Unconscionable to put political advantage above the demands of humanity. Starmer should look carefully at the company he keeps in this initiative.

How many times do we need to point this out? By appeasing the far right, you do not weaken it. You strengthen it. While weakening your own position. There's a vast amount of academic research showing this. But Labour will not listen. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec...

But the question remains: why is Keir Starmer not making the case for the ECHR and what protections it brings to British people? He spent his entire career defending it. He wrote a 900 page book on it! A prime minister who left his principles at the door the minute he got into power.

Can we go back to responding to racism and antisemitism with disgust and opprobrium please?

Kirsty Hughes: The Implications of the Court of Appeal’s Judgment on ‘Family Life’ for the Government’s Immigration Proposals ukconstitutionallaw.org/2025/12/10/k...

The EU was created in by people who lived through WWII and saw political and economic integration as a means to bringing peace and stability to the continent. It is being opposed by Putin, Musk and the others who support Neo Nazis in Europe.

If you teach histories of British slavery, don't miss this Thursday's book launch and talk: Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain's Colonial Past, IHR, London 11 December & on Zoom. 5:30pm. Registration details are below and a link to the open access book in post 2/2. This post is 1/2.

I feel angry about the all hostile narratives propagated against immigrants. It's socially hard for an ethnic minority woman to express anger but nevertheless I feel I must. Anger is the appropriate emotion here with such gross unfairness & public harm. Let's give eachother permission to express it.

Our conversation about immigration is framed entirely on Nigel Farage’s terms. Labour has completely capitulated the ground to the far right, the racism & the hate. We no longer have a conversation AT ALL about how we need immigration & when we cut it, we pay the price. #r4today

I’m a past winner of the Orwell Prize & won partly because I exposed Vote Leave’s unlawful activities. Michael Gove was its co-convener & refused to answer a single q. He’s now a judge of the prize & our world is truly one that Orwell would recognise bylinetimes.com/2025/11/25/m...

Shabana Mahmood is an avatar of open Britain – that’s what makes her fable about immigration so seductive | Nesrine Malik

Blood spilled in Sudan can be seen from space. Nobody can feign ignorance about what’s going on | Nesrine Malik

The real BBC bias story, narrated by Anna Ford

Starmer’s anti-asylum policies show how utterly clueless he is about the right-wing media’s role in politics. He’s trying to fix a “problem” contrived by Farage, GB News and The Telegraph. He’ll never win, because ultimately he’s fighting a ghost – he’s fighting something that doesn’t really exist

Excellent place to start on the legal and constitutional implications of the asylum white paper. And, as ever, Mark manages to pen these articulate thoughts so fast.

I think you can get the measure of the deadness of someone's soul from the fact they kick up a stink about [checks notes] autistic kids wearing ear defenders

Imagine writing a policy that required you to be explicit that you would not forcibly confiscate refugees’ wedding rings

Six weeks since the PM said Britain faced a choice between decency or division and our bad, obviously, for not understanding that he was in fact Team Division

Remembrance Day doesn’t seem to have had any impact on this *Home Office Minister*. To propose a reprehensible policy does its own moral harm, as well as revealing profound ignorance.

There’s just so much performative cruelty and stupidity in the asylum announcements that it’s hard to know where to start. But one place to start is that if its aim is to reduce small boats crossings, it won’t work. We’ve had 5 years of deterrent policies. They don’t work.

Not everyone is unhappy about the Government's descent into anti-refugee politics

Labour’s latest attack on asylum seekers is cruel & counterproductive. How does it help community cohesion to hold threat of deportation over vulnerable people? We don’t need an arms race with the hard right over asylum, we need safe routes & European cooperation #bbclaurak

If you want more significant numbers of asylum seekers to work and find their own housing, rather than rely on statutory asylum provision, then you presumably need to…allow them to work? What am I missing

Today is not the day to argue "oh so you want Reform to win then" as an argument for Labour's indefensible and inhumane anti-asylum policies. At least be honest and own that you're defending racist policies promoted with genuinely far right talking points. Don't try and pretend this is "progressive"

Does Shabana Mahmood realise she is in the Labour party? I'm struggling some days to see how some Labour MPs even joined the party.. they don't seem to have any of the ideals I associate with being a Labour supporter.

Mahmood’s word-salad to camouflage a vile move by government. If immigration is causing divides fix the divides not the legislation.

To suggest that having lived a life so grim that even an English tribunal will grant you asylum, and to have somehow managed to get here at great risk to life, is a "golden ticket" is absolutely fucking contemptible. Shame on this so-called Labour Party.

Asked a question by Kuenssberg about whether her proposals on refugees would mean refugee families being broken up, Shabana Mahmood immediately started talking about illegal migration. Eventually, she’s admitted that yes, Labour’s policy will break up settled families. Vile.

In my wildest nightmares I never imagined Labour could be so cruel, so wrong, so batshit crazy as to go this far. Reform & the Tories must be lapping it up.

Hey, why not make 50 years? Or 100? Or 1000? That'd teach the Normans and their yoke. Or something.

Another day another migration story. Terrifying in here tho is the reform of the ECHR she will attempt. This will be Labour's biggest and most dangerous mistake, I GUARANTEE. It will set up the infrastructure for a Reform govt. to dismantle all our protections. news.sky.com/story/home-s...

We need to fight this on every term. Even if you don't care about migrant rights (which is stupid), you should care about 100 other things that this will affect. Don't let the cover of a migration story put you off.

Any politician who is taking seriously that the next election might be lost to a far-right populist party, should be doing all they can to strengthen protections for vulnerable people. If this is lost, it will go down in history as a moment where everything collapsed.

The Home Office are scaring the sh*t out of me!

"The era of permanent protection is over" Is this Labour government really saying it was wrong in principle to let these refugees of the last 75 years to stay, settle and become British - and they believe that should NEVER happen again in principle or practice? www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiuR...

Someone should ask Starmer and Mahmood whether they think the Kindertransport, for example, should have been a return ticket. Whether Alf Dubs, rather than becoming a Labour MP and now Lord, ought to have been sent back with his family to Czechoslovakia once it was liberated from German rule.

Imagine the Attlee government in 1950 expelling Claus Moser, Hans Krebs, Ernest Gellner, Frank Hahn, Sigmund Warburg, Herman Bondi, and three of the Amadeus Quartet www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

What new hell is this? Not in my bloody name.

UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood: “On Monday, I will announce the most significant changes to our asylum system in modern times “ I never thought I’d reach the point where I dread an announcement like this from Labour.

Donald Trump is not going to sue the BBC for $1 billion The real story today is both Reform/Farage and the Conservatives/Badenoch talking today about radically changing the BBC This is the real agenda

Our evidence on 'Changing prison cultures through education' submitted to the House of Lords' Justice and Home Affairs Committee has been cited in their report 'Better Prisons: Less Crime'. We are working hard to see that inclusive education is at the forefront of solutions to the prison crisis.

The sheer greasy desperation from these bastards that any violent crime is committed by an immigrant so they can continue their grift. Even when they know it isn't true. Foul.

Let me excerpt the concluding paragraph:

Government has published one of those quiet but important documents that might get overlooked as it is not 'newsy'. The headline finding is that £1 of public R&D investment generates £8 in net economic benefits for the UK over the long term www.gov.uk/government/p...

Jesus Christ. We go mad about one bloke we wrongly released, yet hear next to nothing about this horror? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Woah! So Labour's position really is, 'telling us off for breaching human rights undermines the case for human rights'? Proper Trumpian stuff from Labour's answer to Suella Braverman.

Making topical comedy at bleak news times can be so tough but, in my book, it’s thank heavens for the return of Have I Got News For You, where Ian and Paul work magic to conjure laughs when there are none. Tonight with wonderful Miles Jupp and Sheila Hancock - and me trying to host. 9pm on BBC One.

"Trump is using the full power of his office to punish people and organisations who criticise him. There's a word for that - authoritarian." If you think this is just about Jimmy Kimmel, you are missing the point. @maitlis.bsky.social | @lewisgoodall.com www.thenewsagents.co.uk/article/if-y...

www.theguardian.com/education/20... Guardian today, very pleased at the work of philosophyinprison.com getting some coverage.

Who's following the philosophy in prison debate? Readings and essays - or a levelling conversation?