I know @GaryLineker and the rest of us with basic knowledge of history aren’t allowed to say the tone of a Home Secretary calling for actual lawyers to be jailed is exactly like the tone of 1930s Germany; but it’s exactly like the tone, and indeed the reality, of 1930s Germany.
2 MILLION people do not have the ID needed to vote.
But just 63,000 people had applied for a free Voter ID certificate in time for yesterday's deadline.
That's exactly what the Tories hoped would happen.
This is what voter suppression looks like.
This is how post-truth polarising populism works. Wilful deliberate distortion of someone’s words so that he can to round telling people they’ve been called something unpleasant and insulting when they haven’t. The guy is a Scroat.
Has the @bbc actually analysed @GaryLineker’s tweet? Because it is factually accurate. A lot of the tropes used now by Govt: ‘invasion’, ‘menace’ etc, are pretty similar to those used by nationalist parties in 1930s Germany. Why no analysis? Are BBC history presenters muted too?
I like to think I’m a reasonable person who doesn’t get into hyperbole too often… but this is seriously Trump-ish voter suppression from the Tories. They aren’t even subtle about it. They think younger people won’t vote for them, so their plan is just to stop them voting at all.
For 4 years when I was US Editor I went to endless Trump rallies where we’d be accused of being ‘enemies of the people’ - the ‘we’ were the media, but also ‘liberals’, civil servants, environmentalists, the swamp, the think tanks.
All felt a bit familiar in B’ham today