esmé

french and sociology #graduate

[Diane Abbott @HackneyAbbott]

51 people died in Home Office asylum accommodation in 2024, making it one of the most dangerous places in Britain.
Stop the cover-up and start to to address the issues.

Home Office told to come clean over deaths of asylum seekers in its care
https://t.co/v2gMVzBsq2

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

Labour is playing into the hands of Reform.

We need an alternative that can fix the housing crisis, end child poverty and bring about the real change this country deserves.

[Free Tin @Fri_Tinmar]

@ansamenow

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

Day 10.

I'm in Bristol.

Later in Birmingham.

Tonight in Manchester.

@TheGreenParty is on the move.

https://t.co/0qbagSvIYp

[Lowkey @Lowkey0nline]

The top funder of Reform UK is Christopher Harbourne, who also has citizenship in Thailand under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit.

He is also the largest single shareholder in arms firm QinetiQ, which exports UAV drones to Israel for use in the Gaza genocide.

[Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis]

Believe it or not, I had an old school friend on today’s marches in London. He sent me some photos from the crowd.

We went to middle school together and grew up on the same Eastern District council estate in Northampton.

I asked him why he was there. He gave me two answers:
1.“The government doesn’t listen to us.”
2.“I want to feel proud of my country again.”

He wore a Union Jack, not a St George’s Cross as he said that one had been hijacked by racists.

He wasn’t there for Hopkins, Musk, or any of the professional ‘grifters’ as he put it. He was there to feel part of something bigger, though he admitted there were a lot of, in his words, “assholes” there.

He’s an electrician. He’s smart. He’s not racist, but he’s not “PC” either. He’s not a fan of Keir Starmer but he also believes Farage would be a disaster.

Oh yes, he’s a bundle of contradictions! But aren’t we all?

I don’t know what ‘box’ we put him or the millions like him in. And I think pretending they’re all racists or fascists would be a massive mistake.

Some were. But not all.

This is about something bigger than immigration slogans or GDP numbers. For decades we’ve hollowed out our national life, underfunding and undermining the very institutions that once brought us together.

Karl Polanyi, writing in The Great Transformation, argued that when markets are “disembodied” from society, when land, labour, and life itself are treated as commodities
society pushes back. He called this the “double movement”: people seeking to protect themselves, to reclaim dignity and meaning when everything solid seems to melt into air.

That’s what I saw in my friend’s photos. Not just anger, but a demand for belonging.

We’ve replaced collective experience with atomisation. Without getting too nostalgic, programmes like the BBC’s Generation Game once pulled in millions every Saturday night, giving us something we could all talk about on Monday morning. Now we watch Netflix, Disney+, Prime, or Paramount, alone, in algorithmic silos.

Football used to be affordable and rooted in community; now it’s millionaires playing for the profitability of billionaires. The NHS, the post office, the railways - all chipped away, run down, sold off or centralised, leaving people feeling powerless and disconnected.

And don’t get me wrong: some kind of “Hovis Labour” nostalgia for the 1950s isn’t the answer. The country back then was often intolerant, grey, and deeply unequal. But what we’ve built since is a society that gives people little to hold in common, no collective story about who we are or what we’re for.

I reckon that’s partly why my mate marched. Not because he wants to turn back the clock. But because he wants to feel pride again. Pride in a country that is inclusive, fair, and offers a role for everyone. Pride in a nation that has a respected place in the world, tackles grotesque inequality, and gives people something real to believe in.

Polanyi warned that when democracies fail to provide a humane alternative, the backlash can turn authoritarian. This is how fascism grew in the 1930s, not because everyone became a true believer, but because millions felt abandoned and looked for strength, identity, and meaning wherever they could find it.

If Labour and progressives don’t offer that story of renewal, if we don’t rebuild our national institutions, restore collective pride, and re-embed markets within society, the far right will do it for us, in their own image.

And by then, it will be too late.

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

https://t.co/0qbagSvIYp

[esmé @0912esme]

He's tone deaf, he's lying, he serves his own interests

[David Lammy @DavidLammy]

It is the honour of my life to be appointed Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary by @Keir_Starmer.

Ever since I was a boy growing up in Tottenham, I’ve been determined to help make this country fairer, safer and better off. 1/2

[Dr. Abi O'Connor @abioconnor_]

Monthly rents hit record high with North West seeing sharpest increase of +9.7% on last year

This is not an inevitably! The housing crisis is manufactured by those extracting profit

Controls on rents are *essential* for individuals, families & the wider economy

[Peter Symons#NHSLove❤.🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿.🍉 @brookebay21]

Without a doubt ..

[esmé @0912esme]

@labourlewis Clive Lewis you are one of the soundest and most consistent MPs may you never change and may you help sort this country out

[Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis]

An Observation on Angela Rayner and the Labour Government:

One cannot help but feel a measure of sympathy for Angela Rayner. I know her well enough to say that she came into politics for the best of reasons: a desire to serve, a determination to improve the lives of people whose struggles she understood from her own experience.

But the further up the ladder one climbs in politics, the more insistent the temptations become. This is not simply about individual weakness or personal failing. It is structural. Over the past 40 years, Britain has built a society in which consumption, status, and proximity to wealth have become defining features of the political class. The gravitational pull of money is now so great that even those who arrive in Westminster with the clearest sense of purpose find their heads turned.

Angela’s story is not unique. She came from humble beginnings, but the wealth that circles political life today is more concentrated, more brazen, and more intrusive than in the past. The old checks and balances, party rootedness in mass membership, trade union accountability, a press less entangled with oligarchic interests, have all weakened. Where once honour, public service, even a sense of historical duty could command respect, today those values are dimmed in comparison to the pursuit of material position.

The mechanism is subtle but relentless. It is not corruption in the brown-envelope-under-the-table sense. It is the slow, almost invisible turning of heads. You are introduced to those who walked this path before you, former ministers who now sit comfortably in boardrooms or on the payroll of consultancies with six and seven-figure salaries. You are invited to corporate boxes at sporting events, to private dinners, to concerts and premiers. Lavish clothes or spectacles can be “within the rules,” provided they are declared. But by then the damage has been done.

The message is implicit but unmistakable: play the game, listen to us, and you too can enjoy more of this. The logic creeps into your personal life. You stretch to buy the house that can host the right gatherings. You measure your worth by the standards of a world that equates success with possessions and proximity to privilege. And once you are on that path, it is hard to step off.

This is, of course, a simplification of a complex socio-economic and political process. But as someone who came from a council estate myself, I see it all around me in Westminster. And it is not going to be changed by media witch-hunts, the tutting of ethics advisers, or even the occasional burst of public outrage.

As Gladstone once warned, “Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.” But in our current system, what is morally questionable is too often normalised, excused, and rebranded as “just the way things are.”

Real change will only come from a collective decision to choose a different path: to stop outsourcing our state to private interests, to end the revolving door between government and corporate boardrooms, to challenge the idea that the role of politics is to serve vast concentrations of wealth.

We can choose differently. We can once again put community, solidarity, and public service at the heart of our political life. We can insist that worth is measured not in the size of one’s house or the company one keeps, but in the contribution one makes to society and the integrity with which one serves.

Until we do, until we decide as a polity to hold up those values rather than the glittering prizes of private gain, hese scandals will not just recur. They will define the very character of our politics.

[ACORN the union @ACORNunion]

Every council home sold without replacement deepens the housing crisis. Selling off our safety net while people face record waits and sky-high rents is indefensible. We need a government that will build public homes and protect them for the future not continue to sell them off!

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

Now that @ZackPolanski is the leader of a party with the same amount of MPs as Reform UK, but more councillors, he should get as much media coverage.

RT if you agree!

[Mark Hammond @MarkHam80780803]

“Basically the trick is to keep them painting roundabouts, sticking up flags and hating foreigners so they don’t realise we are serving our rich donors.”

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

UK supermarket profits are now £50m a day.

Quadrupled in just 3 years.

[Gilly 🖤 @Gillian275Gm]

£49.18 is the standard weekly allowance for asylum seekers.

It's reduced to £9.95 if meals are included with accommodation.

You need a national insurance number to claim benefits or work. Asylum seekers do not have one.

No free phone (or Ipads). Occasionally, sims, or recycled phones are provided by charities.

Just in case anyone is interested in the facts.

[¡VAMOS ESPAÑA! 🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸 @eff_hey]

I feel Iike if you're the government and you have a majority of 146 seats, you're not supposed to openly be bossed around by a party with four (4) seats. Just as a baseline of political competence

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

Appearances on standard BBC question time:

Nigel Farage: 38

Jeremy Corbyn: 1

Now tell me the BBC don't have an Agenda...