Real security comes from having a secure base at home — Keir Starmer’s reckless and renegade decision to get Britain deeper into the proxy war against Russia is as dangerous as it is wasteful, writes SALLY SPIERS
While claiming to target fraud, Labour’s snooping Bill strips benefit recipients of privacy rights and presumption of innocence, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE, warning that algorithms with up to 25 per cent error rates could wrongfully investigate and harass millions of vulnerable people

THE government’s Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill forces banks and other financial institutions to act as an extension of the state in snooping on the population of Britain. As is usually the case, the poor and vulnerable are the particular victims of this discriminatory proposed legislation, but the Bill fits into a wider landscape of “Big Brother,” surveillance-state government that should worry every British citizen, regardless of wealth or health.
DWP Secretary Liz Kendall, who has put forward the Bill as part of the Labour government’s wider war on benefit claimants and in particular the disabled and those with mental health issues, claims that the legislation is designed to combat fraud and organised crime. However, it will compel banks to spy on the account activity of anyone in receipt of any form of state benefits, and to report those it considers to have any form of even potentially suspicious transactions.
The mass nature of this surveillance means that it will inevitably be carried out by computers using algorithms and AI rather than by human beings, and as with all alogorithmically driven decisions there will be a significant error rate — with investigations and potentially penalties aimed at those who have done nothing wrong and had no idea they were in the government’s crosshairs until it is already well under way.

With Reform UK surging and Labour determined not to offer anything different from the status quo, a clear opportunity opens for the left, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE

Keir Starmer’s £120 million to Sudan cannot cover the government’s complicity in the RSF genocide or atone for the long shadow of British colonialism and imperialism, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE

