United Kingdom

The construction plans include building new bunkers in Suffolk, which will seemingly be used to store nuclear weapons, and modernising facilities to help covert units run secret operations.

The US military is also planning to upgrade its base in Gloucestershire, from which waves of powerful bombers attacked Iran earlier this year on the orders of Donald Trump.

The plans highlight the breadth of the US military and security establishment’s footprint in the UK, where more than 12,000 US military personnel are spread around at least 15 bases and facilities.

There are questions about whether Britain should continue to host the US installations on its soil.

For more than seven decades, successive governments have seen the bases as a foundation of the UK’s military partnership with the US.

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Another $1.1bn is earmarked for Mildenhall airbase in Suffolk, at which about 4,000 American military personnel are stationed. During this year’s US-Israeli war on Iran, the base played an important part in facilitating bombing missions. Huge planes flew from the base to the Mediterranean to refuel other airborne aircraft flying to and from Iran.

Less visible are the covert forces based at Mildenhall. They are tasked with flying special operatives into what they call “hostile, denied and/or politically sensitive territories” across Europe and Africa.

An unspecified portion of the $1.1bn earmarked for Mildenhall will fund the construction of purpose-built facilities, to enable these special forces to house their aircraft in one place. This, according to the Pentagon, will enable the forces to react more rapidly in a crisis.

Nearly $500m is to be spent at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, which played a vital role in US bombing raids on Iran this year.

The base has a very long runway, at almost 2 miles, and is reinforced to withstand heavy bombers, such as the B-1 and B-52, which can carry huge payloads, including the so-called “bunker buster” bombs.

This enabled the bombers to take off from Fairford instead of the US, cutting out thousands of miles.

The Canary has been debanked by Lloyds. Despite banking with them for almost a decade they are currently withholding a substantial amount of our money. We are left with barely any funds.

We do know that multiple other politically engaged people have suffered similar actions by other banks in recent times. It is not lost on us that powerful banks are able to restrict the financial activity of anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine organisations and individuals. Whilst we do not currently know the reasons behind our debanking, we cannot afford to be naive about this.

It is an outrage that the Canary has been unceremoniously dropped into financial instability with no notice or explanation from Lloyds.

Labour is definitely experiencing a Burnham bounce; the question is how high the ceiling is, and how far the party will drop back down

The long-awaited defence investment plan boosts military spending by £15 billion, an increase of £1.5bn over the last two weeks, extra cash wrung out of the Treasury by new Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis.

And Mr Jarvis confirmed that the figure will rise further to 3 per cent of gross domestic product in the next parliament, and to 3.5 per cent by 2035.

The extra cash is to be splurged on drones above all, as well as fighter jets, nuclear arms and a larger weapons stockpile.

Investment in roads and energy projects are the immediate victims of the military increases, Sir Keir announced, amid rumours that his next stop after Downing Street may be as secretary-general of Nato.

Campaigners condemned the announcements, which were also designed to tie the hands of premier-presumptive Andy Burnham.

Stop the War Coalition vice-chair Chris Nineham said: “Never mind the cost-of-living crisis or the collapsing services he leaves behind, Starmer wants to be remembered as the man who ramped up spending on weapons to record levels.

“He claims he doesn’t want war, but that the best way to avoid it is to be prepared for it. This is a transparent lie.

“It is clear that security, defence and the fantasy and implausible threat from Russia, which is constantly talked up by ministers, generals and arms companies, are now the main ways that the ruling classes are justifying attacks on social programmes, on welfare and working-class living standards in favour of still more missiles.

“And that is why any effective campaign against public sector and welfare cuts needs to be making anti-war arguments.

When British Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned last week, an old but forever damning clip resurfaced. Appearing on a London radio show in October 2023, the former human rights lawyer told the host that Israel had the right to cut water and electricity off to the besieged population of Gaza.

This was no slip of the tongue. Instead, it represented the instincts of a man who went on to oversee Britain’s complicity in the greatest crime of our time. In opposition, Starmer helped Israel accrue the confidence and capital it needed to justify its crimes. In office, his government helped Israel accrue the military means it needed to carry them out.

After Starmer took office in July 2024, the value of arms export licences granted from October to December that year alone was 127.6 million pounds ($168.8m), far higher than what was approved by the Conservative government from 2020 to 2023. In September 2024, Labour Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced a partial suspension of arms exports to Israel. Pausing about 30 arms export licences out of a total of 350, the government made one, huge, glaring omission: the continued supply of parts for Israel’s F-35 stealth fighter jets. This included components that went to the United States to be sent on to Israel and spare parts that went into global stockpiles that may have gone to Israel.

Arms sales typically dominate discussions of British complicity. However, perhaps even more significant has been the continued role of Royal Air Force Akrotiri base in Cyprus. “The whole world and everyone back at home is relying on you. Quite a bit of what goes on here can’t necessarily be talked about all of the time. We can’t necessarily tell the world what you’re doing.” This is what Starmer told service members while visiting the RAF base in December 2024. If Starmer won’t tell the world, we will: RAF bases have been a critical site of complicity, principally through the performance of routine RAF surveillance flights over Gaza.

Israel has not just relied on the United Kingdom’s military support but its economic support too. The government should have been using every single economic and political tool at its disposal to force Israel to stop. That is the approach the government has taken towards Russia. Refusing to do the same to Israel is rank hypocrisy – and proof of economic, diplomatic and political complicity. A sprinkling of sanctions against a handful of extreme settlers and ministers doesn’t cut it. Without comprehensive sanctions, Israel will never adhere to international law: not in Gaza, not in the West Bank, not in Lebanon, not anywhere.

Shabana Mahmood is a really horrible person whose policies are cruel. She's one of the worst people in the Labour administration and should be fired immediately.

Asylum seekers in the UK are generally not allowed to work while they are waiting on a decision on their claim. If they have been waiting for more than a year, then they can apply for permission to work.

As a result, they are reliant on the Home Office for housing and support as they cannot work to pay for accommodation.

Marley Morris, associate director at the IPPR, said there are “better ways of bring down” costs of asylum such as “speeding up asylum processing and appeals, reforming the existing asylum contracts”.

The government will repeal the Vagrancy Act on Monday 29 June 2026, ending nearly two centuries of legislation that has criminalised rough sleeping and begging.

British-born, older men among those most likely to have disease found only postmortem, say researchers