I've never seen a party implode so fast in my life. Reform voters won't switch their vote to Labour just because of their cruelty. It's that Farridge bloke. It's a personality cult. They don't like Starmer nor trust him. As a brown man, neither do I. Labour are now in lock step with the far-right.

A BBC investigation finds asylum seekers trapped in dilapidated hotels, spending years in administrative limbo, indebted to criminal gangs and yes, moved arbitrarily so that they have to take taxis across the country for routine GP appointments. Government response? Stop the taxis.

Congratulations to the Labour Party for becoming so dedicated to cruelty that you've alienated... the Church of England www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

The government should be ashamed that its migration policies are being cheered on by Tommy Robinson and Reform. Instead of standing up to anti-migrant hate, this is laying the foundations for the far-right. I questioned the Home Secretary on how she can be proposing such obviously cruel policies.

Labour now falling so deep into the anti-immigration hole that they're telling bare-faced lies we'd sooner associate with Reform or the Tories.

I think the conventional wisdom that switching to PR, even explicitly to block Reform, would delegitimise the system is completely wrong. You would get buy-in from every other party, bar maybe the Tories, and it's historically the main reason electoral reform happens. www.jstor.org/stable/2585577

👀 Only 20% *of 2024 Labour voters* in Scotland approve of Keir Starmer's Government just over a year into office.

🧵 / With less than six months until the Scottish Parliament election, the SNP are the party Scots are most likely to consider voting for SNP: 37% would consider Greens: 27% Lib Dems: 26% Labour: 23% Reform UK: 21% Conservatives: 15% 'Your Party': 15% Alba: 8% yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

The Scottish Greens lead by a distance on "which party do Scots feel would be best at handling transgender rights" and if there has been clearer evidence the Scottish public actually are generally on board with just being kind and accepting of trans people I don't know it.

Doesn’t matter. “Starmer and Mahmood wanted to take jewellery from asylum seekers” is a mark those two will never be able to wash off and which the party as a whole will have to put in onerous work to remove.

and it's a feature, not a bug, of whatever mangled faction this is that is running Labour. these people are able to do one thing and one thing alone - fight factional wars against the left. they're absolutely shit at literally anything else.

I simply do not understand how the govt can simultaneously believe (1) they don’t have enough political capital to breach the manifesto on tax and (2) they have enough to political capital to pick an unwinnable fight with their own MPs on immigration.

I had the highest immigration caseload in Scotland, and was proud to advocate on behalf of constituents. It's important work and makes a huge difference to people's lives. I hear that some Labour MPs have reverted to pre-2015 behaviour of not supporting people with immigration casework. Shameful.

I see Shahrar Ali has turned to approvingly sharing videos from "British Pariot", attacking GPEW for being too pro-migrant, and attacking @zackpolanski.bsky.social for being too critical of Trump. A striking example of how transphobia is a gateway drug to the far-right.

It is notable that between the two leading local Edinburgh newsletters (the Edinburgh Minute and the Edinburgh Enquirer) the one that is run by a bunch of old newspaper execs is brazenly biased in how it selects and reports stories and the one run by a newbie enthusiast is even-handed and fair.

I didn't realise we'd see a British Home Office more overtly cruel and outright evil than that led by the Tories over the past decade without Reform getting into power. But here we are. A Labour Home Office that is the most openly evil British institution in my lifetime.

"Europe faces an existential choice: build genuine technological sovereignty now, or accept governance by platforms whose architects view democracy as an obsolete operating system." authoritarian-stack.info

This piece was greenlit and then killed by a British newspaper, so I’ve decided to publish myself instead. Trans People Deserve Better. "Gender critical" feminism doesn't help women but it does help the far right open.substack.com/pub/wellread...

This is a new low from a govt plumbing the depths of performative cruelty in hopes that the public won’t notice they have no answers to the real issues facing this country A sensible, humane govt would focus on safe routes to prevent people making dangerous small boat crossings

Gosh, this is bad www.reuters.com/world/explos...

Even with my bedrock low opinion of Labour, I was clinging to some shred of hope that even they would realise that stealing the last remaining possessions of people who have fled for their lives was a disgusting policy. Turns out there isn't a bottom to this particular barrel they are scraping.

The organised and consistent fashion in which Labour has been depicting itself as racist has been picked up by their supporters.

"Shabana Mahmood warns Labour MPs ‘dark forces are stirring up anger’ over migration" as she proposes TAKING AWAY THE JEWELLERY OF ASYLUM SEEKERS! You are the dark forces! The call is coming from inside the house! This is evil!

Unique among inmates, Ghislaine Maxwell gets room service in her cell, after-hours access to recreation, a private visitor suite with refreshments and even a service-dog puppy to play with. Is this a federal prison sentence or a comped stay at a Trump Hotel?

I was there this lady (I guess also running in this district) really thought she was doing something and everyone in the room was like “uhhhh…” She handed Kat a bottle of Trump cologne (???) to wear in jail (?????). She didn’t think the bit through. Mandatory improv class for all Republicans. 2/10

"Shabana Mahmood threatens Trump-style visa ban on three countries" Not satisfied with becoming Reform, Labour's Home Secretary wants to become MAGA. "Mahmood is said to have been inspired by Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem" Bloody hell... archive.ph/1bLd9#select...

This reminds me of how classism and ageism have congealed in the anti-trans movement in their hatred of young insecure people and the things they care about. They find common cause with many of the red-brown lot who also have open contempt for the actual modern working class.

Iqbal Mohamed, a Your Party organising MP, has publically called Trans women "men" and called for their segregation in public spaces Anti-Trans+ ideology rots political parties from the inside out www.thecanary.co/trending/202... @thecanaryuk.bsky.social

This Labour Government had made life worse and harder for immigrants, refugees, disabled people, and trans people than they had it under the Tories. So why should anyone believe them again when they say "vote for us or the bad people will get in!" You are the bad people! You are the threat!

Yeah, introducing Texas alone to the concepts of public transit and freight rail would offset entire aviation emissions world over.

The people who still eat turkey for Christmas are wrong. It's a terrible meat and the "tradition" is an American import that's barely a hundred years old.

"You have to give up YouTube and Netflix to save the planet" isn't rooted in any evidence or climate science, it's basically rooted in Puritanism and the belief that "eating bitterness" is mandatory...

I should add that becoming more like the political parties that your voters hate is not a good way to keep your voters. Which is why after nearly thirty years of voting Labour, I’ll be switching to the Greens or Lib Dems.

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

like, all in on hating immigrants and trans people is the core of the reactionary centrist agenda, and the result is that Labour looks close to permanently incinerating itself as a viable party.

Every time I hear a politician say that an issue is “dividing” this country they always then come down on the side of the right wing view of it. Just once I’d love to hear someone say “this issue is divisive, which is why I’m making the argument that kindness and compassion is important”

The Labour Government reeling off the same far-right talking points on immigration. And look who is celebrating. The far-right. There is a political alternative that won’t ever scapegoat those fleeing war, persecution and torture join.greenparty.org.uk

There is no difference in practice between removing rights of individuals and leaving the ECHR. The end outcome is still the same, people lose rights. If human rights are an obstacle to your policy it is not the rights which are the issue, it is your policy. Labour going full Reform at this stage.

Labour policy is being celebrated by Tommy Robinson. That's it. That's all you ever need to say to explain who Labour are.

It can't be emphasised enough that the Government's current approach: - Increase ILR to 10 years, - Increase Asylum ILR to 20 years, - Removal "immediately" if your home country becomes "safe," - Loss of permanent refugee status, Is exactly the sort of thing they dismissed as radical extremism.

They must be proud with this endorsement, they worked hard for it.

This is interesting — a recent study of mode share (the % share of transportation trips by car, transit, walking, biking etc) relative to city size and income levels in almost 800 cities in 61 countries. Interesting results. HT @davidzipper.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A BBC news reporter talks of 'what Starmer *admits* is a crisis at our borders'. By using that word 'admits' the BBC indicates that this supposed crisis is a fact. But it isn't a fact. It's a manufactured moral panic.

just say it, reporters, it's not hard: '...the trump administration's open threats to use military force against a state that has not attacked it are widely seen by experts as illegal under international law...' there is very little to debate about that.

There does come a point at which pinning your hopes on "vote for us, we're not Reform!" runs into difficulties as you gear all your policies towards Reform voters.

Not even blinking between openly using "illegal immigration" to refer to "asylum seekers". When asylum is not only my illegal, but internationally required not to be. Mahmood is the shadow of cruelty in our politics. Reform could cease to exist and she'd still be pushing for this.

JD Vance owns a company that buys American real estate and sells it to foreign investors. They specifically target Americans in crisis to buy their property for less than it is worth.

@alastaircampbell.bsky.social speaks openly about SENIOR members of the BBC being “so far over in the JK Rowling (read: ‘gender critical’ obsessive transphobe) camp” Let’s just stop and think about this for a moment…

When the Pope can treat trans people with humanity there is a message sent. That message is important, especially here in Scotland where over 1 in 8 people are Catholic.