1/ Starmer is right to claim the mantle of patriotism. Real patriotism is care for the people of one's country, not the yelling of slogans and the waving of flags. Real patriotism takes careful thought and hard work. And real patriots do not wallow in Russian money.
2/ Real patriotism is not about 'believing in Britain'. It's not about distracting people from our country's real problems and the hard work needed to address them by pointing at foreigners or scapegoating minorities. Real patriotism is about care, not loud-mouthed pride.
3/ We have made a huge mistake leaving the hard and far-right in charge of powerful emotionally charged words and symbols like 'patriotism' and the UK and English flags. We have let them use them as sticks to beat us with. They don't deserve to own them. We must take them back.
4/ Farage, for example, poses as a patriot, but he has colluded with Russia and rich and powerful Americans to undermine and weaken this country. Far from being a patriot, he is a traitor, and that's another powerful word we need to seize from the right.

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More from @nickreeves9876

12 Oct
1/ We should be pressing as hard as possible to get opposition parties to accept electoral cooperation and to immediately start work on the basic arrangements. Cooperation is vital for defeating the Tories under FPTP. Without it all our efforts will be in vain.
2/ We need a hashtag for an electoral cooperation campaign. Ideas would be welcome. One requirement is that the hashtag be short.
3/ Electoral cooperation does not demand monolithic unity. We in the opposition will continue to disagree among ourselves about all sorts of issues. But these should be treated as disagreements among allies and friends. Disagreement must not mean enmity.
Read 4 tweets
11 Oct
1/ We should take back the UK and English flags from the hard and far-right. They show no care for our country and its people, so they have no right to own our national symbols. But to do that we need a positive narrative about what the UK & England stand for.
2/ Many people will, understandably say - a pox on national identity. But there are two big problems with that stance. One is that if we don't forge a national identity others will. But there's a larger issue here, namely the interweaving of national identity and democracy.
3/ We are very familiar with anti-democratic aspect of nationalism. But there's another side of nationality that recent events have eclipsed. Democracy requires a sense of our belonging to a shared community, giving us a sense of solidarity with other members of the community.
Read 5 tweets
9 Oct
1/ "We won’t be back in the EU”: Rachel Reeves sets out Labour’s Brexit policy

Then we Remainers and Rejoiners should dump Labour. Electoral cooperation will be needed to beat the Tories so there is no need for us to back a party that spits in our faces. labourlist.org/2020/10/we-won…
2/ Ever since 2016 Labour has taken its pro-EU voters for granted while pandering to Brexiters. Well enough is enough. Why should we back a party that treats us with contempt? Electoral cooperation will be needed to beat the Tories, so let's leave Labour with its Brexity red wall
3/ I'm not a hardline rejoiner who demands the next government brings us back into the EU. Rejoining will depend on very clear majority support, and before rejoining we would need to radically strengthen our democracy.
Read 4 tweets
2 Oct
The market fundamentalist ideology driving right-wing politics - an extreme ideology, backed by big money, which views the intrinsic worth of a person as determined by their wealth, and views taxation as theft & democracies as parasites.
By @MrMarkEThomas 99-percent.org/what-is-the-ma…
Market fundamentalism would be the stuff of a few cranks were it not supported by the members of the super-rich like Koch, Thiel and Mercer. It is a fundamentally anti-democratic doctrine which can only achieve its goals by crippling or destroying democracy.
Market fundamentalism is an inversion of Marxism. Whereas Marx wanted to free humans from the tyranny of the market, market fundamentalists regard the market as the true locus of freedom and everything that conflicts with it as tyranny. Hence their claim to be libertarians.
Read 5 tweets
26 Sep
Andrew Neil's news channel is an attack on British democracy. Like Murdoch's Fox News it is designed to create a self-contained right-wing tribe which regards the rest of society as enemies and so will back the kleptocrats' demolition of democracy.
theguardian.com/media/2020/sep…
Make no mistake, the kleptocratic super-rich and their political and media minions are now a class wholly detached from the rest of society. They see democracy and its laws, taxes and regulations as an unjust imposition. They will therefore use any trick to cripple or destroy it.
They want to divide us into warring tribes who live in closed belief bubbles, and come to regard the other group as enemies, not as fellow members of a democratic community. They then will use their money and their pet tribe to crush opposition to their kleptocratic project.
Read 5 tweets
24 Sep
1/ Braverman claims opposition to breaking international (and national law) is unpatriotic. She is the one being unpatriotic. From Magna Carta onwards our governments have been constrained by the rule of law. It is tyrants who put themselves above the law.
politicshome.com/news/article/b…
2/ Braverman claims the government is respecting Parliamentary sovereignty. Section 4(g) gives the ministers the power to break laws passed by Parliament. This is not respect for Parliament, it is a power-grab by an Executive which holds the former powers of the Monarch. Image
3/ The song 'Rule Britannia' isn't about imperial domination. It's about Britain's freedom from tyranny, as these words make clear –

'The nations not so blest as thee
Must, in their turn, to tyrants fall'

A government that gives itself the power to break the law is a tyranny.
Read 4 tweets

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