Tessera

If you don’t like it, well, anyone is free to pay Tufton Street lobbying firms or the Tony Blair Institute to represent their interests, stoke up a series of national media panics and then force through whatever crazy measures they want. And what could be more democratic than that?

Once you know this, it makes perfect sense that the national equality body should be a little death-star full of vicious crackpots and roaring wingnuts that floats around the country zapping transgender people for Rupert Murdoch, and so on. That is just how Britain works.

It’s not that Britain doesn’t have regulators and other oversight bodies. We do have those. It’s that these are politicised bodies tasked with helping the right sort of chaps to get away with whatever horrifying shit they want to do this week, while providing a thin veneer of public accountability.

flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · 23h ago

To explain for foreigners: our energy regulator rubber-stamps price rises; the water regulator tuts while rivers fill up with human shit; the press regulator wags an occasional finger, and the national equality body enforces press campaigns against groups of people they hate and wish to damage.

Britain, where the national equality body is a boobyhatch jam-packed with wingnut cranks who fervently believe their job is creating weapons for police to hammer minorities that the press hates and wants to harm.

KISHWER FALKNER AND AKUA REINDORF
Code of practice provides weapon to defend single-sex spaces
Organisations have long ignored the law on self-identity. The EHRC rules which take effect today will not end that but are nevertheless a victory
Kishwer Falkner and Akua Reindorf
Tuesday August 04 2026, 10.15pm BST, The Times

And now, to talk about this report in an upsurge in hatred, an absolutely insane racist maniac with horrifying opinions on topics ranging from “what should be done about the Muslims” to “how much violence should states be permitted to use on entire civilian populations”. Mr Maniac, welcome

To pick just one from a foaming legion of truly hateful psychos and far right headbangers: here’s what one of their current advisors regards as extreme. And he is far from the worst of this cavalcade of crackpots.

TERROR VISION
THE government's "independent" reviewer of terrorism legislation has used a speech at a right-wing think-tank whose funders include arms firms and energy companies to call for new counter-subversion laws to limit political dissent... including anti-war protests and
"extreme" environmentalism.
In a speech last week at the Policy Exchange think-tank, Jonathan Hall KC expressed concern that such dissent could be exploited by foreign agents to cause "long-term damage to the national security of the UK" , such as a "loss of
trust in a government trying to raise defence spending
Hall is meant to be an independent voice to help make anti-terror laws "fair, necessary and proportionate".
. But his counter-subversion call
extends far beyond existing laws, identifying areas where he belleves bad foreign actors could cultivate domestic dissent in the UK. These range from "contentious foreign policy issues such as Gaza", "extreme" environmentalism he hiding?
inoss reasoning - and what is
'Old Sparky'
and, er, "Scottish independence", to presenting
"masculinity" as "toxic"
questioning "the very
definition of woman" and trying to make "white people... ashamed and non-white people aggrieved".
He admitted that previous MI5-led counter-subversion had been dropped because it was linked to McCarthyism and "unjustified infiltrations of domestic protest groups" by undercover cops, but argued that "allowing judges to decide" on how new laws are applied would prevent abuses.
Policy Exchange has a history of promoting anti-protest laws; and its backers include companies potentially facing just the sort of protests Hall links to "subversion" - arms firms Northrop Grumman and Boeing, or energy firms Southern Gas Networks, Octopus Energy and Drax. His call for tougher laws on national security to "save democracy from itself" gives a green light for more authoritarian measures by government - and authoritarian measures by government-and security forces and suggests a watchdog stra…

This is a smart, because senior politicians and press have been treating reactionary crackpots, vicious wingnuts and straight up fascists as sage and judicious advisors on radicalisation, extremism and racism for at least a decade. This convict neo-Nazi will fit right in with the rest.

In a statement Bonehill-Paine wrote: "The last 24 hours have shown that a lot of people do not understand how terrible I feel about the things I did when I was much younger.
" I know that my previous actions continue to cause pain in the Jewish community. I had thought that getting involved in my local council and working hard for my community was a good way to show how much I have changed and that I want to give something back."
He went on: "Rather than standing as a local council candidate, I believe that my experience is better used supporting Kemi Badenoch in her ongoing mission to combat the antisemitism and extremism that is dividing our nation. I have therefore informed the Party of my decision to withdraw from next year's council election and Kemi has instead offered that I become an adviser to the Conservative Party's Culture and Integration Commission, specifically focusing on how young men become radic-alised."

Where might the renowned genius Kemi Badenoch have got the idea that it’s fine to snuggle up with horrifying racist cranks and far right psychos, provided enough newspaper dorks are willing to agree that actually they are committed antiracist anti-extremists, and in fact the victims of prejudice?

Like, Kemi really has got the right idea here: “pal up with fash cranks then scream abuse at the left for not liking them, and use that insulting vexatious drivel to secure your position ” really has been the core of British politics since at least 2019. But she’s so awesomely stupid and bad at it.

It’s wild how Kemi is just this funhouse mirror of ten years of horrible UK politics and media, showing the rest of them their reflections with deeply unsettling and embarrassing distortion. What she’s doing is IMO little different to what they’ve done, it’s just more ham-fisted, crass and idiotic.

I don’t think Badenoch’s plainly unreformed neo-Nazi adviser is any sillier or more insulting than anything else her cohort have to say about destabilisation, anti-racism and anti-extremism. She’s just too stupid to realise you can’t do this with someone jailed for quite horrifically abusing an MP.

Kemi Badenoch
@KemiBad... • 1h
While I am sad that Joshua feels he won't be given the space to explain his position and represent his community, I am glad he is going to work with me and the party on tackling radicalisation as part of our Culture and Integration commission.
If we are going to stop extremism and antisemitism we are going to need help from those people who were part of the problem, but have now changed and are being part of the solution. Piling on them and trying to get them cancelled may be sport for other parties, but this is a different Conservative Party.
Sometimes there will be difficult judgement calls, but right now I know that we are the only party actively working to unite the country rather than one particular faction or other.
Crewkerne Man •
@Crewkerne... • 1h
The last 24 hours have shown that a lot of people do not understand how terrible I feel about the things I did when I was much younger....