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Video of Labour's broken promises to nuke veterans gets 3 million views

Video of Labour's broken promises to nuke veterans gets 3 million views

Daily Mirror15 hours ago

Labour is under pressure to act on the Nuked Blood scandal after a video of ministers' broken promises was seen by 3 million people
The 3 Cabinet ministers who made promises to nuke veterans
A video detailing Labour's broken promises to nuclear veterans has been seen by more people than the 10 o'clock news.
Growing awareness of the goverment's failure to resolve the £5bn Nuked Blood scandal is now putting ministers under pressure to come up with answers.

A defence minister is expected to make a written statement to the House of Commons tomorrow to reveal interim findings of a review into allegations of human radiation experiments carried out on troops in the Cold War.

And it comes as more evidence emerges of veterans' medical records being tampered with to remove evidence of monitoring them before, during and after they served at nuclear weapons tests.
Peter Stefanovic, lawyer and founder of the Campaign for Social Justice, has compiled clips of Defence Secretary John Healey, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard while in Opposition, all calling for the Tories to set up compensation schemes for the veterans.
In just six weeks it has been viewed by 3 million people - more than watch the 10 o'clock news on either BBC or ITN.
* You can support the veterans' fight for justice HERE
"That doesn't happen unless the public get behind something. It illustrates to the government that public consciousness and outrage continues to grow," said Mr Stefanovic.
"We are hitting the public and the government in the face with this every day. Something has to give."

Lawyers acting for the veterans have threatened to launch a £5bn lawsuit for the missing medical records, unless the government accepts a cheaper offer of a one-year special tribunal, with capped costs, to investigate the cover-up.
And police are assessing a criminal complaint of misconduct in public office, linked to a secret database with information about blood and urine testing of troops, unlawfully locked behind national security at the Atomic Weapons Establishment. After the Mirror forced some of the files open, the entire archive is due to be declassified.

Now veteran Dave Whyte - who has been ruled "vexatious"| by the Ministry of Defence over a long Freedom of Information battle aimed at discovering his radiation dose after he was sent into Ground Zero at Operation Grapple in 1958 - has discovered a huge bundle of his personal medical records have gone missing.
After more than a decade and campaign group LABRATS raising his case with the Veterans Minister Al Carns, Dave, 88, of Kirkcaldy, Fife, has been sent his medical notes from his 10 years in service.
It contains just 13 sheets of paper, some of them duplicates. His 10 years of annual medical examinations are missing, along with 12 sets of clinical notes and 8 records of visiting the medic. The papers show two blood tests and a chest x-ray were administered for no clinical reason, but only one set of test results is in his file. And the results of a gland biopsy, conducted two years after the nuclear tests when his lymph nodes swelled up and doctors decided he had a blood disorder, are also missing.
Dave said: "I've asked again about my records from the decontamination centre I was sent to, and have been informed that I am still barred from asking FOIs. It is 14 years since I have been banned, convicted murderers serve less time."
The Mirror's evidence of the Nuked Blood scandal featured in a BBC documentary last year, called Britain's Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story, and in a Newsnight special report last week.

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Keir Starmer's 'island of strangers' speech was right
Keir Starmer's 'island of strangers' speech was right

New Statesman​

time36 minutes ago

  • New Statesman​

Keir Starmer's 'island of strangers' speech was right

Photo by Ben Stansall -In two interviews published on Sunday, Keir Starmer marked the end of week of retreats with a regret: he had never properly read the 'Island Of Strangers' speech he gave in May. The reason given, with an admirable and especially human candour, was that he and his family were still shaken from the mysterious arson attack that occurred at the same time. Who wouldn't be? He spoke of the temptation to cancel the speech – an obvious choice to most of us – but ploughed ahead. The interviews gave us the chance to remember that Starmer is a human being, but once again one whose weakness is still found in human problems. Problems found in the deep cynical opportunism and histrionics of Britain's political culture and the inability of the media (the humans that run it, and their incentives) to countenance any even-handed response to modern political culture. The admission that Starmer was not au-fait with the speech's contents won't have improved his image as a puppet of Morgan McSweeney and other, anonymous Labour spads. It won't have improved his image as a man with few strong personal convictions. It also seems barely credible. How can a man who (supposedly) wrote the far more inflammatory phrase 'the damage has been incalculable' in the 'Restoring Control Over The Immigration System' White Paper have robotically repeated the accompanying speech without knowing the contents? Surely a man who was involved in Black Lives Matter and came to prominence as an MP during the 'woke' political era would understand the taboo around anything – however unfairly it might be seized upon – even vaguely reminiscent of Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech. In 2013, polling by Lord Ashcroft found that 68 per cent of Afro-Caribbeans still remembered Enoch Powell. Asian communities were far less likely to hold the memory, but it still remained strong among Sikhs. The wound opened by Powell is still there. To have not been more careful of it was cack-handed, but to conflate the two speeches was so transparently insincere it is a shame the PM has shown only contrition. By declining to speak further to the context of what he was trying to do he has let the speech die without its merit being heard. Thus, the Guardian's letters page claimed another victim: the Prime Minister. Have those who condemned Starmer actually read the speech he says he didn't read? This focus on outrage over the 'island of strangers' phrase alone speaks to Labour's biggest challenge one year into power. Long since cut adrift from its former identity as a party of working-class people, Labour is trying to hold together a coalition of a core of metropolitan middle class public sector workers and a newly re-established group of 'somewheres' outside those cities. The latter live in significantly less diverse communities in declining, post-industrial Britain. These 'somewheres' are much more electorally influential and will decide the winner of the 2029 election – still searching for a politics and economics that doesn't leave them at the margin. Can the two groups that make up Labour's coalition ever play nice together? One would think that 'The Labour Party' would be delighted to find an electoral pathway that runs through the poorest parts of Britain. Yet, so far, it seems ashamed to be stood in front of the electoral tap-in that looms before the party. It has no politician of conviction to poke the ball into the net. But then, to do so will take a re-assessment of the political culture inside the party since Tony Blair. Instead of bowing to the uproar, Starmer should have emphasised again the substance of the speech: they are the political growing pains associated with the reality of the electoral map. First: the immigration policy Starmer discussed in his speech is in a crisis of democratic legitimacy that has reached its apex. Nothing describes the left's contemporary patrician mindset better than their instinct to try to sidestep this issue and ignore voting trends that are inconvenient, convinced that they are a product of the plebs' xenophobia and therefore fundamentally illegitimate. Britain has a housing shortage of between 2.5m and 4.2m homes (depending on which think tank you ask) and needs to build 200,000 over Labour's target of 300,000 a year. It needs to do this every year for six years to start closing this gap – probably all too late for the millennial generation whose future fortunes in life will now be completely defined by inheritance. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The average number of houses built since the Brexit referendum is around 206,000 annually, whilst the average net migration rate is closer to 330,000. In most years the net migration rate has climbed, making the infrastructure delivery requirement just to stay still harder each year. In fact, aside from the brief pandemic era, net migration has risen every single time a government was elected on a promise to reduce it. Labour is – or was – trying to do something to respond to this yawning democratic deficit. That's commendable in an era when political trust is lower than it has been for a lifetime and ordinary voters talk to focus groups in apocalyptic terms about the end of British society. Starmer's speech also dove into the relationship between migration and employer apathy – pointing to sectors like engineering, that previously offered Britain's working class a real chance at social mobility, but are now more likely to choose to issue a visa than they once were to train an apprentice. Apprenticeships are the much more likely choice of educational route for the children of lower income and/or non-graduate parents (read: working-class people). The British education system has become ever-more tilted toward university degrees, ever-more toward student debt. It has gifted the newly educated an empty post-graduate labour market that has reduced their educational premium to essentially nil. It is a broken system that is fundamentally pro-employer and pro-investor. One designed to pull the ladder away from working-class people. The mind boggles thinking of how the left became so enamoured of this system. Labour's top team are – or were – beginning to realise that there are winners and losers in the current globalised economic settlement. In a country where social mobility has collapsed and regional inequality has ballooned, it is the working class people the party was founded to represent that have lost out most. In trying to force the business' hand to bring training home, Labour can both help out the most disadvantaged and train the new generation of trade workers that it will need to build the extra hundreds of thousands of homes Britain needs. Finally, there is the pathos of both the phrase 'Island Of Strangers' and of Starmer's much more ill-advised use of the phrase 'incalculable damage' in the foreword to the white paper. That damage is not being done to Britain, but to other countries that we infrequently hear about. The liberal immigration consensus has, in fact, caused a form of damage that few have tried to bring as a calculation to the public mind: damage associated with brain drain from nations with the most to lose. As of 2023, Britain preys on the 'red-list' countries that the World Health Organisation says have critical shortages of doctors and nurses. In March Wes Streeting described the NHS's recruitment practices as 'unethical' – and he was right. These are countries with fewer than 49 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 10,000 people – the darker side of the migration consensus, that won't be included in platitude-laden conversations about diversity. These recruitment drives again remove the need for the state to train more working class would-be doctors and nurses in Britain. Most of all, Labour itself is becoming an Island Of Strangers. This speech was Starmer's first attempt to speak to the emotional life of our country. Binning it would be a mistake, a return to the meaningless, politics-without-any-politics speak of 'Five Missions'. According to polling by More In Common made after the speech, 50 percent of Britons feel disconnected from society. Then look closer; this feeling is heavily, heavily weighted to the least well-off, who feel least closeness with their neighbours and whose sense of social trust has collapsed from high to low over a generation. The same polling shows that this feeling is most extreme with Reform voters, who also claim to have the lowest levels of life satisfaction. These are people who are often living unhappy lives and who feel the loss of a world their parents had very keenly. People Labour should feel a sense of compassion toward, and who Labour has to win the trust of if it is to continue in government. Instead many have the instinct of the harshest capitalist: adapt or die. As Michael Young and Peter Willmott wrote in their study of 1950s Bethnal Green Family and Kinship in East London, community ties were once the precious treasure of a working-class life. They were the traditions that founded the Labour Party. My grandmother knew half of Hebburn before she passed, over money and property her ability to love others was my family's great inheritance. My father knew fewer people than her. I know fewer still. 'Knowing other people' is a form of wealth that can't be replaced by AI innovations, GDP growth, industrial strategy or in a 'mission'. The erosion of social bonds is slowly boiling British life to death: it is making life feel less worth living, less hopeful, especially for the poorest. Forcing Britain to face up to the various, uncomfortable hypocrisies within a failed consensus on globalisation shouldn't be something Labour apologises for. It is a moral mission that the party was once completely comfortable with. Perhaps Starmer's biggest problem is that he doesn't really believe in that particular mission. [See also: A humbling week for Keir Starmer] Related

Labour contenders jockey for position
Labour contenders jockey for position

Spectator

timean hour ago

  • Spectator

Labour contenders jockey for position

They say you should never waste a good crisis. And that certainly seems to be the mantra of certain senior figures within the Labour party, given their prominence in recent days. First, there was Wes Streeting out on the Sunday airwaves. Asked about the 'Death, death to the IDF' chant at Glastonbury, the Health Secretary told Victoria Derbyshire: I'd also say to the Israeli embassy, get your own house in order. What happened in the West Bank this week by Israeli settler terrorists needs to not only be condemned, it needs to be acted upon. And Israel cannot continue to look the other way while its own people are carrying out unwanton acts of terrorism and violence. They wouldn't tolerate it, rightly, against their own citizens; their citizens are doing it to Palestinians and it's got to stop. He used the same phrase 'get your own house in order' on Sky too. Exactly the sort of thing that an ambitious minister expecting a leadership contest might say… Then there was Andy Burnham, the Mayor of the Great Manchester. You can always tell when Keir Starmer is in trouble by how much Burnham pops up on telly. He is the SAS of the Labour party, always on standby. So it is no surprise then that Burnham has decreed – shocked – that the proposed concessions on the Welfare Bill tomorrow do not go far enough. Speaking at an event at Glastonbury (where else?), he said: What's been announced is half a U-turn, a 50 per cent U-turn. In my view I'd still hope MPs vote against the whole bill when it comes before parliament… [Labour MPs] face the prospect, if they accept this package, someone could come to their surgery in two years saying 'Why did you vote to make me £6,000 worse off than someone exactly the same, but who was protected because they were an existing claimant'?… I hope they think carefully before the vote, because the vote will create that unfairness and divide in disabled people. Never a good sign for any PM when the young contenders start circling publicly. Still, maybe another moody long form interview will fix it for Sir Keir eh?

Why Labour ministers and rebels need to make peace with each other, and quickly
Why Labour ministers and rebels need to make peace with each other, and quickly

Scotsman

timean hour ago

  • Scotsman

Why Labour ministers and rebels need to make peace with each other, and quickly

Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... This coming week the Labour Party should be celebrating a year in office. The new era they have launched, turning the country away from the chaos and sleaze of Boris, Liz and Rishi. But instead, they will be picking through the rubble of what was their welfare reform plan and presenting a patched-up alternative forced on them, not by an impotent Tory opposition, but their own MPs. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Around the echoing corridors of Westminster, nobody is talking about Labour's Industrial Strategy, Spending Review or trade deals clinched where the Tories couldn't. The gossip is all about the U-turns and how a government which promised so much has disappointed so many. I can only imagine the frustration that many on the benches behind the Prime Minister must be feeling at the jibes that this is not the change we expected from a Labour government. But perhaps what has actually changed, or is at least changing, is that we no longer see or experience our politics in terms of left, right and centre. Keir Starmer is shown a fast-jet trainer during a visit to RAF Valley in Anglesey on Friday (Picture: Paul Currie) | PA Do the right thing The idea of a widespread, trade union-supporting, working-class movement thirled to the idea of a mutually exclusive relationship with the Labour party belongs in the past. The soft-left, progressive ideals of New Labour still hold some of their attraction, but for many people even the notion of any of class-informed rhetoric is anathema. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It is no longer enough to be the party of the working person or of business. Increasingly our political thoughts are dominated by issues that demand a new paradigm: climate change, immigration, international tensions, gender conflict and societal violence. I, and many of my colleagues, regularly find ourselves in cross-party agreements on issues as varied as energy licenses and China. This past week has been a case in point. The opposition to the welfare reforms which would, by Labour's own calculations, have pushed 250,000 people into poverty had support across the House. But there is another, less discussed issue. We have become too dominated by spin doctors and professional political analysts whose motivation is all about target groups, positioning and 'the message'. All of those things have their place, but should never, I believe, take the place of genuine political instinct and motivation. Doing the right thing. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Welfare reform required I know what I believe, and in this week's drama I was firmly in the same camp as those fighting to preserve support for those who need it. For me, there were no political points to be won, or positions to be taken. It was only about doing the right thing. Yes, our welfare bill is exploding. Yes, the system needs to be reformed. But no, that should not be to the detriment of those it was set up to help in the first place. Agreement appears to have broken out in the Labour party but that's no guarantee that tomorrow parliament will be presented with something which meets the needs of those it is elected to serve. Labour will now have to make peace amongst themselves and establish just what it is that they want to stand for in power. For the next four years, the country needs good, stable government. We had enough drama with the Tories.

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