Stevewjj

Xitter's hurriedly-aborted location feature - which showed the most vocal MAGA accounts were really posting from Nigeria, Serbia, Russia and other countries behind fake flags - proved what we’ve always known: the chaos is coordinated.

Twenty people allege he has a racist past. He denies it. Who’s telling the truth about Farage’s schooldays? Reform UK’s leader refuses to answer questions about his abusive behaviour, claiming there’s ‘no evidence’. We talk to victims and witnesses

I mean it's not complicated. Twenty people who were there have confirmed that Nigel Farage said all of these things.

He's the only one denying it, which means just one thing. He is a liar
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I am a migrant. I understand (some of) what it is like to have that fact treated as a negative, even a threat.
But that's nothing compared to the fear that foreigners settled in the UK are feeling right now, even those Labour promise have nothing to fear.

He was either paid or said it for free. Neither option is acceptable.....

So the line is that he wasn't getting paid for any of this

Five years and a huge majority to tackle Reform head on and take control of the narrative.

Yet here we are.....🤷‍♂️

#ukpolitics

Ultimately, you can't demand some people's exclusion and not expect to show your "credentials" for inclusion; demand femininity be defined and policed, but only for others.

That's the thing with "safe". There's no way of locking others out that doesn't also lock you in. Your fort is also your cell.

Spot on and an epic thread🧵

Comedy Of Terrors America’s most inept administration will destroy itself

It’s all falling apart.

And that's the thing about Trump. You can molly coddle him as much as you want, state visit etc, but it only gets you a temporary reprieve at best....

Michael Gove lobbied by Covid VIP lane’s biggest winner of PPE contracts Exclusive: then Cabinet Office minister had phone call with Unispace, which weeks later got the first of £680m worth of deals

I mean why TF is Gove a Lord now? He spent Covid plotting with Cummings and grifting his sorry arse off, having already lied himself inside out over Brexit - another reason our country is in such a mess.
He gets a peerage.
We get to pay for it all.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Trust in UK politics is at an all time low because people have been told that we can smash a big hole in the economy, have great public services, and tax can remain low.

The fact that this is all a big lie is all around us.

The responsibility lies with Boris Johnson and his cabinet. Utter incompetence.

I sense some brittleness and exhaustion creeping in...

Do you think somewhere in the back of her mind there is a teeny-tiny voice, but growing imperceptibly in volume, that repeats and repeats "oh f**k, I am the public face of this sh*tshow"?

The UK Covid-19 Inquiry says the government response to the pandemic in March 2020 was "too little, too late" • Inquiry chair Baroness Hallett is making a statement now - watch live at the top of the page. She says February 2020 was a "lost month" • The inquiry report says imposing lockdown a week earlier could have saved 23,000 lives in the first wave in England • But the inquiry also says lockdown could have been avoided altogether if steps such as social distancing and isolating those with symptoms had been introduced earlier • The report adds that a failure to learn from mistakes during later waves of the pandemic was "inexcusable"

This is what happens when you put a preening, lazy, populist, dilettante in charge of a country.

Johnson was completely out of his depth and more concerned with his pathetic perceived popularity than leading this country through the greatest crisis since 1939.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cm...

North East campaigners send hard-hitting message on two-child limit It is estimated by the national charity Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) that, for every day the two-child limit remains in place, a further 109 children are pulled into poverty across the country

Leigh Elliott, CEO of Children North East, said:

‘No credible plan to tackle child poverty would leave any version of the two-child limit in place. All the evidence shows it’s simply not possible to turn the tide on this issue without ending this policy once and for all.’ 👏👏👏

Seeing another "climate realist" post about how we can't afford to focus too much on climate mitigation now, your periodic reminder that the vast majority of climate change costs related to current decisions will be paid by the future.

Short 🧵

I would put it like this. Minority communities and the majority of the majority community have integrated v.well. However, a significant minority of the majority community and a significant majority of the political class are stubbornly refusing to integrate, and that is where the real problem lies.

Fox News credulously reports that "the Saudis now say their investment pledge in the US will be increased to $1 trillion." THE ENTIRE GDP OF SAUDI ARABIA IS $1.1 TRILLION, so this is total nonsense.

Kemi Badenoch tells Keir Starmer that he is leading "the first government in history to float increasing income tax rates only to then U-turn on it all after the actual budget".

Starmer: "The Budget is next week"

‘I thought the grownups were back in charge!’: John Crace on how Labour shattered his expectations After 14 years of Tory rule, the Guardian’s parliamentary sketch writer thought he had seen it all. Westminster would surely tick along nicely once Keir Starmer’s party took over. How wrong he was ...

Really good by @johnjcrace.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Sometimes you just have to murder and dismember a critical journalist. Things happen!

Stripping rights from refugees today endangers us all tomorrow   When I was 13, I visited a Nazi concentration camp for the first time, confronting my country’s dark history always—and rightly—a bedrock in my growing up.    One image from that visit has stayed with me ever since: a display of prisoners’ personal possessions.    It revealed a world in which those imprisoned were stripped not only of their freedom but of the last tangible traces of their humanity. That systematic erasure was the most important precondition for murdering millions.   Now, as a historian, I know that history does not flow into the present in a straight line, and direct comparisons are rarely appropriate. They certainly are not here.   But history is the one compass humanity has. Too often we choose to ignore it.    The Home Secretary’s proposals for changes to the UK’s asylum system represent such a moment of failure.    Yet the most troubling aspect of Labour’s frantic efforts to appear tough on immigration is not even the historical echoes that taking refugees’ possessions invokes. It is that cost recovery is not the real purpose of the rationale behind it.    The true aim is to appeal to a particular audience—those who take satisfaction in seeing people seeking refuge deprived of what little they have.

It is hard to imagine a more troubling approach to policymaking, and that becomes even clearer when we consider the Home Secretary’s proposals in context.   As of June 2025, there were 42.5 million refugees globally. Over 70% are hosted by low- and middle-income countries. The UK hosts 548,000 refugees; that is 0.78% of the UK population. Around 110,000 people are in receipt of asylum support; that is 0.15% of the UK population.   It is unconscionable that such a small and vulnerable population can be targeted with deliberate cruelty and weaponised for assumed political gain.   And that is all this will ever be. The core miscalculation is believing that adopting these positions will neutralise Reform.    Both historical knowledge and current research show the opposite. Mainstreaming extremist policies legitimises them further and aids only the original. Each step towards Reform’s territory simply gives Reform more power.   But our political discourse has been so degraded over the last decade that many no longer even recognise policies—or the language that frames them—as extreme.    That is how the Home Secretary can speak so casually of desperate people seeking sanctuary as recipients of a ‘golden ticket’ as though the context is Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory rather than countries torn apart by war and starved by famine.

Speak of her ‘moral mission’ to withdraw support, alleging that ‘illegal migration is tearing our country apart.’ And warn of ‘dark forces stirring up anger,’ oblivious to her own role: from the use of blurry, dehumanising images of refugees to spread falsehoods about their impact on communities, to the equally false description of refugee movements as illegal migration.    I suggest the Home Secretary find a mirror if she is keen to understand who is helping turn anger into hate.   Because it is the mainstreaming of far-right talking points that the Home Secretary’s proposals represent that is really tearing our country apart.   For when a policy looks like the far right, speaks to the far right and is hailed by the far right as being far right, it is far right. There is a reason Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is jubilant and speaks of ‘the Overton window having been obliterated.’   This makes a mockery of the Prime Minister’s recent comments on the urgent need to tackle racism. But it also raises alarming questions about the impact this will have on communities around the country, many of which are already deeply divided.    The proposed policies will do nothing for these struggling communities, because their problems simply do not stem from people seeking sanctuary with us. In fact: for as long as politicians focus on immigrants and refugees as the cause of our problems, they will fail to deliver for the British people.   But it is important to grasp the impact of the Home Secretary’s proposals as they carry broader consequences for all of us.

Suggestions for changes to how the European Convention on Human Rights is applied are particularly concerning. Requiring judges to prioritise ‘public safety’—falsely implying refugees pose a threat—would qualify human rights for a specific group.   And once one accepts that human rights can be qualified for one group, one creates tools that can be used against anyone.   So what these proposals really mean goes far beyond asylum policy. This is about the kind of country we will have in the future. If human rights are no longer universal, they become a means for exclusion and control.    That is why stripping rights from refugees today can only enable a system that endangers all our rights tomorrow.    And that is why our historical compass matters and why we have to use it now. Because that compass tells us without doubt that when first they come for one group that is never where it ends. 

Tried to get this published but no luck, so might as well ‘publish’ it here so it’s not a complete waste!

➡️ Stripping rights from refugees today endangers us all tomorrow

#asylum #Mahmood #history #humanrights

As a kid every single day I was called exactly the same racial slur the Home Secretary used in the House of Commons yesterday.

You dont fight racism by attacking the rights of refugees and demonising them.

You fight racism by challenging it.

The Home Secretary doesn't speak for me.

Listening to Steve Reed explain on the radio today that he can't say what Mahmood's plan means for kids of people who give birth after they've been granted asylum because that's a hypothetical Q govt can't be expected to answer right now made me think these reforms are going to unravel quite fast

“I’d never experienced antisemitism growing up, so the first time that this vicious verbal abuse came out of Farage’s mouth was deeply shocking. But I wasn’t his only target. I’d hear him calling other students ‘Paki’ or ‘Wog’, and urging them to ‘go home’."

Mahmood faces calls for compassion and clarity over hardline asylum policies Home secretary urged to explain statement that asylum admissions will start at ‘a few hundred’ people

The "safe and legal routes", the sop to allow Labour MPs to convince themselves that there's a smidgen of morality here, are to cover "a few hundred people"

Centre-left tipped to lose Copenhagen for first time in electoral history Political rivals say PM’s divisive politics have encouraged voters to ditch the Social Democrats for the far right

The Danish party that inspired Labour’s hardline immigration policy is on course to lose Copenhagen for the first time in more than a hundred years.

Among the reasons cited: fatigue and frustration with its hardline immigration policy.

The basic problem with the temporary refugee status policy - especially one lasting up to 20 years - is it leads to very few removals (based on Denmark's experience) but does significantly worsen integration.

The legal and constitutional implications of the asylum white paper: Some initial thoughts Proposals for radical reform of the UK’s asylum system raise a number of legal and constitutional issues, with respect both to the European Convention on Human Rights and the domestic principle of …

New post

The legal and constitutional implications of the asylum white paper: Some initial thoughts

publiclawforeveryone.com/2025/11/17/t...