‘Labour’s policies are dictated by social media’ - spiked - "Having been in the Labour Party for almost 40 years, I have put great energy into trying to get the party back to focusing on its working-class heritage... Labour has been moving away from that, which is predominantly why the Red Wall has crumbled and why people are not associating with us. Instead of supporting working people, Labour is re-examining the very identity battles that we went through in the 1970s. I came into parliament in 2001 and was one of only two Muslim MPs at the time. I spent a lot of time working on the issue of radicalisation of young people. Reflecting over lockdown, I noted that we still have a huge amount of radicalisation going on, where people are being groomed away from the mainstream. They are being told to ignore the mainstream media and only to use social media. They are being told not to integrate into society. And they are being isolated as a result. We have to do something about that. But instead we are using the term ‘Islamophobia’ in a way that weakens people’s resolve and forces a victim mentality on them. We need to empower our young people not to be afraid and instead to see themselves as individuals who can progress... We can’t afford to have our policies decided on social media. We can’t afford not to understand what the average person is going through. Social media should be a way of engaging with people, not a means to decide policy and then force people to accept it. Take the Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) initiative. We have it in Birmingham and it’s causing huge problems. People are having to go on huge detours because of it. You can say we should go back to an age where there were no cars on the road. But look at who suffers: working-class people. These people can’t afford to get a new car, so they get penalised. Let’s not use the environment as a stick with which to beat working people... Let’s not have policies that segregate people. Let’s not have funding for one ethnic group or another. That’s division politics. We should support everyone. We should look at the needs of the whole community in every area and see how we can get people to come together. That’s what the Labour Party needs to do. It needs to get people to unite... When I stood for election in 2001, people in the Labour Party said I would not get elected – because the Indians wouldn’t vote for a Kashmiri candidate, the Afro-Caribbeans wouldn’t vote for an Asian person, and the white people were racist so they wouldn’t vote for me either. I managed to get a majority of 7,000. People in all those communities voted for me. That just goes to show that people aren’t divided in the way that others want them to be. They aren’t blocked off into different categories. People are people, and they will treat each other as individuals. Let’s not presume that they are racist. Let’s not try to preach to them from a theoretical standpoint. Instead, let’s do the practical thing and go out and speak to them... People are sharing all these woke ideas on social media and it makes people afraid to say anything. They are too scared to discuss an issue face to face. When somebody posts something online, others assume it is absolutely true. They say it is their feeling, so we can’t discuss it. But we should not just take it as written. We should sit down and talk about it, think about why they are upset. The more you isolate yourself, the more you prevent people having that discussion with you, the worse the problem gets. People want to be part of society. But others are trying to separate them"
The BBC is not a beacon of ‘public service journalism’ - "Just as his party prepares to defenestrate him, Sir Keir Starmer seems to think he has alighted on a grand idea that he can claim as his legacy: more internet regulation. Not content with barring under-16s from social media, Sir Keir’s latest proposal would see the Government manipulate what the adult public sees, reads and thinks. Labour is considering forcing social media companies and platforms such as YouTube to make so-called “public service journalism” more prominent. In practice, this means private companies will be made to boost artificially the content of a select band of organisations hand-picked by Labour, such as the BBC and Channel 4. As a result, space for content from national newspapers or new online creators shrinks. Could it even be the case that publications may be encouraged to sign-up to new rules in order to qualify as acceptable? Such an underhand move would be press regulation by stealth. These plans mean that viewers will be steered towards what the Government thinks they ought to see. This risks giving the impression that Sir Keir is trying to bury the work of those publications or individuals he disagrees with. The Government’s claim is that by promoting the likes of the BBC, bias and misinformation on the internet will be reduced. But even a cursory look at the BBC’s recent track-record makes a mockery of this idea. Last year, The Telegraph published a leaked memo drawn up by Michael Prescott, who was the corporation’s editorial standards adviser. It found that the BBC’s “LGBT desk” had subjected any coverage of the trans issue to “effective censorship”. Any stories that departed from a hyper-progressive view were seemingly ignored. Quite how this qualifies as a “public service” is unclear. Under Labour’s plan, it would have been promoted anyway. The problems do not stop there. Coverage of the Gaza war bordered on shameful: on average, BBC Arabic published two stories a week that it was forced to correct. On Brexit, the economy and immigration, our national broadcaster has time and again failed to represent views that diverge from those of the liberal establishment. Given this, it is unsurprising that trust in the BBC has been falling, while younger audiences have migrated to platforms such as YouTube. "
BBC bias row as Britons 'forced to read woke lefty news' under Labour plans to promote 'trusted sources' - "Labour's plans to force social media platforms to promote "trusted and accurate" news outlets such as the BBC has sparked concerns they may be forced to promote “woke or lefty” stories. On Monday, the Government published its "Watch this Space: A new strategic direction for UK media" Green Paper. The document sets out plans to ensure social media companies and video-sharing platforms prioritise content from "public service" media (PSM), which includes the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. The move would see mainstream media outlets pushed to the top of people's social media feeds when they search for news stories - even if they don't want to read them. The Government has claimed the increased use of social media to access news may mean the public consumes "misinformation" - rather than state-approved PSM."
Meme - "I didn't realise how rich and generous Sadiq Khan is, personally funding London government services. I mean the alternative is he's lying, taking credit for money paid for by taxpayers but he'd never do that... would he?"
"MAYOR OF LONDON... Services funded by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan"
Who needs the Labour Party? - spiked - "If it weren’t for the pandemic, you might forget which party was running the country. The government has responded to Covid-19 with record-high public spending, wage subsidies and increased welfare payments – the kinds of policies most of us have come to associate with the Labour Party. And today, the Conservative government announced that it will effectively ‘renationalise’ the railways... First, there’s Brexit. This has freed the UK government to be more interventionist in the economy. Shapp’s planned GBR would have violated EU law, which demands that trains and tracks are run by separate bodies to foster competition. More broadly, British sovereignty over its state-aid policies was a key battle in the UK-EU trade-deal negotiations. The second is the UK’s political realignment, turbocharged by Brexit, which has pushed the Conservatives towards more state spending and economic intervention, away from so-called ‘free market’ principles. Although many on the left issued dire warnings that Brexit would turn the UK into ‘Singapore-on-the-Thames’ – a low-tax, low-regulation libertarian wet dream – the Conservatives’ post-Brexit voting coalition was always going to push the party in a more interventionist direction. Having won over vast swathes of disaffected, working-class ex-Labour voters, the Tories have had to work out how best to keep them."
From 2021. Clear proof that the Conservatives were a right wing party
Kosher on X - "I want to be sick watching this. Jenrick was questioning Deputy PM David Lammy on Paedophile Hadush Kebatu’s accidental releasing from Prison. This was Lammy’s response. Deranged laughter. Do you feel safe with people like Labour running the country?"
'Voters of Hartlepool, you are the problem' - spiked - "And as with every electoral upset and every populist upsurge over the past half-decade, the liberals have gone into complete and utter meltdown. ‘How could this have happened?’, they whine. ‘How could the party of the pandemic, of sleaze and of arch-liar Boris, win against the moderate, respectable and enlightened Sir Keir?’ For these embittered liberals, the only people to blame are the voters themselves. ‘Comic’ James Felton thinks the good people of Hartlepool were just too damn thick to know what was at stake. In electing the Tories, they had ‘failed the idiot test’, he tweeted... For law professor Paul Bernal, it is less to do with mass stupidity than mass selfishness. ‘Labour’s problem’ was that, unlike nice, generous and intelligent citizens like himself, ‘a lot of people don’t actually want a fairer society’, he says... And for Byline Times contributor Otto English, the electorate has once again been duped by their betters, by ‘fall[ing] for foppish public schoolboys’. A floppy hairdo and a posh accent is apparently enough to manipulate the gullible masses into ticking the wrong box... The message from these oh-so-clever, kind and virtuous folk is the same as it always is: we aren’t the problem – you, the voters, are. For them, the grubby masses simply aren’t good enough for the benevolent Sir Keir and his party of angels. What they always forget to ask themselves is this: why should the voters support a party that holds them in such contempt?"
From 2021. If you don't vote left wing, you're stupid, insane and/or evil, and don't deserve to get to vote
Keir Starmer the victim of a revolution in British ‘turnstile state’ - "British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is the victim of a revolution, but not the kind you have in mind. Elected with a sweeping majority in 2024, he announced Monday that he will step aside as Labour party leader, ceding the office to his likely successor, former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham. But Starmer is being toppled by a tendency that has taken hold in the United Kingdom over the last decade of dumping a leader as the means to address the country’s deeply rooted, difficult-to-solve problems. It is a revolution that has outfitted 10 Downing Street with a revolving door — one that has turned Britain into a political turnstile nation — with Starmer making way for what will be the country’s seventh prime minister in a decade."
Meme - "STARMER. STALIN
PERSECUTION OF FARMERS
JAILING OF POLITICAL DISSIDENTS
REMOVAL OF FREE SPEECH
POLITICAL SHOW TRIALS
HIGH TAXES
FORCING CITIZENS TO FREEZE
STATE CORRUPTION
BIASED STATE MEDIA
CREATION OF 'THOUGHT CRIMES'
COVER UP OF MURDERS
FORCED MIGRATION"
Nowhere left to go | Henry Hill | The Critic Magazine - "The WASPI campaign is amongst the most entitled and undeserving in all of British politics – and that is quite the bar. Hinting at compensation and then giving them a bus pass is just Picasso-level trolling... the fact that Burnham has been forced into yet another immediate u-turn after yet another un-thought-out promise bodes very poorly for his premiership, if it ends up happening. He seems to share Boris Johnson’s defining flaw: needing everyone to like him and not being able to say ‘no’; it’s hard to demur from the Labour source who describes Burnham’s wobbling to the FT as “pathetic”... John Healey’s resignation as Defence Secretary is extraordinary. I can’t immediately think of one of his predecessors who resigned over the issue of defence spending. Moreover, Healey is hardly the rebellious type; the point where you can’t keep a loyalist like him inside the government with a serious portfolio is truly the end of the line. Again, though, it’s difficult to expand on this too much without getting repetitive. We know what the basic problem is: the public finances are being hollowed out by runaway expenditure on welfare (defined to include things such as pensions, social care, and the NHS) driven by a toxic combination of generous policy and unpromising demography, but Labour MPs weren’t elected to do mean things like cut spending and so are utterly unprepared to do it. As Rachel Reeves has already put taxes up several times, this leaves the Government nowhere to go in fiscal terms and no way to arrest its trajectory. Not only are most capital projects being endlessly salami-sliced and delayed, but even headline commitments by the Prime Minister himself, such as on defence spending, can’t actually be financed. The results, especially on defence, are crushingly embarrassing and are doing real damage to Britain’s global reputation. Because remember, the tangible failure of British defence in the past couple of years – most recently being unable to deploy a ship to Cyprus – has been accompanied by ever-wilder and more delusional rhetoric. Not only has Starmer previously said that he’s putting the UK on a “war footing”, but the now-departed Healey last year said that we would fight China to defend Taiwan. Not only is the very idea of that laughable given the present condition of the Royal Navy, but even the United States (which could actually defend Taiwan) hasn’t made that explicit commitment... Ask Labour MPs what mistakes Starmer has made to justify getting rid of him, and they’ll list his paltry efforts to control public spending; his authority is broken and isn’t coming back. If Burnham replaces him, he’ll have no mandate to do anything differently and apparently a crippling need for his MPs to like him – one failing, at least, that Starmer does not share."
Clearly, the UK needs to stop feeding the military-industrial complex and pre-emptively surrender to Russia, China and everyone else so they can do the decent thing and fund even more welfare
There is nothing authentic about Andy Burnham | Elliot Keck | The Critic Magazine - "Gone are the days when the electorate would tolerate politicians of the kind of Burnham. You can stomach a politician having no principles if GDP per capita is climbing handsomely each year. Who cares if a politician says one thing to one group and another to another group when you are so much better off than you were two years ago. When we talk about wanting politics out of our lives that’s ultimately what we mean — not that we want better, more honest, more principled politicians. We just want politicians who leave the country richer at the end of their time in office than at the start... Britain’s economic model is less trickle down, more Niagara Falls. As Max Tempers pointed out on X recently, the UK’s minimum wage as a percentage of average earnings is now higher than the Soviet Union’s at its peak (66 per cent compared to 60 per cent ). The ratio between the earnings of the top 10 per cent and bottom 10 per cent in the UK is also similar to the Soviet Union’s at its most compressed. Whatever these policies may poll individually, their results are despised by an electorate that is desperate for leadership, and desperate for growth. What is really scary about Burnham is that his proclivity to simply say whatever most appeals to the people he needs to appeal to will prove disastrous in government. His absence of any mandate means already powerful backbench MPs will be able to hold him to ransom. We will see the inevitable result of the fact that Labour MPs don’t understand the difference between debt and deficit, between gilt yields and exchange rates, written all over our borrowing costs, employment figures, economic growth rates, inflation statistics and more besides. So yes, Andy may be able to connect with the bloke at the pub. But when the price of that pint increases, the bloke at the pub’s taxes go up, and the pub ultimately closes under the pressure of tax, regulation and energy prices, we’ll see that sanctimonious smile wiped swiftly off his face by the time he faces his reckoning with the electorate. They very much will be looking back in anger as they realise that he is just as bad as the rest of them."
Dovey Margeaux on X - "Well… well… well… what do we have here? For months the mockingbird media has obsessively scrutinised every single move made by Reform councillors. Endless headlines and hit pieces. Yet since May 1st.. 216 Labour councillors have resigned, quit the party, been suspended or defected and somehow we were barely heard a peep. They just never seem to keep the same energy for the Labour.. or any other party. And some of these cases definitely should have gotten more coverage.
David Graham, Fife Council Suspended and later lost his seat after being jailed for sexually abusing a 15 year old girl over a six month period.
Cllr Irfan Mohammed, Lambeth Council Suspended after being charged with sexual assault and reportedly showing women homemade masturbation videos.
Fiona Wild, Burnley Council Became an independent councillor and later resigned after posting “good riddance” following the shooting of Charlie Kirk.
Cllr Dennis Jones, Peterborough Council Labour’s former council leader, suspended after referring to grooming-gang victims as “poor white trash”.
Cllr Matt Palmer, South Gloucestershire Council Suspended after admitting to taking cocaine while responsible for a vehicle.
These aren’t minor slip ups. They’re serious cases that would have dominated headlines if the party label were different. But sure.. keep gaslighting and tell us there is no media bias."
Greens fight over whether ‘Zionism is racism’ - "It is infighting you would expect from a Monty Python sketch. But pro-Palestine Greens have been plunged into further factional chaos as they quibble over competing anti-Israel motions. Earlier this year, far-Left members of the party tried to pass a motion dubbed “Zionism is Racism” at the Greens’ spring party conference, but technical difficulties and filibustering from opponents meant that it was never fully considered. However, leaked WhatsApp messages seen by The Telegraph reveal the members are still planning to propose the motion at the party’s autumn conference. If successful, the motion would codify the belief in a “single Palestinian state” and the Palestinian right to “armed struggle” into Green Party policy. This contradicts existing party policy, which endorses a two-state solution... In a post on Instagram, Greens4Palestine wrote: “It has been brought to our attention that a motion excluding Palestinian voices is being drafted, in an attempt to derail the Zionism Is Racism motion.” The message continued: “While we have no doubt your intentions are well-meant, your approach feels assumptive and anti-Palestinian. “It is not your place to decide that you know better than us about how to resist our oppressors. “No rewrite, clarification or attempt to shield the party from accusations of anti-Semitism should come at the cost of erasing our reality. “You have taken it upon yourself to rewrite a motion duly drafted by our Palestinian group. We are not aware of who authorised this, nor on what basis you assumed you could ‘tidy it up’. “What we see, time and again, is that Palestinians are used to garner votes and more credibility, then cast aside when our agency becomes uncomfortable. “We are not interested in a rewrite.” However, leaked comments left on the draft by members of the hardline Greens4Palestine WhatsApp group tell another story. They showed that concern centred around the fact that the “main theme” of the new motion is “Jewish safety ... rather than Zionism”. A second writer elaborated: “[This motion] assumes that Jews as victims of state-sponsored anti-Semitism was true before, not today. Jews are not marginalised, and it’s a deceptive term.” A third said: “This motion reads as a compromise document designed to manage disagreement inside the Green Party rather than a document rooted entirely in Palestinian political analysis, liberation and self-determination.” Another commentator added: “My main issue is the premise of creating an alternative. The original motion was extremely popular.”"
When you literally support ethnic cleansing/genocide and terrorism
The Greens have shockingly proved that anti-Semitism is a vote-winner - "As one Green candidate admitted on video: “I’ll be very honest with you, I had no interest in politics before, until the genocide [sic] take place [sic] in Gaza… apart from that, I had no interest.” In the fertile ground of social media insanity and community balkanisation, the Greens have become a seedbed for the political ambitions of every jihadist, Islamist and progressive fanatic in Britain. Our politics have been disgraced by the rise of a Leftist-sectarian alliance of convenience, one that is riddled with anti-Semitism. These are problems we have known about for years, even if the elites still prefer to downplay them. The figure of Mothin Ali, the deputy leader, sums it up. Here is a man who celebrated October 7 (he later apologised), described a rabbi as an “animal” and has recently shared several posts by Sami Hamdi, a controversial Israelophobic firebrand whose American visa was revoked amid accusations that he supports terrorism. Yet, with bewildering success, Ali presents himself as a voice of tolerance and moderation. He has even rebranded himself as a humble gardener. But what about the women? Bafflingly, it seems that the ladies can’t get enough of this stuff. According to YouGov, 44 per cent of women aged 18 to 24 would vote for the Greens. So will anybody heed the true message of this election? Warning lights are blinking on the dashboard of Britain. With Jews under attack and a new fanaticism stalking our politics, Polanski’s Greenshirts are on the march."
Green councillor ran business with man accused of cartoon ape fraud - "A business partner of a Green Party councillor filmed driving a £200,000 supercar has been accused of stealing about £2m in a cryptocurrency scam. Baggy Khan, 25, who was elected to Bolton Council this month, is named on official business documents alongside Mohamed-Amin Atcha, 25, a school friend. Mr Atcha was one of three British nationals named in court documents in New York in June 2024 as an alleged perpetrator of a $2.7m fraud involving digital images of cartoon apes. He was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in 2021 and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison."
