Stephen Campbell

This morning, an attack carried out by Israeli forces killed Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff member, Omar Hayek, and seriously injured four others. The attack took place on a street where our teams were waiting to take a bus to the MSF field hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza. All staff were wearing MSF vests, clearly identifying them as medical humanitarian workers. We express deep sorrow and outrage over the killing, which occurs less than two weeks after another MSF colleague, Hussein Alnajjar, was killed by the Israeli forces, in Deir Al Balah. Our thoughts are with Omar’s family and colleagues at this tragic time. Omar, 42 years old, is the fourteenth MSF colleague to be killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023.

MSF staff are universally understood to be engaged in an essentially sacred form of work. For a state to nonetheless continuously murder them is a testament to a truly unthinkable degree of depravity.

msf.org/msf-denounce...

David is slightly unfair. There is a clear difference here.

Conservatives and Reform plan to forcibly expel large numbers of people who are legal, permanent residents of migrant origin. The BNP proposal is voluntary.

Cass Review full of 'stigma' and should not guide trans youth care, say experts A newly published study has argued the Cass Review into trans youth care, published in April 2024, is full of 'stigma' and 'misinformation'.

Cass Review slammed AGAIN. This time by Australian academics.

www.thepinknews.com/2025/10/06/c...

soon the Assemblée Nationale will be a tourist attraction where you get to be sworn in as Prime Minister for 30 seconds and your name gets added to the wikipedia infobox

Macron remarks are notable- some quotes: "We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies."

ALIEN logo being build and the E has no middle line

The ALIEN logo

Every time I watch ALIEN I am transfixed thinking to myself "there's no way they've left themselves enough room to get the third horizontal line in that E without it looking like a squashed-in mess!" but no, every single time there it is, and it's beautiful. Most tense part of the movie tbh.

Why is Starmer becoming more confident criticising Brexit? Because quietly, without any great drama, a consensus has been reached. It's a disaster inews.co.uk/opinion/brex...

There's lots of talk that this government needs to "deliver". But all governments "deliver". Including this one. They're making announcements every day. During a conference, many. Governments do more than ever to help people. And are not thanked for that.

Probably unpopular reflection from this Labour conference - mainstream political parties including this one are no closer to being able to understand how delivery in government can lead to popularity. Just as there have been no obvious paths to growth since 2008.

Back electoral reform to embed ‘progressive majority’ and thwart Farage, Starmer urged - Politics.co.uk Keir Starmer has been urged to throw his support behind some form of proportional representation (PR) in order to embed Britain’s “progressive majority”. Paul Sweeney, member of the Scottish parliamen...

🚨 NEW: Back electoral reform to embed ‘progressive majority’ and thwart Farage, Starmer urged

Without electoral reform, the country could face a “horrendous scenario” leading to the “extinction of the United Kingdom”, @paulsweeney.bsky.social has warned

Story ⤵️
www.politics.co.uk/news/2025/09...

These are some of the most extreme restrictions on immigration in years. We're told to see them as benign because they're less bad than Farage's far-right extremism. But they are still terrible.

Presumably Swinney's calculation/hope is Labour will (eventually) have to scrap the two-child limit and ScotGov won't be on the hook for the cost of the Two Child Limit Payment for long

Burnham's for PR so I say Burnham for PM

Me: we probably do need digital IDs to access public services [monkeypaw curls] okay we're calling it a BritCard and it's mostly to fuck over migrants

using my britcard for the most patriotic thing i can imagine and that's chopping up cocaine on the toilet seat in a wetherspoon's

The UK is not a papers, please society. It is a 'can you navigate a Kafkaesque thicket and/or get someone from a middle class occupation to sign your papers please society'.

That's good to hear. I know it's gained traction and you yourself are doing great work on it. I mean it isn't yet mainstream in the parliamentary party and isn't on the government's radar, despite the stakes.

I feel like I post about this every year, but it would be useful if the media explained that it is not, in fact, easy to immigrate to this country, to get a national insurance number, to get indefinite leave to remain, to get citizenship. It is, in fact, already very difficult.

it would be political suicide to do it but like 60% of the developed world very badly needs a poltician willing to talk to them like adults and say “listen, you can let in Rahul to work and pay taxes, you can pay more taxes, or your pension can be cut. those are the options. you need to pick one.”

far and away the most compelling argument for pro-natalist policy is how fucking dysfunctional greying countries are becoming politically. can't cut elderly benefits. can't raise taxes. can't let in workers. no throw only fetch politics until something collapses.

The best ones are Frasier and Peep Show and it's not close

Love this story from 1994 when the News of the World tried to do a hit job on a Citizens Advice which operated underneath a brothel and the advisers were just like "we know" and the sex worker was like "yeah they helped me with my forms, they're really nice"

Andy Burnham gave a good speech at a gala dinner this week, I hear. “I love this job,” said the mayor of Greater Manchester. “I am very happy where I am. I have no ambition to be [pause] ambassador to the US”

Unlike most electoral reform nerds I think the UK should adopt AMS. Partly because I'm sympathetic to the argument you need strong broadchurch parties to avoid fragmentation and gridlock. But mostly because keeping the constituency link would help get PR over the line with politicians and the public

Glad to see there are some people in Labour (though still too few) who see First Past The Post might gift a far-right party absolute power on less than 30% of the vote, and think they should do something about it. @alexsobel.co.uk

🔗 www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...

This is outstanding. And, while research doesn’t get much of a hearing these days on identity issues, everything in it is consistent with piles of research. Anti-racism norms don’t drop from the sky. They are built and buttressed by elites drawing red lines. They can be eroded when elites don’t.

A mildly hot take is that we have both an actual elite unaccountability problem and a perception of elite unaccountability problem, and that those are two related but distinct problems and that solving one will not necessarily solve the other.

Think @mazmhussain.bsky.social is right that Samuel Huntington's clash of civilisations thesis is looking somewhat vindicated lately.

🔗 open.substack.com/pub/mazmhuss...

Absolutely !!!insane!!! to me that the UK government, lobby and newspapers litigate at length every minor infraction by the BBC, rival newspapers, or what some random columnist has posted. But all of them just carry on not even commenting about this media owner. He’s not hiding, he’s telling you!