As tens of thousands return to the streets for the first national Palestine march of 2026, this movement refuses to be sidelined or silenced, says PETER LEARY
GOVERNMENTS fall more often from let-downs than lock-downs. That’s why Marcus Rashford’s “end child food-poverty” campaign has thrown British politics into a tiz. Who would have thought a young, black footballer would provide the leadership politics seems to lack?
Although Rashford consistently says “this is not about politics: it is about humanity,” everyone understands the umbilical links.
Knee-deep in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, Rashford’s free school meals campaign stepped in to confront another pandemic; child food poverty in Britain. Boris Johnson’s government may have spurned the call to extend free school-meals vouchers to spring 2021, but the issue is anything but dead. If anything, it opened up a chasm between the government and the people.



