Best Of

She's there because she's ostensibly better than Cooper, who has been useless in the home office, but instead of a straight demotion to justice has failed upwards to the easier and glitzier foreign office role; replacing Lammy - who, despite seriously low expectations has managed to build a good relationship particularly with the US VP but has now been given the sop of Deputy PM; a good personal relationship wiped out with the US administration because Starmer didn't dare demote Cooper.

A lot of comment from the US right about Shabhana Mahmood in the Home Office, and some of the causes and protests to which she’s aligned herself in the past.

I remember the good old days when it was none of their fucking business.

Great in theory, but when the comments look like this it’s potentially concerning for the UK government.

https://x.com/bgatesisapyscho/status/1964554012352500054
“Calls for America to restrict its ‘Intelligence Sharing’ with the UK following the appointment of Shabana Mahmood to UK Home Secretary.
“Mahmood swore her oath to UK Office on the Quran & has attended Pro Hamas Rallies that have called for the ‘Globalisation of the Intifada’.”

https://x.com/kevin_rainville/status/1964360369155043682
“@DNIGabbard @SecRubio Five Eyes Intelligence Services MUST exclude the UK from receiving any further data. Mahmood has publicly stated multiple times that Islam governs EVERY facet of her life. Such as spying for the IRGC and practicing Taqiyah during international relations.”

https://x.com/steve_zivin/status/1964295446358090075
“I am not sure Americans realize how outrageous this is. We need to immediately reevaluate intelligence sharing. Mahmood has refused to condemn Palestinian activists sabotaging British military hardware as well as championing boycotts of Jews.“

With Tulsi Gabbard in charge of US intelligence I’m frankly surprised we’ve not already voluntarily stopped sharing with them.

They are not an ally anymore.

I still don’t understand where the Tulsi Gabbard stuff actually comes from. She’s been a serving Officer in the Reserves for two decades.

Where her rabbit hole journey comes from, or where the concerns about her come from?

The concerns about her come from multiple, consistent on the record statements and actions in support of both Bashar al Assad and Vladimir Putin, including claiming the Ukraine invasion was provoked (“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/Nato had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns”), denying Assad had used chemical weapons, and repeating the Ukraine biolabs conspiracy theory.

That said, she’s not a one woman threat. Almost the entire current administration has variations on the same views, all of which should make British intelligence very very careful about sharing what they have.

Remember this is an admin that according to news reports this week has started deporting Russian dissidents back to Russia and sharing details of their asylum claims with the Russian authorities.

She's there because she's ostensibly better than Cooper, who has been useless in the home office, but instead of a straight demotion to justice has failed upwards to the easier and glitzier foreign office role; replacing Lammy - who, despite seriously low expectations has managed to build a good relationship particularly with the US VP but has now been given the sop of Deputy PM; a good personal relationship wiped out with the US administration because Starmer didn't dare demote Cooper.

A lot of comment from the US right about Shabhana Mahmood in the Home Office, and some of the causes and protests to which she’s aligned herself in the past.

I remember the good old days when it was none of their fucking business.

Great in theory, but when the comments look like this it’s potentially concerning for the UK government.

https://x.com/bgatesisapyscho/status/1964554012352500054
“Calls for America to restrict its ‘Intelligence Sharing’ with the UK following the appointment of Shabana Mahmood to UK Home Secretary.
“Mahmood swore her oath to UK Office on the Quran & has attended Pro Hamas Rallies that have called for the ‘Globalisation of the Intifada’.”

https://x.com/kevin_rainville/status/1964360369155043682
“@DNIGabbard @SecRubio Five Eyes Intelligence Services MUST exclude the UK from receiving any further data. Mahmood has publicly stated multiple times that Islam governs EVERY facet of her life. Such as spying for the IRGC and practicing Taqiyah during international relations.”

https://x.com/steve_zivin/status/1964295446358090075
“I am not sure Americans realize how outrageous this is. We need to immediately reevaluate intelligence sharing. Mahmood has refused to condemn Palestinian activists sabotaging British military hardware as well as championing boycotts of Jews.“

Given the Putin stooges in the WH shouldn’t the UK be concerned about our own intelligence? The USA lost its moral authority to criticise any other country after the re-election of Trump . In his first term there were at least some saner people surrounding him . That’s no longer the case .

Of course.

The point, though, is that the US under Trump believes because it's the most powerful party in the relationship, it's fine to humiliate its allies.

See also.
If South Korea chained several hundred US workers, many Americans would be talking war.

Hard to exaggerate how mad this is.

Mad economics, mad foreign policy.

Shameful to treat an ally this way.

This is the kind of thing which won’t be forgotten. Decades of good will torched.
https://x.com/ATabarrok/status/1964456149044122009

"The Black Farmer: If you think rural Britain is racist, you’re wrong
My experiences in Devon show the countryside is far more welcoming than the latest report on ‘normalised’ abuse would have you believe

Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/02/black-farmer-branding-countryside-as-racist-is-a-mistake/?recomm_id=9d459d0e-d0b5-4de6-907e-d97cbe2896f6

IIRC if you look at the comparative surveys that ask questions like: “would you be happy with a family with a different skin colour moving in next door?” or “Would you react negatively to your daughter marrying someone of a different race?” the UK is one of the least racist countries in Europe, possibly on the planet.

Which doesn’t make us a pure, prefect land of colour blind plenty, but it is food for thought.

While that is true, it's not inevitable that the data moves one way, towards us being even less racist.

There are worrying signs that racism towards certain groups is becoming more 'respectable' again, fuelled by the current dehumanising attitudes towards asylum seekers and the call in some quarters for 'mass deportations'.

Yes, it’s quite possible that two decades of identity politics and multiculturalism, seeing race and gender in everything, has the potential to reverse the trend towards a less-racist country.

Yes, I agree - I'd argue the UK of 2005 or thereabouts was as unracist as its possible for a society to be. The identity politics we've had since then has got us to the rather less harmonioua state we are in now.

What absolute rubbish. The idea that 2005 was "as unracist as its possible for a society to be" is absolutely ludicrous.

e.g.:
"Between 2000 and 2004 racist incidents reported to the police in England and Wales - anything from verbal abuse to the most vicious of assaults - rose from 48,000 to 52,700."
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/mar/27/foodanddrink.expertopinions

Or from 2007:
"Black people were almost seven times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police last year, according to official figures."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7069791.stm

Maybe the zenith was slightly earlier. I didn't say there was no racism. Just that I don't think you'll ever find a society doing much better.

1990s.

Is it because everyone relentlessly treated Rayner herself like some special-needs child, a young, underprivileged woman who they secretly suspected couldn’t read or write? If you look at the way Starmer spoke about her, it was constantly in these terms: she was a woman, and working class.

Of her actual record, of course: no hint. She was the perfect deputy prime minister for him: a politician allowed to rise to the top on personality alone. And that personality was: middle-class person’s idea of what a working-class person should be. Slobby, ribald, partying in ’Beefa — isn’t vaping on inflatables what working-class people all do? Spoiler alert: it isn’t. Most working-class people are insulted to be compared to her.

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/angela-rayner-no-working-class-hero-ptr88wp8b

Rayner was someone from the bottom 10% who moved into the top 10% through the Labour party.

Its no wonder that Labour politicians, people who are obsessed about the top 10% and bottom 10% and very little in between, turned Rayner into their living icon.

Put the "scum" back in her box where she belongs? We need proper working class heroes like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Lucy Connolly.

Poshos at the top is the standard order of things, which is why nobody was bothered about the likes of Blair and Darling.

Whereas Rayner is disconcerting, having gone from bottom 10% to top 10%, entirely through the medium of the Labour party.

That appears great to Labour politicians who are obsessed about those at the top and those at the bottom.

But less so to the 80% who get the impression that Labour isn't interested in them.

There are, of course, other people who have gone from bottom 10% to top 10% - in sport, in entertainment, even in business. But these people leave a trail of visible achievement whereas Rayner was a pretty rubbish housing minister for a year.

Like I said.

She called you "scum" so you don't like her. Nonetheless I don't believe you can dismiss her achievement in becoming Deputy Prime Minister.

And don't forget, Boris got all the big calls right.

Johnson certainly got Ukraine and covid right but he was responsible, much like Rayner, for his own fall from grace

Such is politics

COVID?

Yes he invented the Oxford Zeneca vaccine but the rest?

I have questions relating to Ukraine from a decade back and prior to his last throw of the dice in 2022.

I do not expect you to give Johnson any credit, but it is widely recognised he did support Ukraine, even Ukrainians recognising it by naming a street after him, and on covid, if he had listened to Starmer we would probably be still in lockdown !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is it because everyone relentlessly treated Rayner herself like some special-needs child, a young, underprivileged woman who they secretly suspected couldn’t read or write? If you look at the way Starmer spoke about her, it was constantly in these terms: she was a woman, and working class.

Of her actual record, of course: no hint. She was the perfect deputy prime minister for him: a politician allowed to rise to the top on personality alone. And that personality was: middle-class person’s idea of what a working-class person should be. Slobby, ribald, partying in ’Beefa — isn’t vaping on inflatables what working-class people all do? Spoiler alert: it isn’t. Most working-class people are insulted to be compared to her.

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/angela-rayner-no-working-class-hero-ptr88wp8b

Rayner was someone from the bottom 10% who moved into the top 10% through the Labour party.

Its no wonder that Labour politicians, people who are obsessed about the top 10% and bottom 10% and very little in between, turned Rayner into their living icon.

The Independent is gunning for Farage over taxes today, perhaps hoping that the Rayner zeitgeist will enable another scalp.

Question for the lawyers: if Farage had provided the £800k for his girlfriend to buy the flat in Clacton which he later claimed to own, does this actually open him up to any legal liability? It appears on the face of it that he has structured this transaction to avoid paying the higher rate of stamp duty.

If the £800k was a gift & the girlfriend gets to keep the property free & clear if they break up, then obviously he’s fine. But HMRC might well look at this transaction as one being structured to avoid tax & the property being “really” owned by Farage acting in a similar fashion to a shadow director of a limited company. Is that actually prosecutable though? My instincts say no, but that doesn’t mean much in this area!

It may be interesting to amateur psychologists that Farage's girlfriend is French and his former wives are Irish and German.

That just proves he's a racist xenophobe

Although being one of the three most senior posts, history suggests that progressing from there to PM is extremely uncommon. When the PM role becomes vacant, it's the Chancellor and FS who are best placed to pitch for the top job.

Which is why I think Cooper comes out well from the recent shuffle in terms of her prospects. Although she may have under-performed particularly from a media/comms perspective, she has avoided any of the major scandals, disasters or blunders that killed the careers of so many previous Home Secs, and now she's FS she could pitch for a future leadership having done two out of the three most senior roles.

Given that Reeves is already tarnished and Mahmood is brand new (and inherits the poisoned chalice), Cooper is effectively heir apparent. Yes, there's Streeting hanging about in the wings, but people underestimate how unpopular he is with many party members, making the young Blair look like a hero of socialism by comparison.

That’s a sad inditement of the quality of this government if Yvette Cooper is the best they’ve got

"The Black Farmer: If you think rural Britain is racist, you’re wrong
My experiences in Devon show the countryside is far more welcoming than the latest report on ‘normalised’ abuse would have you believe

Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/02/black-farmer-branding-countryside-as-racist-is-a-mistake/?recomm_id=9d459d0e-d0b5-4de6-907e-d97cbe2896f6

IIRC if you look at the comparative surveys that ask questions like: “would you be happy with a family with a different skin colour moving in next door?” or “Would you react negatively to your daughter marrying someone of a different race?” the UK is one of the least racist countries in Europe, possibly on the planet.

Which doesn’t make us a pure, prefect land of colour blind plenty, but it is food for thought.

While that is true, it's not inevitable that the data moves one way, towards us being even less racist.

There are worrying signs that racism towards certain groups is becoming more 'respectable' again, fuelled by the current dehumanising attitudes towards asylum seekers and the call in some quarters for 'mass deportations'.

Yes, it’s quite possible that two decades of identity politics and multiculturalism, seeing race and gender in everything, has the potential to reverse the trend towards a less-racist country.

It's f-all to do with that. If people are going to be racist fuckwits, then that's down to them.

Don't excuse racist fuckwits.

If as a society you prioritise one group over another - e.g. enshrining in law that non-whites must be prioritised - don't be surprused if those whites who are losing out start to feel a little less well towards multiculturalism.