The @LordWalney Review on "political violence and disruption" is a manifesto for a police state.

If implemented, it would turn the UK - already an outlier in limiting protest - into something more like an 'illiberal democracy', to use Orbán's phrase.

A few highlights 🧵 👇 Let's extend use of police spies and surveillance to invade the lives of anyone we think might "cause disruption" on protests.

Another thing worth noting from yesterday's TUC demo is that it feels like the intense sectarianism of recent years is evaporating a bit. Almost all my interactions were positive, including people who've disagreed with me in recent years.

All, that is, except one interaction... Walking up the demo, I find smiles and waves. Good chats with folk in Counterfire, @CPBritain & later Socialist Appeal - all of whom were v critical of left Remainism (and me!). After all I'm leafleting for Don't Pay, an unrelated campaign.

Then I see the Young Communist League.

Finally got round to reading The Starmer Project by @EagletonOliver this week. I'm glad someone has done the research, and a lot of it is interesting and useful. But, like @FisherAndrew79, it's not just that I disagree with the chapter on Brexit, it's that I'm left baffled by it. Firstly, it barely mentions Another Europe is Possible. It manages to mention me (who?) on multiple occasions but doesn't explain *what I was doing*, which must be odd for the reader. Instead, it rolls up AEIP into PV, an organisation we existed to oppose/ be an alternative to.

Chile votes for the final time today. Looks like Boric is slightly ahead, but there are all kinds of things that could go wrong (supressed turnout, polls being off the mark, Parisi supporters being volatile - the PDG, his old party, just voted by a large margin to endorse Kast). Predictions now are pointless. What I would say is that if the Chilean left wins today, it will be proving two things:

1. It is uncrushable. Here's a force that endured dictatorship, free market hegemony, the hollowing out of its base - but still manages to find a way through

Yesterday I left the @Another_Europe office for the last time. It's been a hopeful, brutal, inspiring, demoralising, exciting five years.

I will always be grateful to the organisation, and to the fantastic people who set it up and still run it. I could (and will) list our "achievements" - there are many, by the standards of an NGO annual report.

But the truth is we got beat, and all I can say with any degree of honesty is that we tried our best, shifted the terrain a bit, and that we don't yet know how this story ends.

THREAD

A brief guide to proscribing organisations from the Labour Party: who they are and how it works.

(I am a gigantic leftwing nerd and Trotspotter, but even I took a look at the list that Starmer wants to proscribe thought "hang on, who?") The first thing to say is that there is no proper working list of proscribed organisations that the party has in a formal sense. That was a abolished in the 1970s and never reinstated.

It's more of a "make it up as you go along" process, like most of Labour's internal workings.

THREAD

For the Workers' Party of Britain to get 21.9% of the vote in their first byelection is a hell of a result, and something that the left should take a close look at.

Their stated aim is to "replace Labour as the party of the working class". It won't work, and here's why: 1. So far, it's the George Galloway show. Galloway has morphed into a classic figure of the Trump era: he looks ridiculous to "sensible" pundits, but comes across as insurgent and populist. We shouldn't be surprised he can still do well, and WPB has no success outside of him.