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Jan 26, 2023 17 tweets 8 min read Read on X
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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'.

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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

Sep 8
🧵

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. Image
A month after entering No 10, Johnson and his senior adviser Dominic Cummings had a meeting with Thiel, leaked files suggest.

Johnson is now likely to face questions about whether the non-disclosure amounts to a breach of the ministerial code.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/s…
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.

Read 12 tweets
Aug 31
🧵

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. Image
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. Image
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. Image
Read 60 tweets
Aug 28
🧵 @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.

@Rylan
Read 23 tweets
Aug 27
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/…Image
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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.

x.com/docrussjackson…
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.”
Read 13 tweets
Aug 25
🧵

The internet never forgets.

A thread of tweets posted by Lucy Connolly.

A reminder of the one, viewed 310,000 times, for which she was jailed, which urged people to burn down asylum seeker hotels after the #Southport attack - which had nothing to do with asylum seekers. Image
While all these tweets of Connolly's were made before her incendiary post, they don't say which year they were posted.

They can be accessed here, via The Wayback Machine, which has archived more than 916 billion web pages.

Draw your own conclusions.

web.archive.org/web/2024080616…
Connolly's tweet (top right) was in response to the tweet on the left, which criticised Laurence Fox for posting an upskirt photograph of Narinder Kaur.

The next one (right centre) was Connolly asking Kaur if she had 'flashed her gash'.

The third discusses a teenage experience. Image
Read 16 tweets
Aug 22
🧵

Trump’s Fake Washington DC Emergency: Power Grab Exposed (in 2 Minutes).

Excellent explainer of an age-old strategy.

It's being deployed in Britain NOW, and would become a feature of UK life if Reform ever won a general election.

Watch and share.

It involves Trump, JD Vance, Robert Jenrick, Nigel Farage, and Farage's "friend", billionaire Peter Thiel.

The asylum backlog is coming down, and the number of hotels housing asylum seekers has been halved since Labour came to power.

Aided by the billionaire-owned UK news media (Mail, Sun, Times, Metro, TalkTV and GB "News"), populist politicians push a cynical, divisive, and dangerously irresponsible false narrative that Britain is 'lawless'.

Here's why it's a shameless lie.

Image
Read 6 tweets

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