1/ When @SuellaBraverman took office she would be briefed on the fact that one in six terror convicts in the UK is far-right. The core ideology driving them is fear that "invasion" by migrants is a form of "white genocide". Here's Renaud Camus - Great Replacement - 2012...
2/ So "invasion" is not just an over-emotive word, that might trigger the far right. It is a word validating their world-view... that the invasion is being organised by liberals, human rights lawyers, and feminists - and in Suella's case by implication, the Labour Party
3/ For Camus there are three phases: the "collaborators" prepare the way (human rights law); the "invasion" takes place; then the invaders "colonise and replace"... Braverman's thought architecture is close on the first two points...
4/ Here's the most succinct form of Camus' thesis. Tell me how Braverman's Commons answer in any way distanced the government from this worldview?
5/ See also the link to "globalism" and ...and you can see why it is so dangerous to use this terminology. Thousands of actual fascists will feel they have an explicit ally - in the very politician whose job it is to prevent far right terror and street disorder...
6/ In #HowToStopFascism I describe the central problem: the ideological takeover of authoritarian conservatism and right-wing populism by the language and thought structures of Camus' fascism...
7/ If Great Replacement is Item #1 in the fascist thought architecture, and Collaborationism of the liberal humanists #2, what is Item #3? You guessed it: Cultural Marxism... the idea that the downfall of the West has been designed by an alien/hostile/treacherous force...
8/ Item #4 of modern fascist ideology is to commit acts of symbolic violence that reinforce the narrative. Like firebombing a migrant centre. Spot the absence of outright condemnation in Braverman's first public response...She could have said "I condemn this attack".
9/ The fifth and final item in the modern fascist belief system is the idea that modernity will end in a global ethnic civil war, from which transnational ethnically pure empires will emerge. Thankfully there is no trace of that in right-wing British conservatism...
10/10 But Braverman's use of the world "invasion" in this context is despicable. I hope ministers will take a crash course in how to defeat Great Replacement politics, and understand its pervasive influence among the online right, including those convicted of terror offences.
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One of the joys of not being economics editor of Newsnight anymore is... being able to state when the Institute for Fiscal Studies is talking out of its derriere. Today they've had a go at Labour's plan to offer statutory sick pay to the lowest-paid workers 1/... ifs.org.uk/articles/labou…
2/ At present there's a lower limit on SSP: you have to be earning more than £123 a week to get it. That leaves 1.1 million workers without access, two thirds of them women...plus you don't get SSP for the first three days of absence... .tuc.org.uk/blogs/scrappin…
3/ Labour wants to scrap the lower limit and start SSP from day one. But, says the IFS, that will likely be passed through into lower wages. According to models based on American data, all attempts to raise the statutory benefits of workers lead to wage cuts... labour.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
In June 2021 the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender sailed past Russian-occupied Crimea, triggering the Russian navy to fire shots over its bow. Does Nigel Farage think our Navy "provoked this war"? 1/ I ask because he wants to be prime minister...🧵
2/ He says NATO and the EU "provoked this war" by expanding Eastwards... that's a pure repetition of the lie peddled by pro-Trump fascists and pro-Putin tankies... but let's explore the reality: before 2022 NATO ruled out Ukrainian membership...
3/ So Farage can only mean - as the tankies do - that we were wrong to allow Poland, the Baltics, Romania etc into NATO. Now who else argues that? Vladimir Putin, in his infamous December 2021 Draft Treaty, demanding demilitarisation and neutrality for Eastern Europe...
Sunak's strategy was to squeeze Reform by pandering to racism. It's ended up with crossover: Reform emerging as a protest vote option for some conservative voters who could never vote Lab/Libdem ... and like Brexit it's driven by loathing of immigration 1/... Big consequences ...
2/ Reform surge could, if the Sunak fails to stop it, reduce Tories to double figures while putting a handful of Reform MPs in Parliament - a voice for outright Islamophobia and pro-Putin foreign policy... And then the fun begins: a multi-year project to elect a far right govt in Britain...
3/ There is a strong case for tactical voting in Clacton... and in all seats identified by @hopenothate as potential wins for Reform: in most cases, inc Clacton, that means voting Labour... but ...
What does Labour's spending plan tell us? That the conditions where social-democracy could achieve change through fiscal expansion have vanished (for now). 1/ However redistribution can happen thru many channels - and this is a highly redistributive manifesto ...
2/ Each of Labour's Five Missions is redistributional... growth, thru higher real wages (boosted by the New Deal) ... Net Zero thru energy security and local control... crime and education thru enhancing individual opportunity ... and the NHS is an engine of social justice
3/ This is a manifesto aimed precisely at the problem Starmer's left critics ignore: we're in an era of strategic conflict. It's fundamentally an answer to that: external threat, radicalisation and democratic decay... NB this 👇🏽 is the most significant spending commitment
Why is Sunak's campaign imploding and how bad could it get? I think we could - but not inevitably - be witnessing the end of the post-1945 Tory formation. A 🧵... 1/ They have achieved nothing in 14 years except Brexit...
2/ ... and since the 2019 election the swing voters who delivered Johnson's majority (@LabourTogether voter segments)...have begun to desert them because Brexit has failed, both materially and morally...
@LabourTogether 3/ ... not only is the economy stagnating, but the UK has self-isolated from two giant, divergent economic powerhouses: the USA and EU... and every crisis of the past 5 years is driven by that...