Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Action, not words, needed on Europe
In an interview after the worst week of his tenure in No 10, he added: "We are not reversing Brexit but we are turning our back on the Britain of the Brexit years that we've had for the last decade.
"That has seen a Britain that has turned inward, a Britain that has not been able to assert itself and influence others on the world stage or the European stage."
He went on to argue that the UK should “move closer to the single market” in certain markets, where it was in the interest of both sides, just months before the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum result which ultimately took Britain out of the EU.
This sort of talk is of course, welcome, but we are not moving fast enough. While we remain outside the single market we remain vulnerable to Trump's tariffs, with businesses struggling to overcome red tape and a sluggish economy.
It's time to put the words into action.
Monday, February 16, 2026
Pressure grows for inquiry into hounding of journalists
The paper says that the calls add to pressure on the Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons, who commissioned a report in 2023 on journalists investigating Labour Together, the thinktank that would help propel Starmer to power:
The research was paid for and subsequently reviewed by Simons when he was director of Labour Together, according to sources and documents seen by the Guardian.
In an agreement addressed to Simons, drawn up by Apco Worldwide, the PR consultancy agreed to “investigate the sourcing, funding and origins” of a November 2023 Sunday Times report about the thinktank, in addition to other journalistic investigations into the group.
The Sunday Times reported that the contents of Apco’s investigation were informally shared with Labour figures in 2024, including present cabinet ministers and special advisers. The report contained allegations about Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke, journalists at the paper, which then spread around Westminster.
The paper reported that Tom Harper, Apco’s senior director and a former Sunday Times employee, wrote that he had examined the “sourcing, funding and origins of the Sunday Times story” using documents and “discreet human source enquiries”.
Harper was said to have made “baseless claims” that the emails underpinning the published story were likely to have come from a suspected Kremlin hack of the Electoral Commission.
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John McDonnell, the veteran Labour backbencher and former chancellor, said on Saturday he had written three times in recent weeks to the general secretary of the Labour party to call for an independent inquiry into the affair.
“I copied Keir Starmer into each request,” McDonnell said. “Clear to me as secretary of the NUJ’s parliamentary group if true this is unacceptable.”
Another Labour MP, Karl Turner, said the prime minister needed to look into the affair himself and should meet McDonnell to discuss it.
The contract showed that Simons asked for information specifically on the sources for a book by Paul Holden about McSweeney’s role in Starmer’s rise, as well as related articles by the US journalist Matt Taibbi.
With the Sunday Times focussing on this, it is unlikely that this issue will go away any time soon.
Sunday, February 15, 2026
What next for the government on Palestine Action?
The paper refers to the verdict of the high court on Friday that the government’s proscription of the direct action group was “disproportionate and unlawful” and that most of their activities had not reached the level, scale and persistence to be defined as terrorism:
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, was urged to respect the court’s decision after the three judges said the ban, introduced by her predecessor Yvette Cooper, impinged on the right to protest and should be quashed.
However, the fate of more than 2,500 people, arrested for supporting Palestine Action since proscription, remained uncertain after Mahmood said she would appeal against the ban.
Additionally, the three judges, led by the president of the king’s bench division, Dame Victoria Sharp, said the banning order would not be quashed until both sides had been allowed to make representations.
In the meantime, the Met police said they would stop arresting people immediately for showing support for Palestine Action after the high court ruling but would gather evidence for potential future prosecution.
Huda Ammori, a co-founder of Palestine Action, who brought the high court challenge, called it a “monumental victory”. She said: “We were banned because Palestine Action’s disruption of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems, cost the corporation millions of pounds in profits and to lose out on multibillion-pound contracts.
“We’ve used the same tactics as direct action organisations throughout history, including anti-war groups Keir Starmer defended in court, and the government acknowledged in these legal proceedings that this ban was based on property damage, not violence against people.
“Banning Palestine Action was always about appeasing pro-Israel lobby groups and weapons manufacturers, and nothing to do with terrorism … Today’s landmark ruling is a victory for freedom for all, and I urge the government to respect the court’s decision and bring this injustice to an end without further delay.”
The judgment is the first time that an organisation banned under anti-terrorism law has successfully challenged proscription in court.
The judges allowed the challenge on two of four grounds. They were that there was “a very significant interference” with the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and that Cooper’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action was not consistent with her own policy, which required her to take into account factors including the nature and scale of the organisation’s activities, and the specific threat that it posed to the UK.
Sharp described Palestine Action as an organisation “that promotes its political cause through criminality and encouragement of criminality”, but added: “The court considered that the proscription of Palestine Action was disproportionate. A very small number of Palestine Action’s activities amounted to acts of terrorism within the definition of section 1 of the 2000 [Terrorism] Act.
“For these, and for Palestine Action’s other criminal activities, the general criminal law remains available. The nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities falling within the definition of terrorism had not yet reached the level, scale and persistence to warrant proscription.”
The government really do have egg on their face over this issue. Many of us have been arguing for some time that they have overreached, and now the high court has agreed. Now we move to the Supreme Court for their view.
Saturday, February 14, 2026
A plaque to a bread maker
According to this historical marker database, David Ayres Jones was an engineer and inventor of Bakery Machinery, being responsible for creating the Worlds first bread moulder in 1947.
When I worked there in 1963, D. AYERS JONES & CO. LTD., also traded under the name of 'MONO UNIVERSAL BAKERY ENGINEERING CO LTD'. The Managing Director was David Ayres Jones himself who founded the bakery engineering company. He also had a bakery shop in Manselton known as 'MANOR BAKERY ', and if my memory serves me right, the shop was situated in Manor Road, Manselton , within a couple of hundred yards from where 'CLIFF ROWE' the DAIRY had his small milk bottling plant in the yard at the back of his home. Manor Bakery was renowned for its quality bread and fresh cakes baked at the rear of the shop. David Ayres Jones eventually expanded the bakery side of his business, and eventually he opened up a bakery which adjoined the engineering part of the factory on the Queensway, Fforestfach.
I recall a father, and his son named Brian working there. They were both 'Master Bakers' who baked and decorated to a very high standard, birthday and wedding cakes to order, as well as their daily routine of baking bread, doughnuts and various fancy cakes for supply to the shops. Quite often I would attend work twenty minutes before time and would pop into the Bakery Side of the factory for a chat with Brian and his Dad. Being in the bakery with the smell of freshly baked bread and cakes for just those twenty minutes before start of work, were very mouth watering moments; and even at 6.40am in the morning, I couldn't resist the offer of two scrumptious warm donuts pumped full of raspberry jam and covered in sugar. "There we are boy " Brian would say, " You can have those two as they are out of shape " (not up to the standard for selling).
The bakery engineering side of D. AYRES JONES & CO. LTD., manufactured bakery machines which were transfer labelled 'MONO UNIVERSAL' and were distributed on completion by their own lorry to London, and many bakery machines went onward from there to Europe. The machines which were made at the factory 'from scratch' were for various purposes in the process of producing bread and cakes. He employed his own draughtsmen to plan and design the machines and come up with new ideas. David Ayres Jones (Mono Universal) was a one time leader in the manufacture and marketing of bakery machines such as a dough mixers, dough dividers, bread provers, donut makers, pancake makers, and mini moulders for making the perfect shape bun.
I quite enjoyed the description of David Ayres Jones, who when he did pay a visit to his Fforestfach factory, would arrive driving a Rolls Royce. Apparently, it was such a large limousine that his head could barely be seen above the steering wheel whilst driving. Mono Equipment has its own website, which includes an account of its beginnings:
During the Second World War, MONO Equipment's founder and President, Mr D Ayres Jones, was working at the family's bakery in Swansea, South Wales. When his brother was conscripted for war service, and facing acute labour problems, Ayres found it increasingly difficult to manage the increased workload on his own and began contemplating the design of a machine which would mechanically assume the laborious task of moulding the dough before baking.
His dogged determination, combined with his love of engineering, meant that within a short period of time Ayres had designed and built his first bread moulder almost entirely from scrap materials, including parts from an old motor cycle and bits and pieces sourced from a local scrapyard. The parts he couldn't source, he made himself using a small lathe which he had taught himself to use.
In the time-honoured fashion of the day, there was no welding involved in the machine's build as each part was riveted together piece by piece. This post-war 'make-do-and-mend' philosophy helped fire the imagination and creativity of designers and inventors who had to be truly innovative with the limited materials they had available.
The bread moulder was so successful that other bakers in the principality heard of this wonderful new time-saving machine and approached Ayres to make a moulder to help production in their bakeries too. As a result of the genuine interest expressed by local bakers, and those further afield, in 1946 the MONO Universal Bread Moulding Machine went in to commercial production.
It is from such beginnings that commercial empires are built.
Labels: lochist
Friday, February 13, 2026
A costly use of power
The paper says that Huda Ammori, co-founder of the group, has challenged the government’s decision to ban the organisation under anti-terrorism laws in the courts:
Since the proscription, thousands of people have been arrested for holding signs declaring support for Palestine Action and the move has been condemned as “an enormous overreach of the UK’s terrorism powers” by human rights groups. A decision by the High Court in the case is expected tomorrow.
The Home Office has been charged £694,390.03 exclusive of VAT for work on the case against Ms Ammori, freedom of information data shared with The Independent shows. This includes the legal fees of the government legal department, fees of counsel instructed in the case, and other court fees.
The fees are however dwarfed by the costs of policing protests in support of Palestine Action since the terror ban was enforced, which run into the millions of pounds. The ban came into force in early July last year making supporting Palestine Action a criminal offence, with membership or expressing support for the group punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
The Metropolitan Police told the London Assembly in October last year that it has cost around £3.6m to police protests, arrests and carry out other enforcement action associated with the proscription of Palestine Action - a figure which will have grown over recent months.
Lawyers for Ms Ammori argued in the High Court that the decision by the then-home secretary Yvette Cooper to proscribe Palestine Action was “novel and unprecedented”.
Raza Hussain KC said that the group was a “direct action civil disobedience organisation that does not advocate for violence”. He said that any examples of serious violence committed by the group against property or person “are not the norm, they are rare”. Government data shows that in the year up to September 2025 there were 1,630 arrests linked to supporting Palestine Action.
Activists who have organised protests against the proscription believe this is much higher, with 2,787 people arrested for holding signs in support of Palestine Action.
The group was proscribed after an incident in June last year where activists broke into RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and sprayed two military planes with red paint. Ms Cooper cited the group’s protest at a weapons equipment factory in Glasgow in 2022, and its targeting of Israeli defence technology company Elbit Systems UK in Bristol in her reasoning for proscribing Palestine Action.
Ms Cooper had faltered over the decision, initially deciding to go ahead with the terror ban in May last year before she paused the decision and requested further information. One month later, on 20 June, she then confirmed that the proscription should go ahead.
A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries, who have campaigned to lift the ban on Palestine Action, said: “None of the costs arising from this crackdown are in the public interest. These are unnecessary and politically-driven costs that serve only to protect companies which the UN has named as profiting from genocide and the state of Israel itself”.
Yasmine Ahmed, UK director of Human Rights Watch, said: “The staggering costs of this court case emphasise how committed the UK government is to stifling legitimate criticism of Israel.
“The use of counter-terrorism legislation to proscribe Palestine Action is a grave abuse of state power and just one of a suite of measures this government is using to curtail people’s right to protest”.
Given that the government has not been able to publicly provide any proper public justification for the proscription, this seems a lot of money to spend to suppress dissent about Israel's actions in Palestine.
UPDATE: The high court has ruled that the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful.
Thursday, February 12, 2026
It's all about the cats
The website says that with one in four Welsh households (24%) owning a cat, Cats Protection is using its Cat Manifesto Wales to call on MSs to make cats a priority during policy-making:
The charity also highlights areas where Wales falls behind the rest of the UK.
This includes cat breeding and the regulation of animal welfare establishments which are already licensed in Scotland; compulsory microchipping which is required by law in England and pet theft which is a specific offence in England and Northern Ireland.
Alice Palombo, Cats Protection Advocacy and Government Relations Manager, said: “Our manifesto gives voice to cats, who cannot speak for themselves, and provides a framework by which cats across Wales could be safeguarded from becoming victims of cruelty, neglect or poor welfare and ultimately enjoy better lives.”
Key focus areas
The manifesto advocates for five key focus areas through which MSs could improve the welfare and wellbeing of the 480,000 owned cats in Wales.
It calls for regulating breeding, animal welfare establishments, and ending practices that harm cats’ wellbeing.
The charity wants a total ban on breeding cats with extreme physical traits that cause pain or chronic health problems, including Scottish Folds, extremely flat-faced Persians, Munchkins, and so-called ‘Dwelf’ or ‘XL Bully’ cats.
They also said activities such as cat cafés, where cats’ welfare can be compromised, should also be carefully regulated or discontinued.
The charity is also calling for protections in the digital world. This includes tightening rules around selling cats online, encouraging social media platforms to tackle harmful content involving cats and urging advertisers and media outlets to portray cats responsibly.
Such measures would prevent breeds known to have health or behavioural issues from being normalised or promoted.
Cats Protection wants compulsory microchipping of all pet cats with a single searchable database, more pet-friendly rental housing, the inclusion of animal welfare in school curricula, and greater awareness of the welfare risks associated with cat hoarding or multi-cat households.
The manifesto also highlights practical steps to keep cats safe and secure. These include better labelling of products toxic to cats, such as lilies, which over half of Welsh cat owners were unaware could be harmful, and restrictions on fireworks to reduce stress and injury.
Speaking as somebody who has lived with cats for over 40 years, and as somebody involved with a local animal charity, I fully endorse this manifesto.
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
Have the wheels come off Reform's DOGE experiment?
The reality though is that all the promised savings have failed to materialise, while the expected freezing of council tax has proved to be just a pipe dream.
The Independent reports that Reform-led Worcestershire County Council will issue the biggest council tax rise in England this April after the government gave it special permission to raise it by up to 9 per cent, despite the party’s pledge to slash rates.
The paper says that the local authority had applied for exceptional financial support after its newly appointed head of strategic delivery, operations, governance, and efficiency (Doge) said it was facing a “financial emergency”.
This record hike has come about despite the fact that the council has hosted a visit from Reform UK chair Zia Yusuf and his national Doge team:
Reform-led Worcestershire County Council will issue the biggest council tax rise in England this April after the government gave it special permission to raise it by up to 9 per cent – despite the party’s pledge to slash rates.
The local authority had applied for exceptional financial support after its newly appointed head of strategic delivery, operations, governance, and efficiency (Doge) said it was facing a “financial emergency”.
The council is one of seven across the country to get permission to raise council tax beyond the 5 per cent limit.
In a written statement by local government minister Alison McGovern on Monday night, she said Worcestershire, Shropshire and North Somerset councils can raise their share by a maximum of 9 per cent.
As part of a three-year settlement for local authorities, she also said Trafford, Warrington, and Windsor and Maidenhead can increase their tax by up to 7.5 per cent, while Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council can raise its share by up to 6.75 per cent.
Worcestershire is a Reform-led authority, but because it only has 25 of the 57 county council seats, it operates a minority administration, which means it relies on support from other parties to approve its budget.
However, the council has hosted a visit from Reform UK chair Zia Yusuf and his national Doge team, the Elon Musk-inspired cost-cutting team that pledged to work with councils on cutting wasteful spending of taxpayers’ money.
In January, the council created its own Doge cabinet role to drive efficiency. Councillor Nik Price, on her appointment to the position, said the authority was “facing a financial emergency, a situation we inherited and which we are dealing with”.
On its Facebook page, after Labour’s decision, Worcestershire Conservatives wrote: “Back in May, Reform promised to cut your taxes. Today Labour gave them power to raise your tax by up to 9 per cent.” The group has launched a petition calling for a U-turn.
Over the weekend, a Reform councillor announced he was quitting over the plans to increase council tax. David Taylor, who represents Redditch East, will now sit as an independent councillor.
Worcestershire County Council has blamed significant financial pressures caused by a rise in demand and costs of child and adult social care. The cabinet member for finance, councillor Rob Wharton, said every 1 per cent increase in council tax would generate an extra £3.6m for the local authority, which he said was “vital for sustaining statutory services”.
Local government is in trouble, with all councils facing these pressures, irrespective of which party is in charge. If only Reform could have been more open about what is really going on when they promised voters the earth.
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
Fighting like cats and dogs
The Independent reports that Keir Starmer is clinging on to power with the support of key cabinet figures – even after being rocked by the departure of a second key aide, and public demands for his resignation by Labour’s own leader in Scotland.
The paper says that the prime minister is supported by colleagues, including former deputy Angela Rayner, when previously loyal Anas Sarwar urged him to step down over the Mandelson scandal, saying he had made “too many mistakes”:
On a day of drama, the PM was also hit by the resignation of Downing Street director of communications Tim Allan, less than 24 hours after chief of staff Morgan McSweeney resigned.
But Sir Keir insisted: “I am going nowhere.”
As the embattled prime minister prepared to address the parliamentary Labour Party to save his premiership, leading pollsters suggested his departure had become “inevitable”.
It all appeared to be unravelling after the controversial aide, Mr McSweeney, stepped down on Sunday over his advice calling for the appointment of Lord Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States despite his ongoing association with convicted paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Mr Sarwar, whose Scottish Labour Party is trailing both Reform and the SNP ahead of crucial Holyrood elections in May, held a press conference to say Sir Keir should also now step down.
He said he was calling for his “friend” to resign “with a heavy heart”.
“The distraction needs to end, and the leadership in Downing Street has to change,” he told reporters.
“We cannot allow the failures at the heart of Downing Street to mean the failures continue here in Scotland, because the election in May is not without consequence for the lives of Scots."
But almost as soon as he had spoken, health secretary Wes Streeting – once accused by Downing Street officials of plotting against the PM – said: “Give Keir a chance.”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves posted: “With Keir as our Prime Minister we are turning the country around.”
Deputy prime minister David Lammy added: “Keir Starmer won a massive mandate 18 months ago, for five years to deliver on Labour’s manifesto that we all stood on.”
As ministers lined up to pledge loyalty, former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, another candidate to replace Sir Keir, also appealed for calm.
She said: “I urge all my colleagues to come together, remember our values and put them into practice as a team. The prime minister has my full support in leading us to that end.”
Labour grandee Alan Johnson warned that ditching the PM would “turn Labour and the country into an international laughing stock”.
But amid the febrile atmosphere in Westminster, one Labour MP said: “It’s over. It is just a matter of when, not if.”
Behind the scenes the Parliamentary Labour Party don't appear to be convinced. The paper says that a number of MPs on the Labour left have already described his position as “untenable”, and there were plans to heckle the prime minister at the Parliamentary Labour Party event on Monday evening.
Time to get the popcorn.
Monday, February 09, 2026
They seek him here, they seek him there
They say that Dan Thomas, the former Conservative leader of Barnet council in London, was introduced on February 5 by Nigel Farage as his handpicked leader in Wales but there is speculation has as to whether the claim that he is living in Islwyn is correct:
Thomas resigned at the end of last year after 19 years as a councillor, saying he moved away from Barnet so that he and his wife could raise their young sons in the countryside and live closer to their families in south Wales.
Blackwood-born Thomas told the conference in Newport: “After 27 years I’m back home. Raising my two boys in the south Wales valleys. I’ve come back to where I belong.”
However, a source contacted us to say: “I read the NationCymru article about Dan Thomas, the new Welsh Reform leader. What he omits to tell is that he lives in a £1m house in Bath. The ‘countryside’ is not Wales. I feel this is a calculated misdirection if not blatant lie and one your readers would like to know about.
“He moved there last year from London – his parents live in Blackwood. He doesn’t. They [Thomas and his wife] sold their house in Edgware in London for a huge profit and moved to Bath last year.”
Mr Thomas was the Tory leader of Barnet council until 2022, when the party lost power to overall Labour control for the first time since the borough was established in 1964. He defected to Reform UK in June 2025 and in December 2025 resigned his seat on the council.
At the time his successor as leader of the now opposition Conservative group on the council, Cllr Peter Zinkin, told the London Standard: “He informed us several months ago that this would be his final year serving as a councillor in Barnet, having moved to the West Country to be closer to his family and raise his children there.”
Nation.Cymru contacted Cllr Zinkin, who told us: “Our understanding is that he sold his house in Edgware and moved to the Bath area, where he is working for a large financial institution.
“He has two very young children, the older of the two being three or four years old.”
Blaenau Gwent Labour MS Alun Davies said: “When he was announced as Reform’s leader in Wales, we were told that after spending his adult life in England he had returned to his roots in the Valleys. Now we learn that isn’t true, but that he moved from London to the Bath area. At the beginning of their Senedd election campaign, their narrative has been built on a fraud and a lie.
“As James Evans [the Tory MS who defected to Reform this week] said quite recently, Reform is full of hypocrites who have no principles.
“The last time this shower had seats in the Senedd, when they stood as UKIP, they were led by Neil Hamilton, who lived in a mansion in Wiltshire. This time their leader lives 10 miles nearer to Wales. At this rate they will have a leader who actually lives in Wales by 2050.”
Since then Reform have reiterated their claim that Thomas has moved his family to Wales, claiming he rents out the property in Bath. However, the details are sketchy. Where exactly does he live? Which schools is he sending his children? Is he renting or did he buy? These are oustanding questions.
A later article on Nation Cymru tells us that Thomas does not appear in the electoral register compiled in December 2025 that covers the part of Wales where he has his roots, and despite continuing to claim that he is on the voters’ roll in Wales, Reform has refused to answer the long list of questions which the journalist posed to them about the matter and is seeking to close scrutiny down.
The qualification to stand for the Senedd is very clear: a candidate has to be a registered local government elector in Wales and has to certify on the nomination form that the address they give is their main home. No doubt it will all be sorted out by then.
Sunday, February 08, 2026
McSweeney’s think tank paid PR firm to investigate journalists
They say that according to documents they have seen, the influential Starmerite think tank, once run by Morgan McSweeney and then by Josh Simons, now a minister in Starmer’s government, hired APCO Worldwide to investigate journalists from the Sunday Times, the Guardian and other outlets and to identify their sources:
ACPO was hired in 2023, when Simons ran Labour Together. Sources close to Morgan McSweeney, who joined Starmer’s team in 2020, said that he did not make the decision to hire APCO but did not dispute that he was aware of it.
A political think tank hiring a PR firm to investigate journalists is highly unusual, and the revelations have sparked furious response from a senior figure in Labour Together’s formation.
Former Labour MP Jon Cruddas, who helped found the organisation in 2015, said our findings were “shocking” and “extraordinary”.
“I have heard of black briefings, but never heard of anything like this,” he told us. “This is dark shit.”
The news that Labour Together put private investigators onto journalists will raise fresh questions about the conduct of senior figures around Starmer as the prime minister fights for his political survival.
Starmer today declared ‘full confidence’ in McSweeney, who pushed for Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador despite his known friendship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
November 2023. Panic at Labour Together. The Sunday Times had just published an explosive investigation into the organisation, revealing in detail how McSweeney had failed to declare £730,000 in donations to his think tank between 2017 and 2020. The money paid for polling and campaigning powered Starmer’s rise to the Labour leadership.
The story, bylined by Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke, was filled with serious accusations. At its core, is that McSweeney had intentionally kept Labour Together’s donors secret so the think tank would look like a humble, grassroots initiative when in fact it was a well-funded vehicle to take over the party.
With a general election now pending, questions about Labour Together’s money - and its genesis - could seriously derail an operation that had become a pivotal part of Starmer’s Labour.
So Labour Together turned to APCO Worldwide, a controversial PR firm whose work includes crisis comms. The think tank would pay at least £30,000 to identify the source of stories about its funding.
The work was led by Tom Harper, a former Times journalist who is now APCO’s head of European media relations. APCO, which has previously worked for big tobacco companies, has recently faced protests in the UK over its work for Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems.
Internal reports prepared by APCO’s London office for Labour Together, and seen by Democracy for Sale, name Pogrund, Yorke, The Guardian’s Henry Dyer, Declassified’s John McAvoy and journalists from other outlets as “significant persons of interest” and discuss potential “leverage” over other reporters.
APCO’s briefings suggest - without providing any evidence - that one possible source of the Sunday Times story about Labour Together’s funding was a Russian or Chinese hack of the Electoral Commission. It is understood that the contents of some of the documents were shared with other journalists on Fleet Street, seemingly in an attempt to discredit the initial story.
These revelations, together with the role McSweeney played in persuading Starmer to appoint Mandelson as ambassador to the US must surely make his position in Number 10 untenable.
