GET A GRIP Profile picture
May 1, 2022 18 tweets 8 min read Read on X
#THREAD

Let’s take a closer look at some of the foundational ideological positions that the @Conservatives publicly claim to support, & how their actions & policies all too often run in complete & total contradiction to them.
They claim to support free speech - but criminalise protest & control what charities can say & do publicly in the 12-month run-up to elections.

They claim to be against ‘red tape’ - but gave Ukrainian asylum seekers a 100-page form to complete.
They claim to support a 'free press' - but support, appease & fear foreign billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who owns swathes of the UK right-wing media, non-dom billionaire Jonathan Harmsworth, who owns the Daily Mail, & non-dom billionaire Frederick Barclay who owns the Telegraph.
They claim to support democracy - but removed the independence of the Electoral Commission, introduced Voter ID, disenfranchising up to 3 million voters despite just 8 cases of in-person voter fraud & place donors into roles leading some of Britain’s institutions such as the BBC.
They claim to support the rule of law - but unlawfully prorogued parliament, introduced legislation enabling the Govt to overrule judicial review findings that challenge their agenda, unlawfully broke the COVID rules & unlawfully sent untested people into care homes.
They claim to support human rights - but have announced plans to radically undermine them.

They claim to support the #NHS - but they have strong links to private healthcare providers & in 2019/20 NHS commissioners spent £9.7 billion on services delivered by the private sector.
They claim that free-market capitalism drives standards up - but since Brexit, food, animal welfare, & safety standards have fallen.

They claim to represent the ‘will of the people’ - but go against the wishes of 96% of respondents to a consultation about the future of Channel4.
They claim to believe in mutual respect & tolerance of others - but relentlessly demonise as “woke”, ‘activist lawyers’, academics, Doctors, teachers, the BBC, the RNLI, the National Trust, & anyone offering a balanced view of the British Empire or treating asylum seekers fairly.
They claim to believe in social mobility & ‘levelling up’ - but they disproportionately cut funding to non-Tory Councils & local authorities & allowed the wealth of Britain’s richest 1,000 people to increase by half a trillion pounds since 2009.
They claim to be the party of low taxation – but announced tax rises worth 2% of GDP in just two years – the same as Tony Blair & Gordon Brown did in ten.

They claim to be patriotic - but refused to condemn supporters booing the England team.
They claim Britain is a kind & welcoming country - but go against international refugee conventions & international law to unlawfully & immorally send asylum seekers to one of the most authoritarian & antidemocratic countries on earth.
They claim to be against ‘cancel culture’ - but banned charities from publicly criticising Government in the 12-month run-up to elections & introduced legislation which means journalists can be jailed for up to 14 years for stories embarrassing the Government.
They claim to be about decency & integrity - but constantly lie to the British people, demonise non-Tory politicians & public figures with grotesque smears, knowing mislead parliament often & are serial breakers of the Ministerial Code.
Finally, they claim to - & are supposed to - act in the interests of all the British people - but they prioritise the interests of their wealthy - often Russian oligarch - donors & focus almost exclusively on appeasing the 29% of the UK electorate who voted for them in 2019.
Forget to mention they claim to be the party of family values - but they're led by a serial sexist cheat with who-knows how many children, have multiple MPs embroiled in sexual harrassment allegations, & now we hear No10 had a 'sexist of the year' award at an unlawful xmas party.
They also claim to be 'tough' on drugs & drug users, often announcing 'crackdowns' - but senior Tories have themselves used drugs: Boris Johnson has tried cocaine & cannabis; Hunt, Leadsom, Raab, Hancock & McVey all smoked cannabis; Rory Stewart, opium; & Michael Gove - cocaine.
Thank you so much for reading, & for all the wonderful feedback, which I really appreciate. 🙏

Here's a few more of my #threads on the same theme:

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More from @docrussjackson

Feb 6
🧵

Tice amplifies this article by Allison Pearson, which is riddled with factual errors, misleading claims, selective omissions, and hyperbolic sensationalism which attempts to recast Lucy Connolly not as a bigot lawfully convicted of inciting racial hatred, but as a victim. Image
The Telegraph piece isn’t news reporting or balanced commentary - it’s propagandistic advocacy: a highly opinionated defence that relies on cherry-picked extracts from Connolly’s subject access request (SAR), filtered through anonymous barrister commentary and Pearson’s biases.
Where this narrative collides with or contradicts published court judgments, sentencing remarks, and appeal outcomes, attention-seeking propagandist Pearson predictably either downplays, distorts, or completely ignores them.

I've got 10 minutes, so here are the main problems...
Read 45 tweets
Jan 12
🧵 Musk’s ‘Fascist Britain’ Claim Is False

@elonmusk isn’t offering his 200M followers serious political analysis: he’s amplifying repeatedly debunked far-right disinformation and presenting it as evidence that a democratic state is illegitimate. He’s dangerously out of control. Image
The claim about arrests for online comments that Musk boosted originated with anonymous far-right disinformation superspreaer account, “Basil the Great”, well known for passing off unverified rumours as fact when there is zero supporting evidence.

Musk’s latest misleading post centres on a striking but deeply misleading graphic asserting that the UK has “the highest number of arrests for online comments in the world”.

I debunked it September and will now do so again today.

Read 37 tweets
Dec 12, 2025
🧵

Reform UK’s slick, stage-managed launch of a Christian Fellowship in St Michael’s Church is not some harmless Christmas-season publicity stunt. It is a clear and brazen step towards the Trumpification of UK politics, where religion is weaponised as a tool for cultural warfare and political mobilisation.

This is not organic Christian revival. It’s strategic political engineering.

Behind this development sit figures who have spent years trying to inject a US-style fusion of right-wing politics and religious identity into British political culture:

• Paul Marshall

A billionaire media financier with a clear ideological project: to build a hard-right cultural and religious counter-establishment. Through GB “News”, The |Spectator and UnHerd and other platforms he has amplified narratives about “woke attacks” on tradition, identity, and Christianity. The Islamophobic tweets he liked are disgusting. His network provides the media oxygen for precisely the kind of politicised Christianity on display at the Reform launch.

• James Orr

A Cambridge academic and prominent Anglican conservative intellectual, closely connected to the “post-liberal” movement and hard-right US conservative and Hungarian organisations. Orr openly promotes the idea of restoring Britain’s “Christian identity” through politics — a framing that sits uncomfortably close to the Christian-nationalist rhetoric of the US right. His advisory role to senior Reform figures is a clear sign of the ideological hardening underway.

• Danny Kruger

Long known for advocating a more “muscular” Christian politics, Kruger has repeatedly argued that the UK should explicitly root its laws and social policy in “Judeo-Christian values” - a dog whistle I explain in the next tweet.

This is the British echo of US culture-war evangelicalism: turning religion into a political badge, not a spiritual or moral tradition. His involvement in shaping Reform’s policy direction cements the party’s shift toward faith-infused populism.

• Calvin Robinson

Though no longer in the Church of England, disgraced former GBN presenter and political extremist Robinson remains one of the most prominent voices pushing an aggressive “anti-woke, anti-liberal” form of Christianity in the media — including endorsing narratives that paint inclusive or progressive churches as heretical. His alignment with Reform’s messaging shows how the party is deliberately courting polemical, grievance-driven Christian activism.

Together, these figures represent a new coalition: a British attempt to import the US religious-right model, with all its corrosive social consequences.

Using St Michael’s Cornhill — a church rooted in the conservative evangelical network — as the backdrop for this political spectacle is shocking in a UK context.

This is not merely a “religious event attended by politicians.” It was a political rally held in a church, wrapped in Anglican aesthetics.

The Church of England has historically avoided such political entanglement precisely because it knows how dangerous it is to let a religious institution become a vessel for partisan identity politics.

Britain is not America — but Reform UK wants to change that

What we are seeing is the deliberate construction of a political identity rooted in far-right themes lurching toward a contemporary form of Christofascism:

grievance Christianity
nostalgia for a mythic “Christian Britain”
hostility to minorities and multiculturalism
anti-LGBTQ+ theology rebranded as “family values”
anti-immigrant populism framed as moral duty
and a narrative of cultural siege identical to the US evangelical right

It is the Trump playbook, translated into British idiom.

This is disturbing, because once a political movement fuses religious identity with national identity, democratic debate changes: Opponents are no longer wrong — they are heretical. Policies are no longer argued — they are sanctified. Compromise becomes betrayal. And politics becomes a zero-sum culture war.

Britain has largely avoided this polarising poison. Reform UK is now trying to inject it directly into the bloodstream of national politics.

Reform UK’s “Christian Fellowship” is not about faith. It is the public unveiling of a British Christian-nationalist project — backed by wealthy ideologues, amplified by culture-war media, and borrowing heavily from the most divisive elements of the US right.

It is a serious warning sign of where Reform UK intends to take the country: toward a politics defined by religious grievance, cultural division, and the erosion of the pluralistic norms that have protected Britain from the worst excesses of American political extremism.
Read 10 tweets
Dec 9, 2025
🧵

How have populist UK politicians and Britain’s right-wing press and broadcasters got away with repeating — day after day, year after year — the brazenly false and wildly misleading claim that we live in a “high-welfare, high-tax” country? Image
Why the “High-Welfare, High-Tax” Myth Persists.

The claim that Britain is a “high-welfare, high-tax” country is a shameless lie—brazenly false—as OECD and OBR data consistently show: the UK's tax take is ~36% of GDP (mid-table globally, and well under the EU average of 40.5%). Image
The UK's total tax take of 36% is far under France's 45% or Denmark's 46%. Welfare benefits spending (including state pensions) is a modest ~11% of GDP—among the lowest in the OECD, well below the EU average of 17.5%, and just under half that of France (20.5%) and Italy (20%). Image
Read 31 tweets
Dec 8, 2025
🧵

Not only has Nigel Farage shamelessly normalized far right discourse, but Reform UK have welcomed a new generation of young, radicalised, Andrew Tate fanboys who think it's acceptable to spread divisive bigoted lies and disinformation, and to make crass bigoted 'jokes'. Image
Joseph Boam is a radicalised 22-year-old Tate fanboy who started out as a Tory, running as a district councillor, then switching to Reform UK in 2024 and becoming a councillor in May 2025 representing the Whitwick division on Leicestershire County Council for the Reform UK party. Image
A former KFC worker, who has worked with his dad on sheds and property renovation, despite his total lack of any relevant experience or knowledge of the area, he was appointed Council deputy leader and cabinet member for adult social care—which ispatently absurd. Image
Read 14 tweets
Dec 5, 2025
🧵

‘The Psychology of the New Far Right: Privilege, Fear, and Media Power in the Rise of Authoritarianism.’

Fear, belonging, and power are being manipulated into a frightening new age of populist outrage and algorithmic media, argues Dr Russell Jackson.

bylinesupplement.com/p/the-psycholo…
I've reproduced the article in 🧵 form, below, because its a subscriber only article from @BylineTimes.

You can subscribe here, and I would encourage you to - Bylines tells the stories and undertakes investigations many national news media fear to.

subscribe.bylinetimes.com
Across the West, figures such as Trump, JD Vance, Farage, Johnson, Tice, Kruger, and Lowe helped normalise far-right populist rhetoric within mainstream politics. Their appeal is anti-elite—yet they themselves embody the privilege they claim to challenge.

populismstudies.org
Read 91 tweets

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