Celia Clarke

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

There is nothing “defensive” about helping the United States bomb Iran.

This is an illegal war of aggression — and Britain should have nothing to do with it whatsoever. https://t.co/uljisS3iCo

[Mark Curtis @markcurtis30]

The oligarchy is all set. Its candidate has condoned everything required: nuclear arms, the US, Nato, Israel, arms industry. The system requires no election. It's all perfectly normal.

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Tony Blair is the living embodiment of what happens when political office becomes a down payment on future plunder. Ejected in 2007 by his own MPs as a massive liability, he bequeathed Britain a wild casino economy primed for the 2008 crash. And when the British economy crashed and burned, Mr Blair kept quiet while honing his skills at securing power by other means.

His first job, after his ejection from 10 Downing Street, was as the West’s Middle East envoy, with a supposed emphasis on Gaza. It took six painful years for Mr Blair’s tenure to prove a failure so profound it amounted to active complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing, in Palestinian erasure, and in paving the ground for the ongoing genocide.

Soon after, the Chilcot Inquiry demolished Blair’s Iraq lies, exposing him as a liar, a chancer and a war criminal responsible for countless corpses of Iraqis, but also of British soldiers.

Then came Blair’s real innovation: the financialisation of the ex-premiership itself. The Tony Blair Institute, fuelled by £130 million from Oracle's Larry Ellison—coincidentally, the largest individual donor to the Friends of the IDF—became a shadow state, brokering governance contracts for autocrats and companies like Palantir that weaponise AI to produce mega-death abroad and full-on surveillance of Western populations.

Now, in May 2026, this corporate fixer issues a 5700 word tantrum demanding that Labour embrace Trump even more than Starmer already has, denounce what is left of Labour’s betrayed Green New Deal, and trash the remnants of workers' rights. This is not the wisdom of an aging statesman. It is the frantic squirming of a man fearing his grip on oligarchic power might soon wane and whose entire post-10 Downing Street existence depends on preventing the many from ever reclaiming what the few have plundered.

https://t.co/1Onlpx9Nkh

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Today marks Nakba Day, an annual day of remembrance to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel and the year that followed.

Inea is a New Yorker and a Nakba survivor. She shared her story with us — one of home, tradition and memory over generations.

[Akunjee 🖋 @mohammedakunjee]

Statement by Barristers Chambers re Prosecution of Rajiv Menon Kc

Rajiv Menon KC, a highly respected silk at Garden Court Chambers and a former head of chambers, is facing proceedings for contempt of court. The alleged contempt concerns a closing speech that Rajiv delivered to a jury at the Woolwich Crown Court in January 2026. The trial involved pro-Palestine activists causing criminal damage to weapons and other property at a factory in Filton, Bristol belonging to Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer.
Not only is this the first time in English legal history that a barrister is being prosecuted for contempt in respect of a closing speech at a criminal trial, but the procedure being used to prosecute Rajiv is wholly novel and without historical precedent.

Until this week, any publication about Rajiv being prosecuted for contempt has been prohibited by various court orders. As a result of reporting restrictions now being lifted, Garden Court Chambers is at last able to comment publicly on this matter. We have supported Rajiv throughout the proceedings, including significant numbers of our members attending court hearings at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Rajiv is independently represented by solicitors and leading counsel who have made powerful arguments about the jurisdictional legality and procedural propriety of the contempt proceedings being brought against Rajiv. Judgment is currently awaited from the Court of Appeal (Civil Division). It is hoped that the arguments being advanced will prevail, and that the proceedings against Rajiv will be swiftly concluded without Rajiv having to stand trial. Whatever the outcome, Garden Court Chambers will continue to support Rajiv.

It is important to note that the prosecution of Rajiv for contempt has wider constitutional implications. We are extremely concerned about the chilling effect on the Bar of the state seeking to criminalise barristers for their representation of their clients. Such action is bound to undermine the confidence of the public that those charged, particularly in political and controversial cases, can receive the committed representation that they would expect to be provided.

[David Maddox @DavidPBMaddox]

Just pointing out that I broke the story 7 months ago that Mandelson failed vetting from the security services and put it to Downing Street...so the idea that Downing Street only found out on Tuesday is complete nonsense.

https://t.co/9Zp14BGCoD

[Richard Murphy @RichardJMurphy]

I am tired.

Tired of war.

Tired of anger.

Tired of death.

Tired of lives lost.

Tired of hope destroyed.

Tired of unnecessary grief.

Tired of the destruction of well-being.

Tired of forced migration.

Tired of tears.

Tired of children living in tents, denied the childhood they deserve.

I am tired of the political excuses offered for war.

I am tired of racial hatred.

I am tired of human lust for power wrapped up in theocracy.

I am tired of talk of defence that excuses aggression.

I am tired of biased reporting

I am tired of being told that people who have died on one side of a dispute are lives lost and that on the other, they are just killed.

I am tired of a failure to recognise that any life lost unnecessarily is just that: it is a life lost unnecessarily.

I am tired of the belief that war will ever solve anything.

I am tired of the assumption that after war everything will go back to normal.

I am tired of the cost of conflict always being borne by anyone but those who started it.

I am tired of those who think we don’t have a duty of care to everyone, whoever they are, wherever they come from, whatever they believe, whatever their skin colour, whatever their gender, whatever their age.

I am tired of those who think that others don’t matter.

Most of all, I am tired of those who destroy hope,

I live in hope.

Hope of a better day.

Hope of a better life for everyone.

Hope that I might live to see that.

Hope that everyone might then share hope.

Is that too much to hope for?

[Celia Clarke @ClarkeCelia]

@paulmasonnews You’re a joke

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

This is racism, pure and simple. It’s also a test. The UK press needs to describe it for exactly what it is: that Reform’s candidate made a racist and inflammatory losing statement

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Looks like Tony Blair is very determined to confirm his status as one of the worst persons alive.

His speech is pure 19th century colonialism: he frames the Gaza issue as one of "ineffective governance" on the part of the Palestinians, without as much as mentioning the 17-year blockade, the occupation, or the small matter of the deadliest assault on a civilian population this century.

I'd love to understand how you build "effective institutions" when:
- Your airport was destroyed by Israel in 2001
- Your seaport is blockaded
- Building materials are banned as "dual use"
- Your university gets bombed every few years
- Your civil servants can't travel for training
- Your economy is strangled by design
- Your people and government officials are routinely killed in devastating attacks

And he uses this, the eminently predictable outcome of this continuous strangling of a people, as evidence that they can't govern themselves and that they require outside management by the architects of their immiseration.

Absolutely repugnant, no other word for it.

[Declassified UK @declassifiedUK]

Did you know❓

The Bank of England froze $2bn of Venezuelan gold to support the US effort to oust Nicolas Maduro.

The UK government has been supporting regime change efforts in Venezuela for years👇
https://t.co/l7jZ6lAKSO

[Declassified UK @declassifiedUK]

⚖��� POLL - do you support the hunger strikers?

Please repost after voting.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Whistleblower reveals that SAS units in Afghanistan:

* shot dead a sleeping couple in bed, badly injuring two toddlers with them;

* killed a group of women and children under a mosquito net;

* took existing prisoners along on raids so they could be executed as though they posed a threat;

* placed weapons on the bodies of civilians the SAS had illegally killed to justify their murder.

This went on for years. Senior officers systematically covered up these war crimes.

The whistleblower told a belated inquiry investigating summary executions of 80 people in Afghanistan by SAS units: “We didn’t join UKSF [special forces] for this sort of behaviour – toddlers to get shot in their beds or random killing. It’s not special, it’s not elite.��

The inquiry, under Lord Justice Haddon-Cave, is happening in place of a proper war crimes trial at the International Criminal Court. The ICC ducked prosecuting UK commanders and soldiers, even though its chief prosecutor had found plenty of evidence of UK forces committing war crimes.

Why? The US had recently intimidated the court, issuing severe sanctions on its judges and officials to dissuade them from pursuing war crimes allegations against US forces. Presumably the ICC got cold feet.

There should be no expectation that any serious prosecutions of UK forces will take place, despite the mass of evidence. This is just another way of continuing the cover-up.

The same story is playing out over Gaza.

The UK and US are not only actively assisting Israel's continuing war crimes against the Palestinian population, but they have renewed a campaign of intimidation against the ICC to protect the West's key client state.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

When it comes to Israel, the BBC is too frightened to accurately report the news – even when we can all see what happened with our own eyes.

Israeli soldiers were caught on CCTV executing two Palestinian men in the West Bank, shooting them in the back after they had surrendered and their arms were in the air.

Israel's Haaretz newspaper straightforwardly reports the Israeli army "fatally shooting" the pair "after they had surrendered".

The BBC, by contrast, dares not report what we can all see for ourselves. Its reporter says instead that the Palestinian men "appear to be surrendering" and that "the Israeli soldiers appear to open fire and shoot them dead at point-blank range".

"Appear" used twice – for no reason other than to cast doubt on what is self-evident.

Israel's national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, has lauded the soldiers for killing the two men.

No matter – the BBC is so desperate not to upset Israel it reflexively throws doubt on its crimes, even when Israel itself isn't denying what took place.

[Mark Curtis @markcurtis30]

So British military personnel have been trained in Israel during the genocide. A major story that will now be buried by the national media. So please repost below.

[Richard Corbett @RichardGCorbett]

Years of right wing bias in BBC news & current affairs and nothing happens, but upset Trump and the Tory director general resigns…

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

This should be a massive scandal.

Dutch police concluded that violent Maccabi hooligans were closely linked to the IDF - and determined to cause "serious violence".

Your government lied to you.

Your media lied to you.

And they smeared Birmingham to defend Israeli hooligans!

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

Zohran's campaign was his determination to make New York a city everyone can afford to live in. Huge congratulations!

His success will resonate throughout the world. A story where no one is left behind.

It's time to write that story across England & Wales too.

[Sangita Myska @SangitaMyska]

Netanyahu has authorised the killing of 63 Palestinians including a large number of children. This is on top of the daily killing of Palestinians by Israel since the ceasefire was announced. This war was never about the hostages for him. It was about staying out of prison.

[Priyamvada Gopal © @PriyamvadaGopal]

And the rest of us have to take 'Bribery Act' training.