I wrote a statement this week about how voting for Reform UK would represent the biggest rollback of women’s rights in the UK since before the Abortion Act 1967. I provided evidence. I listed sources. I explained the pattern of how abortion rights are removed gradually through strategic silence and institutional positioning.
The responses I received were disturbing. Not because people disagreed with my analysis. Because they agreed with it and celebrated it.
Dozens of people commented on my Facebook post saying this was exactly why they were voting Reform. Men and women from all over the country openly stated that women losing reproductive rights was a good thing. They praised the idea of abortion access being restricted. They said this was precisely what they wanted.
“Roll on May 7,” they wrote.
“Good,” they said.
Some said women had too many rights. Some said abortion was murder and should be banned. Some said women needed to face consequences for their choices. Some said the 1967 Abortion Act was a mistake that needed correcting. Misogynistic men and women who vote Reform thought this was worth celebrating. They were gleeful about it. They couldn’t wait for it to happen.
These were not fringe voices. These were ordinary people from across the United Kingdom saying openly that they support removing women’s bodily autonomy. They were proud of it. They were voting for it deliberately. And they wanted everyone to know.
This is what you are dealing with, United Kingdom. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is not speculation about what might happen. This is people telling you directly what they want to happen and why they are voting to make it happen.
But abortion rights are just the beginning. Reform UK has stated they want to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. They want to remove the protections embedded in European law that currently safeguard women’s rights in the workplace, in healthcare, in public life, and in private life. These are not abstract legal frameworks. These are concrete protections that affect women’s lives every single day.
The European Convention on Human Rights protects women from discrimination. It protects women from violence. It protects women’s right to privacy, to family life, to fair treatment under the law. Leaving the ECHR removes those protections. It removes the legal framework that allows women to challenge discrimination when it happens. It removes the international accountability that forces the UK government to uphold women’s rights even when domestic political pressure pushes against them.
European employment law guarantees equal pay for equal work. It protects women from being paid less than men for doing the same job. It protects pregnant women from being fired. It guarantees maternity leave and maternity pay. It prevents employers from discriminating against women who have children or who might have children. It protects part-time workers, who are disproportionately women, from being treated as second-class employees. It guarantees rights to parental leave, to flexible working, to protection from harassment in the workplace.
Reform UK wants to remove these protections. They call it cutting red tape. They call it reducing burdens on business. They call it sovereignty. What it actually means is removing legal protections that prevent women from being exploited, discriminated against, underpaid, and dismissed without recourse.
The Working Time Directive limits working hours and guarantees rest breaks. Women, especially women in low-paid work, rely on these protections. Without them, employers can demand unlimited hours with no guaranteed breaks and no overtime protections. The Agency Workers Directive protects temporary workers, again disproportionately women, from being paid less than permanent staff doing the same work. The Pregnant Workers Directive protects women from being dismissed or discriminated against because they are pregnant or on maternity leave.
All of these
Local traders at a historic British market are in a race against time to raise £15m to stop it falling into the hands of private equity firms.
Brixton Market dubs itself “London’s most diverse and vibrant market”, with over 100 vendors representing more than 50 countries.
The market began life on Atlantic Road in the 1870s, with covered arcades built in the 1920s and 1930s.
In 2018 it was purchased by global investment firm TPG Angelo Gordon and property management company Hondo Enterprises, who put it up for sale last year.
Under their stewardship, traders have repeatedly complained that the market was being turned into a “ghost town” on the back of soaring rents.
The market is now being pitched to unnamed private equity firms for £50m as part of “a plan to drive £1.2m in increased profits by evicting tenants paying lower rents,” Londonist reported.
The original six-month consultation window was scrapped without warning, leaving only days before bidding closes on 22 June.
In response, the Brixton Traders and Community Association have launched a 'Buy Back Brixton' counter-bid, with support from The Advocacy Academy.
They have set a fundraising target of £15m to launch a bid to bring the market into community ownership.
"Brixton Market as we know it could disappear," the two groups said in a joint statement.
"Local traders actively create the wealth that is then taken out of the community by private interests, and yet are told time and time again that their needs don't matter and that they are replaceable by other businesses/chains who can compete with rising rents, despite being the ones to build this space into what it is.
"We now have two choices. We can either accept that the market will always be run by developers who don't live here, don't have any ties to the community, and only see our people as cash cows – or we do something about it. For us, the choice is clear."
🟡 MAGAZINE
On the Ground – Tackling Crypto-Politics
By @josiahmortimer
We talk a lot about the intoxicating stench of big money in politics but politicians often see it as impossible to tackle. How would parties operate without mountains of cash? Byline Times .
We talk a lot about the intoxicating stench of big money in politics but politicians often see it as impossible to tackle. How would parties operate without mountains of cash?
Byline Times .
READ ON:
https://t.co/iHPu10ip7E
"The government have actively avoided looking for evidence Russia interfered."
The Intelligence & Security Committee's Stewart Hosie said the government didn't investigate alleged Russian interference in the Brexit vote, and no one wanted to touch this "with a ten-foot pole".
Starmer has done nothing to rectify this situation. Please repost if you want the government to conduct a full scale inquiry into Russian interference in British politics over the last twenty years. Russia is waging a hybrid war against the UK and this government, like its Tory predecessors, is failing to protect us against the political half of that attack.
Devoured by private equity.
Bernard Matthews
Body Shop
Byron Burger
Casual Dining
Cath Kidson
Claire’s
Comet
Debenhams
Flybe
Four Seasons Health Care
Homebase
Maplin
Thousands of jobs lost, supply chain destroyed, taxes dodged. Yet govts venerate PE.
https://t.co/I0XaUBp0QC
Really surprised to see Katie Hopkins being kicked out of a London pub. It's almost as though the real world bears no relation to the bots and Russian shills of Twitter and ordinary people don't like hideous hate-filled divisive grifting twats.
Buy Back Brixton!
Thank you to the community that turned up in their hundreds for tonight's public meeting and street party to save Brixton Village and Market Row from Corporate Developers.
It was an honour to speak at this meeting as the first Green Party Leader of @lambeth_council.
A few weeks from now, Brixton Village could belong to another distant investment fund.
Another faceless owner.
Another group of people who see Brixton not as a community, but as a line on a balance sheet.
And if we do nothing, we know exactly what happens next.
We have seen it before. For twenty years we have seen rampant private equity buy up Brixton and sanitise and gentrify our community.
The rents rise. Independent traders are squeezed out. Culture becomes a marketing strategy. Community becomes a brand. And the very people who made this place special are told there is no longer room for them.
That is the story communities across London have been forced to live through time and time again.
But we have a chance to write a different ending.
Because Brixton Village and Market Row are not just another piece of property on the Capitalists Monopoly Boar.
It is one of the most important cultural landmarks in our borough.
It is where generations of people have built businesses, created jobs, shared food, made music, celebrated their heritage and built the community that we love.
The value of Brixton Village and Market Row does not lie in the bricks and mortar.
Its value lies in the people.
And those people turned out today.
Today, we said something simple but powerful:
Brixton is not a commodity.
Brixton is a community.
As Leader of Lambeth Council we will do everything in our power to enable our community to take ownership of Brixton Village and Market Row to keep the wealth and the power where it belongs: in OUR community.
#BuyBackBrixton
EXCL: Nigel Farage has been trying to block Bank of England cryptocurrency plan that could be costly for billionaire bankrolling his party.
Reform UK leader has said Christopher Harborne wants nothing in exchange for millions donated to party and undeclared £5m personal gift to Farage revealed by Guardian.
But Farage used private meeting at Bank to urge governor to drop plans for state-run alternative to digital currency that has made his Thailand-based benefactor one of richest people in world.
Cracking tale from @tomburgis
https://t.co/o4ljHGx8fZ
Foreign money funding Reform UK.
Another 7m from two overseas British crypto billionaires - £4m from Hong Kong-based billionaire, £3m from Thailand.
Tax exiles shaping UK politics. What have they been promised?
Must ban political donations.
https://t.co/UzYPsSxITL
Reform UK’s #Makerfield candidate Rob Kenyon is being paid £14,822 per year now he’s a Wigan Councillor.
He’s not even turned up to sign in, not attended a council meeting and hasn’t even bothered to post a single thing advocating for his ward.
Voted for Rob Kenyon as councillor? He conned you.
New figures show Reform raked in £9m in 3 months, with Farage still in the hotseat for his £5m "gift" from billionaire Chris Harborne.
£4m came from billionaire Ben Delo, who was convicted for facilitating money laundering in the US, but pardoned by Trump.
https://t.co/6tXHKCqMjm
There are only 8 Reform MPs and they have a combined wealth of over £70,000,000.
They have consistently voted against every single improvement to workers rights and plan to scrap legal protections left right and centre.
They are funded by the bosses to rip up your rights.
🚩 Reform claims to be for working people, but their London Mayor candidate proves they don’t. Leila says growth comes from entrepreneurs and risk-takers.
Mick Lynch rightly says every successful economy is built on public investment, infrastructure, housing, transport, education and industrial strategy.
The post-war boom wasn’t created by slogans. It was built.
Leila’s response reveals Reform’s blind spot: they talk endlessly about wealthy entrepreneurs, but far less about the public investment, skilled workforce, infrastructure, wealth redistribution and institutions that make businesses possible in the first place.
No successful economy was ever built on “leave it to the market” alone.
Watch the full exchange. 👇
You voted against scrapping zero hour contracts.
You voted against banning fire and rehire.
You voted against day one sick pay for workers.
You said the minimum wage was too high for young people.
Reform politicians openly say they don't like trade unions.
You will always put the interests of your offshore crypto billionaire donors ahead of workers.
Mick Lynch on Reform & Restore ‘they are all as despicable as each other to me & working class people should turn away from the hatred they spread … you believe in isolating people & taking advantage of poverty so you can divide them & make your friends even richer.’
#newsnight
Farage has achieved his goal — to return from his hiding place with such outrageous statements that he hopes the questions about his £5m donation are now forgotten.
The media are duly obliging by focusing on his racist dog whistles instead of his corruption.
Trumpian.
Nigel Farage's work over the last 11 weeks broken down:
- Parliamentary votes registered (including on immigration): 0
- Violent racial divisions stoked: 1