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Jan 26, 2023 17 tweets 8 min read Read on X
#THREAD

The #PREVENT Review was announced in 2019. Like the controversial Race Report, the Social Mobility Commission, & so much else, it's an ideological stitch up, headed by ex-director of the hard-right anti-Muslim Henry Jackson Society, William Shawcross.

And now this:
A draft of the "independent" #PREVENT review, led by William Shawcross, made the dangerously irresponsible claim that 'The Govt’s counter-terrorism programme has been too focused on right-wing extremism & should now crack down on Islamist extremism'.

Image
In 1992, Old Etonian William Shawcross wrote an "admiring" biography of Rupert Murdoch, & in 2011 was appointed a member of the board of directors of the grotesque trans-Atlantic UK-based neoliberal/free-market 'think tank', the Henry Jackson Society.

In 2003, Shawcross published 'Allies: The United States, Britain, Europe & the War in Iraq', a defence of the war that praised Tony Blair's 'consistent courage' in pushing for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as the 'right thing to do'.

There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction. Image
By 2010, Shawcross had become a critic of New Labour & a fan of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory: 'Labour boasts that 3 million new jobs have been created, but most went to immigrants.. leaked Labour documents suggest this was a deliberate policy "to dilute Britishness".' Image
Using dangerously divisive extremist rhetoric reminiscent of the far-right, Shawcross continued by saying that 'Labour's bullying "multicultural" ideology has been a catastrophe' & concluded by claiming only the @Conservatives could rescue us from such humiliations!
When the @Conservatives entered government the following month, Shawcross' daughter, Eleanor Shawcross acquired a key liaison role between the Treasury & the City of London. Later she donated £20K to Sunak's leadership campaign, & is now head of Rishi Sunak's No10’s policy unit. Image
Several years earlier, in an opinion piece for The Jerusalem Post, Shawcross had claimed that the West is 'threatened by a vast fifth column - that there are thousands of European-born people, in Britain... who wish to destroy us, & whom he referred to as Islamo-fascists.
The Cabinet Office announced on 29 August 2012 that Shawcross was the government's controversial & preferred candidate for chair of the Charity Commission, a post he held until 2018.

Then in September 2021, Shawcross became the Government's commissioner for public appointments. Image
Shawcross led an investigation into the process that saw Boris Johnson's friend Martin Thomas appointed as chair of the Charity Commission, who withdrew from his appointment after allegations he had behaved inappropriately while running Women for Women International. Image
Questioned by MPs about his investigation, Shawcross said the government is “not to blame” for the failed attempt to appoint Thomas.

He later apologised for the statement, after being accused of prejudicing his own ongoing inquiry into how the appointment was conducted! Image
And now we find William Shawcross - the father of Rishi Sunak's policy chief - has just been appointed to investigate Boris Johnson’s “loan” link with Rishi Sunak's old boss (who "gave" the @Conservatives £400,000) Richard Sharp, the man Boris Johnson appointed to Chair the @BBC! Image
George Osborne attended Ellie's 25th birthday party, & increasingly far-right shit-stirrer Douglas Murray is an old friend.

While working as a management consultant, she was seconded to work for Boris Johnson during his 2008 mayoral election campaign.

Later in 2008, Ellie Shawcross was appointed as an advisor to then Shadow Chancellor George Osborne.

Shawcross married Brextremist Simon Wolfson in June 2012, who she met while he was working on Conservative economic policies with George Osborne. Image
Brextremist Simon Wolfson - Baron Wolfson of Aspley Guise - is currently chief executive of the clothing retailer Next plc, as well as a Conservative life peer who donated to David Cameron's Tory leadership campaign in the 2005. Image
Wolfson was named by the billionaire-owned Telegraph as the 37th-most important Tory in 2007, & signed an open letter calling on then Chancellor, George Osborne, to press ahead with the coalition government's #austerity plan to reduce the public finance deficit in one term! Image
In December 2016, Wolfson was appointed to the Chair of the #TuftonStreet's Eurosceptic Open Europe think-tank, which was widely accused of stoking anti-EU sentiment in the UK media, & which later merged with the dodgy Policy Exchange.

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More from @docrussjackson

Nov 21
🧵

In May, Reform UK became the UK’s first party to accept crypto donations; experts warned of major money-laundering and foreign interference risks.

The NCA says Tether—backed by Reform’s £13.7M donor Christopher Harborne—has been used by Russia to fund its war in Ukraine. Image
A multibillion-dollar scheme that exchanges cash from drug and gun sales in the UK for crypto—digital tokens hiding users’ identities—has enabling “sanctions evasions and the highest levels of organised crime, including providing money-laundering services to the Russian state”.
theguardian.com/politics/2025/…Image
In 2023, the hedge fund co-founded by GB "News" owner Paul Marshall, who employs 60% of anti-Net Zero Reform UK's MPs, had £1.8 BILLION invested in fossil fuel firms.

Harborne (who has Thai citizenship under the name 'Chakrit Sakunkrit) also makes money from fossil fuels.

Read 17 tweets
Nov 19
🧵

I and countless others are sick to death of the billionaire-funded Reform UK propaganda machine, GB “News”, and their decontextualised ‘facts’ that would make Goebbels blush.

Let’s examine the claim that “one quarter of foreign sex offenders come from just five countries”.
Yes, the raw data comes from a genuine Ministry of Justice (MoJ) prison census, but the way it’s being weaponised is deeply misleading.

The statistic sounds explosive, and deliberately so: a factoid engineered to sound like a revelation of hidden danger.
The right-wing information pipeline: a cherry-picked fragment of official data stripped of context, laundered through an opaquely funded “think tank” that isn't a think tank, amplified by billionaire-funded media, and weaponised by opportunistic politicians for electoral gain.
Read 38 tweets
Nov 19
🧵

Reform UK’s head of Policy is a privately educated son of immigrants called Muhammad Ziauddin Yusuf.

Yusuf is a shameless liar.

Below, I'll expose just a few of his more recent brazen lies and misleading claims about asylum seekers, immigrants, and ‘foreign nationals’.
In the September 2025 @SkyNews Immigration Debate, chaired by Trevor “Muslims are not like us” Phillips, Reform UK’s head of policy Zia Yusuf made a series of inaccurate and highly misleading claims about migration, and more recently, on @BBCNewsnight, about social housing. Image
These assertions are easily disproved with publicly available data, but often go largely unchallenged on air, despite being about some of the most sensitive and polarised issues in politics.

Yusuf started by claiming that UK net migration “last year” was “about a million.” Image
Read 39 tweets
Nov 17
🧵

When a newspaper repeatedly publishes misleading, distorted, or outright inaccurate stories, the public expects independent regulators to step in.

What if I told you the editor responsible for these stories is now in charge of writing the very rules that govern press ethics? Image
Privately educated Chris Evans, editor of The Daily Telegraph since 2014, has—since January 2024—simultaneously served as Chair of the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practice Committee, the body that drafts, reviews, and rewrites the ethical rulebook that the UK press is meant to follow. Image
Evans holds this regulatory role at a time when his own paper is producing more factual corrections and clarifications than almost any other major UK outlet — with an overwhelming concentration in politically weaponised right-wing themes.

telegraph.co.uk/news/0/telegra…
Read 25 tweets
Nov 11
🧵 OPEN LETTER

Defend the @BBC Before It’s Gone

The BBC isn’t perfect — but it’s ours. As coordinated attacks on its independence intensify, I warn that if we don’t defend it now, we may lose more than a broadcaster — we may lose a cornerstone of British democracy... Image
As a long-time critic of the @BBC, let me spell it out: what we’re seeing right now isn’t organic outrage — it’s a sophisticated coordinated campaign by ideological enemies and commercial competitors to undermine the BBC’s independence and funding. Image
If you can’t see that, you’re being played — and that’s exactly the point.

Let’s start with Michael Prescott, author of the dodgy dossier leaked exclusively to The Telegraph, who is a PR man and former political editor at Murdoch’s Sunday Times.

news.sky.com/story/who-is-m…
Read 40 tweets
Nov 10
🧵

Growing numbers of people are angry and disillusioned with the political establishment.

Desperate voters are easy prey for manipulative populists—as they were in Germany in the 1930s.

But the problem isn't immigrants or religious minorities. It's always wealth distribution. Image
The story of wealth in Britain over the past eight decades since WWII is not one of ‘the invisible hand’, but of deliberate policy choices—choices that once built one of the most equal society in modern history, but now sustain one of the most unequal in the developed world. Image
Data tracking wealth distribution from 1945 to 2025 reveal a striking U-shaped curve: a rapid reduction in wealth inequality after World War II, making Britain one of the most equal countries on earth by the mid 1970s, followed by an unbroken rise.

Read 31 tweets

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