Frankly, when the Prime Minister and Home Secretary start listing the flags and bunting they have at home, to get in with the flag-loons, we know that our govt has completely lost its way/mind.
Welcome to my shiny new echo chamber… hoping here that I can keep it clean and tidy and ‘woke’. IRL - lawyer (of the lefty, campaigning variety).
41,606 followers 1,352 following 2,428 posts
view profile on Bluesky
Frankly, when the Prime Minister and Home Secretary start listing the flags and bunting they have at home, to get in with the flag-loons, we know that our govt has completely lost its way/mind.
Are you young, highly educated and driven, and want to contribute to our stagnant economy with its aging population and low productivity? Well out you go
This does not ‘take back’ the flag. It’s patronising bullshit that won’t appeal to racists and just annoys the rest of us.
Overt racism on our streets, flags as threats, Reform strutting around like they’re in power already, toxic radicalisation by Musk on X, politicians howling to leave the ECHR and to hell with the consequences… How can the govt just meekly nod along? FFS and for all our sakes, stand up to this shit.
Each day I am astounded and mortified by this country’s descent into open and brazen racism I am equally astounded and mortified that rather than push back on the malign forces taking us to these dark places - an elected Labour government appears more interested in trying to learn from them
Exactly this. It’s a continuation of the stubborn refusal to face up to the damage (and dishonesty) of Brexit. If every politician and media outlet that genuinely cared about democracy and our national wellbeing had robustly scrutinised Brexit, the ECHR idea would never have seen the light of day.
My main issue with the debate around ECHR is that no one advocating for it seems willing to accept that the past decade of politics has shown us that withdrawing from organisations/treaties/institutions always has more unintended consequences than intended, usually negative.
I turn on my TV and a TV presenter is asking a Govt minister why they are talking about rolling out free childcare when the big issue is asylum hotels. This is objectively insane.
Brexit - the gateway drug to a dangerous obsession with immigration - next come deportation schemes, #Farageriots, increasing authoritarianism, overt racism from politicians and media, cruelty as policy, leaving the ECHR… On and on. Relentless, ruinous failure. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Only worse in the sense that he gives less of a shit about saying the bad stuff out loud cos he has no skin in the game. The other two are either carefully suppressing their inner racist (Farage) or cultivating it in their bid for power (Jenrick). On that basis, who’s worse is a difficult one.
Carswell is in the same camp as Farage and Jenrick and all the other dismal, dull-arsed Reform/Tory hatemongers trying to create social division and civil unrest for their own power. No more hanging back. Anyone who genuinely cares about society and decency must stand up to this.
There can be no pussyfooting around this now. It’s sinister. Tory/Reform voters are being swiftly radicalised by these bastards into full-on vicious racism. And politicians/media giving them victim status, to dodge their own culpability and responsibility are being unforgivably cynical and feeble.
At what point can we just call this whole Farage-led-flag-shagging-moral-breakdown the brazen racism that it is? Asking for the ignored, decent majority who are completely sick of this hate-mongering shit pretending to be “legitimate concerns”.
What a traitorous piece of shit Farage is… (Sunday Times)
There’s a lot to hate about the world the Brexiters created. But the deliberate failure to hold Brexiters to account is right up there. The fact that they’re still strutting around the stage and not in the reject-bin of public life is a tragic indictment of our politics and our press.
The Times would not endorse Labour at the election and never runs pieces that scrutinise Tory/Reform. The so-called ‘paper of record’ has become a megaphone for the far right and a pernicious threat to our democracy. It’s fully complicit in pushing us into this ruinous and racist brexity dead end.
There can be absolutely no “shock” about this. The media has been shamelessly platforming Reform all summer. All summer, we’ve had hate-mongering headlines about immigration. It’s a tedious and grim inevitability that you’ve made people angry enough to want to vote for this shit in response.
What do politicians go into public service for? You’d hope - to act responsibly in the best interests of the country. Not to live in fear of the Daily Mail having a wettie. Honest to god, if you don’t speak out now, what’s the fucking point of you?
The ECHR is not theirs to casually throw away. With Brexit, they’ve perfectly showcased just how irresponsible, inhumane and inept they can be. There should be a zero tolerance approach to the wild madness of these intolerant, entitled clowns thinking they can rewrite our human rights framework.
Any fool blithely saying they’ve now had a bit of a think about the ECHR and we should leave - is part of why we’re now stuck in the mess of Brexit, being told by the far right to hand our human rights over to them to administer. FFS people. Have you learned nothing from the last decade of failure?
Leaving the ECHR to stop 40,000 asylum seekers per year is foolish, given the risks to Britain's other interests. People who should know better have lost all sense of proportion.
Any media outlet trying to tell us that Farage/Reform don’t have a track record are admitting that they have utterly failed to scrutinise them and hold them to account. No experience of govt - sure… but more than enough ‘track record’ to show us that in govt they would be a catastrophic shitshow.
The Times says Reform “has no track record to weigh it down”… Other than: Islamophobia, racism, inept councillors, MP absenteeism, admiration for Putin, love of Trump, brazen grifting, idiotic manifesto, dodgy donations and Brexit… the single stupidest thing the country has done in our lifetimes.
We need to keep the debate out there. It’s the only way to push to hold those responsible for the shitshow to account - and yes, Farage, that certainly includes you. And if we don’t keep saying it, we end up with our own version of Trumpland… which is, frankly, an intolerable prospect.
Partly because some powerful vested interests are behind Brexit and the push for us to be a deregulated hellscape where a few get very wealthy by removing our protections. And partly because really dismal right wing politicians can’t deal with the extent of their own failure and are never made to.
It’s simply staggering that so many of our politicians and media outlets have put so much time and effort into failing us like this… to protect their own interests and power. The country is so much worse off in every possible way and still no one wants to break cover and say so. Beyond shameful.
Meanwhile The Times threatens us with Farage as leader - stating that he has ‘no track record’ weighing him down. This whole racist, ignorant, flag-wielding, ruinous shitshow is Farage’s track record. And right wing media outlets like the Times are fully complicit in this dismal Brexit reality.
The Times is a deeply pernicious paper. Everything it represents is in this piece of writing. - dishonesty - total abdication of its democratic responsibility to hold power to account - fascism ‘no track record’… ffs And don’t pretend for one second, Times, that you can comment on what is moral.
I presume those calling for ‘mass deportations’ and deals with the Taliban will be excusing themselves from poppy wearing and Remembrance Day events from now on…
Farage’s “probity and judgment were sold as the product called Brexit. It turned out to be a piece of shit.” And, unbelievably, this Labour govt finds itself trapped because it has refused to call this out. What a profound - and now dangerous - political failure. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
A day of shame for the UK. A political party proposes mass deportations and the response from other political parties is not to condemn this as going further than even Mosley or the National Front.
*Another* day of shame. Each one worse than the one before. The cowardice and the corruption that have brought us to this point… where fascism and racism are being normalised as political positions worthy of respect and votes… It’s such a cynical and unforgivable abuse of power.
Because engaging their brains makes them cross. It means they have to confront uncomfortable truths, rather than wallow about in their warm cesspit of prejudice and idiocy.
We have access to pesky laws that try to stop employers, landlords and the DWP from exploiting/failing vulnerable people. And, as a charity, we don’t charge our clients for any of our work. What bastards we are.
Oh I don’t have any kind of relationship with any Brexit/Reform voter. And I remain v angry at the damage those people have already managed to do to our country. I just don’t need X’s menace and stupidity.
These people would be in charge…. It is genuinely impossible that they wouldn’t be an epic (and, for the country, catastrophic) fuck-up.
Reform UK, which has a grand total of four MPs, was just given an uninterrupted platform for an hour and a half on the BBC and Sky News channels, in order to talk about its plans for mass deportations When was the last time the Greens (with four MPs) or the Lib Dems (with 72) were given the same?
Yes. I wouldn’t go to a pub every day where the clientele shouted racist abuse, had a go at me, refused to ever engage with facts/reality and waved England flags in my face while threatening to remove all our human rights because they hated immigrants so much. How can that be good for us/anyone?
That’s very likely, yes. It would also be way too late by then. It’s voters who need to block Farage’s inhumane plans. They need to be persuaded that there’s something far better to vote for, with a track record of competence. Not a corrupt far right outfit that exploits ignorance for votes.
But mainstream media drowning us in the lies, the threats and the anti-immigrant hatred of a far right politician who has already wreaked havoc on our country… is newsworthy. There’s just hardly anyone who’s prepared to take up the challenge of reporting that dismal reality.
"Are asylum seekers the biggest political issue in Britain?" Asks radio 4. "We interview man who is determined to make it the biggest issue in Britain. And make it a headline every morning until it definitely is"
This is so reminiscent of Brexit… Farage loudly whipping up fear and hatred, in front of a huge ‘Breaking point’ poster with tiny little fact checks whispered far behind the bullshit headlines. His immigration ‘plan’ would be a cruel and incompetent shitshow. We’ve done this all before. (iPaper)
Can govt please explain to those of us who aren’t racist or anti-immigration, who’ve protested peacefully in far greater numbers against Brexit and in support of Palestine… why we are not worth representing at all? Why is it ok to doggedly ignore us in favour of a minority of ignorant haters?
They won’t win over anyone on X. Half of them aren’t even real or 🇬🇧 voters. And X isn’t set up for persuasion. It’s set up for pile-ons. They need to get onto different sites, talk to different audiences and stop using X as a focus group for policy, as most of us aren’t hateful frothing racists.
They need a better story to communicate in the first place. Comms is always less of a problem if you believe in what you’re saying.
But still, they stay on X… Brexit prejudice and lies, the ‘legitimate concerns’ bullshit and allowing social media sites to become cesspits of radicalisation and conspiracy theory… have all led to this dismal place. A total failure of politics and journalism. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
I don’t want to be too shrill about this but I think the BBC, ITV and Sky have disgraced themselves in their coverage of the anti-refugee protests. A massive failure of judgement. But now we know the next time a progressive protest “isn’t news” that it’s nothing to do with numbers
Just for perspective, a few weeks ago roughly 100,000 turned up for the London Trans+ Pride march. By contrast fewer than 3,000 ACROSS THE WHOLE COUNTRY, have turned up to anti-asylum "protests". Yet we are meant to take the latter as "the voice of the people" and the former as "the minority".
Tories/Reform don’t chase their opposition’s voters. They focus doggedly on their own and they’re ruthless, well funded and have huge media support. By targeting socially conservative voters, rather than their own, Labour loses its own base, doesn’t win over the right and pisses everyone off 🤷🏻♀️ wtf?
And I mean by that, genuinely, honestly, telling people the truth about the harm the last decade has done… Only then really do they have a chance of raising a rallying cry, building support and defining policy in a way that is authentic and socially responsible.
It’s staggering really that Labour never seems to think - hang on - we’re losing significant ground here - why don’t we try talking again to the people who actually voted us in and see how we do? They might be pleasantly surprised if they went back to what, and who, Labour is meant to stand for.
And she herself treats X as a credible focus group, taking up its howls as if they represent the mainstream and not a load of bots and algorithmically radicalised trolls. If she really cared about social responsibility and the rise of ethno-nationalism, she’d get off X and call for regulatory checks
It’s not good for the soul either… Far better to be braver. Fight back. Starve the goddam crocodile.
The entitlement and lack of remorse are off the scale. Where being held to account = outraged victimhood, rather than any kind of recognition of one’s own culpability and inadequacy. Genuinely repulsive.
Exactly. Just shut him down. Don’t pander to this fascist nonsense. Don’t even bother asking how. Just say no. Delusional garbage. Unworkable. Go away and find out how things actually work. Read some history. Stop lying to people, knowing you will only let them down.
This latest spasm of racism, protests, flags, ‘legitimate concerns’, ‘political prisoner’ bullshit is the ugly hangover of a Brexit that failed to deliver the social change it promised because it was all a lie. Now, instead of facing up to that, we get more lies, more hatred. It can only ever fail.
The real 'two tier' divide in British politics is between the wife of a Conservative councillor calling for refugees to be burnt alive, being treated as a brave 'political prisoner', and the protestors calling for the end of mass starvation and genocide, being treated as domestic terrorists
They’ve served a few though…
2016: “Brexit isn’t racist. Instead of freedom of movement with just the EU, we’ll welcome people from all over the world. Global Britain, don’t you know…” 2025: “Fuck off everyone. We never meant *this* kind of Global Britain. It was more an empire thing. We come to you. Not the other way around”
The situation is no less volatile now, as Connolly is released. In fact it’s worse. And these media outlets platform her like she’s got a fucking point. She has not. She’s just a vicious Tory racist who’s being enabled to victim-wash her ugliness. We need to close that shit down immediately.
god I hate this I hate this I hate it I hate it, I hate that the mainstream right has gone this mad and racist and radicalised, I hate that no one seems to know how to stop it from getting worse, it worries me so much and I hate it all
No, Lucy. People hoped prison would make you have a good hard look at yourself, to see how radicalised you’d become. Instead, you’ve learned nothing and, with help from your cynical right wing friends, you’re now grifting from your utterly bogus victimhood. That makes what you did even worse.
You know what it says. You don’t need to read it. You know who’s behind it. You know where this leads. So yes, I share your disgust.
This is what Farage represents. This ignorance. This racism. This hatred. This social media radicalisation. Shame on every single politician, newspaper, hack and pundit who has helped pave the way to this vicious, stupid, nationalistic version of England. (Times - a complicit disgrace of a paper)
Incredible isn’t it? We’ve got our own track record of ruinous national isolationism with Brexit. An objective and profound failure based on lies Farage told. And now we have the nightmarish Trumpscape too. And *still*, people are lining up to mainline this toxic populist simplism into their veins.
As are his detention centres, his brutal deportation plan, his insane Ascension Island idea. It’s all grotesque. The country will fail so fast, and all those morons cheering this on, and every media outlet who’s leeched off this populist monster will be complicit.
The fact that this is being presented to us as even a possibility - and some voters are actually up for it - shows how goddam stupid we’ve become.
How low we have sunk. To still have that fag-breathed race-baiter bossing our politics. To have left the EU on his xenophobic lies. To have failed so completely to hold him to account and to now be flailing around in his fascist cesspit talking about ‘mass deportations’. A nation-trashing tragedy.
Farage’s immigration ‘plan’ amounts to nothing more than threats (or promises, if you’re racist) to be as inhumane, unlawful, moronic and prejudiced as possible about asylum seekers. It’s the most unworkable, unthinkable, ruinous, Trump-branded horseshit. Brexit failure and toxic racism on steroids.
Farage is content with allowing people to be murdered and tortured. I'm not on that side and never will be.
Agreed. But I am talking about politicians, journalists and media figures when I say ‘influential’. And now, because so many have disgraced themselves on this, and the prevailing media mood is so hostile, it’s going to take someone brave to put their head above the parapet.
The really awful question to consider is, “Would a tragedy happening (to an asylum seeker/asylum seekers) make those baying for civil unrest… stop and think?” And the devastating answer to that is “Probably not.” So, it’s going to take some very brave and influential people… to talk this down.
President Zelenskyy: When Russia raises the issue of security guarantees,I honestly don't know who is threatening them yet.They attacked us, they’re on our land.I don't quite understand what guarantees the aggressor needs.Guarantees of what?
Readers of the iPaper expressing the views of the real silent majority: those who aren’t frothing with prejudice, those who think decency and responsibility should win out, those who have genuine legitimate concerns about social division and civil unrest… those who never seem to make the headlines.
Why doesn’t The Times just add ‘we hope’ to their headline?
Don’t ever bother telling me that this flag-hysteria is a flurry of enthusiastic patriotism. Because we’ve managed to paint ourselves into a very dark corner with that particular claim. There is nothing to be proud of here. This is just another ugly spasm of insecurity, prejudice and threat.
Migrants can't answer back. They have no voice. So they make the perfect scapegoat for the pent-up rage of the angry, self-loathing far right who can unite around this issue. In addition it gives the media something to write about in the long summer recess. That is what is really going on here.
Love this too. Partly because it will be utterly baffling to those it mocks. It’s this kind of humour that I love about Britain. Not flags strapped to lamp posts. (Private Eye)
This is all so dangerous. Starmer needs to step up - urgently - and make the alternative case; the case for immigration, the case for respect and dignity, the case for not become a cruel, shrivelled-up nation of threatening, flag-waving, prejudiced wankers.
But there was no assumption here and while I do wish that the left would stop tearing itself apart and face down the far right enemy together, we should be careful to remain persuasive or we only harm ourselves.
There’s something particularly nauseating about moneyed, privileged, safe politicians punching down repeatedly on some of the world’s most vulnerable people… from whom they would happily take everything… their safety, their agency, their dignity and ultimately even their lives.
I don’t think he’s saying Labour caused this. Just that it would be very disloyal and irresponsible for Labour councils to join in with this move that further endangers and targets asylum-seekers and makes rehousing them all the more difficult. Labour needs a united, responsible front on this.
Honestly. This is monstrous toddler tantrum politics. We will huff out of every institution, sack all the judges, deport all the people… Why is *anyone* engaging seriously with this and not laughing at him and ripping his ‘ideas’ to shreds. Demeaning that this is the level of our political debate.
Media… dont bother interviewing raging hypocrites like Chris Philp. Just make him read this out loud to your audiences. www.context.news/newsletter?i...
Beyond disgraceful of Badenoch to be writing to Tory councils urging them to take the govt to court over asylum seeker hotels in their areas. Her govt rocket-boosted this dismal, unsafe, but hugely profitable nightmare. And now she wants to jump on the racist bandwagon for votes. Truly despicable.
Anti-asylum protests and threats, political dog-whistling, flag-mania, emboldened racists strutting around our streets… It must stop. People must speak out. This country mustn’t be chewed up with hatred and failure. Such an important read. @iandunt.bsky.social liveapp.inews.co.uk/category/386...
If it's true that Labour wants to fight the next election on the basis of "Look, it's us or the far right", as Macron did, then they're going to have to start explicitly denouncing the far right, as Macron does
I’d write to my MP but she probably put them up!
Jenrick has raised his miserable profile on the backs of asylum seekers and every single thing he says about how he would treat them is soaked in his utterly unprincipled opportunism. A truly despicable politician and unforgivably loathsome man.
And now, driving home, some bunch of dickheads have attached Union Jack flags to nearly every bridge over the dual carriageway. WTF do they think this represents? Because I certainly don’t look at them and feel proud. I feel surrounded by dangerously emboldened racists.
This is all becoming very dangerous and the Government's failure to show any kind of resistance to it is a disgrace www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
Yes please. Let’s work with our European partners to avoid ever having to need America again. Rather than holding out in the vain hope that it becomes less mad and dangerously unreliable.
“A flag on every damn lamp post is a sign of a society going quite mad.” Yes. Let’s not pretend this is pride or patriotism. This is snarling tribal nationalism. It’s vigilantism. It’s threat. app.independent.co.uk/edition/uk.c...
When history books are written on this sorry episode of American politics, this photo will say it all. At a meeting with EU leaders to urge Trump not to fold to Putin and to protect Ukraine instead, Trump shows off his merch to Macron and Zelensky. Desperate diplomacy meets deeply vulgar egomania.
Jenrick can't control who stands in the background of his photos, but he can decide whether to attend protests with a far-right message and a documented history of being organised by the far-right. He knows this. He goes anyway. Once upon a time it would have been a sackable offence.
It really did have the ‘parent sitting down with monster brat and explaining why bullying is bad’ vibe.
What small-minded nasty little people the Tory party are now. As if improving workers’ rights means just cost and damage to the economy. What if treating people better, rebalancing the mismatch in power improves productivity and retention? In the end, being decent costs far less than being an arse.
Glad that, despite the Times’ relentless efforts to flatter Farage’s ego, (rather than ever hold him to account), its readers are far less convinced by his grifting demand for peerages and his sense of entitlement to power without responsibility.
Trump brags that no other US President has held a meeting with so many heads of state. No other US President has needed a mass intervention like this. No other US President has been so played by Putin. No other US President has had so little understanding of what peace actually means.
