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@docrussjackson
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did & it never will” Frederick Douglass
64 subscribers
Dec 12 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
🧵

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:
Dec 9 • 31 tweets • 11 min read
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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
Dec 8 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
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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
Dec 5 • 91 tweets • 20 min read
🧵

‘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
Nov 21 • 17 tweets • 7 min read
🧵

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
Nov 19 • 38 tweets • 9 min read
🧵

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.
Nov 19 • 39 tweets • 14 min read
🧵

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
Nov 17 • 25 tweets • 9 min read
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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
Nov 11 • 40 tweets • 13 min read
🧵 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
Nov 10 • 31 tweets • 11 min read
🧵

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
Nov 2 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
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Shameless Matt Goodwin’s post is a cascade of fearmongering, distortion, and pseudo-intellectual racism.

It takes a handful of horrific individual crimes and turns them into a sweeping indictment of entire communities.

It's pure scapegoating, dressed up as social science. 1. Misrepresenting facts.

Many of the crimes Goodwin cites are still under investigation, misreported, or involve UK citizens, not “illegal migrants.” The Huntingdon suspect is British-born — yet he cites it as evidence of “mass uncontrolled immigration.”
Image
Nov 2 • 32 tweets • 11 min read
🧵

Shameless opportunist Rupert Lowe is the most dangerous and most extreme MP in the UK.

His latest stunt is a letter to the PM that strongly implies the knife attack on a train was the product of “mass immigration” and “Islamic extremism”. It had *nothing* to do with either. The incident was reported as NOT terror-related and the suspects BRITISH BORN at around 8:30 am: by @BBCNews 8:32; @Guardian 8:34; @SkyNews 8:36;
@ITVNews 8:38.

Lowe published his letter strongly implying it was 'Islamic extremists' on @X at 08:41. It quickly gathered 1M views. Image
Oct 30 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
🧵

A Reform UK Govt would be catastrophic for the British values of democracy, rule of law, liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance. Their failure to win Caerphilly, despite significant investment of time and money, shows tactical voting can stop them.

The threat of Reform UK cannot be overstated.

Thomas Lockwood, a PhD Researcher at York St John University, examines Reform’s vulnerabilities and shows how mobilising the anti-Reform majority requires a level of co-ordination rarely seen UK elections.

theconversation.com/could-tactical…
Oct 15 • 33 tweets • 12 min read
🧵

The report of the British Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) of Parliament into allegations of Russian interference British politics (AKA The #RussiaReport, published in 2020), found substantial evidence that Russian interference in UK politics is commonplace. Image The Russia Report found no evidence of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum because the UK Govt did not conduct or commission any formal investigation into it, despite credible indications and the (ISC) committee's call for a retrospective probe.

thedailybeast.com/meet-posh-geor…
Oct 10 • 66 tweets • 16 min read
🧵

Let's not mince words.

A handful of selfish sociopathic billionaires and the populist politicians and media they fund have deliberately divided and radicalised millions of people across the world, solely to protect their wealth and power. They claim to want to help “save children” while spreading distrust of experts, reputable journalism, climate science, and vaccines — which have saved over 100 million children since 1974.

By dividing the public, they protect their wealth and power.
Oct 8 • 31 tweets • 12 min read
🚨

Robert Jenrick closed his Conference speech with: “Let’s build this NEW ORDER. Let’s TAKE our country back.” Hitler's “New Order” was a vision for an Aryan-led Europe which involved exterminating or enslaving “undesirable” minorities.

Jenrick has a Jewish wife. He knew this. Image Across mainstream platforms and parliamentary stages, an extremely dangerous rhetorical drift is taking hold.

I've written elsewhere about what Prof Ruth Wodak calls “the shameless normalisation of far-right discourse” in relation to British politics.

Oct 6 • 38 tweets • 14 min read
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Let's talk about chainsaw enthusiast, Musk buddy, and darling of the global free-market right, Javier Milei.

Let’s look at which UK politicians and news media have been most effusive in their praise for him, and at whats happened to Argentina since he was elected in 2023. Image Milei’s election as President of Argentina in November 2023 was met with enthusiasm from right-wing news media and populist politicians who praised his libertarian, anti-establishment platform as a model for radical economic reform. Image
Oct 5 • 26 tweets • 9 min read
🧵

A global evangelical Christian ARMY linked to TPUSA/TPUK, "fighting for the Britain whose church missioned & colonised the dark, demonic, heathen world with light, truth & salvation", founded by a former British boy band member addicted to cocaine until he found God?

WTAF!🤯 Image 'The King's Army' is a non-denominational Christian evangelism and discipleship movement launched in the UK mid-2024 - a "spiritual army" of believers enlisted to combat sin, cultural decay, and "darkness" through aggressive street outreach, prayer marches and public protests. 🤪 Image
Oct 2 • 39 tweets • 10 min read
🧵

Two people have died and three are in a serious condition following a suspected terror attack on a Manchester synagogue. Muslim leaders have condemned the attack. The suspect was shot dead by Police.

Some @X accounts are blaming Starmer. What's this got to do with @elonmusk? Image Since Musk bought Twitter in October 2022 and rebranded it as @X, the platform has transformed from a space for news and debate into a megaphone for hate, disinformation, and extremist ideology.

The consequences are now spilling into the streets.
Sep 24 • 31 tweets • 11 min read
🧵

Ellison (~$390bn), Musk (~£385bn), and Zuckerberg (~$260): the three richest men on earth.

Ellison is buying TikTok. He controls nearly 50% of Paramount Skydance and wants Warner Bros Discovery. Carrie Symonds's dad is a director of his Foundation.

Who is Larry Ellsion? Image For more than a century, some of the richest people on earth have bought up various media in order to shape politics and public opinion in a way that protects their wealth and power from democracy.

Musk, Zuckerberg and Ellison are doing precisely this on steroids. Image
Sep 17 • 40 tweets • 10 min read
🧵

The dangerously irresponsible rhetoric of Dan Patrick, Texas Lt. Gov. under Gov. Greg Abbott - specifically his push for a permanent 'name and shame' blacklist of campus liberals - threatens free speech, promotes cancel culture, and echoes a dark chapter in tabloid history. Dan Patrick - like GB "News" owner Paul Marshall and recent Tory defector to Reform UK Dan Kruger - is a reactionary evangelical Christian.

Lieutenant governor of Texas since 2015, Patrick built his career on hardline conservatism and polarising rhetoric.