Bar, café and retail jobs are society's heartbeat
Last October, accompanied by Sir Keir Starmer's rhetoric about 'the dignity of work and of every worker', the chancellor's budget embraced a pig-headed manifesto commitment not to touch individual pay packets in a way that would be noticed. It stealthily froze tax thresholds, raised capital gains and hammered family farms — right on top of a disastrous harvest year — but refused to nudge up even slightly the national insurance element that everyone on PAYE sees in their payslip. It was all on employers instead.
This was, frankly, a cosmetic political decision, blowing a kiss to workers and a raspberry to paymasters. But the effect was that while avoiding ripples which might rock little boats it caused a tsunami of lost opportunities. Sure, voters would have grumbled at personal NI rises, maybe reduced consumer spending a bit, but they would soon have got used to the new level. Particularly if chances were visibly burgeoning for everyone in a growing economy.
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ITV News
14 minutes ago
- ITV News
PM suggests UK will play role in Gaza aid airdrops amid mounting calls for Palestinian statehood
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has suggested the UK will play a role in dropping aid into Gaza by air, as he faces calls from 221 cross-party MPs to recognise a Palestinian state. Israel said on Friday it will allow airdrops of aid by foreign countries into Gaza to alleviate starvation in the Palestinian territory. Starmer said the UK will 'do everything we can to get aid in via this route'. Meanwhile, he faces growing calls to recognise a Palestinian state immediately. Some 221 MPs from Labour, the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru, SDLP and independents, have signed a letter calling on the government to take the step at a UN meeting next week. France's president Emmanuel Macron announced his nation would formally recognise Palestine at the UN General Assembly in September, leading UK politicians to question whether the British government would follow suit. US President Donald Trump suggested Macron's announcement 'doesn't matter' as he left America for a visit to Scotland. But Sarah Champion, the senior Labour MP who organised the letter by parliamentarians, said recognition 'would send a powerful symbolic message that we support the rights of the Palestinian people'. Other senior Commons figures who signed the letter include Labour select committee chairs Liam Byrne, Dame Emily Thornberry and Ruth Cadbury. Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, as well as Tory former minister Kit Malthouse, and Sir Edward Leigh – Parliament's longest-serving MP – also signed it. The majority of those who have signed, 131, are Labour MPs. In a video statement released on Friday, Starmer made plain his desire for a ceasefire in the war. He said: 'I know the British people are sickened by what is happening. The images of starvation and desperation are utterly horrifying. 'The denial of aid to children and babies is completely unjustifiable, just as the continued captivity of hostages is completely unjustifiable.' Signalling the UK is willing to help get aid into Gaza via air, the prime minister added: 'News that Israel will allow countries to airdrop aid into Gaza has come far too late, but we will do everything we can to get aid in via this route. 'We are already working urgently with the Jordanian authorities to get British aid on to planes and into Gaza.' Children who need specialist medical treatment will be evacuated from Gaza to the UK, Starmer added. He also called for an international coalition to 'end the suffering' in Gaza, similar to the coalition of the willing aimed at helping Ukraine. Starmer had earlier responded to calls for the recognition of a Palestinian state, insisting such a move needed to be part of the 'pathway' to peace in the Middle East, which he and allies are working towards. He added: 'Recognition of a Palestinian state has to be one of those steps. I am unequivocal about that. But it must be part of a wider plan which ultimately results in a two-state solution and lasting security for Palestinians and Israelis.' In a statement released on Friday alongside the leaders of France and Germany, the prime minister urged Israel to stop restricting the flow of aid into Gaza. Charities operating in Gaza have said Israel's blockade and ongoing military offensive are pushing people there towards starvation, warning that they are seeing their own workers and Palestinians 'waste away'. The prime minister will meet the US president during his trip to Scotland, where he arrived on Friday evening. US-led peace talks in Qatar were cut short on Thursday, with Washington's special envoy Steve Witkoff accusing Hamas of a 'lack of desire to reach a ceasefire'. The deal under discussion is expected to include a 60-day ceasefire in which Hamas would release 10 living hostages and the remains of 18 others in phases in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
The Guardian
36 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Dear Keir Starmer, stop cosying up to Donald Trump – or he'll drag Britain down with him
Donald Trump's victory in last November's US presidential election presented Keir Starmer, Britain's Labour prime minister, with a choice – and an opportunity. Either cosy up to a man whose obnoxious, hard-right, ultra-nationalist policies are inimical to UK security and foreign policy interests, economic prosperity and democratic values; or risk a rupture with the US, a longstanding but overbearing ally, and seize the moment to redefine Britain's place in the world, primarily through reintegration in Europe. Starmer made the wrong call – and Britain has paid a heavy price ever since. The cost to national dignity and the public purse will be on painful show this weekend as Trump, pursued by the Epstein scandal and angry protesters, makes an expensively policed, ostensibly private visit to his golf courses in Scotland. On Monday, the prime minister will travel north to kiss the ring. More humiliations loom. In September, Trump will return for an unprecedented second state visit, at Starmer's unctuous behest. At that point, the full, embarrassing extent of Britain's thraldom will be there for all the world to see. Let's be clear. Trump is no friend of Britain's and is, in key respects, a dangerous foe. Efforts to curry favour with this narcissist will ultimately prove futile. Trump always reneges. His unedifying career is littered with broken promises and relationships, personal and political. His only loyalty is to himself. Right now, this wannabe dictator is busy making America not greater but weaker, poorer, less influential and more disliked. Don't let him drag Britain down, too. It's not too late to make the break. US leadership of the western democracies used to be taken for granted. Now it's a problem. Politicians in both Britain's main parties have difficulty accepting this shift. As so often, public opinion is ahead of them. Recent polling by the Pew Research Center found 62% of Britons have no confidence in Trump 'to do the right thing regarding world affairs'. Most of those surveyed in 24 countries viewed him as dangerous, arrogant and dishonest. Thanks to him, the US's international standing is in freefall. Giving Israel a free hand in Gaza is the most egregious example of how Trump's policies conflict with UK interests. Starmer's government has condemned the deliberate killing and starving of civilians. Among the 55% of Britons opposed to Israel's actions, 82% believe they amount to genocide, a YouGov poll found last month. A majority backs additional sanctions. Trump's support for forced relocations, opposition to a two-state solution and close collaboration with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader charged with war crimes, all contradict stated UK policy. Trump bears significant personal responsibility for what Starmer calls the 'unspeakable and indefensible' horror in Gaza. Starmer warned dramatically last month that the UK was in growing danger of military attack following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Britain and other Nato states have steadfastly supported Kyiv. Not so Trump. Since taking office, he has toadied to Vladimir Putin, vilified Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy, suspended military supplies and questioned Nato's future. Ignoring proliferation fears, Trump is simultaneously fuelling a nuclear arms race. Now the hapless Starmer has been panicked into buying US jets capable of carrying warheads and, it is claimed, has secretly allowed US-owned nukes back into the UK. This is not the Britain Labour voters want. Trump recently reversed himself on Ukraine, patched things up with Nato and criticised Putin. But he could change his mind again tomorrow. Oblivious to the glaring double standard, he congratulates himself meanwhile on 'obliterating' Iran's nuclear facilities – even though last month's illegal US bombing was only partly successful. Britain rightly favours negotiations with Tehran. It wasn't consulted. Trump's tariff wars pose a direct threat to the UK economy, jobs and living standards. Despite Starmer's deal mitigating their impact, 10% tariffs or higher remain on most US-bound exports. Trump's bullying of Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Panama and others over sovereignty, migration and trade feeds uncertainty. His irrational hostility to the EU may gratify the likes of Nigel Farage (and Putin). But endless rows between important allies do not serve Britain's interests. The advance of hard-right, nationalist-populist parties in Europe and, most recently, in Japan suggests the socially divisive, chauvinist agendas championed by Trump's Maga movement have widening international appeal. That augurs ill for democracy in Britain and the world generally. For the same reason, Trump's assaults on US constitutional rights, notably minority and gender rights, attacks on judges, universities and public institutions, and attempts to suppress independent media scrutiny are ominous. Such toxic behaviour is contagious. Trumpism is the new Covid. Britain needs inoculation. By slashing overseas aid, cutting public service broadcasters such as Voice of America, defunding and ostracising UN agencies, flouting international courts and pretending the climate emergency is illusory, Trump inflicts immense harm on the US's reputation, global influence and soft-power armoury. He is wrecking the rules-based order that Britain views as fundamental. It's a gift to China, Russia and authoritarians everywhere. As Pentagon spending rockets to $1tn annually, his crude message is unmistakeable: might makes right. Brute strength rules. Trump is a disaster for the west and all in the UK who respect progressive democratic values. His second term will evidently be more globally perilous, destructive and destabilising than his first. In support of universal principles established centuries before anyone heard of him, Britain should steer clear of this walking, talking catastrophe. Rather than hug Trump close, Starmer should keep him at arm's length for fear of infection. Don't go to Scotland to see him, Prime Minister. Don't waste your breath. Instead, start planning for the post-special-relationship era. Make the break. It's time. Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
The Guardian
40 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Dodgy guys who dress just like him': meet the team behind far-right activist Tommy Robinson
The Tommy Robinson outriders were early to Epping. Wendell Daniel, a former Labour councillor who is now a film-maker for Robinson's Urban Scoop video platform, turned his microphone to a young woman on the edge of the protests in the Essex town. 'Look into that,' he said pointing to the camera. 'Talk to Tommy, tell him you want to see him coming down here.' 'Tommy,' she responded, 'I think you should definitely come down because you will help out the situation so much more.' Robinson, 42, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was quick to respond: 'Hear you loud & clear, I'm coming to Epping next Sunday ladies & bringing thousands more with me,' he said on X. The actor and rightwing activist Laurence Fox was coming along too, he added. For days, Epping has been the scene of demonstrations outside the town's Bell hotel after the charging of an Ethiopian asylum seeker – recently arrived on a small boat – with sexual assault against a local girl. With the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, and the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, talking up the risk of the disorder spreading further, it had appeared the perfect opportunity for Robinson, with a so-called 'migrant hotel' providing the focus. Twenty-four hours later, Robinson appeared to have gone cold on the idea. It might not benefit him and it might not benefit Epping, he mused on camera. It might appear an awkward volte-face, but Lucy Brown, once a right-hand woman to Robinson, chronicling his every stunt and provocative comment for social media for two years, had seen it all before. It was, the 34-year-old suggested, an insight into both his frustrating tendency to act on instinct and a reliance on the colourful team behind him, an inner circle that includes the son of a Krays' gangster, the Canadian publisher of a far-right platform and a Sikh convicted of being part of a robbery in which a shop worker was threatened with having his throat slashed. 'He's very reactive,' Brown said of Robinson. 'It's often just what comes into his head. He's very quick to believe his own myth. It takes probably a bunch of messages from people saying, 'Don't do it'. And finally he has to begrudgingly say: 'Oh, maybe it's not a good idea'. 'He'll just rush in, straight away, whatever feels right at the time. He just does not think. Which is why he falls in [to] prison all the time, because he's always saying stuff that he shouldn't.' Brown was with Robinson at some of the key moments early in his rise, including escorting him to what would be a highly lucrative first meeting with Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist to Donald Trump. Bannon thought he was ex-army, a bemused Robinson disclosed to her at the time. Brown left Robinson's side after a bruising falling out, but suspects that his enthusiasm for Epping dulled when he was alerted by his entourage to appeals from leading figures in the local protests for him to stay away. Robinson may appear to be a one-man band, marshalling his significant following in the UK and a trans-national far-right community that is particularly strong in the US thanks to Bannon and Elon Musk. This week, Robinson sent out an email to followers to raise £106,000 to fund an upcoming demonstration, according to one recipient. In truth, the 42-year-old sits at the centre of an ecosystem of long-term acolytes and more recent hangers-on, who are key to facilitating what even his harshest critics will admit is a successful campaign to put himself at the heart of national debate. When Robinson judicially reviewed his 'detention in solitary confinement and treatment' at HMP Woodhill, where he was jailed for repeating false claims about a 15-year-old Syrian refugee in defiance of a court injunction, the judge ruled against him on the grounds that it was for his protection and he had enjoyed '80 social visits, not including those from family members'. On leaving prison, Robinson told a friendly podcaster that he had planned from his cell a 'Uniting the Kingdom' demonstration in London to be held on 13 September, all with the help of regular communication with his lieutenants. Who then is Team Tommy? Brown, who at one point moved to Bedfordshire to work more closely with Robinson, stopped working with him seven years ago, but the core around him has remained remarkably stable for at least a decade, according to Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate. On leaving HMP Woodhill, Robinson had words of thanks on the steps of the prison for Ezra Levant, the Canadian owner of Rebel Media, a social media platform similar to the better known Breitbart, for helping his family while he was in jail. Nine years ago, he had started paying Robinson £200 a video for Rebel. The platform generates revenue through donations from viewers and crowdfunding campaigns. Brown, who was the helping hand with the camera at the start of that relationship, said Robinson had become a big earner for the businessman. 'Ezra Levant is very important, definitely kind of like the show runner, and it's fascinating seeing him still around,' she said. 'He is the one that goes down to the court cases with [former Sun journalist] Dan Wootton and spins the story to make sure that everyone knows that Tommy's actually the victim, guys. He is perpetuating the Tommy myth despite seeing him up close and personal. But it is a business to him.' While it was with Levant that Robinson did his first interview after leaving jail, the second was on a podcast called The Dozen hosted by Liam Tuffs, son of Peter Gillett, a registered sex offender who was said by Reggie Kray to be his 'adoptive son'. Tuffs, who runs a security firm and has described his father as an 'animal' and 'narcissist', has interviewed figures such as Laurence Fox (in a episode entitled 'British Culture is under Attack') but he has also featured Adam Kelwick, the imam at the Abdullah Quilliam mosque in Liverpool (an episode entitled 'Death Cult or Peaceful Religion? Muslim Leader Quizzed over Radical Islam'). 'He's a friend of Tommy that now and again would go on stage and compere for him,' said Brown of Tuffs, who is regarded as a calming influence on Robinson, who has been diagnosed with ADHD. 'I've watched him sidle his way in. He likes to tell people that he helps Tommy get sober, but I'm not sure if we can trust that Tommy is sober, to be honest with you.' It was Tufts and Guramit Singh, a former leading member of the English Defence League (EDL), who was with Robinson at the Hawksmoor restaurant on London's Air Street last month when they were asked to leave because staff 'felt uncomfortable serving him'. Singh, from Nottingham, was sentenced in 2013 to seven years and three months in jail for his role in a robbery during which a shop assistant was pinned the ground and made threats to slash his throat if he did not hand over cash. There is a further tranche of Robinson devotees at Urban Scoop, the so-called 'independent journalism' website to which Robinson is a consultant. It was set up by Adam Geary, better known as 'Nem', and one of Robinson's closest advisers since the rough and ready days of the EDL. Robinson today emphasises the peacefulness of the protests he organises and the relationship with the police that he has sought to build. But Brown said that those who crossed him were well aware of his ruthlessness. In his biography, Tommy, the Hope Not Hate founder, Nick Lowles, reported how Robinson failed to visit his cousin, Kev Carroll, a former leader of the EDL, for six months when he was on remand after he was caught wielding a machete while standing on the bonnet of a car. 'I'm 52 years old and I've got nothing to show for it,' Carroll later wrote. 'You give Tom everything and he just wants more and more until you have nothing left to give. And then he doesn't want to know you.' Lowles recalled how Robinson doorstepped him at his home alongside 'self-confessed bomb-maker' Peter Keeley to accuse him of paying people to 'make up information about him'. His behaviour towards a female reporter at the Independent, after she investigated his finances, compelled her to apply for an interim stalking order. What, then, keeps people by Robinson's side? 'A lot of these guys around him seem to have the same kind of modus operandi of 'protect the source' – because I guess they'll probably make money as well from association with him', said Brown. 'Many of them have their own little YouTube channels, with varying degrees of success.' There was a darkness to her experience with Robinson, she said. She remembered 'the dodgy guys that look and dress just like him' and the drink and drugs binges. Her memoirs, The Hate Club, are expected to chronicle some of the sleazier moments in her time with him when she self-publishes next month. Robinson has admitted to past heavy drug use while denying claims that he used donations to buy cocaine and pay for the services of sex workers. But he has a charisma that lures people into his circle, said Brown, who is married to Sascha Bailey, the son of the photographer David Bailey. 'It's like being around Peter Pan or something,' she said. 'You just have to keep up the myth. You're either in or out. He wines and dines them all, you know. 'Come out. We'll go for drinks'. He schmoozes people, and he knows what they want. That's something I noticed when we were working together – he knows what people want to hear.'
