Abby Innes

Jansen Ganesh is on fire in this column on the UK’s role in the Iran conflict

www.ft.com/content/eaee...

The Iris Dena, a prized destroyer in the Iranian navy, had participated in an international naval exercise in India last month. The ship had been making its way back toward Iran from Visakhapatnam, a city in India where the joint exercise ended on Feb. 25. The United States was among the many participants in the drills.

It was in international waters. It was heading home from a drill *in which the US also participated.* We aren’t in a declared war, nor do we have UN authorization to do — I mean, any of this, but definitely this.

Maybe the Times could spin its Rolodex and see if any experts would like to weigh in?

Uk's Home secretary Shabana Mahmood.

So Shabana Mahmood says refused asylum seeker families could get up to £40,000 to leave Britain...

Meanwhile at 10 Downing Street, someone’s clearly teaching a masterclass titled: “How to Annoy Literally Everyone in One Easy Policy.”

Five stars. No notes. Absolute bipartisan chaos. 🍿

There's a political firestorm in India about the fact that our Big Strong Heroic regime invited this unarmed ship from a former (?) allied state to our waters and then stood by and said nothing as Big Daddy USA blew it up. From the world's largest democracy to small fry nazi state on Empire's plate.

If there is evidence of irregularities at some polling stations at the Gorton and Denton byelection, then that evidence should be properly and promptly investigated in accordance with due process by the proper authorities. And that is what is being done. Any denunciations of the election result should thereby await the result of this process. The losing party spokesperson candidly admitted the day after the election that any irregularities were not enough to have affected the result, which was emphatic. But this did not prevent the losing party’s leader from loudly promoting grave allegations of sectarian voting, corruption and dishonesty. Yet if the irregularities are not upheld on investigation as invalidating the result, it is unlikely that those findings will be shouted about. And such a response is irresponsible. Parts of the United Kingdom have a history of sectarian violence. Parts of the United Kingdom have histories of racial tension. Responsible politicians should not exploit such allegations for partisan advantage. Making such allegations is to play with fire, literally. Responsible politicians should be careful to avoid subverting the very fundamentals on which a functioning democracy rests. Such “poisoning of the wells” is familiar to those following the politics of the United States, and it lay behind the lethal violence that took place in Washington DC on 6th January 2021.

New

The poisoning of the wells

Why discrediting election results without waiting for due process is unhealthy for a democracy

This week's Weekly Constitutional by me at @prospectmagazine.co.uk

Billionaire-owned media celebrating the industrial slaughter of human beings by machines as a wondrous leap forward.

Some of the FT comments section is higher quality than nearly all the paid for opinion writing in the 'quality' papers

Your regular reminder than a large majority of voters - and overwhelming majority of Labour voters - favour giving settled migrants access to the welfare state after five years or less. The Home Secretary is not reforming rules in line with public opinion. She is doing the opposite.

Oh my!

BREAKING: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls for an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged foreign intelligence ties.

I don’t want to share the video because it’s pretty graphic, but apparently we’re at the ‘Republican Senator breaks the arm of a Marine IN FULL DRESS because that marine was protesting the Republicans starting a war of choice with Iran’ stage of things.

Try: ’I would like to give Trump money…’

this the FT not The Onion

Bombardement d’une école en Iran : l’enquête du « Monde » atteste la présence de nombreuses victimes civiles, dont des enfants Les vidéos obtenues et analysées par « Le Monde » démontrent la présence d’enfants et de victimes civiles lors du bombardement d’une école à Minab, en Iran, au premier jour des frappes israélo-américa...

Le Monde investigates the bombing of a girls' school in Minab that claimed more than 180 dead. There was no ambiguity that this was a school when it was attacked, they write. This was a clear war crime that reminds of Hegseth's statement that there would be no "stupid roles of engagement."

Frocious! ❤️🧸

Meanwhile…

Spot. On.

‘Any threat against member state is threat against the EU’, says commissioner in response to Trump comments – Europe live Stéphane Séjourné is the latest high-profile name to express solidarity with Spain over Trump’s comments last night in Madrid Sánchez’s defiant speech may have been made in response to Trump’s threat to cut off all trade with Spain, but his words were also aimed every bit as much at other EU leaders (and at Spain’s political class). “A war that, in theory, was said to be waged to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, bring democracy, and guarantee global security, but which, in reality, seen in retrospect, produced the opposite effect. It unleashed the greatest wave of insecurity our continent has suffered since the fall of the Berlin Wall.” “It is absolutely unacceptable that those leaders who are incapable of fulfilling this duty use the smokescreen of war to hide their failure and, in the process, line the pockets of a select few – the same ones as always; the only ones who profit when the world stops building hospitals and starts building missiles.” “The government of Spain stands with those it must stand with. It stands with the values that our parents and grandparents enshrined in our constitution. Spain stands with the founding principles of the European Union. It stands with the Charter of the United Nations. It stands with international law and, therefore, stands with peace and peaceful coexistence between countries and their harmonious coexistence. Continue reading...

‘Any threat against member state is threat against the EU’, says commissioner in response to Trump comments – Europe live

Text excerpt from NYT article linked in second skeet saying: “Most of the profits are flowing to the very affluent Americans, who are not subject to this cost-of-living crisis anyway because they’re so rich. They’re getting richer, and everyone else is dealing with inflation,” said Gregor Semieniuk, associate professor of University of Massachusetts Amherst who led the study. The United Kingdom responded to fossil fuel companies’ bumper year by adding a windfall tax designed to capture some of the excess profits and use the money to ease the burden on households facing higher bills. Semieniuk’s team calculated what would have happened if the U.S. government redistributed the portion of the fossil fuel industry’s 2022 profits that exceeded its 2021 returns. They found that the move would send $1,715 to every American household, which, they argued, could have helped ease the burden of inflation on lower-income households.

Text excerpt from the FT article in the second skeet saying: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://help.ft.com/faq/gifting-and-sharing-an-article/what-is-a-gift-article/. https://www.ft.com/content/43fe2f44-d3ea-45c9-a641-e6f0e68949af?accessToken=zwAAAZy4l4RPkc9D_i9E0-pFydOmQebw5olJrw.MEUCIH4nsXTramXEOh6tWM6n9rrMqI0FnMfHQsz7tU0HufXAAiEAx8x5MmOYujURIqdhdxGDYHysYSEB2eVuSpM9n1iDuhA&segmentId=e95a9ae7-622c-6235-5f87-51e412b47e97&shareType=enterprise&shareId=a96149bb-d68a-4bc5-b023-2174a60fd9c5 Research on the oil and gas crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 showed that the gains of the boon on energy producers were not equally shared. The wealthiest 1 per cent of the US population eventually received more than 50 per cent of energy companies’ windfall from that particular surge in prices, according to a paper published in September 2025. “If anything [the US has] become a more powerful exporter and producer of fossil fuels since 2022. And of course, their oil majors are active globally. So I think [US shareholders] are poised to take advantage even more [now],” said Gregor Semieniuk, a professor at the University of Massachusetts who was one of the authors of the research. “Wealth distributions don’t change overnight.”

Who stands to profit as energy prices are rising due to the escalating war in the Middle East? NYT and FT quoting our research on the 2022 energy crisis! Spoiler: in the West it's mainly affluent shareholders.
High time to dust off the discussions on excess profit taxes & strategic price controls.

Turns out not everyone loves the spivvy soft-on-Russia pro-Trump ethnonationalist sex police.

Good thing some US colleges are closing their Religious Studies departments—definitively not “useful” at all or an area of expertise that might be relevant for understanding our present…

How’s that move rightwards on immigration working out for you Sir Keir?

Thrilled that Prof. @mazzucatom.bsky.social is joining my talk on "Fossil fuel profits and the low-carbon transition: who stands to lose?" at the LSE as a discussant!

Tomorrow at 6:30pm GMT - coordinates of the hybrid event open to all at:
www.lse.ac.uk/european-ins...

As the laid off Middle East News Editor, I concur. Management eliminated the positions of every single staff correspondent and bureau chief in the Middle East.

’Fud’

This is great! I knew Purdue had an agrivoltaics research program going, but I didn't know they would be partnering with Mammoth Solar in Northern Indiana. It will be the largest solar project in the US upon completion.

The contrast between the US SecDef belittling European allies and the French president outlining a forward-deterrent scheme for Europe today is quite something.

I honestly don’t know, but we need the political equivalent of an ASBO….

This war has massive implications for the world economy There is nowhere else on the planet with quite as concentrated a supply of quite so much energy as the Arabian Gulf.

This war has massive implications for the world economy

Cubans fight blackouts with solar as US extends oil chokehold Cubans are scrambling to install solar panels on their homes, shops and vehicles to combat extended blackouts as Washington prevents oil shipments from reaching the Caribbean's largest island, contrib...

While the fossil-fuel market operates on tight supply-demand constraints, there's huge overcapacity in solar and batteries. When countries are cornered, like Cuba has been by the US, they can now choose solar. A choice unavailable during previous oil crises. www.reuters.com/business/ene...