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Aug 30 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
#THREAD

In January this year, Deborah Turness was appointed CEO of @BBCNews. What most people are unaware of - either by accident or design - is that she is married to little-known John Toker - the UK Govt Cabinet Office's Director of Communications for Security & Intelligence.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Toker's role as Director of Comm for Security & Intelligence, there is next to nothing about him online, & while I cannot verify if @g_johnjtoker (dormant since 2017) is actually the same John Toker, if it is, his political views are pretty clear:
One thing we do know is that in 2012, days before former executives at Murdoch’s News International were to testify at the #Leveson Inquiry, the Govt was granted special 'core participant' status that gives advance access to witness statements & the ability to question testimony.
At the time, John Toker was the spokesman for the #LevesonInquiry, & confirmed that 'core participant status' would give the government the right to see documents and witness statements in advance, and enable it to question other witnesses through its lawyers.
Openness & transparency in Government not only promotes honesty, efficiency & effectiveness, it also strengthens & builds trust in Govt & democracy. When supposedly independent appointments are made to public institutions like the @BBC, there should always be full transparency.
In Britain, supposedly independent Commissions are too often headed by partisan Govt stooges, often with extreme ideological views: we saw this with the Race Commission, the Social Mobility Commission, & now with the 'Commission on Countering Extremism':

The rise of far-right antidemocratic anti-pluralist populism, & the intensifying wave of autocratization around the world is chilling, & as many of these features are now evident in Britain, highlights the need for new initiatives to defend UK democracy.

The independence of institutions such as Election Management Bodies - charged with overseeing free & fair elections - are attacked & undermined by antidemocratic regimes in many autocratzing countries. Concerningly, this is now happening here in Britain:

Furthermore, when the independence of a supposedly democratic country's judiciary & its legislature is demonised & attacked, & its own Govt fails to - or simply refuses to - adequately defend its judiciary from these attacks, democracy is in real danger.

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More from @docrussjackson

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Aug 31
Another #THREAD about the sinister & shadowy network of opaquely funded right-wing free-market think tanks (lobbying groups), funded by US Libertarian billionaires, that have infiltrated & threaten our democracy.

This one concerns Policy Exchange's current attack on our Police.
The Policy Exchange report says the Home Office should use its powers to reform "failing" police forces, replacing chief constables if necessary, as some common offences are "in essence almost entirely decriminalised" because policing has "lost its way".

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-627323…
Using divisive culture war rhetoric imported from the US far-right, the report states that the public feels police officers are "more interested in being woke than solving crimes". While this may be true for a radicalised minority of the public, it is a dangerous & absurd claim.
Read 33 tweets
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Aug 30
When 'economic logic' was more powerful than geopolitical rivalry, nations sought cheapness & efficiency, prioritising 'free-trade'.

But now that international rivalries are growing, questions around safety, stability & ethicality are making a comeback - which the Tories hate.
Did globalisation mean that western democracies naively sponsored the rise of hostile rivals such as Russia or China? Left-wing critics correctly associate the “neoliberal” era of globalisation with widening inequality & environmental degradation.
'There is truth in both of these critiques. But the pressure to cut trade and investment ties is not simply a product of rising nationalism & economic stress — it can also contributes to both processes.' - Gideon Rachman in the FT.

ft.com/content/b03290…
Read 5 tweets
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Aug 30
Divisive hard-right crank Calvin Robinson (sporting his new dog collar!😬) chats with Steve Baker at the relaunch of Baker's ERG-supported anti-Net Zero 'Conservative Way Forward' event in July. Others attending included Suella Braverman & Tobias Ellwood.

Image
#ManOfGodMyArse

See also:
Read 4 tweets
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Aug 30
#ESSENTIAL article by Sang Hun Lim: drawing on Karl Polanyi’s writing on fascism during the inter-war period.

It help us better understand & diagnose contemporary radical right-wing populism AND recommends how we might prevent the collapse of democracy.

globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/articles/why-l…
Radical right-wing politics is widely regarded as a populist movement for social protection against economic globalisation. Critics often suggest reforming left-wing parties to reorient populist movements from the right to the left by building a broad non-capitalist coalition.
However, through a close reading of Karl Polanyi’s works, Sang Hun Lim's article offers an alternative diagnosis & prescription for preventing radical right-wing empowerment.

Polanyi notes that fascists gained political power through support from capitalist elites.
Read 8 tweets
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Aug 29
#THREAD

Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) produces the largest global dataset on #democracy, with over 30 million data points for 202 countries from 1789 to 2021.

Involving over 3,700 scholars & other country experts, V-Dem measures hundreds of different attributes of democracy. Image
The V-Dem Democracy Report 2022 contributes a greater understanding of the global challenges to
democracy.

This year's report makes for grim reading. Like many other observers around the world, the authors are deeply concerned about the decline of democracy over the past decade. Image
The intensifying wave of autocratization around the world highlights the need for new initiatives to defend
democracy.

The level of democracy enjoyed by the average global
citizen in 2021 is down to 1989 levels & the last 30 years of democratic advances are now eradicated. Image
Read 25 tweets
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Aug 29
In July 2019, Mail & Sunday Telegraph columnist Simon Heffer - who in 2012 had written in the Spectator the first draft of a grotesque attack on Liverpudlians, often attributed to Boris Johnson - accused Jeremy Corbyn of 'wanting to reopen Auschwitz'.

Heffer said in 2012 that he wrote the first draft of a Spectator editorial in 2004, regarding the death of Kenneth Bigley, which said in part:

"An excessive predilection for welfarism have created a peculiar, and deeply unattractive, psyche among many Liverpudlians." Image
"They see themselves whenever possible as victims, and resent their victim status; yet at the same time they wallow in it... They cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it..." Image
Read 7 tweets

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