UK recognition of Palestinian statehood carries risks – even with US approval
When Emmanuel Macron, the French president, announced that France would take this step, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, instantly condemned a 'reckless decision' that 'serves Hamas propaganda' and 'sets back peace'.
Sir Keir Starmer will want to avoid that kind of vitriol from his closest ally if he goes ahead.
Later this week, he will summon the Cabinet for an emergency meeting to endorse what Downing Street describes as a British plan for 'sustainable peace' in the Middle East. This will include recognising Palestine as a state, although the timing remains unclear.
Donald Trump's conciliatory words in Scotland on Monday will have given Sir Keir a measure of reassurance. Asked whether recognition could be a step towards peace, Mr Trump replied: 'I'm not going to take a position – I don't mind him [Sir Keir] taking a position.'
Not minding whether Britain proceeds with recognition is a long way from denouncing a reckless move that would only serve Hamas. Mr Rubio would need to check with the White House before censuring Britain as fervently as he criticised France.
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The Independent
5 minutes ago
- The Independent
Inside the depraved world of migrant hunters using disturbing tactics to track down asylum hotels
'You're a traitor.' Those were the words heckled last week to a driver pulling into RAF Wethersfield, a former Ministry of Defence airbase in Essex currently being used to house asylum seekers. Livestreamed from an iPhone to tens of thousands of people online, the clip shows a group of so-called migrant hunters hurling abuse at the driver, presumed to be a worker at the airbase, and threatening to publish his car's number plate. This – verbally abusing staff and police officers on camera, before sharing the incident with fellow 'patriots' – appears to be the modus operandi of the self–proclaimed migrant hunters, who are on the rise amid growing unrest over the government's handling of the migration crisis. Often posing as journalists, these far-right activists will turn up at accommodation centres and hotels with the intention of harassing those who work and live there. They then post the footage online with the aim of – according to experts – laying the groundwork for anti-migrant protests, which often descend into violence. They also use Facebook and X to spread information about the locations of hotels which have been earmarked by the government to house asylum seekers. A post shared time after time in this corner of the internet is an interactive map, purporting to show the location of more than 200 hotels across the UK where migrants live. Their methods for identifying accommodation for asylum seekers appear to be a myriad of tip-offs from disgruntled employees at the hotels in question, information from locals, as well as meticulous monitoring of to check which 3* hotels have been blocked out for mass bookings. Some of the most prominent migrant hunters have nearly 200,000 followers on X and tweet around 20 times a day, often peddling false and dangerous rumours about those inside the hotels. Among the more disturbing posts are unfounded claims of an upcoming terror attack, littered among AI generated images of far-right activist Tommy Robinson. Recent research from the anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate found the number of migrant hunters had doubled since 2021 and that they had visited hotels housing asylum seekers on more than 250 occasions. But activity on social media accounts connected to the movement has ramped up particularly in recent weeks, following anti-migrant protests in Epping, Essex which triggered similar demonstrations across the country. The unrest began in July after an asylum seeker from Ethiopia, believed to be staying at The Bell Hotel, was charged with sexual assault, including that of a 14-year-old girl. Since then, protests have taken place in cities such as Manchester, London, Bournemouth and Edinburgh, with more planned for Friday evening as part of what organisers have called Abolish Asylum Day – a mass protest at eight different locations across the country where asylum seekers are being housed. Far-right groups have been encouraging such protests for years, yet concerns are growing over the invasive tactics used by the migrant hunters, who appear to spend their time travelling to various hotels, doxxing their opposition and harassing those temporarily given refuge there. They then use messaging apps such as Telegram, Signal and Whatsapp to spread the word Speaking to The Independent, Joe Mullhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate, said these individuals first became prominent online during the spring of 2021. 'Originally they were on the beaches, filming the arrival of boats and doing daily tallies, before moving from areas like Dover to the accommodation centres. They were the content creating machine that was sitting under the far-right.' he said. 'They would release daily vlogs and livestreams which would percolate through the far-right system and get picked up by people like Tommy Robinson. They have been quite important in pushing cross-Channel migration up the agenda of the far-right.' Having analysed the locations of protests, the anti-racism charity spotted a pattern – hotels targeted during the summer of violence in 2024 had often been visited multiple times by migrant hunters. Riots were sparked across the UK last July after three girls were killed in a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, with a wave of misinformation on social media falsely claiming the killer was a Muslim asylum seeker. Mr Mullhall added: 'Where we saw those atrocious scenes and arson outside the Holiday Inn in Rotherham, migrant hunters had visited that hotel 12 times between 2021 and 2024. It's interesting because that hotel is not in the city centre – people knew where to go, migrant hunters had laid the groundwork.' Momentum has picked up again and these activists are once again livestreaming themselves at protests, quickly racking up thousands of comments and clicks online. In Epping, one protest organiser told The Independent they had been made aware that the Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf in London's financial district was being repurposed by the Home Office after being contacted by an employee who had been made redundant. Two protests broke out there after the information spread online. Meanwhile, one former soldier, who claims to have raised more than £30,000 in donations to help fund an anti-migrant movement called the Great British National Protest, claims to be behind 20 demonstrations around the UK. Richard Donaldson, 33, told The Times the money raised would be used to fund 'covert investigations inside hotels', and claimed to have recruited members of staff who were supposedly willing to wear hidden body cameras and share intelligence. 'There has been a proliferation of online social media accounts that are promoting anti-migrant sentiments,' Sabby Dhalu, co-convenor of Stand Up To Racism said. 'Firstly since Elon Musk took over X and secondly since Donald Trump became President, there has been a shift in the algorithm, a bias towards far-right material. Such content is getting a wider reach.' She added: 'We've noticed in our demonstrations that people say they are journalists and pick up their phones, but what they are really doing is doxxing people and identifying people they can target.' On Monday, the Home Office announced it was providing another £100 million to tackle people smuggling and Sir Keir Starmer has struck a deal to return Channel migrants to France in exchange for asylum seekers with ties to the UK. While the move has been criticised by refugee charities, the government are hoping it will prevent an outbreak of similar disorder to that of last summer. Enver Solomon, CEO of Refugee Council, said: 'Protests against people seeking asylum is causing alarm amongst adults and children who have fled war in countries such as Sudan and Afghanistan. 'Last summer, we witnessed refugees we support fear for their lives as an angry mob tried to set fire to the hotel where they were living. Rhetoric that dehumanises people who've come to Britain seeking sanctuary creates a climate where violence can flourish. 'Our frontline staff work in many of the communities affected and see that most people are fair-minded and compassionate. While they may have valid questions about why hotels are used, these concerns are being hijacked by a violent minority. 'Asylum hotels have become flashpoints – a symbol of a broken system that traps people in limbo, unable to work or rebuild their lives at huge public cost.'
The Guardian
17 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Hiroshima anniversary: mayor says Ukraine and Middle East crises show world ignoring nuclear ‘tragedies'
The mayor of Hiroshima has led calls for the world's most powerful countries to abandon nuclear deterrence, at a ceremony to mark 80 years since the city was destroyed by an American atomic bomb. As residents, survivors and representatives from 120 countries gathered at the city's peace memorial park on Wednesday morning, Kazumi Matsui warned that the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East had contributed to a growing acceptance of nuclear weapons. 'These developments flagrantly disregard the lessons the international community should have learned from the tragedies of history,' he said in his peace declaration, against the backdrop of the A-bomb dome – one of the few buildings that survived the attack eight decades ago. 'They threaten to topple the peace-building frameworks so many have worked so hard to construct,' he added, before urging younger people to recognise that acceptance of the nuclear option could cause 'utterly inhumane' consequences for their future. Despite the global turmoil, he said, 'we, the people, must never give up. Instead, we must work even harder to build civil society consensus that nuclear weapons must be abolished for a genuinely peaceful world.' As applause rang out, white doves were released into the sky, while an eternal 'flame of peace' burned in front of a cenotaph dedicated to victims of the world's first nuclear attack. The ceremony is seen as the last opportunity for significant numbers of ageing hibakusha – survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – to pass on first-hand warnings of the horror of nuclear warfare. Just under 100,000 survivors are still alive, according to recent data from the health ministry, with an average age of just over 86. On Wednesday, the names and other personal details of more than 4,940 registered survivors who have died in the past year were added to a registry kept inside the cenotaph, bringing the number of deaths attributed to the Hiroshima bombing to almost 350,000. In his peace declaration, Matsui recalled how one woman had begged for water as fires raged through the city after the Enola Gay, a US B-29 bomber, dropped a 15-kiloton uranium bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 people by the end of the year. 'Decades later, a woman who heard that plea still regretted not giving the young woman water,' he said. ' She told herself that fighting for the elimination of nuclear weapons was the best she could do for those who died.' Three days after the devastation in Hiroshima, the US dropped a plutonium bomb on the city of Nagasaki, killing 74,000 people. While the debate continues over whether the attacks were morally and militarily justified, many Americans continue to believe they forced Japan's surrender on 15 August. Nihon Hidankyo, a nationwide network of A-bomb survivors that last year won the Nobel peace prize, said humanity was in a race against time to challenge the US and Russia – which together possess 90% of the world's 12,000-plus nuclear warheads – and other nuclear states. 'We don't have much time left, while we face a greater nuclear threat than ever,' it said in a statement. 'Our biggest challenge now is to change nuclear weapons states … even just a little.' At 8.15am, the exact time the bomb detonated, Hiroshima observed a moment of silence. Many attendees lowered their heads and closed their eyes, some clasping their hands together in prayer. The advanced age of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs has become a defining theme of the anniversary. Yoshie Yokoyama, 96, a wheelchair user who visited the park early in the morning with her grandson, told reporters her parents and grandparents had died as a result of the Hiroshima attack. 'My grandfather died soon after the bombing, while my father and mother both died after developing cancer,' she said. 'My parents-in-law also died, so my husband couldn't see them again when he came back from battlefields after the war. People are still suffering.' Russia apparently did not send an official to Wednesday's ceremony, but its ally, Belarus, attended for the first time in four years. Taiwanese and Palestinian representatives were there for the first time, Japanese media reports said. Successive Japanese governments have faced criticism for refusing to ratify a 2021 treaty to ban the possession and use of nuclear weapons. Dozens of countries have signed the treaty, but they do not include any of the recognised nuclear powers or countries, including Japan, that are dependent on the US nuclear umbrella. After laying a wreath in front of the cenotaph, the prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, did not mention the treaty but said it was Japan's 'mission' as the only country to have been attacked by nuclear weapons to lead global efforts towards disarmament. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in a statement that 'the very weapons that brought such devastation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are once again being treated as tools of coercion'. Guterres added, however, that Nihon Hidankyo's Nobel prize was cause for hope, adding that 'countries must draw strength from the resilience of Hiroshima and from the wisdom of the hibakusha'.
The Independent
19 minutes ago
- The Independent
YouTube ads should be monitored like traditional media, say Lib Dems
YouTube adverts should be vetted in the same way as traditional media to protect consumers against scams and harmful content, according to the Lib Dems. The party said adverts on the video streaming service should be screened for 'harmful and misleading content' and brought under the regulation of media watchdog Ofcom. Culture spokesman Max Wilkinson MP told the BBC the social media platform was operating under a 'lighter touch' advertising regime. 'Regulations need to catch up with the reality of how people are watching content and unscrupulous advertisers must not be allowed to use loopholes to exploit people,' he said. 'We cannot allow a two-tier system where traditional broadcasters face robust scrutiny, while a digital giant like YouTube is allowed to mark its own homework.' Industry bodies Radio Central and Clearcast currently pre-approve most ads before they go to air. YouTube advertising is not subject to the same type of pre-clearance checks. YouTube is now the second most-watched media service in the UK, behind the BBC and ahead of ITV, according to an annual Ofcom report. Overall, people spent an average of four hours and 30 minutes a day watching TV and video content at home in 2024, with broadcast TV still making up 56% of in-home viewing, the regulator said. 'It's time for the regulator to treat YouTube adverts much more like TV and radio adverts, to protect UK consumers from misleading or harmful content. The government needs to act now,' Mr Wilkinson said. A spokesman for the Advertising Standards Authority, which monitors adverts on TV, radio and online, todl the BBC the cases highlighted by the Lib Dems came under Ofcom's reach under the Online Safety Act, but it would support their work and 'continue to play a disruptor role by reporting them and working with platforms to have them removed'. According to Ofcom, people spent 39 minutes a day on YouTube in 2024, with 16 minutes of this on the household's TV set. Younger adults aged 16 to 34 are driving the trend, watching 18 minutes of YouTube a day on TV, while one in five children aged four to 15 (20%) head straight to the app as soon as they turn the set on. Even those aged over 55 have almost doubled the time they spend watching YouTube on their TVs compared with the previous year – up from six minutes a day in January 2023 to 11 minutes in December. YouTube's soaring popularity comes as the platform's content has evolved, with half of its top-trending videos now more closely resembling traditional TV, including long-form interviews and game shows, Ofcom said. Ofcom has been approached for comment.
