In a special Zeteo UK live stream, Editor-in-Chief Mehdi Hasan and Political Editor Shehab Khan were joined by Ava Santina, Political Editor at ‘Politics Joe’, and John McTernan, former Political Secretary to Tony Blair to discuss what happens next.

The discussion looked at various topics, including the major questions about Burnham’s leadership, his political ideology, and his positions on Israel and Gaza.

“After yesterday’s by-election, which Andy Burnham won big in Makerfield, are we on the verge of, am I counting right? A seventh British prime minister in the space of a decade?” Mehdi asks.

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“I spoke to a number of Labor MPs this morning. Not a single one of them thinks that Andy Burnham won’t be the Prime Minister,” Shehab says, adding: “It is a question of how long it takes for other British politicians to decide or understand that that’s where reality is pointing.”

The panel explores what Burnham’s rise could mean for Labour’s future direction, whether his success offers a blueprint for defeating Reform UK, and the basic democratic questions surrounding a potential leadership transition without a general election.

McTernan argues that Burnham represents a significant shift in Labour’s political thinking, particularly in how the party reflects on Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 campaign.

Speaking about Burnham, he says: “This is the first senior Labour politician, leadership contender, who seriously, seriously addressed what was the lesson of 2017. That Corbyn Manifesto was a powerful manifesto. It wasn’t all right, but it asked all the right questions.”

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Asked by Mehdi what Burnham’s rise means for the Greens, Santina says: “There’s still going to be some rather marked differences between the two parties. The Green Party is an eco-socialist party. For all of Andy Burnham’s calls for nationalisation and even if he brings in a land value tax, he’s not Che Guevara!”

Watch the full discussion as the battle for Labour’s future and potentially for Downing Street itself enters a decisive new phase.

And do stay tuned to Zeteo UK for continuing coverage of what is fast becoming one of the most consequential periods in modern British political history.

This video is being shared without a paywall. If you believe in the work we do and want to see more of it, do consider becoming a paid subscriber and helping Zeteo UK grow and expand.

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Andy Burnham didn’t just win the Makerfield by-election last night. He won big, with an overwhelming majority, and more votes than Reform UK and Restore combined!

So what happens now? Will Burnham launch a leadership challenge immediately? Or wait a while? Can Prime Minister Keir Starmer cling on to Downing Street in the face of such a challenge? Is the United Kingdom ready for yet another leadership crisis? And what does the Labour Party even stand for anymore? Hugely consequential elections like the one in Makerfield yesterday are the kind of moments Zeteo UK was created for, and we are giving you the chance to be part of our coverage.

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Tune in to Zeteo UK on YouTube or Substack today, Friday, at 3 pm in the UK, to watch as our political editor Shehab Khan and Mehdi go live to discuss the results of the UK’s most consequential by-election in recent memory. They will be joined by special guests Ava Santina, Political Editor at Politics Joe, and John McTernan, former Political Secretary to Tony Blair and advisor to several cabinet ministers under Gordon Brown.

Viewers will also get to take part in the conversation by dropping their own questions in the chat for Shehab, Mehdi, and their guests to take on!

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This live will be available to all subscribers, both free and paid. To be part of all of Zeteo UK’s future coverage, do please consider upgrading your subscription to paid if you are currently on the free plan. Your financial support will go a long way in helping us cover the biggest moments in UK politics that affect you.

See you at 3pm!

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Recounting everything from her violent childhood to her mother’s imprisonment to her rise in politics, Naz Shah’s story is one of resilience, bravery …

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Thank you for being a Zeteo UK subscriber! Every now and then, we might share articles first published by Zeteo that might also interest Zeteo UK subscribers, like the piece below from Zeteo’s media columnist, Justin Baragona, on CBS News’s Bari Weiss hiring Sky News’s Trevor Phillips as a senior global affairs correspondent. Justin dives into Phillips’s long history of anti-Muslim remarks here in the UK and has exclusive details on how staffers are reacting to this hugely controversial hire.

And if you’re not already, please do become a paid subscriber today so you can avoid our paywalls and help fund independent journalism in the UK! - Mehdi

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“No, don’t try that one on me!” Sky News presenter Trevor Phillips dismissively sneered at UK Green Party leader Zack Polanski last month during an extremely contentious interview.

That contemptuous response came after Polanski, the only Jewish party leader in the UK, as well as the only leader who is outspoken against the genocide in Gaza, wondered why his “Jewish identity [was] being erased from this conversation” as Phillips continuously twisted the left-wing politician’s previous remarks about the threat of antisemitism in the UK.

Polanski noted that many Jews – such as himself – do not feel that pro-Palestinian rallies should be perceived as unsafe hate marches, while acknowledging that attacks on Jewish sites and people in Britain are on the rise. But Phillips chose to ignore and even belittle Polanski’s personal experiences and feelings on the matter. Even when the progressive leader brought up his own recent brushes with antisemitism.

Five weeks after Phillips “monstered” Polanski on air, as Zeteo’s own Owen Jones observed in a recent column in The Guardian, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss announced that the longtime British broadcaster and political figure had been hired as her network’s senior global affairs correspondent.

“Trevor Phillips cuts through the noise. His decades-long career is a masterclass in seeing beyond groupthink and pursuing the truth,” Weiss said in a statement about his hiring, noting that his reporting will appear on all of CBS News’s programming. “Trevor’s deep knowledge of geopolitics and history will be an incredible asset at CBS News, where he’ll quickly become an indispensable voice for audiences across all platforms.”

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Of course, with Weiss – a former New York Times opinion columnist and founder of the anti-woke blog The Free Press – seeing herself as a heterodox thought leader, it doesn’t take much digging to see exactly why Phillips appeals to her.

First, Phillips will be reporting out of the network’s London bureau, which has already seen a huge shakeup after Weiss pushed out highly respected bureau chief Claire Day after a freelance cameraman accused Day of running the bureau like a “Hamas cell”. She replaced Day with Shayndi Raice, a former Wall Street Journal editor with no broadcast experience but similar views on Israel and Gaza as the “Zionist fanatic” Weiss.

And while Phillips comes to CBS News following a long and distinguished career in British politics, writing and broadcasting, it is not without a fair bit of controversy. He was a Labour Party politician who served as the chairman of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (and the Commission for Racial Equality, its predecessor) for nearly a decade, leaving in September 2012.

His management of the EHRC was wracked with turmoil, which saw six of the organisation’s commissioners leave due to this “divisive leadership” that had led to “deep discontentment and dissatisfaction.” It was also during his time in charge of the race commission that Phillips, in 2004, said that the UK should stop supporting multiculturalism and instead “assert a core of Britishness”.

His views on Islam, however, are what have drawn the most notice in recent years.

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Thank you for subscribing to Zeteo UK. We are still in soft-launch mode till September as we finish recruiting our team, but given the craziness of the British news cycle right now, we will be publishing stories and op-eds on a semi-regular basis between now and then. Please do become a paid subscriber today so you can read and watch all of our Zeteo UK original content without hitting a paywall – and also so you can help fund independent journalism in the UK. For now, please do enjoy this latest news-making report from our brilliant new political editor, Shehab Khan, without a paywall. - Mehdi

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A senior Labour peer held a meeting in Parliament last week with a leading politician from Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party who previously suggested not all members of the Nazi SS were criminals, Zeteo UK can reveal.

Lord Maurice Glasman, the founder of the Blue Labour movement and an influential voice on the right of the Labour Party, met Maximilian Krah, who is an AfD member in Germany’s federal parliament.

Krah sparked international outrage in 2024 when he told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica: “I won’t say that [someone] was automatically a criminal because he wore an SS uniform.”

The comments were so controversial that even Marine Le Pen’s National Rally cut ties with the German far-right party in the European Parliament.

Glasman told Zeteo UK that the meeting was private, took place at Krah’s request, and was intended to help him better understand the AfD’s political thinking. He said he had no plans to meet Krah again.

A spokesperson for Glasman added, “Lord Glasman regularly engages with people with whom he does not agree, which is the case here. They do not share the same views.”

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The meeting has been described as “unacceptable” by anti-extremism campaign groups. It is understood that the Labour Party was not aware of the meeting and played no role in facilitating it. Labour has no formal links with the AfD.

Glasman was elevated to the House of Lords by former Labour leader and current Energy Secretary Ed Miliband in 2011 and is widely regarded as the intellectual force behind Blue Labour, a political movement that combines left-wing economic policies with socially conservative values.

In 2025, he was the only Labour Party figure invited to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, where he said he spent time with U.S. Vice President JD Vance, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage.

Earlier this year, he called for the Royal Navy to be deployed to prevent migrants from crossing the Channel into the UK from France.

Although Glasman does not hold a formal leadership role within Labour, he remains an influential figure on the party’s right. On Tuesday, he called on Keir Starmer to step aside and backed the former minister and Royal Marine Al Carns as a future prime minister.

The meeting with Krah is likely to raise questions within Labour about the relationships that senior figures within the party have with far-right, anti-immigrant parties across the world.

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It will also be uncomfortable reading for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who, during a visit to Berlin in 2024, urged progressive parties to cooperate in opposing far-right movements, such as the AfD, across the continent.

The AfD’s Krah has also faced scrutiny over his links to China. Last year, his former aide, Jian Guo, was jailed for four years and nine months after being convicted of spying for China. Guo had worked for Krah in the European Parliament while Krah was an MEP.

Separately, Krah remains under investigation by German authorities over alleged bribery and money laundering linked to payments he is alleged to have received from China. He denies any wrongdoing.

The AfD is leading in the polls in Germany while also coming under increasing scrutiny for its far-right politics. The country’s domestic intelligence agency classified the party as a right-wing extremist organisation in 2025. The designation is currently suspended while the party’s legal challenge is considered by the German courts.

Nick Lowles, chief executive of the UK anti-extremism campaign group Hope Not Hate, said it was “unacceptable” for a Labour peer to meet with an AfD politician.

“It’s hugely inappropriate to normalise meetings with members of the far right and invite them into the British Parliament,” he said.

“The Labour Party and its representatives should have nothing to do with the AfD.

“Sadly, Glasman has a history of befriending figures on the far right. He has been a strong advocate of Donald Trump and counts Steve Bannon as a friend.”

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Check out more from Zeteo UK:

Thank you for subscribing to Zeteo UK. We are still in soft-launch mode till September as we finish recruiting our team, but given the craziness of the British news cycle right now, we will be publishing stories and op-eds on a semi-regular basis between now and then. Please do become a paid subscriber today so you can read and watch all of our Zeteo UK original content without hitting a paywall – and also so you can help fund independent journalism in the UK. For now, please do enjoy this debut piece from our brilliant new political editor, Shehab Khan, without a paywall.

- Mehdi

Aged just 15, in a commuter-belt village in Cheshire, Andy Burnham watched a BBC drama, ‘Boys from the Blackstuff’, about men signing on in Liverpool and decided politics and the Labour Party were for him. That moment changed his life, putting him on a course that would thrust him to the forefront of British politics. Now, more than 40 years later, the boy from up north is being asked by some in that same party to come down south and save it.

On Thursday, the voters of Makerfield will decide whether to return Burnham to Westminster – a result that will almost certainly determine the prime minister’s fate. If he is successful, the expectation is that before long Burnham, the most popular Labour politician by a long way, will either make a move to challenge Keir Starmer or his allies will force the prime minister to step aside for him. As one Labour MP put it to me a few weeks ago, “[W]e will carry Andy on our shoulders all the way to Number 10.”

Keir Starmer is at the G7 summit meeting with world leaders, and no one in the room knows whether they are shaking hands with the now-and-future prime minister or a caretaker with days left on the clock. The future of British power, this week, does not reside in the summit room – it resides in a by-election in Wigan.

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It should however be made clear there is no guarantee that Burnham will win that by-election. A former minister told me this weekend they believe “it is tighter than we think” – that shy Reform voters could yet emerge, and that if Nigel Farage’s party can pull more of the Restore vote across to it, Thursday will be close. Reform came second here in 2024 and swept the board in May’s local elections; Makerfield is not a Labour fortress.

“This is not going to be a walk in the park,” the former minister told me.

Yet even a Burnham defeat would not settle Labour’s leadership question. It would undoubtedly strengthen the hand of other hopefuls – not least Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner – but among Labour MPs, the debate has already moved beyond whether a succession will happen to who will lead it, with the argument centring not on whether Starmer can survive but about who will replace him.

Makerfield may decide the protagonist, but to understand why Labour is reaching for Burnham, you have to understand what he has built. He started his career in journalism writing for trade magazines before working for then-Labour MP Tessa Jowell. He was an MP at 31, a junior minister under Tony Blair and in the cabinet under Gordon Brown by his late thirties. He ran for the Labour leadership twice and lost twice – fourth when Ed Miliband won in 2010 and second to Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, before going on to take up a role in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.

It has given rise to a joke that has been doing the rounds in Labour circles in recent years: “A Blairite, a Brownite, a Milibandite, and a Corbynite walk into a pub. ‘Hello, Mr Burnham,’ says the barman.” Burnham is well aware of it. Indeed, he says he can laugh about it.

Asked about the gag by The Guardian, he replied: “It says more about the people who tell that joke than me, because it says they are factional.” Burnham’s argument is that what critics see as ideological flexibility is in fact loyalty – he served the leaders the party chose and now presents himself as a figure capable of bridging Labour’s divides in Westminster and beyond.

In 2017, in a move that now looks like genius but at the time looked like self-imposed exile, he left Westminster to become the first mayor of Greater Manchester, winning with more than 60% of the vote. He was re-elected twice by landslides, and his popularity has surged. He brought the buses back under public control – the yellow Bee Network is now as much a part of Manchester as the music he loves – and capped fares at £2. During the pandemic, he turned a row with a Conservative government into a battle where he emerged as “King of the North“. He is the only politician in Britain of any stripe with a net-positive favourability rating.

It is his performance as the mayor of Greater Manchester that is the central case for Burnham, and it is a real one. It is why a current loyal Starmerite minister, whom I spoke to, was generous about him even while urging caution. Burnham is “a great colleague”, they said, but the party’s energy after this by-election belongs to the upcoming Greater Manchester mayoral contest he would trigger by leaving, not in a war on its own leader. “It wouldn’t be wise to start infighting instead of the bigger challenge.”

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The sharper edge came in a question. “What has he done on a national level?” the minister asked. The advice: Win Labour the mayoralty race that you’ve started, get into the cabinet, and “show everyone what you can do”.

Burnham has been a metro mayor for nine years – a serious job, but one mercifully sheltered from decisions about national debt and taxation, the defence budget and the geopolitics of a darkening world. The blank canvas that makes him appealing – unattached to any of the government’s failures – is also what raises concerns among some colleagues that he remains largely untested on the biggest questions facing the country. Yet as his potential return to Westminster draws closer, we are beginning to see where Burnham stands.

He has pledged to maintain the state pension triple lock, sticking to Labour’s manifesto commitment. On defence, meanwhile, he has argued that welfare spending should be reduced to help fund a larger military budget. The position places him closer to those in Labour who believe defence spending must rise more quickly than Starmer’s government currently intends.

On Gaza, polling by Opinium suggests the issue remains politically potent, with half of former Labour voters now backing other centre or left-wing parties saying this government’s pro-Israel position influenced their decision to ditch the party. Burnham, for his part, was among the first senior Labour figures, alongside Sadiq Khan, to call for a ceasefire in October 2023. Yet he has stopped short of describing Israel’s actions as genocide, telling The Guardian: “I do have concerns about the disproportionate nature of what has happened in terms of the destruction, and there has to be a full process of investigation and accountability.”

In recent weeks, as his national policy positions have come under greater scrutiny, Burnham has shifted on some major issues. On the WASPI dispute – which centres on millions of women born in the 1950s who say they were not properly informed about increases to the state pension age and should therefore receive compensation – Burnham appeared to back their calls before rowing back amid concerns about the cost.

On immigration, his position has also shifted. He dropped his support for migrants being given immediate access to benefits, leaving even some sympathetic colleagues telling me his plans are “half-formed”.

Assuming he does win the by-election – and the latest Opinium poll has him five points clear – several routes open before him. He could bide his time, remain on the green benches as a constant reminder of the prime minister’s troubles – a thorn in the side of the government – waiting for Starmer to conclude that his position is no longer tenable.

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Another possibility is that senior cabinet ministers decide the prime minister’s time is up and press him to announce an orderly handover. That could be through private meetings, in the media or by sending the aggressive message by resigning. Starmer may choose to step away at that point or fight a leadership race but in either of those circumstances, a rival candidate may step forward to prevent a coronation – and all eyes would be on Wes Streeting in that scenario.

The third option is for Burnham or someone else to fire the starting gun himself and force a leadership contest. Everyone I speak to in Westminster believes Burnham would have little difficulty securing the backing of the 81 MPs required to trigger one.

A resulting leadership race could be messy, could take some time and open Labour up to criticism from opponents that they are putting their internal party politics over the country and because of that not everyone in Labour believes such a contest is desirable. Some within the party believe a swift, uncontested handover would be preferable. “Starmer can’t go on and a lengthy leadership race is not good for the party or the country. Getting Andy in quickly is better for everyone. It will happen anyway,” a pro-Burnham former minister told me.

But it is the potential leadership race that contains the real drama, because Starmer has so far said he will fight one. The question – and it is the question his own colleagues are asking – is whether he means it or whether he simply has to say it to maintain a shred of authority. One MP was blunt with me: In a head-to-head, the prime minister “would be humiliated”.

Whether Starmer agrees is another matter. Unlike any other candidate, Starmer does not need MPs to nominate him; he is automatically on the ballot. But even if he chooses not to run, the former health secretary Streeting has made it clear he has no intention of waving Burnham through; there will be no coronation if the former health secretary can help it, and he would put his own name forward.

The case that will be made in that leadership race by team Burnham, if he wins the by-election, is that he has just defeated Reform in a seat that is one of their most prominent targets. Luke Charters, until recently a parliamentary private secretary and widely regarded as a Starmer-era high-flyer, told me that if Burnham manages it, he will have proved himself “a blueprint for defeating Farage right across the country”. That is the key thing that Labour MPs are most worried about. They believe Reform and Nigel Farage are their biggest threat, and so far have seen little evidence that Starmer – or anyone else – has a convincing plan to beat them.

If Burnham wins in Makerfield, Charters tells me, it will provide the evidence many Labour MPs are craving – and ultimately become his mandate. “The era of timidity and incrementalism has to have had its day. Andy can deliver a bold, decisive, progressive policy programme, and that is exactly how we can defeat hard-right populist forces,” he adds.

But it is a different former minister who put their finger on what could ultimately be the long-term worry for Team Burnham. Referring to 2017, “Andy left when we needed him most, now after we’ve spent years rebuilding the party, he wants to come back and swoon in.” They added that Starmer had won a leadership election, won a landslide, held a democratic mandate and had still been stripped of his authority. If Burnham takes the crown untested, then the first hard decision he makes that Labour MPs don’t like may leave him with no authority at all. “I can totally imagine colleagues saying ‘you have no right to say a thing’,” they told me.

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Their real argument therefore was not against Burnham but against a coronation. “We need a contest,” they said. “We need to test whoever wants to be PM.”

For now, everything depends on what happens in Makerfield on Thursday. If Burnham wins, Labour’s leadership question will no longer be a Westminster parlour game – it will become the defining question of British politics.

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Thank you for subscribing to Zeteo UK. We are still in soft-launch mode till September as we finish recruiting our team, but given the craziness of the British news cycle right now, we will be publishing stories and op-eds on a semi-regular basis between now and then. Please do become a paid subscriber today so you can read and watch all of our Zeteo UK original content without hitting a paywall – and also so you can help fund independent journalism in the UK. - Mehdi Hasan

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On 18 June, this Thursday, almost 10 years to the day since Britain voted to leave the European Union, voters in Makerfield, Greater Manchester, will decide whether the city-region’s mayor, Andy Burnham, will return to Parliament in order to challenge Keir Starmer for the premiership.

His election is widely seen as the only means of rescuing the ruling Labour Party from its catastrophic decline in popularity since being elected with a huge majority in 2024. But it is also a test of whether Britain can rescue itself from the racism and violence that Brexit unleashed.

Labour’s collapse follows that of the Conservatives, who implemented Brexit in 2020. Both these traditional parties have been floored by the far-right movement headed by Nigel Farage, Brexit’s prime instigator. A by-election victory for his Reform UK party will be seen as a decisive step towards his becoming prime minister in 2029.

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Even if Burnham wins, Labour is unlikely to gain an overall majority again. To block the far right, Britain’s progressive forces – Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish and Welsh nationalists and the left-wing Greens, together with their voters – will have to unite in a way they have never done before.

But that will be difficult unless the left can overcome division around the one issue that has fractured the progressive bloc more than anything else: the Gaza genocide. If it can’t, we will likely witness what the U.S. did in 2024 with Donald Trump’s victory – Nigel Farage will win.

The Referendum

To understand how we got here, we have to go back to 2016 and the racist nationalism that helped the Brexit campaign succeed.

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Thank you for subscribing to Zeteo UK. We are still in soft-launch mode till September as we finish recruiting our team, but given the craziness of the British news cycle right now, we will be publishing stories and op-eds on a semi-regular basis between now and then. Please do become a paid subscriber today so you can read and watch all of our Zeteo UK original content without hitting a paywall – and also so you can help fund independent journalism in Britain. - Mehdi Hasan

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In more than 25 years of practising criminal law, including working on some of the most serious terrorism cases brought before the courts, I never thought I would see terrorism legislation deployed in a way that so fundamentally blurs the line between genuine threats to public safety and acts of political protest as I did in the sentencing of the so-called Filton 4.

In 2024, Palestine Action activists broke into an Israeli arms factory in Filton, near Bristol, where they destroyed “military assets” including drones and other equipment, with the stated aim of preventing weapons being used in war crimes. In May this year, a jury found four of the activists guilty of criminal damage. The judge, Mr Justice Johnson, ruled there was a “terrorist connection” to their offending and imposed heavy sentences ranging from four years and eight months to eight years and eight months.

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Whatever view one takes of the defendants’ actions, the route taken in this case raises profound questions about the direction of our justice system and the future of protest. Those who welcome terrorism powers being used against pro-Palestinian activists today would be appalled to see them used against anti-immigration protesters, farmers or trade unionists. But that is how these powers will travel. They will expand far more easily than they contract.

The protest at Elbit was not a peaceful sit-in. Serious damage was caused, and a police officer was injured, leading to a conviction of one of the defendants for inflicting grievous bodily harm, though the jury acquitted on the allegation that there was any intent to cause serious injury.

But acknowledging the seriousness of the conduct is not the end of the debate.

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That meant bringing together the award-winning Sangita Myska, who made headlines leaving LBC after a fiery interview with an Israeli spokesperson; one of the British left’s best-known names, Owen Jones, co-host of Zeteo’s ‘Two Outspoken’ podcast; Grace Blakeley, one of the UK’s sharpest economic thinkers; Afua Hirsch, the acclaimed broadcaster and author on race and identity; and veteran journalist Peter Oborne, an unflinching conservative critic of the British political and media establishments. Leading our daily Westminster and UK politics coverage is the respected former ITV News reporter Shehab Khan, as political editor. And, of course, our very own Mehdi Hasan will be pitching in, too.

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Watch the short video above to hear why each of our new contributors decided to take the jump with us.

So, that’s why they’re part of Zeteo UK… now, the question is: are you?

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An attempted beheading in the street. Yet no incendiary front pages followed. No politicians issued statements inciting fury. There were no riots, no pogroms.

This was a terror-related attack by a white neo-Nazi, Alina Burns, against a Kurdish barber last year. Similarly, when two teenagers stabbed to death a random British Asian father as he delivered groceries to his mother in Wales, Nigel Farage did not demand “pure, cold rage.” When a white British man raped a Sikh woman, believing her to be Muslim, the Daily Telegraph did not ask if the UK had “descended into anarchy.”

And when a white man stabbed a Saudi student to death in Cambridge, GB News didn’t host a segment headlined, ‘British people are fed up!’ Indeed, there’s no evidence it covered this hideous murder at all.

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Belfast burned this week. The direct culprits were racist thugs who set fire to homes they believed migrants lived in. Families with little children had to be rescued from the flames. Businesses and cars were burned. Vehicles were stopped so the mobs could search for migrants. We have a word for this: it is a pogrom.

None of this can be divorced from Northern Ireland’s own history. In the summer of 1969, loyalist thugs burned one in 20 Catholics out of their homes in Belfast – the biggest act of ethnic cleansing in Western Europe since World War II. Perhaps some of their grandchildren continued this hateful tradition.

But there is another context for this pogrom. For years, British media and political elites have portrayed Britain as descending into violent mayhem because of immigration.

That’s all based on a lie. There has unquestionably been a huge increase in immigration over the last two decades, and it has made Britain far more diverse than it was. Yet by any measure you pick, violence in Britain has plummeted over that same period. Overall surveyed crime is about a third of what it was in 2002. The murder rate in England and Wales is nearly half what it was in 2003. In London – the UK’s most diverse city – it is at its lowest ever recorded level. Hospital admissions caused by assault, knife assault, bodily force, blunt objects and firearms have all fallen sharply.

Detailed research by the Oxford Migrant Observatory finds no significant relationship between immigrants and crimes. Foreign nationals are underrepresented when it comes to violent offences and robbery.

Yet commentators and politicians have whipped up hateful hysteria in defiance of the facts. For example, the Telegraph’s Allison Pearson told GB News that 44% of the 116 accused in pending sexual assault and violence cases in Dorset were asylum seekers. “There is no truth in the 44% figure,” said Dorset Police.

The Times published claims by the Tories that Channel migrants were 24 times more likely to go to prison than Britons – which were debunked by Full Fact. Meanwhile, GB News presenter Patrick Christys declared: “They have seeded rapists, murderers, violent criminals and thieves all around our country.”

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We were already warned where this could lead. In July 2024, 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana attacked a dance studio full of little girls in a horrific knife attack, killing three of them. It was reminiscent of the Dunblane massacre of 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton slaughtered 16 primary school pupils and one teacher. Except, after Dunblane, there were no riots.

This time, there was a national pogrom. Asylum seekers were almost burned alive in hotels, while shops, cars and mosques were attacked. The private homes of people believed to be minorities or migrants were targeted. Victims were dragged from cars.

This should have been a bucket of ice-cold water thrown over our heads. Instead, the violent summer of 2024 was scrubbed from our national memory. No lessons were learned. Why? Because it implicates a media and political establishment that has spent years whipping up bigotry and division.

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Notice, too, that politicians and commentators demand that peaceful protests against Israel’s genocide are banned as “hate marches”. Yet many of them have nothing to say when families are burned out of their homes in Belfast because of anti-migrant hysteria. The morning after it happened, Farage posted about cracking down on flytipping.

Now, any time a hideous crime is committed by someone who is not white, violent riots and pogroms become a possibility. It may not even take that. There has already been so much incitement by politicians and media outlets that a summer of turmoil may be coming.

The most frightening aspect of all of this is that it is difficult to see a way out. So few politicians and media outlets are willing to push back. After all, our Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer, has exploited anti-migrant bigotry, too, declaring that mass migration has done “incalculable” damage to our country. The government is introducing one of the harshest asylum regimes in Europe.

The Green Party’s Zack Polanski stands almost alone – and he has been on the receiving end of an unrelenting smear campaign.

That’s why the launch of Zeteo UK is such a relief. We have a media ecosystem which has normalised hateful lies and brought our country to the edge of the abyss. We need far more pushback. Otherwise, a bleak future awaits this country.

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Owen Jones is a columnist, Zeteo UK contributor, co-host of Zeteo’s ‘Two Outpoken’, and author of The Establishment: And How They Get Away with It.

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Defence Secretary John Healey resigned on Thursday, saying Prime Minister Keir Starmer had been “unable, and the Treasury unwilling” to commit the resources the nation needs to protect itself.

His resignation letter did not include the usual language used for cabinet departures. There was no careful diplomatic prose that allows a prime minister to manage the optics of losing a colleague – instead, he wrote in plain terms: the Defence Investment Plan that was presented to him this week would force him to make decisions that “could make the country less safe.” He added that he had no other option.

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This is not a resignation over scandal, or political posturing, or even an ideological disagreement. Those kinds of departures are damaging, but they are, in Westminster terms, containable. A minister goes. The news cycle turns. A new name appears at the despatch box. This is something different. Healey – one of the most respected figures in Westminster – has looked at the funding settlement his own government has offered him and decided that accepting it would be a dereliction of duty. He has chosen the armed forces over the cabinet table, and that choice is the indictment.

The proposal would have seen defence spending rise from 2.6% of GDP to 2.68% by 2030 – that 0.08% increase was seen as being nowhere near enough by Healey. He wanted the figure to reach 3% by 2030 and then 3.5% in 2035. It means that Starmer now needs to find someone willing to become defence secretary when their predecessor has just left saying there is not enough money to keep the country safe.

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It will not be easy to find someone willing to stand at the despatch box and make the case for a settlement that their predecessor refused to accept – especially given the fact that there is no guarantee that Starmer will be in Number 10 for much longer.

This also potentially complicates next week’s by-election in Makerfield. Andy Burnham is campaigning in the constituency, positioning himself as the alternative Labour can offer, so he can directly challenge the prime minister, but this resignation hands Reform UK and Nigel Farage an argument they have been rehearsing for some time: that under Labour, Britain is not safe. Reform will not waste the gift. In the final days of a contest that was already hostile, Healey’s words are the fuel their campaign needed.

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Check out more from Zeteo UK:

Zeteo UK is not even two days old, and yet, it has already become the centre of attention in UK media and political circles!

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The UK’s very own Press Gazette – a decades-old institution – has called Zeteo UK’s incredible team of journalists and commentators a “star” line-up.

Of course, England’s right-wing media jumped on the news as well, calling Zeteo UK’s founder a “troublemaker” that pledges to challenge BBC’s “bullsh*t.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves!

As the Telegraph noted, word of the launch has also reached Westminster, with the UK’s Green Party Leader Zach Polanski tweeting about the “brilliant news.”

But who better to explain what Zeteo UK is all about than Zeteo’s founder himself, Mehdi Hasan – who did just that on Sky News.

Want to join the hype? Subscribe now for just £5 a month via our annual plan! There is even a bundle option for people who want to access both Zeteo and Zeteo UK content.

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Shehab walked away from one of the UK’s top broadcasters, ITV, to join us at Zeteo UK. It was quite a risk, Mehdi suggests in this fascinating conversation, but Shehab disagrees:

“We have gone through a period of chaos, of change, in a way the United Kingdom has not experienced. Six prime ministers since 2016, psychodrama in Westminster… And what we haven’t had, I think, is proper independent journalism assessing it – holding truth to power, not being influenced by billionaires, not being influenced by corporate interests.”

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Watch the full video above to hear Mehdi and Shehab - both dressed weirdly alike! - field viewer questions about what’s in store for Zeteo UK, dissect Britain’s “political shit show,” discuss the role of Gaza in the Labour Party’s decline, and trade predictions – starting with who could be the next prime minister.

“It is a case of, ‘Oh, U.S. politics, that’s crazy!’ and then UK politics is like, ‘Hold my beer, we’re crazier,’” Mehdi says.

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Become a paid subscriber to Zeteo UK today to stay ahead of the chaos and help build Zeteo’s latest venture into an independent media force: the kind of fearless, no-holds-barred political journalism that Britain needs now more than ever.

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I can’t quite remember the exact moment when I realized we needed a Zeteo specifically for the UK.

Was it after watching the Gorton and Denton by-election in late February, when almost every major media outlet from Sky News to the BBC to the Daily Mail helped spread Reform UK’s lie about British Muslims engaging in illegal ‘family voting’ for the Greens?

Was it after examining the egregious failure of mainstream media in the UK in the first week of March to describe the joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran as illegal, a violation of the UN Charter, and a clear act of aggression?

Was it after reading a linguistic analysis by UK media bias comparison app NewsCord in late April, which showed how some of the UK’s leading news organizations “failed to name Israel as the perpetrator in Israeli attacks where civilians were killed in Gaza” in around half of all cases?

Was it after witnessing the British media pile-on against Green Party leader Zack Polanski in early May, over the issue of antisemitism, while most journalists gave Reform UK leader Nigel Farage a pass on that same issue?

Or perhaps… it was all of the above.

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The UK media is broken. TV ratings are in decline, newspaper circulations have been collapsing for years, and trust in journalism is disappearing fast. Britain ranks 32nd out of 48 countries for trust in news, placing it in the bottom third of the countries surveyed, and far below the levels seen in other major European democracies. The only professions in the UK that command less public trust than journalists are advertising executives and politicians.

I have to say that I take no pleasure in the crisis engulfing the British media. I spent a decade inside the mainstream media, working for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Sky News. Those were the years that shaped me as a journalist. I worked alongside many remarkable colleagues and came away convinced that a strong and healthy democracy depends on a strong and healthy media.

For far too long, however, mainstream media in the UK has failed the public. It has downplayed the rise of the far right at home while helping manufacture consent for genocide abroad. It has claimed the mantle of fearless truth-telling while too often bending to the wishes of the powerful. It has stressed independence and impartiality while too often bowing to corporate interests – or, in the case of the BBC, to political pressures from the government of the day.

The good news is that there is another way. In the United States, independent journalism has exploded, reaching millions of people who no longer defer to establishment media gatekeepers. Polls show Americans increasingly placing more trust in independent and online journalists than in traditional national news organizations.

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There is no reason Britain cannot follow America’s lead (at least in this one positive trend!). No reason we cannot build a media landscape that is more fearless, more accountable, and more willing to speak truth to power.

We, Zeteo, have had huge success in the United States as an independent outlet – breaking big news stories and producing ground-breaking documentaries; winning multiple awards; and acquiring hundreds of thousands of loyal subscribers on Substack and millions on YouTube. All this has been possible thanks to the financial support of all our paid subscribers. Every paid subscription helps us expand and fund real journalism.

Now, we want to replicate that growth and success in the UK. Zeteo UK will produce exclusive UK content by UK reporters for its subscribers. We’ll be bringing together some of the smartest British media voices from across the political spectrum – including Sangita Myska, Owen Jones, Grace Blakeley, Afua Hirsch, and Peter Oborne - while our daily coverage of Westminster politics will be helmed by former ITV News reporter and presenter Shehab Khan, who has interviewed the past six British prime ministers.

Oh, and I’ll be involved too! I plan to join many of Zeteo UK’s live events, both online and in person, as well as co-host shows and write op-eds. (I caught the UK politics bug at a very young age and – despite Donald Trump’s antics now commanding much of my journalistic time and attention – I haven’t lost it yet!)

So why would you not subscribe to it?

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To be clear, this is a soft launch. We’ll spend the coming months expanding our reporting, growing our team, and building something worthy of this historic political moment in the UK. We’ll be publishing videos and articles on a semi-regular basis, some of which will be paywalled. Then, in September, we launch officially with daily content, including op-eds, news shows, and video podcasts – and we’re also planning a big live event in London with a very prominent British politician!

But every launch has a beginning.

Tomorrow, with your help and support, a new force for journalism, truth-telling, and disruption arrives in the UK media landscape.

Today, Zeteo UK is born.

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