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Downing Street rejects Witkoff’s description of Putin as a ‘humanitarian’

No 10 says Russian president ‘has killed thousands of people, both innocent Ukrainians and his own people’

Downing Street has rejected the description of Vladimir Putin as a “humanitarian” made by Donald Trump’s chief negotiator on the Ukraine war.

Steve Witkoff met the Russian president in St Petersburg on Wednesday as he sought to make a new push to end the invasion of Ukraine, with the US putting pressure on Kyiv to agree to a settlement.

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© Photograph: Kristina Solovyova/Reuters

© Photograph: Kristina Solovyova/Reuters

© Photograph: Kristina Solovyova/Reuters

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Burnham to become first PM to appear on Gogglebox in episode filmed at No 10

The PM is heard having a long discussion about crisps in the trailer to the show, which is in aid of Stand Up To Cancer

From ranking his favourite crisps in the pub to complaining about people watching TikToks out loud on the train, Andy Burnham has made efforts to show he has the common touch.

Now he will become the first prime minister to appear on the TV show Gogglebox, in a special charity episode on Friday.

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© Photograph: Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street

© Photograph: Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street

© Photograph: Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street

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Tax online sales more heavily to save high streets, Burnham urged

Exclusive: British Chambers of Commerce president calls for overhaul of business rates and greater powers for local leaders

Andy Burnham has been urged by one of his most senior former advisers to tax internet sales more heavily than in-store purchases to help “level the playing field” for struggling high streets.

As the prime minister and his chancellor, John Healey, prepare for their first budget next week, Andy Haldane joined calls for action to stop more shops closing across the UK.

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© Composite: Guardian Design

© Composite: Guardian Design

© Composite: Guardian Design

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How Middleton’s revival could be grist to the mill for Britain’s struggling towns

Turnaround initiated by Andy Burnham and led by Steve Coogan could provide blueprint for other neglected areas

The former England footballer Paul Scholes and the actor Steve Coogan stare out from beside a fish and chip shop in Middleton, near Manchester. Looming over a mural of the pair – and the whole town – is an enormous former cotton mill that powered its economy a century ago.

The deafening looms and spindles of Warwick Mill fell silent decades ago, replaced in recent years by TikTok “urban explorers” who share videos of themselves crawling through its abandoned shell.

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© Composite: Guardian Design

© Composite: Guardian Design

© Composite: Guardian Design

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The truth about Burnham’s Russia meddling claims in Brexit vote

Burnham’s Russia interference claim is a hoax to justify re-joining the EU and war prep.

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Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Still the preposterous “Russians are coming” narrative is being pushed in the UK. And yet this time it’s not from top military figures or those in the intelligence community, but the PM himself – albeit in a subtle way, days ahead of a first-ever UK-EU Summit. Andy Burnham, a man who you might think would be more at home on a used car lot than in the political arena, dropped a bombshell recently when he announced that he was told by the security services that Russia had in fact “sought to interfere” with the UK’s Brexit referendum of 2016. Remarkably, 10 years after the event, Britain’s own secret service have come up with such a conclusion when almost every single year previous to this announcement they have said the opposite. So what is really going on?

Burnham has a major challenge ahead. How does he stay in power and succeed at the polls against the Conservatives, who are growing, and Reform UK, which still holds an impressive support base, when he doesn’t actually have any policies himself to fix anything in broken Britain? His answer is to look backwards at the past and try to win voters’ hearts and minds by fixing it. Even if it doesn’t need fixing. One of the policy areas is Britain’s relationship with the EU and the possibility of another referendum to rejoin it, despite his promises to the contrary – which is, in part, where the statement about Russia is coming from. There is actually no evidence at all to suggest Russia interfered with the Brexit referendum, and even opposition MPs have asked him in recent days to provide it, to back up his sensational claims. Burnham is building a case to move the UK back to Brussels, and the lie about Russian interference is one component of that case. But it’s an important one.

On another parallel, he is aligned completely with the EU idea that all European member states should be spending much more on defence in preparation for a war with Russia. Like Merz and Macron, though, he too doesn’t mention to the British public that the impending war with Russia is one which is going to be manufactured entirely by him, Merz and Macron as part of a political renaissance to keep them and their support bases in power. The rationale isn’t very complicated. Successive governments have done terrible jobs on the economy, energy and investing in longer-term projects to create jobs. They have sold off everything that was worth selling and are now running their countries on an impossibly high borrowing model which even the most stupid know cannot continue. They also cannot afford the fallout of NATO collapsing and a scandal of Western officials exposed at skimming off billions from the Ukraine war racket when it ends – and so the Ukraine war must go on at all costs. They have, more or less, boxed themselves into the ‘Russia war’ plan.

Rather than wait for the economic meltdown and tyranny to take over most towns in the UK, in particular in the north, the elites like Burnham believe that a war – or as close to the imminent threat of one – will serve its purpose from distracting the angry crowds away from burning and looting and focus them on supposedly fighting for their own country. It’s a scam. And sadly, it’s one which seems to be working, as it is supported by the billionaires who own the media in the UK, so, broadly speaking, the working classes have swallowed the ‘war with Russia’ ruse.

Furthermore, the industrial military complex also gets a massively needed shot in the arm of public money which under normal circumstances would not be possible. Most of this is U.S. money, of course, but the UK has also a defence industry of its own which is in need of new cash. And as we have seen with Boris Johnson, it also works on the same ‘gratuity’ basis for paying off politicians huge amounts for helping with their orders. Part of the sweetener of getting the country to prepare for war with Russia is that the huge contracts that have to be given to the defence business also come with the same brown envelopes for those who presided over them. It beggars belief how our politicians in the UK have resisted so far not to bang on the Russian war drum more when the rewards are considerable.

There is nothing remarkable about our leaders any more – only that they are no longer leaders. Burnham has the on-screen charisma of a provincial school teacher whom you meet in a train compartment and instantly regret engaging in conversation, as he really has nothing to say. No new ideas. No new plans. He is stuck in the past and has no choice but to remain there while apparently fixing Britain. His problem is that the country and the world have changed and are rapidly changing. The EU that Britain left is not the same EU today. The economies of France and Germany are in tatters due to years of poor governance, atrocious foreign policy stunts like Ukraine, and too many poor domestic policy decisions that have backfired, like energy. The EU itself under von der Leyen has turned into an Orwellian superstate, corrupt to the core, which also has exactly the same scam to save their own political necks: war with Russia. The U.S. is in rapid decline, BRICS nations are emerging as the new global economic powerhouse to balance the old world order. All Burnham has is old ideas which belong in the past. And lies. Even his own ministers have admitted that there is no truth whatsoever in the Russian interference hoax, and yet he is peddling it, like an old comedian recycling someone else’s old jokes. The truth is that while Burnham is under some pressure from, in particular, Germany’s leader Merz, to push this narrative that the far right is funded by Russia (which of course works for Burnham in the UK as well), in reality the only ‘foreign interference’ is the dark power of the Israeli lobby and its cash in Westminster. And why doesn’t even one single UK journalist or commentator point out the patent hypocrisy of this election meddling accusation which all superpowers indulge in anyway? In 2014, the Americans boasted that they had spent $5bn USD on social media influencing in Ukraine to install a Westernised leader in power. Was that not “meddling”?

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Wanted: new No 10 adviser to help citizens deal with rise of AI

Andy Burnham advertises for policy experts in technology, economic growth and cost-of-living challenges

Andy Burnham is to recruit a number of advisers to plug gaps in No 10, including an expert on how AI will affect society.

The roles advertised by Downing Street give a glimpse into the biggest challenges facing the prime minister – and what he has decided to prioritise.

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© Photograph: Zeynep Demir/Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Zeynep Demir/Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Zeynep Demir/Anadolu/Getty Images

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