Capitalism in Crisis Throws Democracy Out the Window

By Mike Craig

Northern Ireland

I really wish the general public would pay attention to this.

 

We do not live in a democracy. Within the capitalist system democracy is always limited, but because global capitalism is teetering on the brink of collapse, those who own and control it will go to even greater lengths to try and save it at the expense of democracy and international law. 

 

Part of this battle is the attempt to take over the Middle East and remove all threats to Western hegemony. Israel is a key part of this project, and contrary to the idea that Israel controls western governments, the reality is actually the other way around. 

 

The USA, the UK and the EU need Israel as the attack dog against the perceived enemy - any country which doesn't lie down and accept western control, or any country which would threaten the primacy of the petrodollar in global trade. The West's attack dog is a settler colony which suffers from a serious case of siege mentality, the longer the colony continues to exist the more deeply imbedded this mentality becomes. 

 

The g*nocidal tendencies of this have reached a point where even the supporting western governments have become embarrassed by it, nevertheless they still continue to arm the g*nocide and cover for it.

 

Over the last few years we have seen George Orwell's predictions becoming a reality, nowhere more so than in the Middle East, where truth has been turned on its head. 

 

Israel is in breach of several international laws and countries who support it, like the UK, are also in breach of international laws for continuing to support its actions rather than carry out their duty which is to hold it to account.

 

In the UK too, truth has been completely turned on its head. The Government is a collective criminal, it's lapdog media and its leading judiciary are guilty too, yet they compound this by criminalising any protest against their delinquency.

 

This isn't just about Palestine Action, it is an assault on democracy and the real rule of law. 

 

Our Governments and their institutions are arch criminals who hold no value for human life. 

 

We are now entering the period of barbarism which we were warned about by Rosa Luxembourg. 

Who Are the English? Michael Rosen Takes a Look.

I met an English guy from Durham recently and happened to mention I was English. When he found out I was born in Yangon (Rangoon) because my dad was in the British Army, he said I can't be English, I'm British. Needless to say, I didn't waste much time with this one.

Watching developments back home (England and the UK in general) I hear the right wing elements, the Reform Party types and the extreme right, who say the same thing; Pakistani's, Indians, Africans can't be English, only British, and there are efforts to bury that category. 

Unfortunately, this attempt to divert attention from the actual cause of social crisis gets an echo among sections of the population when there is no serious counter to the propaganda.  I went on to google images and typed in, English faces. Every image was a white person. Of course, the Irish can't be English, (not that they'd want to be) and they're white. White Chimpanzees, the British bourgeois referred to them on occasion. Skin color is the dominant means for undermining working class unity in the US and increasingly so in the UK it seems to me.

 

With immigrants being blamed for the economic crisis, we are seeing an increase in racism in the UK as well as Islamophobia. After all, England, like the US, is a white Christian country to these elements. And Islam is heresy. So is Judaism, and Jew hatred has a long history in England. The massacre of English Jews in York in 1190 is one of the examples of anti-Semitic assaults in England and it took an American Jew to inform me of that episode. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the UK as well as the US. I believe the cause of this to a great degree is the barbaric policies , including genocide, of the Israel state whose leaders claim to be the official voice of the Jewish people throughout the world. Fortunately, in the UK and the US, young Jews are in the forefront of the movement against Zionism and Palestinian rights; clearly the best defense against anti-Semitism.

 

Not liking the search in Google images, I asked chatgpt why black people can't be English and got this response below. Now that's more like it. Below the image is a piece that Michael Rosen*  posted to his Facebook page countering this false view that there is a set definition as to what English actually is. In the last analysis though, the dominant division in capitalist society is class. For me, the central aspect of my identity is that I am working class. My life activity that put food in my mouth and a roof over my head has been as a seller of labor power, not a buyer of it. Richard Mellor

 

 

Who Are the English? Michael Rosen Takes a Look.

By Michael Rosen *

July 13, 2026

 

I see that the people I might dub the 'Englishists' are busy at work on social media trying to reinvent the colour bar and fire people from the England team. As with a lot of racism, they rely on ring-fencing groups of people according to this or that migration or invasion. In this case, the 'true' Englander is, in their books, the descendant of the Germanic migrations to what is now England (these Germanic peoples went elsewhere as well but this particular bit of ringfencing is only interested in what is now England). 

 

According to some historians these Germanic migrations began after the Romans left. Some doubt this and say that logically, Germanic peoples must have sailed and rowed across from Germanic countries well before that. As it happens the genetic evidence seems to dispute that, as I'll show in just a moment. 

 

So what is the latest information (according to AI) on the waves of migration before the Germanic peoples arrived? I suspect that the word 'English' and the phrase 'ethnically English' is going to be used by right-wing parties in the near future. At present, I can see on social media that they seem to be talking about, descendants of the Germanic peoples. 

 

Why have these racial purists excluded the English Celts? (I'm leaving out the Welsh and Irish Celts for the moment!) What happened to them? Or are they still here? 

One story is that the Germanic peoples shoved them into Wales and Cornwall. Another story is that the Germanic peoples intermarried with the Celts in most of England but less so in Cornwall and Cumbria. 

 

But then, hang on, who was here before the Celts? After all, weren't they European invaders? Yep. But hang on again. Whoever was here before the Celts, were they invaders? So who was here before them? And so on and so on? 

 

Clearly, when it comes to choosing the England team on a blood and soil basis (as all good racists should) we should dispense with these recent Germanic invaders and fill the team with those with the highest percentage of English Celtic DNA (or, if possible) with the DNA of the folk who came before the Celts - unless they were wiped out, of course.) 

 

Of course, this is all ironic. As you know, this construction of 'the English' as a Germanic type is shot through primarily with hatred of people of colour. All I'm doing here is pointing up that to create this Germanic type (in essence a reinvention of the 'Herrenvolk') they have to dispense with different branches of the Celtic parts of what is now the UK. Most laughably, this includes the 'English Celts' ie those people who (the DNA folks claim) have 'markers' on their genome going back to Celtic settlement in England (not in Wales and Ireland). In other words this racism has to be also racist towards pre-Germanic settlers on 'this land'! 

 

No surprise it's racist towards Irish, Welsh and Scots Celtic peoples, but it's grimly funny that it has to be racist towards English Celts. (In terms of where such people are most likely to live today, it's Cornwall and Cumbria, say the geneticists.)

 

For people who hate all this DNA stuff, you have my sympathy. By no means am I trying to reduce people, culture, language, or politics to DNA. And we must never forget that DNA studies of difference are talking about tiny, tiny differences. 

And, as geneticists have always pointed out: differences in DNA make-up between so-called different 'races' are no greater than differences between people within an alleged 'race'. However, I am interested in the 'markers' that modern geneticists use as they do show, I believe, stories of migration. 

 

Below, when it says DNA - they are not talking about a whole genome (the whole DNA package). They are talking about one or several markers that belong to a given group, and which, they claim, are distinctive of that group. 

 

[Geneticists reading this, please feel free to dive in on comments below]

Anyway....

 

So what did AI tell me about all this?

 

As follows:

1. The Anglo-Saxon Profile is Clear and Localized

The study (Oxford University) tracked the genetic signature of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon migrations that occurred after the fall of the Roman Empire (around 450 AD).

 

The Genetic Marker: This parentage closely matches modern populations in Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

 

The Concentration: This Anglo-Saxon DNA is concentrated primarily in central, southern, and eastern England, where it makes up roughly 10% to 40% of the modern local genome.

 

2. The Indigenous "Celtic" Profile is Fragmented

 

The most surprising discovery was that there is no single "Celtic" genetic group. Before the Anglo-Saxons arrived, the indigenous Celtic Britons were already highly localized.

 

Distinct Tribes: The study found that Celtic parentage in the UK splits into vastly different genetic clusters. For example, the Celtic people of Cornwall, Devon, Wales, and Scotland are among the most genetically different from each other.

 

The Welsh Isolation: The Welsh genetic cluster showed almost zero Anglo-Saxon input, remaining the closest living match to the original, post-Ice Age indigenous settlers of Britain.

 

3. Anglo-Saxons Intermarried Rather Than Replaced

For centuries, historians debated whether the invading Anglo-Saxons completely wiped out the indigenous Celtic population of England. The study settled the controversy:The Anglo-Saxons intermarried with the existing Celtic population.

 

Even in eastern and southern England—the heart of the ancient Saxon kingdoms—the remaining 60% to 90% of the DNA is still indigenous Celtic Briton. The incoming Saxons contributed a minority percentage to a massive, pre-existing Celtic genetic baseline.

 

Summary of Differences

The survey proves that Anglo-Saxon parentage (Germanic/Continental Europe) and Celtic parentage (Indigenous/Ice-Age Briton) are fundamentally different branches on the genetic tree. 

 

However, they do not exist in separate people today. Modern English parentage is a story of the two lines fusing together.

 

A DNA study of Britons has shown that genetically there is not a unique Celtic group of people in the UK. According to the data, ``(BBC Who do you think you really are? A genetic map of the British ...19 Mar 2015) — There was no single 'Celtic' genetic group. 

 

When is it thought that Celts started inhabiting what is now England?

 

The mainstream scientific consensus is that the people who became the Celts began inhabiting what is now England during the Middle to Late Bronze Age, specifically between 1400 BC and 800 BC.

 

For decades, historians believed Celtic culture didn’t arrive until the Iron Age (around 600 BC) via a sudden military invasion. However, a groundbreaking Harvard-led ancient DNA study completely reshaped this timeline:

 

1. The Bronze Age Genetic Shift (1400 BC – 800 BC)

By extracting DNA from nearly 800 ancient skeletons, scientists discovered a massive, peaceful migration from continental Europe (mostly modern-day France) into southern Britain (England and Wales).

 

 

This migration was sustained over centuries and was so significant that it altered half the genetic ancestry of England's subsequent population.Rather than a violent conquest, it was a steady integration of continental people who brought new ritual practices, trade links, and crucially, early Celtic languages.

 

2. The Iron Age Flourishing (800 BC – 43 AD)

While the genetic foundation was laid in the Bronze Age, the distinct "Celtic culture" we recognize today—hillforts, distinct curvilinear artwork, complex metalworking, and Druidism—became fully dominant during the Iron Age.

 

By 320 BC, Greek explorers like Pytheas sailed around the island and explicitly documented that the inhabitants were culturally and linguistically Celts (Keltoi).

 

3. "Continuity" Rather Than Arrival

It is important to note that the term "Celt" is largely cultural and linguistic rather than a biological group that suddenly showed up. The people inhabiting England did not just cross a border as "Celts"; they were a mix of the indigenous Neolithic stone-circle builders, Bronze Age migrants, and continental traders who slowly evolved a shared Celtic identity over a thousand years.

 

What do we know of the genetic make-up of who was living in what is now England before the Celts arrived?

 

Before the Celtic migrations arrived in what is now England around 1400 BC, the island's genetic landscape had already undergone two distinct, total population replacements.

 

Ancient DNA extracted from skeletons has revealed a detailed timeline of the people who occupied England during the millennia before the Celts:

 

1. The Bell Beaker People (2400 BC – 1400 BC)

Directly before the Celts, England was inhabited by the "Bell Beaker" culture (named after their distinct, inverted bell-shaped pottery).

The Genetic Horizon: 

 

Arriving around 2400 BC from the river deltas of northwestern Europe (modern Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium), they were part of a massive westward expansion of people carrying Eurasian Steppe ancestry.

 

The Turnover: 

A landmark Harvard Medical School study proved that the Beaker folk replaced 90% to 100% of the British gene pool in just a few centuries.

 

Physical Traits: The Beaker people brought the genetic variants for lighter skin, blue eyes, and lighter hair to the island. They also introduced the paternal DNA haplogroup R1b-M269, which became the dominant genetic signature of modern 

British men. 

 

By the time the Celts arrived, England's population was almost entirely composed of these Beaker-descended communities.

 

2. The Early Neolithic Farmers (4000 BC – 2400 BC)

The sophisticated society that the Bell Beaker people replaced consisted of the Neolithic Farmers, the very communities responsible for building iconic monuments like Stonehenge.

 

The Genetic Horizon: This population arrived around 4000 BC, tracing their deep ancestral origins back to Anatolia (modern Turkey). They migrated across the Mediterranean and continental Europe, bringing agriculture and livestock to Britain.

 

Physical Traits: 

Skeletal DNA shows that these Stonehenge-builders typically had olive-brown skin, dark hair, and brown eyes. When the Beaker folk arrived, this Neolithic genetic signature was nearly entirely wiped out, possibly due to a lack of immunity against continental diseases like the plague.

 

3. The Western Hunter-Gatherers (10,000 BC – 4000 BC)

Before the farmers arrived, Britain was populated by a sparse group of post-glacial Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.

The Genetic Horizon: They re-colonised Britain after the glaciers receded.

 

Physical Traits: Famously epitomised by "Cheddar Man," this population possessed a genetic combination rarely seen today: very dark skin paired with striking blue eyes. When the Neolithic farmers arrived in 4000 BC, they caused a 90% genetic replacement of these hunter-gatherers, leaving only a tiny fraction of their DNA in the subsequent farming populations.

 

Summary of the Pre-Celtic Genome

When the Bronze Age "Celts" began crossing the channel around 1400 BC, they were not entering an empty land or encountering the people who built Stonehenge. They were stepping into an England populated by Beaker-descended communities who had light skin, high rates of the R1b gene, and deep roots in the continental European Steppes.

 

By they way, you may know that apart from my common ancestry with all human beings (which is the large proportion of all our DNA) my markers (and it is only specific markers) aren't part of any of this! I'm culturally 'Ashkenazi' and, say the geneticists, there are significant markers on my genome that says that these originate in a mix of the 'Levant' and what they call 'southern Mediterranean Europe' (ie Italy, Sicily, Malta and Greece.) More on that in my next post.

 

*Michael Rosen is a writer that writes children’s books and poetry. He has also directed plays. You can find out more about him by going to his website at; MichaelRosen.com.UK  He also has a You Tube channel: Kids’ Poems and Stories With Michael Rosen 

Editorial: what will a Burnham leadership mean?

L Keir Starmer R Andy Burnham

From the UK Socialist Website Left Horizons

Editorial: what will a Burnham leadership mean?

24 June 2026Posted by Editor

Short of an unexpected natural disaster, it looks like Andy Burnham will be Labour leader and new Prime Minister, perhaps be the end of July. Labour conference looks like being a coronation, there being little likelihood of any right-wing opposition to Burnham from the parliamentary Labour Party, most of whom are only too happy for a chance to salvage their political careers under a new leader.

Before considering the implications of Burnham ascendancy, it is worth noting that he will be the seventh Prime Minister in ten years – a record for the British capitalism state and one that marks it out as the least stable in western Europe in recent times. Moreover, the dumping of a Labour Prime Minister, less than two years into the parliament has never happened before in more than a century of Labour history.

Starmer’s resignation speech was a master-class in self-righteousness, lies and hypocrisy. He claimed to have inherited a party “that was politically, financially and morally bankrupt”. In fact Labour was the biggest party is western Europe, awash with money from its membership dues. Starmer squandered this money on pointless litigations over alleged antisemitism.

As for “morally” bankruptcy, Starmer glossed over ditching his “ten pledges” as soon as he was elected, and the tens of thousands of pounds-worth of “gifts” he received from rich backers immediately on coming into office. And there was no greater absence of morality in helping empower Netanyahu in his genocidal attack on the people of Gaza.

The key question that faces socialists

The key question that faces socialists today is this: to what extent will the Labour Party revive under Andy Burnham? If the Labour Party is pretty much a moribund organisation now, with few activists and largely demoralised or  quiescent membership – not to mention the plague of CLP suspensions and closures – will it revive again in the future, and will it once again, a place where real socialist ideas can be aired and get a hearing? The answer to that, as we will explain, is a heavily qualified‘yes’. Qualified, only because the scale of change and the pace of change are impossible to predict.

There is a spectrum of opinion on the left as to what difference Burnham will make. On one end of the spectrum is the Marathon to Snickers view: the name and wrapper was changed, but the content was exactly the same. On the other end of the spectrum, some on the left think that Burnham will ‘save’ the Labour Party from a defeat at the hands of Reform. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but where precisely it lies on that spectrum remains to be seen.

In times of social and economic crises, class conflicts and struggles are sharpened to a higher degree, through strikes, demonstrations, occupations and even riots. As economic uncertainties and insecurities intensify, so also do political reactions to them. But clash of opposing class interests is always reflected inside the labour movement – in the trade unions and the Labour Party – in the form of more bitter and angry conflict between left and right, over what is the correct course of action.

Such is the period that is opening up at the present time. We can more or less identify the pressures that will be put on Andy Burnham from both right and left, once he takes the keys of Ten Downing Street.

The worst Parliamentary Labour Party in its history

Burnham will be under the sway of a Parliamentary Labour Party which is the worst in the Labour Party’s entire history – nine-tenths of ‘Labour’ MPs with little connection to working class people, and out only to further their own careers and prestige.

Burnham, let us remember, has been adopted by the PLP right wing as the only hope of saving their careers. Josh Simons, who stood down as Makerfield MP to let Burnham stand, is an arch right-winger. He was the director of Labour Together, that toxic factional organisation that spent hundreds of thousands of pounds to undermine Jeremy Corbyn and then promote Starmer for the leadership. (See analysis of that by-election, here)

Much of the huge sums of money given to Labour Together was illegal – not declared to the Electoral Commission, for which the organisation was fined – but as director, Josh Simons spent tens of thousands more to put private detectives onto the journalists who were researching that illegality. (On this, see the excellent book Fraud, by Paul Holden).

This PLP of carpet-baggers and chancers only want Burnham to save their necks. But in the process, they will also push him towards ‘moderation’ and against too much ‘radicalism’ – like the rest of Labour’s right-wing, they have no understanding of real politics and their political horizons cannot see beyond the capitalist system.

In pushing from the right, the PLP will be backed up by the media and the establishment in general, including the civil service, the judiciary and the defence procurement monopolies who want to make billions more in profit from an expanded defence budget.

The biggest of these pressures on Burnham, however, will be the insistent and remorseless pressure of the market system itself. Over recent months, even the smallest threat of Starmer’s resignation led to the bond markets being in a panic, pushing up interest rates. There is a constant threat from this quarter that ‘unfunded’ government expenditure will lead to a massive rise in interest rates – as happened under the ill-fated premiership of Liz Truss – and an economic crisis.

The imperatives of capitalism – more austerity

The consensus in all the representative journals of capitalism – like the Financial Times and the Economist – is that there need to be strict controls on government expenditure and that increased spending on defence comes out of spending on welfare. For capitalism, these policies are an imperative.

These, therefore, will constitute the pressures that will push Andy Burnham in the direction of the Marathon/Snickers metaphor – a new label, but the same confectionary underneath. In response to hints about public spending, Burnham has already been making some suggestions that he will abide by the same ‘fiscal rules’ – ie limit public spending – as has Rachel Reeves.

But on the other hand, what will be different for Burnham, as compared to Starmer, is that expectations are different. Burnham has been catapulted into high office precisely because there is a perception within the labour movement that he will represent working class people better. To some extent, although often vaguely, he has articulated the needs of working class people – for example, by talking about “forty years of failed neo-liberalism” and the need for public ownership of utilities.

Most trade union leaders, with a few honourable exceptions, cravenly supported Keir Starmer heaving the Labour Party to the right. With the assistance of the then general secretary, David Evans, the left was attacked mercilessly. Labour conferences – with the support of right-wing union leaders – backed constitutional changes that shifted the balance of power to the right wing. Corbyn was isolated and not allowed to stand. MPs were suspended for supporting measures like abolition of the two-child benefit cap (a measure Starmer was eventually dragging kicking and screaming into doing away with) and thousands of members were expelled or walked away.

For the 2024 general election, scores of right-wing candidates were parachuted into seats over the heads and usually against the wishes of local party members, and all of this was accepted by most of the trade union reps on Labour’s NEC.

TULO showing signs of life

That may no longer be the case, however. The organisation of affiliated trade union members, TULO, has so much clout in the Party and on the NEC that it could lift its little finger and make the Party leadership jump. They are supposed to represent four million affiliated members but in the Starmer years, TULO misrepresented them.

Now, however, TULO seems to be waking up. In its recent statement it said, in part, “Labour’s affiliated unions are deeply concerned by the Party’s catastrophic election results. They show a stark disconnect between this Labour Government and the working people.”

How can it be otherwise? The trade union leaders understand – even though they may sometimes pretend not to – that the surge of votes for Reform, which threatens the careers of MPs and the rights of workers in general, is not due to a wave of millions of voters become racist. It is due to the overwhelming gut feeling of millions of workers that their economic prospects are getting worse year on year.

Andy Burnham will be under enormous pressure to deal with these very real concrete issues. Working families are less secure. The services on which they rely, especially the NHS, is falling apart in front of their eyes. Their children and grandchildren are getting married but there is no decent affordable housing available. Good, well-paid jobs exist only for a few, while most jobs do not provide enough to live on week by week. Reform UK and the rag-bag assortment of racists and xenophobes have no answers – socialists are well aware of that – but it is easy to understand why so many voters are seduced into thinking that ‘someone’ else, ie migrants, are getting more resources than them.

To take one more relevant example, The Guardian published a story only yesterday about child poverty. “Four hundred thousand children in the UK”, it reported, “were supported by baby banks in 2025, an 11% increase from the year before, prompting warnings from charities that they “cannot continue to absorb the impact of child poverty on this scale” without government support”. And this is under a ‘Labour’ government.

What we need to understand is this: it was not due to parliamentary chicanery or manoeuvres in the corridors of power that Starmer is being booted out. It is due to the bread and butter issues that face millions of working class families and the impact these have had on electoral politics.

And it is in this respect that there will be expectations put on Burnham that were not put on Starmer – in the streets, in the workplaces and in the communities. There are expectations that he will have to provide some answers, something different, even if it means challenging the wealth, power and privileges of the billionaire-class.

If, as seems likely, the right wing of the parliamentary party is not willing to stand a candidate against Burnham, it is because they know that their candidate – Darren Jones, or Wes Streeting, for example – would be utterly crushed in any contest. That is a measure of the feelings of the Labour and trade union grass roots.

Left Horizons believes, therefore, that the Burnham leadership and premiership will mark a new stage in the life of the Labour Party, a small beginning of change, but only a beginning. It does not mean a return to the old conditions, where the two-party system dominated utterly and Labour was the only serious party on the left. The Green Party, with a radical leader and policies as left as Corbyn’s ever were, is here to stay in the short and medium-term at least. It is a party with many good socialist members, thousands of them driven out of Labour by Starmerism.

Labour is today a desert, but things might change

But the idea that the Labour Party is near ‘death’ is a long way from certain. In fact, that argument has been made and proven too many times in the past, and at least at the moment it still rests on the affiliation of four million trade union members.

If an early period of promise and hope under Burnham eventually gives way to a period of disappointment, because of the pressure of capitalism and his inability or unwillingness to resist that, even then that will not necessarily mean the end of that party.

Such disappointment in the present circumstances is far more likely to lead to a revolt within the affiliated unions, and through that, to a revolt in the Labour Party in general. Where the Labour Party is today a political desert, with little activity and discussion, Burnham’s accession to power represents the very early beginning of a change, at first particularly inside the unions.

We live in a period whereby the crisis of the capitalist system is more demanding and intense than it has been for generations. Socialist ideas – the programme of democratic control and management of the commanding heights of the economy and a rational economic plan in the interests of all – are more relevant today than at any time. Such ideas will find a far greater echo in the future, but particularly in the organisations where workers and youth gather to discuss left-wing politics.

Labour has not been such an organisation for some time, but that could be about to change. How much it changes, and how quickly, we cannot say, but in the life of this very important political party, Burnham’s rise could mark an important turning point. 

Analysis on the UK Labor Party, the end of Keir Starmer and Burnham's Rise.

 Richard Sanders is an author and writer and has made documentaries and written articles about the Middle East (West Asia). He is connected to the website, Middle East Eye from what I can gather and formerly worked for the UK's Channel Four. 

Double Down News is an independent UK News organization.

The Labour MPs determined to show they represent Israel, not the British people

The Labour MPs determined to show they represent Israel, not the British people

Labour wants the repression of Palestine Action to serve as a blueprint for politics. Why not lock up opposition party leaders and any constituents who protest government policy?

Johnathan Cook, June 17, 2026

Mike Tapp, a minister in the Home Office, recently posted on X a “gotcha” response to Green Party leader Zack Polanski’s criticism of the Labour government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action. 

In the wake of the Court of Appeal ruling this week to uphold proscription, Polanski noted the government’s authoritarian assault on civil liberties. Thousands of grandparents –retired lawyers, doctors, vicars, army veterans – he pointed out, had been arrested on terrorism charges simply for holding a placard saying: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

In response, Tapp asked Polanski: “Do you support the Palestine Action group?”

This was Tapp’s attempt at entrapment. If Polanski answered in the affirmative, he could be jailed for up to 14 years – because of the unprecedented decision Tapp’s own Home Office took to declare Palestine Action a terrorist organisation. 

No direct action group in the UK’s history has ever before been designated a terrorist group, on a par with al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

Tapp clearly thought he was being clever. But all he was really doing was further exposing the ugly, patently authoritarian nature of the government he serves in and its complicity in Israel’s endless atrocities in Gaza.

Tapp is not some disinterested party in all this. He is a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel, the genocide-compatible wing of the Labour party that dominates the cabinet.

Investigative journalist Paul Holden noted on X: 

Tapp has taken money and benefits from Labour Together, Labour Friends of Israel and Stuart Roden, who founded the Israeli-based VC company Hetz Ventures with Judah Taub. Taub is a former IDF Special Forces operative who served as an IDF reservist in Gaza. 

The Labour government is stuffed with compromised individuals like Mike Tapp, who serve as Israel’s cheerleaders in the UK. 

In addition, or more likely as a consequence, many of these ministers, from Keir Starmer down, receive large donations from the Israel lobby. 

Polanski replied to Tapp: “The fact that your government has made it illegal for me to answer yes is a damning testament to your flagrant disregard for civil liberties.”

The McCarthy-emulating Tapp is not some outlier in the Labour party. He is its beating heart. It was his wing of the party, at the behest of the Israel lobby and working covertly through the unlawful activities of Labour Together, that helped confect an imaginary “antisemitism crisis” in the party in the second half of the 2010s. 

Their goal was to use anti-democratic means to drive Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters out of the Labour party and put corporate donors and the Israel lobby firmly back in charge of policy.

While Tapp was seeking to jail the only Jewish leader of a major British political party this week, it emerged that another Labour MP, Peter Kyle, had reported a female constituent of his in Brighton to the police. She was arrested and charged after writing to him in protest at the government’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Kyle apparently believed that, in writing to him, her MP, the woman had committed a crime under the Communications Act by “causing him annoyance”. Presumably, Kyle finds it annoying to be reminded of his party’s collusion in genocide. 

Subscribed

And presumably he imagines too that, in his version of democracy, MPs should never be questioned by those they represent on ethical issues, such as complicity in a genocide. 

Shockingly the Crown Prosecution Service agreed to pursue Kyle’s case through the courts, proving once again that it is nothing more than an adjunct of the executive branch. 

In a rare sign of the independence of the judiciary – at least at its lowest levels – a local magistrate threw the case out this week. 

There is, of course, a connecting thread in these two cases: both Labour MPs hoped to use the law to crush criticism of their party’s continuing support for Israel’s genocide.

They imagine their authoritarian repression of Palestine Action can serve as a blueprint for British politics. Why not lock up opposition party leaders and any constituent who dares to write protesting at their criminal behaviour? 

This is how Starmer’s Labour party conducts its politics: through intimidation, disinformation and show trials. 

And they do it not for our benefit or, as they keep proclaiming, in the interests of “national security”. 

No, they do it for the benefit of a foreign government viewed, even in Israel, as the most extreme in its history, one that includes self-declared fascists who Israel’s former top general, Moshe Yaalon, this week compared to the Nazis.

The Starmer government is tapping deep into its own fascist instincts. And with Nigel Farage’s Reform party nipping at its heels, there is little hope that the situation is going to improve any time soon.

Legal profession revolt against the UK judge whose job is to protect Israel's genocide

Judge Johnson so rigged the trial of anti-genocide activists that 1000s of legal professionals have urged him to step down from the sentencing hearing. But Johnson's dirty work is not yet complete.

Johnathan Cook, June 10th 2026

From Johnathan Cook on Substack

The trial of the Filton Four reaches its climax on Friday. Judge Jeremy Johnson will decide the sentences of four Palestine Action activists found guilty of criminal damage – after two juries refused to convict them of far more serious charges brought by the British government, via the Crown Prosecution Service.

Keir Starmer’s government failed to secure the convictions for aggravated burglary and violent disorder it so desperately needed. They would have helped retroactively justify its decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation – the first time in British history that a direct action group, which targets property, has been proscribed.

Starmer’s hostility towards Palestine Action is personal. It has been a massive thorn in his side during Israel’s near three-year genocide in Gaza.

From the outset, Starmer suggested that Israel had the “right” to withhold food, water and power from the 2 million Palestinian residents of Gaza – a crime against humanity for which the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is wanted by the International Criminal Court.

Starmer’s complicity in the genocide has only been underscored by Palestine Action, which has targeted Israeli factories operating in the UK run by Elbit Systems that supply Israel’s genocidal army with killer drones for use in Gaza.

The so-called Filton trial derives its name from an Elbit factory in the Filton neighbourhood of Bristol that Palestine Action targeted in August 2024. Efforts to destroy these Israeli drones came at a time when Starmer was under enormous popular – if little political – pressure to end British arms sales to Israel.

PR crisis

Proscription, however, has not worked out well for Starmer. It has entangled him in a self-inflicted public relations crisis of almighty proportions.

Palestine Action activists have been held in remand without trial for an unprecedented period of time, far in excess of the normal maximums, and in especially harsh conditions that have treated them as if they were terrorism suspects, even though their arrests long precede the group’s proscription last year. 

These sustained abuses led to a prolonged hunger strike, and a desperate government and media campaign to justify their mistreatment. 

Proscription has led to thousands of people, most of them elderly and including upstanding members of British society – from magistrates and doctors to army veterans – facing convictions for “supporting terrorism” for holding up placards stating: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

This popular backlash cornered the High Court into declaring the proscription unlawful – a decision the government is appealing. That has led to another unprecedented situation: police are still arresting people for holding the placards, despite the courts ruling that the basis for such arrests is unlawful.

The law has never looked more of an ass.

Which is why the government is pinning its hopes on Judge Johnson riding to the rescue on Friday.

Judge Johnson has not been shy about showing where his loyalties lie. Not to the law, but to the British security state.

Which should hardly come as a surprise, given his background.

Judge Johnson made it to the bench after years serving as the most favoured barrister of the “secret state”, representing the intelligence services, the ministry of defence and the police. His working environment of choice as a lawyer was behind-closed-doors prosecutions held out of view of the public or proper legal scrutiny.

Rigged trials

Judge Johnson has done precisely nothing to counter the overwhelming impression that the Filton activists’ prosecutions were entirely political. He quite openly rigged both trials in manifold ways, as former British ambassador Craig Murray has set out. 

Let me quote from him at length the ways Judge Johnson flagrantly skewed the hearings to the detriment of the activists and justice:

Judge Johnson ruled that the defendants were not permitted to refer to their motives.

He ruled that the jury may not be informed of their absolute right to acquit.

He attempted to have the leading defence barrister, Rajiv Menon KC, prosecuted for contempt of court for informing the jury of their rights.

He ruled that terms including ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ may not be used in court.

He ordered that the notebooks and other writings of the accused be redacted to withhold from the jury any information related to Elbit’s supply of weapons to Israel.

He enforced the concealment from the jury of the nature of the weapons and equipment that had been damaged.

He granted anonymity to senior Elbit staff and admitted their evidence without the defence being able to cross-examine.

He ruled that the trial had *not* been prejudiced by the Secretary of State [Yvette Cooper] and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police [Sir Mark Rowley] stating the offences as fact throughout national media.

He allowed the release to the media of highly edited and selective prosecution video footage during the trial which gave a false impression of events.

He permitted the admission of Metropolitan Police video evidence which they had given over to Elbit’s sole custody for an entire year.

In a trial with so many extraordinary anomalous moments, perhaps the most glaring was Judge Johnson’s efforts to get the main defence barrister in the first trial, Rajiv Menon KC, jailed for contempt of court simply for noting to the jury in his summing up speech that they had a hundreds-of-years-old right in law to acquit.

Jonathan Cook 4mo If you are baffled by why the jury refused to convict the Palestine Action defendants, it's because – unlike them – you didn't hear the actual evidence. You heard what the media wanted you to know. Here, I explain what the jury learnt from the trial: https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/barristers-powerful-speech-at-filton 383 8 130

Judge Johnson’s behaviour was so unprecedented and certain to have a chilling effect on the ability of defence barristers to represent their clients – the Filton defendants decided to dismiss their barristers from summing up in their second trial to avoid their lawyers facing prison for doing their job and defending them – that the Court of Appeal had no choice but to overrule Judge Johnson’s contempt proceedings against Menon. 

Murray rightly concludes: "That is an astonishing list of nefarious actions by Judge Johnson. Read it again. Many people will surely conclude, it is Judge Johnson who should be in jail."

Gagging order

But even with the convictions for criminal damage secured under these rigged conditions, Judge Johnson is still in a position to cause more harm to the rule of law. He is due to sentence the Filton Four on Friday. 

Judge Johnson has reserved to himself the right to sentence the four anti-genocide activists not just for the relatively minor criminal damage charge they were convicted of after his rigged trial, but – once again in an unprecedented move – treat those criminal convictions as if they were for terrorism offences.

That means he can impose a longer sentence, more draconian prison conditions and more onerous, life-long conditions after their release. 

The jury knew none of this when they were considering whether to convict. Judge Johnson placed a gagging order on his decision during the trial which meant the information was withheld from the jury and could not be reported until after the verdict. The gag was broken only by foreign mediaand Zarah Sultana, who used her parliamentary privilege to reveal Judge Johnson’s government-friendly, anti-justice machinations. 

In yet another unprecedented feature to the trial, this will be the first time in British history that someone accused of criminal damage is sentenced as a terrorist. Judges were only given these extraordinary powers in a highly controversial amendment in 2021 to counter-terrorism legislation. 

Judge Johnson’s logic for taking advantage of his extra powers in this case is quite extraordinary too. He argues that, in destroying Elbit’s killer drones, the activists were seeking to “influence” the Israeli government to change its policy in Gaza – that is, to stop committing a genocide. 

Subscribed

Putting pressure on governments is what terrorists try to do, he argues, so this must mean the anti-genocide activists are terrorists.

Opposition to the genocide, in Judge Johnson’s view, has to be treated as an aggravating factor, not a mitigating one. 

It is all the more astounding that Judge Johnson is using this argument when he refused to allow the jury to hear any evidence of the activists’ larger political motivations: that they wanted to stop British complicity in Israel’s genocide by targeting a factory that made the drones for use in that genocide. 

Remember, all this is happening as Starmer’s government makes unprecedented moves to end many jury trials in Britain, leaving us to the mercy of judges like Jeremy Johnson. 

As Defend Our Juries notes, the government is looking to create “an extraordinary and deeply authoritarian precedent, allowing countless more protesters to be tried for an ordinary offence, but secretly sentenced as terrorists, without juries knowing this when they convict”. 

‘Cruel and vindictive’

Judge Johnson’s rogue manoeuvrings have so incensed the legal profession that thousands signed a petition demanding that he take the chance last Monday to recuse himself from the sentencing hearing. He, of course, refused to do so. 

They call his behaviour during the trial “biased” and “discriminatory conduct” and have referred him to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office.

Here is David Whyte, professor of law at Queen Mary’s University of London, who handed the petition to the JCIO explaining another reason why so many legal professionals are outraged by Judge Johnson’s actions: he has shown exceptional “cruelty and vindictiveness” in holding the activists in remand for more than three times the normal maximums, even when the prosecution was not asking for them to be remanded, and for refusing them bail between their convictions and sentencing. 

The Court of Appeal is due to issue its ruling on the government’s appeal against the earlier High Court decision declaring Palestine Action’s proscription unlawful this coming Monday, days after Judge Johnson’s sentencing of the Filton activists. 

If this is all starting to look like theatre, that it because it is. In dictatorships, these are called show trials. Everyone understands that the outcome is predetermined. Everyone understands that justice is non-existent. The verdict is entirely political. It is a faux-legal rationalisation of what the security state wants. 

Judge Johnson is the perfect judge to play that part. 

The courts will do exactly what is expected of them unless they are worried that public revulsion will discredit their decision. Now is the time to raise our voices.