Ben Whitham

James Cleverly: "I cannot understand the motivation for protests of this type so regularly"

This analysis can be extended: UK migration politics (e.g. around asylum hotels) are underpinned by a libidinal economy, wherein socio-economic anxieties and contradictions are managed or displaced via investment in fantasised migrant "deviance" and perceived "excess" (including excess enjoyment).

Screenshot of a quotation from a book: ‘One of the fundamental stratagems of ideology is the reference to some self-evidence – ‘Look, you can see for yourself how things are!’. ‘Let the facts speak for themselves’ is perhaps the arch-statement of ideology – the point being, precisely, that facts never ‘speak for themselves’ but are always made to speak by a network of discursive devices. […] Discourse analysis is perhaps at its strongest in answering this precise question: when a racist Englishman says ‘There are too many Pakistanis on our streets!’, how – from what place – does he ‘see’ this – that is how is his symbolic space structured so that he can perceive the fact of a Pakistani strolling along a London street as a disturbing surplus? That is to say, here one must bear in mind Lacan’s motto that nothing is lacking in the real: every perception of a lack or a surplus (‘not enough of this’, ‘too much of that’) always involves a symbolic universe’. Source: Slavoj Žižek, Mapping Ideology (1994, page 11).

For his (many) faults, Žižek's early work on ideology remains helpful for understanding our politics today. Robert Jenrick's comments, in this analysis, are a racist ideological statement aimed at "structuring symbolic space" so that others will perceive Black and Brown people as "excess" in the UK.

Police to get new powers to crack down on repeated protests, says Home Office Move follows arrest of almost 500 people at latest pro-Palestinian demonstration in London on Saturday

When Labour came to power last year it followed 14 years of Tory rule in which international monitors had issued stark warnings about the UK's "authoritarian turn" through crackdowns on political protest and migrants' rights. Starmer is continuing that project.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

The local coverage of last night's mosque attack even makes reference to the Manchester synagogue attack, rightly (if implicitly) identifying a continuum of antisemitic and Islamophobic racist violence at work. Yet seemingly the former attack is not deemed worthy of major coverage by the BBC.

Man arrested after fire at London asylum seekers' hotel The blaze is being treated as a hate crime by officers investigating.

These cases of extreme, far-right racist violence targeting Muslims and people seeking asylum are being blithely ignored by most media and politicians because they see no political capital in addressing them.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Peacehaven: Fire at East Sussex mosque probed as 'hate crime' Video appears to show two people in balaclavas at the mosque before a large blaze spreads.

Men in balaclavas set fire to a mosque in East Sussex last night. It's only appearing on the BBC's local coverage, rather than its main national headlines, despite coming just a week after the (also under-reported) firebombing of an asylum hotel in London last week
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and ...

"This has real, material consequences for our comrades in the struggle for a better world. The internet that spawned Occupy and Black Lives Matter has become hostile to the maintenance of radical political movements and is inimical to the founding of new ones" www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

It’s easy to say that this is the last desperate hurrah of a dying party, but can we be clear: Trump’s ICE agents are literally kidnapping people, detaining them without due process in concentration camps (yes, this is the right term) and 1000s have disappeared. These are fascist practices.

🚨🚨 My dear friend and fellow academic, the Palestinian American sociologist @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social has been taken by the Cook County Sheriff near Chicago. They have not mirandized her. Please signal boost. All eyes on Broadview for Eman and the community she was defending 🚨🚨

It struck me that if this brilliant young man in front of me had died in the protest, or had been killed by his abusive father, or had perished on the journey it would have been "normal" - national systems would likely not even register his death.

So how dare he travel to safety? Get an education?

Yesterday I interviewed a 20yo from senegal whose parents were dead, best friend was killed in a protest & who spent a year running to safety only to arrive to this version of America.

And it struck me that what this country is punishing his insistence on surviving. +

Screenshot from Guardian story: "Following the horrific and tragic events that have taken place in Manchester this morning, the details of which are still developing, the Met is stepping up reassurance and protective security operations across the capital with a particular focus on London’s Jewish and Muslim communities,” said the letter, which was signed in the name of the deputy assistant commissioner Ade Adelekan"

Screenshot from Guardian story continues: “However, as you know, your previous large-scale events and other concurrent protests place a significant pressure on policing and draw officers away from the communities they serve to be in central London. This means less neighbourhood and response officers in their communities and less officers focusing on serious crimes"

After a horrific antisemitic atrocity that took two lives yesterday, the Met essentially commits to devoting more resources to arresting pensioners protesting genocide than protecting Jewish communities and "focusing on serious crimes"
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

#ECREWeekly Updates on UK:
▪️Launch of ‘One in, one out’ people transfer scheme
▪️Channel crossings and deaths
▪️Lawyers and NGOs call out threats from far-right
▪️NGOs urge the government to stop scapegoating people on the move
▪️Migration and asylum-related policy announcements

shorturl.at/4sgMp

dissembling and idiotic genocide denial by an MP of the UK's ruling party, hand-picked for office by the current leadership

Apparently Israel’s genocidal acts are just “daft”.

YouTube video by NamibiaCam Namibia: Live stream in the Namib Desert

found the last remaining pure place on the Internet and it seems to be a livestream of a waterhole in Namibia www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydYD...

In her letter, Deakin said that during the lengthy meeting about the selection of prefects, a colleague had remarked that Farage was a “fascist but that was no reason why he would not make a good prefect”.

Pretty sure this has always been the philosophy underpinning British private schools (and consequently also the entire political, military, media, legal and business elite).

Same energy

'Blue Labour' and the Thiel Effect: How MAGA Is Making In-Roads Into British Politics The ideology of the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement, which has transformed politics in the United States, is having an impact in the UK. But how is this influence being transmitted?

EXCLUSIVE: Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel behind Trump exporting MAGA playbook to Britain - embedding across three parties: Blue Labour, Tories, Reform - via a network of race science believers. By me with @peterjukes.bsky.social via @bylinetimes.bsky.social
bylinetimes.com/2025/09/25/b...

A confirmed genocidal war criminal and a billionaire white supremacist would-be dictator created what the media uncritically reports as a "peace plan" for their own victims, whose lands they have repeatedly and explicitly stated their intention to annex, occupy and exploit?

Guardian headline: Reeves says she won’t take economic risks, hints at hard choices, and warns Reform will threaten living standards.

The last line here might be easier to sell if Labour had itself done anything but launch further brutal assaults on living standards in more than a year in office. The two-child cap, disability benefit cuts, austerity for public services, no new wealth tax... where's the alternative economic offer?

But these people are "not racist" according to the government, they merely support racist policies, which is apparently a completely different thing and very important to know.

Stop blaming migrants and tackle UK’s real problems, 100 charities tell home secretary A letter warns Shabana Mahmood that ‘targeting refugees will do nothing to tackle’ problems with housing and the NHS

On the day of her speech to Labour conference, our letter to the Home Secretary - co-signed by more than 100 orgs across migrants' rights, human rights, workers' rights, racial justice, environment, mental health, and homelessness - is featured in today's Guardian
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Vichy Labour. Deliberately and repeatedly affirming and amplifying the inflammatory far right *lie* of "uncontrolled migration".

Kneecap rapper Mo Chara's terror case thrown out The case against Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh is thrown out following a technical error in the way the charge against him was brought.

"This entire process was never about me. It was never about any threat to the public, it was never about terrorism – a word used by your government to discredit people you oppress. It was always about Gaza, about what happens if you dare to speak up." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Starmer will chiefly be remembered for failing to stand up for Black and Brown people when they were attacked in their streets and homes, capitulating to rather than countering the politics of the far right when they mobilised at unprecedented scale, and furthering instead of undoing austerity.

Keir Starmer to announce plans for digital ID scheme The prime minister believes a new scheme would help crack down on illegal working in the UK.

If he's looking for a policy hated in equal measure by left-wing progressives, rights-focused centrist liberals, and right-wing conspiracy theorists, he may have hit his mark. But doubtless he and McSweeney have some tiny but apparently vital electoral segment in mind. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Labour's choice: neoliberalism or more neoliberalism The leadership candidates are promising support for business leaders and “wealth creators”, suggesting a return to the neoliberal agenda of the Blair years.

As people are posting about Andy Burnham, here's a decade-old throwback on Labour neoliberalism. It partly aged badly in that I said Corbyn "according to the bookies – is by far the least likely to win" and the next week he went from 200-1 outsider to favourite! www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemoc...

The press didn't write an article blaming "illegal migrants" for "strain on our public services" (directly contradicting his previous view that "poor public services are not the fault of migrants ... they're political failure") and publish it in a notoriously racist rag, though. Keir Starmer did.