Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
GET A GRIP Profile picture
@docrussjackson
Mar 12, 2023 • 24 tweets • 14 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
The "star" of the Home Office's grotesque immigration propaganda video is failed UKIPper Steven Woolfe, who nearly succeeded Farage as UKIP leader, until he was in a punch up in Strasbourg with a fellow kipper. He's also featured in #TuftonStreet's abysmal 'New Culture Forum'. 😬
Woolfe's English father was mixed race, born to a British Jewish mother & a Black American father, who abandoned Woolfe as a small child.

His first role as an Employed Barrister was acting as General Counsel for a stockbroking firm Merchant Securities Limited.
Woolfe moved to the Union Bank of Switzerland, London office in the legal & compliance department, & then went onto work for several investment banks such as Credit Suisse, Barclays Capital and Standard Bank as well as Aviva.
He spent several years as general counsel for hedge fund managers, then co-founded the Hedge Fund lawyers Association & was its chair for 2010 to 2102. Since 2019 he has also acted as a legal & regulatory consultant to financial institutions.
Woolfe was introduced to UKIP by Lord Pearson of Rannoch & made his debut speech at UKIP's 2010 annual conference. In 2010, Nigel Farage declared his intention to stand in the UKIP leadership, he appointed Woolfe, who was not a member of UKIP, to his team of senior spokespeople.
Woolfe stood as a UKIP candidate for the City & East for the Greater London Authority in May 2012.

In November 2012, Woolfe won UKIP's nomination to contest the Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner elections. Woolfe's campaign message was one of being tough on crime.
Woolfe was selected as number 3 on UKIP's regional party list in the 2014 European Parliament election in North West England. He was one of three candidates from the party to be elected as MEP in the region.
In 2014 Woolfe became Spokesman for & shaped UKIP migration policy, then from July 2014 until May 2015, Woolfe's was responsible for macro policy & taxation % City of London spokesman. Predictably, he advocated a simplified & lower tax regime for all.
On 4 September 2014, Woolfe was chosen as UKIP's Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Stockport. Woolfe came third at the 2015 general election with 13% of the vote.

In July 2016, Woolfe launched his bid to become leader of UKIP following the resignation of Nigel Farage.
In 2017, Woolfe produced a report for Brextremists Leave Means Leave, detailing a visa system they wanted the Govt to implement post-Brexit, with the aim of bringing net immigration down to 50,000 people. He claimed large-scale immigration caused wage depression & job shortages.
Woolfe gained the support of the leaders of UKIP in Wales, Scotland & London. His running-mate was Welsh UKIP leader Nathan Gill, who during the #GE2015 campaign, denied human involvement in climate change. He resigned from UKIP & was briefly Leader of Reform UK Wales in 2021.
Woolfe promised to 'ruthlessly' go after Labour seats in Northern England & the Midlands, claiming UKIP had "won the argument" for managed immigration.

But on 31 July 2016, he was blocked by the party's National Executive Committee because his application was 17 minutes late.
On 5 October 2016, Woolfe was reported saying he was considering joining the @Conservatives Party - but didn't.

On 6th October, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Woolfe was in a fight with fellow UKIP MEP Mike Hookem, which ended up with Woolfe in hospital.
Hookem told the @BBC that Woolfe objected to comments he had made & asked him to "take it outside of the room... 'mano a mano'."

Hookem claims he forced to defend himself after his fellow MEP Woolfe "came at me".

Sources reported that Mr Woolfe was punched in the face.
After only 2 years as a UKIP MEP, Woolfe resigned & spent 3 years as an Independent & never joined a political party after that.

Woolfe became the director of legal affairs & main (only?) shareholder of the 'think tank' The Centre For Migration & Economic Prosperity in 2019.
He is also the editor & head of communications of 'Libertatio' - a "platform that promotes writers, campaigners & freethinkers who challenge elites & champion liberty" - which sounds suspiciously like a platform for right-libertarian "freethinkers" & assorted right-wing cranks.
And now Woolfe has popped up as the star turn in the Govt's grotesque "How the Government plans to stop the small boats" #propaganda video, as spokesman for The Centre For Migration & Economic Prosperity, a 'think tank' which appears to comprise just 3 people, including Woolfe.
Details are thin on the ground, but according to Companies House, Woolfe is the only person associated with the Private Limited Company, the accounts are overdue, & there is an "Active proposal to strike off" the company.

So it'll fit right in with the @Conservatives!
The companies website says "CMEP believes that immigration if managed & controlled by governments who think about their people, nation first can develop policies that listen and are accepted by the community."

Imho, a proof-reader would be a sensible investment for Mr Woolfe.
The website claim that "This in turn will reduce the negative language & concerns that uncontrolled migration brings & will lead to a beneficial system where immigration is no longer seen as major burden or concern."

"REDUCE THE NEGATIVE LANGUAGE"!

Whose language is that then?
Website 'commentary' articles by Woolfe includes "13 ways to stop the channel migrant crisis", which states "If the boat doesn’t get you there People Traffickers Holidays will call the RNLI emergency lines who will collect you for free. It’s cheaper than Uber & more reliable." 😬
The 'Centre For Migration & Economic Prosperity' @Twitter account has gained just 197 followers since it launched in June 2020, & follows #TuftonStreet's 'Migration Watch' (led by Lord Green of Deddington,& Chaired by Alp Mehmet), & the extremely dodgy "Active Patriot" account.🙋‍♂️
Within hours of the grotesque Home Office #propaganda video launching, Home Office officials altered a @Twitter post about the illegal migration bill to remove an image of the newsreader Huw Edwards after complaints from the @BBC.

theguardian.com/politics/2023/…
The Govt #propaganda video still features @thehuwedwards at the start, in a @BBCNews clip, followed by another news reader from @channel5_tv. Given the recent furore over Gary Lineker & Govt pressure on the @BBC, this signals the Tories are out of control.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with GET A GRIP

GET A GRIP Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @docrussjackson

GET A GRIP Profile picture
Dec 12
🧵

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.
Concerning Paul Marshall:
Concerning James Orr:
Read 10 tweets
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Dec 9
🧵

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
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Dec 8
🧵

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
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Dec 5
🧵

‘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
GET A GRIP Profile picture
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
GET A GRIP Profile picture
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

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(