"We will continue to provide safe & legal routes for people to come to this country who are seeking persecution" - Tory MP Tom Pursglove on #BBC2.
Brextremist Pursglove has been MP for Corby since 2015, & at the time of his election, he was the youngest Conservative MP.
Pursglove was one of the founders of 'Grassroots Out', an organisation which advocated Brexit, led by politicians from a range of political parties, including fellow Conservative MP Peter Bone & Labour MP Kate Hoey.
In February 2016 it was announced that Pursglove & fellow Tory MP Peter Bone would speak at the UKIP Spring Conference.
While rare for members of rival parties to appear at such events, they argued any role they had there would be as representatives of the Grassroots Out group.
In April 2016, Pursglove was criticised for taking payments of £21,750 from the Grassroots Out campaign, of which he was chief executive, which some fellow campaigners argued should have been donated to further campaigning.
He argued his work would "keep costs to a minimum, allowing us to spend the maximum amount on campaigning", rather than hiring outside expertise.
In May 2016, he said given the choice he'd prefer to see Brexit than the @Conservatives secure another majority at the next election.
Pursglove has advocated abolishing the Department of Energy & Climate Change, expressed scepticism about human influence on climate change, voted to reduce regulation on fracking, & was criticised by environmentalists for his constituency party taking donations from energy firms.
Pursglove has questioned public spending on reducing carbon emissions in the UK, & between 2013 & 2016, he was director, with Chris Heaton-Harris, of Together Against Wind, a lobbying company that helped move Govt policy against favouring the installation of onshore wind power.
Pursglove received donations with a value of £15,000 from Offshore Group Newcastle, which makes platforms for oil, gas & wind energy companies.
He also received a donation (value of £6,666) from Alexander Temerko, a Russian businessman with interests in oil, gas & wind energy.
Russian former arms tycoon Alexander Temerko, who has spoken warmly about his “friend” Boris Johnson, has given over £1.2 million to the Tories over the past nine years & reportedly admitted being involved in a Eurosceptic plot to oust May as Tory leader.
In July 2019, Temerko was quoted by Reuters as applauding Brexit, endorsing Boris Johnson's bid to lead Britain out of the EU, lauding senior Russian security officials & proudly recalling his past work with the Yeltsin-era Russian Defence Ministry. 😬
Tommy Robinson claimed his protest drew “three million patriots”. The Met Police reported 110,000.
Prof Milad Haghani, an actual world-leading expert on estimating crowd sizes, estimates “about 56,000... However I run the numbers, it’s very difficult to make it to 100,000.”
Unlike shameless liar and multiply-convicted violent far-right coke-snorting thug Tommeh, Prof Haghani is a world-leading expert on estimating crowd sizes. He leads geospatial transport planning initiatives, and is an expert in crowd dynamics.
Tommeh is a world-leading grifter.
Compulsive shameless liar Tommy Robinson made the laughable claim that his 'Unite (Divide) The Kingdom' rally was “officially the biggest protest in British history.” 🤥
In reality, as only about 56,000 people attended, it struggled to scrape the top TWENTY. 😂
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
🧵 @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.
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/…
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.
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.”