The annual cost of Britain rejoining the European Union is still being quoted, even by committed Eurosceptics, at around £25 billion. The budget arithmetic now coming out of Brussels suggests it would be far higher.

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The European Commission, the EU’s unelected executive body, has proposed a 2028–34 Multiannual Financial Framework worth 1.26 percent of EU gross national income (GNI). Britain’s latest GNI stands at £3.0 trillion (~$4.0 trillion). Apply the Commission’s own ratio to that figure, and the indicative gross burden is about £38 billion (~$50.3 billion) a year, or roughly £730 million (~$970 million) a week. That calculation sits upstream of receipts, the precise EU financing formula, and whatever terms an accession deal might eventually contain.

Significantly, a returning Britain would not receive the old rebate on its budget contributions secured by Margaret Thatcher as compensation for historic overpayment. This partial refund was negotiated in 1984, defended for decades, gradually eroded, and disappeared altogether with Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. Nothing in the bloc’s current budget proposals, and nothing in the politics of Brussels, suggests those terms would be restored.

Preferential accession arrangements on issues such as committing to eventually adopting the euro currency are equally unlikely.

For some reason I’m currently the most realistic source of information on the subject of Britain rejoining the EU.

Even the most ardent Eurosceptics are quoting a £25bn annual rejoining figure.

THAT IS NOT TRUE.

IT IS WAY HIGHER.

Let me explain.

Brussels has proposed a… pic.twitter.com/WCtNfcm8IQ

— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) October 2, 2026

The Numbers.

The figures that follow from the gross calculation, once the absence of a rebate is allowed for, are roughly:

— £40 billion a year
— £3.3 billion a month
— £770 million a week
— £110 million a day

An inflation adjustment between now and the start of the new budget period takes the annual cost to about £42 billion (~$55.6 billion)  by 2028. These are membership costs only, describing only the scale of the contribution Britain would be expected to make toward the EU budget, not the wider consequences of membership, which would require giving up independent trade deals and an additional share of Britain’s fishing stocks, among other concessions.

The weekly number is worth dwelling on because it is the unit the public already understands from the EU referendum campaign. £770 million a week is more than double the famous £350 million cost advertised by the Vote Leave campaign in 2016. EU grants, subsidies, or research funding might reduce the net figure, but they would not return it to the £25 billion range still being cited.

What the Membership Fee Leaves Out.

Rejoining the EU on ordinary terms would reimpose the bloc’s Free Movement migration regime on Britain. This carries immense and unpredictable fiscal, housing, and infrastructure costs that never appear in the GNI contribution. The National Pulse has separately modeled those migration effects; the budget’s cash cost is independent of them and must be met either way.

As mentioned above, reaccession would also require a commitment to eventual adoption of the euro. Britain would surrender its independent monetary policy and absorb the transition costs of a currency change. State aid rules would once again limit the support that governments can offer to national industries. Steel, energy, automotive production, and defense supply chains have all been treated as strategic priorities since 2020. EU competition law restricts that kind of support.

The Terms of the Argument.

The “rejoiner” case has so far been able to lean on lower estimates of potential British budget contributions,  and on the claim that Brexit’s opportunity costs exceed any subscription fee. The European Commission’s 1.26 percent proposal, applied to a £3 trillion GNI and stripped of the old rebate, changes the baseline. £40 billion a year, £770 million a week, and £110 million a day are the numbers that now have to be answered before the conversation moves on to borders, the currency, or industrial policy.

To put these figures in context, spending on Britain’s overcrowded prisons is only around £8.4 billion annually. Spending on the courts, which are also extremely overburdened, stands at £2.538 billion. Border Force funding stands at only around £730 million, and funding for the Immigration Enforcement directorate is somewhere around £470 million.

£40 billion a year as an annual subscription fee for EU membership is therefore an extremely high price to pay, especially considering Britain currently has a longstanding trade deficit with the EU and would be required to surrender sovereignty on issues ranging from immigration and international trade to state aid and fisheries alongside the fee.

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For over a quarter of a century, the political establishment and the corporate media have tried to convince the public, and themselves, that Nigel Farage is a temporary anomaly. Yet time and again, the undisputed godfather of Brexit and British populism has defied their expectations.

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Here are seven times Nigel Farage rewrote the rules of Western politics:

2009: Breaking the Two-Party Monopoly.

Before the 2009 European Parliament elections, the conventional wisdom dictated that third parties in the United Kingdom were relegated to perpetual protest status. Operating within a tightly controlled media environment, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) under Farage weaponized the European stage to bypass the Westminster gatekeepers.

Earning 13 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), Farage achieved a historic first and pushed then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s governing Labour Party into a humiliating third place. It was a tremendous breakthrough; just two election cycles prior, UKIP secured just one percent of the national vote. It was the first structural crack in Britain’s century-old Labour-Conservative duopoly, proving that a disciplined populist message could break the establishment’s grip.

2014: The First Nationwide Victory for an Insurgent Party.

If 2009 proved the duopoly could be wounded, 2014 proved they could be beaten outright. Farage marched UKIP into the 2014 European Parliament elections and secured an outright nationwide victory, taking 24 seats and 27.5 percent of the vote.

This was an electoral earthquake. It marked the first time since December 1910 that a party other than Labour or the Conservatives had won the popular vote in a nationwide British election. Farage had taken a fringe independence movement and transformed it into the most potent electoral force in the country, completely upending the institutional calculus in London.

The 2014 By-Elections: Forcing Cameron’s Hand.

The Westminster commentariat insisted that Farage’s success was confined to Brussels and could never translate to the First Past the Post (FPTP) system used to elect national lawmakers to the House of Commons. Farage killed this myth by orchestrating high-profile defections to UKIP by Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs) Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless.

In the subsequent Clacton and Rochester & Strood by-elections (special elections), Farage’s ground game delivered two devastating blows, securing UKIP’s first-ever parliamentary election victories. Terrified of a total collapse on his right flank as he led a fragile coalition government, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron was panicked into formally promising the public a referendum on leaving the European Union in his 2015 election platform.

2016: Defeating the Globalists.

On June 23, 2016, Farage achieved his most impossible victory. The campaign to keep Britain inside the European Union deployed the full force of “Project Fear.” Farage faced down the entire British state apparatus, the leadership of every major political party, corporate boardrooms, the BBC, international banking cartels, and even the direct intervention from U.S. President Barack Obama.

Against all odds, the British public voted for Brexit. Farage’s decades-long crusade successfully severed Britain from the bureaucratic clutches of Brussels. Within hours, David Cameron resigned in disgrace, his political career permanently extinguished by the populist wave Farage had spent a lifetime building.

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2019: The Six-Week Resurrection That Saved Brexit.

By 2019, the Westminster “uniparty” had successfully gridlocked the Brexit implementation process, deliberately attempting to dilute and derail the 2016 mandate. Believing Farage was safely retired, Prime Minister Theresa May—who had voted to remain in the EU—assumed Farage, who had retired as UKIP leader after his referendum win, was now a spent force.

She was wrong. In an unprecedented display of political agility, Farage launched the Brexit Party from scratch. Within a staggering six-week window, he built a nationwide infrastructure that wiped the floor with the establishment parties in the 2019 European Parliament elections. The sheer force of this electoral execution shattered the legislative deadlock, forced the near-immediate resignation of Theresa May, and compelled the Conservative Party to finally deliver Brexit.

2024: Cracking the Westminster First-Past-the-Post Barrier.

For years, establishment media figures mocked Farage for failing to win a Westminster seat, relying on the structural biases of Britain’s national elections to keep him out. But in 2024, with the Brexit Party having been transformed into Reform UK, Farage mounted a high-velocity campaign that shattered the Westminster glass ceiling once and for all. In 2019, the Brexit Party had stood down in constituencies held by the Conservatives on a promise that they would “get Brexit done,” even though the Conservatives refused to reciprocate in Labour-held seats where the Brexit Party had the better chance of winning.

Farage was comfortably elected as the MP for Clacton, leading a disciplined vanguard of Reform MPs directly into the House of Commons. By establishing a permanent beachhead inside the palace walls, Farage proved that Reform was not just a pressure group, but could become a legitimate government-in-waiting. The Conservatives, who had delivered a half-measures Brexit and record-breaking immigration, hemorrhaged voters to Farage’s party and suffered their worst defeat in a century.

Post-2024: Toppling Starmer and Topping National Polls.

Following the 2024 elections, which saw Labour return to power on a low turnout after years of Conservative failure on Brexit and immigration, Reform first displaced the centuries-old Conservatives as Britain’s leading right-wing party and then began regularly topping national opinion polls, drawing massive support from both disillusioned working-class Labor voters and abandoned Conservatives.

The tipping point arrived during the English local elections in 2026, where Reform inflicted historic losses on the incumbent Labour Party. Suffering catastrophic losses in former industrial strongholds, the sheer scale of the Reform surge induced an immediate leadership crisis within Labour, ultimately toppling Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer from power. He was at least the third prime minister to be brought down by Farage; arguably the fourth, including Rishi Sunak in 2019.

The Future.

Farage about to take the stage. Don’t miss this. https://t.co/y5wBcRFN6T

— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) October 1, 2026

Institutional panic over the rise of Reform is palpable, and the establishment’s playbook is becoming increasingly transparent. According to data analyzed by The National Pulse using recent YouGov MRP figures, corporate-backed splinter parties—such as the Rupert Lowe-led, Elon Musk-backed “Restore Britain”—fail to win a single seat of their own in a general election, but threaten to split the right-leaning vote just enough to hand dozens of seats back to the left-leaning uniparty.

Yet history shows that artificial, top-down political experiments can rarely duplicate the organic success of movements like Farage’s. As Britain prepares for its next constitutional turning point, the data makes one thing clear: betting against Nigel Farage is a losing proposition.

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As the United States celebrates its semiquincentennial, popular memory naturally turns toward the triumphant moments in the Revolutionary War—moments like George Washington crossing the Delaware, the British surrender at Saratoga, and the decisive victory at Yorktown. Yet some of the greatest chapters in the story of America are not the Patriots’ victories, but the survival of their fragile experiment in the dark autumns of the late 1770s.

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Yesterday, for instance, was the anniversary of some of the lowest moments of the Revolution in 1776 and 1777, marked by crises of faith and governance. One saw Washington in despair, the other saw the physical eviction of the Continental Congress from its capital. Yet these low moments became the catalysts that forced a fractured alliance of thirteen colonies to organize their fledgling country under its very first constitution.

September 30, 1776: Washington Hits Rock Bottom.

By the final day of September 1776, General Washington was trapped in a nightmare. In the preceding weeks, the British had smashed the Continental Army at Long Island, seized Manhattan, and sent the Americans into a disorganized, demoralized retreat. Raw militia forces were panicking and fleeing the field at the mere sight of the redcoats. Supplies were virtually exhausted, and the army was on the verge of melting away as winter approached.

Pushed to his limits, Washington sat down on September 30, 1776, to write a deeply candid, private letter to his cousin, Mount Vernon estate manager Lund Washington. “In confidence I tell you that I was never in such an unhappy, divided state since I was born,” he wrote, confessing that he was “wearied to death all day with a variety of perplexing circumstances.” The Commander-in-Chief feared his reputation would be ruined by an army incapable of standing its ground, yet he knew he could not resign: “If I fall, I shall fall with a property that will give me no respectability… and yet, if I do not satisfy the public expectation, I must expect to be the scapegoat,” he said.

The general turned the remainder of his letter to providing meticulous instructions on how to repair the fireplaces and chimneys at Mount Vernon, an escape for a man who genuinely believed he might be facing the ruin of his cause.

September 30, 1777: The Continental Congress Is Exiled.

A year on, the crisis had reached through the military front lines and into the halls of government. Following a crushing victory at the Battle of Brandywine, the British Army under General William Howe successfully outmaneuvered Washington and marched into Philadelphia.

The capital had fallen. The delegates of the Continental Congress were forced to pack their legislative papers onto wagons and flee into the countryside in the dead of night. On September 30, after days of exhausting travel, the fugitive delegates crossed the Susquehanna River and reassembled in the small, frontier town of York, Pennsylvania. Gathering in the modest brick courthouse, they declared York the temporary capital of the United States. They were a government in exile, isolated and operating entirely on a handshake agreement between thirteen separate, sovereign states.

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The Articles of Confederation.

It was the sense of fragility created by this flight into exile, perhaps reinforced by the memory of Washington’s near-collapse a year prior, that altered the mindset of the delegates in York. For more than a year, Congress had bickered and stalled over how to formally bind the colonies together. Big states argued with small states over voting power; Northern merchants clashed with Southern planters over taxation and Western land claims.

But as the delegates looked around their cramped, temporary quarters in York, resolve hardened. They realized that a loose association of independent states could not survive a war against a global empire. They needed foreign alliances—specifically with France—and European powers would not sign treaties or lend millions to a rogue committee of politicians in hiding. They needed a legitimate, legally recognized government.

Spurred by the desperation of their situation, Congress threw themselves into the stalled draft of a national constitution. Working through the bitter cold of that autumn in York, the delegates compromised on state sovereignty, representation, and war powers.

Less than two months after arriving as fugitives, on November 15, 1777, the Congress officially adopted the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.

The Legacy of the Dark Autumn.

The Articles of Confederation were imperfect. To avoid creating a new tyranny like the British monarchy, the writers created a central government that was unable to levy taxes directly or easily enforce national laws. A decade later, it would be replaced by the current U.S. Constitution.

Nevertheless, the Articles were an enormous step forward out of the dark autumns of 1776 and 1777. They legally transformed a rebellious colonial alliance into a singular political entity recognized by international law. They provided the legal framework that kept the army funded, secured the French alliance, and guided the nation to victory at Yorktown.

The United States was not forged in a moment of easy triumph. It was hammered out in a drafty courthouse by fleeing politicians, under the protection of a Commander-in-Chief who was wearied to death, but refused to give up.

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President Donald J. Trump is making moves to tie congressional representation to the total number of citizens and legal immigrants living in each state, with illegal aliens discounted. New polling data reveals that a majority of Democrat voters are in favor of changing the current system.

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Under the current system, the number of seats in the House of Representatives for each state is determined by the state’s population, including not just citizens and legal immigrants, but also illegal aliens. Crucially, this gives extra seats to states with high concentrations of illegals and noncitizens, which are often centered in Democrat sanctuary cities.

A new Census Bureau proposal, released on September 10, seeks to radically change the existing structure by counting only citizens and lawful permanent residents when determining a state’s population for the purpose of congressional apportionment in the next census in 2030.

President Trump has been arguing for changes to the system since his first term, noting in 2020 that the current system essentially encourages and rewards states that allow violations of U.S. immigration law by counting illegal aliens in the census and increasing their power in Congress.

Under the 14th Amendment, congressional seats are detemined by the “whole number of persons in each State” but, the Trump administration has consistently argued that while in practice that has counted noncitizens and illegals, the amendment itself “does not specifically define which persons must be included for the purposes of apportionment and requires only that Representatives be apportioned according to what has long been understood to mean the ‘inhabitants’ of each State.”

Even Democrat Voters Support the Change. 

Polling released on September 30 by McLaughlin & Associates reveals that of 1,000 likely voters, 65 percent support President Trump’s proposed changes to the congressional apportionment base. The highest support, 80 percent, comes from Republicans, but even a majority of Democrats, 54 percent, agree with the changes.

The results of the polling also revealed that 75 percent of voters believe that those responding to the census should indicate whether or not they are citizens of the United States, a question that would make it much easier to allocate congressional seats under Trump’s proposed changes.

 Democrat Politicians Admit Counting Illegals Benefits Them.

Some Democrat politicians have been quite open and frank about how counting illegal aliens in their areas benefits them in the form of redistricting.

In 2021, Democratic New York Rep. Yvette Clarke made a case for resettling Haitian migrants in her district, saying, “I need more people in my district, but just for redistricting purposes,” during a meeting of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Democrat Yvette Clarke said the quiet part out loud. They want to flood our country with illegals just for redistricting. This is why they want open borders! pic.twitter.com/VxtRoe23Yw

— Heritage Action (@Heritage_Action) April 19, 2026

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How Trump’s Reform Could Affect the States.

Given that the changes will only be made to the 2030 census, Trump’s policy will have no immediate effect on Congress and will have no impact on the upcoming midterm elections in November. However, projections have been estimated by redistricting researcher Jonathan Cervas, who published an independent study suggesting that California, Illinois, and Texas would each lose a seat, while Michigan, Tennessee, and Wisconsin would each gain a seat.

Cervas states that overall, the policy would likely benefit Republicans, as the seats gained are in states that voted for President Trump in 2024, even though, because of its high population of illegal aliens, the Republican stronghold of Texas would lose a seat. California, projected to lose a seat according to Cervas’s projections, was already set to lose seats by 2030 due to population trends, with many leaving the state in recent years due to high taxes, housing costs, and a generally high cost of living.

A citizen-only policy, which goes beyond the Trump administration’s proposal to apportion seats based on citizens and legally resident foreigners, would have far different results, and give Republicans a far clearer advantage, according to projections from the American Redistricting Project.

Under a citizen-only counting system, blue states would lose the most seats, with California losing six seats instead of one, New York losing two, Illinois losing one, and New Jersey and Rhode Island each losing one. Florida and Texas would gain two seats, and Ohio, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona would all gain a seat each.

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The Falkland Islands are British. They have been British for 260 years. Yet this has not stopped successive governments in Argentina from repeatedly claiming sovereignty of the southern Atlantic islands. President Javier Milei has become just the latest Argentine leader to claim the islands, referred to as “Las Malvinas” in Argentina, at the latest United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan.

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Milei’s newest claim to the islands includes threats of international legal action over the development of an offshore oilfield named Sea Lion, which lies north of the islands and nowhere near Argentina’s national waters, more than 400 miles from the Argentine coast. Discovered in 2010, the oilfields are currently being developed, with extractions of around 50,000 barrels of oil per day scheduled to begin in 2028.

“If in 2 weeks the United Kingdom does not halt the illegitimate exploitation, we will go to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. THE MALVINAS ARE ARGENTINE, and they are defended with facts, not words,” Milei wrote on X on September 28.

Yet despite Milei’s claims, the history of the Falklands, from the first European to discover them until today, shows they are fundamentally British in character.

Found By an Englishman and Named By an Englishman, After An Englishman.

English navigator John Davis is widely considered the first European to ever set eyes on the Falklands in 1592, although it was not until nearly a hundred years later, in 1690, that English captain John Strong actually landed on the remote islands. Strong was the one to name them the Falklands, after Anthony Cary, the 5th Viscount Falkland, who served as a Member of Parliament at the time.

Settlements on the island were not established until the latter part of the 18th century, with France establishing Port Louis on East Falkland in 1764. Britain asserted possession of West Falkland for King George III in 1765, establishing Port Egmont a year later. France later gave up its settlements in the Falklands, handing them over to Spain, which managed to briefly expel the British in 1770. The British returned shortly after, but left again in 1774 due to economic issues.

Argentina, during this time, did not exist as an independent state, and was still part of the enormous Spanish Empire in Latin America. Spain abandoned the Falklands in 1811, and Colonel David Jewett, an American-born mercenary, claimed them for the United Provinces of the River Plate in 1820. The United Provinces included modern-day Argentina, but it was not an exact predecessor state, including portions of other modern-day countries, including all of Uruguay and southern Bolivia.

Britain maintained that the Falklands remained British and sent a warship to the islands in 1833, expelling the Argentine military garrison that had been placed there a year prior. Argentina has claimed that Britain also expelled civilians, but British sources indicate that the majority of the just 30 or so people living in the Falklands at the time stayed there.

An agreement was signed by both Argentina and Britain in 1850 settling the differences between the two nations over issues like the Falklands. This peace was to last nearly a hundred years, with only one diplomatic complaint by Argentina about the islands in 1888. Britain’s rule was unquestioned, and virtually the entire resident population of the Falklands was British.

A Failing State Declares a Hopeless War.

After the Second World War, aside from giving refuge to some of the most notorious members of Hitler’s Third Reich, Argentina became plagued with government instability. This occurred particularly following the death of President Juan Peron in 1974. Peron, who is still seen as a major political figure in Argentina and a source of inspiration for many of its presidents, had been overthrown in 1955, but returned to power in 1973 after almost two decades in exile, only to die a year later.

By the 1980s, the country was no longer ruled by a charismatic strongman like Peron, but a military junta of assorted generals and admirals who had overthrown Peron’s wife, Isabel Peron, in 1976. Under the junta, Argentina’s economy deteriorated sharply, with runaway inflation and a severe recession in 1981.

On April 2, 1982, seeking to shore up support, the junta decided to invade the Falkland Islands.

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The Royal Navy Sails to Victory.

Shortly after the Argentine invasion, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 502, demanding that Argentina leave the islands. When this was ignored, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dispatched a large naval task force on a voyage of around 8,000 miles. The British declared an exclusion zone around the islands, warning the Argentine navy to stay out of it.

On May 2, the British nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror fired three Mark 8 torpedoes at the Argentinian cruiser ARA Belgrano, a former American naval vessel from the Second World War. Two struck the ship, sinking her and killing 323 sailors on board, a full half of Argentina’s total military deaths during the conflict. While some argued that the ship had not been in the exclusion zone, the British navy countered, saying the Belgrano had been part of a pincer movement against British forces. Regardless, the sinking led to Argentina removing nearly all of its surface fleet from the theatre for the remainder of the war. In retaliation, the Argentinians sank the British destroyer HMS Sheffield on May 10, using French-made Exocet missile systems. Twenty British sailors died.

British forces finally landed on the Falklands proper later in May, making amphibious landings from May 21 to 25. On May 28, British forces fought a decisive battle at Goose Green, and later surrounded the Falklands’ occupied capital, Port Stanley, on June 11. Just days later, on June 14, Argentine forces surrendered, returning the islands to Britain and liberating the local population.

On July 3, 1982, Prime Minister Thatcher addressed the victory, saying:

When we started out, there were the waverers and the fainthearts. The people who thought that Britain could no longer seize the initiative for herself.

The people who thought we could no longer do the great things which we once did. Those who believed that our decline was irreversible—that we could never again be what we were.

There were those who would not admit it—even perhaps some here today—people who would have strenuously denied the suggestion but—in their heart of hearts—they too had their secret fears that it was true: that Britain was no longer the nation that had built an Empire and ruled a quarter of the world.

Well they were wrong. The lesson of the Falklands is that Britain has not changed and that this nation still has those sterling qualities which shine through our history.

The Men (and Women) Who Cry ‘Malvinas.’

Since the British victory in the Falklands War, multiple Presidents of Argentina have addressed the Falkland Islands and their sovereignty. This tends to occur when Argentina faces severe domestic problems, such as hyperinflation or a recession. Former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is the best-known, claiming the Falklands were a “colonialist enclave” in 2012. Fernández went even further in 2011, convincing other Mercosur (a trading bloc of South American nations) members to refuse to allow vessels with the Falkland Islands flag into their ports.

The escalation from President Kirchner was the greatest since the buildup to the Falklands War, and in response, Britain took steps to put an end to the question of sovereignty: they asked the Falklanders what they wanted.

The Falklanders Choose Britain.

In March 2013, the Falkland Islands held a vote on whether the residents wanted to remain part of Britain as an Overseas Territory. With a turnout of 92 percent, the vote was 1,513 to three. This  99.8 percent vote to remain British remains one of the most lopsided votes on such a question in the 21st century.

“I’m very happy. Everyone has come together to express ourselves. I think this is massively significant. It’s important to show how much we want to stay British,” Falklander Kyle Buiggs said at the time. Another local resident, Barry Nielsen from Stanely, said, “We are British and that’s the way we want to stay.”

Argie Bargie.

In response to the referendum vote, President Kirchner at the time simply said that the views of the island residents did not matter. The current President, Javier Milei, believes the same thing, and has explicitly stated the vote does not count, accusing the Falklanders of being colonists.

As with the junta, Milei’s rallying cry of “Las Malvinas” comes amid economic crisis and declining popularity at home. For Milei, like so many other Argentinian leaders, the islands are just a distraction from failure.

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On September 25, Tanweer “Tan” Ikram, Deputy Chief Magistrate of England and Wales, refused bail to Daniel Thomas, the anti-immigration activist better known as Danny Tommo, at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court. Thomas has pleaded not guilty to criminal damage over an allegation that he punctured a small boat used by organized criminals to ferry migrants across the English Channel. The migrants had already left it, with only one rescue worker who appeared to be in no danger still aboard. Nevertheless, Ikram said he was “satisfied there is a real possibility of an immediate custodial sentence in this case.” The trial is listed for March 2027.

With far more serious criminals, many of them migrants, being granted bail on a regular basis, the decision reignited the longstanding debate in Britain over “two-tier” justice, with Ikram, in particular, often being accused of treating suspects perceived as politically incorrect or right-leaning with disproportionate harshness. Significantly, he is one of the most senior magistrates in the country, a prominent diversity official, a member of the commission that selects judges, and an adviser to a Pakistani organization that attacked Reform MP and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman for calling out Pakistani grooming gangs.

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Beginnings.

Tanweer Ikram was born in Slough, west of London, to Pakistani parents. A 2018 profile in Counsel magazine, unearthed by independent journalist Steven Edginton, reveals that he grew up partly in Pakistan and then had to “re-integrate during his primary school years.”

His early career was not promising: he switched to law from engineering, graduated with a lower second-class degree, and initially failed to pass the Bar. He entered the legal profession eventually, however, admitting to using his ethnicity as “a bit of an advantage.”

Soon after reaching the bench, he became the Deputy Lead Diversity and Community Relations Judge. Under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, he was made a CBE—Commander of the Order of the British Empire—“for services to judicial diversity.” In December 2023, still under the Conservatives, he joined the Judicial Appointments Commission for a three-year term, allowing him to help select new judges.

EXCLUSIVE: Tan Ikram, deputy chief magistrate, is an adviser to a Pakistani organisation that referred to “so-called ‘grooming gangs’” and called Suella Braverman’s comments about British-Pakistani gangs “reprehensible”.

My investigation reveals:

• He targeted Bradford to…

— Steven Edginton (@StevenEdginton) September 30, 2026

“We Need You.”

On July 15, 2024, speaking to Women in Law Initiative Pakistan, Ikram described a recruitment trip to Bradford, a city in northern England known for its large Pakistani population. “Bradford is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the UK. [There are] lots and lots and lots of Pakistani practitioners in practice in that area, and I specifically went there to reach out to that particular group of lawyers,” Ikram said, adding: “I’ve worked with the British Pakistani Professionals Forum… to try to reach out to Muslim Pakistani background lawyers to try to encourage them to apply.”

The British Pakistan Foundation lists him as an adviser, and in a 2021 foundation webinar, he stated: “The judiciary has to represent the community it serves. We want there to be true diversity in the judiciary and as an old adage goes, we need you.”

Significantly, the foundation’s public line on Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs in Britain is highly contentious. In 2023, after Suella Braverman, then Home Secretary, spoke about the involvement of British-Pakistani men in group sexual exploitation of girls, the foundation objected to what it called “so-called ‘grooming gangs.’” In an open letter to then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, it wrote: “The divisive and dangerous way in which the Home Secretary is seeking to portray all British Pakistani males and insinuating that the community is complicit in their actions is reprehensible.”

Fiona Goddard, a survivor of Pakistani-led grooming gangs, told Edginton: “I find Tan Ikram’s association with the British Pakistan Foundation deeply concerning as a survivor of Pakistani grooming gangs.” She added: “To call them ‘so-called grooming gangs’ is an insult to all survivors. Why is a senior judge connected to such a partisan group?”

Ikram is also listed as visiting faculty at the Pakistan College of Law. At an event in Pakistan in October 2018, he complained to an audience of Pakistani politicians and jurists about media attacks on the judiciary for its rulings against Brexit during the EU withdrawal negotiations, complaining, “One cannot underestimate the power of [the] media, but problematically the Government stayed silent, giving into the right of [the] media’s freedom of speech.”

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‘Two-Tier’ Tan.

Ikram is most infamous for what his critics perceive as “two-tier” sentencing, handing down draconian punishments to alleged racists while treating ethnic minority terrorists with a light touch.

In February 2024, he handed non-custodial sentences to three women convicted of a terrorism offense for glorifying Hamas paragliders after the October 7 massacres in Israel. “You crossed the line, but it would have been fair to say that emotions ran very high on this issue,” he told them, confirming that he had “decided not to punish” the defendants.

Soon afterward, it emerged that he had ‘liked’ a strident pro-Palestinian post on his LinkedIn account. He received a formal misconduct warning in June 2024.

In December 2024, he handed a suspended sentence to Victoria Thomas Bowen after she pleaded guilty to assault by beating and criminal damage for throwing a milkshake over Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK party. Farage said at the time, “We now live in a country where you can assault a Member of Parliament and not go to prison. The latest example of two-tier justice.”

In August 2023, Ikram acquitted transgender activist Sarah Jane Baker of intentionally encouraging an offense. Baker had told a rally: “If you see a TERF [Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist], punch them in the fucking face.” Ikram insisted that it was possible Baker had been seeking attention and publicity without intending anyone to act on the words.

Meanwhile, in June 2022, he handed a former police officer James Watts a 20-week prison sentence for sharing allegedly racist memes in a private WhatsApp group.

Setting the Tone.

As Deputy Lead Diversity and Community Relations Judge, Ikram helps oversee a national network of diversity judges. In 2018, he cited Labour lawmaker David Lammy’s review of racial disparity in the criminal justice system and asked: “Why is it that a country which prides itself on diversity, equality and justice has so many people of colour languishing in prisons?” He added: “We don’t reflect the face of the society that we serve.”

He has also organized meetings between Islamic clerics and judges, and discussed his Islamic faith in official channels.

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Ikram holds a leadership rank in the magistrates’ courts, a seat on the commission that chooses judges, and an advisory role at a foundation that downplays “so-called” grooming gangs. Coupled with his seemingly unequal treatment of the people appearing before him, many will question whether he is truly suitable for the bench.

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