i kid you not, this is the YouTube channel of the candidate Kemi's defending

This is grim. DO is essentially a professor of practice - a common title where people often don't have PhDs He's obviously got the gig because he's well known for doing popular history telly programmes not coz woke.

Once again, I come back to the fact these guys have created a situation where one of the UK's leading, cis female athletes is scared to go to the loo alone, and the fact that they are celebrating this as a step forward for women's rights.

Equality and Human Rights Commission@equalityhumanright.bsky.social · 8h ago

Our code of practice for services, public functions and associations comes into force today. It provides practical guidance on how the Equality Act 2010 applies to services, public functions and associations. Find out more: https://ow.ly/alIf50Zwrkx

"Whether we like it or not, the future of jobs lies in largely non-traded, labour absorbing activities such as retail, food services, hospitality, care and other personal services. The Left cannot evade this reality."

Dani Rodrik@drodrik.bsky.social · 6h ago

My thoughts on where Andy Burnham’s (and the Left’s in general) priorities on the economy should be futureoftheleft.substack.com/p/the-left-m...

Andy Burnham was challenged to say more about immigration. His words on carer & settlement + in Dover on borders & safe routes reveal his balancer instincts: for fair rules with gratitude for migrant contribution, for control + compassion. My Eastern Eye column www.easterneye.biz/andy-burnham...

Can Burnham find a new balance on immigration?

'Fair rules should protect more than just care workers'

easterneye.biz

A terrible day for trans people in Britain and a shameful one for the EHRC and government

Equality and Human Rights Commission@equalityhumanright.bsky.social · 8h ago

Our code of practice for services, public functions and associations comes into force today. It provides practical guidance on how the Equality Act 2010 applies to services, public functions and associations. Find out more: https://ow.ly/alIf50Zwrkx

wild way to frame one of the most aggressively anti-trans bathroom bans in the developed world

Equality and Human Rights Commission@equalityhumanright.bsky.social · 8h ago

Our code of practice for services, public functions and associations comes into force today. It provides practical guidance on how the Equality Act 2010 applies to services, public functions and associations. Find out more: https://ow.ly/alIf50Zwrkx

Bonehill-Paine runs the "Crewkerne Gazette" YouTube channel (nope, me neither), publishing cringey mostly anti-Labour AI slop videos. But he did post this very odd "explainer" video where, essentially talking to himself (an AI "interviewer"), he bigs himself up in a strangely immodest way

The Crewkerne Gazette: Who is the Crewkerne Man?

YouTube video by The Crewkerne Gazette

youtube.com

Kemi Badenoch on Today defending the neo-Nazi council candidate by saying that it is right to give those who have previously been radicalised a chance. Badenoch on Shamima Begum, whom was groomed by Islamic State when a child, "Citizenship is a privilege, she forfeited it." 🤔

No mention of anti-Muslim hatred. This isn't mere whataboutery - if the argument is former neo-Nazis should be selected having renounced their antisemitic views, it'd be stronger if it mentioned a form of hate that is as prevalent and dangerous. conservativehome.com/2026/08/05/j...

Joshua Bonehill-Paine: Britain is failing its Jews. I know where this hatred leads | Conservative Home

The Government, police, universities and political parties must stop treating this as a passing controversy. Those who threaten Jews or attack Jewish institutions must face serious consequences, and t...

conservativehome.com

And there’s this: bsky.app/profile/jdpo...

Jonathan Portes@jdportes.bsky.social · 8h ago

I'd note that while the claim appears to be that having "reformed" he now spends his time combating antisemitism, what he actually does is produce videos like this. Certainly not Nazism, but hardly befitting Her Majesty's Opposition... youtu.be/WwOtIGuuNMg?...

I'll be honest: I'd buy this a lot more if his main outlet wasn't abusively attacking opposition politicians via AI slop in ways which obviously nod to other forms of prejudice.

Mark Wallace@wallaceme.bsky.social · 8h ago

ConservativeHome has always been a critical friend of the Conservative Party, and a place for all of its wings and views to debate and discuss. So in addition to the above editorial, Bonehill-Paine is also in today’s Comment section making his own case conservativehome.com/2026/08/05/j...

It was always strange to call the genocide in Gaza a war, but it's even more bizarre when there is a ceasefire and Israel has killed 1200 Palestinians since then. Even if the Guardian doesn't want to use the term genocide "war" doesn't capture one sided slaughter of civilians

This is of course, a creation of the right & of Brexit, sadly abetted by UK press & media. Brexit led to the departure of EU healthcare staff who'd been popping up the NHS, to be replaced by non-white folk from S Asia & Africa. Switch then gleefully exploited by the same racists who drove Brexit.

Jonathan Portes@jdportes.bsky.social · yesterday

"There's a real thing going on in the composition of the staff...does that not have to be looked at as well?" Nick Robinson, on Today, discussing this news.sky.com/story/nhs-st...

David Miller. Wrongfully dismissed, but he's since shown the world who he is. I'm glad he no longer works at Bristol, but I do wonder how on earth he got appointed in the first place.

Has anybody checked that it's NOT Grant Shapps?

Tim Bale@timbale.bsky.social · yesterday

Rather puts Grant Shapps being rejected as a Conservative candidate into perspective.

As someone who politely replied to his previous post: I feel like the QTs and replies to this pretty gracious mea culpa are an illustration of most of the worst of Bluesky.

Ben Goldacre@bengoldacre.bsky.social · yesterday

Apologies: I’m not online much, I haven't paid any attention to Rod Liddle for a long time, I didn't really know his extremes. I do now: I wouldn’t have posted if I'd known. I’ve seen death of difficult people up close (and its impact on others): that’s the only reason it was on my mind as an issue.

I recall we had a period of time where the response of Starmer and Cooper to concerns about these groups was ‘I like flags’

Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social · yesterday

Leaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.

Yeah, you just can't separate this stuff from "it's good to see free speech is so healthy" after a far right march launched a race riot in your capital city.

Rob Ford@robfordmancs.bsky.social · yesterday

This is what happens when anti-racism norms erode, and elites bear a lot of the responsibility for norm erosion, as they have disproportionate power to set and enforce norms

If you, to take another entirely random example, describe recent immigration a "squalid chapter in our politics" a "failed experiment", and promise to "shut down the lab" you are contributing to the problem of norm erosion www.gov.uk/government/s...

PM remarks at Immigration White Paper press conference: 12 May 2025

Prime Minister Keir Starmer's remarks at a press conference on the Immigration White Paper.

gov.uk

This is what happens when anti-racism norms erode, and elites bear a lot of the responsibility for norm erosion, as they have disproportionate power to set and enforce norms

Charles EP Murphy@cepmurphy.bsky.social · yesterday

news.sky.com/story/nhs-st... stereotypically this has been seen as Old People, but not only would the old people of now have often been born post-Windrush, lot of this will be younger people who've always lived in a diverse Britain. The guy with a pregnant wife likely millennial at oldest

3. But *if* Today/Robinson had done that, they'd have been instantly accused of bias, of course! Hence (I suspect) Robinson's extremely clumsy (at best) formulation. Not an excuse, but I have a (very limited) amount of sympathy here (for Robinson, not BBC) www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Radio 4 - Listen Live - BBC Sounds

Listen live to Radio 4 on BBC Sounds

bbc.co.uk

This is a measured and damning thread from Sunder - you just have to continue reading past the first post which is obviously too much for some people.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 2d ago

66 seems a young age for Rod Liddle to die. Talented comic writer, insightful about football.obvs took much pleasure in transgressing political correctness But just lied when caught being much more indefensibly racist+ sexist online in his Millwallmonkey persona www.theguardian.com/media/2026/a...

2. There *is* an important point here about context! The rise in racism against NHS staff is driven in large part by the simultaneous sharp growth in both non-white NHS staff *and* the growth in explicitly xenophobic/anti-immigrant rhetoric in UK politics. A point worth making!

Appending some further thoughts on this (1/3) 1. Robinson wasn't trying to justify racist behaviour. It's just a sort of knee-jerk cringe/search for "balance"/"context", which ends up doing the opposite...

"There's a real thing going on in the composition of the staff...does that not have to be looked at as well?" Nick Robinson, on Today, discussing this news.sky.com/story/nhs-st...

Patients refusing to be treated by non-white staff as NHS reports shocking rise in racism

Paul Awah, a Bedfordshire-based diagnostic radiographer originally from Nigeria, said: "It's definitely got worse – people are more expressive."

news.sky.com

A party that was actually anti-racist would be kicking this person out, not allowing them to run for the Governing Committee. There are many decent Greens who will be disgusted by this and I wish them all power fighting back against it. We know from experiance how hard that is.

Liddle's ex-colleagues find it easy to defend his mainstream journalism as a lark But a conscious effort to ignore what his Millwall-Monkey stuff revealed."Even the Jews were allowed to smoke at Auschwitz" was reported. His "niggermeat, not wogmeat" comments + most virulent sexist threads were not

The Times, one of the leading voices when it comes to 'protecting women and girls' calling a man who assaulted his young pregnant girlfriend, said he would rape the kids if he was a teacher and called for child sex abuse porn to be legal, 'brilliant'

"There's a real thing going on in the composition of the staff...does that not have to be looked at as well?" Nick Robinson, on Today, discussing this news.sky.com/story/nhs-st...

Patients refusing to be treated by non-white staff as NHS reports shocking rise in racism

Paul Awah, a Bedfordshire-based diagnostic radiographer originally from Nigeria, said: "It's definitely got worse – people are more expressive."

news.sky.com