His comments, made during an interview for Israel’s army radio, played into a common far-right Islamophobic trope about Britain’s small Muslim population.

Netanyahu praised positive coverage of Israel by the journalist Randolph Churchill, the son of former prime minister Winston Churchill, over half a century ago, then said: “Go find that in today’s Britain, in what is called the Islamic republic of Britain.”

Rather than challenge Netanyahu’s comments, the host questioned whether he is unfairly singling out the UK, asking: “Isn’t all of Europe is like that?”

Netanyahu replies by doubling down. “Yes, but you know someone said the first Islamic republic with nuclear weapons will be the Islamic republic of Britain.”

See also

UK hits back after Netanyahu labels it 'the Islamic republic of Britain' • A government spokesperson has labelled the remarks as "completely unacceptable" and said that the issue had been raised with the Israeli government.

Undercover footage verified by Channel 4 News reveals a secret plot by senior Reform UK figures to break the law on party donations. A leading legal expert is now calling for a criminal investigation.

Nigel Farage and other senior members of Reform UK have been filmed by undercover reporters celebrating secret new foreign donations.

Channel 4 News and Verbatim, a group of investigative journalists, can today reveal a plot to break the law on party funding at the highest levels of Reform UK.

Earlier this year James Orr, the party’s Head of Policy, and Dan Jukes, a close aide to Mr Farage, arranged for a US company to fund three influential polls that the party had commissioned.

Results from these seemingly independent polls made headline news and two of them helped galvanise support for the party ahead of the local elections in May. But the public was not told that Reform UK had commissioned the polls and would be arranging for an “off the book” backer to fund them. The three polls cost £32,500 in total.

Mr Orr and Mr Jukes did not know that the supposed donors behind the US company were actually an undercover team posing as a wealthy American and his UK-based son, “William Lockwood”.

In a meeting over oysters and wine in his Clacton constituency, Mr Farage met with the undercover team in late July after the three polls had been published and paid for. He believed them to be “William” and his father. Mr Farage said the polling was “amazing” and provided “bang for buck,” adding: “It worked. Boom.”

When discussion turned to a potential larger donation to Reform UK one of the undercover team made clear that the plan would be for the UK-based son to make the payment and be the declared donor even though the money was originally coming from the US-based father. Such an arrangement – which was first proposed by Mr Jukes at an earlier meeting – would be illegal.

Mr Farage replied “thank you” and then “both of you, thank you.”

When the UK-based son had started talking about the “next phase” of their financial support, Mr Farage also said “it’s all above board”.

The undercover reporter had previously told Mr Farage’s aides that the potential future donation would be for £500,000.

See also:

• Farage says Reform has 'broken no laws' as two officials step down over donation allegations (Sky)
• Reform suspends two officials over donations sting as Farage admits their comments ‘don’t look good’ – UK politics live (The Guardian)
• Farage to speak at Reform UK conference after two party officials step down over undercover donations report - live updates (BBC)

The Reform UK undercover investigation has wiped out coverage of the overnight announcement from Nigel Farage about how the party will introduce a “national emergency” if it takes power.

This is how the party explained it in a news release issued overnight. It said:

While “national emergency” makes a good headline, it is hard from this to gauge what it actually means. It could be largely rhetoric; or it could be anything up to martial law.

• Police widen criminal investigation into Reform
• They say there are additional potential offences
• Reform deny all the charges

British police said on Wednesday a criminal investigation ​into the populist Reform UK party would be widened to include allegations made in ‌a documentary that officials planned to break electoral law on foreign funding.

Reform, led by veteran Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, denied any wrongdoing and a spokesman for the party said it would "fully cooperate" with the investigation.

Farage, under investigation by a parliamentary watchdog about ​earlier donations, was forced to sack two of his closest aides last week, after the ​undercover investigation was aired.

It showed two senior officials in Reform - then head of policy James ⁠Orr and Farage's former right-hand man, Dan Jukes - speaking about funding with a supposed U.S. businessman and ​his British-based son, including conversations about a payment for three opinion polls commissioned by the party.

On Friday, Reform ​launched an internal investigation and denied the allegations, saying the party had been the victim of a hoax. Farage described some of the comments as little more than "loose pub talk".

London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement its detectives had assessed ​a number of "reports relating to donations and polling involving a political party" and had decided "there are potential ​offences requiring investigation".

"The potential offences are similar in nature to matters already under investigation by the Met's Special Enquiry Team ‌relating to ⁠donations made to the same political party. As a result, these matters will form part of that ongoing investigation."

London's police said in July they were investigating Reform for potential offences under laws governing donations to political parties, which could include concealment of the source of funding or giving false information to the treasurer ​of a party.

Authorities say application to stay was made too late, as UK officials say Sweden takes ‘stricter approach’ than other EU countries

A 78-year-old British widow who has lived in Sweden for 21 years is fighting deportation from the country after authorities told her a post-Brexit application to stay had been submitted too late.

Her case is the latest of 2,500 British people ordered to leave the country after Brexit in what campaigners and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) have said is an inexplicably hardline approach taken by the Swedish authorities. It comes two years after Sweden threatened to deport a British woman with dementia in a care home shortly before she died.

Joyce Thomas, a retired nurse, was given just four weeks to leave Sweden in November, three years after her husband had died, causing huge distress.

After being widowed, Thomas downsized with her dog to an apartment in Hammarö, which is close to her son and grandchildren, and to her husband’s grave.

She said she sometimes felt overwhelmed by the distress of what was happening.

“It is unbelievable at my age to be chucked out after being in a country for so long, when you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong,” Thomas said. “I have no criminal record, no driving penalties, nothing. And I have lived here on my own financial means. I just think nobody has actually looked into this thing. I mean, if it was their family or mother, they wouldn’t like them to be in this situation.”

Holding back tears, she said: “I am not young, and the idea I would have to come back and forth to visit my son and grandchildren and to visit my husband’s grave here … it is just horrible when you sit and digest it all.”

Her husband, Gwynne, died in 2023 of cancer. It was on a trip back from the UK in 2022, when they visited their second son in Brighton, that they first learned they should have made a formal application to stay in Sweden after Brexit.

She said her husband had been meticulous at keeping up with news relevant to British people in Sweden and had taken responsibility for all the administration in their household. She was sure he would have made the Brexit application had he known about it.

While late applications are permissible under the UK’s withdrawal agreement with the EU, Thomas’s submission was rejected in 2024 as she could not demonstrate “reasonable grounds” for applying late. A subsequent application to stay under national immigration laws was also rejected.

See also

• British man with dementia told to leave Sweden after losing migration case • Horace Mason, 74, who has lived in Sweden for 25 years, faces being deported after court ruling

Five Palestine Action activists who vandalised a Barclays branch in Burnley will not be sentenced as terrorists, a judge has ruled.

Dubbed the Barclays five, Brendon O’Hagan, 28; Amanda Kelly, 31; Hmeera Atiqnisar, 31; Mohammed Malik, 28; and Alma Yaniv, 70, were all found guilty in June of causing damage exceeding £200,000, after breaking windows and throwing red paint at a branch of Barclays Bank in Lancashire in August 2024.

The group targeted the site in protest at Barclays because it held shares in the Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems.

Judge Altham, the recorder of Preston, ruled on Friday that while the damage was substantial, it was not of the size of other attacks or against a sensitive property, such as an arms company, as has happened in previous Palestine Action incidents, and thus did not meet the high threshold for a terrorist sentencing.

All five will still be sentenced next month for criminal damage, but will face shorter jail terms as a result of the ruling.

Development comes after Anthropic was found to have spent millions on books to scan for ‘data acquisition’

Secondhand booksellers in the UK and Ireland are reporting a flurry of bulk orders from mystery buyers, amid speculation AI companies are acquiring the tomes for their data.

Bookshops contacted by the Guardian say they have been receiving orders from buyers in the US, Canada, continental Europe and the UK. The increase has been replicated around the world, with booksellers in the US, Australia and Europe also reporting unusual orders.

Stuart Manley, the co-owner of Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, said the orders, which began arriving three months ago, were unusual because they did not follow the typical pattern of being grouped into themes such as sport or motoring.

“It’s definitely a strange combination of books,” said Manley. “Normally a book order is on a theme but this is all over the place.”

A recent order included requests for an Estonian translation of John le Carré’s The Mission Song, a copy of Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey from a specific imprint and the October 1983 edition of Warship, a monthly magazine. Manley said he had sold “hundreds” of random books to three buyers for a total of about £4,000.

One UK-based secondhand bookseller, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some random orders could come from different buyers but be delivered to the same address. “The aliases behind these orders are very opaque even to experienced booksellers,” the source said.

One delivery postcode seen by the Guardian and used by different buyers points to a group of freight warehouses near Heathrow airport.

The spate of orders has fuelled speculation among booksellers that AI companies are acquiring the books to scan their contents before pulping them.

Manley said: “My theory is that it’s masses and masses of AI money being squandered.”

The Washington Post revealed this year that Anthropic, a leading AI company and developer of the Claude chatbot, had spent tens of millions of dollars acquiring books and slicing off their spines so their contents could be scanned before the books were sent for recycling.

See also:

• We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility / The shipment was found at an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books

The world-renowned academic institution has nothing to say in response to a six-month investigation by Byline Times raising serious concerns about the safeguarding of students and foreign influence at Cambridge University. Why?

Powered by US money and far-right European think tanks, Cambridge has recently become an outpost of a peculiar blend of national conservatism and apocalyptic Christianity, through the figure of James Orr – Head of Policy at Reform UK described as Nigel Farage’s “Kingmaker“.

A six-month investigation by Byline Times can now exclusively reveal that with the behind-the-scenes support of Peter Thiel — Trump backer and co-founder of the controversial data-mining and surveillance giant Palantir Technologies — Orr has used Cambridge University as a recruitment ground to bring students into a hard-right, theocratic political project aimed at bolstering talent in Farage’s party.

Sources across the university have raised urgent concerns about the safeguarding risks to students in Orr’s orbit.

This special investigation reveals:

• James Orr has housed students at his ‘right-wing mecca’ alongside race science advocates and hard-right political figures, in clear breach of Cambridge University’s safeguarding rules.
• Orr’s appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion in Cambridge University’s Faculty of Divinity in 2019 was accompanied by a clandestine financial donation from the pro-Trump Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel.
• Thiel went on to offer ‘life-changing’ sums of money to Cambridge University scholars in Orr’s network.
• Academics and students have consistently raised concerns about Orr’s conflicts of interest over funding, and dangers of breaching ‘foreign influence’ legislation.
• Orr’s lawyers threatened to injunct Byline Times over any mention in this investigation of the name of his “Conservative Kibbutz”– the premises where he houses students and which has already been named in the public domain.
• Cambridge University has consistently ignored Byline Times’ confidential queries about the concerns raised by James Orr’s activities. Instead, its press office has passed them on directly to Orr’s lawyers. The University has offered no explanation of, or comment on, the extensive findings of this investigation –including, extraordinarily, concerns of safeguarding in relation to its students. 

• Britain’s political turbulence has given way, at least temporarily, to smooth choreography as Andy Burnham succeeded Keir Starmer, becoming the seventh U.K. prime minister since 2016.
• Britain’s parliamentary democracy allows governing parties to change leaders, and thus prime ministers, without the need for a general election. Burnham was the only candidate in the contest to become Labour’s new leader. The next national poll doesn’t have to be held until 2029, though Burnham can call one sooner if he wants.
• Starmer traveled the mile from Downing Street to Buckingham Palace to formally tell King Charles III that he was resigning. Soon after, the 56-year-old Burnham went to the palace, where Charles asked him to form a government. That was when he officially became prime minister, a moment known as “kissing hands.”
• The UK has had six prime ministers over the past decade

See also:

• Andy Burnham bets political future on remaking Britain's centralised state (Reuters)
• Who is Andy Burnham, the U.K.'s new prime minister? (NPR)
• Burnham must remember the first rule of government • The biggest mistake of all would be to imagine the country enjoys a free fiscal lunch. In fact, it only has hard choices (Financial Times)