📢 🇬🇧 🗳 Reform: No talks until Restore expels co-founder accused of anti-Semitism

Nigel Farage warns of ‘extreme racists at or near the top’ of Rupert Lowe’s party after ‘Jewish supporters’ row

Reform UK has ruled out striking a deal with Restore Britain unless it expels a co-founder accused of anti-Semitism.

Nigel Farage had said he was “open-minded” about working with Restore after Rupert Lowe said the pair needed to work together to bring about a “patriotic government”.

Mr Lowe had demanded that the Reform leader support the deportation of millions of migrants, and exclude former Conservatives from a future Cabinet before a deal could be struck.

Restore has since become embroiled in an anti-Semitism row over a post on X by Charlie Downes, its co-founder, which suggested that Nigel Farage had been “bought” by Jewish supporters.

Mr Downes responded to a post on X by the Reform leader – in which Mr Farage said he could not be bought – with an image showing him in front of signs for the Reform Jewish Alliance.

On Saturday, Mr Downes said Israel was committing “genocide” against the Palestinians in Gaza – a policy position more commonly held by the hard Left.

A spokesman for Reform said there was no question of any agreement with Mr Lowe’s party while Mr Downes was in place.

“There are anti-Semitic and extreme racists at or near the top of the party, and they would have to go first,” he said.

“We’re happy to talk but we can’t do when there are people in the party like Charlie Downes.

🐸 “This all started with the Groypers in the US and it’s happening here, putting out this anti-Jewish stuff that is very similar to the far Left.”

The Groypers are supporters of Nick Fuentes, the US far-right activist, who has hit out at what he calls “organised Jewry”.

Mr Downes made the comments about Israel in response to a Telegraph story which revealed he had claimed Muslims were less British than Christians.

He said: “The Telegraph, on the other hand, has spent the last three years running cover for Israel’s genocide against Muslims in Gaza.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/08/09/restore-reform-charlie-charlie-downes-nigel-farage-lowe/

🇦🇱🇺🇸 An Albanian gangster may have lied to Jared Kushner about the feasibility of his and Ivanka Trump's planned holiday resort on the Albanian coast embroiling Kushner in his biggest controversy to date.

Residents of Zvërnec were shocked two years ago when Jared Kushner posted renderings of a planned Mediterranean resort on a slim peninsula sandwiched by the azure sea and a lagoon where flamingoes flock. 

The images were of a spit of land where their parents and grandparents once raised potatoes. The villagers contended the property was stolen from them in the 2000s by Artur Shehu—a suspected gangster who fled to Miami after a gunfight at his bar.

So they wrote a letter to Kushner saying they were locked in nearly two decades of court disputes with Shehu, urging the developers not to proceed. The site, they wrote, is “owned by the village and its residents.”

Instead, a Kushner-backed development group pressed ahead and paid Shehu over $120 million for the land earlier this year. Two months later, Albanian prosecutors sought Shehu’s arrest for allegedly playing a lead role in a sweeping international drug-smuggling operation that brought cocaine from South America to Europe in shipments of charcoal and fruit paste.

Shehu laundered money through property —including the peninsula in Zvërnec — that was stolen using techniques such as forged Ottoman-era land records, prosecutors said.

The controversy is the latest black eye for Kushner’s foreign real-estate ambitions—one piece of the post-2020 business career he launched after the first Trump administration. While most of his investing has been out of his $6 billion private-equity fund backed by Gulf wealth funds, Kushner also turned back to his real-estate roots. He talked of getting in front of the investment curve by developing in the Balkans, where tourism and property prices are rising, targeting Serbia and Albania

He struck a no-bid deal with Serbia’s government to develop state-owned land in central Belgrade—drawing local criticism that Serbia’s government was trying to cozy up to Trump, a charge the government denied. The Serbia plans fell apart after weeks of protests and the indictment of a cabinet minister who pushed through project approvals. Kushner pulled out in December.
 
The Albania project in Zvërnec has drawn a larger popular backlash. A video showing the Kushner-backed group’s private guards punching a local villager and dragging him across a beach sparked large daily protests in Tirana. They have continued for over two months, with protesters expanding their criticisms to endemic corruption and rampant development in a movement they call the Flamingo Revolution.

🔗 https://unwall.app/www.wsj.com/world/europe/jared-kushner-albania-shehu-drug-investigation-95391263

🇸🇴🇬🇼🇸🇿🇸🇸 Somaliland was reportedly close to securing recognition from Guinea-Bissau before Somalia intervened with support from Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Hargeisa had also been lobbying Eswatini, South Sudan and other African states, with backing from the UAE and Israel, according to Mada Masr.

🔗 Faytuks Network