Criticise Sadiq Khan as loudly as you like, he's a politician and needs to be held to account. But when Lee Anderson says Khan he has handed control of London to Islamists, he is parroting the conspiracy theories of the violent and fascistic right. 1/ In May 2022, Payton Gendron murdered 13 people in the US town of Buffalo. His manifesto said that he was inspired by the man who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019 and called for the murder of Sadiq Khan.
theguardian.com/us-news/2022/m…

Boris Johnson's legacy still poisons Britain.
His insistence that he was stabbed in the back by Sunak persuaded the Tories to give us Liz Truss and an economic disaster.
nickcohen.substack.com/p/boris-johnso… It's not just personal. By presenting his fall from power as the fault of traitors, Johnson not only absolved himself of blame also allowed his strain of nationalist populism to live to fight another day. Whatever the cost to the British people, Johnson is still in the game.

Boris Johnson did not "get Brexit done". He did what Thersa May thought no British PM would ever do and put a border in the Irish Sea. Lied about it. Then when the lies stopped working proposed breaking the international treaty he had agreed to a mere 2 years before. Breixt isn't done, it's a running sore. It will be interesting to see if any of the candidates for the Conservative leadership dare tell the truth and propose a way out of the diplomatic crisis.

1/ My Observer column: The Government is getting away with giving itself unprecedented political power to police online debate.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/… 2/ Its Online Safety bill turns the broadcast regulator Ofcom into a Web enforcer. It might be an admirable idea were the government not rigging the system so that the job of Ofcom chair goes to Paul Dacre. See Jim Waterston’s piece on the fix here
theguardian.com/media/2021/aug…

Rosie Duffield appears at Labour Women's rights rally in Brighton to huge applause. Party refused to allow organisers to appear on the official fringe. "Here we are in 2021 and we have to form a group called Lesbian Labour just to be heard "

Robert Paxton, the most authoritative thinker about fascism, says he no longer disputes that Trump is a fascist.

newsweek.com/robert-paxton-… "Trump's incitement of the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2020 removes my objection to the fascist label. His open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line. The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary."

Patel keeps dodging the question "if the new strain is more infectious, why aren't the rules as tough as they were in the spring?" BBC asking the question again. Patel still won't answer. Just keeps saying "the rules are clear".

Johnson fans say that ‘He's nothing like Trump’, says @peterkyle But ask yourself why aren’t friends of Angela Merkel or Emanuel Macron saying they’re nothing like Trump? The answer is simple, they don’t need to point out the obvious. With Boris Johnson it isn't so obvious. As evidence of Trumpism in the Tory party he cites
1/ Trump and Johnson, are dismissed as frivolous jokers, lightweights, until they actually get elected. We didn’t take them seriously or read enough importance into the early warning signs.

I am shocked to discover courtesy of @PrivateEyeNews that those nice Liberal Democrats could teach Dominic Cummings a few tricks How on earth did they expect to get away with it? The local press has reports of Lib Dem councillors pandering to David Icke levels of paranoid fantasy amd saying 5G would make Bath residents "guinea pigs" in a sinister experiment somersetlive.co.uk/news/local-new…

One of the worst examples of wishful thinking masquerading as news I've seen was the right wing claim that the 'Swedish model' could deal with virus. There was no need for lockdowns, no need to take extreme action to protect the vulnerable, all we had to do was follow the Swedes. Today the Swedish king said: ""I think we have failed. We have a large number who have died and that is terrible. The people of Sweden have suffered tremendously."
bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur…

Thread
1 Conclusive reply from @anneapplebaum to the “involuntary conservatives”, who say that, although they deplore Trump, they will vote for him because they fear the intolerance of the left more
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… 2 “A nasty leftist made me do it” excuse doesn’t wash and not just because it’s infantilising. Trump’s racism and misogyny drive voters towards authoritarian left politics. A Trump victory, almost certainly won with electoral fraud, will only persuade others to follow them

1. Here's how fear spreads in British culture. The distinguished novelist Amanda Craig signs the letter condemning the “insidious, misogynistic and authoritarian” #RIPJKRowling campaign along with McEwan, Stoppard and dozens of others, me included. thetimes.co.uk/article/litera… 2. Retribution is instant. Mslexia magazine, which says it champions women's writing, tells her she is dropped as a judge on one of its competitions.

Why do politicians and journalist s treat Cummings as a Machiavellian genius when everything he touches turns to dirt asks @MarinaHyde theguardian.com/commentisfree/… This is the guy who was so desperate to be treated as the Nostradamus de nos jours, he forged his own blog to make it look as if he saw Covid coming

Sceptical take on Extinction Rebellion's politics and economics. They believe that if they can recruit 2.2 million protestors, or 3.5% of the British population, the implementation of their goals will be irresistible.
uncancelled.co.uk/tie-world/the-… The confidence comes from Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan’s study of non-violent movements. But Almost all cases examined in the study see a frustrated population toppling a tyrannical regime and implementing either a freer or more democratic political system.

Here's Munira Mirza, director of Number 10’s policy unit, challenging a Black youth on whether the use of the “N word” is any different from calling someone “fat”, and asking whether he is playing the victim. hackneygazette.co.uk/news/racial-eq… I wrote about Mirza's Spiked/Revoultionary Communist Party cult last week and how it has infiltrated multiple institutions theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

This tweet from the Westmonster site shows how far right fake news industry works. It gives an authoritative source it knows few of its readers will have the good sense to check, and announces, “trust in BBC from some has collapsed 20 points since 2018”

https://twitter.com/Michael_Heaver/status/1272791322601103360?s=20

The drivel is then retweeted and liked thousands of times. The indoctrinated say it is because the BBC is left wing and anti Brexit, as you would expect.
But what the hell does “trust in BBC from some” mean? Are these people illiterate or mendacious?

Magnificent demolition by @DavidLammy of Johnson's supposed commission on racism on @BBCr4today . "Hang on a minute, why has he announced a commission behind a paywall in the Telegraph in the middle of yet another article about Chruchill!" "If he is serious, why are there no details about how it will be staffed, its remit, its terms of reference? It's because it was written on the back of a fag packet yesterday to assuage the Black Life Matters movement."

Taking on Daniel Hannan is so easy it seems like sadism. But just because a target is easy doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hit it. The slave trade was opposed at the time. Not just by abolitionists but – and this may shock Hannan to learn – by the enslaved themselves As I say in the Observer today, the conservative line that “you can’t judge the past by the standard of the present” is historically illiterate. Rhodes's private army had to fight two wars in the 1890s to subjugate what is now Zimbabwe
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Here's my piece in the Observer today about how the hideously neglected care services for the old and disabled have become virus death traps.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/… Afterwards try this - 13 dead in Glasgow
google.com/amp/s/www.dail…

Why Brexit is not done and no-deal is a likely outcome by Martin Wolf ft.com/content/de2a1e… Incidentally Johnson has now banned diplomats from saying "no deal". They must use the windy euphemism " a trading relationship with the EU like Australia’s”.
Which ignores
1. Australia has no deal with the EU so "a trading relationship like Australia's" means no deal

Me in the Observer on the listlessness that infects Britain. It's as if people believe Johnson has sorted Brexit out when all the suffering is yet to come
theguardian.com/commentisfree/… The Conservatives won a big majority. Brexit bores the public . The opposition is hopeless. Journalists aren’t doing their job. But the talk of moving on, building high speed railways, reinvigorating the north etc is mad. I'd call it a phoney war but really it's a phoney peace