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@docrussjackson
Apr 24, 2023 • 27 tweets • 12 min read • Read on X
#THREAD

More than 830 UK health professionals & representatives from leading medical bodies have signed an open letter to Sunak expressing “grave concerns” that the Govt’s #Rwanda Plan will cause “catastrophic mental & physical harm” to people seeking safety.

PLEASE READ IT: Image
"As health professionals, we, the undersigned, are writing to express our grave concerns about the health implications of ongoing plans to forcibly remove individuals seeking protection in the UK to Rwanda, as set out in the ‘Migration & Economic Development Partnership’." Image
"Using this approach to advance hostile border policies rooted in unevidenced deterrence & externalisation objectives, despite clear documentation of the medical harm caused, is unconscionable." Image
"We urge you to abandon this policy immediately to ensure that the rights, safety & humanity of people seeking asylum in the UK are acknowledged and safeguarded." Image
"International examples of externalisation policies have led to wide-scale abuse & been found to cause catastrophic mental and physical harm." Image
"In 2017-18, Médecins Sans Frontières’s mental health project on #Nauru Island, where people seeking safety were detained by the Australian Govt, more than 66% of their 208 asylum seeker & refugee patients - including children - engaged in self-harm, suicidal ideation & acts." Image
"It is therefore unsurprising that the prospect of removal to Rwanda, which is modelled closely on the failed Australian system, has exacerbated the mental health conditions (including post-traumatic stress disorder and depression) of the men, women & age disputed children... Image
...who have been threatened with expulsion, triggering fear, confusion and uncertainty about their safety. It has proven increased risks of self-harm and suicide, and undermined resilience to the psychological effects of trauma." Image
"Subjecting people seeking sanctuary in the UK, many of whom have mental health conditions and have histories of torture, trafficking and trauma, to such an inhumane process is a matter of significant concern for the medical community." Image
"As health professionals, committed to alleviating suffering, we cannot turn a blind eye to the harmful effects this policy is having and will continue to have on people who are made vulnerable by restrictive border policies." Image
"We cannot stand behind this policy on medical, ethical and humanitarian grounds and we join lawyers, civil society, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, trade unions and many Home Office officials themselves in their condemnation of this scheme." Image
"We find this policy, with its inevitable toll on the mental and physical health of those subject to it, unconscionable & abhorrent." Image
"We urge you to abandon it in its entirety & ensure that any further reform of the asylum system leads to a strengthening, rather than a weakening, of protection & dignity for those seeking sanctuary in the UK."

msf.org.uk/article/open-l… Image
Here's another recent letter about the UK Government's barbaric, abhorrent, immoral, cruel, unlawful & unnecessary #Rwanda Plan.

The REAL reason so many asylum seekers are housed in the UK, & the backlog of asylum claims is so high, is because rather than reducing asylum costs, the @Conservatives DELIBERATELY MANUFACTURED A CRISIS, because scapegoating is their political strategy.

Truly horrific situations are happening to ordinary people – human beings, not faceless numbers. Two-yr old asylum seeker Alan Kurdi drowned in 2015. How we choose to describe them impacts on how we view people who, in another life, could very well be us.

Which ideological extreme Tory MPs are the cheerleaders for the proposed inhumane & abhorrent amendments to the Government's already cruel & barbaric 'Illegal Migration Bill'?

Some of them self-identify as "Christians'.

Ruth Wodak is a brilliant linguist who has been analysing far-right populist discourse for decades. In the context of the latest "migrant crisis" & the demonization of refugees by those on the Right, everyone would benefit from her analysis & insights.

It's depressing & speaks volumes about the abject state of our politicians & of our "news" media, that despite DECADES of debate around migration, most British people still don't even know the differences between 'migrants', 'asylum seekers', & 'refugees'.
So who is & isn't a refugee? Here's a 60 second explainer of the UN Refugee Convention & the legal definition of a refugee.

Contrary to much UK Gov, media, & far-right rhetoric, people who have committed very serious crimes are excluded from protection.

For well-evidenced facts & other information about asylum seekers & refugees, there are many excellent & unbiased online websites which avoid the pitfalls & problems of the often divisive, partisan, & highly charged political & media rhetoric which dominates the issue.
Based at the Centre on Migration, Policy & Society at the University of Oxford, the Migration Observatory @MigObs provides impartial, independent, authoritative, evidence-based analysis of data on migration & migrants in the UK.

migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk
The @Refugees Agency, UNHCR is dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights & building a better future for people forced to flee their homes, established by the UN in 1950 in the aftermath of WWII to help the millions of people who had lost their homes.

unhcr.org
The @refugeecouncil is a leading UK charity, founded in 1951 following the creation of the UN Refugee Convention.

It exists to support & empower people who have fled conflict, violence and persecution in order to rebuild their lives here in the UK.

refugeecouncil.org.uk
I recommend visiting the @freemovementlaw website, founded (& edited) by barrister @ColinYeo1 in 2007, which gives accessible & well informed updates, commentary, & advice on UK immigration & asylum law, as well as offering the Govt practical solutions.

freemovement.org.uk
A #THREAD on the @Conservatives' 'performative politics' in relation to asylum seekers.
Our news & politics media is failing the British people in its fundamental role of informing people about reality. Voters need to much better understand the nature & techniques of the @Conservatives' cynical, divisive, & misleading 'performative politics':

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More from @docrussjackson

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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

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