuel the 2024 Southport riots which involved unprecedented racist violence. According to the London Post's announcement, Robinson was hired by the MMBF Trust to help oversee a £100,000 arts grant programme that would launch in February 2018. The nature of the work Robinson undertook for the MMBF Trust is unclear. But the charity appears to have been a front to provide legitimacy to a Russian-backed propaganda operation. The 2Trom Network The London Post is part of a media consortium of ostensibly British news organisations, operating under an entity called 2Trom News Group. Although inco...

Keir Starmer's Brutal Treatment of Andy Burnham Has Destroyed All Illusions About His Premiership

Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY "The enemy has only images and illusions… behind which he hides his true motives. Destroy the image and you will break the enemy." — Shaolin Master to Bruce Lee, Enter the Dragon That line appears at the very start of Enter the Dragon, delivered before a punch is thrown. It frames the entire film. The struggle it describes is not one of brute force, but of credibility. Power, Bruce Lee's Shaolin master suggests, rarely confronts you directly. It shelters behind images. Strip those away, and what remains is exposed. It is difficult for me not to think about that line when looking at what has just happened inside the Labour Party. For years, the Labour right under Sir Keir Starmer's leadership has carefully cultivated an image. The staging is familiar: the Union Jack backdrop, the language of seriousness, duty, restraint and responsibility. Even the careful emphasis on titles and institutional roles plays its part. The claim is not merely of competence, but of public duty. That power is exercised reluctantly. That decisions are taken in the national interest, not out of factional advantage. That this is public service, not politics as usual. That image has mattered because it has functioned as legitimacy. It reassured voters, quietened dissent and disarmed critics. It suggested that whatever internal disagreements existed, those in charge were acting from a higher sense of responsibility. But images only work if behaviour sustains them. Freebiegate and repeated policy U-turns have already eroded that credibility. But the decision to block Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from the Gorton and Denton by-election did something more profound. It did not simply remove a political obstacle. It punctured the image itself, publicly and unmistakably. Keir Starmer's Labour Government Is Much Better Than the Media Admits There is a deep disconnect between the Government's actions to improve the country and its standing in the polls, argues Professor Chris Painter Professor Chris Painter This was not persuasion. It was not democratic judgement. It was not even subtle strategy. It was the open deployment of bureaucratic power to neutralise a figure whose authority rests on precisely the things the leadership claims to value: electoral success, public trust and a strong local mandate. In that moment, the illusion failed. When power reaches for administrative force rather than argument or consent, it reveals its true priorities. What was exposed here was not country before party, but self-preservation. Not public service, but control. Not national interest, but institutional self-interest. Once that becomes visible, the language no longer works. The symbolism no longer covers the act. Claims of seriousness and duty ring hollow when set against naked factional enforcement. This is not simply about Andy Burnham as an individual. It is about what happens when a political leadership becomes more invested in managing threats to itself than in advancing a project rooted in democratic confidence. When maintaining control becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to serve a wider purpose. MPs may spend much of their lives inside the Westminster bubble, but we are never fully enclosed by it. We return each week to our constituencies. We sit in surgeries. We hear frustration, anger and disillusionment unfiltered. We see how political decisions land beyond the chamber and the lobby briefings. What Keir Starmer Should Have Done With Andy Burnham The PM's decision to block Burnham from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election risks handing the seat to Nigel Farage, and ultimately triggering his own downfall. It didn't have to be this way, argues Adam Bienkov Adam Bienkov It is in that space, between Westminster and the country, that legitimacy is tested. When MPs themselves begin to conclude, alongside the public, that th...

Reform UK's Plans For a British ICE

Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY Reform councillors Joseph Boam and Michael Squires faced a wave of backlash on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, this week for posting favourably about ICE, the US immigration enforcement agency which is accused of operating like a paramilitary force, following the killing of nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The footage of Pretti's death showed him intervening to help a protester being assaulted by an ICE agent, before being pinned to the floor by several agents who then realised he had a holstered gun (for which he had a license) on his hip. Pretti's hands were pinned to the ground, with one agent shown reaching for the holstered weapon, then another pushing that agent away and firing his own gun into Pretti's prone body. The killing occurred just two weeks after ICE agents in Minneapolis shot Renee dead as she drove away from them. The posts from Boam and Squires appeared in immediate reaction to Pretti's shooting, with Boam reposting an image from the US Department of Homeland Security bearing the slogan "I stand with ICE". Squires then shared the image and added his approval: "100% chance of ICE forecast. Well done and huge congratulations to ICE for their heroic work saving the United States of America". The men were accused of endorsing the killing. Squires has since deleted his post, and Boam hurriedly clarified that it was not the killing that he stood by, saying: "When I said I support ICE's work, I mean that I support the enforcement of immigration law, which is the task of Immigration Control and Enforcement, aka ICE. That is what I stand by". 'Domestic Terrorism': ICE Contractor Palantir's Tools for Tracking Dissent Peter Thiel's controversial data firm – which holds contracts with the UK's NHS and Ministry of Defence – researched protest prediction for the US Army before agreeing to build ICE's data platform to conduct mass deportation. Are its tools now targeting democratic dissent as well as illegal immigration? Nafeez Ahmed Boam has got form. According to the anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate, he used to endorse Andrew Tate on Twitter. However, it would be wrong to dismiss support for the agency as merely the outbursts of two renegade provocateur councillors. Indeed, support for ICE, and the desire to create a British equivalent, runs deep in the Reform UK project. At Reform UK's conference last September, Professor James Orr, a senior advisor to Farage, said on a panel about preparing Reform for government: "We know what needs to be done, we know what needs to be repealed. We need a new borders taskforce, a British ICE and so on". Orr is a key player in Reform, acting as a trans-Atlantic bridge to the Trump administration. He is a mentor to Vice President JD Vance, who memorably described the Cambridge don as his "British sherpa". In the same speech, Orr argued that the party should hold its cards close to its chest before entering government, keeping certain operational decisions under wraps before governing, to prevent a backlash from political opponents. Other prominent figures in Reform are also signalling their approval for the creation of a British version of ICE, even if concrete policy proposals have not yet been published. In an interview on GB News, Reform rising star and candidate for London Mayor, Laila Cunningham, was asked if she thought there needed to be a British equivalent to ICE. She replied: " I think we need a deterrent and we need law and order and we need to protect our borders", before adding that the men of ICE "are just enforcing" deportation orders and that the UK needs a "strong border force, like ICE, to be a deterrent [to irregular migration]". Trump's Violent Assault on Minnesota Is an Operation in 'Reflexive Control' The President is using Soviet-style redirection to wage an information war across America, argues Grant Stern Grant St...

'Domestic Terrorism': ICE Contractor Palantir's Tools for Tracking Dissent

Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY The Trump administration's immigration and customs enforcement agency, ICE – which sparked outrage after killing US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on the grounds of them being "domestic terrorists" – is using digital surveillance for its mass deportation scheme built by the data firm Palantir, which previously developed tools to track protestors for the US Army, Byline Times can reveal. Palantir, the giant US analytics firm co-founded by pro-Trump billionaire Peter Thiel, has major contracts with the UK's Department of Health and Social Care, and the Ministry of Defence. The company has a £330 million contract as the lead supplier of the NHS' federated data programme, and a £240 million contract to provide analytics for the MoD. London is home to the company's biggest office outside of the United States. In the US, the company's contracts with ICE stretch across a number of years, with obligations already exceeding $139 million and procurement documents describing future work worth hundreds of millions more in its mission to track down illegal migrants as part of President Donald Trump's mass deportation policy. Both killings in the past month have been of protestors against ICE activity. Good, a 37-year-old American citizen and mother of three, was fatally shot three times by ICE agent Jonathan Ross after she monitored his activities. Witnesses reported that agents gave conflicting commands – one told her to move her vehicle, while another shouted for her to exit. Pretti, also 37, an intensive care unit nurse at a specialised medical centre operated by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, was holding his phone to film the activities of ICE officers and was trying to protect a woman who had been pepper-sprayed when he was shot on his knees in the back of the head. It has since emerged that ICE agents reportedly had prior contact with Pretti a week earlier when he was protesting against ICE efforts to detain others. On that occasion, ICE attacked him and broke his ribs. Sources told CNN that ICE officers have been collecting private information about protestors in Minneapolis and that the agency had "documented details" about Pretti before he was shot to death – raising the question of what information ICE is compiling about protestors. The US Department of Homeland Security – of which ICE is the largest investigative arm – has denied creating a "database" of "domestic terrorists" or of having any record of the previous incident involving Pretti. But analysis by Byline Times of official ICE procurement documents shows it has the capability to move from immigration enforcement to the suppression of protest – with Palantir first developing such technology for the Pentagon. Domestic Surveillance Two years into the first Trump administration, the Pentagon was revealed to be funding research to predict where anti-Trump protests would occur. This work, led by the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), involved scraping social media, tracking geolocation data, mapping social networks to identify influencers and organisers, crowd dynamics modelling, and building AI models to forecast dissent before it emerged. One of the scientists behind the research, Lance Kaplan, working at the ARL, also published papers on the use of sensor fusion and network science to predict human behaviour from data streams. Another, Claire Bonial, listed research interests including "predicting social unrest using social media", "event detection", and "modelling emergent behaviour". In 2018, Palantir began working directly with the US Army Research Laboratory. In 2020, the company was awarded a $91 million contract for "artificial intelligence and machine learning development". In 2021, the US Army claimed that ARL scientists had built models to "detect events from open-source information" and "identify patterns ...

Keir Starmer's Labour Government Is Much Better Than the Media Admits

Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY The most striking aspect of Keir Starmer's Government has been the disconnect between its actions on policy and it's standing in the polls. The Government has received far too little credit for much of these. Both its child poverty strategy, a centrepiece of which is the scrapping of the two-child cap on universal credit, and its national youth strategy, including young futures hubs, signify its willingness to tackle inter-generational fairness. The same applies to rolling out Best Start family centres. Even its means-testing of winter fuel allowance can be justified on the same basis, albeit with a qualifying threshold that was initially drawn far too tightly. Major changes to employment law begin a redress of the imbalance between capital and labour so entrenched since the 1980s. Likewise, advances in renters' rights rebalance landlord-tenant relations. These reforms are complemented by increases in taxation on capital gains, inheritance, high-value properties and non-domiciled status. They are all significant redistributive measures, whether of power or wealth. Similarly, changes to the formulae used for local government funding geared to relative need, providing latitude too on how resources are deployed, a harbinger of whole place strategies as opposed to funding silos. A new violence against women and girls' strategy also placed gender vulnerabilities at the heart of public policy, in circumstances where domestic and online abuse has reached epidemic proportions. Then there was the Government's industrial strategy designed to enhance the competitiveness, resilience and security of the UK economy, with associated sectoral plans. Complementary is its upgrading of public infrastructure, including transition towards low-carbon energy, with fiscal rules adjusted accordingly. Admittedly, not all these policy initiatives will be game-changers. Rachel Reeves' tax reforms have been piecemeal rather than systematic in aligning levies on different revenue streams. Stretched funding for the most deprived areas and extent of deep poverty remain scourges on the country's conscience. Nonetheless, the directions of travel is clear. So, why the poor popularity ratings? Weaponizing Words: How the Trump Administration Used Language to Distort the Truth in Minnesota Government and media organisations used the power of words to shift moral responsibility for the ICE killings, argues linguist Dan Clayton Dan Clayton Polls Apart The first thing to acknowledge is that the Government faces a deeply hostile media. This hostility is arguably worse than ever given the character of those owning and controlling legacy media, combined with the algorithmic biases built into the main digital platforms that so readily accommodate far-right disinformation and imagery. The Government's dire inheritance of a lethal cocktail of taxes at relatively high levels for the post-1945 era; deteriorating public services; depleted civic assets; atrophying high streets; and cumulatively high levels of public borrowing leaving the UK economy seriously exposed in international markets, have also contributed. However, such a defence inevitably wears thin with the passing of time. Another explanation for the lack of popularity centres on its failures of political leadership in developing a compelling over-arching narrative for how its policy will change the country for the better. This has led to calls for an overhaul of the Government's whole communication strategy. However, much of Starmer's time and energy as Prime Minister has had to be devoted, in co-ordination with other European and Commonwealth leaders, to managing the security threats posed not only by Vladimir Putin's state terrorism, but also from a rogue President in the White House susceptible to Russian propaganda and impulsive actions on the global stage. A Populist Revolt Polit...