The lawyers challenging Palestine Action’s proscription faced sustained pressure. The government’s case for the ban received a fraction of that scrutiny.
Nima Akram
Andrew Gilligan has worked at the BBC, the Telegraph, the Sunday Times, City Hall and Downing Street. Today he writes for The Spectator and Policy Exchange, and his main subject is British Muslims. This dossier sets out his career, what he writes, what the NewsCord Watchdog found in it and the people he has written about.
Nima Akram
On Monday Shabana Mahmood told MPs that the right to live in Britain for good must now be earned. Her rules sort people by their salary and by how they got here, and they apply to more than 500,000 people already living here. Kemi Badenoch proposed most of it first. Andy Burnham's Labour government is the one doing it.
Nima Akram
In 115 of 199 English-language election reports we checked, Palestinian citizens of Israel were only ever "Arabs". Every leading candidate ran on denying Palestinians a state, a say in government or a home in Gaza. Here is what they posted, in their own words.
Nima Akram
We examined 920 headlines about El-Sayed from 141 outlets and 740 stored articles. Fox and the Post carried the smear from August onwards and almost never told their readers it had nothing behind it. The charts compare headline subjects, who made the allegations and whether the articles assessed the evidence.
Nima Akram
In our English-language sample, 35.1% of Brazil result headlines included the loser’s challenge, against 26.7% for Ecuador. Sky put Bolsonaro’s rejection in its headline and González’s below it. CBS buried the fact that both Brazilian campaigns had asked for extra voting time.
Nima Akram
In December 2024 the Health Secretary met the Board of Deputies, whose constitution commits it to "advance Israel's security, welfare and standing", and the Jewish Medical Association asked him for IHRA. Ten months later the NHS adopted it, and the review went to Lord Mann, whose office a charity runs on £420,000 of uncompeted government grants. We followed the money.
Nima Akram
The government said the man who wrote its antisemitism review was independent, with no conflict of interest. He was being paid by a government agency. In 2005 he singled out Muslim schools as a challenge to "our coherence as a nation", and a charity whose one firm policy is opposing boycotts of Israel has named him on its council since at least 2016. We followed the money.
Nima Akram
Sir David Bell's review used it to say a view held by 45% of British adults, that Israel treats Palestinians like the Nazis treated Jews, could be antisemitic. It was committed to the definition before it heard any evidence. A charity whose one firm policy is opposing boycotts of Israel lists Bell on its council. Four of 37 reports told readers what the definition says about Israel.
Nima Akram
Henry Hopwood-Phillips pleaded guilty in June. We can find no report of it until a Daily Mail story about Michael Gove's former partner on 13 October, and by that evening the Mail had rewritten its line about The Critic. The Critic loses about £1 million a year and stays open on its owner's money. It has not said a word.
Green Party members voted 1,022 to 813 that Zionism is racism. The Telegraph printed 'hunted down' as Lubna Speitan's words though they came from an anonymous X account, headlined a 'good friend' nobody named, and left out that her legal challenge made the Met look again at war crimes accusations against Britons who served in Gaza. By Nima Akram.
Nima Akram
Tom Watson, Lord Watson of Wyre Forest, has been paid by Palantir since November 2024, registered as a member of its Public Services Advisory Board. He voted 240 times in the House of Lords while it paid him, 30 of them on the Crime and Policing Bill while Palantir chased a £50m Met contract, and when he spoke on the data bill he declared UK Music, not Palantir. On 18 September 2026 Palantir made him senior vice president to fight the campaign to drop its £330m NHS contract at the February 2027 break clause. His register of interests now reads one line: exempt from registration. He keeps the title, the peerage and the Labour whip. The Code of Conduct says none of it broke a rule. That is the problem, and the piece says where the power to fix it sits: the chief whip, the Conduct Committee and the Health Secretary.
Nima Akram
Ben Delo gave Reform £36m on 11 September 2026 and Christopher Harborne matched it the next day. Delo pleaded guilty to a US money-laundering control offence in 2022 and was pardoned by Trump; Harborne owns around 12 per cent of Tether and his undeclared £5m gift to Farage is under investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Reform says the money only levels the playing field with Labour and the Conservatives. We pulled every registered donation since 2017 from the Electoral Commission: Reform was already out-raising both parties, 2026 is now the biggest fundraising year any British party has recorded, and about 90 per cent of Reform's money since the election comes from two men. With charts, the Harborne ledger, the crypto bill that vanished from Reform's website, and the Westminster building Delo funds where Rupert Lowe drafts mass deportation.
Nima Akram
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