UK Politics Thread 🇬🇧

[Heimdall]

Met police officer who slapped face of boy, 16, found guilty of assault

PC Sevda Gonen hit the boy ‘multiple times’ in the back of a police van as he was being taken to hospital

www.theguardian.com

Met apologises to black community leader detained by officer who has faced three misconduct proceedings

Exclusive: Jason Matthews alleges Connor Jones used unnecessary force on him and pushed him to the ground

www.theguardian.com

In the news twice in one day

 

[SlowPaceThrillah]

Catholic trolling

 

[88m3]

He Inherited a Seat in the House of Lords. The UK Government Says He Will Lose It in 2025.

The U.K. government has pledged to remove hereditary peers from Parliament in 2025. For Lord Cromwell and 87 others, it is a wistful departure.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Heimdall]

a tab I hadn't read yet

In Britain's degraded politics, fighting racism has become a cynical game | Gary Younge

This goes far beyond a Tory donor’s racist comments about Diane Abbott, and Labour’s opportunistic response, says sociology professor Gary Younge

www.theguardian.com

“The very serious function of racism is distraction,” Toni Morrison argued in a lecture in Portland, Oregon, in 1975. “It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms, and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

Hester did not invent British racism. His comments are the product of it. In the run-up to the 2017 election, an Amnesty International investigation found that Abbott had attracted almost half of all the online abuse directed at female MPs. Hester’s comments illustrate a confidence that he could disparage Abbott in the most heinous manner and get away with it. It’s as though she was nothing.

It is not difficult to see why Hester thought Britain’s first Black female MP was fair game.

Abbott had frequently been treated with the utmost disrespect by her own Labour colleagues. In the first parliamentary Labour party meeting after Jeremy Corbyn became leader, Jess Phillips, a newly elected MP, boasted that she told Abbott, the then shadow international development secretary and an MP of 28 years, to “fukk off” in front of their colleagues. (Abbott denies this happened.) Phillips then invited a pile-on. “People said to me they had always wanted to say that to her, and I don’t know why they don’t as the opportunity presents itself every other minute,” she said. She later apologised.

A couple of years later, according to a leaked internal report, Labour officials hostile to Corbyn mocked Abbott for crying in the toilets and suggested telling a journalist where she was. One official called Abbott an “angry woman” (a clear racist trope) while another called her “repulsive”. To my knowledge, none of them have apologised.

The Forde report on factionalism in the Labour party, commissioned by Keir Starmer and conducted by the barrister Martin Forde KC, found that the criticisms of Abbott “are not simply a harsh response to perceived poor performance – they are expressions of visceral disgust, drawing (consciously or otherwise) on racist tropes, and they bear little resemblance to the criticisms of white male MPs elsewhere in the messages”.

Forde concluded that racism in the party is experienced through “hearing the particular disdain which colleagues reserve for (for example) ethnic minority MPs”, among other ways.

...

So when Labour lambasts Sunak for his unprincipled and unconvincing response to Hester’s comments, it does not do so in defence of Abbott: those now in charge of the party have been complicit in insulting her for years. Nor is it motivated by combating the levels of anti-Black racism in politics: almost a year after his report came out, Forde lamented that no one from the party had even contacted him to discuss his recommendations.

 

[FAH1223]

 

[FAH1223]

 

[null]

"in britain"

 

[bnew]

Edwin Hayward (@edwinhayward.com)

So 280 people were added to the government payroll to deport zero asylum seekers to Rwanda? That's proper Tory value. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jan/04/home-office-rwanda-asylum-seekers-guards-escort-officers-redundancies

bsky.app

Spoiler: full text & large images

1/19
Edwin Hayward

So 280 people were added to the government payroll to deport zero asylum seekers to Rwanda?

That's proper Tory value.
About 280 contractor jobs cut after Labour ends Rwanda asylum scheme

2/19
‪Jim Higham‬ ‪@jimhigham.bsky.social‬

And so many people moan that Starmer doesn’t do any good. This story will of course be buried.

3/19
‪christhecatsmum.bsky.social‬ ‪@christhecatsmum.bsky.social‬

Which company, who got the contract money, and supplied the guards would be intetesting.

4/19
‪SteveA‬ ‪@stevea53.bsky.social‬

Contractors are not made redundant and paid off, their contracts are simply not renewed, that's the point of using them. So are they Contractors or employees?

5/19
‪Robert Williams‬ ‪@robwiny.bsky.social‬

As the Daily Mail is all ok with it, they can’t have been working from home.

6/19
‪Markeye‬ ‪@markeye.bsky.social‬

Looks like around £10m of our money saved, at a guess.

7/19
‪richard‬ ‪@7866richard.bsky.social‬

huge resources were put into the Rwanda plan surely as they would be home office employees they should be relocated to border control to ease airport congestion or would that be too easy
BBC reveals massive scale of Use of Force training for forcing vulnerable people onto Rwanda deportation flights - Medical Justice

8/19
‪thisoldman.bsky.social‬ ‪@thisoldman.bsky.social‬

Very good point. How strange that The Times, an Organ of Record, has not mentioned this, unless I have missed it in the Christmas blur

9/19
‪Rich‬ ‪@mrbusy.com‬

Bet they were contracted through a company owned by someone with close links to the Tories.

10/19
‪gabi510.bsky.social‬ ‪@gabi510.bsky.social‬

#torycrimesyndicate

11/19
‪George Hotchkiss‬ ‪@hotchkiss13.bsky.social‬

And I’m sure procurement was scrupulously followed, honest.

12/19
‪Dr Simon Perkins #FBPE ‬ ‪@simonperkins.bsky.social‬

Definitely (not).

13/19
‪George Hotchkiss‬ ‪@hotchkiss13.bsky.social‬

Labour really should go after some of the iffy stuff. I suspect PPE is just the area we know about.

14/19
‪Pip‬ ‪@pipspeak.bsky.social‬

All contractors, someone’s pockets were getting lined.

15/19
‪Coxy‬ ‪@collyc.bsky.social‬

They were so unbelievably bad at this, I'm not surprised Rishi called an election when he did.

16/19
‪Pete Lowe ‬ ‪@petelowe-exx.bsky.social‬

Isn’t Tory value an oxymoron?

17/19
‪Jim Higham‬ ‪@jimhigham.bsky.social‬

Torys value money. Your money.

18/19
‪sootie123.bsky.social‬ ‪@sootie123.bsky.social‬

Why has it taken 6 months to stand them down

19/19
‪@BatesMoira‬ ‪@manderson22.bsky.social‬

On Friday? ....when it was shut down in July?

To post tweets in this format, more info here: https://www.thecoli.com/threads/tips-and-tricks-for-posting-the-coli-megathread.984734/post-52211196

 

[88m3]

Wandsworth: Ex-prison officer jailed over sex with inmate

A video clip of Linda De Sousa Abreu, 30, having sex with an inmate went viral online.

www.bbc.com

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Vienna Airport apologises to Scots 'abandoned'

A Scottish family were left "stranded" in Vienna without luggage and had to pay for a hotel and replacement flight.

www.bbc.com

 

[the cac mamba]

 

[the cac mamba]

 

[merklman]

Starmer is gonna catch a lot of bad press on this from the right wing papers and Musk et al. However, had they proceeded with it, I think the results would've been rather embarrassing for Farage/Musk. The narrative here is Pakistani men are significantly overrepresented in these child sex abuse cases. However official ONS data which has the breakdown yearly since 2020 shows that asian people are not proportionally overrepresented as defendants . . . and the 2022/3 release has a subcategory for Pakistanis specifically, still no overrepresentation. But guess which ethnicity is annually overrepresented? White people.

Check page 38 -

https://www.csacentre.org.uk/app/uploads/2024/02/Trends-in-Offical-Data-2022-23-FINAL.pdf

As an aside, one of the suggestions coming from the tories of deporting these abusers where possible - that should be adopted for sure

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain?

Living standards have fallen. The country is exhausted by constant drama. But the U.K. can’t move on from the Tories without facing up to the damage that has occurred.

www.newyorker.com

 

[null]

What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain?

Living standards have fallen. The country is exhausted by constant drama. But the U.K. can’t move on from the Tories without facing up to the damage that has occurred.

www.newyorker.com

lack of long term capital investment
poor standards
low education
poor work ethic
rigid class system
low social mobility
benign neglect of the masses




none of that changed with the switch of govt.