The picture is damning. Keir Starmer helped break the guarantee that makes lawful military service possible. That guarantee is simple and absolute: if you obey lawful orders, act within the rules given at the time, and serve the state in good faith, the state will stand by you when the mission ends. Without it, discipline collapses, restraint corrodes, and trust dies. Iraq is where that guarantee was first torn up. Northern Ireland is where the damage is now being repeated.
In 2007, Starmer chose to involve himself in a legal case that reshaped how British soldiers could be pursued after Iraq. Working voluntarily and without payment alongside Richard Hermer, now his Attorney General, and Phil Shiner, later struck off and convicted for fraud, he advanced a claim that extended human rights law deep into active war zones. That decision widened the law, lowered the bar for investigation, and turned clearance into a temporary reprieve rather than an end point.
The effects were immediate and brutal. Soldiers who had been investigated and cleared were dragged back years later. Lives were suspended in legal limbo. Families lived under permanent threat. The state had changed the rules after the fact and pretended nothing fundamental had shifted.
The case of Sergeant Richie Catterall exposes the truth with pitiless clarity. Cleared twice. Reopened a third time on allegations later shown to rely on false material. Thirteen years of pursuit. Severe mental illness. Near suicide. Vindication came only after his life had been dismantled. The submissions that reignited that ordeal were personally advanced by Starmer and Hermer.
From there, the machinery expanded. The Iraq Historic Allegations Team ballooned into existence, fed largely by claims generated by Shiner's firm. Thousands of allegations. Tens of millions of pounds spent. No convictions. What it produced reliably was fear and exhaustion for soldiers who had acted under lawful orders, while lawyers prospered and the process rolled on.
This history matters because it explains the present. The renewed pursuit of Northern Ireland veterans follows the same legal logic, now exercised with the full authority of government. The gutting of the Legacy Act, the refusal to pursue appeals, the exposure of ageing soldiers to endless process while terrorists walk free. This is the Iraq template reapplied.
Starmer's defenders retreat into technicalities. They speak of interventions, points of law, and neutral assistance to courts. That defence fails on contact with reality. Law does not operate in a vacuum. Extending litigation into war zones was a political act with foreseeable consequences. Starmer is too experienced to plead ignorance.
The detail meant to excuse him only deepens the charge. He acted pro bono. He was not compelled. He volunteered. He gave his time freely to a cause rooted in suspicion of state authority and indifference to battlefield reality. That speaks to belief, not detachment.
The continuity is reinforced by personnel. Richard Hermer, Starmer's ally in the Iraq case, now sits at the heart of government as Attorney General. What was once advocacy has become policy. The legal culture that treats soldiers as permanent suspects is now embedded at the top of the state.
This is the core failure. By making lawful service conditional and temporary, the government has voided the moral contract of soldiering. Serve today. Be judged tomorrow by different rules. Face process decades later. That is how hesitation replaces judgement, lawyers replace commanders, and recruitment drains away without announcement.
And while trust collapses at home and the bond between the state and its soldiers breaks down, where is our Prime Minister? In China, managing the fallout from the Chagos debacle and the row over a Chinese super-embassy. Leadership begins with loyalty. If he cannot stand by Britain's veterans, he should not stand at the head of government.
Keir Starmer and Lord Hermer
John Healey’s resignation is depressing because it confirms that there is no prospect of Labour funding defence adequately. Not a surprise but now it is undeniable. Without anyone able to make grown up decisions the risk only grows. I had naïvely hoped for welfare reform from this lot but even that is lost.
@HenMazzig Jews turned a desert into gleaming Tel Aviv. Arab Muslims turned Gaza into a terror propagating shit hole. The contrast in cultures is breathtaking. One, a world leader in science, tech and medicine, the other a medieval misogynistic death cult.
There's confusion, so here's that EHRC guidance in plain Sunday Sport language:
'Lads, if you want to play dress up and have a wank, crack on. Just not in the ladies' shithouse, eh?'
For 37 years, over 2,000 images taken by a Chinese state media photographer were hidden in a metal box, surviving brutal purges—until now.
These raw, powerful photos show the courage of the students, the scale of the protests, and the horror of what the Chinese Communist Party did.
Now, The @EpochTimes is making the photos public for the first time. [1/2]
“AND YOU STILL DARE TO OPEN YOUR MOUTH…”
Sasha Legerman: This is too accurate not to share.
This Australian’s response to Trump’s rant that “NATO does nothing for America” is absolutely devastating:
“Mate. You run a country where 600,000 homeless people will sleep on the streets tonight.
A country where 40% of adults can’t cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money.
A country where insulin costs more than a car payment, and people ration it just to stay alive.
A country where medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy.
A country where women die in hospital parking lots because doctors are too afraid of abortion laws to treat miscarriages.
You imprison more of your own citizens than any country on Earth.
More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea.
In the land of the free, 2 million people sit in cages, and a quarter of them haven’t even been convicted of anything.
They’re simply too poor to afford bail.
Your life expectancy is declining. You’re the only developed nation where that’s happening.
Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba’s.
Your children practice active shooter drills between math and English classes while you sell defense stocks to your friends.
Your minimum wage hasn’t changed in 15 years.
Your teachers work two jobs, your veterans sleep under bridges, and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that never attacked you.
And now a convicted criminal — found liable for sexual abuse, defending a pedophile, sleeping with a porn star, and running the biggest dumpster-fire campaign since the Taliban — is thanking you for yet another disaster.
And you call Greenland badly governed?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world.
Nobody there goes bankrupt because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because insurance refused treatment.
‘NATO wasn’t there when we needed them.’
When exactly was that, champ?
September 11?
Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU.
Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU.
Australia wasn’t even in NATO, and we still showed up. For twenty years.
And then you left at 2 a.m. without telling anyone and left everybody else to clean up the mess.
You don’t care that a great nation is being terrorized by your friend, and you haven’t shown it a single ounce of sympathy.
So maybe before calling other countries badly governed, take a look at your own backyard, you aluminum siding salesman with a spray tan.
The only thing badly managed in this picture is your damn mouth.
And you still dare to lecture the rest of the world?”
A huge thank-you to the Sikhs
They are setting an excellent example for the Muslims to follow
This is, for moderate Muslims to speak out against the radical Muslims
We're all waiting...
In autumn 1946, a young economist from rural Tennessee arrived at the University of Chicago calling himself a libertarian socialist.
By December, his entire worldview had collapsed and been rebuilt.
This is the story of one of the three future Nobel laureates trained by the same professor.🧵
@KarlTurnerMP@RogTallbloke Didn’t know? I hope this is bad phrasing. Please try harder or make it clear you are pointing out Starmer’s usual defence is a joke now.
@RupertLowe10 As someone wrote, I want reparations from Denmark for what challenged along the river Ouse in 1066. DNA proves many of my relatives killed. Give me the money.
The moment you finally realise you’re leading the most authoritarian government in our country’s history:
1️⃣ Introducing an official definition of “anti-Muslim hostility” that silences legitimate criticism of religion — 18 years after Parliament abolished such laws.
2️⃣ Removing the right of most defendants to have a jury trial, in the biggest assault on English liberty in over 800 years.
3️⃣ Requiring pub landlords to monitor customers’ private conversations to protect staff from remarks, comments, or jokes they may find “offensive”.
4️⃣ Clamping down on lawful social media posts, arresting an Irish comedian for gender-critical tweets and even threatening to ban access to X in the UK.
It’s not a great look, is it, Prime Minister…
Is This Plausible?
I am Morgan Macsweeney
I am Chief Of Staff to the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
I hold a top-secret security clearance
I own a mobile phone
I use this phone to conduct Government Business
I use this phone to message with Lord Mandelson
My phone is tracked by GCHQ
There are protocols for officials using personal phones to conduct Government business
My communications are monitored to ensure they are not intercepted
My phone is "stolen" a month after Lord Mandelson is sacked
The police do not investigate
The phone is not tracked down
The police are too busy to track down the phone the most senior member of the Prime Minister's team - someone with a top-secret security clearance
I do not contact my service provider to block the stolen phone
I do not consider asking GCHQ to do this as a national security priority
I do not ask for a replacement sim
I do not buy a new phone
I do not activate my new phone with the new sim
I do not log-in to my Google account
I do not select "Restore"
I do not download WhatsApp
I do not recover my messages
Nobody, ever, who had their phone stolen was ever able to get their messages back.
@UKLabour@Keir_Starmer
DO YOU THINK WE ARE ALL STUPID?
It is the cover-up that will take you down