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Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features SUBSCRIBE TODAY When police stopped Nathan Gill at Manchester Airport on 13 September 2021, they did so under Schedule 3 of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 - a power designed to detect hostile-state activity and foreign interference at UK borders. Byline Times and The Nerve can now reveal that, when Gill was arrested, the former MEP had been invited to spend four days in Moscow at a major gathering of 'political technologists' from across the world, under the auspices of the Kremlin. According to the Crown Prosecution Service indictment and Gill's own pleas, he accepted bribes from December 2018 to July 2019 from Oleh Voloshyn - a pro-Russian Ukrainian MP with longstanding ties to Viktor Medvedchuk, Vladimir Putin's closest political ally in Ukraine. This new revelation ties Farage's closest aide even more directly to Russia and its state influence operations. And, in a week when Reform UK celebrated becoming the first ever political party in the UK to receive cryptocurrency donations, we can also reveal that Gill had prepared a presentation about the electoral role of cryptocurrencies for his Russian sponsors. EXCLUSIVE 'Thick as Thieves': Nathan Gill and Nigel Farage's Putin Problem Far from being distant from the Reform UK Leader, insiders told Byline Times that the former MEP convicted of bribery was one of Farage's closest aides, while we reveal how Gill worked on the Kremlin's strategic plan to crush Ukrainian independence with 'Moscow's Man in Ukraine' Peter Jukes From Ukraine to Russia with Love When Nathan Gill pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery at the Old Bailey, for taking money to issue statements favourable to Russia while he was a UKIP and Brexit Party MEP, it was the first case under the Bribery Act for foreign political interference. And it provided further proof that Nigel Farage's parties - like many other right-wing Eurosceptic groups across the continent - were consistently targeted by Putin's intelligence services and their proxies. Five days after the first payment was made in December 2018, Gill - then a UKIP MEP - made a statement in the European Parliament to protest the planned closure of Medvedchuk's TV stations 112 Ukraine and News24. He was interviewed by the TV station's presenter and the wife of the man who had bribed him, Nadia Borodi (also known as Nadia Sass). Borodi was also pictured with then UKIP Leader Nigel Farage - who sat as an MEP alongside Gill - outside the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, and then apparently inside Gill's parliamentary office. The bribes from Voloshyn continued until July 2019, when Gill was one of the few UKIP MEPs to join Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party. According to his then fellow MEP Rupert Lowe - who now sits as an independent MP in the UK Parliament after being suspended by Reform UK - Gill acted as the whip for Brexit Party MEPs. In a recent statement, Lowe described being called to a meeting by Gill at the European Parliament, where those in attendance claimed to be "very close to Putin". This coincided with a roundtable event Gill hosted for Viktor Medvedchuk, during which 'Moscow's man in Ukraine' announced a new 'peace plan' for the country, which he then celebrated with President Putin the next day in the Kremlin, boasting of the support of British and other MEPs. According to sources Byline Times has spoken to, Farage and Gill were "as thick as thieves" during this period, and it would have been "inconceivable" that Farage could not have known about Gill's Ukrainian connections and statements. Farage himself has admitted that he knew Gill for some years and warned him about going to Ukraine - because it is "one of the most corrupt countries in the world", as he recently described it to the BBC. But what about Russia, deeply entwined in its post-Soviet corruption through t...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features SUBSCRIBE TODAY The young woman who attended the interview had brown hair, her face permanently anxious. Her name was Petra, and she came from the Czech Republic, in the hope of working for me. This was in the early 2000s, some four years after the Community Care (Direct Payments) Act came into effect and meant that disabled people were able to opt for receiving funds directly. It was a novel, and at times unsettling, experience - the autonomy bringing responsibility - and I found myself learning fast about the process of recruitment and interviewing. This was pre-Brexit, four years after freedom of movement became enshrined in EU law, and supported the influx of many young women who applied for work within the broadest context of the care industry. It was an eye-opener. Within the first months of my recruitment process for two personal assistants, the majority of applicants were not 'native' to the UK. The first 10 to apply included three 'natives' across a broad age spectrum (21-69), who came with a standard agency mentality. The remaining seven were from Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Zimbabwe. To my mind, these seven were by far the better applicants. Some had a certain quality of pragmatism which I appreciated, and others an incredible work ethic. All of them were eager. Unlike the 'natives', none of them had a patronising attitude, but were open to learning from me, and appreciated that I did indeed know my own needs (the primary focus of independent living). Why Are We Accepting State-Sanctioned Social Murder? Sara Ryan's new book argues that people with learning disabilities experience fatal violence at the hands of the state. Why? Because we do not see them as 'human' Sara Ryan Their experiences of working in the UK varied - with many sharing, as trust grew between us, horrific experiences of exploitation and abuse. Darling Petra, so keen to do her best, was also working as a cleaner for several non-disabled clients - probably not all 'on the books', but that was hardly her fault, and certainly not my business. But it became so when I detected abuse that rose to what I knew was criminal behaviour and urged her to report incidents to the police, which she did not do out of fear of her abuser, and of losing her right to stay in the UK. She eventually decided to move back to the Czech Republic. Precious, from Zimbabwe, was a giggler. I was in awe of how far she had travelled. She bathed and dressed me with care and laughter, which lessened the white person guilt I felt very aware of. We had a lot in common, including a love of knitting. When I went out with Precious, I noticed a sickening difference in how others interacted with her compared to Petra - it was clearly racially motivated. Then there was Gergana, a striking young woman from Bulgaria interested in social work and excited by the growing activism coming from the UK's disabled community. There are numerous factors that make the type of work I offer appealing to these young women who are prepared to travel so far - and, in many cases, keep stoical in the face of the abuse and outright racism that coming to the UK sadly entails. Still, the reality is that there remains the chance of a higher standard of living here, with a number of my PAs pointing out that to work in the UK care industry means better earnings, while the home-grown 'natives' balk at pay that scarcely scrapes above national minimum wage. Many of my own PAs also feel they gain insight and particular skills from working in the UK, despite evidence of exploitation within the more traditional agency work structures. These young women can be emotionally scarred, with stories that remain shocking, if familiar. Foreign workers being lured into modern slavery traps - passports 'kept safe', meaning withheld; 'guaranteed accommodation' turning out to be...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features SUBSCRIBE TODAY The same digital infrastructure used by Israel's military in Gaza has been quietly coded into the design of Gaza's proposed post-war administration, Byline Times can reveal. Poised to profit are the very American tech giants backing President Donald Trump, who plans to send US troops to Israel to monitor the new Gaza ceasefire. A Byline Times review of the leaked Gaza International Transitional Authority (GITA) framework, procurement guidance documents, and FEC filings shows that its digital-governance backbone - covering identity, border control, aid logistics and donor coordination - matches the Oracle-Palantir technology 'stack' of digital technologies currently used in Israel's defence network. They further suggest that the GITA board structure is planned to allow this stack an easy entry-point into reconstruction contracts. The plan was drafted by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), whose biggest financial backer is Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder and executive chairman of tech giant Oracle Corporation. Since 2021, the institute received donations or pledges of at least £257 million from the Larry Ellison Foundation, an amount that dwarfs all other donors combined. The funding has enabled TBI to expand across Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, embedding consultants in government ministries. TBI insists that Ellison's money is "ring-fenced" for social and climate programmes. Yet Ellison's dominance in TBI's revenue stream makes such separation largely theoretical. Ellison himself is a Trump supporter and Republican Party megadonor, who has given tens of millions of dollars to the party and embedded Oracle across the American federal government following extensive lobbying. Oracle is also poised to oversee TikTok's US algorithm after the completion of its US sale, under Trump's deal with China. Ellison has close ties to fellow pro-Trump billionaire Peter Thiel, through a little-known partnership between Oracle and Palantir, the surveillance and defence-analytics firm co-founded by Thiel. Both companies have directly supported Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip. But the same companies are also in prime position to profit from the technocratic management of Gaza after the war. The leaked draft first obtained by Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz outlines a sweeping post-war system: a unified civil registry and digital identity platform; centralised border and customs management; data-driven humanitarian logistics for aid and reconstruction; and an interoperable digital-governance backbone connecting donor agencies and local authorities. These mirror the operational domains of the Palantir-Oracle technology stack. The Ellison-Thiel Technological Axis In April 2024 Oracle and Palantir announced a deep "strategic partnership" to deliver "mission-critical AI solutions to governments and businesses." It was a relationship nearly a decade in the making - back in 2017 Ellison had held exploratory talks with Peter Thiel about acquiring Palantir outright. By July, Palantir and Oracle jointly unveiled deployment guides showing its Foundry and AI platforms running on Oracle's sovereign, government and "air-gapped" clouds, tailored for national security clients. In June 2025 Oracle launched its Defence Ecosystem including "Palantir for Builders." Palantir has long become a cornerstone of Western military data infrastructure, and in January 2024 the company had announced its own "strategic partnership with Israel's Ministry of Defense" to supply operational software for the Gaza campaign. Palantir technology has also been instrumental in Israel Defence Force (IDF) AI targeting in Gaza. Ellison's Oracle had made parallel moves. Through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's (OCI) Jerusalem Region launched in 2021 - a sovereign data centre built "to ser...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features SUBSCRIBE TODAY It's taken a long time but Keir Starmer's Government has finally admitted that Brexit has been a disaster for the UK. "There is no doubt that the impact of Brexit has been severe and long-lasting", Rachel Reeves told Sky News, in her first big admission that leaving the EU has badly hit the UK economy. This admission has been a long time coming. For years Labour's strategy has been to suggest that they could seize the "opportunities" of leaving the EU in order to "Make Brexit Work". Yet with polls showing support for Brexit at all time lows, and support for "Mr Brexit" Nigel Farage at all time highs, Downing Street have decided to start linking the two. The strategy has a double purpose. Not only do they hope that it will put the blame for the UK's faltering economy onto Farage, but they also hope that it will help pave the way for the tax rises that Reeves today explicitly stated will have to be introduced at her upcoming budget. There are two big problems with this strategy. The first is that it is unclear how effective trying to blame a man for the UK's current economic stagnation, who has never been in Government before, rather than the two parties who were in charge of the country both before leaving the EU and since, will be. If Brexit is to blame for the economy then so are the two parties who voted it through and keep it in place. UPDATE 'Stunned?' Farage's Admission He Knew Nathan Gill but Not His Kremlin Associates Does Not Stand Up to Scrutiny Insiders have told Byline Times it is 'inconceivable' the Reform Leader did not know about his close aide's pro Russian statements Peter Jukes The second and bigger problem is that if Brexit has been such a disaster, which it has, then why is Keir Starmer's Government still so intent on continuing with it? Since entering government the Prime Minister has repeatedly insisted that the UK will never rejoin the EU in his lifetime, while also ruling out any return to the European Customs Union or Single Market either. There have been some slight but welcome tweaks to the UK's trading and regulatory relationship with the EU, with the overall trend under Starmer being a gradual shift towards a more pro-European and internationalist position. Reeves' comments today are undoubtedly a part of that shift. Yet when it comes to making the sort of significant move back towards the EU that would actually make a meaningful difference to Britain's stagnant economy, Starmer remains firmly stuck in the Brexit mud. Making Brexit Worse This is particularly the case when you look at why Brexit has been such a disaster for the UK economy. On this the evidence is clear. By shutting off the UK from its main economic partners in Europe, Brexit put the breaks on British trade, while shifting the costs for this additional friction onto UK consumers. Most experts agree that one of the main reasons inflation remains so stubbornly high in the UK compared to most other European nations is because of the additional trade and Labour costs associated with being outside the EU. The fall in the pound that followed Brexit, combined with the impact of depriving British companies of a skilled and relatively cheap European workforce, means that inflation in the UK is now significantly higher than it otherwise would have been. The result is that even now when forecasts suggest stronger economic growth in the UK in the years to come, most voters will continue to feel worse off because of ever-spiralling prices. The political beneficiary of this will inevitably be the same Reform UK leader the Government is now belatedly trying to shoulder with the blame for it. Of course the obvious solution to this problem would be to remove those inflationary barriers, either through reversing Brexit altogether, or through negotiating re-entry into the Single Market and Cus...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features SUBSCRIBE TODAY The recent investigations into Syria's "stolen children" have uncovered a bleak truth. Documents and testimonies indicate that children "disappeared" under Bashar al-Assad were hidden in so-called orphanages, including facilities run by the global charity SOS Children's Villages. Many were not orphans, but the sons and daughters of detainees and regime opponents. The centres were used to extort and punish their families. Reporting by Lighthouse Reports, the Observer and the BBC details mothers denied answers, records altered, and children's identities changed. The Syria scandal demands answers, but what SOS truly needs is a reckoning with the very foundations of its model of care. SOS is not a small organisation. It is a federation operating in more than 130 countries which presents itself as the world's largest provider of care for children without parental care. With revenues of €1.64 billion in 2023, the organisation operates with a level of power and influence comparable to some governments. That same year it claims to have provided "a range of care options" to about 69,000 children, while supporting 103,500 families to prevent separation, according to its own impact data. At the heart of its system are the "villages", clusters of houses where one SOS "mother" cares for up to ten children. Marketed as "family-like care", these villages are essentially residential institutions. The idea is not new. A century ago, Barnardo's in the UK built "cottage homes" on the same model, later abandoned because children were stigmatised and segregated from community life. SOS has repeated this model for many decades on a global scale. With tens of thousands of children in its care, it holds enormous influence yet operates without democratic oversight. The Syria scandal is not the first time SOS has faced serious questions. In 2021 SOS commissioned independent reviews of historical abuse after allegations surfaced across the federation. The organisation issued apologies and pointed to stronger safeguarding, but survivors and whistleblowers continue to ask who has been held accountable and how decisions were made. The federation highlights reforms including a revised child safeguarding policy, a strengthened code of conduct and the creation of a global ombuds system. Yet these measures raise questions about whether they represent genuine cultural change or reactive crisis management. How Trump's Gaza Peace Plan Could Quickly Crumble The President's America-first, Palestine-last plan for Gaza risks collapsing under its own contradictions, argues Rana Sabbagh Rana Sabbagh The notion of the villages "family-like" care also falls apart under scrutiny. SOS villages are often built on the outskirts of towns, hidden behind walls and fences that cut children off from everyday community life. However well-intentioned, this segregation reinforces stigma and marks children and young people out as different. Inside the houses, a single adult is usually responsible for eight to ten children, and when one caregiver is stretched so thin, older children frequently take on the parenting of younger peers. Evidence shows it piles stress on children and harms their long-term outcomes. A recent review of studies comparing foster and residential care underline what practitioners already know: children thrive best in families rooted in their communities rather than in institutions by another name. In my own research in Thailand, we interviewed children living in children's village settings, some run by SOS and some by the Government. Children described both the strengths and the strains of this model. They appreciated the stability of house mothers, but also spoke about the stigma of village life, feeling marked out at school as being different from their peers. Boys were separated at the age of 14 int...