Wednesday, December 17, 2025
Another slippery slope?
His stance comes following the appalling attack by two gunmen on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Australia on Sunday, killing 15 people and injuring a further twenty-seven:
The prime minister’s official spokesperson said that while “free speech is an important right in this country, that can’t extend to inciting hatred or harassing others”, saying the police will use their powers “more robustly” to tackle the proliferation of antisemitism.
Starmer and the Chief Rabbi are, of course, absolutely correct that hate speech has often led to unacceptable and horrendous atrocities against Jews, but also against other minorities, and where there is a clear causality then the police need to act.
But at the same time, in enforcing any new rules, care must be taken to distinguish between, for example, rhetoric criticising the actions of the state of Israel, which is not anti-semitic, and language that is clearly discriminatory.
There are inherent risks in asking the authorities to police what people can and cannot say when demonstrating. The ban on supporting Palestine Action for example, has led to hundreds of unnecessary arrests and overreach on the part of the police, with some people being arrested for displaying perfectly legal wording on placards.
The police already have powers to deal with hate speech and incitement. A new directive in which officers are asked to make a judgement call on what is anti-semitic and what is not, could well act as a severe restraint on people's basic democratic rights and lead to more confusion and inconsistencies in the way that peaceful protest is policed.
It would be a further step down a very slippery slope and one that should be considered very very carefully before it is taken.
Tuesday, December 16, 2025
TUC brand Reform as a threat to Welsh industry
The paper says that the TUC believe that thousands of jobs in Wales are at risk under Reform and Tory policies that could revive Margaret Thatcher's "industrial destruction":
Ahead of crunch Senedd elections next year, analysis for the TUC found Nigel Farage's party poses the biggest threat to Welsh industry. Reform has vowed to scrap net zero and proposed cutting renewable subsidies, which risks making clean industrial upgrades unviable.
Analysis found this could starve Welsh industry of investment and deny factories vital investment, threatening 39,873 industrial jobs. Reducing investment in home-grown clean power will also make the UK more reliant on imported gas, which means bills can be hit by global shocks like Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
It comes after years of Tory neglect pushed factories, car plants and manufacturing sites in Wales to the brink. Last year, thousands of steel workers in Port Talbot lost their jobs when Tata closed its blast furnaces.
The Conservatives would threaten similar numbers of jobs, but researchers said the likelihood of the party enacting their policies was less likely. By comparison, Labour, Plaid Cymru, the Greens and the Lib Dems have all made stronger commitments to retaining or expanding clean industrial upgrades.
Flintshire, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire are the local authorities most at risk from job losses, with over 2,000 industrial jobs at risk in each, the analysis found. 7,765 auto workers are threatened, as are 7,544 metals workers and 5,813 plastics and rubber workers, both directly and indirectly in the supply chain.
TUC Cymru President Tom Hoyles said: “Welsh industry needs urgent action from all parties to survive and thrive in the 21st century. Policies which seek to turn back the clock and revive Thatcher’s industrial destruction would put thousands of Welsh jobs at risk.“
Industrial workers and the TUC are launching the “Save Welsh Industry – No More Site Closures” campaign this week. They are calling on politicians in Westminster and Cardiff Bay to bring forward measures to slash industrial electricity costs and to accelerate clean energy investment.
The campaign also demands work to prevent offshoring of jobs and emissions and to promote domestic industry, as well as a commitment to buy Welsh-made steel, cement and materials for big infrastructure projects.
It is about time the consequences of Reform's policies were spelt out in this way.
Monday, December 15, 2025
Labour MPs on alert over disabled jobs cuts
The paper says that MPs raised concerns over possible changes to the Access to Work (ATW) scheme, and hailed it as a vital lifeline for young people with learning disabilities and autism. Established in 1994 , the ATW scheme is designed to help people with disabilities or conditions get into employment or stay in their jobs.
The group, which includes Sir Jeremy Hunt, Daisy Cooper, Vicky Foxcroft and Rachel Maskell, has now written to the Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden, raising concerns further reforms could see unemployment rates soar.
In a letter, they said: “It is vital that we do all we can to support these young people into meaningful, sustained employment. One of the most effective ways to do this is through supported internships.
“However, recent changes to Access to Work funding, specifically the 26-week cap are putting these programmes at risk. Supported internships follow the academic year, and the final phase of the programme is critical.”
It comes with 948,000 individuals aged 16–24 not in education, employment, or training between April and June 2025. Young people with Education, Health and Care Plans are also 80% more likely to be unemployed compared to their peers.
The letter adds: “We recognise the government faces difficult decisions, and that Access to Work is in need of reform. However, we strongly urge you to reconsider this cap for supported internships. Enforcing it will jeopardise the long-term employment prospects of young people with learning disabilities and autism. Unless addressed, the policy changes risk driving up unemployment rates among young people across the UK”
With the Labour government intent on cutting spending on welfare it is not surprising that MPs are on alert, however this scheme is important in helping people get into work and should be protected.
Sunday, December 14, 2025
Labour under fire over tackling violence against women
The paper says that important voices in the violence against women and girls (VAWG) sector have privately accused ministers of sidelining first-hand expertise and expressed concern that the strategy will not be sufficiently radical to achieve the government’s flagship manifesto promise to halve the rate of VAWG in the UK in a decade:
Initially expected in spring, the VAWG strategy was delayed until summer and then autumn.
On Friday it emerged that schoolboys would be the target of the strategy, which the BBC reported would be built around the pillars of preventing radicalisation of young men, stopping abusers and supporting victims.
But multiple sources from organisations working in the VAWG sector said they had felt sidelined during the devising of the strategy.
One figure in the sector, comparing the past 18 months with the process before the strategy produced in 2019 by the Conservative government, said: “It is worse than under the Tories. In fact, we were so much better off under the Tories, you could get a meeting, they engaged with you. This whole process has been incredibly haphazard.”
Another figure in the sector noted that after the murder of Sarah Everard, the Conservative government reopened a public consultation. “We saw more senior ministers and had more contact with the secretary of state under the last government,” they said. “Ministers like Alex Davies-Jones and Jess Phillips have clearly worked hard on this, but it feels the machine has worked against them.”
Further concern is that the publication of the strategy, which is expected just before parliament closes for the Christmas recess, will be lost. “They’ve had 18 months and now they’re scrabbling around in the last week of parliament. It just feels like an afterthought,” said one source. “It hasn’t felt like it’s been a properly considered process where they’ve really sought the expertise in a considered way. It’s been slightly haphazard.”
On Tuesday Karen Bradley, the chair of the home affairs committee, wrote to Phillips and Davies-Jones to complain that “there has been poor engagement and transparency with VAWG stakeholders throughout the development of the VAWG strategy”. She noted that the VAWG advisory board – which contained experts to guide policy – had met only twice in person and once online and its role had been limited.
Andrea Simon, the director of the End Violence Against Women and Girls coalition, said there had been positive moves from the government, including £550m of funding for victim support, and proposed law changes to improve the fair treatment of victims in rape trials and ban depictions of strangulation in pornography. She called on the government to commit to a monitoring and evaluation structure for the strategy, to ensure accountability.
“Without that, the government will potentially fall foul of the lack of oversight we’ve seen in previous, underresourced strategies,” she said. “There has been a lot of rhetoric about commitment to halving VAWG through a cross-government approach, but that won’t stand up unless they are willing to be open, transparent, and bring in external scrutiny.”
While stories were emerging about the strategy in the press, a different figure said a full document had not been shared with even a small number of trusted parties. “You have to ask how a cross-governmental, strong strategy is being built if none of the experts are at the table,” they said.
Karen Ingala Smith, a co-founder of the Femicide Census, said it was “disappointed” not to have been invited to join the VAWG advisory board, adding that the two wider meetings she or her co-founder, Clarrie O’Callaghan, had attended felt like “box-ticking” exercises.
“It felt like it wouldn’t have mattered what we said, it wasn’t going to make any difference to what was written,” she said. “It felt perfunctory and tokenistic.”
Who knew Labour could make a bigger mess of this issue than the Tories?
Saturday, December 13, 2025
Swansea's link to the development of radar
Near the end of the war, he moved to Australia, where he used this knowledge to carry out research that he headed as Chief of the Radiophysics Division of CSIRO:
These programs, which included his enduring personal interest in cloud physics, artificial rainmaking, and the causes of natural variability in rainfall, were undertaken in the stimulating environment that he fostered at the radiophysics laboratory.
Wikipedia adds more detail about the revolutionary work carried out by Bowen in fitting radar into an aircraft, which they describe as difficult because of the size and weight of the equipment and the aerial:
Furthermore, the equipment had to operate in a vibrating and cold environment. Over the next few years Bowen and his group solved most of these problems. For example, he solved the problem of the power supply in aircraft by using an engine-driven alternator, and he encouraged Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) to produce the first radio-frequency cables with solid polythene insulation.
Further refinements continued until September 1937, when Bowen gave a dramatic and uninvited demonstration of the application of radar by searching for the British Fleet in the North Sea in poor visibility, detecting three capital ships. Bowen's airborne radar group now had two major projects, one for the detection of ships and the other for interception of aircraft. Bowen also experimented briefly with the use of airborne radar to detect features on the ground, such as towns and coastlines, to aid navigation.
On the outbreak of the Second World War, Bowen's unit was moved to St Athan. One of the first things that Bowen did there was to try to detect a submarine by radar. By then, the cavity magnetron had been improved by John Randall and Harry Boot, making airborne radar a powerful tool. By December 1940, operational aircraft were able to detect submarines at up to 15 miles (24 km). This technology had a major effect on winning the Battle of the Atlantic which eventually enabled forces to be built up by sea for the invasion of Europe.
In April 1941, RAF Coastal Command was operating anti-submarine patrols with about 110 aircraft fitted with radar. This increased the detection of submarines both day and night. Few of the attacks were lethal until the introduction in mid-1942 of a powerful searchlight, the Leigh light, that illuminated the submarine. As a result, the U-boats had to recharge their batteries in daylight so that they could at least see the aircraft coming. The radar and the Leigh light cut Allied shipping losses dramatically.
It is fair to say that this work would have proved fairly significant in helping the Allies win the war in the Atlantic.
Wikipedia adds more detail about the revolutionary work carried out by Bowen in fitting radar into an aircraft, which they describe as difficult because of the size and weight of the equipment and the aerial:
Furthermore, the equipment had to operate in a vibrating and cold environment. Over the next few years Bowen and his group solved most of these problems. For example, he solved the problem of the power supply in aircraft by using an engine-driven alternator, and he encouraged Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) to produce the first radio-frequency cables with solid polythene insulation.
Further refinements continued until September 1937, when Bowen gave a dramatic and uninvited demonstration of the application of radar by searching for the British Fleet in the North Sea in poor visibility, detecting three capital ships. Bowen's airborne radar group now had two major projects, one for the detection of ships and the other for interception of aircraft. Bowen also experimented briefly with the use of airborne radar to detect features on the ground, such as towns and coastlines, to aid navigation.
On the outbreak of the Second World War, Bowen's unit was moved to St Athan. One of the first things that Bowen did there was to try to detect a submarine by radar. By then, the cavity magnetron had been improved by John Randall and Harry Boot, making airborne radar a powerful tool. By December 1940, operational aircraft were able to detect submarines at up to 15 miles (24 km). This technology had a major effect on winning the Battle of the Atlantic which eventually enabled forces to be built up by sea for the invasion of Europe.
In April 1941, RAF Coastal Command was operating anti-submarine patrols with about 110 aircraft fitted with radar. This increased the detection of submarines both day and night. Few of the attacks were lethal until the introduction in mid-1942 of a powerful searchlight, the Leigh light, that illuminated the submarine. As a result, the U-boats had to recharge their batteries in daylight so that they could at least see the aircraft coming. The radar and the Leigh light cut Allied shipping losses dramatically.
It is fair to say that this work would have proved fairly significant in helping the Allies win the war in the Atlantic.
Friday, December 12, 2025
Starmer adds more peers than he has removed
They say that the prime minister has put forward 25 new members for the House of Lords, including his former director of communications Matthew Doyle and Rachel Reeves’s ex-chief of staff Katie Martin:
The list of potential new Lords follows staunch opposition from peers to Labour’s flagship Employment Rights Bill.
A Labour source said: “The Tories stuffed the House of Lords, creating a serious imbalance that has allowed them to frustrate our plans to make working families better off. This needs to be corrected to deliver on our mandate from the British people. “
Women’s rights activist Sharron Davies was nominated by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, alongside ex-Tory cabinet minister John Redwood and journalist and historian Simon Heffer.
Another Labour aide Carol Linforth, seen on stage removing Sir Keir’s jacket when he was glitter-bombed during his 2023 Labour conference speech, is also on the list, as well as Sir Michael Barber, who served in No 10 during Sir Tony Blair’s premiership.
Last year, he was appointed an adviser to Sir Keir to help him drive forward the delivery of his five “missions”.
At least Starmer avoided the faux pas of nominating former Welsh First Minister, Vaughan Gething, a move that would have really undermined Labour's Senedd campaigning.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats made a total of five nominations, including former MP and coalition government minister, Sarah Teather.
How anybody can justify the continuation of this over-bloated institution is beyond me, it needs fundamental reform to democratise it. As the Electoral Reform Society says it's 'ridiculous' that Starmer has created more peers than he's removed.
Darren Hughes, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, issued this statement criticising the appointment of more political peers:
Keir Starmer himself not long ago described the wholly unelected and grossly bloated House of Lords as ‘indefensible’. Nothing has changed since then so it is deeply disappointing to see even more peers being stuffed into the upper chamber.
Firstly, it is absurd for the Lords, which at more than 800 peers is already the second largest legislative chamber after China’s National People’s Congress, to be getting even more members. It is also patently ridiculous that the government has now added more peers into the Lords than the 92 hereditary peers it is in the process of removing.
The ending of the remaining hereditary peers is a step in the right direction, as people should not be making our laws because of who their parents were. But [the new peerages] highlight just how unsustainable a wholly unelected and unrestrained chamber is.
I can understand why Ed Davey nominated additional peers, but really, he and the rest of the party should be fighting tooth and nail to abolish the Lords and replace it with an elected second chamber.
Darren Hughes, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, issued this statement criticising the appointment of more political peers:
Keir Starmer himself not long ago described the wholly unelected and grossly bloated House of Lords as ‘indefensible’. Nothing has changed since then so it is deeply disappointing to see even more peers being stuffed into the upper chamber.
Firstly, it is absurd for the Lords, which at more than 800 peers is already the second largest legislative chamber after China’s National People’s Congress, to be getting even more members. It is also patently ridiculous that the government has now added more peers into the Lords than the 92 hereditary peers it is in the process of removing.
The ending of the remaining hereditary peers is a step in the right direction, as people should not be making our laws because of who their parents were. But [the new peerages] highlight just how unsustainable a wholly unelected and unrestrained chamber is.
I can understand why Ed Davey nominated additional peers, but really, he and the rest of the party should be fighting tooth and nail to abolish the Lords and replace it with an elected second chamber.
Thursday, December 11, 2025
How UK aid cuts have consequences for our security
The article points out that major reductions in development funding from the US, Germany, France, and the UK mark the biggest contraction in aid spending in decades, adding that by some projections, aid spending by the top donors in the world will decline by $67 billion (£50bn) from 2023 to 2026, a drop of almost a third:
This is driven primarily by Donald Trump's administration shuttering the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and cancelling 80 per cent of its foreign aid programmes. Its sudden and chaotic decision to cut USAID has been coupled with an increasingly uninterested, if not adversarial, approach to multilateral cooperation in general – skipping G20 meetings and calling the language of the Sustainable Development Goals (the global, UN-set targets for addressing poverty) "adverse" to American interests.
Cuts and disruption at this scale will have human consequences. By some projections, 100,000 deaths so far, and potentially millions in future. But as my colleague Jerome Puri and I outline in the report "Rethinking UK aid policy in an era of global funding cuts," they will also have security and geopolitical implications that we should not ignore.
The international organisations through which much aid spending is channelled – particularly UN agencies –– work on global challenges which affect UK security too. This includes controlling infectious diseases, pandemic monitoring and preparedness, and biosecurity.
An analysis by the World Health Organisation (WHO) of its 108 country offices’ work through March–April 2025 found that 70 per cent reported disruptions linked to aid cuts since the start of 2025, particularly for systems needed to monitor, prepare for and respond to outbreaks of preventable diseases. Analysis by Germany’s Kiel Institute has found there is evidence of significant returns for aid donors who invest in health in poorer countries, particularly in controlling and managing infectious diseases which if left unmanaged would result in wider crises. Preventing pandemics is more cost-effective than responding to them.
The UK government cut Britain's aid budget earlier this year not for the ideological reasons of the Trump administration, but because it wanted to find tactical cuts to provide more funding to defence. Parliament's Defence Select Committee has rightly said it is critical and urgent that the UK improve its readiness to fight a war to defend itself. But one of the biggest risks to UK security in the past five years was the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning the structures for controlling and addressing risks to global health are critical to our security too.
The government has sought to preserve – even as it cuts spending – part of its contributions to major global health funds. But it has nonetheless cut funding for some initiatives, including those focused on critical but less attention-grabbing issues, such as combatting anti-microbial resistance – and it will be affected by the wider reduction in resources for international health institutions.
This year’s cuts in aid spending are also likely to particularly hit countries most affected by conflict – recent trends in spending suggest what aid remains may well be channelled to more stable countries where impact is easier to measure, or reserved for short-term emergency responses.
Countries like Somalia, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, and Palestine have all already been hit by the UK’s cuts to aid it spends directly in specific countries. The difficult work of preventing conflict in the first place, or trying to reduce the likelihood it spirals out of control into wider regional wars is likely to lose out from wider cuts too. Uncontrolled conflict creates fertile ground for illicit finance, organised crime, and refugee flows. And, most refugees fleeing conflict head for more stable neighbouring countries, many of which – Kenya, Bangladesh, and Jordan, for example – have been hosting massive refugee camps for years. Reduced UN capacity and funding will make it harder for these countries to manage these situations – without sufficient international support, these governments may face domestic pressure to restrict rights or push refugees back, in ways that could affect regional security too.
As the article says, aid and defence spending are often described as opposed "soft" and "hard" power tools, but it might be better to see investment in global public goods such as health security or climate action not as soft power – but as practical and direct investments in collective security.
It adds that ensuring some resources are concentrated on neglected conflicts also has wider benefits, in guarding against those conflicts spiralling out of control in ways which can have long-run effects on regional stability and irregular migration.
These are wise words that the government would be wise to take note of.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
Covid fraud under the Tories cost the taxpayer £10.9 billion
Hayhoe's report says that the response to the pandemic had led to "enormous outlays of public money which exposed it to the risk of fraud and error", with employment support schemes set up by the previous Conservative government, including furlough and help for the self-employed, suffering £5bn of fraud:
Many of the support measures were credited with propping up the economy throughout the Covid lockdowns. However, Mr Hayhoe said the "outrage" at fraud, abuse and error was "undiminished".
Mr Hayhoe had been asked by Chancellor Rachel Reeves to investigate the amount of public money lost to fraud given his experience in procurement as the former chair of an NHS trust.
The near £11bn lost to fraud and error is close to what the government spends on the UK's justice system. The report said £1.8bn had been recovered, although: "Much of the shortfall is now beyond recovery."
However, it added that there were still areas "where investing in recovering money paid out incorrectly is worthwhile and work should continue".
The report said weak accountability, bad quality data and poor contracting were among the main reasons for the losses.
Most public bodies were unprepared for "a crisis that required spending on such a scale and with such urgency".
"Consequently, some measures to protect against potential fraud were inadequate."
This applied to the procurement of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) where the volume of orders "overwhelmed the newly created supply chain and involved measures that invited mistrust, opportunism and profiteering".
It found £13.6bn was spent on PPE procurement, with 38 billion items purchased - although 11 billion were unused by 2024. Losses were estimated at £10bn from over-ordering and £324m of fraud.
The support for small businesses was also criticised, where "lending relied on self-certification with inadequate checks to prevent abuse".
It said the design of the Bounce Back Loan Scheme "created specific vulnerabilities to fraud and error", with the programme estimated to have incurred fraud and error losses of up to £2.8bn.
The report acknowledges that the schemes were designed and rolled out at speed but Mr Hayhoe says that fraud prevention should be more embedded into future disaster responses.
What adds to the feeling of outrage about this lost cash is that in many instances it was facilitated by people who should know better, through fast track VIP streams that failed to deliver.
That was the main reason, in my view, why pandemic-era PPE contracts cost the British taxpayer £1.4bn on undelivered contracts and unusable gowns, masks and gloves, with only a small fraction of that - £400m - having been recovered.
The government must continue to try and recover this money, while ensuring that lessons are learnt for the future.
Tuesday, December 09, 2025
Labours energy price cut could be swamped by rising costs
The paper says that in her Budget last week, the chancellor promised to take £150 off household bills by scrapping the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme, but the former Labour donor and green entrepreneur Dale Vince has now claimed that the impact of paying for building nuclear energy capacity will largely wipe out the £150 because of the £1bn cost in the first year and ongoing costs for nuclear power:
Further analysis shows that, under plans announced by Ofgem, levies on bills to fund gas pipelines and the high-voltage electricity grid are set to rise £40 from £222 a year in April when the government’s £150 discount is due to come into effect.
The levies are due to rise for the following four years - reaching £338 a year by April 2030, according to Ofgem’s impact assessment.
Meanwhile, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) also revealed in its report with the Budget that £1bn a year will be added to household energy bills to fund energy secretary Ed Miliband’s next auction for renewables projects, known as “allocation round 7” (AR7).
The concerns are that instead of reducing household bills by £150, energy bills will instead rise.
Mr Vince told The Independent that the chancellor’s much-publicised £1bn in energy bill savings will be entirely wiped out by the costs of the Sizewell C nuclear project — costs the government is forcing households and businesses to pay years before construction even begins.
He claimed that the £150 discount is almost identical to the total annual charges that will hit homes and businesses through the Regulated Asset Base (RAB) nuclear levy, created to fund Sizewell C.
He said: “The chancellor’s energy savings will be wiped out overnight by the cost of Sizewell. From November, the government has decided to load the financial risk of this project straight onto our energy bills — before a single shovel hits the ground. And this isn’t some one-off charge.
“We’ll be subsidising Sizewell for at least 10 years, maybe longer — nuclear projects always run late. And we could still be paying for decommissioning well into the 22nd century.
“Imagine ordering a car and the dealership starts charging you before they’ve even built the factory — that’s what’s happening here.
“EDF say Sizewell will be ready in 2035, but Hinkley Point is running 14 years late and its price has jumped from £18 billion to £46 billion. Sizewell won’t bring bills down or help us get to Net Zero in time — but it will cost us for years.”
He claimed that the extra cost would be at least £35 and grow to £140 for a small hairdressing salon.
The government of course denies it. But realistically, raising expectations of a cut in bills, when extra costs are being added to them and when many of the factors leading to price rises are out of the government's control is a big gamble.
Monday, December 08, 2025
Following the Russian playbook
The paper says that three more British MEPs from Nigel Farage’s bloc are alleged to have “followed the script” given to Gill, who was being bribed by an alleged Russian asset, according to prosecutors, as a police investigation into the affair continues:
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has named Jonathan Bullock, Julia Reid and Steven Woolfe, saying they followed the script provided to Nathan Gill by Oleg Voloshyn when giving interviews to 112 Ukraine, a pro-Russian TV channel in March 2019.
In all, at least eight MEPs elected for either Ukip or the Brexit party are now known to have been the focus of efforts by Reform UK’s former Wales leader Gill to co-opt them into fulfilling tasks set for him by his Kremlin paymasters.
The claims that the three followed Gill’s talking points – disclosed in CPS documents in Gill’s case – are among those which have raised fresh questions over the extent of Gill’s influence since his jailing last month. There is no suggestion that any of the three committed criminal acts or had been aware Gill took bribes to promote Russian interests.
Amid the continuing police investigation, the Labour party has called on Farage to voluntarily offer to help investigators, who have already spoken to MEPs he led in the European parliament.
The chair of the Labour party, Anna Turley MP, said: “He must order an urgent investigation into pro-Russia links in Reform, and he should voluntarily go to the police for interview and help them with their inquiries.”
Last week, another former leading member of the group of MEPs headed by Farage denied taking money as part of a campaign to promote Russian interests.
David Coburn, who was also the leader of Ukip in Scotland for four years, was mentioned in WhatsApp messages between Gill and Voloshyn – a former Ukrainian MEP who is accused of the bribery – that were released by prosecutors.
The messages showed Gill and Voloshyn apparently discussing how much should be set aside for Coburn, who was also an MEP for Reform UK’s precursor the Brexit party. Coburn denied taking any payment when confronted by BBC journalists outside his home in France.
The messages were sent in April 2019 before a meeting at the European parliament of the editorial board of 112 Ukraine, whose membership included Gill and Coburn, and which was connected to Viktor Medvedchuk, Vladimir Putin’s ally in Ukraine.
The case for an investigation into foreign interference in UK politics is becoming compelling. The focus at present is on associates and former associates of Nigel Farage, but there are suggestions that others may well have been approached from other parties.
I don't believe that we can rely on Reform to conduct an investigation into its own affairs, this has to be a UK government inquiry, and an all-embracing one at that.
