I can't stress enough from a professional policy and campaigns standpoint, as well as basic decency, how actively unhelpful bringing Mahmood's family/background etc into, justified, criticism of her anti-immigration policies is. Play the ball not the player, or you make out racism is okay for some.

Migrants already "earn the right to settlement" through extortionate visa costs, which can run into tens of thousands of pounds. They prop up key services, including through the Immigration Health Surcharge. Pushing the hostile environment on steroids helps no-one. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Qatar's labour market shrank after the World Cup. Recruiters in Doha are now targeting migrant workers to serve on the Ukrainian front for Putin’s army. Story from Doha for @josimarfootball.bsky.social with @bobbyperu.bsky.social. josimarfootball.com/2025/09/25/t...

We can say this until we’re blue in the face and it won’t make a blind bit of difference, because this isn’t and wasn’t ever electoral calculus. Put simply: this government has total contempt for the libs, never mind the left, and it wants to represent rich reactionaries and retired racists instead.

Why aren’t the people complaining that their communities are declining volunteer to spruce them up or organise events to bring people together? Instead they’re looking for other people to do it & only organise to hate & divide. Migrants aren’t the issue, it’s the lack of action by these individuals

It really is just relentless the constant dehumanisation in this country. Prove you deserve to be here. Prove you deserve to be cared for. Prove your gender. Prove you deserve to have human rights. Prove you deserve to stay after a whole decade. It just chisels away at your humanity

Refreshing from John Rentoul on how political commentators have moved to the right in the past 20 years

If I was an allegedly centrist Prime Minister of the UK who is facing being wiped out by fascists in a few years, I probably wouldn’t be building them infrastructure with which they can track & surveil citizens. But that’s probably just me.

Some of you people thinking "British ID cards are fine" clearly have absolutely no Black friends, and it shows.

Labour saying “You might be a brain surgeon, but unless you also give your time for free to help native people, you aren’t fit to live here.”

When I did my Life in the UK test , my British co-workers helped me drill. To a person, they all said "I would completely fail this if I had to do it." The language bar's already pretty high. Also, mandatory volunteering is an oxymoron. Forced work for the young, unpaid work for migrants. 😒

Rachel Reeves: "We do need a welfare system that is based on the principle of contribution" What happened to a welfare system based on the principle of need? Or the principle of universalism? Haven't contributed for whatever reason? Tough.

another thing the expansion of the university system did was soak up youth unemployment. private business is not prepared to pay for mass internships to replace it, so the state would have to. Do these people think Real Jobs Training won’t cost billions?

Literally - and I mean that literally - the Stasi. Literally.

"We have a debt crisis so I've joined the party that was in power for 14 years and under whom debt massively grew." "Commentator of the Year"

None of the comedians on the line-up for the Riyadh Comedy Festival need that money. I've scrolled on through, they're all doing really well, they didn't need to say "yeah go on then I'll take an epic paycheque from a deeply oppressive regime". AND they have to agree to censorship.

Think this is absolutely true - so much is written about boys and Andrew Tate - Tate is more popular with grown men than boys!

Bodes well for the men’s World Cup

Who would have thought that leading internal divisions within the EU and within European nation states would be beneficial for Putin and Russia 🙄

Sky News and the BBC repeatedly mention the "migrant crisis" in doing so they are normalising and legitimising far right talking points. There is no "migrant crisis", there is only migrant hysteria, which the British media is feeding into instead of countering.

More freedom of speech news

Re: the male loneliness epidemic, there is *still* not enough emphasis on how many heterosexual girls and women are staying single out of self-preservation, because the sexual norms that many heterosexual boys and men have adopted are exceptionally dangerous.

History shows that when democracies face crises, strengthening and reinvigorating democratic participation is essential to prevent democratic backsliding and the rise of authoritarianism. This is not that.

“Let’s call it for what it is: bullshit. The truth is, politicians have talked about little else but immigration for decades and in the most dehumanising ways. Polanski added: “Stop the boats’ is all we hear. Well, today I'm saying ‘stop the bullshit’.” www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Completely normal country where I wake up every day and see some polling asking people whether or not I should be allowed to live here and and exactly how much of a scourge to society I am. Very cool. I feel great, actually.

For all Labour's, and Conservatives' when in power, posturing about "doing everything to tackle gangs", the focus on "deterrents" just leads to more people dying. What is needed are genuinely safer options, not swapping people back and forth like trading cards. 2/ www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

An important aspect here, as well as the tragic loss of life, is the word "makeshift". When dinghy sales were restricted in France gangs moved to using larger, less stable, ones from elsewhere. With the current focus on preventing supply of boat parts, they will shift to even more unsafe options. 1/

More human tragedy

Here is the thing. I do not live in an echo chamber. I have gone my entire life in a world where the majority of political media has been screaming that I'm a stupid asshole and anyone who does what I want is basically a Muslim traitor to the country.

Like Victor Frankenstein creating a monster that he and society despise, the older generation keep despising the young as though they are at fault for the problems that emerge from the society of the old

National ID cards, famously stopping people illegally working in <checks notes> …France and Italy?

There are half a dozen candidates for most absurd sentence or claim in this essay. It is especially weird on race

already seeing plenty of people saying “if the fascists get in it is all the fault of those left wing purists who failed to vote Labour” - find a little time to ask, what have Labour done that has made even those who held their nose when voting before find themselves unable to vote for them again

If this had Farage in the byline, would anyone have double checked?

Keir Starmer has already aped Reform because Reform’s project is detrimental to the country and his “national renewal” project is the same as divisive populism.

Legal migration was not "uncontrolled". Why accept far right framing?

Classic multivalent signalling error as per @dhnexon.bsky.social 's work: 1. Say to The Guardian that the fascist march sent shivers. 2. Say to The Telegraph that he agrees with the fascists and will do the fascism harder. On the same day. We're all too stupid to not see the contradiction here.

What did we say? We said: when these people talk about the idiot scum left and their moronic ideas that all patriotic Britons hate, they also meant Sensible Moderate liberals. They always despised you too - see, e.g. David Blunkett in the 2000s - and they were never shy about making that clear.

🚨BIG news 🚨 Climbing pioneers, rising talents and major orgs have signed an open letter urging climbing federations and other pro climbers to take a stand against polluting sponsorship. 🧵 1/7 Full story. 👇

Who killed the pedestrians and cyclists? It was motorists. Why are the victims being blamed rather than the perpetrators? It's this framing that perpetuates poor driving and anti-cyclist/pedestrian attitudes in motorists.

Also economically. The argument is explicitly 'New Labour's economic approach was wrong'. Okay, Keir...what is yours? Do you have one?!

So barely a year after being elected, the government has exhausted its stock of positive, useful ideas. As a manifesto for leadership of the fightback against the far right, this is just a gaping void. If this wasn’t obvious already, we’re going to have to do this without the Labour Party /end

Labour Conference gearing up to be one long dog whistle as the party continues its decline. You can't counter Reform by aping Reform. If Labour loses the next election it'll be down them shifting to the right, not previous supporters voting for Greens, Lib Dems etc. www.bbc.com/news/article...

I really hope the Starmer speech on patriotic renewal is better than this summary of it, which basically argues that New Labour and the Tories let in too many immigrsnts but this one is going to give you a youth club instead so please don’t vote Reform www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/f9444c6...

Hearing that fighting the far right isn’t just about immigration, it’s also [checks notes] about flags and also about the contributory principle which is [frowns, adjusts glasses, holds notes at arms length] about immigration

Well, this is a hot mess of dog whistles and utter nonsense. For a speech claiming to tackle "toxic" and "poisonous" rhetoric Starmer leans heavily into pandering to the usual misinformation about migrants and portraying anti-immigration ideals as "patriotic" www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09...

Starmer has learned nothing and continues to pander to the far right. Is he really going to give communities control of who they accept in their locality? We’ll be back to the No dogs, no blacks, no Irish’ signs.

Once a professor who used to have quite interesting things to say. Now a madman.

If only the PM would say the far right aggression must stop. Funny how he can find the time to support the racists

✅ Free bus passes have been shown to work. ✅ Providing those seeking asylum with the right to work would help ✅ Ensuring they are in areas where they can access services and report would work. That's not where they are heading with this though is it? www.bbc.com/news/article...