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Keir Starmer's Government Is Funding 'Violence and Death' on the French Border, Say Human Rights Groups

Read our Digital & Print Editions And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY The UK Government's attempts to prevent migrants from crossing the Channel by small boat is leading to increased violence and death on the border, according to a new report published on Monday. Humanitarian organisation Humans for Rights Network and charities working in the camps of northern France said that more than £650 million of British taxpayers' money is being used to fund police patrols and purchase surveillance equipment. This is then used to "instigate violent policies" on the UK's border with France, they said. Last year was the deadliest on record, with at least 73 people dying on the border - more than in all other years put together. NGOs working on both sides of the Channel say the French police routinely use flashballs, tear gas, including against children, and unleash police dogs to prevent migrants from boarding. Chaos at the point of embarkation has been known to lead to people being crushed to death. Last year Sara, a 7-year-old girl, suffocated beneath a group of bodies while trying to board a dinghy bound for Britain. Campaigners say the UK is responsible for deaths like these because it is funding violence perpetrated by the French riot police. The 'Pink Ladies' Laundering Anti-Migrant Views Into the Mainstream An anti-migrant movement backed by Reform and Conservative politicians and regularly invited onto news channels is funded by a far-right group and has platformed a Neo-Nazi activist Nicola Kelly Since 2018, Britain has spent more than £3.5 billion on private sector company contracts designed to 'secure' the border with France. A further £476 million was pledged in 2023, to provide surveillance equipment and personnel, including drones, helicopters and patrol officers. More than £100 million has already been given to France for the 'one in, one out' scheme to return migrants there, and to bring those who have been accepted to Britain. Earlier this year, French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said that of 1,200 law enforcement officers at the border each day, 730 are paid for by the UK government. Alongside the perils faced while boarding boats, the French Government's policy of arresting those in the camps on 'no fixed abode' charges also leads to widespread violence, the report states. One group, Human Rights Observers documented over 800 evictions at the border in 2024, affecting at least 16,365 people. Belongings confiscated during these operations include medication, prescriptions and asylum claim documents. Organisations working in northern France say police brutality is commonplace, with one, Utopia 56, recording 680 incidents of violence outside of crossing attempts between March and September 2025. Moussa, who lived in the camps of Calais until recently, said: "The police there are like soldiers but without guns - it's like a war." Charities say migrants rarely report police brutality due to lengthy and unworkable processes. "It's not right what the police did. But we're not going to complain. Who are we going to complain to?" said Jamal, who witnessed violence on the northern France coastline. This year has seen the closure of several safe routes to the UK, including refugee family reunion and some resettlement schemes. Campaigners and charities argue that the lack of alternative routes makes it more difficult for those on the move to seek asylum, risking increased police violence. It also allows smuggling networks to proliferate. At least four people are known to have been shot dead in and around Dunkirk so far this year. In one documented incident, an autistic 16-year-old boy had a gun held to his head by smugglers. "What's complicated in Dunkirk is that the mafia is very present," said an employee of Medecins du Monde working in the camps. A climate of tension and violence has really been accentuated over the past two or three years. We regularly...

The UK's Shrinking Army Is Conducting Secretive Deployments in 51 Countries

Read our Digital & Print Editions And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY Britain's Army is shrinking to its smallest size since the Napoleonic wars, struggling to recruit and unable to modernise at the pace its own commanders say is required. Yet despite this contraction, new Ministry of Defence (MoD) figures obtained by Byline Times suggest that the UK is quietly extending its global reach by sending military reservists into more countries than at any point in recent history. The FOI disclosure reveals that 612 reservists were deployed overseas last year, entering what the MoD classifies as a "deployment theatre" for more than 24 hours in 51 countries and territories. It is an unusually broad global footprint for the modern Army Reserve - particularly for a force shrinking to its smallest size in two centuries - and one the Government has offered no public explanation for. The MoD will not say what these part-time soldiers were doing, under whose authority they were sent, or why some missions took place in states that have no publicly declared UK military interest. When asked whether reservists had also been deployed to other, undisclosed countries, the department issued a "neither confirm nor deny" response - the phrasing normally reserved for sensitive or clandestine operations. In a previous FOI disclosure, the MoD listed Iran as a deployment location before withdrawing the claim once Byline Times asked for clarification. EXCLUSIVE How Epstein Channelled Race Science and 'Climate Culling' Into Silicon Valley's AI Elite The Epstein files expose how racial hierarchy, genetic "optimisation" and even climate-driven population culling circulated inside Big Tech circles Nafeez Ahmed It leaves a striking contradiction at the heart of British defence: as the Army contracts, its overseas activity appears to be quietly expanding, pushed into opaque theatres with little democratic scrutiny and few safeguards for accountability. These revelations come at a moment when the military is facing scrutiny over a murder-rape case in Kenya and allegations that UK Special Forces carried out unlawful killings in Afghanistan - abuses senior officers stand accused of concealing. This month, Kenya's parliament delivered a very clear warning of what happens when overseas deployments drift beyond scrutiny. A sweeping year-long inquiry into the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) has accused troops of decades of abuses, from sexual violence and fatal accidents to environmental damage and the negligent handling of unexploded ordnance. All of this seems to be shielded by a veil of diplomatic and military immunity that allowed grievances to fester for generations. Kenyan lawmakers described BATUK's refusal to give evidence as showing an entrenched culture of impunity. This echoes patterns seen elsewhere in Britain's military footprint from Iraq to Afghanistan: allegations initially dismissed, investigations obstructed, civilian harm minimised, and accountability delayed and denied until the political cost becomes impossible to ignore. Where They Went The MoD's list spans NATO allies, conflict zones and several states where the UK has no obvious strategic interest. A handful of deployments follow familiar patterns of deterrence or alliance maintenance. Others sit far less comfortably, resembling the routines of a vanished Empire that persist more through inertia than declared strategy. The Gulf features prominently - unsurprising given long-standing security partnerships and the region's role as a major purchaser of British defence equipment. Eastern Europe also appears heavily on the list, consistent with the UK's efforts to signal resolve against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. Yet interspersed among these are countries where the UK's interests feel, at best, opaque. Cape Verde, Djibouti, Lebanon, the Maldives: each appears on the MoD's ledger with no accompanying explana...

Elon Musk Has Made X a Threat to Democracy and His War on the EU Proves It

Read our Digital & Print Editions And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY In December 2025, the European Commission fined X €120 million under its new Digital Services Act (DSA) - the EU's flagship online safety law, which requires the biggest platforms to be transparent about how they amplify, advertise and police content. It was the first ever non-compliance ruling under the DSA, and it focused on three design choices at the heart of Elon Musk's version of X: a deceptive paid blue-check system, an opaque advertising archive, and the platform's decision to shut out researchers. Those are not abstract compliance failures. They are exactly the structural weaknesses that covert foreign influence operations have been exploiting on X. The recent exposure of covert foreign influence via imposter accounts on X is jarring enough as it is, but a closer look reveals an even more concerning reality: these accounts did not flourish in spite of the platform's policies, but because of them. When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he promised a new era of "free speech," an end to bots, and a more transparent information ecosystem. Instead, the platform he renamed "X" has become a near-perfect environment for foreign-run political influence operations. While these problems predate Musk, the architecture he built - notably the monetisation of engagement, the destruction of identity verification, aggressive cuts to trust and safety, and a recommendation system that amplifies right-wing outrage - has turned X into one of the most permissive, profitable, and low-risk environments in the world for foreign operators seeking to infiltrate US political discourse. With the recent revelations about foreign-run MAGA and "patriot" accounts, we now have the clearest evidence yet that Musk's policy changes are facilitating - and in some cases, even monetising - foreign influence and disinformation. EXCLUSIVE How Epstein Channelled Race Science and 'Climate Culling' Into Silicon Valley's AI Elite The Epstein files expose how racial hierarchy, genetic "optimisation" and even climate-driven population culling circulated inside Big Tech circles Nafeez Ahmed From Verification to Monetisation Suddenly, the perception of legitimacy associated with the checkmark was available to anyone willing to pay a small amount of money. Among the recently-exposed fake MAGA accounts, many were willing to do just that. In a sample of 22 of the most influential foreign-run fake MAGA accounts, nearly all (19 accounts, or 86%) have a blue checkmark, indicating that they are paying to be Premium users and therefore are eligible to apply to participate in X's content monetisation program, which allows influencer accounts to earn money from their content based on the levels of engagement they receive from other Premium users. Accounts with Premium subscriptions also get algorithmic priority, which in practice means their posts have greater reach and higher engagement than non-Premium users - so more people see their posts and more money can be made based on their greater reach. The engagement-based monetisation system introduced by Musk incentivises outrage bait, disinformation, and other problematic content that large numbers of people react to and engage with. Under this unprecedented scheme, anyone, anywhere in the world, can profit from divisive or false content designed to drive wedges between Americans and Europeans, with no regard for things like quality or truthfulness. It's no coincidence that the fake MAGA accounts posted frequently about hot-button topics like immigration, isolationism, and culture war issues. These same design choices are now at the centre of the EU's €120 million penalty, which found that X's paid blue-check system misleads users about who is "verified", exposes people to impersonation and scams, and undermines transparency around political and issue-based advertising. Dismantling Trust an...

The Government's 'Integrity Gap' Is Leaving the Door Open for Nigel Farage

Read our Digital & Print Editions And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY Downing Street's electoral strategy is no longer a mystery. Labour's leadership has decided the safest route to power is to narrow politics to the smallest possible space: mimic just enough of Reform UK's rhetoric to neutralise them, reassure the bond markets, and run out the clock. This is not a strategy of renewal. It is crisis management masquerading as competence. And the public can already see through it. The latest polling from More in Common makes that unmistakably clear. When voters were asked which party they are most likely to vote against, Labour came first. For a governing party at the start of a term, this should set every alarm bell ringing. Voters are not rejecting bold reform or ideological ambition. They are rejecting the absence of it. They see a party that promised a decade of national renewal, but is offering a programme indistinguishable from managed decline. The Autumn Budget only confirmed the problem. In Parliament, I welcomed the necessary steps: ending the two-child limit, modest moves towards taxing wealth, a rise in the minimum wage. But these are tactical concessions, not a governing strategy. They do not confront the structural drivers of Britain's crises: monopoly extraction, climate-driven inflation, a decade of stagnant wages, and an economic model where unelected financial markets hold more authority over national policy than Parliament itself. As I said in the Commons, repainting the wallpaper does not fix the walls. And this Budget did not even acknowledge the foundations. The Integrity Gap: How We Built the Authoritarian Future We Fear Labour MP Clive Lewis argues that the collapse of public trust in Government is the product of corporate power being wired into the architecture of the state Clive Lewis MP Meanwhile, the political landscape is shifting beneath Labour's feet. For the first time in years, Nigel Farage's carefully crafted public image is cracking. Former classmates describe not a momentary lapse in judgement, but a pattern of racist bullying so severe it shaped the culture of their school. Indeed, these accounts reveal a man whose teenage cruelty seems less like a phase and more like a blueprint for his future-self. This should be an open goal. A moment to expose the gulf between Farage's performative plain-speaking and the worldview beneath. A chance to persuade those Reform-curious voters who feel abandoned by an economic system that extracts from them while political elites swap places and call it change. But Labour's leadership cannot seize this moment - because it cannot credibly speak to the failures it has chosen to imitate. You cannot call out Farage's divisive politics while borrowing his language on migration and asylum. You cannot promise economic dignity while refusing to challenge the extractive model that keeps millions in insecurity. You cannot build trust with disillusioned voters while clinging to the very managerialism they believe has failed them. This is Labour's integrity gap - and it is now a structural weakness. People feel something deep is wrong in Britain. They feel their wages stagnating while prices surge; their rent climbing while housing becomes ever more precarious; their energy bills rising while privatised monopolies post record profits. They watch water companies pollute rivers with impunity. They watch their children's futures shrink. They watch politicians change, but the model that fails them stay exactly the same. These instincts are not ignorant or extreme. They are rooted in a decade of lived reality. And if Labour does not offer a coherent alternative, others will fill the void. Because Britain's renewal depends on recognising who actually keeps the economy alive. SMEs, sole traders, co-operatives, family farms, local manufacturers and community enterprises have been crushed between rising costs and ...

Imitating the Populist Right: The Politics of Shabana Mahmood

Read our Digital & Print Editions And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system SUBSCRIBE TODAY With her appointment in September as Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood has become one of the country's most senior politicians, responsible for tackling migration, refugees and policing, core challenges for the Starmer Government. A self-declared social conservative - "If you were trying to put me in a box you would say social, small-c conservative," Mahmood admits to a "natural affinity for the faith, family and flag element of Blue Labour." Her appointment was seen as another triumph for Starmer's Chief of Staff and behind-the-scenes kingmaker Morgan McSweeney. Unsurprisingly, her appointment was met with acclaim by the Blue Labour leadership. Maurice Glasman called the move "fantastic", compared Mahmood to Elizabeth I and declared, "she's now clearly the leader of our part of the party" while Jonathan Rutherford with hyperbolic exaggeration hailed her as "perhaps the most astute and able politician of her generation". Yet, until now, she had remained unknown to most Labour supporters and the wider public. So what do we know about her politics? What is Her Background? Mahmood's grandparents came to Birmingham for work from Azad Kashmir in the 1960s. Her father was a civil engineer who worked in Saudi Arabia where Mahmood lived for the first seven years of her life. She then lived and went to school in Birmingham before gaining a place at Oxford University, where she took a degree in law. She then worked as a barrister until her election as Labour MP for the safe seat of Ladywood in inner-city Birmingham in 2010. She had no discernible track record of political activity prior to her selection but her dad was the chair of the Birmingham Labour Party. In the words of one long-standing, local councillor, "she was manoeuvred into the seat." In her maiden speech she proudly promoted the diversity of her constituency and gave a clear, positive definition of multi-culturalism. "…..while the people of my constituency might have come from different places, the destination they seek is the same - a place of greater opportunity and the same chance as everyone else to succeed." She recalled how "My grandfather came to this country from Pakistan in the 1960s. He worked long hours on a low wage and made sacrifices so that his family could access greater opportunity." She paid tribute "…to the successes of the Labour party and the Labour Government, who created the opportunities that made my family's journey and that of so many ordinary hard-working families possible. I believe that opportunity and the chance to fulfil one's aspirations is the birth-right of every one of our citizens." The 'Pink Ladies' Laundering Anti-Migrant Views Into the Mainstream An anti-migrant movement backed by Reform and Conservative politicians and regularly invited onto news channels is funded by a far-right group and has platformed a Neo-Nazi activist Nicola Kelly The Hostile Environment Revisited As Home Secretary Mahmood had an opportunity to make her grandparents' aspirations come true for successor generations of migrants. Instead, she is aping recent Tory predecessors in her role - Theresa May, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman - by instituting a "hostile environment" for them. On 29th September as Home Secretary she announced a new contribution-based settlement model to reduce net migration, boost integration and reduce pressure on public services. This stated that "To ensure people contribute to the economy and society before being able to settle in the UK, under the new model they will have to be lawfully resident in the UK for the minimum of 10 years, double the current period." Furthermore she set out tough new criteria for gaining indefinite leave to remain in the UK, including learning English to a high standard - defined in other briefings as equivalent to A level - not having taken any state benefits, and giving bac...