‘Bigger and better than ever’: how Durham Pride beat Reform’s funding axe with help from the miners. Solidarity between LGBTQ+ people and unions has saved an event denied ‘a single penny’ of council money www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Tennessee school district bans Alex Haley’s Roots under 2022 state law www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

My article on 'Displacement in the ICJ's Advisory Opinion on Climate Change' has now been published in Environmental Policy and Law - free access here journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10....

How the Trump administration is undermining legal immigrants. The US has been targeting not only people who have violated the law but many who are in the country legally. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Friendships, fishing and community clean-ups: the unseen kindness of life on the Bibby Stockholm barge. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Jurgen Habermas has left us: amp.dw.com/en/celebrate...

There were two right wing parties standing yesterday and one got 10,578 votes and the other got 706 votes. It’s the worst byelection result in history for the Conservatives. While attention is on what Gorton and Denton means for Labour, it’s seismically bad for the Tories.

Labour’s message to us left voters was: “You have to vote for us or else Reform will get in. Meanwhile we will adopt a lot of Reform-like policies to win their supporters over. You will stick with us because you have no choice.” They got that wrong.

According to the ONS in 2021 these were the percentages of foreign-born people living in these locations: Boston -13% Skegness Region (East Lindsay) – 1% Clacton (Tendring Region) – 2% Great Yarmouth – 4% Basildon – 11% Ashfield 5% Seems that people who dislike foreigners haven't met any foreigners.

Trump’s next move: Give me Greenland or I walk away from Ukraine.

Never mind Venezuala. Trump is attacking his own country. If he invokes the Insurrection Act it makes it far clearer that he is waging war against America.

Has any president seen international law as a restraint on American power?

Although publicly Russia is deeply concerned about what is happening privately Putin must be laughing his head off.

41,000 people arrived in the UK by small boat in 2025. 46,000 people watched Sunderland play Manchester City on Friday this week. So in a year, not enough people to fill The Stadium of Light for one game crossed the Channel irregularly .

Forced displacement in the UK. Hundreds of Blackpool families to be evicted in ‘mass dispersion’ of vulnerable people. Up to 400 homes face demolition under a £90m regeneration scheme that promises only 230 replacement properties www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Happy new year and keep fighting.

Campaigner turned down MBE over ‘scapegoating’ of people with disabilities www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Why economic insecurity – not immigration – should be Labour’s top electoral priority theconversation.com/why-economic...

UK to rejoin EU’s Erasmus student exchange programme. British students will be able to participate in EU-wide scheme from January 2027, sources say www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

What is the potential impact of the proposed reforms to the UK's asylum system? Some measures, like restricting family reunion, may plausibly deter some people from coming to the UK. Yet the evidence is mixed, and insufficient to say whether any effects will be particularly large.

It’s a breach of trust’: fear and frustration over countries’ push to return Syrians home. Syrians who have rebuilt their lives abroad face uncertainty over their futures amid hardening of attitudes www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Tourists to US would have to reveal five years of social media activity under new Trump plan. Proposed plan would apply to tourists of all countries, including those not required to get a visa to visit the US www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

🚨 Vacancies at Maastricht in research programme "Europe: Society, Politics and Global Order" (do share!) - Assistant Prof Political Philosophy in Euro Democracy - Assistant Prof Euro Political History - PostDoc Disinformation and Euro Democracy vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/search/?crea...

Shabana Mahmood has pointed to the prohibition on torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in the ECHR as a problem when it comes to deporting people from the UK. She does not want to deport people if they are at risk of being tortured, but …

Step 1. Government promotes hostility towards asylum seekers. Step 2. People grow more hostile towards asylum seekers. Step 3. Government concludes that the solution to growing public hostility to asylum seekers is to be more hostile to asylum seekers. Step 4. What do you think?

UK university halted human rights research after pressure from China www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Government minister: “It’s an operational issue for the police, and government doesn’t get involved in operational issues for the police.” But: “[The decision] is just completely and utterly unacceptable.” I think you are getting involved mate!

On the Guardian United States news page today;

Mahmood stakes the credibility of the nation state on its ability to control border crossings. Whatever you think of nation states, this is a fairly minor aspect of what they do …

Care workers ‘Frightened to get out of their cars’: Britain’s toxic race debates threaten overseas care workers. Staff are being advised to travel in mixed groups and carry panic alarms as incidents of intimidation spread www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

UK charities say toxic immigration rhetoric leading to threats against staff. Voluntary organisations forced to introduce extensive security measures to protect staff and property www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Doreen Lawrence alleges Home Office was involved in Met spying on family. ‘Egregious’ police surveillance was sanctioned by government department, mother of Stephen Lawrence tells inquiry www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Gaza PhD student ‘heartbroken’ as family blocked from entering the UK. Manar al-Houbi’s husband and children refused entry despite her winning a scholarship to cover tuition fees, living costs and housing for them all www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

‘It’s a question of humanity’: how a small Spanish town made headlines over its immigration stance. Mayor explains why Villamalea unanimously backed call to regularise undocumented migrants – across party lines www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

The Gaza effect: how a global pro-Palestine protest movement met repression and resistance. Across the west, solidarity marches are testing governments’ tolerance for dissent. From arrests to bans, free-speech boundaries are shifting www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Militia strikes kill at least 60 in Sudan displacement camp, says El Fasher group. Drone and artillery strikes by RSF paramilitary group hit Dar al-Arqam shelter in western city, says resistance committee www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Ugly scenes in our neighbourhood where right wing thugs are putting flags back up after the council removed them. Menacing atmosphere out there and many people who don’t look “right” will be scared to go out.

Of course Jenrick’s comments were racist but the important point is that he intended them to be whatever he says subsequently. He’s wants the racist vote which has traditionally belonged to the Conservative Party but which Reform have nabbed.

Happy, stressed, overwhelmed: Palestinians evacuated from Gaza start their studies in UK. Abdallah, 27, and Soha, 31, describe adjusting to their new lives after leaving their war-torn home. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

UK universities offered to monitor students’ social media for arms firms, emails show. Loughborough, Heriot-Watt and Glasgow corresponded with companies concerned about campus protests www.theguardian.com/education/20...

The question for UK political parties is do they want the racist vote? The Greens and LibDems clearly don’t. ReformUK clearly does. Jenrick’s version of the Tory party clearly does. How about the Labour party?

How come Jenrick isn’t going to some village in Suffolk and complaining about the lack of ethnic diversity? Why only inner cities?

Theresa May warned the Tories against being the nasty party but Jenrick has embraced that identity - nasty vicious politics.

Enjoying international cuisines makes people more tolerant, UK study finds. Frequent and varied eating found to reduce likelihood of perceiving immigrants as ‘cultural or economic threats’ www.theguardian.com/food/2025/oc...

Angry that fascists came to march in our great city of Bristol but proud of its defiance of their hatred.

British political parties now competing over who will deport more migrants. Reform UK - 600,000 in first term; Tories - 150,000 a year (around the same then); Labour - Shabana Mahmood yet to put her bid in.

The UK is not experiencing a migration crisis. It is experiencing a political crisis as far right politicians have succeeded in creating a general anxiety about migrants which the mainstream political parties feel they need to respond to by competing to feed that anxiety.