In Brighton on Monday 29 Sept? Join us for this. actionnetwork.org/ticketed_eve... @ayoub.bsky.social @naamoduk.bsky.social

Just to illustrate how much worse it's got, I have received more abuse over the past year and a bit - including death threats and a large volume of antisemitism - for what I write than in the previous 15 years of covering migration and the far right put together.

For bonus dehumanisation points, "addicted to cheap foreign labour".

Historians may correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, the LoN mandate simply reflected the terms of the Balfour declaration: a national home for the Jewish people without prejudice to the civil and religious (but not national) rights of the non-Jewish population (i.e. the Palestinians)?

In Brighton on Monday 29 Sept? Join us for this. actionnetwork.org/ticketed_eve... @ayoub.bsky.social @naamoduk.bsky.social

Note the pernicious deployment of the term "identity politics", and who and what it is used to denigrate. If the UK left's civil war of 2025 results in people who do this being consigned to the trashcan of the movement's history, that will be something, at least. observer.co.uk/news/politic...

From "pragmatic"(!) centrists to class first leftists, its alarming how many people's instinctive response to the fascist moment is to scramble around for a human sacrifice to offer.

The backlash against the essential 1619 Project was a canary in the coal mine for the censorship of curriculum, books, and Black academics happening with increasing frequency today. Importance weekend listening.

The suppression of dissent is yet another form of collusion with the genocide, alongside arms supplies, military cooperation, and the refusal to impose meaningful sanctions. All this likely puts the UK in breach of its obligations under the Genocide Convention. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Centrists are predisposed to think the worst of a left wing undergraduate (especially if it's a woman and/or member of a minority) in the same way as they're predisposed to give the infinite benefit of the doubt to a white, male middle class fascist.

Right. My students working two part time jobs and/or having an hour and a half commute to uni because they have to live at home due to the cost of student accommodation lack drive and vigour. Sure thing, Peter. The UK Govt still haven't a clue about the realities of universities today.

No reason why the UK left can't have a big bright future, with its own Zohrans, AOCs etc. But that will only happen if Certain People are not involved in leadership and organisational roles. A fresh start is required. What more evidence of this does anyone need?

There is no "migration problem". The problem is racism.

750,000 people signed up for Your Party and honestly, you could pick a dozen of them at random to form an organising committee and they'd do a better job than 90% of the people currently running the show.

Tory & Labour politicians are entitled to respond to Polanski in this way. So long as they're prepared to disavow everything they've said since 1945 about Britain's brave stand against fascism in WWII and the "liberal rules based order" it supposendly helped built and uphold during the Cold War.

It was trivially easy to predict that the Starmer government's belated condemnation of far right criminality last weekend would be quickly followed by even more intensive pandering to the far right's politics. Its who they are. They won't change www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

After the revolution, comrades, James Butler will present 'In Our Time'. This will do for now

time for me to man up and fill this out

The leading, indispensable accomplice to this world historic evil will tomorrow be given all the honours of a state visit to the UK by one of the other key accomplices. I know that reads as somewhat polemical but it really is just a bald statement of fact.

He condemned the criminality in last year's racist riots and then spent the next year pandering to the politics of the rioters. Hence the horrible scenes at the weekend. I hope his centre left critics are smart enough not to be fobbed off by this little performance.

He condemned the criminality in last year's racist riots and then spent the next year pandering to the politics of the rioters. Hence the horrible scenes at the weekend. I hope his centre left critics are smart enough not to be fobbed off by this little performance.

UN commission: “Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, have incited the commission of genocide.” 5 days ago: Keir Starmer welcoming Isaac Herzog into 10 Downing St

Me and @owenjones.bsky.social had a chat about Israel's strike on Qatar, what it means for US power in the region, and the implications for the UK govt. I'm wearing a keffiyeh to express my insistence on the Palestinians' humanity, equality & rights as a people. www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5O3...

The leading, indispensable accomplice to this world historic evil will tomorrow be given all the honours of a state visit to the UK by one of the other key accomplices. I know that reads as somewhat polemical but it really is just a bald statement of fact.

We don't get much sense in this report of the degrading language that was used, what that might say about the workplace culture in question and how this might affect people. We do hear a lot about how the resignation impacts Starmer, and what a great person Ovenden is. Plus his lengthy non-apology.

Important to remind ourselves of this as we hear and read words like "revelations" and "emerged" in respect of the Ovenden resignation. It has in fact been common knowledge for years that (a) this is the culture in that faction of the party, and (b) that Starmer is largely indifferent to it.

Me and @owenjones.bsky.social had a chat about Israel's strike on Qatar, what it means for US power in the region, and the implications for the UK govt. I'm wearing a keffiyeh to express my insistence on the Palestinians' humanity, equality & rights as a people. www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5O3...

Entirely consistent with allowing Israel to blow up the ceasefire negotiations last week. Israel does not want peace, or even the return of the hostages, as much as it wants absolute victory: the annihilation of Hamas, the total conquest of Gaza, and the end of Palestine as a viable national project

A Israeli soldier who was attached to the GHF "relief" operation, and was ordered to shoot at the crowd: "The officers would shout at me: take them down, take them down. I shot 50-60 bullets per day, I stopped counting the kills. I have no idea how many people I killed, lots. Children". Haaretz.

Yes, and while as a socialist I have substantial criticisms of many on my own side about their response, I think liberal centrists at this point might be better advised getting their own collective house in order rather then treating us to yet another round of "What the left gets wrong about...".

"You can't just call people racists" is disingenuous strawmanning at the best of times. But invoked in reference to a *far right rally*? Farcical. What it amounts to now is "you can't identify racism when its staring you in the face". And well, we tried that approach didn't we? And here we are.

It's not just the violence they need to condemn. It's the politics. They condemned the violence last summer and then spent the entire subsequent year pandering to the politics. That's why we are where we are.

Such a good point. We often do this in public health too. We implicitly -sometimes explicitly- reduce the socioeconomic determinants of health to poverty and we forget the social bit. Our societal divisions are rooted in ideology not only deprivation. Denial of this harms our efforts towards equity.

The far right's "free speech" scam was no less effective for it's shameless transparency. Every time you disagreed with them, critiqued them, expressed your frankly justified disgust with them, it turned out you were actually oppressing the poor little lambs.

Not only are these the moves of a political project that is afraid of its vulnerability, this is also the political project of an entire worldview, value system and power structure that is afraid of its vulnerability. With any luck, it's the last venomous backlash of a dying social order.

It's not just the violence they need to condemn. It's the politics. They condemned the violence last summer and then spent the entire subsequent year pandering to the politics. That's why we are where we are.

Let me elaborate my disagreement with @zackpolanski.bsky.social in a 🧵. The scenes on our streets are not "the consequences of decades of austerity" but of centuries of racism propagated by the British ruling classes to rationalise the social order they have constructed at home and abroad.

I went to a home counties boys grammar school during the Thatcher/Major era and this doesn't even slightly surprise me about that cohort. In the school's 1992 mock election the BNP came second. Even the LibDem candidate was overtly racist. These men aren't radicalising so much as being emboldened.

I'm genuinely grateful for the solidarity, irrespective of how rare this is from a politician. But fascism can't be reduced to displaced economic concerns. It doesn't stand up analytically, it won't help politically or strategically, and I really wish the left (of which I'm part) wouldn't do this.

It's physically unsafe for people like me to go into the centre of our home city this Saturday on account of the colour of our skin. Most politicians are either failing to stand up to this or actively contributing to the situation. We don't owe any of those politicians our votes. Not one of them.

The 'Vichy Labour' moment is just a natural expression of the political DNA of Starmer, McSweeney, et al. All due respect to the people behind this letter but you may as well urge the Conservative Party to do more to fight racism. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Charlie Kirk spent his life making people like me unsafe. His followers sent me death threats for years and threatened my employer if they didn’t terminate me. His work was NEVER about free speech. It was about hate and emboldening violent people. The dishonesty of the past 24hrs is disgusting.

It's been a thoroughly grim week, and its a thoroughly grim time generally. So here's a thoroughly wholesome picture of two absolute legends to help rekindle your faith in the universe.

What this means is that government and UUK want to impose contract changes on vast swathes of academic staff to reduce research time, and ultimately make vast numbers of staff redundant. Join UCU if you are not already a member www.ucu.org.uk/join

A sign of how badly the Vichy Labour era is going that even the party soft left have gone from vague expressions of concern to something approaching contempt.

No better evidence that "The Cathedral" is fake than allegedly liberal journalists tripping over their dicks to praise, as a champion of free discourse and expression, a guy who made one of his central accomplishments a blacklist of professors

I feel like I am taking crazy pills. Charlie Kirk’s ultimate goal, which he said time and time again, would have been the suppression, through threat of violence and the use of state power, of the rights of those he disagreed with, including freedom of expression. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/o...

I have two professor colleagues who have faced threats and harassment due to the organization Charlie Kirk built, and they were not alone. We can denounce and loathe political violence without hagiography for its victims. This is dangerous nonsense.

This is why I've been using the term Vichy Labour. Grovelling to power - no matter the nature of that power or the human costs of collaborating with it - is in the political DNA of the whole faction. John Cruddas once used another good term for their politics: "kiss-up-kick-down".

In an atmosphere of violent racist threat not seen since the 1970s, it would have been nice to have Bell Ribeiro-Addy involved as well, a person of colour and experienced anti-racist campaigner. But the nature of Vichy Labour is to suppress and marginalise voices like hers.