The official notice of the dissolution of Samoa’s Legislative Assembly. May 2025
“Upon the adjournment of Parliament yesterday, I met with the Head of State and tendered my advice to dissolve Parliament,” she said.
Fiame said that advice was accepted, and the Head of State has confirmed that the official dissolution of Parliament will take place on Tuesday, June 3.
According to Samoa’s constitution, an election must be held within three months of parliament being dissolved.
Fiame reassured the public that constitutional arrangements are in place to ensure the elections are held lawfully and smoothly.
Caretaker mode
In the meantime, she said the government would operate in caretaker mode with oversight on public expenditure.
“There are constitutional provisions governing the use of public funds by a caretaker government,” she said.
PM Fiame Naomi Mata’afa in Parliament on Tuesday . . . Parliament will go into caretaker mode. Image: Samoan Govt /RNZ Pacific
“Priority will be given to ensuring that the machinery of government continues to function.”
She also took a moment to thank the public for their prayers and support during this time.
Despite the political instability, Fiame said Samoa’s 63rd Independence Day celebrations would proceed as planned.
The official programme begins with a Thanksgiving Service on Sunday, June 1, at 6pm at Muliwai Cathedral.
This will be followed by a flag-raising ceremony on Monday, June 2, in front of the Government Building at Eleele Fou.
The pro-government alliance achieved a sweeping victory in Venezuela’s May 25 elections, while a fractured opposition suffered losses. Western media distorted the results – spinning low turnout claims, ignoring the role of illegal US sanctions, and offering selective sympathy to elite opposition figures.
Opposition fractures, pro-government consolidates
At stake for the 54 contesting Venezuelan political parties were seats for 285 National Assembly deputies, 24 state governors, and 260 regional legislators.
The pro-government coalition won all but one of the governorships, taking three of the four states previously held by the opposition. The loss of the state of Barinas was particularly symbolic, for this was the birthplace of former President Hugo Chávez, and especially so, because the winner was Adán Chávez, the late president’s older brother.
Likewise, the Chavista alliance swept the National Assembly, securing 253 out of 285 seats. Notable exceptions were the election of opposition leaders Henrique Capriles and Henri Falcón, both of whom are former presidential candidates.
The New York Timesreported the same outcomes but spun it as the “results [rather than the vote]…stripped the opposition of some of the last few positions it held,” inferring fraud.
However, this election outcome was not unexpected, as the opposition was not only divided but also had a significant portion opting to boycott the vote. The pro-government forces enjoyed a unified effort, an efficient electoral machine, and grassroots support, especially from the communal movement.
“After 32 elections, amidst blockades, criminal sanctions, fascism and violence,” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro affirmed, “today we showed that the Bolivarian Revolution is stronger than ever.”
Opposition self-implodes
The headline from Le Mondespun the voting thus: “Venezuela holds divisive new elections.” Contrary to what the headline suggests, the divisiveness was not the government’s doing, but due to the opposition’s perennial internecine warfare.
While the pro-government Great Patriotic Pole alliance around the ruling Socialist Party (PSUV) “works in unison,” according to opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the electoral opposition is divided into three warring camps. They, in turn, were surrounded by a circular firing squad of the far-right abstentionists, calling for a vote boycott.
The abstentionists were assembled around Maria Corina Machado. She had been pardoned for her involvement in the short-lived 2002 US-backed coup but was subsequently disqualified from running for office for constitutional offenses. Following Washington’s lead, which has not recognized a Venezuelan presidential election as legitimate since 2012, the far-right opposition rejected electoral means for achieving regime change and has even pleaded in effect for US military intervention.
Machado’s faction, which claimed that Edmund González Urrutia won the 2024 presidential election, does not recognize their country’s constitutional authority. Consequently, when summoned by the Venezuelan Supreme Court, they refused to present evidence of their victory, thereby removing any legal basis for their claimed victory to be accepted. Machado maintained that voting only “legitimizes” the government, bitterly calling those participating in the democratic process “scorpions.”
Machado spent the election in self-imposed hiding. She further dug herself into a hole, after urging even harsher punishing US sanctions on her own people, by appearing to support Trump’s sending of Venezuelan migrants to the CECOT torture prison in El Salvador.
El Paissympathized with her as “driven by the strength of the pain of being a mother who has been separated from her three children.” The WaPodescribed the middle-aged divorcé from one of the wealthiest families in Venezuela as a “courageous leader” whose “three children are exiled abroad.” In fact, her adult children live comfortably in the US and Colombia.
To this manufactured sympathy for the privileged, Venezuelan-Canadian sociologist Maria Paez Victor asks, “Where are the defenders of the human rights of Venezuelans?” She excoriates the collective West for its selective concern for human rights, emphasizing the neglect of Venezuelans’ rights amid external pressures and US sanctions.
The disputed Essequibo
The headline for The New York Times’sreport spun the elections with: “Venezuela is holding an election for another country’s land.” This refers to the elections for governor and legislators in Essequibo (Guayana Esequiba in Spanish), which is, in fact, a disputed land.
For nearly two centuries, Venezuelans have considered that region part of their country, having wrested it from Spanish colonialists in 1835. In the questionable Paris Arbitral Award, with the US representing Venezuela, the Essequibo was handed over to the UK in 1899 (then colonial British Guiana and now the independent nation of Guyana). Ever since, it has been contested territory.
In 1962, Venezuela formally revived its claim at the UN, asserting that the 1899 award was null and void. Not surprisingly, the Times sides with Guyana, or more precisely with what they report as “Exxon Mobil’s multibillion-dollar investments” plus “military ties with the US.”
This first-time vote for political representation in the Essequibo is seen by Venezuelans across their political spectrum as an important step to assert their claim. It follows a referendum in 2023, which affirmed popular support for the Essequibo as part of their national territory. The actual voting was held in the neighboring Bolivar state.
On cue, the western-aligned press criticized the vote on the Essequibo as a “cynical ploy” by the Maduro administration to divert attention from other pressing problems. Meanwhile, they obscure the increasing US military penetration in neighboring Guyana and in the wider region.
Yet even the NYT had to admit: “Claims to the Essequibo region are deeply ingrained among many Venezuelans… [and even] María Corina Machado, the most prominent opposition leader, visited the area by canoe in 2013 to advance Venezuela’s claim.” Venezuelan journalist Jésus Rodríguez Espinoza (pers. comm.) described the vote as “an exercise in national sovereignty.”
Illegal sanctions – the elephant in the room
A WaPo opinion piece claims, “that the actual root cause of poverty has been a lack of democracy and freedom,” as if the US and its allies have not imposed sanctions deliberately designed to cripple the Venezuelan economy. These “unilateral coercive measures,” condemned by the UN, are illegal under international law because they constitute collective punishment.
But the fact that Venezuelans had to vote while being subjected to illegal coercion is completely ignored by the corporate press. That is, the existence of sanctions is recognized, but instead of exposing their illegal and coercive essence, the press normalizes them. The story untold by the press is the courage of the Venezuelan people who continue to support their government under such adverse conditions.
Disparaging the election
Washington and its aligned press cannot question the popular sweep for the Socialist Party’s alliance in Venezuela, because it is so obvious. Nonetheless, they disparage the mandate. The chorus of criticism alleges the fraudulent nature of previous elections, although it is a geopolitical reality that Washington considers any popular vote against its designated candidates illegitimate.
For this particular election, these State Department stenographers focused on the supposedly low turnout. In fact, the turnout was typical for a non-presidential election contest and fell within the same percentage range as US midterm elections.
Moreover, the pro-government slate actually garnered more votes than it had in the previous regional elections. The Chavista core of older, working class women remains solid.
When Elvis Amoroso, president of Venezuela’s authority (CNE), qualified the turnout percentages to apply to “active voters,” he meant those in-country. Due to the large number of recent out-migrations, a significant number are registered but cannot vote because they are abroad.
What was notably low was the voting for the highly divided opposition, with major factions calling for a boycott. Further, the opposition had been discredited by revelations that some had received and misused hundreds of millions of dollars from USAID. More than ever, the inept opposition has exposed itself in a negative light to the broad electorate.
The overwhelming sentiment on the street in Venezuela is for an end to partisan conflict and for continuing the slow economic recovery. Challenges ahead include inflationary winds, a rising unofficial dollar exchange rate, and, above all, the animus of the Trump administration, which is currently in internal debate over whether to try to deal the Bolivarian Revolution a quick or a slow death. Either way, destabilization efforts continue.
To which Socialist Party leader and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said: “No one can stop our people. Not sanctions, nor blockades, nor persecution – because when a people decide to be free, no one can stop them.”
Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa has advised Samoa’s head of state that it is necessary to dissolve Parliament so the country can move to an election.
This follows the bill for the budget not getting enough support for a first reading on yesterday, and Fiame announcing she would therefore seek an early election.
Tuimaleali’ifano Va’aleto’a Sualauvi II has accepted Fiame’s advice and a formal notice will be duly gazetted to confirm the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly.
Parliament will go into caretaker mode, and the Cabinet will have the general direction and control of the existing government until the first session of the Legislative Assembly following dissolution.
Fiame, who has led a minority government since being ousted from her former FAST party in January, finally conceded defeat on the floor of Parliament yesterday morning after her government’s 2025 Budget was voted down.
MPs from both the opposition Human Rights Protection Party and Fiame’s former FAST party joined forces to defeat the budget with the final vote coming in 34 against, 16 in support and two abstentions.
Defeated motions
Tuesday was the Samoan Parliament’s first sitting since back-to-back no-confidence motions were moved — unsuccessfully — against prime minister Fiame.
In January, Fiame removed her FAST Party chairman La’auli Leuatea Schmidt and several FAST ministers from her Cabinet.
In turn, La’auli ejected her from the FAST Party, leaving her leading a minority government.
On Monday, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) congratulated Venezuela for successfully holding regional and parliamentary elections.
Earlier, on Sunday night, the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) had won 23 out of 24 governorships.
The Bolivarian Revolution also secured 40 out of 50 seats in the National Assembly. Among the new legislators will be current ALBA Secretary Jorge Arreaza.
“The ALBA member states applaud and congratulate the people and government of the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for the resounding success of the legislative and regional elections held this Sunday, May 25, 2025.
Last week, North Carolina Democrats scored a victory when Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin, who’d lost a tight race for the state’s Supreme Court, finally conceded defeat after a six-month legal battle to throw out ballots that he contended were illegitimate. But that same morning, the party suffered a setback that may be more consequential: losing control of the state board that sets…
Oklahoma’s rolling out a new curriculum, a $33 million curriculum, where high school students are going to be required to learn from their social studies teacher that the 2020 election may have been stolen from Donald Trump and this is the brainchild of Ryan Walters, the superintendent of all schools in the state of Oklahoma. […]
Pittsburgh residents will not get to vote on whether to divest from genocide in the May 20 primary election after legal challenges ultimately killed a local ballot effort. The grassroots campaign Not On Our Dime withdrew its petition for the ballot question a second time last month despite spending months campaigning and collecting over 21,300 signatures to add the referendum to May’s ballot.
Fresh, stringent security measures have been imposed in New Caledonia following aborted political talks last week and ahead of the first anniversary of the deadly riots that broke out on 13 May 2024, which resulted in 14 deaths and 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4.2 billion) in damages.
On Sunday, the French High Commission in Nouméa announced that from Monday, May 12, to Friday, May 15, all public marches and demonstrations will be banned in the Greater Nouméa Area.
Restrictions have also been imposed on the sale of firearms, ammunition, and takeaway alcoholic drinks.
In the wake of the May 2024 civil unrest, a state of emergency and a curfew had been imposed and had since been gradually lifted.
The decision also comes as “confrontations” between law enforcement agencies and violent groups took place mid-last week, especially in the township of Dumbéa — on the outskirts of Nouméa — where there were attempts to erect fresh roadblocks, High Commissioner Jacques Billant said.
The clashes, including incidents of arson, stone-throwing and vehicles being set on fire, are reported to have involved a group of about 50 individuals and occurred near Médipôle, New Caledonia’s main hospital, and a shopping mall.
Clashes also occurred in other parts of New Caledonia, including outside the capital Nouméa.
It adds another reason for the measures is the “anniversary date of the beginning of the 2024 riots”.
Wrecked and burnt-out cars gathered after the May 2024 riots and dumped at Koutio-Koueta on Ducos island in Nouméa. Image: NC 1ère TV
Law and order stepped up
French authorities have also announced that in view of the first anniversary of the start of the riots tomorrow, law and order reinforcements have been significantly increased in New Caledonia until further notice.
This includes a total of 2600 officers from the Gendarmerie, police, as well as reinforcements from special elite SWAT squads and units equipped with 16 Centaur armoured vehicles.
Drones are also included.
The aim is to enforce a “zero tolerance” policy against “urban violence” through a permanent deployment “night and day”, with a priority to stop any attempt to blockade roads, especially in Greater Nouméa, to preserve freedom of movement.
One particularly sensitive focus would be placed on the township of Saint-Louis in Mont-Dore often described as a pro-independence stronghold which was a hot spot and the scene of violent and deadly clashes at the height of the 2024 riots.
“We’ll be present wherever and whenever required. We are much stronger than we were in 2024,” High Commissioner Billant told local media during a joint inspection with French gendarmes commander General Nicolas Matthéos and Nouméa Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas.
Dupas said that over the past few months the bulk of criminal acts was regarded as “delinquency” — nothing that could be likened to a coordinated preparation for fresh public unrest similar to last year’s.
Billant said that, depending on how the situation evolves in the next few days, he could also rely on additional “potential reinforcements” from mainland France if needed.
French High Commissioner Jacques Billant, Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas and the Gendarmerie commander, General Nicolas Matthéos, confer last Wednesday . . . “We are much stronger than we were in 2024.” Image: Haut-Commissariat de la République en Nouvelle-Calédonie
New Zealand ANZAC war memorial set alight A New Zealand ANZAC war memorial in the small rural town of Boulouparis (west coast of the main island of Grande Terre) was found vandalised last Friday evening.
The monument, inaugurated just one year ago at last year’s ANZAC Day to commemorate the sacrifice of New Zealand soldiers during world wars in the 20th century, was set alight by unidentified people, police said.
Tyres were used to keep the fire burning.
An investigation into the circumstances of the incident is underway, the Nouméa Public Prosecutor’s office said, invoking charges of wilful damage.
Australia, New Zealand travel warnings In the neighbouring Pacific, two of New Caledonia’s main tourism source markets, Australia and New Zealand, are maintaining a high level or increased caution advisory.
The main identified cause is an “ongoing risk of civil unrest”.
In its latest travel advisory, the Australian brief says “demonstrations and protests may increase in the days leading up to and on days of national or commemorative significance, including the anniversary of the start of civil unrest on May 13.
“Avoid demonstrations and public gatherings. Demonstrations and protests may turn violent at short notice.”
Pro-France political leaders at a post-conclave media conference in Nouméa last Thursday . . . objected to the proposed “sovereignty with France”, a kind of independence in association with France. Image: RRB/RNZ Pacific
Inconclusive talks Last Thursday, May 8, French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls, who had managed to gather all political parties around the same table for negotiations on New Caledonia’s political future, finally left the French Pacific territory. He admitted no agreement could be found at this stage.
In the final stage of the talks, the “conclave” on May 5-7, he had put on the table a project for New Caledonia’s accession to a “sovereignty with France”, a kind of independence in association with France.
This option was not opposed by pro-independence groups, including the FLNKS (Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front).
French Overseas Territories Minister Manuel Valls . . . returned to Paris last week without a deal on New Caledonia’s political future. Image: Caledonia TV screenshot APR
But the pro-France movement, in support of New Caledonia remaining a part of France, said it could not approve this.
The main pillar of their argument remained that after three self-determination referendums held between 2018 and 2021, a majority of voters had rejected independence (even though the last referendum, in December 2021, was massively boycotted by the pro-independence camp because of the covid-19 pandemic).
The anti-independence block had repeatedly stated that they would not accept any suggestion that New Caledonia could endorse a status bringing it closer to independence.
New Caledonia’s pro-France MP at the French National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf, told local media at this stage, his camp was de facto in opposition to Valls, “but not with the pro-independence camp”.
Metzdorf said a number of issues could very well be settled by talking to the pro-independence camp.
Electoral roll issue sensitive
This included the very sensitive issue of New Caledonia’s electoral roll, and conditions of eligibility at the next provincial elections.
Mesures administratives
À l’approche de la date d’anniversaire du début des émeutes de 2024, le Haut-commissaire, en lien avec les élus et responsables du monde économique, annonce les mesures suivante du 12 au 15 mai 2025 :
— Haut-commissariat en Nouvelle-Calédonie (@HC98800) May 10, 2025
Direct contacts with Macron Both Metzdorf and Backès also said during interviews with local media that in the midst of their “conclave” negotiations, they had had contacts as high as French President Emmanuel Macron, asking him whether he was aware of the “sovereignty with France” plan and if he endorsed it.
Another pro-France leader, Virginie Ruffenach (Le Rassemblement-Les Républicains), also confirmed she had similar exchanges, through her party Les Républicains, with French Minister of Home Affairs Bruno Retailleau, from the same right-wing party.
As Minister of Home Affairs, Retailleau would have to be involved later in the New Caledonian issue.
Divided reactions Since minister Valls’s departure, reactions were still flowing at the weekend from across New Caledonia’s political chessboard.
“We have to admit frankly that no agreement was struck”, Valls said last week during a media conference.
“Maybe the minds were not mature yet.”
But he said France would now appoint a “follow up committee” to keep working on the “positive points” already identified between all parties.
During numerous press conferences and interviews, anti-independence leaders have consistently maintained that the draft compromise put to them by Minister Valls during the latest round of negotiations last week, was not acceptable.
They said this was because it contained several elements of “independence-association”, including the transfer of key powers from Paris to Nouméa, a project of “dual citizenship” and possibly a seat at the United Nations.
“In proposing this solution, minister [Valls] was biased and blocked the negotiations. So he has prevented the advent of an agreement”, pro-France Les Loyalistes and Southern Province President leader Sonia Backès told public broadcaster NC la 1ère on Sunday.
“For us, an independence association was out of the question because the majority of [New] Caledonians voted three time against independence,” she said.
More provincial power plan
Instead, the Le Rassemblement-LR and Les Loyalistes bloc were advocating a project that would provide more powers to each of the three provinces, including in terms of tax revenue collection.
The project, often described as a de facto partition, however, was not retained in the latest phases of the negotiations, because it contravened France’s constitutional principle of a united and indivisible nation.
“But no agreement does not mean chaos”, Backès said.
On the contrary, she believes that by not agreeing to the French minister’s deal plan, her camp had “averted disaster for New Caledonia”.
“Tomorrow, there will be another minister . . . and another project”, she said, implicitly betting on Valls’s departure.
On the pro-independence front, a moderate “UNI” (National Union For Independence) said a in a statement even though negotiations did not eventuate into a comprehensive agreement, the French State’s commitment and method had allowed to offer “clear and transparent terms of negotiations on New Caledonia’s institutional and political future”.
The main FLNKS group, mainly consisting of pro-independence Union Calédonienne (UC) party, also said that even though no agreement could be found as a result of the latest round of talks, the whole project could be regarded as “advances” and “one more step . . . not a failure” in New Caledonia’s decolonisation, as specified in the 1998 Nouméa Accord, FLNKS chief negotiator and UC party president Emmanuel Tjibaou said.
Deplored the empty outcome
Other parties involved in the talks, including Eveil Océanien and Calédonie Ensemble, have deplored the empty outcome of talks last week.
They called it a “collective failure” and stressed that above all, reaching a consensual solution was the only way forward, and that the forthcoming elections and the preceding campaign could bear the risk of further radicalisation and potential violence.
In the economic and business sector, the conclave’s inconclusive outcome has brought more anxiety and uncertainty.
“What businesses need, now, is political stability, confidence. But without a political agreement that many of us were hoping for, the confidence and visibility is not there, there’s no investment”, New Caledonia’s MEDEF-NC (Business Leaders Union) vice-president Bertrand Courte told NC La Première.
As a result of the May 2024 riots, more than 600 businesses, mainly in Nouméa, were destroyed, causing the loss of more than 10,000 jobs.
Over the past 12 months, New Caledonia GDP (gross domestic product) has shrunk by an estimated 10 to 15 percent, according to the latest figures produced by New Caledonia statistical institute ISEE.
What next? Crucial provincial elections As no agreement was found, the next course of action for New Caledonia was to hold provincial elections no later than 30 November 2025, under the existing system, which still restricts the list of persons eligible to vote at those local elections.
The makeup of the electoral roll for local polls was the very issue that triggered the May 2024 riots, as the French Parliament, at the time, had endorsed a Constitutional amendment to push through opening the list.
At the time, the pro-independence camp argued the changes to eligibility conditions would eventually “dilute” their votes and make indigenous Kanaks a minority in their own country.
The Constitutional bill was abandoned after the May 2024 rots.
The sensitive issue remains part of the comprehensive pact that Valls had been working on for the past four months.
The provincial elections are crucial in that they also determine the proportional makeup of New Caledonia’s Congress and its government and president.
The provincial elections, initially scheduled to take place in May 2024, and later in December 2024, and finally no later than 30 November 2025, were already postponed twice.
Even if the provincial elections are held later this year (under the current “frozen” rules), the anti-independence camp has already announced it would contest its result.
According to the anti-independence camp, the current restrictions on New Caledonia’s electoral roll contradict democratic principles and have to be “unfrozen” and opened up to any citizen residing for more than 10 uninterrupted years.
The present electoral roll is “frozen”, which means it only allows citizens who have have been livingin New Caledonia before November 1998 to cast their vote at local elections.
The case could be brought to the French Constitutional Council, or even higher, to a European or international level, said pro-France politicians.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Aotearoa Philippines Solidarity national assembly has condemned the National Party-led Coalition government in New Zealand over signing a “deplorable” visiting forces agreement with the Philippine government
“Given the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ appalling human rights record and continuing attacks on activists in the Philippines, it is deplorable for the New Zealand government to even consider forging such an agreement,” the APS said in a statement today.
Activists from Filipino communities and concerned New Zealanders gathered in Auckland yesterday to discuss the current human rights crisis in the Philippines and resolved to organise solidarity actions in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The visiting forces agreement (VFA), signed in Manila last month, allows closer military relations between the two countries, including granting allowing each other’s militaries to enter the country to participate in joint exercises.
“By entering into a VFA with the Philippines, the coalition government is being complicit in crimes against humanity being perpetrated by the AFP and the regime of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. against the Filipino people,” the statement said.
Having such an agreement in place with the Philippine military tarnished New Zealand’s global reputation of respecting human rights and having an independent foreign policy.
“The APS reiterates its call to the New Zealand government to junk the VFA with the Philippines and to end all ties with the Philippine military,” the statement said.
Mid-term general election tomorrow
“Assembly participants also discussed the mid-term general election campaign in the Philippines “and the violence borne out of it”.
“Elections are typically a bloody affair in the country, but the vote set to occur on Monday [May 12] is especially volatile given the high stakes,” the statement said.
“The country’s two dominant political factions, the Marcos and Duterte camps, are vying for control of the country’s political arena and there is no telling how far they would go to obtain power.”
The statement said there were reports of campaigners going missing, being extrajudicially killed and also being detained without due process.
“We expect electoral fraud and violence will again be committed by the biggest political dynasties especially against the progressive candidates representing the most marginalised sectors.
“The Philippine government must do everything it can to avoid further bloodshed and violent skirmishes that aim to preserve power for the competing political dynasties.”
The statement said that the APS called for the immediate and unconditional freedom for Bayan Muna campaigner Pauline Joy Panjawan.
“Her abduction, torture and continuing detention on trumped up charges speak volumes about the reality of the ongoing human rights crisis in the Philippines.
With yesterday’sassembly, the APS renewed its commitment to raise awareness over the human rights crisis in the Philippines and to do everything it could to raise solidarity with the Filipino people struggling to “achieve a truly just and democratic society”.
Leafleting for Majority, I stopped a bloke in Newcastle city centre.
Late thirties, Geordie accent, carrying a plastic bag with his shopping in, he said:
Oh, I’ll definitely be voting in the next council election.
I asked:
Who are you thinking of voting for?
“Re Form,” he pronounced, as two separate words.
You get a lot of that these days. Loads of media commentators and Westminster bubble people expound their theories why. Few of them actually go and find out for themselves.
Local elections: breaking through the Westminster bubble to find out what voters really think
I asked him if he thought Reform will fix anything after the local elections. Yes, partly as a leading question, but I was genuinely interested to hear his thoughts.
“Well, erm, aye,” then a short pause, “Farage is the man isn’t he?”
I followed up with:
What do you think needs fixing?
“Homelessness.” No hesitation this time. He continued:
Like, you see people sleeping in shop doorways. And begging, and if people give them money it goes on drugs.
I asked him his name: Ryan.
Then, I told Ryan a story.
A few years ago I visited HMP Northumberland and spoke to some of the inmates there. When I was mayor we funded courses so inmates could get skilled up and get an interview and have a job arranged all before they were released. So they came out with an income and with a life plan. I asked some of the lads what they thought would be an improvement. And they told me something I never thought I would ever hear a prisoner say.
They said:
The sentences are too short. You get lads with 3 month sentences, they serve like 5 weeks, and the drugs are barely out of their system and they’re released. But wherever they were staying has gone when they get out. And who’s nice to them? The drug dealers. So they go straight back on it.
I’m not sure longer sentences are the answer, but they were right about the problem. I explained the ‘Housing First’ policy. Giving people somewhere to live that they know can’t be taken off them. Where if they miss an appointment with a job coach they still have their home. With that foundation, they start to feel in control of their lives. They start to turn their lives around.
Working class voters have lived austerity’s devastating reality
Ryan was nodding along:
Aye, and they can get proper rehab and stuff, and they’ll turn up because they have somewhere to live. You know I struggled when I came out of prison.
I had no idea – I’d never met him before. For privacy I’ll skip over the details of Ryan’s youth he shared with me. But it struck a chord with him. The fact that I’d listened to people with his life experience. Not just listened, but heard them, and learned from them too. In return, he listened to me.
We spoke about the Newcastle Assembly where the people will develop their own manifesto. That we’ll be running in next May’s local elections for a progressive coalition to take control of Newcastle city council. Would Ryan vote for us?
Well I was just saying Re Form because there was no one else. Labour just lie.
He paused for a moment. Then, he said:
You know, if I was prime minister, I could fix this country in six months.
I was impressed. Even I’m not that confident, and I’ve ran an arm of government. I asked him what he would do. Ryan said:
You’ve got all people, like working, but they haven’t got any money, and they’re struggling to pay their bills and buy food and that. The government could support them with a bit money. And you wouldn’t have as much crime. You wouldn’t have people sleeping in doorways. And things like tourism would improve. Who’s going to come and visit here if there’s people sleeping rough?
One working-class lad with a tough history spoke more economic sense in one five minute conversation than Rachel Reeves has since she was elected, despite her Nobel Prize in economics, or whatever her CV says these days. Ryan got anti-austerity politics because he lived it. And not one word about immigration passed his lips.
Honesty and integrity: what’s missing from politics
I spoke to Alison. She also had a broad Geordie accent, and works two jobs, one as a cleaner, one as bar staff. She’s helping her daughter get through university, who’s training as a nurse.
What do you think of them getting in in Durham, then?
I asked her if she thought they’d fix anything. Alison replied:
Nah. They’re just all talk like the rest of them. They won’t fix nowt. They’re going on about people working from home now. But who can you vote for? Labour have gone back on everything they’ve said. Everything.
She told me about her daughter, and how expensive her accommodation is. My son’s at uni too, and it’s eye watering. I told her about the assembly, about having a manifesto where the people get to take part in setting policy. Would she vote for us?
I will pet, I will.
Once you get out of the social media bubble, people just want things to work. We chose the name Majority because the majority of people agree with our politics. Making sure everyone has a secure home. Public utilities run for the good of the public. A wealth tax on the very rich. Every poll shows between 70% and 80% of people want these things to happen.
It’s also about integrity. We can’t slam the Tories for VIP WhatsApp lanes and Labour for freebies unless we’re better. The most effective line in my mayoral campaign was, “In five years I claimed £0 expenses”.
Integrity means being honest. We stick firm to our values of anti-racism, anti-ableism and LGBTQ+ inclusion. Honesty gets you respect. It wasn’t Labour’s stance on immigration that lost them these local elections. It was their stance on truth.
Nigel Farage’s party is on the rise. In the local elections, Reform took 31% of contested seats to Labour’s 14%. In fact, Keir Starmer managed to lose 65% of the up for grabs seats that Labour held, the most of any new prime minister. Of course, this would be a resigning matter if Jeremy Corbyn were still leader of Labour, but we hear barely a peep over Starmer’s historic losses.
Farage: you best “give up” on tackling the climate crisis
Reform’s local election success is already putting a lot at risk. Deputy leader and multi-millionaire landlord Richard Tice said Reform-led councils will block renewable energy infrastructure:
We will attack, we will hinder, we will delay, we will obstruct, we will put every hurdle in your way. It’s going to cost you a fortune, and you’re not going to win. So give up and go away.
Yet analysis shows that in Greater Lincolnshire renewable industries contribute £980m to the economy and provide 12,209 jobs.
While renewable projects are subject to national oversight, Reform can delay or block smaller projects. Alex Wilson, a Reform member of the London Assembly, has said renewables are “absolute lunacy” and are “sacrificing our economy”. He continued:
It’s making our bills more expensive. We have the highest electricity costs in the Western world, that’s had a huge impact on industry, it’s why the automotive industry is on the floor, it’s why the chemicals industry is suffering. The impact of net zero on energy prices, on industry, on people’s bills, is absolutely catastrophic. It’s a big part of the contribution to the results we had on Thursday’s elections, ten councils we now control and another four that we’re the largest party in them.
The idea renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels is the real source of lunacy. Government contracts for offshore wind energy have been under 5p per kilowatt hour. That’s less than a quarter of typical household electricity bills that consumers are facing. A renewable energy transition would not only address spiralling climate disaster, it would greatly bring down our energy bills.
But it’s no wonder Reform are taking such a stance. DeSmogresearch shows Farage’s party has accepted £2.3 million from fossil fuel interests, big polluters and climate deniers since 2019.
Wilson also said:
What we are against is giving up vast swathes of prime agricultural land for these huge solar farms. We want to make better use of our own natural resources to continue to provide the cheap and reliable and secure energy supplies going forwards, so oil, gas, going to keep using those.
Gas is not cheap. On top of that, Common Wealth notes we have spent £12.5 billion through bill payments to fossil fuel firms for them maintaining their ‘capacity’ in the last ten years. In other words, we rent gas companies for their existence for literal billions – just for them being ‘available’ to sort out supply issues.
Solutions?
Starmer, meanwhile, isn’t taking the opportunity to deliver a publicly owned Green New Deal. And he opposed landmark legislation that would make the UK’s targets to tackle the climate crisis emergency legally binding. He’s also investing almost three times more in carbon capture schemes that don’t work than he is in actually funding renewable energy.
Still, it’s better than Reform who are accelerating rapidly in the completely wrong direction.
At the same time, Green Zack Polanski is standing to be Green party leader. He wants to challenge Farage on a platform of ‘eco-populism’. All the best to him: it could be the only way out of the political hellscape.
Less than one year ago, the people of County Durham returned six out of six MPs for Labour. Northumberland voted Labour in four out of four. On Thursday, Northumberland Labour dropped from 21 seats in 2021, to just eight. In Durham, from 53 seats to just four. Four. Yes, there are fewer seats with the boundary changes, but this is beyond defeat. It is obliteration. And Reform has taken control.
Labour’s vote collapsed because people are rightly angry
How can a party collapse so quickly?
Well, it didn’t. Durham voted Brexit. People at bus stops weren’t discussing the intricacies of the European Central Bank. They were bemoaning the price of buses. Boarded up shops. No school places nearby. Youths on noisy motorbikes intimidating pedestrians.
One resident of a former pit village told me:
We haven’t even got a supermarket here.
The Brexit vote was a howl of pain.
In 2019, the land of the Durham Miners’ Gala returned three Tory MPs. This year, just one of 24 Tory councillors survives from the 2021 local elections. The people gave them a chance. They failed to deliver. So the people voted them out.
In July last year, the people gave Labour a chance. Boy, were they betrayed quickly. Winter fuel allowance. Impoverishing disabled people. Still no buses. Still the shops are boarded up while the prices keep going up.
Reform has 65 of 98 seats on Durham County Council. Its vote is a coalition of two angry groups. Those who are angry at life. At immigrants. Trans people. Vaccines. Tofu. Recycling. Green energy. To them I say, haters gonna hate.
And a much larger group who are angry with supermarket prices. At working long hours and still slipping into debt. At paying in all your life, then having your Winter Fuel Allowance taken away.
To them I say, you’re right to be angry. But Nigel Farage is not on your side. He’s part of the same snake-oil selling establishment who has been selling you out for a long, long time. Helping the rich get richer, while delivering a reality of ill health and insecure work.
Reform has taken back control, so what now?
What happens now that Reform has taken back control? Will they fix Durham? Or just blame someone else? Voters don’t like that. They expect you to fix something. They know you can’t fix everything everywhere, all at once. But if your park is still covered in glass after four years, they will hold you to account.
What Brexit broke was not the tradition of voting Labour. It broke the tradition of voting by tradition. Will Reform even hold together? Its four MPs have managed to start suing each other. Will they be falling out before the leaves fall off the trees?
Newcastle has all-out council elections in 2026. Labour has already lost overall control through resignations. It has a £40m debt liability for the Crowne Plaza hotel. It has cost us £7m through the failed profit-making parks trust, implemented by now North East Mayor Kim McGuinness. Child poverty is up. The new Metros are not in service. No one seems to be in charge, or capable of delivering anything. The Gateshead flyover is still closed. And no one takes responsibility.
Instead, all we get are slavish repetition of national talking points:
Everything is fine, and it’s all the Tories’ fault.
We need people who will stand up for our region. Who are not terrified of telling the truth for fear of being politically executed by party apparatchiks. We need a credible alternative.
Exactly one year ago, I polled 25,000 votes in Newcastle compared to Labour’s 26,000 votes. There is a desire for better politics and higher standards. I want to see a coalition that will actually represent the people, not the parties. I want independents involved, and Greens if they are up for it. For the people leaving Labour – and there are many – to be part of it. To use citizens’ assemblies to set policy priorities.
We need politicians who will put local people first, and who are not beholden to party HQs or toeing the party line. Our first assembly is on Sunday 18 May in the Discovery Museum. You can book on the Majority website. Get yourself along.
Over the past weekend, several candidates in suburban Texas school districts who opposed book bans won their elections, defeating conservative officials who had supported and implemented such policies in recent years. Book bans in the Lone Star State have largely targeted titles with LGBTQ themes, Black or Brown characters, or authors of the same backgrounds. In the 2022-23 academic year…
Dresden, May 6 — Friedrich Merz barely managed to assume power Tuesday as the Federal Republic’s 10th chancellor, having fallen six votes short of the number he needed when the first Bundestag ballots were counted in a morning vote.
Berlin was reeling for most of the day as it faced a political impasse unprecedented in postwar German history. A second ballot, held hurriedly later in the afternoon, got Merz over the line by a margin of nine votes. While Bundestag members vote secretly, the numbers indicate that some members of his new coalition betrayed him. Among the German analysts with whom I spoke today, the interesting question now is how long Merz will manage to remain as chancellor.
Footnote content. The dust had barely settled on the Australian federal election on May 3 before the hagiographers, mythmakers and revisionists got to work. If history is seen as a set of agreed upon facts, there was a rapidly growing consensus that Labor’s imposing victory had been the result of a superb campaign, sparkling in its faultlessness.
This did not quite match pre-election remarks and assessments. The government of Anthony Albanese had been markedly unconvincing, marked by dithering, short sightedness and a lack of conviction. It had, rather inexplicably, made the conservative Coalition led by that cruel, simian looking automaton Peter Dutton, look electable.
Overall, the campaign on the part of both sides of politics was consistently dull and persistently mediocre. Expansive, broad ideas were eschewed in favour of minutiae and objects of bribery: tax matters, cutting fuel excise, forgiving some student debt, improved Medicare services and child care assistance. Issues such as the parlous reliance of Australia upon US security interests, not to mention the criminally daft obligations of the AUKUS security pact, or a detailed, coherent policy on addressing environmental and climate challenges, were kept in storage.
What did become evident in the weeks leading up to the poll was that the Coalition policy palette, which never went beyond blotches of law and order (terrorism, criminal refugees, paedophilia forefront themes), mild bribes for “cost of living relief”; and illusory nuclear energy, failed to appeal. Its campaign lacked the barely modest bite of Labor, largely because it had been eclipsed by such oxygen drawing events as US President Donald Trump’s tariff regime and the death of Pope Francis I.
It had also misread the mood of the electorate in pushing policies with a tangy Trump flavour, notably the proposed removal of 41,000 jobs from the public sector and the establishment of something similar to the US Department of Government Efficiency . (Country Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price unhelpfully promised to “make Australia great again.”) The Coalition, Dutton admitted after being accused by Labor of being “DOGE-y Dutton”, had “made a mistake” and “got it wrong”. The focus would be, instead, on natural attrition. There were also scrappy sorties on the cultural war front, featuring lashings of undesirable press outlets, such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and The Guardian (“hate media”, according to Dutton), and the presence of “wokeism” in schools.
Flimsy soothsayers could also be found, many endorsing a Liberal-Nationals victory. “For the first time in my journalistic career,” beamed Sharri Markson of Sky News Australia on May 1, “I’m going to offer a pre-election editorial, endorsing one side of politics […] A Dutton prime ministership would give our great nation the fresh start we deserve.” With vigorous drumbeating, Markson could only see “our values under threat – from enemies and abroad” – and retaining Anthony Albanese as prime minister was dangerous. With the analytical skill of an unread, hungover undergraduate, the political astrologist found the PM a victim of “far-left ideology”, something “out of step with mainstream Australia.”
With Labor’s victory assured, the fiscal conservatives at the Australian Financial Review proved sniffy, noting that Labor’s record on the economy did not warrant another term “but the Coalition has not made the case to change the government.” More explicit, with hectoring relish, was Australia’s premier shock jock of the press stable, Andrew Bolt. “No, the voters aren’t always right,” he wrote scoldingly in the News Corp yellow press. “This time they were wrong, and this gutless and incoherent Coalition should be ashamed.” Australians were set to “get more” of policies that had “left this country poorer, weaker, more divided and deeper in debt”.
One is reminded of Henry Kissinger’s rebuke of Chilean democracy at the election of the socialist leader Salvador Allende. As one of US foreign policy’s chief malefactors, he refused to accept the proposition that a country could “go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” Democracy was only worthy if directed by the appropriate interests.
Senator Price, evidently rattled by the result, returned to the Trumpian well, hoping to draw attention to claims of irregular voting in rural polling booths. The Australian Electoral Commission, she told the ABC, “has been alerted to this over and over and does little with it. I urge the ABC, as a taxpayer funded organisation, to go out and see what is occurring.”
There are other evident patterns that emerged in the vote. The old division between urban, metropolitan areas and rural and country communities has been coloured with sharpness. The Liberal Party, which must win seats in urban Australia, finds itself marginalised before its allies, the Nationals, who have retained their complement in regional and country areas. Party voices and strategists lament that not more was done after the 2022 defeat, with the Liberals refusing to address, among other things, the failure to appeal to female voters or the youth vote.
Disappointing in such stonking majorities is the assumption that minority parties and independents can be ignored, if not with contempt, then with condescending politeness. Labor may well be soaring with the greatest return of seats in its history, but attitudes of the electorate can harden quickly. The move away from the major parties, as a trend, continues, and there is no room for complacency in a new Albanese government.
Among the many lessons to be learnt by Australia’s defeated Liberal-National coalition parties from the election is that they should stop getting into bed with News Corporation.
Why would a political party outsource its policy platform and strategy to people with plenty of opinions, but no experience in actually running a government?
The result of the federal election suggests that unlike the coalition, many Australians are ignoring the opinions of News Corp Australia’s leading journalists such as Andrew Bolt and Sharri Markson.
Last Thursday, in her eponymous programme on Sky News Australia, Markson said:
For the first time in my journalistic career I’m going to also offer a pre-election editorial, endorsing one side of politics […] A Dutton prime ministership would give our great nation the fresh start we deserve.
Sharri Markson issues own Dutton endorsement as ACM says ‘Australia is Tanya Plibersek’https://t.co/UYh0xKeXPR
After a vote count that sees the Labor government returned with an increased majority, Bolt wrote a piece for the Herald Sunadmonishing voters:
No, the voters aren’t always right. This time they were wrong, and this gutless and incoherent Coalition should be ashamed. Australians just voted for three more years of a Labor government that’s left this country poorer, weaker, more divided and deeper in debt, and which won only by telling astonishing lies.
That’s staggering. If that’s what voters really like, then this country is going to get more of it, good and hard.
The Australian and most of News’ tabloid newspapers endorsed the coalition in their election eve editorials.
Repudiation of minor culture war
The election result was a repudiation of the minor culture war Peter Dutton reprised during the campaign when he advised voters to steer clear of the ABC and “other hate media”. It may have felt good alluding to “leftie-woke” tropes about the ABC, but it was a tactical error.
The message probably resonated only with rusted-on hardline coalition voters and supporters of right-wing minor parties.
But they were either voting for the coalition, or sending them their preferences, anyway. Instead, attacking the ABC sent a signal to the people the coalition desperately needed to keep onside — the moderates who already felt disappointed by the coalition’s drift to the right and who were considering voting Teal or for another independent.
Attacking just about the most trusted media outlet in the country simply gave those voters another reason to believe the coalition no longer represented their values.
Reporting from the campaign bus is often derided as shallow form of election coverage. Reporters tend to be captive to a party’s agenda and don’t get to look much beyond a leader’s message.
But there was real value in covering Dutton’s daily stunts and doorstops, often in the outer suburbs that his electoral strategy relied on winning over.
What was revealed by having journalists on the bus was the paucity of policy substance. Details about housing affordability and petrol pricing — which voters desperately wanted to hear — were little more than sound bites.
Steered clear of nuclear sites
This was obvious by Dutton’s second visit to a petrol station, and yet there were another 15 to come. The fact that the campaign bus steered clear of the sites for proposed nuclear plants was also telling.
— C h r i s @chrishehim.bsky.social (@ChrisHeHim1) May 4, 2025
The grind of daily coverage helped expose the lateness of policy releases, the paucity of detail and the lack of preparation for the campaign, let alone for government.
On ABC TV’s Insiders, the Nine Newspapers’ political editor, David Crowe, wondered whether the media has been too soft on Dutton, rather than too hard as some coalition supporters might assume.
He reckoned that if the media had asked more difficult questions months ago, Dutton might have been stress-tested and better prepared before the campaign began.
Instead, the coalition went into the election believing it would be enough to attack Labor without presenting a fully considered alternative vision. Similarly, it would suffice to appear on friendly media outlets such as News Corp, and avoid more searching questions from the Canberra press gallery or on the ABC.
Reporters and commentators across the media did a reasonable job of exposing this and holding the opposition to account. The scrutiny also exposed its increasingly desperate tactics late in the campaign, such as turning on Welcome to Country ceremonies.
If many Australians appear more interested in what their prospective political leaders have to say about housing policy or climate change than the endless culture wars being waged by the coalition, that message did not appear to have been heard by Peta Credlin.
The Sky News Australia presenter and former chief-of-staff to prime minister Tony Abbott said during Saturday night’s election coverage “I’d argue we didn’t do enough of a culture war”.
Two days after the Ecuadorian presidential election, leftist economist and politician Diego Borja traveled by car to the Colombian border with his wife. They hoped to vacation in the neighboring country for the Catholic holy week of Semana Santa. But there, Ecuadorian border agents confiscated his ID cards and detained him. They said Borja, whose party lost the country’s election on April 13…
Reform UK have won their first parliamentary by-election, taking Runcorn and Helsby from Labour by only six votes. This comes amidst reports of Labour voters feeling betrayed.
Ellie Reeves: “We know we need to do more…”
Naga Munchetty: “When you say you need to do more, one thing that Labour candidates have been hearing from Lab voters on the doorstep is [they] feel betrayed. When you say you need to do more, will there be further betrayals?” pic.twitter.com/mF37ELHAzI
Across the UK, local elections have taken place to contest 1,600 seats in 23 councils. Additionally, six mayoral positions were up for grabs.
Runcorn and Helsby: the bigger picture
As reported by the BBC, Reform also had their first mayor elected in Greater Lincolnshire. Dame Andrea Jenkyns – Former Tory MP, won 42% of the vote. The Tory candidate got a mere 26% of the vote.
Labour managed to hold onto three mayoral contests, but in North Tyneside it was a close contest. Labour held the majority by only 444 votes.
It was just as tight in Doncaster where Labour were victorious over Reform by only 698 votes.
Labour also won the West of England mayoral contest with a 5,949 majority, with Reform’s Arron Banks coming in second.
Overall, Labour has seen a huge drop in the vote share.
But is there any wonder, when they’re claiming to ‘know the public’ and then systematically destroying the public services which that very same public relies on?
“We know the public” that is where it all goes wrong – these arrogant MP’s create a divide between themselves as being “superior” beings and the people who vote for them.
Whilst not all of the results are in, so far, Labour have already lost 23 seats. Additionally, the Tories have lost 82 seats with Reform making huge gains. So far, they have gained 101 seats.
The Labour right have abandoned Labour values, they sold themselves out, attacked their core base for short term gain, we can’t out reform, reform a lurch to the right is not the answer. https://t.co/BK3UWqRazH
It’s shocking to think that going hard on scapegoating marginalised communities for social problems caused by capitalism would lose Labour its voter base. You’d think the Tories tanking after their racist, anti-migrant, and punch down on the poorest platform might have served as a cautionary tale. But clearly not. Starmer’s government has been a tribute act to the last fourteen years of Tory austerity.
Local elections results aren’t a surprise. It’s a pushback at Labour parties heinous policies targeting pensioners/disabled and not give one damn about kids in poverty. The excuses are coming thick and fast from Labour MP/supporters. Take a bow, you did this, gave rise to Reform. pic.twitter.com/rwnt16UERp
Cuts to the winter fuel payment and disability benefit cost Labour seats.
And in next year’s local elections, they will face another threat: Greens & Independents in places like Birmingham, Bradford, Hackney, Islington, Lambeth
Kirklees, Oldham,
Bolton, Newham & Tower Hamlets.
As previously reported by the Canary, voters are fleeing the party:
Top reasons 2024 Labour voters are abandoning the party:
1) Cuts to winter fuel payment
2) Not reduced cost of living
3) Not improved public services
4) Broken too many promises
5) Not stood up to the rich and powerful
But it should have been obvious that Labour’s vile racism wasn’t going to outperform Reform’s. It’s appalling that the party has even tried this to win votes. Anti-migrant voters weren’t going to go for the party in power, that they perceive as failing to “stop the boats”, when the Farage fan club says it’s going to go even further on fascist border force.
However, Reform’s rise is only one part of the picture. Labour’s overall nosedive is a product of a public betrayed again and again. Pensioners picking up the pieces after the winter fuel payment cut, and the WASPI women abandoned. Chronically ill and disabled people facing vicious cuts. Public sector workers – like those in the NHS – seeing state-sanctioned mass redundancies. There’s hardly a soul among Labour’s traditional voters that the Labour right hasn’t screwed over at this point – and it’s rightly biting the big business sell-out shell of a party in the ass.
An 11th-hour blitzkrieg for the Australian election 2025 tomorrow claims the Greens are enabling extremists who “will do anything in their power to establish a worldwide Islamic Caliphate”. Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon investigate the Dark Money election.
SPECIAL REPORT: By Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon
Minority Impact Coalition is a shadowy organisation which appeared on Australia’s political landscape in February of this year.
According to its constitution, its object is to promote “mutual respect and tolerance between groups of people in Australia by actively countering racism and bringing widespread understanding and tolerance amongst all sectors of the community”.
However, it is spreading ignorance, fear and Islamophobia to millions of mostly male Australians living in the outer suburbs and the regions.
Advance is ‘transparent … easy to deal with’ Speaking to an Australian Jewish Association webinar, Roslyn Mendelle, who is of Israeli-American origin and a director of Minority Impact Coalition (MIC), said the rightwing Advance introduced her to the concept of a third party.
“Advance has been nothing but absolutely honest, transparent, direct, and easy to deal with,” Mendelle said.
The electoral laws, which many say are “broken by design”, mean that it will be several months before MIC’s major donors are revealed. Donors making repeated donations below $15,900 are unlisted “dark money”. (This threshold will change to $5000 in 2026).
Who’s paying to undermine Australian democracy? Scam of the week Video: MWM
Coming in second place, are the returns from the Australian Taxation Office.
In NSW, it is targeting Greens candidates everywhere and is also focussed on the Labor-held seat of Gilmore, challenged by Liberal Party candidate Andrew Constance.
Independent journalist Alex McKinnon reported that MIC spokesperson and midwife, Sharon Stoliar, wrote in an open letter:
“When you chant ‘from the river to the sea Palestine will be free’ . . . while wearing NSW Health uniforms, you are representing NSW Health in a call for genocide of Jews. YOU. ARE. SUPPORTING. TERRORISM… I. WILL. REPORT. YOU.”
Its campaign material is authorised by Joshu Turier, a retired boxer and right-wing extremist.
According to Facebook library, MIC’s ads are targeted at men, particularly between ages 35 and 54 in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales.
In mid-April, the group paid for an ad so extreme that Instagram pulled it, leading to Turier reposting on his own Facebook page again this week. He complained that “It’s beyond troubling when our media platforms remove simple, factual material.”
They are ‘coming for us’ {Editor … oh no!} By Wednesday, the video was back on MIC’s Facebook account. The video says that the Greens are deliberately enabling pro-Palestine student protesters, who
“Don’t actually believe in the concept of a nation. They don’t believe in borders. They don’t believe there is a national identity. They believe in the Islamic brotherhood.”
“. . . It is just the beginning. When antisemitism starts, it’s not going to stop. They are going to come for Christians, for Atheists, for Agnostics.”
MIC is spending big on billboards, campaign trucks, and professional videos targeting at least five electorates. But despite their big spending, they cannot be found on the Australian Electoral Commission transparency register.
According to the transparency advocacy group WhoTargets.Me, MIC has spent more than $50,000 on Google and Meta ads in the last month alone. This doesn’t account for billboards, trucks, labour, or the 200,000 addresses letterboxed in late March.
More investigation shows their donations will all flow through the QJ Collective Ltd (QJC), which also “powers” the Minority Impact Coalition website. QJC is registered as a significant third party with the Australian Electoral Commission.
Clones with ghost offices
Advance director Sandra Bourke and Roslyn Mendelle. Image: QJ Collective, Instagram
MIC and Queensland Jewish Collective are virtually identical. They have always had the same directors — with Azin Naghibi replacing Roslyn’s partner, Hava Mendelle, as both QJC and MIC director in March 2025.
When QJC first came to MWM’snotice last year, it was running a relatively well-funded campaign — although limited to several seats — to “Put the Greens Last” in the Queensland state election.
In September 2024, the group’s website stated that it was “non-partisan and not left or right-wing”, and that its “goal was to support Queenslanders in making informed decisions when voting for our leaders”. MIC is the vehicle for this campaign.
Today, neither the QJC nor MIC makes any such claim. The Collective’s website lists its leading “campaign’” as “exposing the two-faced nature of the Labor party”.
The alarming detail While the two “grassroots” groups share several of their total five different associated addresses, mostly consisting of shared offices, it is not a perfect match.
For both groups, directors Mendelle and Turier list their address as 470 St Pauls Terrace, Fortitude Valley, Queensland. There was no name or company, just an address, however, shared offices run by Jubilee Place are available at that location.
QJC and MIC director Naghibi lists her address on both extracts as 740 St Pauls Terrace, a non-commercial building.
Either Mendelle and Turier are living out of a shared office, or Naghibi is unable to remember the address of the shared office she has little real connection to.
Last year, MWM contacted the owners of QJC’s listed office address at Insolvency Company Accountants in Tewantin, Queensland. At first, the firm said that no one had heard of them. Following that, the firm said that the Collective is a client of the firm, however denied any further connection.
A fresh search this year showed an additional contact address listed by the grassroots Collective — this time 1700 km away — at 1250 Malvern Road, Malvern, Victoria. Again there was no name or company, just an address.
Located at that address is boutique accounting firm Greenberg & Co, which specialises in serving clients who are “high net worth individuals”. MWM contacted senior partner Jay Greenberg who said his role was only one of ‘financial compliance’. He said that he did have personal views on the election but these were not relevant. He declined to discuss further details.
Attack of the clones Better Australia is a third party campaigner that, like QJ Collective in 2024, claims to be bipartisan.
Its communications are authorised by Sophie Calland, an active member of NSW Labor’s Alexandria Branch. Her husband Ofir Birenbaum — from the nearby Rosebery Branch — is also a member of the third party Better Australia.
Co-convenor of Labor Friends of Israel, Eric Roozendaal, and former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s secretary, Yaron Finkelstein, provided further campaign advice at a members meeting.
Patron of Labor Friends of Israel and former Senator Nova Peris teamed up with Better Australia for a campaign video last week.
“When Greens leader Adam Bandt refuses to stand in front of the Australian flag,” Peris said, “I ask, how can you possibly stand for our country?”
Better Australia’s stated goal is to campaign for a major government “regardless of which major party is in office”.
The group urges voters to “put the Greens and Teals last”, warning that a Labor minority government would be chaos. The “non-partisan” third party has made no statements on the Liberal-National Coalition, nor on a minority government with One Nation.
Some Better Australia workers — who wear bright yellow jackets labelled “community advisor” — are paid, and others volunteer.
“Isabella” told MWM that her enlistment as a volunteer for the third party campaigner is “not political” — rather it is all “about Israel”.
Previously Isabella had protested in support of the Israeli hostages and prisoners of war held in Gaza.
Better Australia’s “community advisor” “Isabella” at a Bondi Junction polling booth. Image: Wendy Bacon/MWM
Another campaigner told us he was paid by Better Australia. He spoke little English and declined to say more.
Two schoolgirls campaigning at Rose Bay told MWM that they were paid by their father who had chaired a Better Australia meeting the previous evening. They declined to disclose his name.
Calland addressing her Israeli volunteers. Image: Better Australia/Instagram/MWM
MWM later interviewed this woman who is an Israeli on a working holiday visa. She was supporting the campaign because it fits her political “vision”: the Greens and independent MPs like Allegra Spender must be removed from office because they are “against Israel” and for a “Free Palestine” which would mean the end of “my country”.
Allegra Spender denies these assertions.
Greens leader Adam Bandt remained determinedly optimistic, telling MWM that organisations such as Better Australia and MIC,
“are able to run their disinformation campaigns because Australia has no truth in political advertising laws, which enables them to lie about the priorities of the Greens and crossbench without consequence, as well as huge corporate money flowing into politics.
“In this term of Parliament, Labor failed to progress truth in political advertising laws, and instead did a dirty deal with the Liberals on electoral reforms to try and shut out third parties and independents.”
Labor’s candidate for Wentworth, Savannah Peake, told MWM on Tuesday that she had known Calland for 18 months.
Peake said that while she knew Calland had previously founded Better Council, she had only discovered Calland was authorising Better Australia when she arrived at the booth that morning.
Peake told MWM that she had contacted the NSW Labor Head Office to voice her objections and was confident the issue would be “dealt with swiftly”.
The third party campaign runs contrary to Peake’s preferences, which tells supporters in Wentworth to vote #1 Labor and #2 Allegra Spender. MWM repeatedly tried to follow up with Peake throughout the week to find out what action NSW Labor had taken but received no reply.
Liberal candidate for Wentworth, Ro Knox, complies with Better Australia’s call to put Greens last on her voting preferences.
Many people in NSW Labor know about their fellow members’ involvement in Better Australia. The Minister for Environment and MP for Sydney Tanya Plibersek, state member Ron Hoenig and NSW Labor have all previously refused to answer questions.
A Labor volunteer at a Wentworth pre-poll booth told MWM that he disapproved if a fellow party member was involved with the third party. Two older Labor volunteers were in disbelief, having incorrectly assumed that the anti-Teal posters were authorised by the Trumpet of Patriots party.
Another said he was aware of Calland’s activities but had decided “not to investigate” further.
Better Australia focuses on Richmond By the end of the week, Better Australia had left a trail of “Put the Greens last’ placards across Sydney’s Inner West, one of them outside the Cairo Takeaway cafe where the third party’s organiser Ofir Birenbaum was first exposed.
The third party have extended their polling campaign to the seat of Richmond, on the North coast of NSW where campaign sources are expecting more volunteers on election day.
As parties dash to the finishing line, they are calling for more donations to counter the astroturfers. According to website TheyTargetYou, the major parties alone have spent $11.5 million on Meta and Google ads over the last month.
Better Australia splurged $200,000 on ads targeting digital TV, social media, and the Australian Financial Review. Digital ads will continue in the final three days of the election, exploiting loopholes in the mandated political advertising blackout.
The Australian public has made little progress towards transparency in the current term of government.
Until reforms are made, Silicon Valley tech giants will continue to profit from dodgy ads and astroturfing groups sowing division with each Australian election cycle.
Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was the Professor of Journalism at UTS. She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.
Yaakov Aharon is a Jewish-Australian living in Wollongong. He enjoys long walks on Wollongong Beach, unimpeded by Port Kembla smoke fumes and AUKUS submarines. The article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission.
Teals and Greens are under political attack from a new pro-fossil fuel, pro-Israel astroturfing group, adding to the onslaught by far-right lobbyists Advance Australia for Australian federal election tomorrow — World Press Freedom Day. Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon investigate.
SPECIAL REPORT: By Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon
On February 12 this year, former prime minister Scott Morrison’s principal private secretary Yaron Finkelstein, and former Labor NSW Treasurer Eric Roozendaal, met in the plush 50 Bridge St offices in the heart of Sydney’s CBD.
The powerbrokers were there to discuss election strategies for the astroturfing campaign group Better Australia 2025 Inc.
Finkelstein now runs his own discreet advisory firm Society Advisory, while also a director of the Liberal Party’s primary think-tank Menzies Research Centre. Previously, he worked as head of global campaigns for the conservative lobby firm Crosby Textor (CT), before working for Morrison and as Special Counsel to former NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet.
Roozendaal earned a reputation as a top fundraiser during his term as general secretary of NSW Labor and a later stint for the Yuhu property developer. He is now a co-convenor of Labor Friends of Israel.
The two strategists have previously served together on the executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, where Finkelstein was vice-president (2010-2019) and Roozendaal was later the chair of public affairs (2019-2020).
Better for whom? Better Australia chairperson Sophie Calland, a software engineer and active member of the Alexandria Branch of the Labor party attended the meeting. She is a director of Better Australia and carries formal responsibility for electoral campaigns (and partner of Israel agitator Ofir Birenbaum).
Also present at the meeting was Better Australia 2025 member Alex Polson, a former staffer to retiring Senator Simon Birmingham and CEO of firm DBK Advisory. Other members present included another director, Charline Samuell, and her husband, psychiatrist Dr Doron Samuell.
Last week, Dr Samuell attracted negative publicity when Liberal campaigners in the electorate of Reid leaked Whatsapp messages where he insisted on referring to Greens as Nazis. “Nazis at Chiswick wharf,” Samuell wrote, alongside a photograph of two Greens volunteers.
The Better Australia group already have experience as astroturfers. Their “Put The Greens Last” campaign was previously directed by Calland and Polson under the entity Better Council Inc. in the NSW Local government elections in September 2024.
The Greens lost three councillors in Sydney’s East but maintained five seats on the Inner West Council.
But the group had developed bigger electoral plans. They also registered the name Better NSW in mid-2024. By the time the group met for the first time this year on January 8, their plans to play a role in the Federal election were already well advanced.
They voted to change the name Better NSW Inc. to Better Australia 2025 Inc.
Calland and Birenbaum Group member Ofir Birenbaum joined the January meeting to discuss “potential campaign fundraising materials” and a “pool of national volunteers”. Birenbaum is Calland’s husband and member of the Rosebery Branch of the Labor Party.
But by the time the group met with Finkelstein and Roozendaal in February, Birenbaum was missing. The day before the meeting, Birenbaum’s role in the #UndercoverJew stunt at Cairo Takeaway cafe was sprung.
This incident focused attention on Birenbaum’s track record as an agitator at Pro-Palestine events and as a “close friend” of the extreme-right Australian Jewish Association. The former Instagram influencer has since closed his social media accounts and disappeared from public view.
The minutes of the February meeting lodged with NSW Fair Trading mention a “discussion of potential campaign management candidates; an in-depth presentation and discussion of strategy; a review and amendments of draft campaign fundraising materials”. All of this suggests that consultants had been hired and work was well underway.
The group also voted to change Better Council’s business address and register a national association with ASIC so they could legally campaign at a national level.
On March 4, Calland registered Better Australia as a “significant third party” with the Australian Electoral Commission. This is required for organisations that expect their campaign to cost more than $250,000.
Three weeks later, Prime Minister Albanese called the election, and Better Australia’s federal campaign was off to the races.
Labor or Liberal, it doesn’t matter… According to its website, Better Australia’s stated goals are non-partisan: they want a majority government, “regardless of which major party is in office”.
“In Australia, past minority governments have seen stalled reforms, frequent leadership changes, and uncertainty that paralysed effective governance.”
No evidence has been provided by either Better Australia’s website or campaigning materials for these statements. In fact, in its short lifetime, the Gillard Labor minority government passed legislation at a record pace.
Instead, it is all about creating fear. A stream of campaigning videos, posts, flyers and placards carrying simple messages tapping into fear, insecurity, distrust and disappointment have appeared on social media and the streets of Sydney in recent weeks.
Wentworth independent Allegra Spender wasted no time posting her own video telling voters she was unfazed, and for her electorate to make their own voting choices rather than fall for a crude scare campaign.
Spender is accused of supporting anti-Israel terrorism by voting to reinstate funding for the United Nations aid agency UNRWA. Better Australia warns that billionaires and dark money fund the Teal campaign, alleging average voters will lose their money if Teals are reelected.
It doesn’t matter that most Teal MPs have policies in favour of increasing accountability in government or that no information is provided about who is backing Better Australia.
Anti-Green, too The anti-Greens angle of Better Australia’s campaign sends a broad message to all electorates to “Put the Greens Last”. It aims to starve the Greens of preferences. The campaign message is simple: the Greens are “antisemitic, support terrorism, and have abandoned their environmental roots”.
It does not matter that calls unite the peaceful Palestine protests for a ceasefire, or that the Greens have never stopped campaigning for the environment and against new fossil fuel projects.
Better Australia promotes itself as a grassroots organisation. In February, Sophie Calland told The Guardian that “Better Australia is led by a broad coalition of Australians who believe that political representation should be based on integrity and action, not extremist or elite activism”.
It has very few members and its operations are marked by secrecy, and voters will have to wait a full year before the AEC registry of political donations reveals Better Australia’s backers.
It fits into a patchwork of organisations aiming to influence voters towards a framework of right-wing values, including
“support for the Israel Defence Force, fossil fuel industries, nationalism and anti-immigration and anti-transgender issues.”
Advance Australia (not so fair)
Advance is the lead organisation in this space. It campaigns in its own right and also supports other organisations, including Minority Impact Coalition, Queensland Jewish Collective and J-United.
Advance claims to have raised $5 million to smash the Greens and a supporter base of more than 245,000. It has received donations up to $500,000 from the Victorian Liberal Party’s holding company, Cormack Foundation.
In Melbourne, ex-Labor member for Macnamara, Michael Danby, directs and authorises “Macnamara Voters Against Extremism”, which pushes voters to preference either Liberals or Labor first, and the Greens last. Danby has spoken alongside Birenbaum at Together With Israel rallies.
Together With Israel: Michael Danby (from left), activist Ofir Birenbaum, unionist Michael Easson OAM, and Rabbi Ben Elton. Image: Together With Israel Facebook group/MWM
The message of Better Australia — and Better Council before it — mostly aligns with Advance. These campaigns target women aged 35 to 49, who Advance claims are twice as likely to vote for the Greens as men of the same age.
The scare campaign targets female voters with its fear-mongering and Greens MPS, including Australia’s first Muslim Senator Mehreen Faruqi, and independent female MPS with its loathing.
Meanwhile, Advance is funded by mining billionaires and advocates against renewable energy.
Labor standing by in silence Better Australia is different from Advance, which is targeting Labor because it is an alliance of Zionist Labor and LIberal interests. Calland’s campaign may be effectively contributing to the election of a Dutton government. In the face of what would appear to be betrayal, the NSW Labor Party simply stands by.
The NSW Labor Rules Book (Section A.7c) states that a member may be suspended for “disloyal or unworthy conduct [or] action or conduct contrary to the principles and solidarity of the Party.”
Following MWM’s February exposé of Birenbaum, we sent questions to NSW Labor Head Office, and MPs Tanya Plibersek and Ron Hoenig, without reply. Hoenig is a member of the Parliamentary Friends of Israel and has attended Alexandria Branch meetings with Calland.
MWM asked Plibersek to comment on Birenbaum’s membership of her own Rosebery Branch, and on Birenbaum’s covert filming of Luc Velez, the Greens candidate in Plibersek’s seat of Sydney. Birenbaum shared the video and generated homophobic commentary, but we received no answers to any of our questions.
According to MWM sources, Calland’s involvement in Better Australia and Better Council before that is well known in Inner Sydney Labor circles. Last Tuesday night, she attended an Alexandria Branch meeting that discussed the Federal election. She also attended a meeting of Plibersek’s campaign.
No one raised or asked questions about Calland’s activities. MWM is not aware if NSW Labor has received complaints from any of its members alleging that Calland or Birenbaum has breached the party’s rules.
After all, when top Liberal and Labor strategists walk into a corporate boardroom, there is much to agree on.
It begins with a national campaign to keep the major parties in and independents and Greens out.
MWM has sent questions to Calland, Finkelstein, and Roozendaal, regarding funding and the alliance between Liberal and Labor powerbrokers but we have yet to receive any replies.
Wendy Baconis an investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at UTS. She has worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is not a member of any political party but is a Greens supporter and long-term supporter of peaceful BDS strategies.
Yaakov Aharon is a Jewish-Australian living in Wollongong. He enjoys long walks on Wollongong Beach, unimpeded by Port Kembla smoke fumes and AUKUS submarines. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission of the authors.
Progressive figures in Collective are aiming to “drive the formation of a new, mass-membership political party of the left” in Britain. But while this takes shape, it is endorsing local independents and other left-wingers in elections. It shared two lists of candidates for the local elections on 1 May, amid Labour’s plummeting popularity and the Conservative voter haemorrhage to Reform.
It used research from the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), which has been working with others in Collective to help unite the left as Keir Starmer buries the Labour Party once and for all.
Clear opportunities to vote against war and austerity in local elections
Most of the candidate endorsements are for TUSC candidates, from Hertfordshire to the East Midlands, Lancashire to Oxfordshire, Doncaster to Warwickshire, Gloucestershire to Devon, and beyond. But there is also a strong attempt at left-wing unity in an independent list including candidates from a range of different parties.
The diverse, unifying list of candidates includes people TUSC describes as having a clear “anti-austerity and anti-war” stance. These are “often former Labour Party members or, sometimes, councillors”, it explains, and they are “standing as Independents or for registered local community parties”. These include the Broxtowe Alliance in Nottinghamshire, Majority in the North East, Oxford Community Socialists, and the Social Justice Party in North Yorkshire.
Small national parties with candidates standing includeTransform, some communist groups, and the Workers’ Party of Britain (WPB). The latter in particular will rightly raise someeyebrows on the left, of course. But Britain has a massive cultural divide. And if you’re in a socially-conservative constituency where it’s either the WPB or Reform, the choice for opponents of war and austerity is clear.
For many on the left, the Green Party will be a clear preference too, where anti-war, anti-austerity candidates are standing.
A united left platform can’t come soon enough
It seemsfairto assume that the Labour Party’s right-wing leadership has no desire to change direction suddenly and pursue an anti-austerity, anti-war agenda. After all, its unprecedented mission from 2015 to 2019 was to destroy the hope surrounding Jeremy Corbyn at all costs. And in that context, many left-wingers are itching for the formation of the kind of left-wing mass movement Collective is seeking to foster.
The TUSC and Collective endorsements above are a helpful sticking plaster, in the absence of a united left platform. But it’s clear we need more.
There is hope. Because there seems to be a clear will to unite on the left around key policies (wages, climate, housing, wealth tax, public services, and peace). There also seems to be an awareness of the need for trade unioninvolvement and a focus on the economic battle between the super-rich and ordinary people (which the former are currently winning), in order to truly challenge Reform and become a meaningful anti-establishment force.
People across the UK have different social and cultural views, but largely agree on economic issues like public-service funding, wealth inequalities, welfare, and even climate action. So if the left can unite around this type of message in the coming months, focusing on the areas we can all agree on, we may just be able to defeat the Tory-Labour-Reform axis of corporate plunder and hate.
And I certainly did not expect Peter Dutton — amid an election campaign, one with citizens heading to the polls on World Press Freedom Day — to come out swinging at the ABC and Guardian Australia, telling his followers to ignore “the hate media”.
I’m not saying Labor is likely to be the great saviour of the free press either.
The ALP has been slow to act on a range of important press freedom issues, including continuing to charge journalism students upwards of $50,000 for the privilege of learning at university how to be a decent watchdog for society.
Labor has increased, slightly, funding for the ABC, and has tried to continue with the Coalition’s plans to force the big tech platforms to pay for news. But that is not enough.
The World Press Freedom Index has been telling us for some time that Australia’s press is in a perilous state. Last year, Australia dropped to 39th out of 190 countries because of what Reporters Without Borders said was a “hyperconcentration of the media combined with growing pressure from the authorities”.
We should know on election day if we’ve fallen even further.
What is happening in America is having a profound impact on journalism (and by extension journalism education) in Australia.
‘Friendly’ influencers
We’ve seen both parties subtly start to sideline the mainstream media by going to “friendly” influencers and podcasters, and avoid the harder questions that come from journalists whose job it is to read and understand the policies being presented.
What Australia really needs — on top of stable and guaranteed funding for independent and reliable public interest journalism, including the ABC and SBS — is a Media Freedom Act.
My colleague Professor Peter Greste has spent years working on the details of such an act, one that would give media in Australia the protection lacking from not having a Bill of Rights safeguarding media and free speech. So far, neither side of government has signed up to publicly support it.
Australia also needs an accompanying Journalism Australia organisation, where ethical and trained journalists committed to the job of watchdog journalism can distinguish themselves from individuals on YouTube and TikTok who may be pushing their own agendas and who aren’t held to the same journalistic code of ethics and standards.
I’m not going to argue that all parts of the Australian news media are working impartially in the best interests of ordinary people. But the good journalists who are need help.
The continuing underfunding of our national broadcasters needs to be resolved. University fees for journalism degrees need to be cut, in recognition of the value of the profession to the fabric of Australian society. We need regulations to force news organisations to disclose when they are using AI to do the job of journalists and broadcasters without human oversight.
And we need more funding for critical news literacy education, not just for school kids but also for adults.
Critical need for public interest journalism
There has never been a more critical need to support public interest journalism. We have all watched in horror as Donald Trump has denied wire services access for minor issues, such as failing to comply with an ungazetted decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
And mere days ago, 60 Minutes chief Bill Owens resigned citing encroachments on his journalistic independence due to pressure from the president.
The Committee to Protect Journalists is so concerned about what’s occurring in America that it has issued a travel advisory for journalists travelling to the US, citing risks under Trump administration policies.
Those of us who cover politically sensitive issues that the US administration may view as critical or hostile may be stopped and questioned by border agents. That can extend to cardigan-wearing academics attending conferences.
While we don’t have the latest Australian figures from the annual Reuters survey, a new Pew Research Centre study shows a growing gap between how much Americans say they value press freedom and how free they think the press actually is. Two-thirds of Americans believe press freedom is critical. But only a third believe the media is truly free to do its job.
If the press isn’t free in the US (where it is guaranteed in their constitution), how are we in Australia expected to be able to keep the powerful honest?
Every single day, journalists put their lives on the line for journalism. It’s not always as dramatic as those who are covering the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, but those in the media in Australia still front up and do the job across a range of news organisations in some fairly poor conditions.
If you care about democracy at all this election, then please consider wisely who you vote for, and perhaps ask their views on supporting press freedom — which is your right to know.
Alexandra Wake is an associate professor in journalism at RMIT University. She came to the academy after a long career as a journalist and broadcaster. She has worked in Australia, Ireland, the Middle East and across the Asia Pacific. Her research, teaching and practice sits at the nexus of journalism practice, journalism education, equality, diversity and mental health.
Canada entered the 2025 federal election with a Liberal minority government and it emerged from the 2025 federal election with a Liberal minority government. The outcome is shocking, given that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre had been riding the top of the polls since the end of 2023. Liberal leader Mark Carney now has a monumental task to lead Canadians through the turmoil of a second…
Ahead of local elections this week where Reform UK is set to win big, the Labour Party is panicking. But a new survey suggests the ruling party should be worrying a lot more about losing voters to the Green Party than to Reform.
Labour’s biggest problem is its abandonment of left-wing economics
Reform helped to take out the Conservatives in 2024, allowing Labour to win with the lowest single-party-government vote share since the Second World War and the second-smallest voter turnout since 1885. But people are now turning away from both the Tories and Labour in large numbers. The vacuous uselessness of Keir Starmer’s government has not only seen Reform lead polls on numerous occasions in recent months, but has even seen Labour place third. The right is dominant, despite being divided. Yet Labour has only pushed left-wingers further away with continued pandering to corporate donors and attacks on people’s wellbeing.
The new survey suggests that’s the wrong approach. Because researchers at Persuasion UK commissioned analysis on “Reform curious Labour voters” and found that it would be a lot riskier to lose left-leaning voters than right-leaning ones. However, it claimed Labour could keep both groups if it changed its strategy.
The vast majority of Reform voters in 2024 had not voted Labour in any recent elections. For those that had, Labour’s disastrous second-referendum position in 2019 clearly made a difference. Overall, though, Labour is much more at risk of losing 2024 voters to the Liberal Democrats and Greens than to Reform, except in Scotland.
It may well be true in some places that right-wing-curious Labour voters are more willing to vote with their feet than left-wing-curious voters. But hypothetically, Persuasion UK points out, “if Labour lost every ‘Reform curious Labour voter’, they would lose 123 seats” while “if Labour lost every ‘Green curious Labour voter’, they would lose 250 seats”.
Labour’s leadership could keep both sets of voters. But that would mean growing a soul, a brain, and a backbone.
Persuasion UK insists that, while Reform-curious Labour voters may be socially conservative – especially on the issue of immigration, “they generally have left-leaning populist views on economics” and are less anti-climate than actual Reform voters. This means that Labour could theoretically “unite its coalition with relatively moderate stance[s] on cultural issues while leaning into progressive positions on economics”. Because of a massive cultural divide between Green-curious and Reform-curious Labour voters, then, the unifying factor is economics.
Reform-curious Labour voters have pretty unfavourable views of big business interests, and want Labour to take action on unscrupulous profiteering as a matter of urgency. They also perceive (correctly) that Labour’s current leadership views working-class and poor people with disdain. Competent policies on immigration matter to them, but so do the winter fuel allowance, cost of living, fair taxation, public services, and wealth inequality. And they view both Starmer and Trump-Musk billionaires unfavourably.
Understanding Reform-curious Labour voters better, Persuasion UK says, shows that Labour could keep both them and Green-curious voters happy if it can “maintain moderate – even if boring – positions on divisive cultural topics like asylum and migration” while shifting “the site of conflict in politics away from cultural issues” and on to “more populist conflict on economic left-right issues”. It should “actively seek and welcome fights on these issues”, the researchers say. A couple of examples they stress are “tax and spend – eg consider proposing a tax on the richest to fund the NHS or schools” and “pick fights with CEOs of unpopular businesses”.
A blueprint for a mass-appeal left-wing movement
It currentlyseemsfair to assume that Labour’s right-wing leadership has no desire to pick a fight with big-business interests. After all, its unprecedented mission from 2015 to 2019 was to destroy the hope surrounding Jeremy Corbyn at all costs. And in that context, the same coalition-building challenge falls on the independent British left, which may soon emerge. This may look like a new party, or may be a coalition of independents, Greens, and other smaller parties coordinating depending on who has the best chance to win in specific constituencies.
There certainly seems to be the will to unite on the left around key policies (wages, climate, housing, wealth tax, public services, and peace) in order to enter the space Labour has abandoned. There also seems to be an awareness on the need to centre the class war, which billionaires are currently winning, in order to challenge Reform and become a true anti-establishment force. And trade unions, of course, must finally dump Labour as well.
But there’s one key lesson for the left from this new survey. While there are big cultural (and regional) differences in the UK, people largely agree on economic issues like public-service funding, wealth inequalities, welfare, and even climate action. So for a movement for national change, we need to understand our differences, meet people where they are, and focus on the areas we can all agree on. That is the only way to create a movement that can defeat the Tory-Labour-Reform axis of corporate plunder and hate.
On April 13, a runoff presidential election between the incumbent Daniel Noboa and the progressive candidate Luisa Gonzalez was held in Ecuador. Leading up to the election, a very tight race was expected and conditions pointed to a likely victory by Gonzalez. However, on election day, Noboa was declared the winner with a lead of more than 11%. Clearing the FOG speaks with Pedro Labayen Herrera, who is a researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research where he focuses on Ecuador. Labayen was present for the elections. He reports on the scandals just before the election, violations of the Constitution by Noboa and what happened on election day. He also describes the deterioration of conditions within Ecuador and the challenges ahead.
Ahead of local elections, a new group has been organising to ‘stop Reform’ from sweeping electoral victories across the UK – and have introduced a new website to do just that.
Stop Reform UK: a new site to keep the far-right out
Multiple analysts and pollsters have beenpredicting the prodigious rise of Reform UK at the local elections on 1 May. The far right party is looking set to win hundreds of seats. In part, the surge corresponds to the continuing collapsing votes for the Conservatives. The mainstream party is now angling for a coalition with Reform – a party itself packed with former Tory councillors and candidates – and largely expected to scoop up its seats in the upcoming elections.
However, Labour’s nosedive in the polls after successive controversial policy decisions is also playing a role. Its lurch to the right in a bid to entice the Conservative voter base and Reform supporters is likely about to be shown for the electoral blunder it is as well.
Polling expert and political scientist professor John Curtice told the Independent on Sunday that less than half of voters it had polled are planning to vote for either of the two major parties.
Separately, pollster and House of Lords peer Robert Hayward has indicated that Reform is set to absorb many of these votes – potentially nabbing up to 450 seats across the UK.
A ‘real threat to the country’s political stability’
So now, a new site brings together a pool of resources to counter Reform ahead of the local elections.
The site aims to stop Reform UK in its tracks because it warns that:
The growing resonance of its far-right rhetoric, means that Reform UK could become a more significant player in future elections. The normalization of its anti-immigration platform, especially as mainstream parties like Labour shift to the right on these issues, poses a real threat to the country’s political stability.
It has spelled out a litany of reasons why it’s vital that the public put a stop to the rise of the far-right party. There are pages on everything from Nigel Farage’s role in the 2024 race riots, the party’s corporate shilling-agenda and interests, and its dangerous policy platform that will undermine human rights, and embolden bigots attacking marginalised communities.
Crucially, the website serves as a record for the party’s persistent propaganda and misinformation-mongering. It has put together pages to debunk Reform’s lies. These cover topics like immigration, the climate crisis, and the NHS. Needless to say, these are issues that Reform has weaponised in a campaign of disinformation to win voters.
Reform will ‘never provide real answers’ to the problems people face in the UK
A spokesperson for the new site explained the reason the group has set up the new tool:
Reform UK is gaining frightening levels of support due to the effectiveness of Farage’s campaigning abilities, coupled with the Labour Party’s unpopular policies and inability to quickly tackle cost of living concerns. Polling for the 2025 local elections shows Reform are likely to win hundreds of council seats, and are competitive in two mayoral elections, as well as parliamentary by-elections in Runcorn and Helsby. If successful, this will feed the narrative that Reform is an up- and-coming national party and provide momentum for future electoral wins.
Reform UK is looking likely to get over 100 seats at the next general election and form a far-right coalition government with the Tories, which will be very damaging to the country. This would be a similar government to Trump’s in the US and we can all see how dangerous and harmful that is.
In response, a group of us set up stopreformuk.net because we want to contribute to preventing Farage and other Reform UK candidates from gaining traction on their destructive far-right rhetoric, to ultimately stop them from getting into government and implementing policies that will never help ordinary people. The website brings together all the information out there about why we need to stop Reform UK, historical and current information about the Reform UK party, why they have been so electorally successful, information debunking Reform’s lies and slogans, and how to take action to stop Reform UK.
They explained how the website gives voters multiple ways to fight back against the far-right:
The website’s Take Action page lists a variety of ways that people can get active. For anyone who has a local, mayoral or by-election coming up on 1st May, an important first action is to make a tactical vote for the best placed candidate to beat the Reform candidate. Go to www.stopreformuk.vote and insert your postcode to find out who to make a tactical vote for. The Take Action page also gives information about organizations that are working at the local level to stop Reform UK, such as HOPE not hate, Stand Up to Racism, and Greens Organise. If people prefer taking action on social media, the Take Action page gives various suggestions.
However, they also noted that all this should only be the start:
Finally, we suggest taking action to lobby the Labour Party over tightening up the rules on foreign donations, introducing critical thinking to be taught in schools, and replacing our first-past-the-post voting system with proportional representation, which would increase the scope for more left-wing representation and break the Labour strangle hold on centre-left politics.
It is completely understandable that so many people are disgusted with Labour and the Tories, and are looking for something better. Reform UK will never provide real answers to the UK’s problems, but stopping them without addressing wider issues is far from enough. At the least, we also need to apply pressure on Labour to do better through mounting campaigns, protest movements and tactical voting initiatives.
Outlets like the Canary warned that Labour under Keir Starmer would be a Conservative government in all but name. This has played out as expected, with the party pushing policies that target old people, sick and disabled people, and people from other countries. And now, Labour is even aping Tory election messaging:
A vote for anyone but Labour risks more chaos under Farage and the Tories.
The only way working people can secure change in your community is by voting Labour on Thursday 1 May. pic.twitter.com/CjyBtqwR5A
The dark irony of what Cameron said was that the proceeding nine years of Tory rule were pure chaos from start to finish. We went through five Tory prime ministers in that time and we suffered more scandals than you could shake a Black Rod at. As a result of this, the ‘chaos with Ed Miliband’ line became a meme.
It’s unclear why Labour would want to remind everyone of this farcical moment in British politics; especially as the chaos and human suffering has continued without pause since Starmer took over from the Tories.
: @amnesty has produced a report looking into our benefit system in the wake of Labour's benefit cuts and the findings are harrowing pic.twitter.com/YKxKz7VaVi
As you’d expect, the replies to the campaign have not been positive:
Some have noted that Labour is losing significant blocs of voters because it’s directly attacking them:
Canary journalist Ed Sykes argued that Labour itself is to blame for the rise of Reform, and that it can’t win over the public by pointing at its own mess and demanding that voters clean it up:
A vote for Labour in 2024 helped to boost the Tory-Reform bloc in record time. Starmer's big achievement has been to throw as many people under the bus as possible: disabled, elderly & young people; victims of genocide; people who oppose genocide & climate destruction; & workers.
Another thing which stands out is the reference to ‘working people’. The reason it stands out is Labour is attempting to appeal to ‘working people’ at the same time that it’s going out of its way to immiserate sick and disabled people with limited or no capacity to work:
Why do you have to shoehorn “working people” into everything. Do the rest not f us not matter. You make me sick.
— The Rt Hon Lady Matildamog (@Jc62Matildamog) April 26, 2025
Jen Clark, Economic and Social Rights Lead at Amnesty International UK, summed up the situation saying:
“Lives are being ruined by a system that is cruel – it erodes dignity by design. We are in a state of severe human rights violations. The social security system is impenetrable, inadequate, and for some completely inaccessible. There can be no tinkering of the system – it has gone too far, and it is too late. There must be full reform. It is broken from start to finish and intentionally sets people up to fail.”
These harrowing accounts coincide with personal stories from across the country, showing how the system is failing those who need it most.
John Stainton, 63, dedicated much of his life serving his country as a civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, even earning an OBE for his work in Afghanistan. But after being diagnosed with aggressive Multiple Sclerosis (MS), his life took a terrifying turn.
Forced into early retirement in 2022, he found navigating the DWP’s Personal Independence Payments (PIP) claim process “alien” and “disjointed.” Despite the impact MS had on his life, assessors initially gave him a low mobility score and refused him points for the daily reality of his condition.
“It took me about 15 months in total from when I first rang up to when the appeal came out,” John said:
“The DWP wrote to me chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, and said they were delighted to tell me they’d decided I deserve PIP. I thought, you haven’t decided, you’ve been told by a judge.”
It’s additionally grim that Labour’s plan to appeal to able-bodied people by victimising those who are disabled isn’t even working, as polling for the upcoming local elections shows:
On the national level, some polls suggest Labour is on track for the same sort of wipeout that the Liberal Democrats (rightfully) suffered after they entered into a coalition government with the Conservatives:
Does this outcome look absurd? Yes! But that is what happens when a party goes from leading Reform by a 20pt margin (in GE2024) to **trailing them** by 8pts.
While Labour is still promising ‘change’, an increasing number of people are convinced that Labour is changing things for the worse. Accordingly, many are highlighting that the party is mirroring the death spiral politics of the American Democrats:
And here we are, with Labour having finally morphed into the US Democrats, with the same message: 'Vote for us because the other parties are even worse!'
The big problem for Labour isn’t just that ‘lesser of two evils’ politics always leads to ruin; it’s that there’s no longer a convincing argument that Labour is a lesser evil.
I have drafted a Preamble I believe our Founding Fathers should have adopted as the opening statement of the Australian Constitution in 1901. We should vote on it (or a better version) at a Referendum to be held on the same day as Federal Election 2028 so that future Parliaments are required to uphold the …
Montreal, Canada — The United States has loomed large over Canada’s upcoming election, with concerns over President Donald Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats dominating much of the campaign.
But for many Canadians, another topic has also been front-of-mind in the lead-up to the vote on April 28: Israel’s war on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“This is a priority issue for many Canadians,” said Dania Majid, a Palestinian community advocate and lawyer based in Toronto, in an interview with Truthout. “We are not detached from what is happening in Palestine.”
Last month, a survey commissioned by the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) found that 55 percent of Canadian voters backed a ban on weapons exports to Israel as the war in Gaza dragged on.