Uncensored Free Speech Platform

What is the most likely authoritarian response to the resistance in Minneapolis?
Every delay has consequences.

As the federal government draws down their force of immigration officers in Minneapolis, the authoritarians are writing the summary of how things went wrong for them. Here's one sobering example of how the authoritarian right views the events in Minnesota. They're blaming their failure on an entrenched anti-American insurgency.
Whether or not that's true (or whether the 'insurgents' are actually the American people), what is the next logical move for the authoritarian elements of the American government?
The archetypical several example of an entrenched insurgency that leverages popular opinion to score political points might be Hamas in Gaza. It has, in the past, been contained with concessions and negotiations, but lately the Israeli government has adopted a scorched-earth escalation of violence. Which method will the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security choose, or is there another option?

Matthew Scott: The Grand Centralisation will undermine trust
Accountability can't be optional.

Matthew Scott is the Police and Crime Commissioner for Kent.

Government reform programmes will leave our citizens further away from power and decision-making. Across multiple strands of government, local involvement in democracy is being peeled away in favour of larger and less accountable bodies.

In policing, they are scrapping locally-elected Police and Crime Commissioners, whilst at the same time proposing a merger of policing that could see as few as twelve mega-forces created. In the South East, that could mean policing decisions in Portsmouth, Milton Keynes and Dover all being made by the same Chief Constable. All of this would be underpinned by a more operational National Centre of Policing. Yet there is no objective evidence that bigger means better.

How they will be held to account is crucial, but their plans for local governance have become confused and convoluted. On the one hand, where Mayors won’t exist, they announced that they would create unelected Police and Crime Boards, with appointed Police and Crime Lead Members. Very shortly after, plans for the mega-forces were briefed to the media, with the suggestion that they could be directly accountable to the Home Secretary.

The Police Reform White Paper will need to address this two-tier approach to policing governance, as there has been no evidence to date that this style of system will work in England and Wales, beyond comparisons to the Netherlands.

If there is no real democratic oversight, no one is accountable for how much council tax you pay. It will be harder for neighbourhoods to elicit a response when they are suffering crime and antisocial behaviour. At present, PCCs are public facing and deal with the public on a daily basis. Under these plans, policing will not be.

Policing is not the only area where democracy and accountability is being reduced. Local Government Reform will see scores of councils abolished.

In their essay titled Reorganisation, local government and the future of English Devolution, Colin Copus and Steve Leach argue that because Local Government Reform will see thousands of councillors abolished, those remaining will be subject to increased workloads and insufficient support to manage. This could, in turn, lead to challenges around trust in elected representatives if they are not able to support the public in the way in which they have been able to at a more local level.

Centrally imposed targets for new housing will place further burdens on councillors, with an expectation that said councillors are across every strand of detail on their local plans, planning applications and appeals. Whilst at the same time, their planning reforms give councillors less ability to block inappropriate developments and protect green spaces. This will put them at odds …

Lord Ashcroft: My latest polling – U-turns, defections, social media, preferred coalitions and Britain and the US
Transparency shouldn't be controversial.

Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. For more information on his work, visit

My latest polling looks at the Jenrick defection, government U-turns, social media and internet regulation, and Keir Starmer’s relationship with President Trump. We also ask how people would describe the party leaders and which parties they would want to see in coalition in the event of a hung parliament.

What have people noticed – and who has noticed what?

 President Trump’s wish for the US to take over Greenland was the most noticed recent political news story. Domestically, the defection of Robert Jenrick and others from the Conservatives to Reform UK dominated people’s recollections, followed by the government’s change of policy on mandatory digital ID.

Our political map shows what kind of voters were most likely to recall which news. Stories about the defections to Reform appear close to the centre of the map, meaning they were recalled across the board, rather than by any particular kind of voter. News about Trump and Greenland, Venezuela and ICE were most likely to be mentioned by those on the Labour and Lib Dem-leaning left-hand side of the map, while stories including the digital ID U-turn and the retirement of the West Midlands chief constable following the ban on Israeli football fans were most often recalled in the Reform-leaning bottom right quadrant.

 The Labour government

 When we asked people to name something specific the Labour government had done since being elected in 2024, the most common answers were means testing the winter fuel allowance, lifting the two-child benefit cap, making U-turns, failing to stop small boat migration, and increasing employers’ National Insurance and other taxes.

The winter fuel allowance, the two-child car and employers’ National Insurance were mentioned throughout the electorate. Other tax rises, small boats, cancelled local elections and the Chagos Islands deal were most likely to be recalled by those on the Conservative and Reform-leaning right hand side of the map, while the minimum wage, breakfast clubs, rental reforms and selling weapons to Israel were most likely to be remembered in Labour, Lib Dem and Green voting territory.

 Overall, voters were more likely to say that U-turns show a government is weak and has no direction than that it is listening and prepared to admit mistakes. 2024 Labour and Lib Dem voters were slightly more likely to think they showed a government was listening – but more than one third of both groups thought it showed it was weak.

 Only one in ten voters overall said the government was making progress and doing some good things (down from a quarter in January 2025). This included just over one fifth of those who …

Peter Franklin: What would be the best outcome of the Gorton and Denton by-election?
Why resist verification?

Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.

When Alan Clark died in 1999, his vacant seat became the subject of immediate, if unseemly, speculation. The big question was whether Michael Portillo — the highest profile casualty of the 1997 Tory defeat — would stand in the looming by-election and thus make an early return to Parliament.

William Hague, who was the Conservative leader at the time, must have feared the worst. Not only was Portillo a “big beast” he’d also become the idol of the party’s modernisers. Elements of that faction were already conspiring against Hague — and with Portillo back in the Commons they’d have an alternative leader ready-to-go.

Hague’s allies might have been tempted to fix the selection process against his rival — choosing some unthreatening local councillor instead. And yet there was no hint of any such skullduggery. Portillo was duly selected as the Conservative candidate — and, on the 25 November 1999, elected as the new MP for Kensington and Chelsea with 56 per cent of the vote. Back then, I was a minor functionary in Conservative Central Office and witnessed all the stops being pulled out to aid his victory.

Nor was that the end of Hague’s magnanimity. Within a couple of months, he reshuffled the Shadow Cabinet to give Portillo the biggest possible promotion — to Shadow Chancellor and deputy leader of the party.

In short, faced with a potential challenge to his position, William Hague chose the path of honour and open-handedness. A quarter of a century later, the same cannot be said for Keir Starmer — whose place-persons on the Labour National Executive Committee have blocked Andy Burnham from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election.

These days, by-elections are few and far between. As for a contest where Labour stands a chance of winning, those are rare as hen’s teeth. To compound the sheer flukiness of the situation, Gorton and Denton is in Greater Manchester, of which Burnham is the popular metropolitan mayor. So for Starmer to stand in his way doesn’t just offend against the British sense of fair play, but against fate itself.

Instead of doing the big thing, the Prime Minister has chosen the path of pettiness. If Labour loses in Gorton and Denton then then the blame will attach fairly-and-squarely to him and his right hand man, Morgan McSweeney.

But just how likely is a Labour defeat — and, by objective psephological standards, just how big a deal would it be?

Let’s start by getting one thing straight: Gorton and Denton is not part of the “Red Wall”.

Yes, it’s north of the Watford Gap and not an inner city constituency, but the Red Wall concept (as originally defined by James Kanagasooriam) applies specifically to marginal seats where the Conservatives have regularly failed to turn promising …

Braverman’s defection exposes a different Tory malaise

There are a number of interesting new stats that now apply to Reform UK.

Following Suella Braverman’s defection, the party has eight MPs – half of them are Tories who left for the turquoise blue in this Parliament alone. They have more of Liz Truss’s cabinet in their team than Kemi Badenoch has in her shadow cabinet.

Of Boris Johnson’s ministerial team Reform can now claim they have his former chancellor, communities secretary, culture secretary, attorney general, political secretary, skills minister, Northern Powerhouse minister, health minister, parliamentary private secretary, assistant whip and a Scotland Office minister. 

Braverman’s defection to many Tories came as little surprise. One MP tells me: “I haven’t seen her all year.” Another, one of the 2024 intake, adds: “I honestly think I have only met her once, that is how little she is around.” But yet she had just placed as Conservative backbencher of the year by our ConservativeHome panel.

It marks quite the end to a political friendship for the former Home Secretary and Kemi Badenoch, who once organised Braverman’s hen do. The deterioration began some time ago with leaked comments of Badenoch’s from the first meeting of the shadow cabinet, accusing her of having a “very public” nervous breakdown.

In her move to Reform, the long-time Tory politician remarked she felt “like I’ve come home”. Braverman may well feel like it given how many former colleagues she has now joined. But it remains an interesting decision given her Fareham and Waterlooville seat is not sewn up with a Reform UK defection – predictions on Electoral Calculus have it remaining Tory.

There is yet more awkwardness for Reform to manage, given their leader Nigel Farage having pledged in the Daily Mail that Reform wouldn’t take Braverman over concerns for the party’s image and Zia Yusuf the party’s policy chief writing on X of a government cover up with Braverman at the helm as Home Secretary. Quite the choice to then hire both of those named.

It does bring on the inevitable question of whether Reform is Tories 2.0, but the recycled, rejected version – and to this Farage has said: “We are taking people who tried their best to fight the system at the time and they admit they failed.” Adding that he won’t be accepting the likes of Boris Johnson or Priti Patel.

The Tories were initially punchy with their statement, telling journalists that Braverman was “clearly very unhappy” and left following “mental health issues”, only to later say that the released comment was meant to be a draft – reissuing the statement without the targeted mental health comment barb that sparked much ire. I received messages from a Reform source saying “they will have to retract it” and “apologise”.

But LOTO were especially pleased with a …

Russia offers cash bonuses, frees prisoners and lures foreigners to replenish its troops in Ukraine
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.

For average wage earners in Russia, it’s a big payday. For criminals seeking to escape the harsh conditions and abuse in prison, it’s a chance at freedom. For immigrants hoping for a better life, it’s a simplified path to citizenship.

All they have to do is sign a contract to fight in Ukraine.

As Russia seeks to replenish its forces in nearly four years of war — and avoid an unpopular nationwide mobilization — it’s pulling out all the stops to find new troops to send into the battlefield.

Some come from abroad to fight in what has become a bloody war of attrition. After signing a mutual defense treaty with Moscow in 2024, North Korea sent thousands of soldiers to help Russia defend its Kursk region from a Ukrainian incursion.

Men from South Asian countries, including India, Nepal and Bangladesh, complain of being duped into signing up to fight by recruiters promising jobs. Officials in Kenya, South Africa and Iraq say the same has happened to citizens from their countries.

Russian numbers in Ukraine

President Vladimir Putin told his annual news conference last month that 700,000 Russian troops are fighting in Ukraine. He gave the same number in 2024, and a slightly lower figure – 617,000 – in December 2023. It’s unclear if those numbers are accurate.

Still hidden are the numbers of military casualties, with Moscow having released limited official figures. The British Defense Ministry said last summer that more than 1 million Russian troops may have been killed or wounded.

Independent Russian news site Mediazona, together with the BBC and a team of volunteers, scoured news reports, social media and government websites and collected the names of over 160,000 troops killed. More than 550 of those were foreigners from over two dozen countries.

How Russia gets new soldiers

Unlike Ukraine, where martial law and nationwide mobilization has been in place since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin has resisted ordering a broad call-up.

When a limited mobilization of 300,000 men was tried later that year, tens of thousands of people fled abroad. The effort stopped after a few weeks when the target was met, but a Putin decree left the door open for another call-up. It also made all military contracts effectively open-ended and barred soldiers from quitting service or being discharged, unless they reached certain age limits or were incapacitated by injuries.

Since then, Moscow has largely relied on what it describes as …

Newslinks for Tuesday the 27th Jan 2026
This deserves loud pushback.

China targeted the phones of Tory No.10 aides under successive Prime Ministers, and still hasn’t stopped

“China hacked the mobile phones of senior officials in Downing Street for several years, The Telegraph can disclose. The spying operation is understood to have compromised senior members of the government, exposing their private communications to Beijing. State-sponsored hackers are known to have targeted the phones of some of the closest aides to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak between 2021 and 2024. It is unclear whether the hack included the mobile phones of the prime ministers themselves, but one source with knowledge of the breach said it went “right into the heart of Downing Street. Intelligence sources in the US indicated that the Chinese espionage operation, known as Salt Typhoon, was ongoing, raising the possibility that Sir Keir Starmer and his senior staff may also have been exposed. MI5 issued an “espionage alert” to Parliament in November about the threat of spying from the Chinese state. Sir Keir departs for China this week – the first visit by a British prime minister since Baroness May in 2018 – to secure trade and investment ties with Beijing” – Daily Telegraph

Chinese hackers targeted top UK officials – The Times

Phones of senior officials in Downing Street ‘have been hacked by China for years’ – Daily Mail

Fury as Starmer presides over ‘ongoing’ China spy hack to the ‘heart of Downing Street’ – Daily Express

Xi’s secret weapon to divide Starmer and Trump: net zero – Daily Telegraph

Starmer ‘courting dictatorship’ with China visit, says peer sanctioned by Beijing – The i

Top Chinese general ousted after ‘leaking secrets to US’ as ‘abnormal’ changes to military sparks alarm bells in Taiwan – The Sun

Comment

As Starmer visits China, how when Theresa May was in Beijing she was told to get dressed under the bed covers so local spies couldn’t film her naked – Jason Groves, Daily Mail

What Starmer can learn from dominant China – William Hague, The Times

China’s vampire state is about to sink its fangs into Kowtow Keir. Stand by for a humiliating spectacle – Ian Williams, Daily Mail

Keir Starmer will have to play it tough in China – Michael Kovrig, The Times

Labour’s China strategy faces its first real test – Eliot Wilson CapX

Braverman brands claims she defected to Reform over mental health issues ‘pathetic’

“Suella Braverman has attacked Kemi Badenoch over the Tories’ claim that she had “mental health” issues. The Conservatives withdrew a statement saying the former home secretary, who defected to Reform UK on Monday morning, had been “very unhappy” and that the party had done all it could to “look after” her mental health. Mrs Braverman told a press conference that the Tory leader had previously accused her …

Fetterman says ‘about 2/3‘ of illegal immigrants ICE deported had criminal records
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.

As illegal immigration enforcement operations have come under heavy scrutiny from Democrats after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by a Border Patrol agent on Saturday, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) offered a different perspective during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night. The Pennsylvania senator defended the necessity of illegal immigration enforcement operations.

Fetterman first took aim at the Biden administration, blasting the former president for failing on border security and immigration.

“President Biden did a terrible job, and our border was effectively open at that point,” said Fetterman. “Biden and Mayorkas did not secure our border, and I tried to warn my party back in 2023 that this would cost us in the election, and America deserves to secure our border. I don’t know why every American can’t agree with that thing.”

Fetterman then stressed that removing illegal immigrant criminals from the country was a positive development, one that all Americans should support. He also called for reforms that would allow non-criminal illegal immigrants a path toward citizenship.

“Another thing that’s the truth that we should all agree to deport all of the criminals that are here in our nation right now,” Fetterman said. “As for me, as a pro-immigration Democrat, I do think we need to develop a way for citizenship for the very hard-working migrants that are amid us now too.”

“I do have to give credit to the president for securing our border,” Fetterman said.

Fetterman addressed the controversy surrounding Pretti’s death in Minneapolis, expressing regret over his death. However, he also stressed the need for the kind of illegal immigration enforcement federal officers were doing over the weekend in Minneapolis.

“And the tragedy that happened, and we’ve lost two American citizens, I don’t think anyone in America wants that or that they would have voted for those things,” Fetterman said. 

Hannity then asked Fetterman about the criminal illegal immigrants apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Minnesota, an effort that Fetterman was supportive of, including citing statistics showing the percentage of criminals arrested by ICE.

“The latest statistics that I’ve seen about ICE, the people that, nationalwide [sic], they have deported, about ⅔ of the ones that have criminal, whether a record or they were actually active in criminal behaviors, ⅔, so that’s what I think America, the vast majority of America, …

Louisiana Paroles Its Lowest Number of Prisoners in 20 Years Under Gov. Jeff Landry

The number of prisoners paroled in Louisiana has plummeted under Gov. Jeff Landry to its lowest point in 20 years, the most visible impact of the “tough on crime” policies he campaigned on.

The parole board freed 185 prisoners during Landry’s tenure compared with 858 in the two years before his January 2024 inauguration, a 78% drop, according to a Verite News and ProPublica analysis of data provided by the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole.

Hundreds of people who would have been paroled under previous administrations now remain in state prisons with little chance of earning an early release through good behavior or by showing they are fit to reenter society and are unlikely to reoffend.

Landry — a former state attorney general and sheriff’s deputy — and his fellow Republicans in the state Legislature overhauled Louisiana’s parole system through a 2024 law that banned parole altogether for anyone convicted after Aug. 1 of that year.

The overhaul also impacted the tens of thousands of people incarcerated before that date who must now meet tightened eligibility requirements to be considered for early release: Prisoners need to maintain a clean disciplinary record for three years instead of just one. And they must be deemed to pose a low risk of reoffending through a computerized scoring system, which does not take into account prisoners’ efforts to rehabilitate themselves and was not intended to be used to make individual parole decisions. Louisiana is the only state using such risk scores to automatically ban people from the parole process, according to a previous investigation by ProPublica and Verite News.

The cumulative impact of these changes has caused the number of parole applications to dramatically fall. In the two years prior to Landry’s inauguration, the board held 1,785 hearings. That number dropped to 714 in Landry’s two years as governor.

The Number of Parole Hearings Dropped to Its Lowest Level in at Least a Decade Under Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry

Note: A 2017 Louisiana law expanded parole eligibility for nonviolent offenders to reduce prison crowding, creating a temporary surge in the number of hearings and parolees. Once those prisoners were released, the number eligible for parole declined starting in 2020. Source: Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole Lucas Waldron/ProPublica

Landry’s approach represents a fundamental shift away from the original intent of the parole system, said defense attorneys, former inmates and civil rights lawyers. The possibility of parole offers an incentive for prisoners to better themselves while behind bars. And the supervision in place for parolees helps them reintegrate in hopes of preventing them from returning to prison.

“People who have done everything asked of them and would normally be on a fast track to get parole, to get out and make money and take care of their families, they’re crushed and their families are crushed,” said Jim Boren, president of the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “It creates a sense of despair.”

Even those who manage to satisfy all of the new eligibility requirements and make it before the parole board face …

Mainstream Democrats direct funds to anti-ICE protests carried out by ‘communist’ groups in Minneapolis
This affects the entire country.

Efforts to disrupt federal law enforcement in Minnesota have united individuals and organizations associated with the mainstream Democratic Party with self-described “communist” and “socialist” activists, a Washington Examiner review of political emails and social media posts has found.

In recent weeks, mainstream Democrats have sent messages to their supporters via email and social media, enticing them to either donate money to groups staging protests in Minneapolis or to join them personally in challenging law enforcement. Far-left groups, including avowed communists, are taking a leading role in organizing these same demonstrations.

Democrats such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), and Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX), as well as a host of state lawmakers and congressional candidates, have all called on their supporters to use , a webpage purportedly maintained by local activists, to donate to “organizations doing the work on the ground” in Minneapolis. The Arlington Young Democrats, a club of young liberals living just outside D.C. — many of whom work as staffers in the capital — endorsed as well.

Also directing supporters to via email was the Communist Party USA, illustrating the alignment between the far and mainstream Left in protesting the enforcement of immigration laws. Individuals posting on forums related to anarchism and witchcraft have circulated links to the donation page too.

Organizations promoted by StandWithMinnesota include those operating hotlines to keep track of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, fielding “legal observers,” and organizing protests, according to its webpage. Marching and organizing alongside these on-the-ground activists are open Marxists, some of whom belong to a group that maintain friendly ties with a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization, for example, has issued calls to its followers on social media to join the protests in Minneapolis, delivered speeches at rallies in Minneapolis, and garnered hundreds of thousands of likes on Instagram for their efforts — showing the broad appeal of the group. 

Videos posted by the FRSO show its members marching alongside other demonstrators and carrying signs bearing the organization’s name in Minneapolis and across the country. Some individuals in FRSO clothing were even present as …