Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Nature under British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, told a fringe meeting at the ruling Labour Party’s ongoing annual conference in Liverpool that a rural Britain of warm ale, pubs, and a dog at your feet is a terrifying and “very far-Right nostalgic vision” that “never really existed.”⁠

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Riddell-Carpenter told Labour comrades that lies “awake at night” in “fear” that if her party cannot impose its “progressive vision for the countryside,” it will ber overtaken by a vision of “warm ale, a black Labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn’t exist, and with symbolism of fox hunting all around… a very far-right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don’t want to have, [and] never really existed.”

The School of Oriental and African Studies graduate said this as Member of Parliament (MP) for Suffolk Coastal, a rural East Anglian constituency (electoral district) comprised of farms, coastal towns, and village pubs. Official figures from the 2021 Census put about 9.5 million people in Britain’s rural settlements, and the Labrador was Britain’s most registered breed last year, suggesting that Englishmen enjoying pints in the pub with black labs by their side are more real than Riddell-Carpenter would like to believe.

These are the comments of Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, who studied at the far left SOAS in London.

She did a BA in History and Politics, completed in 2008, then an MA in Islamic History 👀 https://t.co/FkdpOrAtLE

— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) September 28, 2026

Studies.

Riddell-Carpenter has an unusual background for a woman representing a rural constituency. Privately-educated, she previously worked in public relations and housing, and now chairs the Labour Rural Research Group. However, she attended SOAS University of London, formerly the School of Oriental and African Studies, earning a master’s degree not in anything related to the countryside but in Islamic History.

SOAS is a specialist college focused on Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and one of the most notoriously politicized campuses in Britain. In 2005, its student union became the first in Britain to commit to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. Riddell-Carpenter completed both of her SOAS degrees in the years that followed.⁠ Critics have long called SOAS the “School of Antisemitism,” with Jewish students having reported being too frightened to wear a Star of David or speak Hebrew on campus.

In 2020, the university refunded a student £15,000 in fees after he said a “toxic antisemitic environment” forced him off his course. A 2019 Henry Jackson Society report found SOAS hosted more Islamic hate preachers than any other British university. After the October 7th, 2023, Hamas attacks, the campus became a focal point for Gaza encampments and related disciplinary fights.

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Social Media.

Riddell-Carpenter’s affinity with Islam is reflected in her social media history. On her X (formerly Twitter) account, abandoned after Labour entered government due to “abuse aimed at MPs,” she was quick to reframe Islam as peaceful following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January 2015, writing, “Thoughts with France tonight. Freedom of speech and press a shared corner stone [sic] of our societies. As peace is to Islam #CharlieHebdo”.

In June the same year, she tweeted a complaint about “ignorant guest speakers” discussing Islam, writing, “These non Muslims are making me want to convert to Islam. ”

Europe’s migrant crisis peaked also peaked in 2015, with Germany under Angela Merkel becoming the primary but not the only destination of millions of mostly Muslim migrants. Riddell-Carpenter cheered the process on throughout the month of September, while lashing out those who were uneasy with the experiment.

September 3rd, 2015:

“Best news of my day: [British Prime Minister David] Cameron bows to pressure to allow more Syrian refugees into Britain.”

September 4th, 2015:

“Hungary is running towards fascism. In sorting the ‘Muslim problem’, the [Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán] will give more physical powers to police dealing with refugees. [Referring to Hungary moving to close its borders to illegal immigrants en route to Western Europe.]

September 7, 2015:

“Wow. Watching the response of Germans towards refugees in Munich is heart warming. Wish the British had as warm hearts and open arms.”

The same day:

“Surprised that Syrian refugees have smartphones? Sorry to break this to you, but you’re an idiot.”

September 10, 2015:

“On the train to Henley and its like I’ve walked into the Daily Mail, ignorant people discussing (light term) refugees. Take me back to [London].”

Riddell’s evident contempt for “ignorant” train passengers discussing the migrant crisis en route to Henley-on-Thames, a small English market town surrounded by countryside, and her preference for the multicultural metropolis of London will appear to many to be a particularly strong indicator of her true feelings about a rural Britain she would prefer not to exist, and of her suitability to be a leading voice in government on rural affairs.

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Rahm Emanuel has been a former advisor to the Bill Clinton White House, a Democrat Congressman for Illinois, President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, a two-term Chicago Mayor, and President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Japan. In the last three decades, he has not been outside the halls of power, most recently strongly hinting at a run for the Democratic presidential nomination for the 2028 election.

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In a September interview with Rolling Stone, Emanuel said he was “more yes than no” about a potential 2028 presidential run, and has spent just over a year laying the groundwork with podcast appearances on shows like Honestly with CBS News head Bari Weiss and The New Yorker Radio Hour. He has also published several policy papers over the last year, including one suggesting age limits for political office and banning children under 16 from social media.

Polling, however, shows Emanuel is far from the favorite among Democrats. Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, has previously suggested an ulterior motive for his shadow campaign: Not to win the nomination, but to secure another top spot in the next Democratic presidential regime, possibly as Vice President.

Rahm Emanuel is taking a real run at this thing.

Does he think he can be President? Probably not.

But does he think if he's on that debate stage he gets the call for VP?

Almost certainly. https://t.co/FY3uBTKHiZ

— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) July 8, 2026

Corporate Democrat.

Unlike many of the more popular socialist contenders for the Democrat leadership,  such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Emanuel has never shied away from corporate America, having banked over $18 million in just three years as a Wall Street investment banker after leaving the Clinton administration.

In 2001, after serving as a Clinton White House advisor from 1993 to 1998 and making his millions, Emanuel ran for Congress, winning a seat and representing Illinois from 2002 to 2009, when he went to work as Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama. While serving only part of the administration for 20 months, Emanuel represented the corporate-friendly wing of the Democratic Party, urging Obama not to include a public option in Obamacare, another policy that put him severely at odds with popular socialist Democrats.

However, the most high-profile controversy of Emanuel’s Obama years was a corruption case against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was accused of trying to sell Obama’s former Illinois Senate seat. Emanuel was in contact with Gov. Blagojevich at the time, although was never charged with any wrongdoing, and newly unsealed FBI files released this month show that Obama was aware of Emanuel and Blagojevich discussing giving the seat to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. According to Blagojevich, this was in exchange for her father, then Illinois House Speaker, supporting his budget and healthcare package. As a result of the scandal, Blagojevich served seven years and 11 months in prison, until he was pardoned by President Donald J. Trump in 2025.

The Chicago Machine.

Following the Blagojevich affair, Emanuel sought and won the Chicago mayoral race in 2011, serving two terms as the mayor of America’s “homicide capital.” Under Emanuel, there were 19,000 shootings, 4,000 murders,  and an average of 541 murders per year from 2011 to September 2018. This was up from an average of 463 murders the year prior to him taking office.

The fatal shooting of 17-year-old black teen Laquan McDonald in 2014 by Chicago police was Emanuel’s most high-profile scandal after the city refused to release dashcam footage of the incident for over a year. The video did not get a public release until a judge ordered it in November of 2015. McDonald had been shot 16 times by police, with the city agreeing to a $5 million settlement with his family shortly before the footage emerged.

The New York Times labeled the affair a “cover-up” in 2015. The Chicago Sun-Times also noted in a 2020 report that Emanuel conveniently agreed to the settlement a week after the April 2015 mayoral runoff, and approved it before any lawsuit had even been filed.

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The Biden Years.

The McDonald case may have influenced Emanuel’s shock announcement in 2018 that he was not running for a third term as Chicago Mayor. However, after a few years out of the political spotlight, Emanuel was selected by President Joe Biden to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan in 2021. Shortly before his tenure as ambassador, The National Pulse revealed that Emanuel was a headline speaker at a China-friendly conference sponsored by groups linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2013, while he was still running Chicago.

In 2025, Emanuel ended his term as ambassador and now seems to have his sights set on the presidency, with longtime Democrats like Nancy Pelosi expecting him to run. Nationwide polling, however, often does not even list Emanuel because his numbers are so low. In an Echelon Insights poll released this month, his name is listed with less than one percent of the vote.

So the question remains: Why is Emanuel running? It seems most likely that he will use the nomination debates and the primary system to secure a higher profile and reenter the political machine he has inhabited for decades. His past shows the interests he represents are likely completely at odds with the ascendant, progressive wing of the party, but his alignment with Wall Street, big business, international corporations, and possibly even the Chinese Communist Party may yet see him secure significant backing.

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Last week at the United Nations General Assembly, Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced that the British government would be launching a National Centre for Information Defence. “Russian agencies,” he told delegates, were using “every means at their disposal to spread lies and disinformation and prey on people’s fears.” He was less clear about the content of this disinformation, but he did complain that the Russians had “amplified far right narratives” and “tried to stoke tensions and unrest in the wake of horrific events.”

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Most listeners were left in little doubt as to “disinformation” the Prime Minister wants to crack down on: criticism of mass migration, state-sponsored diversity, equity, and inclusion, and lax border controls and vetting, particularly following high-profile sexual, violent, and terroristic crimes involving migrants or their children. Zia Yusuf, Shadow Home Secretary for Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, asked a former Labour advisor following Burnham’s speech what the public “believe about Britain and are angry about that is not true and is a result of Vladimir Putin’s disinformation.”

No answer came. Still, despite establishment political parties across Britain, America, and the wider West focusing on the Kremlin as the cause of all their troubles from the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton onwards, Burnham insisted that the supposed issue is one that “We have tiptoed around for too long.”

Former Labour advisor refuses to answer this simple question 👇 pic.twitter.com/sKPYOySFTi

— Zia Yusuf (@ZiaYusufUK) September 24, 2026

Burnham’s claim is wrong not just rhetorically, but structurally. His new National Centre for Information Defence, denounced as an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth to clamp down on free speech” by Nigel Farage, will not be the first or even the second of its kind, but only the latest arm in what has become a sprawling censorship regime.

How the Machine was Built.

2007 — RICU

Established in 2007, the Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), often referred to as the “Nudge Unit,” is arguably the British government’s most infamous counter-disinformation and public influence agency.

It was built inside the Home Office, roughly equivalent to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, by former MI6 officer Charles Farr as part of the controversial Prevent counter-terrorism program, on the model of the Cold War Information Research Department. Internal papers describe its goal as “attitudinal and behavioural change.” Often operating through astroturfed campaigns masquerading as organic community groups, RICU’s original goal was to stop al-Qaeda from spreading Islamist ideology among British Muslims.

However, a government-commissioned review of Prevent published in 2023 found it had soon drifted into targeting the comparably minor threat of the “extreme right,” setting the the bar for what should be regarded as Islamism very high and the bar for supposed right-wing extremism “comparably low.” For instance, it has concerned itself with supporters of elected politicians like Nigel Farage, and flagged supposedly extremist “gateway” literature such as the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and, ironically, George Orwell.

RICU is best known for its involvement and suspected involvement in efforts to guide public sentiments following high-profile migrant crimes and terror attacks, with sources speaking to the British press describing how it was “working with the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s C3 intelligence unit to identify those posting the online ‘calls to protest’ in Belfast and other areas” after a man’s attempting beheading on the streets of the Northern Irish capital, with a focus on “giving strategic messages to the police to ensure that the protesters were portrayed as unsympathetic thugs”—leaving no doubt that its remit includes quashing public resistance to mass migration and its consequences.

2015 — The 77th Brigade

Just as al-Qaeda was the original justification for RICU, the justification for the British Army’s 77th Brigade information warfare unit was countering adversaries abroad. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it worked at home. An anonymous Army whistleblower revealed to Big Brother Watch and the British press that soldiers were monitoring “the social media posts of ordinary, scared people” merely for “dissent” against government policies such as mass vaccination and lockdowns, including high-profile journalists and elected politicians. The Ministry of Defence initially insisted that the 77th “does not, and has never, conducted any kind of action against British citizens,” but soon had to backtrack, with then-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace admitting that the unit had spied on citizens’ social media accounts to “assess” what he called “UK disinformation trends.”

The 77th Brigade no longer exists as an independent unit, but it was not truly dissolved, instead merging into the Land Special Operations Force (LSOF) in April, where it is less visible.

2019 — The National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT)

The National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT), originally the Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU), operates within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). Initially, it concerned itself mainly with monitoring political speech and “purported experts” skeptical of the establishment public health narrative during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, following the mass murder of multiple young girls by the son of two Rwandan asylum seekers at a dance class in Southport, England, it increasingly pivoted to immigration issues, pressuring social media platforms such as TikTok over what it called “significant volumes of anti-immigrant content” and “concerning narratives about the police and a ‘two-tier’ system.”

One post flagged to TikTok, marked with “urgency,” was a video of a user scrolling through a rejected Freedom of Information request about hotels hosting migrants crossing the English Channel on small boats, taking issue with the user describing them as “undocumented fighting-age males.”

Significantly, it took the intervention of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee to expose these emails, suggesting the true scale of the British government’s social media censorship operation could be significantly larger.

Then, when he posted online about the denial, the British government told platforms to censor him. pic.twitter.com/4PWb1HYyoh

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) July 30, 2025

2025 — Preventing “Cultural Nationalism”

More broad of a concern than these particular counter-disinformation bodies is the Prevent counter-terror program’s definition of “extreme Right-wing terrorist ideologies,” which includes what it calls “cultural nationalism.” This includes believing that “Western culture is under threat from mass migration and a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups.”

This is a mainstream view held by huge swathes of the general public, with 55 percent of Britons saying that the country’s identity is disappearing due to diversity in a recent poll. Nevertheless, under Prevent’s definition of “cultural nationalism,” public officials such as teachers, police officers, and nurses are actively trained to treat signs of these mainstream, lawful opinions as grounds for referring people for counter-terrorism monitoring and re-education.

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The Bottom Line.

Whether or not Russian agencies have really “amplified far-right narratives,” the reality is that mass migration is not a myth concocted in the Kremlin. Ipsos found in July 2026 that it was the public’s top issue. Two-thirds of Britons believe overall inflows are too high, and YouGov recently found 45 percent would support admitting no more new migrants and requiring large numbers of recent arrivals to leave, including a not inconsiderable minority of Labour and Liberal Democrat voters.

As we have seen, multiple so-called counter-disinformation units have already spent years monitoring social media, flagging content to moderators, and even prosecuting members of the public for “grossly offensive” communications, both on public platforms and in private WhatsApp groups. Burnham’s National Centre for Information Defence will be no more successful in tamping down public sentiment against mass migration and its consequences than any of the government’s other “information defence” units have been, because it will not stop boat migrants from crossing the Channel, evict bogus asylum seekers from the hotels they live in across the country, unwind the years of historically unprecedented mass migration, or put an end to the increasingly obvious two-tier standards in policing and the criminal justice system.

Burnham has told the United Nations that he resents the “negative, corrosive narrative about life in Britain.” Yet a large part of the general public see that narrative reflected in the country they are living in, with no Russian agent or bot having had to convince them.

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In September 2026, Sweden’s national election result was on a knife-edge, with the right-wing-populist coalition seemingly losing by a razor-thin margin. According to reports from Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT, that result may now change, and the reason could be election fraud tied to the country’s Somali community.

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Mohamed Abdukardir Ali, who gained Swedish citizenship only in 2024, was among those elected to the Swedish parliament. Swedish media have previously reported that he lived with two brothers linked to criminal gang activity in an address north of Stockholm that was raided several times by police. He has taken a leave of absence since the announcement earlier this week that Sweden’s National Operations Department (Noa) anti-corruption unit and prosecutors at the National Anti-Corruption Unit are investigating potential election fraud related to his candidacy.

He and an accomplice are suspected of paying people for votes and handing out tainted ballots that excluded non-leftist candidates, among other crimes. The alleged fraud occurred in the municipality of Borlänge, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive northwest of Sweden’s capital, Stockholm, which has one of the largest concentrations of Somalis in the country. Ali and others allegedly targeted vulnerable people like the homeless and drug addicts, giving them cash in exchange for votes, Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Radio has reported.

Should evidence be found of major fraud, the election in Dalarna may need to be repeated. This means Ali’s seat and ten others would have to be re-run, and with the Swedish election result earlier this month ending with just a three-seat majority for the leftist coalition, such a re-run could change the entire outcome of who governs the country.

A Transatlantic Issue.

Fraud increasingly seems like an endemic issue within Somali communities in the West. In Minnesota, which has the largest Somali community in America, the scale of the fraud is now infamous worldwide and may have cost American taxpayers billions of dollars over the last six or so years, according to federal prosecutors.

One of the most high-profile fraud cases linked to the Somali community in Minnesota is linked to the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, which saw dozens of mostly Somali suspects charged with defrauding the Federal Child Nutrition Program of around $250 million during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whistleblowers within the Minnesota Department of Education alleged that Democrat Governor Tim Walz knew of the corruption but suppressed calls to investigate it, possibly because, as in Sweden, the Somali community votes left reliably.

The Feeding Our Future scandal accounts for only a fraction of the total fraud linked to Somalis in the U.S., with much of the stolen funds sent directly back to Somalia, a country where remittances account for as much as 40 percent of GDP. Some of that money reportedly ended up in the hands of the country’s Islamist al-Shabaab terror organization.

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Perverse Incentives.

It is not hard to understand why Somalis quickly become involved in leftist politics after arriving in the West, with leftist parties promoting the easy mass migration and easily exploited welfare systems, which many Somali immigrants use extensively.

In Switzerland, for instance, it is estimated that as many as 80 percent of Somalis in 2019 were on welfare. The pattern hold across Europe, with 47.1 percent of Somalis in Britain being listed as economically inactive and 72 percent as living in publicly subsidized housing in the 2021 census, and Somali labor force participation in Finland being listed at just 24 percent for men and 13 percent for women.

The Big Picture.

The Swedish case is a microcosm of the way mass migration is reshaping politics across the West. For now, leftist politicians are benefiting the most from the rise of ethnic voting blocs, but these voting blocs are increasingly taking over local party positions themselves, rather than lending their votes to the existing old guard.

There is also the threat that right-wing candidates and parties will begin to adopt immigration and foreign policy stances favored by the new ethnic voting blocs, for fear that they will be permanently locked out of swathes of the electoral map if they do not adapt to the new normal.

The Democrats may have been right about demographics being destiny after all.

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Diesel has climbed to about $6.52 a gallon, up 76 percent from a year ago, according to AAA figures. The spike follows the wars in Iran and Ukraine and has put Republican lawmakers under pressure ahead of the November midterms. On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that he has advised his team, “Let’s not send out the diesel.” On Wednesday, POLITICO—which was recently banned from the White House for peddling “fake news”—reported sources as saying a 90-day ban on diesel exports is being prepared.

The White House has denied POLITICO‘s report. However, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has confirmed the administration is examining whether a full or partial export ban would work, and between that confirmation and Trump’s statement to reporters on Tuesday, it seems as though a fierce fight over the policy within the administration is underway. Its most determined opponent appears to be Chris Wright, the Energy Secretary, who has said it “definitely” would not work. Worse, he argues, it would actually increase prices, because, “If you can’t export the diesel that comes out of our refineries, you run out ​of places to store it, and you have to reduce U.S. refining, which would put upward pressure on gasoline prices and jet ⁠fuel prices.”

Who’s right? The National Pulse has looked over the data and the results of the similar oil export ban in place from the 1970s until 2015, and the record is on the Energy Secretary’s side.

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How Export Bans Backfire. 

It seems intuitive that banning diesel exports would keep more fuel in the domestic market, leading to extra supply and lower prices. But when Wright, a mechanical engineer with a background in fracking, nuclear, and mining, has the numbers in his favor when he warns that this extra supply would have nowhere to go.

The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) noted last week that U.S. refineries were producing about 5.3 million barrels a day of distillate, while domestic demand averaged about 3.6 million barrels. It is that surplus that makes the United States the world’s largest diesel exporter, bringing billions in foreign spending into the U.S. economy and lowering the trade deficits that the Trump administration has trying to balance out. Block the exports, and the barrels have nowhere to go. Storage fills, production gets cut, and Americans are soon facing higher prices at the pumps, not a glut of cheap fuel.

This is why 36 industry and business groups, including AFPM, the American Petroleum Institute (API), the Business Roundtable, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, wrote to President Trump this week urging him to reject an export ban. “Export bans would lead to less fuel production, tighter supplies, and rising costs for American families, farmers, and truckers,” they warned, adding: “An export ban would require refineries to throttle utilization to reduce diesel production to equal domestic demand. Falling utilization would result in less gasoline and jet fuel production and higher prices for those products as well… This could not come at a worse time for consumers as home heating oil season is about to begin.”

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Washington Already Ran This Experiment.

The objections to a diesel export ban are not theoretical. Congress already ran this experiment for almost 40 years with its ban on exporting crude oil, lifted only a little over a decade ago in December 2015.

In 2022, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the American Exploration and Production Council (AXPC) released a retrospective analysis comparing the results of the ban’s removal against a hypothetical in which it had stayed in place, and the results were unequivocal: U.S. crude production had increased by 1.8 billion barrels over those six years; global crude prices were averaging $1.93 a barrel lower; and U.S. gasoline prices were averaging 4.6 cents a gallon lower. Meanwhile, consumer spending on refined products and natural gas was $92 billion lower. The study put the GDP gain at $161 billion, the employment gain at an average of 48,000 jobs, and the trade-balance improvement at $178 billion.

Put simply, as U.S. crude prices moved toward international benchmarks and drilling increased, global supply rose, and U.S. product prices, which track internationally traded fuel markets, came down with that extra supply.

The Energy Information Administration reached similar conclusions before the ban was lifted in December 2015, projecting earlier in the year that removing crude export restrictions would leave U.S. gasoline prices unchanged or slightly lower. All the evidence points in the same direction: more U.S. oil reaching the world market did not increase American pump prices; it lowered them.

Crippling Your Customers.

The United States exported a record 1.6 million barrels a day of diesel in August. Top buyers included Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Morocco, France, and the United Kingdom. With Russia restricting diesel exports and supplies from the Middle East disrupted by the conflicts in Iran and Yemen, American producers are in a stronger position than ever, particularly in Europe.

Figures from Kpler, a commercial data company that tracks physical commodity shipments, indicates that the United States supplied more than half of diesel imports into EU countries and the United Kingdom in August. Separate Kpler figures cited this week put August U.S. diesel arrivals in Europe at about 506,000 barrels a day.

America First conservatives may take a dim view of Britain’s Labour government and the European Union, but allies running short of diesel do not keep buying American goods at the same pace. Freight, farms, factories, and generators all run on distillate. Customers who cannot move American goods will buy fewer American goods, cutting into the bottom line for sales of U.S. agricultural products, machinery, LNG, and many other exports. Cutting off Latin American buyers could disrupt food supply chains that feed back into U.S. grocery prices, one of the last things an administration keen to bring down everyday inflation needs.

Cutting off customers overseas now would have long-term ramifications far beyond 90 days. Buyers value reliability, and as Wright said in May, “We can’t be a major energy exporter to the world if we decide sometimes to stop exporting our energy.”

In short, shutting down U.S. diesel exports would strand product, threaten gasoline and jet fuel supplies, harm allied nations, and drive away customers who buy American fuel and American goods. Wrights says the “blunt tool of banning diesel exports definitely doesn’t work.” The available evidence says he is right.

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“I bet Kemi Badenoch would win a snap general election,” read the headline of Daniel Johnson’s Telegraph piece on Thursday. “The Conservative comeback is the most extraordinary phenomenon that British politics has seen for many years,” was the sub-title.

The fact that the Conservative Party hasn’t actually shifted in the polls in the past year seems to be lost on people like Johnson, who are more interested in making Kemi Badenoch a vibe, rather than a viable leader.

Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke “Kemi” Badenoch presents herself as an anti-woke crusader, yet the first Nigerian-raised woman to lead a major British political party has a track record of promoting open borders, attacking populism, and is more gaffe-prone than many of her potential voters would have you believe.

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Badenoch puts up a front as a return to right-wing form for the Conservatives after a string of liberal leaders from 2010 to 2024, when the party held office. However, like many of her Conservative-in-name-only peers, she has been unable to hide her disdain for the populist politics of President Donald J. Trump or Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage, sneering that politics is not “show business” in March of last year. She may want to tap into the electoral enthusiasm being harnessed by figures like Trump and Farage, but, fundamentally, she holds the same contempt for their supporters as previous Conservative leaders like Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson, who promised to cut immigration but delivered record-breaking numbers and a boat migrant crisis in the English Channel.

A clear indication of her views came earlier this year when former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, once a pillar of the populist-right movement in Europe, lost the Hungarian national elections to the European Union-friendly Peter Magyar. Badenoch celebrated Orban’s defeat as a supposed sign of populism collapsing in Europe, despite Orban having been one of the few leaders to back up Conservative governments before and after Brexit.

The Meloni Gambit.

Badenoch’s interactions with other European leaders have raised questions about her honesty, and that of the team around her. Earlier this year, she claimed to have had a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, in Rome. The Times, Britain’s newspaper of record, reported that Meloni encouraged her not to make any deals with Nigel Farage and Reform.

The National Pulse exposed this as a lie, with Meloni’s team denying that any such discussion took place, leading The Times to massively edit its story. In the end, the headline was changed, about half of the content was deleted, and no mention was made of Meloni’s supposed comments on Farage. It was never officially confirmed who exactly sold The Times the lies about Meloni’s comments, but all evidence points to the Conservatives.

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Dual Loyalty, In Her Own Words.

Badenoch was born in London in 1980 after her mother traveled there specifically to give birth, just before the British Nationality Act of 1981 was passed. Significantly, this abolished automatic birthright citizenship for babies born in Britain, starting in 1983, so a child born in similar circumstances to Badenoch would not be entitled to British citizenship today. Her parents took her back to Nigeria immediately after her birth, and she spent her formative years there, allegedly not realizing she was entitled to British citizenship until she was 14.

The claims over her birth have been complicated by statements she has made that she was “born in a country that was 50 percent Muslim,” clearly referring to Nigeria rather than England, and describing herself as a “first-generation immigrant.” The London hospital where she is said to have been born has since closed.

Badenoch apparently “returned” to Britain at 16 due to economic and political decline in Nigeria. She also claimed to have been offered a place at Stanford University in the United States, in pre-med after performing “very well” in U.S. exams. However, The Guardian has previously noted that Stanford “does not offer that course for undergraduates,” and cited “Multiple former admissions staff and U.S. academics” as saying that “Stanford has never made offers based only on SATs—U.S. standardised tests—with no exceptions even for royalty or child prodigies.”

Recently, video clips have emerged showing Badenoch speaking to a Nigerian audience in a Nigerian accent, declaring that she loves Nigeria “just as much as the UK.”

Have you seen this before???

When Kemi Badenoch speaks to other Nigerians, she turns off her fake English accent.

She also tells them that she loves Nigeria just as much as England.

And what’s all this about saying Islamic prayers in Nigeria?

She is running to be PM while… pic.twitter.com/thVCrPxblk

— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) September 24, 2026

Elsewhere, Badenoch has said she does not identify as Nigerian because she prefers to identify only with the Yoruba tribe within Nigeria, saying, “I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity [Yoruba]. That’s what I really am. I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where the Islamism is, those were our ethnic enemies and yet you end up being lumped in with those people.”

Entering politics in 2015 as a Conservative member of the London Assembly, Badenoch became a Member of Parliament (MP) just two years later in 2017, becoming the Minister for Women and Equalities in 2022. Going from city official to a central government minister in just seven years is a meteoric rise by anyone’s standards in British politics, with many suspecting she was a beneficiary of DEI hiring.

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In her time as Equalities Minister, Badenoch promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in recruitment for Britain’s police and judiciary. This was something she later said she was “proud” of.

“I am also pleased to report that as of December 2022, we now have the highest proportion of ethnic minority police officers since records began and following our campaign launched in 2022 to broaden the diversity of the magistracy, more than 1 in 5 of those who applied to be magistrates were from an ethnic minority background,” Badenoch said as a forward to a report on “Inclusive Britain” in 2023.

Open Borders Badenoch.

She also actively campaigned for more open borders in Parliament, publicly thanking then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid for completely uncapping the number of migrant workers and foreign students allowed into the country annually in 2022—a policy that led to the infamous “Boriswave” of mass migration that the Conservatives are now trying to distance themselves from.

Why does this matter? Badenoch has previously stated that she is against “tribalism” and has attacked politicians like Nigel Farage for supporting justice for Henry Nowak, a white teenager murdered last year by a Sikh man and allowed to bleed to death in the street by police who arrested him based on false allegations of racism instead of giving him the immediate medical care he had pleaded for.

“I don’t want to hear about black lives matter, I don’t want to hear about white lives matter,” Badenoch stated after Nowak’s murder and wrongful arrest became a major political scandal. Of course, in 2020, following the death of George Floyd in the USA, she had stated that “Black lives do matter.”

It’s unclear why Badenoch viewed acknowledging black issues in 2020 as acceptable, but joined liberal politicians in denouncing allegations of police discrimination against white Britons as divisive in 2026.

Badenoch has made multiple statements distancing herself from DEI and policies like “positive action”—a less honest British spin on affirmative action—since becoming Conservative leader in 2024, but given how proud she was of her past work as equalities minister, how can she be believed?

Behind the Mask.

Kemi Badenoch is a woman of many faces. There is the anti-woke Badenoch, who rails against DEI and identity politics, despite being proud of supporting overt DEI policies while actually in a position of power. Then there is the establishment Badenoch, who considers populism a direct challenge to her own political belief system, and cheers when it is defeated.

Finally, there is the British Badenoch, who claims that she no longer identifies as Nigerian, while clips show her saying she values Nigeria just as much as Britain, and the Yoruba Badenoch, who denies having ever had a Nigerian identity, because she is a Yoruba ethno-nationalist.

Who is Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke “Kemi” Badenoch? Perhaps even she does not know.

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Image by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street.

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The Official Manchester United Muslim Supporters’ Club (MUMSC) has been pushing hard for the removal of the club’s chairman, Brexit supporter and chemicals tycoon Sir Jim Ratcliffe, in recent days, for having the temerity to express views that a large share of Britain’s population already believes: that the country is “on the slide,” that mass immigration has changed it beyond recognition, and that no one in power has been “tough enough” on border control or benefits claimants.

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For MUMSC, the language was “completely unacceptable,” “playing into populist tropes,” and cause for both Sir Jim and the Glazers—the Jewish family who are Manchester United’s majority owners—to resign. Crucially, the group is not some private prayer circle. It is an official supporters’ club, given access and prominence by the club, and allowed to play a role in organizing club Ramadan feasts and in establishing a “multi-faith prayer room” suspiciously bereft of any religious items except Islamic prayer mats at its Old Trafford stadium.

When MUMSC tells Ratcliffe to resign, it is using Manchester United’s name to police a political argument the club chairman should be perfectly entitled to make. Yet while Man U might be chagrined that MUMSC is biting the proverbial hand that feeds by engaging in partisan lobbying against the club’s leaders, it should not be surprised, given its co-founder’s record.

Manchester United opened a new multi-faith room at Old Trafford for fans of all faiths.

The team worked closely with the Fans' Forum and Muslim Supporters' Club on the space, which can accommodate up to 20 fans at any given time. Prayer mats have already been provided by the… pic.twitter.com/I9Ff0RvvJr

— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) March 3, 2025

The Man Behind MUMSC.

Ghulam Haydar, alias Ghulam “Esposito” Haydar, is a Senior Policy Lead in NHS England’s community pharmacy team, a prescribing pharmacist, and a General Pharmaceutical Council clinical advisor and inspector, paid by Britain’s socialized healthcare provider to help shape national pharmacy policy. However, far from being a neutral community liaison, he is an activist with a decade of posts and articles attacking Britain as a colonial plunderer, railing against British air strikes against Islamic State jihadists, and treating “internalised love for white / superior” attitudes as a moral disease, as The National Pulse revealed on Wednesday.

Now, further research has revealed Haydar as having volunteered for groups later flagged in government extremism assessments, lobbying for anti-terror legislation to be dismantled, and even arguing that French military strikes against the Islamic State were “no different” from the terrorist massacres the group carried out in Paris in 2015.

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Haydar is not a back-office pharmacist who once liked a tweet. He is a national policy lead with a history of open political factionism. In 2015, he posted, “Hate this guy.. Nigel Farage,” referring to the then-UK Independence Party leader, who now stands a strong chance of becoming Prime Minister at the head of Reform UK. Meanwhile, he has made public appearances with Manchester’s left-wing mayor and Britain’s future Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, describing the Labour Party politician as “my old buddy” in 2022—albeit while chastising him for pronouncing “Ghulam” incorrectly.

Haydar’s hatred of Farage appears to extend to Britain and the British people more generally. The National Pulse has already reported on Haydar’s posts accusing Britain of having “ransacked, pillaged & destroyed India,” and urging future generations of British Muslims to resist “the narrative of the coloniser.” Subsequently, posts have been uncovered expressing this hostility in much blunter terms, including one from the Euros football tournament in 2016, seething, “The sooner England get knocked out, the better.”

Minimizing ISIS.

Some of the most revealing statements regarding Haydar’s worldview are not in old social media posts, but in signed articles. On November 20th, 2015, just days after Islamic State terrorists had murdered 130 people in Paris, Haydar wrote for 5Pillars that he could not “differentiate between the reaction of the French government and the ISIS claimed attacks in Paris.”

The West, Haydar argued, could not retaliate against the caliphate “simply because your innocent were taken.” In fact, doing so was “stupidity and madness,” not least because, in his view, the West was no better than the Islamic State: “What France and many other countries are doing is no different to ISIS,” he argued, adding (in case there was any doubt) that “Both are unjustifiable.”

A year prior, Haydar had equivocated on the beheading of American journalist James Foleyby ISIS (“It goes without saying that the killing of innocent civilians should be met with utter contempt, but…”), positively citing CAGE as suggesting the shocking execution was not really any different from the unintentional civilian casualties in U.S. drone strikes in the region. This opinion piece, written for Islamic21c, chose to describe ISIS as a “resistance group” rather than a terrorist organization, critiquing it chiefly for the “damage” it was causing to the “overall resistance” to then-President Bashar al-Assad.

The CAGE Connection.

The approving reference to CAGE was not a one-off. In 2017 post on Facebook, he had hailed the conviction of CAGE’s international director Muhammad Rabbani as somehow a “victory for CAGE” for supposedly exposing “flaws in the terrorism legislation.” In a 2014 article, he had defended CAGE outreach director and former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg as a supposed whistleblower crushed by an “Orwellian state,” after he was hit with multiple ultimately dropped terrorism charges related to trips he made to Syria in 2012–13.

Infamously, CAGE described ISIS executioner Mohammed Emwazi, better known as “Jihadi John,” as a “beautiful young man” and blamed Britain’s MI5 intelligence service for his radicalization—a markedly more generous attitude to a notorious terrorist than Haydar was willing to extend to Sir Jim Ratcliffe. 

Haydar also proudly declared in 2016 that he was a volunteer with MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development), which was later listed by then-Communities Secretary Michael Gove among organizations giving “rise to concern for their Islamist orientation and views,” and called on Allah to bless Ali Dawah, a Muslim YouTuber accused of harassing Jews in London’s Golders Green neighborhood and defending marrying underage girls, as “an asset to the ummah (Muslim community” the same year. 

With Friends Like These.

The list of articles and social media posts from Haydar that might be described as “totally unacceptable” is seemingly endless, extending far beyond those listed above. In 2017, he amplified arguments that “Terror laws should be scrapped.” In 2018, he complained that then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid describing Pakistani Muslim pedophile gangs as “Asian” was “racism.” In 2013, he smeared opponents of the niqab as “dirty” and “sleazy.” And the list goes on. 

The question is why Manchester United affiliated with and given status to a man whose public record puts him so much farther beyond the pale than Jim Ratcliffe could ever be. These were public posts, signed articles, visible to anyone with a mind to look for them.

United did not have to make MUMSC an official club. Doing so has given a man who has branded Britain a colonial pillager, cheered for England to be knocked out of the Euros, volunteered for MEND, promoted CAGE, and written that the West and the Islamic State are “no different” standing to call for their chairman’s head, for the crime of expressing views on immigration held by millions of Britons, doubtless including many United supporters. 

Similarly, NHS England did not have to put Haydar in national policy. Patients in that system include the families of people murdered by the jihadist networks whom he spent years minimizing as products of Western policy, and girls abused by the grooming gangs he believes it is racist to name.

Hopefully, both will learn a lesson from this on the need for better institutional vetting. Because with friends like these, who needs enemies?

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Restore Britain, the upstart political party backed by Elon Musk, could end up handing dozens of UK parliamentary seats to the establishment or “uniparty” based on new analysis by The National Pulse, using YouGov MRP data released on September 24th 2026.

The party is ostensibly led by Rupert Lowe, who was removed from his position in Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party after a series of disciplinary incidents in 2024. The day to day party is run by former Farage staffer Alistair Harrison and his Ukrainian wife Kateryna Petrenko.

Who is Alistair Earl Harrison? https://t.co/pb1HeZCgst

— Catherine Blaiklock (@blaiklockBP) August 3, 2026

The latest constituency-level YouGov MRP data shows a potentially significant problem for Reform UK, caused by Restore Britain. In 77 constituencies that YouGov currently assigns to another party, Restore Britain’s projected vote is at least as large as Reform’s deficit to the projected winner.

That does not mean all Restore voters would automatically vote Reform if Restore disappeared. They would not. But the scale of the overlap is striking, especially when Restore Britain voters appears to want change, rather than to hand more victories to the incumbent Labour Party, the centre-left “Conservative” Party, or any others.

The National Pulse analyzed the constituencies contained in the MRP dataset and calculated, seat by seat, how much of Restore’s projected vote Reform would need to erase its deficit to YouGov’s projected winner.

The result is not confined to seats where Reform would require every single Restore voter.

Under a hypothetical 25 percent Restore-to-Reform transfer, Reform moves ahead in 19 seats and level on the published rounded figures in another seven: 26 constituencies in total.

At a 50 percent transfer, that rises to 46 seats, and at 75 percent, it becomes 58 parliamentary seats. If the entire Restore vote were added to Reform, Reform would move outright ahead in 58 seats, while another 19 would become tied on the rounded constituency figures.

Those figures make the possible effects of right-of-Reform vote fragmentation substantially larger than a handful of isolated constituencies.

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It Doesn’t Take Anything Close to 100 Percent in Some Seats.

The most revealing constituencies are not those requiring the whole Restore vote. They are the seats where Reform is behind by only a point or two, while Restore is polling several times that amount. For instance, there are four constituencies where Reform needs only 20 percent of Restore’s projected support to erase the deficit.

In Heywood and Middleton North, YouGov has Labour on 31 percent, Reform on 30, and Restore on 5. Reform needs just one point out of Restore’s five to draw level. Similarly, in Llanelli, Plaid Cymru is projected on 34 percent, Reform on 33, and Restore on 5. Again, only 20 percent of the Restore vote closes the gap.

In Ossett and Denby Dale, Labour is on 28, Reform 27, and Restore 5: another 20 percent threshold.

And in Washington and Gateshead South, Labour is projected at 35, Reform at 34, and Restore at 5. Once again, just one-fifth of Restore’s projected support equals Reform’s entire deficit.

Seven more positive-gap constituencies require only 25 percent of Restore’s projected vote to erase Reform’s deficit:

• Erewash;
• Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor;
• Redditch;
• South Derbyshire;
• Staffordshire Moorlands;
• Vale of Glamorgan;
• Rawmarsh and Conisbrough.

Rawmarsh is particularly illustrative, with Labour is projected on 35 percent and Reform on 33, but Restore is on 8 percent. Reform’s two-point deficit is therefore equivalent to just one-quarter of the Restore vote.

These are not calculations that depend on every Restore supporter behaving identically. Rather, they are seats where a relatively modest fraction of the projected Restore vote is already as large as Reform’s entire shortfall.

The One-Third and 40 Percent Seats.

A further five constituencies require approximately one-third of Restore’s vote to close the published gap:

• Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard;
• North West Norfolk;
• Southend West and Leigh;
• West Suffolk;
• South Holland and The Deepings.

Three more: Aldridge-Brownhills, Derby South, and Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton, require 40 percent.

By the time the transfer assumption reaches 50 percent, a further group enters the equation, including Aldershot, where YouGov currently projects Labour 28, Reform 26, Restore 4 in Aldershot. Reform’s two-point deficit is therefore exactly half of Restore’s projected four-point vote.

The same arithmetic becomes more demanding in Grantham and Bourne, where YouGov has the Conservatives at 33, Reform at 30, and Restore at 4. Reform would need three of those four points: 75 percent of Restore’s projected vote.

That is why Grantham is a weaker vote-transfer example than Heywood, Llanelli, or Rawmarsh, but it still sits inside the wider 77-seat universe.

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The Effect Is Concentrated Against Labour and the Conservatives.

Among the 58 constituencies that become outright Reform leads under the maximal 100 percent transfer calculation, YouGov currently projects that Restore Britain would help cause the following scenarios:

• Labour ahead in 32;
• The Conservatives ahead in 20;
• The SNP ahead in 3;
• Plaid Cymru ahead in 3.

This is a damning scenario for Musk, Lowe, and Restore Britain, showing how in a poll where they do not even keep one seat in the UK Parliament (the YouGov MRP shows Lowe losing his Great Yarmouth seat), the party would hand dozens of seats to Labour, tens to the Tories, and even some to the far-left Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru in Wales.

In Britain’s increasingly fragmented first-past-the-post system, margins that small can be electorally consequential even when the national numbers appear modest.

The National Pulse will continue digging into the constituency-level numbers, not merely repeating national polling headlines. Join The National Pulse or donate today to support more exclusive analysis from Raheem J. Kassam and his team. Every membership and contribution helps fund the research, reporting, and data work behind stories like this.