A lesson which continues to fail to be learned by left and centre parties around the world is that trying to appease the hard/far right inevitably reinforces their place in mainstream politics, while alienating existing supporters. It's a lose/lose tactic.
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/f...
If the UK was really, really smart, it would now plough tens of billions into research centres and take in all the American academics fleeing the US. Spoiler: the UK is not smart. 🇬🇧
For years people have been saying the anti-trans panic has been a far right recruitment strategy.
Because we literally have the receipts going back to when it was started by the kind of people now possessing great influence with Trump.
www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/u...
If only they were some kind of obvious and direct analogy to an event in history committed by an authoritarian regime that later committed atrocities on a mass scale.
It was only a week ago that Peter Mandelson publicly abandoned his description of Donald Trump as "a danger to the world" saying it was "ill-judged and wrong".
This is what, outside the EU, Britain is reduced to - feeling obliged to debase ourselves in the face of fascism.
A statement titled "Cross-Party Statement on Wes Streeting’s Engagement with Anti-Trans Groups" expresses disappointment over Wes Streeting’s meeting with the Bayswater Group and other organisations advocating for anti-LGBTQIA+ conversion practices. The statement criticises Streeting and the UK Labour government for failing to work in good faith with LGBTQIA+ groups. It highlights concerns about the Bayswater Group’s actions in blocking a Conversion Practices Ban and mentions trans young people’s pleas regarding puberty blockers. It also condemns Streeting’s support for the Cass Review, which is described as flawed and influenced by anti-LGBTQIA+ groups. The statement concludes with a call for Streeting to resign as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. It is signed by Rainbow Greens, LGBTQIA+ Greens, LGBT+ Liberal Democrats, and Out For Independence. The image includes logos of these organisations at the bottom.
A cross-party joint statement from LGBT+ Liberal Democrats, Rainbow Greens, LGBTQIA+ Greens, and Out for Independence on Wes Streeting’s engagement with anti-trans organisations and call for his resignation.
Read and share the full statement here: lgbt.libdems.org.uk/news/article...
More arseholes
This Govt has raised tuition fees, won't reopen Erasmus, is killing their trans friends, isn't serious about climate change, won't tax the rich, and has done nothing on housing. And it's elected and pretends to be left. And you ask why Gen Zs don't like democracy? www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
You can be in your 30s and have had every election you've voted in go against the majority of your demographic until 2024, and then find when the government finally changes the policies that directly effect your life don't change.
Me, not speaking when they come for everyone else: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!!
Me, having nobody to left to speak for me: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.
“having met with Bayswater Parents, I think that's been a – I'd go so far as to say – traumatic experience for some of those families, and that's really stuck with me.” Wes Streeting
I can tell Wes a few things about trauma, but it’s as if I, and Alice’s story, don’t exist to him. Transphobic ass.
10/n To sum up:
1. The moral panic was gibberish. Only a tiny proportion of kids have ever been diagnosed with GD, and very few of those got drugs in the UK.
2. Services in the UK were TERRIBLE before the Cass review. Less than 1/10 ELIGIBLE kids were prescribed medications!
The BMJ journal Archive of Disease in Childhood has just published the epidemiological study done by York university that was commissioned as part of the Cass review into gender clinics in the UK.
It contains some STARTLING (and yet, unsurprising) revelations. 1/n
The rules are simple and yet people seem to find thelm impossible to learn. No cooperation with the far-right. No votes with them. No coalition. No adoption of their narrative. Their ideas must be defeated, not validated. If you see them cheering, you've done the wrong thing.
‘war on woke’ just means ‘persecuting women & minorities’.
nobody fighting the ‘war on woke’ is a good person.
I am not a "tragic outcome" to limit, ameliorate, or cure.
And when it comes down to it, conservative regimes do not care about my innate essence. In more patriarchal regimes, lesbians are forcefully married off to men. Their internality is irrelevant to a society that demands their exploitation.
adequate take: conversion therapy is bad because it doesn't work
amazing take: even if it did work it would still be bad actually!
It's like the man said: "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
That is the ur-principle of conservatism & conservatives eventually bend every religion or ethic into that shape.
Recipe book cover mockup. Vibrant photo of food ona slate grey counter. Tomatoes, limes, street tacos, a red enamel skillet with beans, chili peppers, salsa, corn tortillas stuffed with picadillo. A graphic effect in the center appears to reveal text by tearing this photo. The text reads "HOW TO COOK LIKE THE PEOPLE YOU JUST DEPORTED Authentic ethnic flavors for bigots who don't deserve them"
Almost everything you hear about the Government is filtered through the framing of the British press.
But what is already clear after six months of Keir Starmer’s administration is that they don’t treat all governments equally...
My latest in an occasional series:
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hating anime in 2025 is an awesome bit because every major western corporation is gonna be goose stepping for the next four years minimum so your options for mass market media is gonna be season 9 of 'my hero academia' or frozen 4 where Elsa sings 'get back in the closet'
The Five Questions Nigel Farage is Never Asked About Brexit, Trump and Russia – Byline Times bylinetimes.com/2024/06/19/t...
The failure to reckon with transphobia as a currently central motivation of the far right will continue to plague those disturbed by its rise for a decade or more
Rather than standing with trans people many liberals have pursued appeasement and helped the wider shift to the far right in the process
Sorry, we'd love to make ourselves freer and more prosperous but that would involve angering some wholly unreasonable people who already hate us. We're going to going to plant some magic beans a billionaire sold us & rely upon wishful thinking instead.
I really like words with two opposite meanings. Doubt is one, but egregious is my favourite.
Helpful!
When the media says Musk “appears to” or “accidentally” about his obviously Nazi salute it is little different from the way they constantly use “populism” instead of fascism.
Mainstream media is complicit in the spread of fascism.