Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
GET A GRIP Profile picture
@docrussjackson
Nov 26, 2021 • 20 tweets • 12 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
A minority of politically motivated campaigners are trying to cancel the Left & shut down the views of people they disagree with.

Their voice is louder because they're supported by divisive Tory MPs, press barons, & grotesquely wealthy free-market market fundamentalists. 🧐
Esther McVey & other Tory Culture War cranks have launched "Britain Uncancelled", supported by the weirdo Blue Collar Conservative & reactionary Common Sense Group who regularly attack Universities & organisations like the @nationaltrust, @BBC & @RNLI.

bylinetimes.com/2021/09/14/rea…
I hear that Britain Uncancelled *might* be run by a limited company started in March called 'Unleash Britain Ltd', run by a low profile Edward Peter Barker aka Ed Barker, who may be of 'Barker Strategy Ltd' - though none of this is mentioned on the Britain Uncancelled website. 🤔
Right-wing saxophonist Ed, who played with George Michael, served as Director of Communications for Esther McVey in her leadership campaign, before helping with the communications for the Back Boris campaign, & in 2019 stood as the Tory Party candidate in Derby...
His Brextremist old school hard-right clients speak about Ed in glowing terms, so it's a bit odd that the "Britain Uncancelled" website is reluctant to mention Ed's previous clients - a cynic might say it's trying to pass itself off as a grass roots - rather than Tory - campaign.
In October, @BylineTimes reported on how misinformation & disinformation groups are disfiguring public debate on vaccines: groups like #UsForThem received PR support from Ed Barker, who also runs PR for Conservative MP Steve Baker’s Covid Recovery Group.

bylinetimes.com/2021/10/01/ins…
In 2019, the @Conservatives were accused of dirty tricks after Dame Margaret Beckett branded the Conservatives "pathetic" after the party bought margaretbeckett.com to attack her & Jeremy Corbyn.

Conservatives in Derby South set it up & filled it with anti-Labour messages.
Their candidate - our friend Ed Barker - said they did it because Mrs Beckett did not have a website or social media presence, which "shows she takes voters for granted".

The veteran politician described it as an "unprecedented" personal attack.

bbc.co.uk/news/election-…
The group 'Blue Collar Conservatism' says Barker Strategy (Director, Ed Barker) "played a pivotal part in the Conservative Party's policy platform at the 2019 General Election. We could not have got the exposure we have had or this impact without Ed's contributions & experience.”
'Blue Collar Conservativsm' is a hard-right populist pressure group & caucus of Conservative Party MPs who identify as working class.

Founded in 2012 by Esther McVey & a former conservative parliamentary candidate, Clark Vasey, it was relaunched at the beginning of the 2019.
Similar to 'Britain Uncancelled', but more explicit, Blue Collar Conservatism claims to be "a grassroots campaign forum giving hard-working British voters a way of getting their voices heard."

Imho, this is grotesquely misleading propaganda - astroturfing at its very worst.
In 2019: it was revealed that around a third of the Blue Collar Conservatism Tory MPs who 'self-identify as working class', & who claiming to be “blue collar” workers, went to fee-paying schools, compared with just 7% of the general population.

independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
Ben Bradley features heavily in both the Blue Collar Conservatism & Britain Uncancelled campaigns.

Bradley has demonised academics as "cultural Marxists" (the antisemitic conspiracy theory cited by far-right terrorist Anders Breivik) & called for the sterilisation of the poor!
Another of Barker Strategy's clients was Leave Means Leave - the controversial pro-Brexit, Eurosceptic political pressure group organisation, co-chaired by Richard Tice & John Longworth. The vice-chairman was Nigel Farage, who organised the Leave Means Leave 'March to Leave'.
The 'March to Leave' culminated in a Leave Means Leave rally in London.

Speakers included a parade of 'Divisive UK Libertarian Cranks': Richard Tice; Julia Hartley-Brewer; Spiked editor Brendan O'Neill; Kate Hoey; Wetherspoons' Tim Martin; Claire Fox; Peter Bone & Mark Francois.
Steve Baker's Covid Recovery Group received £10,000 in donations from an unregistered association. Recovery Alliance is an umbrella organisation joining lockdown-sceptic MPs with UsforThem.

Reports say that both groups are being advised by Ed Barker.

opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-…
In 2020 it was reported that after the success of the ERG in shaping Brexit policy, a string of new groups had been set up in recent months with a remit on issues from migration to criticism of “the woke agenda”, including the CRG & The Common Sense Group.
theguardian.com/politics/2020/…
In 2020, the Common Sense Group accused the @nationaltrust of being “coloured by cultural Marxist dogma” & in the grip of “elite bourgeois liberals”.

As previously mentioned, "cultural Marxism" is the antisemitic conspiracy theory cited by far-right terrorist Anders Breivik.
One MP who is a member of two of the new groups told the @guardian: “I would say we are ready for a culture war, & we are confident that our policy agenda will help win it.”

The CRG has been modelled on the ERG, & "has already engaged the services of Ed Barker".

He gets around.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with GET A GRIP

GET A GRIP Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @docrussjackson

GET A GRIP Profile picture
Sep 13
🧵

OK, I'll bite.

The word Fascism isn't 'meaningless'.

To spell out why, we need to unpack both the underlying implication of Andrew Doyle's argument and the reasons why it fails to adequately account for contemporary political dangers. Image
Andrew Doyle asserts that the term "fascism" is misused to the point of recklessness, echoing George Orwell’s 1944 observation that the word had been rendered meaningless. Doyle’s concern is not uncommon—but imho, it’s ultimately misplaced, especially in today’s context.
While it’s true that “fascism” is sometimes deployed rhetorically or hyperbolically (eg by Trump), Doyle’s framing dangerously downplays the genuine resurgence of fascist-adjacent movements across the Western world and undermines the analytical clarity necessary to confront them. Image
Read 23 tweets
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Sep 8
🧵

Boris Johnson appears to have had a secret meeting with billionaire Peter Thiel - perhaps the most fanatical of the libertarian Oligarchs and co-founder of the controversial US data firm Palantir, the year before it was given a role at the heart of the UK’s pandemic response. Image
A month after entering No 10, Johnson and his senior adviser Dominic Cummings had a meeting with Thiel, leaked files suggest.

Johnson is now likely to face questions about whether the non-disclosure amounts to a breach of the ministerial code.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/s…
The hour-long afternoon meeting on 28 August 2019 was marked “private” in a log of Johnson’s activities that day and was not subsequently disclosed on the government’s public log of meetings.

Read 12 tweets
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Aug 31
🧵

Elon Musk has been amplifying far-right accounts again, including Tommy Robinson, Rupert Lowe, and numerous anonynmous known #disinformation superspreader accounts like 'End Wokeness'.

Let's examine the context for yesterday's march in Richard Tice's constituency, #Skegness. Image
After decades of neglect, Skegness (pop 20K), stands out on key socio-economic markers on national averages: residents are older; whiter; lower full-time employment; higher rates of few/no qualifications; and concentrated deprivation - it's far-more deprived than most of England. Image
History repeatedly teaches us that burdening already struggling communities is a recipe for disaster.

These communities have been crying out for help for DECADES, but successive UK Govts have largely ignored their pleas, and continued to increase inequality, which harms us all. Image
Read 60 tweets
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Aug 28
🧵 @Rylan Asylum seekers coming here aren’t technically "illegal." International law (the 1951 Refugee Convention) allows people to seek asylum in any country regardless of how they arrive or how many countries they pass through, as long as they're fleeing persecution or danger.
Allow me to explain why asylum seekers aren’t “illegal”, and how misinformation and nasty demonising and scapegoating rhetoric by certain politicians and media, including news media, has made some British people less welcoming of asylum seeekers.

@Rylan
People fleeing war, torture, or persecution have the legal right to seek asylum.

The 1951 Refugee Convention, which the UK helped write, says anyone escaping danger can apply for asylum in another country no matter how they arrive: claiming asylum isn't a crime.

@Rylan
Read 23 tweets
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Aug 27
Farage's illiberal, immoral, & unworkable authoritarian plan involves ripping up human rights laws forged after WWII, which protect British people, & wasting £billions of UK taxpayers' money, giving some of it to corrupt misogynistic totalitarian regimes.
theguardian.com/politics/2025/…Image
Image
Leaving the #ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act and disapplying international conventions

The UK would be an outlier among European democracies, in the company of only Russia and Belarus, if it were to leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Opting out of treaties such as the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against torture and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention would also be likely to do serious harm to the UK’s international reputation.

It could also undermine current return deals, including with France, and other cooperation agreements on people-smuggling with European nations such as Germany.

The Society of Labour Lawyers said the plan would “in all likelihood preclude further cooperation and law enforcement in dealing with small boats coming from the continent and so increase, rather than reduce, the numbers reaching our shores”. 

Farage said he would legislate to remove the “Hardial Singh” safeguards – a reference to a legal precedent that sets limits on the Home Office’s immigration detention powers – to allow indefinite detention for immigration purposes. This would be highly vulnerable to legal challenge.

Many of the rights protected by the ECHR and the Human Rights Act are rooted in British case law, so judges would still be able to prevent deportations, even without international conventions.

x.com/docrussjackson…
Reform UK’s grotesque far-right mass deportation plan is not just economically and socially illiterate (Britain an ageing population and low birth rate) rely on striking “returns agreements” with countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea and Sudan, offering financial incentives to secure these deals, alongside visa restrictions and potential sanctions on countries that refuse.

These are countries where the Home Office’s risk reports warn of widespread torture and persecution.

It would risk the scenario of making payments to countries such as Iran, whose regime the UK government has accused of plotting terror attacks on British soil.

The Liberal Democrats called the payments “a Taliban tax”, saying the plan would entail sending billions “to an oppressive regime that British soldiers fought and died to defeat”. They said: “Not a penny of taxpayers’ money should go to a group so closely linked to terrorist organisations proscribed by the UK.”
Read 13 tweets
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Aug 25
🧵

The internet never forgets.

A thread of tweets posted by Lucy Connolly.

A reminder of the one, viewed 310,000 times, for which she was jailed, which urged people to burn down asylum seeker hotels after the #Southport attack - which had nothing to do with asylum seekers. Image
While all these tweets of Connolly's were made before her incendiary post, they don't say which year they were posted.

They can be accessed here, via The Wayback Machine, which has archived more than 916 billion web pages.

Draw your own conclusions.

web.archive.org/web/2024080616…
Connolly's tweet (top right) was in response to the tweet on the left, which criticised Laurence Fox for posting an upskirt photograph of Narinder Kaur.

The next one (right centre) was Connolly asking Kaur if she had 'flashed her gash'.

The third discusses a teenage experience. Image
Read 16 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(