Richard Haviland
@rfhaviland
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Former civil servant, enjoying the freedom to speak my mind. Sometimes write stuff. Member of @euromovescot .
Drumnadrochit, Scotland
Joined February 2011
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Pinned Tweet
There was a moment recently when
@lewis_goodall
made me cry. "The kind of crushing thing", he said, "is what pulls them, like so many before them, to Britain. It’s the esteem they hold us in. They think Britain is different. They think Britain will treat them better". THREAD
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Every day I wake up after that man has opened his mouth, I feel as if a little bit more of me has died. A little bit more of my kids’ future has been damaged. A little bit more of what my parents taught me to believe has been laughed at. And it feels very, very personal.
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Is it ok to say ‘I detest any political party that can come up with a policy like Rwanda’?
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I’m trying to imagine being given an FPN for attending an illegal event at my boss’s behest and then finding out that my boss hadn’t been fined for attending the same event. I’m trying to imagine continuing to work for him and being expected to show loyalty. I’m struggling.
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With all the red lights flashing at the state of the UK’s democracy, I’ve seen it said we shouldn’t assume the next general election will even happen. The issue, though, isn’t whether an election will happen (it will). It’s whether it will be free and fair (it won’t). THREAD
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We now live in a place where opposition MPs are criticised for playing politics, archbishops are condemned for signalling virtue, and lawyers are ostracised for upholding the law. And where Tory MPs who know this leads to a very, very dark place sit on their hands and do nothing.
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It’s one thing for a party to change leader while in power. It’s quite another for it to completely disregard the manifesto on which it was elected. Insofar as Truss has no mandate for what she is doing, hers is effectively an unelected government. It does not have our consent.
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In 2016 Michael Gove was a leading member of the Vote Leave team later found by the Electoral Commission to have broken electoral law on multiple counts. In 2022, under new legislation, the Electoral Commission has been brought under Michael Gove’s control. Predictions for 2028?
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Sometimes the truth is painful. But the truth is that Truss will be the second successive prime minister about whom I can say with conviction that, whatever motivates her, it’s not the well-being of the people of the UK.
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Here are 21 defining principles of the Johnson guide to government. I'm sure there are more.
1) Accept responsibility for nothing.
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This week Johnson created a lasting link between Starmer and Jimmy Savile. There’ll be people with no interest in politics whose inner voice, at the next election, will remind them of it. They won’t recall the detail but it will be enough to put them off voting Labour. THREAD
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Next time English football thugs smash up a Spanish bar, I’d like to ask Matthew Goodwin if it’s because they have legitimate concerns.
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How to become an autocrat in six years – an MP’s tale. (THREAD)
In accepting the vote, pretend you now think Brexit is a great idea even though you were a strong advocate for remain.
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I realise why I find this quote from Robin Cook so haunting.
It’s not just because he was right that the Blair and Brown governments would fail to reform the electoral system before losing office..
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On a day when the PM has made it clear he has no interest in mass law-breaking, on his watch, in his office, here’s my essential Johnson guide to government, revised and updated from last year (THREAD).
1.Accept responsibility for nothing.
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The position of Foreign Secretary is one of the Great Offices of State. It requires tact, command of a brief, outstanding communication skills, and a real interest in the wider world. Here’s a look at recent incumbents, picking a random starting point of June 2016. THREAD.
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But scratch below the surface and things are bleak. Voter suppression. A neutered electoral commission to be brought under government control. Public money withheld from constituencies that don’t vote Tory. Personal data used to target susceptible voters with blatant lies.
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Yesterday's result gives me hope that the Tories will yet go down in flames. But I'm still not confident. And you can be assured they will continue to undermine democracy across the UK, at all levels, if that's what they deem necessary to hold on to power. ENDS
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The trouble with allowing Sunak to bring the term ‘illegal protests’ into the jargon without challenge is that it will lead to a mindset where all protests are seen as illegal. A bit like ‘illegal immigrants’. Journalists have a duty not to let this happen.
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The UK isn't about to become a totalitarian state. But it’s well on the way to becoming a sham democracy. And elections are essential to a sham democracy. They allow it to claim international legitimacy. And they reassure a sleeping public that they still have their freedom.
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When you shut out all noise, the Conservative Party are having a lively debate about the future of the civil service because one of their ministers wasn’t allowed to get away with bullying civil servants.
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How long can this go on? My worry is that it can go on a great deal longer. And with each day we remain ungoverned by people without a moral compass, and with sheep on the Tory backbenches, we sink further and further into the abyss. ENDS
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Theresa May can write revisionist books about how she tried to bring us all together if she likes.
Meanwhile, here’s what I wrote on resigning as a civil servant in 2019 after three years of her premiership.
@euromovescot
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In June 2016, just before the EU referendum, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Priti Patel signed a pledge to EU citizens in the UK. It said that, if the UK decided to leave the EU, they would automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain. Here it is.
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I’m fed up with seeing Theresa May being described as an elder stateswoman when she appointed a man unfit to be in public life to the role of Foreign Secretary, a move guaranteed to diminish the UK in the eyes of the world. I’m fed up with being gaslighted day in day out.
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To understand that all these scandals are coming out only because of Conservative party infighting is to understand that there are people who've been sitting on them for months and years. And to understand that is to understand just how irredeemably corrupt the party now is.
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And yet many people seem to believe that the mere holding of an election or referendum is all that matters. That those things alone constitute democracy. The very word “democracy” has been weaponised.
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When, like me, you've been an unquestioning Unionist for most of your life and then started to have severe doubts in the post-Brexit years, you begin to see things you didn't see before. It's hard to overstate the (negative) subliminal effect of this imagery. THREAD
A recurrent theme from the UK media -
@theSNP
leaders being hung, crucified, beheaded, hunted. Still - Andrew Neil thinks they're "brilliant" so that's fine.
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The reaction to the horrors of Southport should be a turning point.
No more indulging Farage or his tawdry impersonators.
No more craven messages from political parties about winning over Reform voters by saying more of the things they like.
Enough is enough.
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Never mind ruling by executive fiat. Never mind closing down parliament. Never mind going to excruciating lengths to avoid scrutiny. Never mind attacking all the institutions whose role is to hold you to account. "We've had an election ergo we live in a healthy democracy".
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I don’t find it easy with my background to say I support independence. Easier to stay quiet. But I do, for various reasons, the main one being that I want to live in a functioning democracy. My letter in
@NewStatesman
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Their meaning is clear. Once elected, a Government should be entitled to do what it wants without limit or challenge, and it is only the electorate - at the next election - which has the right to hold it to account.
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It's an authoritarian position, revealed time and again in the things Tory MPs such as
@joymorrissey
say on social media, often before rushing to press delete, as she did yesterday. Being elected means you can do no wrong, and being unelected means you have no legitimacy.
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I’m fed up with all the flags. I’m fed up with people who profess their loyalty to the Queen while countenancing a man who lied to her. I’m fed up with all the fake patriotism from people who bring disgrace on their country.
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As a non-immigrant, I can assure Robert Jenrick that I live an entirely parallel life to his, and that there is nothing about him or his values that I would ever want to integrate with.
What he stands for is inimical to everything I believe in.
Robert Jenrick: A million new people coming in... is damaging our ability to integrate...
#bbclaurak
: It's easy to say that... what's your evidence integration isn't working?
RJ: Communities are leading parallel lives.. some people on the marches didn't share British values..
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The other day I heard Sir John Hayes MP, close confidant of Suella Braverman, saying that the “culture wars” are an important aspect of politics because they are about values.
The implication being that they are a good thing.
THREAD
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When the scale of depravity is too overwhelming to digest, it can take a single action to help us see clearly.
Knowing that a minister wanted to deny refugee children something that might make them smile should help us see very clearly indeed.
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21) If in doubt, lie. And then lie again. And again. And again. And again.
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Many in the Conservative Party are encouraging this way of thinking. In response to recent scandals, I’ve heard Dominic Raab and Daniel Hannan, among others, say that if the public don’t like it they can vote the Government out.
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When your reasoning is this warped, opposition, scrutiny and debate, holding the powerful to account, all the things that are the very essence of liberal democracy, are seen as anti-democratic. The poles are inverted.
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What we are witnessing is abject cowardice. A refusal to accept that our leaders and elected representatives should be held accountable. An abdication of all sense of morality. Each one of them who has let it get this far without speaking out should hang their heads in shame.
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Together, of course, with a referendum held half a decade ago, in which the vote of a minority of the population was used as a mandate for a full-scale revolution.
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This quote from Robin Cook, a month before he died, is enough to move you to tears when you survey the wreckage of the last 13 years and ponder the prospect of another Labour government again blowing the opportunity of saving us from the horrors of first-past-the-post.
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I’m fed up with being force-fed a daily diet of the latest Conservative Party disgrace. I’m fed up with hearing Tories talk about the party rather than the country they govern. I’m fed up with being daily diverted from what is happening in the world, and what really matters.
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I’m fed up with hearing craven MPs tell us Johnson deserves one last chance. I’m fed up with hearing that ‘Boris delivers’. I’m fed up with anonymous briefings from Tory MPs about what a disaster Johnson really is.
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I was once told by a troll that my leitmotif was my loathing of the Conservative party. They were wrong. My leitmotif is my loathing of what the Conservative party has become and my conviction that they are a very real threat to our democracy.
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It’s tempting to ignore it. But the stuff that people like Rod Liddle write, most recently about Scots, matters. It matters because it is hate speech, given respectability by its appearance in the Spectator and given retractability by being implied as “humour”. THREAD
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So no, we are not about to see general elections come to an end. But there is a danger that the mere fact of their taking place will be seen as evidence that the UK has a healthy democracy.
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For a few weeks in 2009, when I worked for DFID and it looked as if the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic might be of a similar scale to what we've seen with Covid-19, I attended official-level cross-Whitehall coordination meetings.
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Since the Brexit vote, many people have fallen for this. And even if they haven’t, if their preference is for permanent or entrenched Conservative power, they are unlikely to do too much to challenge it.
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Of course other parties lie. Of course other parties contain unpleasant individuals. But they operate within the rules. They don’t go out of the way to appeal to the worst side of human nature. They are not a threat to our very democracy.
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The aim of so much of the ‘commentary’ which blights today’s UK is to persuade people there is no legitimate public conversation to be had about morality or compassion.
To persuade them that there is only "virtue signalling", "wokery" and "sanctimony".
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A good reason, you might say, to make it harder for other parties to win an election.
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One of the greatest Brexit myths is that there’s a cohort of pro-EU fanatics who think the EU is a flawless institution, rather than a group of people who think being members of a flawed institution whose core aim is peace among neighbours is transparently in our best interests.
I’m a fan of Stephen Fry, in particular his eloquent defences of liberalism. It is sad then to see someone normally so rational descend into emotional hyperbole as in this clip. The dogma some developed towards the EU and its many flaws still baffles me.
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As a further thought, who’s to say that if the devolved governments continue to be formed by parties opposed to the Tories, or to the Union, they won’t also one day be deemed "undemocratic?"
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14) Praise the UK’s values of tolerance, freedom and rule of law while displaying intolerance, restricting freedoms and attacking the rule of law.
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Hope against hope that history won’t remember your role in an attack on the democratic fabric of the country you insist on telling the world you love.
Put your flag in the drawer in your office, but keep it handy just in case. (ENDS)
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Much as I idolise Ian, it’s a classic illustration of the mindset of many progressives towards the SNP that in a single tweet he can both acknowledge the damage of Brexit and imply that Westminster bears no responsibility for anything that’s gone wrong in Scotland. THREAD
And there's Flynn's bullshit right there, for all the decent talk on immigration and Brexit. When it comes to his government's failure, he blames Westminster. The same message of grievance and pass-the-buck irresponsibility as the populists.
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You can pick up hints in the utterings of some politicians and commentators, with their not-so-subtle messages that the success of the SNP in Scotland means democracy isn’t working.
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After all, rather than try to convince people of the merits of the Union in a post-Brexit, authoritarian UK, easier just to remove the institution that gives voice to the counter-arguments.
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People, you begin to suspect, for whom the preservation of the Union is more important than the preservation of democracy.
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Today Chris Patten described the party he once loved as a moral vacuum. Maybe he’d listened to Greg Hands tell the world he’s not paid to have an opinion on the matter. Maybe he’d heard Tory MPs line up to tell us we need to move on.
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Even the most fulsome apology from Johnson and his immediate resignation wouldn’t have changed that. There are some things for which an apology isn’t enough. And he never apologises anyway.
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Whatever the cause, he was spot on. People who began their political lives with morals have chosen to discard them. So far in are they that they won’t even realise that’s what’s happened. And we’re not talking about a handful, we’re talking about hundreds.
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It’s not too great a leap of imagination to envisage these people calling one day for the dissolution of the devolved parliaments.
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One day sooner or later Braverman will be out of office. It won’t be enough. She needs to be held to account.
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10) Use three-word slogans and avoid detail at all cost.
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As a Unionist, if it’s between independence and a UK where the likes of Johnson can gain power, put me first in the queue for a Scottish passport
@DrFionaCares
@ScotTories
@DrewHendrySNP
@theSNP
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5) Act like you're in opposition and the opposition are in government.
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16) When put on the spot by an interviewer, look from side to side at an imagined audience with exasperated expression, punch the air, and try to interview the interviewer.
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7) Abuse the French and Germans at every opportunity, while referring to them as “our friends”.
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Especially if you can persuade yourself that you’re doing it all in the name of democracy. Your own, special kind of democracy.
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6) When there's a risk your voters will see through you, escalate the culture war so they’ll still vote for you.
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Since coming to Scotland I’ve learned that those who vote Labour or LibDem and protest about Tory policies are showing justified opposition, but those who vote SNP and protest about Tory policies are pursuing the politics of grievance. It’s amazing what you can do with language.
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Not for the first time since 2016, the sheer irony of the SNP standing up for the people of the UK.
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15) Cite the sacredness of our sovereign Parliament while granting yourself presidential powers.
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Even if you're optimistic the Tories will soon be voted out, don't underestimate the immense, possibly irreparable damage they are doing, as more and more people swallow their propaganda.
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It's poignant to think that, even after yesterday, many asylum seekers will still think like that. Because yesterday was a dark day for Britain. Once again our leaders dehumanised refugees. Once again they used disgusting rhetoric. Once again they brought shame on this country.
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9) Devise a foreign policy for a world in which Europe doesn't exist.
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13) When delivering serious messages of global import, do it with a glint in your eye and a smirk, to show your supporters you don’t really mean it. Emphasise this by using the word "woke" at every opportunity.
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19) Extol the virtues of the Union while doing everything you can to undermine the Union.
20) Use public money to deliver political messages.
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Next time English football thugs get into a running battle with the German police, I’d like to ask Isabel Oakeshott if it’s because they’re not being listened to.
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17) Allow it to be believed that being expected to display good manners, diplomacy and respect for others’ views is an intolerable infringement of your freedom of speech.
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The way the Committee Chair treats
@CarolineLucas
here is excruciating to watch. I sat in many Committee meetings in my time and never saw a Chair humiliate a fellow Committee member like this. He should apologise to her publicly.
Watch this refusal by Minister to answer me on why flights are cheap & trains so expensive - not helped by patronising substitute Tory Cttee Chair shushing me when I dare to do my job holding Govt to account
Share if you think we need answers, not obfuscation from the boys 💪
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I have no problem with Lords reform. But the real democratic deficit in this country is First Past the Post. If doing the former becomes a smoke screen for doing nothing about the latter, it will be one enormous con.
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Maybe he’d listened to any interview given by Jacob Rees-Mogg, James Cleverly, Nadine Dorries or Michael Fabricant over the last few years.
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11) Insult your own voters by making fun of your own slogans.
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To those who think it's OK to sabotage boats in the Channel or send deeply traumatised people to Rwanda against their will, it's worth asking if they felt the same five years ago, and if they'd have been prepared to say so out loud. THREAD
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When you have a home secretary who uses the language of incitement, who tells you that 100 million asylum seekers are heading this way, who can't bring herself unreservedly to condemn violent, hate-fuelled protesters, you are in very deep trouble. You are heading for Trump-land.
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Next time English football thugs trash a Dutch city centre, I’d like to ask Kemi Badenoch if it’s because ordinary people are having cultural Marxism forced on them by the liberal elite.
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Next time English football thugs disgrace themselves abroad, I’d like to ask all these people, and many more, just what the difference is.
ENDS
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Claim that debate about the nature of Brexit is anti-democratic.
Conflate opposition and scrutiny, on any issue, with attempting to thwart Brexit.
Conclude that all opposition and scrutiny is anti-democratic and the views of those who oppose and scrutinise don’t matter.
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There's something very unpleasant, on the eve of an election, about saying what Starmer said today on SM/CU, knowing it will distress millions who will nonetheless feel obliged to vote for him.
Passive aggression at the very least.
But more like bullying.
Taunting.
THREAD
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To mark the final day in office of a unique prime minister, here are my definitive, expanded, 100 Johnson principles of government. (THREAD)
1 Accept responsibility for nothing.
2 Blame others for things that are your fault.
3 Take credit for things that aren’t your doing.
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And it drags Britain, a country once famed for its diplomacy, ever deeper into the mire. ENDS
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And that's where the Labour Party - as the UK's main opposition party - is failing us and failing refugees. Because faced with relentless propaganda, it's not enough just to criticise the government's policies and tone. You need to meet it with relentless counter-propaganda.
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Here is a list of popular phrases used by the Party of Law and Order, each with its English translation for the uninitiated:
THREAD
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