Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Wow, he's optimistic.
I hope he's right. That Labour does have an actual plan. As they do seem to be just thrashing and flailing.

Oh I don't think he's saying that is happening or will happen. It's just his take on what needs to happen and I totally agree.

I would agree solving the asylum hotels issue would be good. However I'm not seeing much sign of a shift to refugee centres. Just talk about closing the hotels.
Even if they can improve processing speeds 100 fold there's still a need to temporarily house asylum seekers.

There's about 65-70,000 asylum seekers in other temporary housing. It's because we've run out of space that we're also putting up 30,000+ in hotels.

I don't think it's a case of it would be good. I think it's essential. Either we resolve the issue on our terms or someone from the right wins and imposes their solution good and hard.

And I think the US is what this looks like. Crossings on the Southern border are down hugely - to their lowest levels since the 60s. As with significantly more protectionist trade policy - this will be the new normal and there will be no return to the status quo ante.

I'd also add that in Europe I think we are doing the really nasty stuff already in the deals with Tunisia, Libyan warlords and Turkey. We just like to cloak migrants being picked up before the can get to the coast and (according to credible reports) dumped in the desert in pious talk rather than acknowledging what it is: a bloodier version of the Trump-El Salvador deal.

I would also question whether massively improving things there will really do much to remove oxygen from reform. The problem there is no matter how much Labour can tackle the issue it will never be good enough.
Refugees are always going to come, there'll always be stuff that can be spun the way the fascists want.

If it's a problem - solve it and run on your record. If you don't think it's a problem then make your case. I think Labour are in the worst case scenario - the Sunak trap - of talking increasingly hardline while being politically unwilling or incapable of solving issues. I think Cooper is getting there though - removing some appeal channels, significantly ramping up the speed at which claims are heard, ending some family reunification etc. I'm not sure it works with Starmer any better than it did with Sunake though.

Your political opponents will always attack you but it's a bit like saying you can cut waiting lists but they'll never be low enough. That's true but your assumption is you can win back most people by delivering what they want and if we're writing off 30-35% of the country and irrevocably Reform then we're already screwed.

Its absolutely true the global refugee system needs an overall- but again where is the chat about this? There's talk about the UK unilaterally deciding we don't like human rights, but nothing about reform.

So first of all there is an issue with the UK interpretation of the refugee convention and human rights law in British courts. This was mentioned a lot by Labour Home Secretaries (Clarke, Blunkett and Straw) in the 2000s, which was coincidentally the last time the numbers of applications and backlog was this high (and the last time it was this big of an issue). Blair wrote about it in his memoir. I've mentioned it before but from what I understand we are the only country in Western Europe with Albanian refugees. The acceptance rate of asylum claims in the UKS is about 75% at first instance increasing to almost 90% on appeal - as I say if you can survive all the lethal obstacles we (and the rest of Europe) put in people's way, chances are they can stay.

On the global stuff - I also think there is a crisis of "borders" globally which is the second crisis of globalisation after the financial crisis. For example Latin American countries are talking about closing their borders due to migration and security issues, there's similar politics in Africa and South East Asia. The Guardian had a great piece on the anti-migrant vigilante gangs across Europe right now (although I always feel Western coverage of Poland and the Green Line does not cover enough that it's explicitly Russia's doing). And there's a wider European crisis around its neighbourhood which directly interacts with migration: Libya, Syria (for now), the Sahel. The politics in the US, Mexico and Central America of both migration but also the ongoing bloody consequences of America's drug habits. I think in all of these areas there's growing instability and insecurity (including from climate emergency) contributing to migration crises, contributing to further instability and insecurity (from a European perspective Turkey is a worry). I'm not convinced, in the current moment, there's a global solution to it - I'm not sure what that compromise would look like. But I think it is a crisis of state capacity and legitimacy - which our system either solves, or undermines itself. However, I'm aware that I think the reason I spilled coffee on the way to my train this morning is a lack of state capacity

A key issue that always gets missed in all this talk about Labour heading off Reform too is that its completely blind to the other side. The Greens, SNP, Plaid, in some quarters the Lib Dems.... the more Labour leans into "Look we can be nasty too" the more they're losing voters here.
It could well be this is a viable strategy. Win educated cities with 40% of the vote rather than 70% of the vote and its the same thing, its number of seats that matter which means targeting shit towns susceptible to fascism. But I've seen even in these places the Greens and Lib Dems can get right up into the high single digits that can really make the difference against fascism.

I don't know. I think Labour's going to lose a lot of the cities (university towns and areas with large Muslim communities) to the Greens and Corbyn's party and quite possibly the old Red Wall seats to Reform. I'm not sure what's left. As I've said, I think the best case might be a Lab-Lib pact and a Macron style campaign of the centre against all extremes.

I'd add on the mention of Plaid and the SNP that Reform are polling pretty well in next year's Senedd and Scottish Parliament elections. There have been a few polls in the Senedd which shows Reform as the largest party. In Scotland they're coming close to Labour competing for second place. I don't think this has sunk in with some of the London press and next year may be a little bit of a shock.

Blair doing the same....eh...ish. You could argue it was a step in that direction for sure, but not the same.
Blair's frequent press conferences were at least tied to policy launches, his summer campaigning was there but again not as constant.

I'm not sure there's a difference. All of Farage's have been tied to policy launches and Blair absolutely used the recess to push his agenda because there was no news (this is why we normally have silly season stories like saving Geronimo the Alpaca ).

What would you suggest then?

I don't know and I'm not entirely sure there is an answer. The structural decline of news is something that worries me - and I think it's most pronounced in the local press. I've not read those stories but I think the big reason you can get away with not doing press is that people aren't reading it so they don't care and I think it goes both ways. I lived in Tower Hamlets in the 2010s when we had a Mayor removed by the courts for electoral fraud, a split within the Labour Party (who held almost all the seats) and some degree of influence between Bangladeshi politics and the council's politics. The local newspaper didn't have a dedicated council reporter any more. They didn't need to end press availability - there was no-one there most of the time. We had a couple of local blogs and occasionally one of the nationals got interested (but often from quite an Islamophobic/specific angle). Sadly I think that's true across a lot of the country. There are the new very local Substacks which I think are brilliant - Londoncentric, the Mill, the Post etc - but they're niche players.

The best suggestion I'd have is something like the Australian media barganing code which basically extracts cash from the platforms for the media (with a bit of redistribution to local and indigenous press) - also, I'd suggest trying to force government (and councils) back into democratically accountable parliamentary and council chambers for making announcements rather than government press release and conference. The Australian code has been fantastic, it has allowed a lot of journalists to be hired, which is a start but I think Australia sees the same structural decline in people reading news.

[HVC]

 No idea if it's true, but the fact that it seems plausible is damning enough


https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNU4WeUo-sZ

[garbon]

No idea if it's true, but the fact that it seems plausible is damning enough


https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNU4WeUo-sZ

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr11qqvvwlo

[Tamas]

So, uhm, was he inciting for violence?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/02/father-ted-creator-graham-linehan-arrested-over-posts-on-transgender-issues

[Richard Hakluyt]

Thoughtcrime.

[HVC]

Could be worse. He could have been trying to watch porn sans official documentation and government consent.

[Sophie Scholl]

So, uhm, was he inciting for violence?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/02/father-ted-creator-graham-linehan-arrested-over-posts-on-transgender-issues

I mean, he has a history of years worth of awful anti-trans posting, comments, and actions at this point. I notice they don't actually mention what the posts said other than what Linehan recalls of them. The entire thing, in fact, is all from Linehan's perspective. 

[Josquius]

Yeah, very light on detail on what he said. If he was encouraging people to harass women who look a bit manly then that would certainly not be a simple thought crime.

[Tamas]

Yeah if he was calling for harassment/violence of trans people, fine.

If he kept using the birth gender of somebody to be mean to them, I propose that being arrested at the airport by armed officers is a bit much.

[Sophie Scholl]

I can't seem to find anything about the content of the tweets other than what he says and the vague, "The man in his 50s was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence. This is in relation to posts on X." from the Metropolitan Police mentioned in The Guardian's article. It seems convenient for him to be getting so much press coverage as he's trying to drum up support to rally outside of his trial for harassing and damaging the phone of a trans woman that starts this Thursday.

[crazy canuck]

So, uhm, was he inciting for violence?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/02/father-ted-creator-graham-linehan-arrested-over-posts-on-transgender-issues

Impossible to say what he did from that article.

edit: I see Sophie already identified that deficiency with the article.

[Gups]

These are the tweets

One from April 20 said: "If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and, if all else fails, punch him in the balls."

A second tweet, on April 19, was a picture of a trans rally with the caption: "A photo you can smell."

The third was a follow-up to that tweet, which read: "I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** em."

They are not very nice but being arrested by five armed police at an airport. Come on

[Gups]

As reported by the Times, I should say

[Gups]

So, uhm, was he inciting for violence?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/02/father-ted-creator-graham-linehan-arrested-over-posts-on-transgender-issues

I mean you can actually be violent right in front of the police and they will do nothing. You can find your stolen bike or car and tell them where it is and they will do nothing.

No wonder Reform, Trump etc are winning.

[crazy canuck]

As reported by the Times, I should say

Are you sure that is the reason he was arrested? Or is the Times reporting on what information is currently publicly available and making an assumption?