Kemi Badenoch is a new type of Tory politician, one that didn't really exist fifteen years ago. She typifies the Age of Populism in that she says things she cannot possibly reasonably believe in good faith. Let me elaboroate ... 1/n Politicians routinely bend the facts to suit they're purposes. Always have, always will. Outright lying was, however, much rarer (of course it did happen) prior to Johnson. We all like to think of ourselves as more reasonable than we are, but in fact ... 2/n

He is the living symbol of the death of democracy. A free society can support a surprisingly high number of stupid people in important positions. It can at the same time support a similarly high number of evil people. What causes collapse is when people are both stupid AND evil.

https://twitter.com/brokenbottleboy/status/1648574933973233665

This is the phenomenon I describe as #thickcuntocracy. Prominent positions in journalism (a vital component of a free society) and politics are captured by people who not only do active harm in those positions, but undermine the credibility of the institutional foundations.

This argument Peter Hitchens is having with everyone, and indeed, reality and facts about Nazism, Communism and Socialism is, on the one hand, just standard tedious twitter boreathon bollocks, and on the other, so revealing of the right's current moral vacuum. Hitchens is not stupid. He knows that the elimination of Bolshevism was as high a priority for the Nazis as the elimination of Jews. He knows that trade unionists, communists and socialists were some of the first people sent to the camps.

In 1979, some bins weren't emptied for three weeks, and the right-wing press invented 'The Winter of Discontent', which took control of the political narrative, and helped give birth to the Thatcher revolution. The winter of discontent that is coming will be worse than anything

https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1578018566477160448

... seen since the end of the forties. It remains to be seen how that will filter into the story that guides the political nation's understanding of itself. It may well be that by then, the right wing press will do as they did with Blair, and switch allegiance.

It's also part of the headache inducing merry-go-round of constant bad-faith accusations on both sides of the argument. It's an idiotic thing to say that this is 'about further stigmatising' trans people. Of course that's not what your opponents want. Fine to argue that this is

https://twitter.com/joannaccherry/status/1578307751474003968

... an inescapable consequence of their argument if that's your position, but the people who disagree with you are not monsters! It's the same on the other side: people who want to improve life for trans people are not motivated by hatred of women. It's just nonsense.

I spend my time here just wittering away, mainly in order to feel like I have a way to keep sane in a mad world. This is my most successful tweet, and I think it’s because people feel so gaslighted by the pretence that people like Harwood are journalists.

https://twitter.com/marshall_proeu/status/1534600434933022721

What people like him represent is anti-journalism. A deliberate attempt to misinform us to achieve a desired outcome. It’s a process that started in the UK and US under Bush and Blair with the systemic lying that pushed the Iraq invasion policy.

This comment is made in the context of the migration hysteria we have been in the grip of since 2005, the single greatest area of co-operation between right-wing politicians and campaigners and toxic media outlets. Brexit would have been impossible without it.

https://twitter.com/russincheshire/status/1535418224061337601

… but it applies to so very much of what is wrong with our media ecosystem today, from reporting on the environment, to the NHS. There’s not a single issue that hasn’t fallen prey to the collapse of journalism. That the BBC is captured is the worst. People misogynistically blame

I disagree. I think Labour needs to set out the fact that the Tory Party has systematically attacked every area of public life in this country, from the top to the bottom. They need to link the attack on democracy, the rule of law and the Union to the cost of living crisis.

https://twitter.com/thomasforth/status/1534974816268304418

Both are as a result of allowing lies and populism to infect our public life through the media and corruption of our institutions. They have led to the normalising of electoral fraud, Jim Crow-style voter suppression, and we all pay the price when a self-perpetuating oligarchy

The Government will do nothing. We know they will do nothing. We know because their entire foreign policy has been the strategic isolation and weakening of this country. We know because they left Nazanin Zahari-Radcliffe to rot for five years.

https://twitter.com/bbcpolitics/status/1534916336413036550

The Russian state has murdered our citizens on British soil with nuclear and chemical weapons. Only through luck and sterling work by our emergency services were serious catastrophes avoided. Our government expelled a couple of diplomats.

The line should be this: The Tories have inflicted catastrophic damage on the UK externally and internally from the moment they permitted the illegally obtained referendum result to determine public policy to the selection of their red lines to Johnson's lies about NI...

https://twitter.com/MarinaPurkiss/status/1534782654939529216

... that damage cannot simply be undone by Labour. We have to work hard to restore our politics and constitution, and that begins by ensuring public consent. We don't think we can do that by simply presenting the public with a simple 'rejoin EU' option...

I think we need mass civil disobedience on energy bills, like we did with the Poll Tax. If a campaign starts with 'pay what you can afford', and an online tool to help people pay the same as last year plus a 4% uplift in line with France, then people who are being put on the ... ... breadline by massive inflation of their bills can pay a reasonable amount, secure in the knowledge that they are part of a mass movement, protected by safety in numbers. People fear destitution, bankruptcy, the bailiffs. They need a solution that protects them from these...

World, I have a problem. During lockdown, redundancy and isolation allowed me to indulge a guilty pleasure: ITV, desperate to fill its schedules cheaply, is broadcasting historic repeats of Coronation Street, branded as ‘Classic Coronation Street’. Two episodes a day. But now, by complete coincidence, I am starting an exciting new job just as lockdown ends (I know. Lucky me. Believe me, I appreciate my good fortune.) However, this leaves me with a problem of time and space: I now have a properly demanding job, and will likely be at the office

I remember back when I was at school and university, there were discussions of the culpability of the German electorate for Nazism, because Hitler (barely) came to power by the ballot box. Essentially, was it reasonable for people to foresee Auschwitz in 1933. And I do think there is much to be acknowledged. (1) Hitler only squeezed into power. He couldn’t have risen to dominance without the folly and hubris of centrist and leftist politicians, for which the German people cannot be held responsible.

I’m so angry about this ‘haute Remain is responsible for hard Brexit’ bullshit. When I stood for Parliament in 2017, I stood in hustings and said ‘Brexit is happening. We demand the Government deliver on the promise of no down-side, and the Opposition hold them accountable’. Neither of those things happened. For four years, the Governments of May and Johnson have at best negotiated in bad faith and at worst actively pursued no deal. They gaslight us constantly that this is ‘the will of the people’, when anyone not insane or punch drunk can see that

Never has anyone complained about aggressive questioning of the other side. Nothing could be more sinister than this attempt to undermine journalistic scrutiny and accountability. It is quite simply how democracies work. This bullshit will be drip-fed to us to soften us.

https://twitter.com/montie/status/1242950070217117696

Notice how it’s all the journalist’s fault for asking the question? Not the politician’s for failing to answer clearly, and honestly. Same applies to Opposition: how dare the Opposition question the government at a time like this? It’s political point-scoring.

Cast your mind back to the Vox Pops done in the days after the Brexit result. Remember those people who were jubilant because it meant we “could get rid of them now”. Get rid of the ‘Muslims’. And the ‘scroungers’ and the ‘bogus asylum seekers’. Think about those people. Why did they think what they did? Why do they still think it now? Because no-one, not one peron with authority in politics or journalism has stood up for the benefits of immigration or multiculturalism since 2005 at the very latest.

Here’s why the @LibDems and @RenewParty are right to favour revoking Art. 50 before a People’s Vote. Those advocating doing it the other way around are making two major mistakes THREAD. The first mistake is the more unforgivable, and that is failing to learn the lesson of last time. This is the error Cameron made after the Scottish referendum. That mistake is the assumption that revoke would win. This is related to the second mistake....

The "no-go" zones of London are part of the right-wing mythology to make Londoners strange people, who would rather live in a crime-ridden "Londonistan" than in "true" Britain. It helps alienate us both as a suspect "metropolitan elite" and cosmopolitan "citizens of nowhere".

https://twitter.com/alexandrabulat/status/1158681072269496330

Every time Farage says "metropolitan elite" and Hopkins says "Sadiq Khan's London", they're saying the same thing: Londoners are not "really" British, and are either a feral, criminal underclass, or a subversive, decadent elite. The false image of "no-go zones" is part of that.

Something has occurred to me about all the Bunting Britain ‘blitz spirit’, Dunkirk nonsense about the memory of the war, now that generation is passing. Three of my grandparents served, and the other was maimed as a munitions worker. Obviously, I’m full of regret now ... 1/n that they are all gone that I didn’t interview them relentlessly about it. One grandmother’s career lifted off as a very young woman, taking her into the Civil Service and transforming her life. One grandfather was a Royal Engineer in North Africa and Europe. 2/n

In Munich, there is a museum about the city’s relationship with the Nazi Party, particularly in its early years. I visited last year. Two themes stood out and struck me. 1/n... The first thing is how German nationalism was profoundly anti-German. Early Nazi propaganda in Munich emphasised Bavarian separatism, and pushing a culture war between “true” “traditionalist” German values, and corrupt, metropolitan Berlin.

Let's talk about 'credit'. One of the many things that completely transformed our world from the world of 300 years ago is credit, but do we really understand it? It's (correctly) most commonly understood as something from the world of finance, but it's part of politics too. 1/ Credit is the mechanism by which resources could be mobilised on a massive, industrial scale as never before, starting in the banks of Florence, and ripping through the world from the renaissance to the Enlightenment. 2/