Ben Wisson

I’m in Clapham today, after the M&S looting. Khan said there’d be ‘enhanced policing’. There wasn’t a single officer in sight. The community feel let down. Have a listen 👇

In Cherkasy region, a Russian drone explosion killed 53-year-old volunteer Ivan Stepaniuk. He was a member of the Ukrainian Rescue Service, a public organization. "Not just a volunteer was killed - a man who was 'first aid' for the entire front has been lost. Repairing equipment under fire, evacuating people from hell where others could not endure - this was his life’s work," Cherkasy resident Liubov Orlenko wrote. Deepest condolences...

Couldn't agree more with @CitySamuel today - I too was a reluctant Remainer, but everything that has happened since confirms we made the right decision to Leave. Exiting the EU is a prerequisite for any national revival thetimes.com/comment/column…

Hey everyone, I finally landed properly on X — right after my response to Rheinmetall’s СЕО. Perfect timing to introduce myself. I’m Oleksandr Yakovenko, founder of TAF Industries — one of Ukraine’s largest drone manufacturers. In 2022, right after the full-scale invasion, money was never my goal. I founded the charity foundation to deliver critical supplies to over 200 military units. It was pure volunteer work. But charity wasn’t enough. The front needed effective and affordable ways to strike the enemy. So in late 2023 I launched TAF. What started as a wartime volunteer project has grown into industrial-scale production: strike drones, reconns UAVs, EW systems, interceptors and over 30 combat-proven solutions. We run our own R&D center, iterate weekly from real battlefield feedback, and operate a distributed network that survives under missile strikes. The future of warfare is cost-effectiveness. Not the most expensive platform, but the one that delivers maximum effect for minimum cost. The recent Iran conflict proved it again: cheap Shahed drones ($20k–50k) force billion-dollar air defenses to burn through multimillion-dollar interceptors. The math is merciless. We understand the concern of traditional monopolists earning billions on ineffective legacy platforms. Change is uncomfortable — Nokia and Kodak felt the same. Yet while they worry, we’re already moving forward: we’ve established a joint venture in Germany with local partner and are receiving the first orders, turning Ukrainian combat experience into European industrial capacity. I’m here not for profit margins, but to strengthen Ukraine’s defense, bring more soldiers home alive, and share real-war expertise through honest partnerships. Open to connecting with military professionals, defence experts, and serious international partners. Let’s talk — even with those who still believe it’s 1979.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928. Its stated aim has never changed. The establishment of a state governed by sharia law under a caliphate. Islam is the solution is not a slogan. It is a programme. And the countries that know it best have drawn their conclusions. Egypt banned it. Saudi Arabia banned it. The UAE banned it. Bahrain banned it. Austria banned it. Jordan banned it in April 2025 after uncovering a sabotage plot linked to its members. These are not fringe states acting on prejudice. They are countries with direct experience of what the Brotherhood does when it embeds itself in civil society. They watched it build parallel social structures, challenge state authority, channel electoral pressure toward Islamist ends and provide the ideological conveyor belt that has carried individuals toward violence. They acted. Britain has not. The 2015 Cameron review found that the Brotherhood's ideology was a possible indicator of extremism. It found that individuals closely associated with the Brotherhood in Britain had supported suicide bombings by Hamas, an organisation that describes itself as the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood and whose military wing has been proscribed in Britain since 2001. It described the Brotherhood as deliberately opaque and habitually secretive, operating with a dual discourse, moderate in public, radical in private. It stopped short of proscription. That report is eleven years old. The Brotherhood has spent eleven years continuing to embed itself in British civil society while the government keeps the matter under close review. Manchester knows what that embedding looks like. Salman Abedi, who murdered 22 people at the Manchester Arena in 2017, attended Didsbury Mosque, whose leadership had documented links to the International Union of Muslim Scholars, founded by Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who publicly endorsed suicide bombings. The mosque's trustees were linked to charities associated with Hamas. The sectarianism now visible on Manchester's streets, men on horseback charging anti-regime Iranian protesters while police stood back, does not emerge from nowhere. It is cultivated over years in institutions the state has chosen not to examine too closely. France's interior ministry declassified a report in 2025 estimating that seven percent of France's Muslim places of worship have links to the Brotherhood, affecting around ninety one thousand worshippers. France has approximately five million Muslims and 2,800 mosques. Britain has approximately four million Muslims and an estimated two thousand mosques. Applying the same seven percent figure to Britain's mosque network suggests around 140 mosques with potential Brotherhood links and somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 people potentially exposed to Brotherhood influence in British places of worship alone. The French government commissioned a report to establish this. The British government has not. The argument against proscription has always been the same. The Brotherhood has not carried out direct acts of terrorism in Britain. Proscription would stigmatise Muslim communities. Engagement is preferable. A decade of evidence has answered all three. The Brotherhood builds the infrastructure, the ideology and the political pressure that others act upon, while charitable organisations linked to it receive Gift Aid from the British taxpayer. The strongest opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood comes not from Western governments but from Muslim majority nations. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan have concluded independently, from direct experience, that the Brotherhood is a destabilising force. Britain standing apart from that consensus has a word. Cowardice. Proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood. Before the countries that already have are proven right in the worst possible way. Didsbury Mosque and Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradaw

Fukuyama: The U.S. does not now have a Trump doctrine. Its behavior can best be explained not by a set of principles, but by the personal interests and preoccupations of the president. Trump's head is full of resentments, anger, anecdotes, and made-up facts. 1/

Dear Mr. Armin Papperger, CEO of Rheinmetall, When you referred to Ukrainian drone manufacturers as “Ukrainian housewives with 3D printers” you revealed just how deeply the European defense establishment still fails to understand the nature of modern warfare. This is not about emotion. It is about battlefield reality. Here are the facts your industry refuses to acknowledge: In 2025 alone, Ukrainian drones carried out 819,737 confirmed strikes. They caused 90 percent of all Russian combat losses, more than all other weapons systems combined. TAF alone produces up to 100к FPV drones monthly. In any given 90-day period, my company’s products alone achieve more confirmed strikes than your entire fleet of equipment has across its full combat history in every conflict. And most importantly, I built this company and achieved these results in two years, not fifty. Think about that. Our drones generate more kinetic effect in three months than your flagship platforms have in half a century. Why? Because the battlefield has changed, and your business model has not. •Russian electronic warfare has made GPS-guided Western munitions such as Excalibur and GMLRS nearly ineffective. •Expensive and complex systems designed for wars with air superiority and traditional peer-to-peer combat have become easy prey for drones costing $500, attacking them from above. •The cost-to-effect ratio has been turned upside down: one 120 mm Rheinmetall shell or one anti-tank missile costs more than a dozen of our drones, and yet our drones still win. This is not a “Lego game.” It is industrial Darwinism in real time. We iterate every week. We print parts in basements and ship 100к strike systems per month, while your engineers still require three to five years and hundreds of millions of euros in certification costs for even a minor upgrade. The war in Ukraine is not a temporary anomaly. It is the first true drone-industrial war. And it has already proven that outdated European platforms, no matter how expensive or “serious” they may seem, are becoming less and less relevant unless they integrate the very technologies you mock. So when you say, “this is not innovation,” I hear something else: “We do not want to admit that the future is being written in Ukrainian workshops, not in Düsseldorf boardrooms.” #MadeByHousewives is trending for a reason. Because these “housewives” destroy more enemy equipment every month than entire European armies do in full campaigns. And they do it while your industry continues to sell 20th-century solutions at 21st prices. The invitation remains open, Mr. Papperger. Stop laughing at the kitchen table. Come and learn how tomorrow’s war is actually being fought. Because the next time someone asks, “Who needs tanks in the age of drones?”, the answer may be simpler than you think: Whoever still believes in 1979 will lose to whoever is building in 2026. With respect, but with facts, Oleksandr Yakovenko “Ukrainian housewives” Founder TAF

I had a little girl who was raped she killed herself at the age of 12. Would this woman be Laughing if it happened to her daughter?

When will people wake up and realise we are hurtling towards a complete state controlled county where for Labour, what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine. Arguing the toss about the past is futile - if we don’t deal with the present the future looks worse. Much worse. @RupertLowe10

Republican senators are breaking with Trump on NATO. McConnell, Tillis, and their Democratic counterparts are drawing a line: leaving the alliance requires Senate approval, and it is not happening. Tillis said it plainly. Any president considering NATO withdrawal is fulfilling Putin and Xi’s greatest dreams while undermining American security. McConnell put it simply. NATO allies fought and died alongside Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is not nothing. Trump never consulted NATO before attacking Iran. Never invoked Article 5. Just assumed Europe would follow. They didn’t. Now he wants to burn the alliance down because his allies wouldn’t join a war he started alone. Putin has been waiting 25 years for this. He didn’t even have to ask.

Labour have trashed our economy. They came to power, raised taxes by over £60 billion, killed jobs, pushed up unemployment and inflation, whilst trying to blame everyone else. They are the worst. The most incompetent and dishonest government in living memory.

On April 1, President Trump told the world’s nations to “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.” He said America would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He said allies must protect it themselves. He said the hard part was done. On the same day, Bloomberg reported that Powerus, a drone company backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump through their American Ventures fund, had been meeting officials in Abu Dhabi to pitch advanced autonomous weapons systems to the United Arab Emirates. The product line includes the Guardian-1, a lightweight kinetic interceptor designed to destroy Shahed-style drones at 340 kilometres per hour for a fraction of the cost of a missile. The pitch is aimed at the exact vulnerability the President’s speech created: Gulf nations that need to defend themselves because America just told them it will not do it for them. The President defines the threat. The sons sell the solution. The war creates the demand. The family supplies the product. Powerus merged with Aureus Greenway Holdings on March 9 in a deal worth approximately $50 million, positioning for a Nasdaq listing under the expected ticker PUSA. The Guardian-1 was unveiled on March 18, ten days after the war began. It completed flight tests at the US Army’s National Training Center in high-intensity combat simulations. The company’s website claims “confirmed intercepts and kills in active combat zones.” No footage has been released. No CENTCOM confirmation exists. No allied government has verified a single Guardian-1 kill. The product is 15 days old. It has been tested in simulations. It has been pitched to a government under missile attack. It has not been proven in combat. The broader Trump family UAE portfolio deepens the architecture. In January 2025, a $500 million stake in World Liberty Financial was sold to an Abu Dhabi entity linked to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the UAE’s national security adviser. Eric Trump signed. $187 million went to Trump family entities from the first installment. Trump Organization licensing with DAMAC and Dar Global for towers and golf courses exceeded $500 million in the past year. An 80-story Trump Tower Dubai is under construction. The family is embedded in the UAE’s financial, real estate, crypto, and now defence infrastructure while the father conducts a war that makes all four sectors more valuable. Senator Jack Reed called for scrutiny: “Trump’s arms sales to family business partners must be examined.” The White House says the President is “unaware” of Powerus dealings. The sons say the businesses are separate. The timeline says otherwise. The war began February 28. The drone company merged March 9. The interceptor launched March 18. The Abu Dhabi meetings took place in recent weeks. The President told allies to defend themselves on April 1. Bloomberg reported the pitch on the same day. Lockheed Martin sells the F-35 with 900 pounds of Chinese rare earth magnets that China has banned. Zelensky sells Ukrainian sea drones to the Gulf states his enemy’s ally armed. And the Trump sons sell an untested interceptor to a country their father just told to fend for itself against the drones their father’s war provoked. The war has no perimeter. The business has no boundary. And nobody in Washington can tell where one ends and the other begins. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Starmer and Lammy have suspended @KarlTurnerMP from the Parliamentary Labour Party over his “recent conduct”. Turner — a former Shadow Attorney General and barrister — has been a leading voice on the Labour backbenches opposing the Government’s sinister plan to curb the right to trial by jury. Under proposals from Justice Secretary David Lammy, defendants facing a maximum sentence of less than three years would lose the right to a jury trial. Instead, their cases would be heard in a judge-only court or by magistrates. The Government has acted in bad faith. In a last-ditch attempt to avoid an embarrassing rebellion at the second reading of the Courts and Tribunals Bill, Lammy offered Turner representation for rebels on the Bill committee in exchange for abstaining. Both of Turner’s nominees — Stella Creasy and Rachael Maskell — were rejected. Turner said: “I will not stand back from speaking truth to power when it matters. Jury trials are a cornerstone of our democracy and a vital safeguard in our justice system.” He added that Lammy’s plan is “unworkable, ill-conceived and not supported by any evidence”, and called it “fundamentally dishonest” to suggest juries are responsible for court backlogs in Britain. This is an increasingly authoritarian Government that has lost its way. Starmer appears intolerant of legitimate criticism, and is seeking to silence dissent. Shameful. Read more below 👇

This is the @NHSEngland Chief Executive, Sir Jim Mackay, publicly stating that the government will punish the general public by denying them access to fully-trained qualified medical professionals This is all a political choice which will cause actual harm to patients

🚨 MAJOR News: Pam Bondi has been fired as Attorney General. She was fired before Trump even took the podium last night. Bondi was scheduled to testify under oath before the House Oversight Committee on April 14th about the Epstein investigation. She will not be testifying as AG. The same Bondi who said “DOJ is done” with the Epstein files. The same DOJ that admitted withholding footage of “death, physical abuse, and injury.” The same DOJ keeping half of 6 million Epstein documents sealed. The same week Epstein’s accountant testified the estate settled with Jane Doe 4 for both Epstein and Trump.

🇺🇸🧐 TRUMP IS CRAZY. THE LEVEL OF MADNESS WILL KEEP RISING — IT’S GOING TO BLOW SOON! That’s not me saying it — that’s former Trump lawyer Cobb, who worked with him for many years. “Trump has always been driven by narcissism and nothing but narcissism, but now he has simply gone insane — it’s obvious to everyone around him. He needs to be removed from the White House. He is seriously mentally ill.” Cobb’s words are not a revelation, but a diagnosis that has long been in the air. Narcissism here is not just a personality trait — it is the engine, the steering wheel, and the braking system all at once. An impulse means action. He wants something — he declares it. He feels offended — he starts breaking things. The problem is that the world is not a reality TV stage where you can rewrite the script after a failed line. But Trump behaves exactly like that: as if each of his whims is a new episode, and the consequences can be edited out in post-production. Hence the feeling of growing madness. Not because he suddenly changed — but because the system around him is no longer capable of smoothing out his impulses. Before, there were filters. Now — there is a microphone and a live broadcast. And yes, “we will see more and more madness.” Because a narcissist cannot stop. He always needs more — attention, conflict, drama. That is his oxygen. The question is no longer what he will do next. The question is — how much longer the world is willing to tolerate it.

All these companies have formally entered administration, insolvency, or equivalent restructuring since Labour came into power: • Ted Baker • The Body Shop UK • Carpetright • Homebase • Claire’s UK • Play Music Today • Homes Direct 365 • Russell & Bromley • ISG • Ardmore Construction • Denby Pottery • Speciality Steel UK • Westbridge Furniture • Belfield Leisure • Rekom UK • Fusion Lifestyle

Today more than a fifth of Crown courtrooms are sitting empty across the country - unused, idle, wasted. Yet instead of fixing that failure, Ministers want to chip away at trial by jury. Fewer juries won’t open closed courts. It won’t cut delays. It won’t deliver justice.

This is outrageous. Removing the whip from a MP, by email (not even the guts to tell him in person), for speaking out against a policy that was not in his party’s manifesto, and is dismantling our precious justice system.

For my Socialist subscribers wondering how Starmer is to blame for the painful fall in house prices here’s the answers; 1) His increase in stamp duty over his two Budgets. 2) Mansion tax on homes over £2million. 3) interest rates dramatically higher than they should be ( even Greece is 1% cheaper) because global traders think we’re more likely to go bust under Starmer than the rest of Europe.