Shabana Mahmood ...
And so it came to pass that Shabana Mahmood, recently elevated to Home Secretary, told how she was going to be tough on migrants, if not on the causes of migrants. Asylum seekers will only be able to remain in the UK temporarily. If their country of origin is deemed “safe”, they may be deported. And their jewellery may be confiscated to pay towards their accommodation.
This, Ms Mahmood has told, is the only way to see off “dark forces … stirring up anger”, which is not only muddle-headed, but total horseshit. All the changes will do is to embolden the far-right to try and drag migration policy further in their chosen direction. It will not move Labour’s poll numbers, well, not in an upwards direction. Reform UK will profit; so will the Greens.
What else is on the menu? This from the BBC: “Those granted asylum will have to wait 20 years to apply to settle permanently. Previously, they could begin this process after five years … Human rights laws around how the right to family life is interpreted in migration cases will change”. Yes, New New New Labour is going to get tough. Really tough. And it’s really pointless.
If the asylum system is not working, as Government sources are suggesting, then there is stuff all use blaming the poor souls who have endured warfare, prejudice, and the danger of crossing the Channel in an inflatable boat. The system should be overhauled so it works, asylum applications are processed promptly and the amount of accommodation needed reduced to a minimum.
... and her real boss
Well, one hates to go full Neil Kinnock, but here we have A Labour Home Secretary of Pakistani heritage - A Labour Home Secretary of Pakistani heritage - scuttling round newsrooms issuing deportation threats and signalling a weakening of Human Rights legislation. Farage and his fellow bigots will think that all their birthdays have come at once.
And it is they who will claim credit for New New New Labour coming over all tough. While Reform UK’s poll numbers may not improve as a result, those voters leaving Labour for the Greens will continue to sap the former’s numbers as they boost the ratings of the latter. Whoever dreamed up this reprehensible set of measures has damaged Labour badly. Very badly.
So it should come as no surprise that increasingly well-regarded Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is not the only name being touted as a replacement for the beleaguered Keir Starmer. Angela Rayner, a genuinely caring and effective politician, is another name in the frame. The only counter of the Morgan McSweeney cabal is to suggest Wes Streeting.
Who is so popular that he almost lost his seat at the last General Election. Thus the cluelessness of McSweeney and his acolytes: while hacks in and around Westminster like Streeting, very few others do. Moreover, McSweeney’s only successes thus far have been in breaking the rules, plus smearing his own party leadership, and throwing the 2019 General Election.
With him effectively in charge, Labour is doomed. No change there, then.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
48 comments:
Let's not forget the likelihood that the true organ-grinder here is McSweeney's mentor, Lord Mandelson. Nothing must be allowed to stop his eternal cocktail party schmooze with the billionaire set.
But, y'know....."greedy doctors"...."antisemitism"....."lost border controls"....."swarms of them"...."trickle down is best"....."billionaires will flee"....."Venezuela/Cuba/China/Russia/North Korea threats"......"AI"....."housing crisis"....."PFI"....."threats to 'corporate media freedom' "....."necessary austerity'"....."scroungers"......"minimum wage too high".....Or something.
Still, Stop The Boats......
I see that Reform’s Stephanus Johannes Paulus ‘Danny’ Kruger welcomed Mahmood’s conversion to the mindset of his Boer forefathers.
Farridge didn’t appear to have turned up.
No need, I suppose.
Aaaand, right on time, here it comes, *drumroll*, THE CHINA THREAT. *bumtish!*
Boycott your local takeaway.
It's Slow Horses time innit.
Exactly. He and the toothsome one have been behind Starmers lurch to the (hard) right since day one, and were likely behind mcsnottys elevation way beyond his limited ability. Trump was probably gutted when Mandelson was fired as Ambassador to the USA - it's nice to have someone else equally loathsome taking the spotlight off you..
Every time this moron govt pulls a stunt like this, as you say the only beneficiaries are Reform and the Greens.
Are they really so thick they cannot see that hyping up Immigration as 'the most important and divisive issue in the uk today', simply plays into the far rights hands? If the govt shut up about it, and left honking frog face and Badenough to battle over it while dealing with real issues, it would fade away as people saw real progress.
Or is that it? That this shower are so utterly useless on the one hand and so up Corporate ring on the other, that immigration is a great smokescreen for them doing nothing to rock the boat (no pun) and keep ploughing the same Tory furrow?
Blair. Brown. Mandelson. McTernan. Mann. Umunna. Anderson. Stürmer. Reeves. Streeting. McSweeney.
See what I did there? And that's just a few of them.
But y'know it all sort of just happened. Jolly old England just accidentally bumbled into this urfascist warmongering Zionist lark. As did the gun firin' cowboy paedophile Washingtonians. And the excitable French. And the stern Germans. And the Israeli Nazis.
Gosh. It's all so COMPLICATED. So NUANCED. Hard work this democracy, facing up to a looming Nuclear Winter. It all just sort of HAPPENED..... like 1914, 1939, Korea, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Chile, Argentina, the Falklands, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Yemen and now Venezuela.
Still, Nigel and trickle down will sort it. That and Stopping The Boats. Something like that.
Talking of extreme regimes, as has been pointed out elsewhere, the UKs latest answer to Ribbentrop is proposing to do what Nigels all time favourite political party did, and steal jewellery from people now being deemed 'anti social elements'.
As ever, not to be beaten to the punch(ing) of immigrants, our glorious future fuhrer is proposing the removal of benefits from all migrants including from the EU. As usual this is accompanied by wild figures regards saving bearing no resemblance of reality.
Even more sinister is Reforms belief that children currently receiving support for neural disorders is 'ridiculous', cue a push to reduce spending on SEN when in power. This of course, is in keeping with their belief that 'only the most seriously disabled should receive benefits'.
Now where have we heard all this before?
13:04.
Aaaand, Right on its heels, *longer drumroll*, THE RUSSIA THREAT *double bumtish!*
Next up, Venezuela threatens to invade Wales.
Oh my aching sides.😂
That photo of Mahmood.
Own up, Tim, you either (a) Photoshopped it or (b) CGIed it.
No human being looks like that.
Oh no! This Nathan Gill/ Farage/Reform/Kremlin Gold story is going to throw up weeks of speculation that the actions and intentions of Mother Russia are not always entirely benign.
Soooo unfair!
Who is that comment possibly geared to? Who on earth thinks that Russia is a benign force in geopolitics?
20:52.
Gill/Farage/Reform/Kremlin?.....Pffffft..... Peanuts, as Bozo and Sugar Daddy USA would say.
Especially where Ukraine Nazis are concerned. Here's the latest "small time" Ukrainian hoodlum scam. Small time by Ukraine/Biden "standards" that is:
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-corruption-scandal-explained-100m-plot-rocking-volodymyr-zelenskyy-energy-sector/
Mind you, REAL small time can be found in Starmer's bought-and-paid-for suits, Mrs Starmer's bought-and-paid-for underwear draw, and Starmer Junior's bought-and-paid-for "study". Then there's Reeves, Rayner, Nandy, and never forgotten Mandelson and the Blair gang.
Tut tut.......Wannabe Slough Slow Horses even slower these days. I blame the "austerity" energy bills.
You clearly haven’t followed the Tankie’s oeuvre over the years (though it seems like decades).
(And see his reflex touchiness below.Right on cue. He’s nothing if not predictably easy to wind up).
But the anonymous person below isn't saying what you say he's saying?
You can say he is providing context, or fog, but he's (i presume he, maybe wrongly) not doing whatever you're saying.
Households face higher energy bills.
No end to profiteering - £30bn last yr.
£4.4bn bills arrears.
128000 a year, including 110,000.pensioners die in fuel poverty.
Tbh, going on the ludicrous 'peace deal' the orange goblin has put forward as the 'only solution', Trump is the answer to that question.
Nice of said Trump to offer up 2025's version of Munich 38', that classic moment of stupidity and cowardice that, poxy (and untrue) excuses aside, led directly to the start of WW2.
Cheer up people. Here's former ambassador and diplomat Craig Murray with the latest news on the Russian invasion of London.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/11/the-beat-of-the-war-drums/
Nick Hagan
The 'anonymous person below' is, as I said, someone you clearly aren't familiar with. He's the only anonymous person on here who is so well-known to regular visitors that he can be referred to simply and unambiguously as 'Anonymous'.
His contributions to the Comments sections of Zelo Street outnumber any other contributor's by about 5 to 1, if not more. His style is instantly recognisable and infinitely predictable.
Among his recognisable qualities is a reflexive nostalgic defensiveness towards the country which gave birth in 1917 to the first great proletarian revolution, a response regularly expressed in a characterisation of its current enemy Ukraine as irredeemably corrupt and/or fascist, which, given the nature of Russia in 2025, shows all the self-awareness of the sooty pot when confronted by the fuliginous kettle.
I hope this gives the comment you seem to be objecting to, a little context.
PS 'benign force' etc was exaggeration for effect, and irony
17:45.
Top McCarthyite bloviating there me ol' Micawber1.
That would pass entry-level for the Azov Battalion, no sweat.
The Slow Horses wouldn't have you though. Far too obvious.
Stil, have a "nice" Starmer day. There won't be many more.
Consider this a free social service at the point of use.😊
.
But, whether he is providing fog or context, he isn't defending Russia. You just seem upset that he's left wing?
Which makes me wonder why you go to the comment section at all.
Well in, Starmer/Reeves/Streeting/Blair/Brown/Millburn and co. Quisling "Labour" since, like, forever.
Right in line with all the other assorted ranting righties, racists and fascists. To say nothing of Zionists-without-qualification.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/24/uk/britain-child-poverty-intl-scli
Ah, but he does, and in classic tankie fashion, and has done many times.
As for being left wing, yes indeed, but alas, the woolly jumpered, Socialist Worker berating their fellow middle classes kind, found in such hotbeds of working class solidarity as Guildford or Godalming.
If you want outdated, popular circa 1917 to 1979, hard left sloganising, he's your man. If you want practical solutions to the UKs ongoing problems, he really is not.
21:59.
Meantime, on the stupid and needless Ukraine War here's a common sense context by a conservative former member of the US officer corps, Doug MacGregor.
The bloviating McCarthyite claptrap that triggered the tragedy can't be expected to bring it to a halt. Its apologists never learn - they still haven't recovered from the 19th century Crimean War and the Charge Of The Light Brigade. Daft Pearly King Lord Cardigans.
https://youtu.be/w_QJ4yBEWMQ?si=lN4-kEVNtHru8I0r
No one is 'upset', Dan. How could we be after having got used to the Tankie's predictable Spartist rants over so many years?
It's always refreshing to see a new contributor on Zelo Street, but as I have told you twice now, you just don't know of what (or whom) you speak (always a good reason for saying nothing, I think?).
And if you believe that a sentimental reflexive defence of an extreme ethno-nationalist kleptocracy currently slaughtering hundreds of thousands of its and its neighbour's youth in a bloody neo-colonialist invasion, if you think that that qualifies as 'left wing' then I think you need to look a bit closer at the terms you employ.
And if you believe that his regular attacks on Ukraine ( a country which everyone knows and in common with much of eastern Europe, has a sizeable fascist element and a great deal of institutional corruption, but which, crucially, is not invading its neighbour), if you think those attacks do not imply a defence of Russia, then I think you are being naive or obtuse, or both. Apart from anything else, his Ukraine fascist/corruption stuff is a straightforward regurgitation of the Moscow line on the 'special military operation' since its inception.
'Left wing'? Stalinist conformism was never 'left wing'.
One further point: it's not your fault that you don't know this, but in late summer 2024 'Anonymous' declared that we in the UK were now living under 'outright fascism' (whether this was supposed to be ordinary old Nazi/ ltalian style fascism or like Stalin's 'social fascism', ie social democracy, was never made clear, though Tankie has never retracted it so we're still presumably suffering under its yoke. Probably justification for Russian warships in the Channel, eh?).
Anyway, I hope that's made things clearer. If it hasn't and you want to carry on this dialogue of the deaf then I'm afraid it'll have to be a monologue from this point on.
I'm afraid Bertie is just like this Nick. Makes up for the only letters coming after his name being "sans degree".
I would not worry about it too much Nick Hagan. Bertie is his own man. We'd probably get on in the pub, here he is insufferable.
It seems that one of the Titans of our free and fearless press has been reading Zelo Street, and in particular the nuanced and subtle analysis regularly produced by Anonymous the Tankie. Clearly seeking impartiality and balance, Telegraph nutjob Allister Heath, the Tankie’s mirror image, has this week belatedly responded to our friend’s claim that the UK is now in its second year of ‘outright fascism’, by declaring, in a considered and not-at-all hysterical headline following the ‘Quislingette’(?) Reeves’s Wednesday Budget, that:
‘BRITAIN IS NOW IN THE GRIP OF FULL-BLOODED SOCIALISM!’
‘Fascism’ Anonymous and ‘Socialism’ Allister: separated at birth?
17:04.
Gosh, me ol' Micawber1...... have you heard the latest news living rent free in your head?
https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2025/11/30/your-party-dual-membership/
Reds are not only UNDER the bed, they're IN the bed, in the ATTIC, NEXT DOOR, in your PUB, and in your local CONVENIENCE STORE.😂
Quick, report it via your subscriptions to the Rothermere Heil and the Murdoch Scum. They'll know how to deal with it. Y'know, "Benefits Street" 'n' all.
As will the Stürmer Zionist-without-qualification. If he and his Israeli fascist genocidal employers can tear themselves away from murdering innocent Palestinians and "fighting" and funding to the last Ukrainian, or locking up grandmas and grandads in wheelchairs for holding up bits of cardboard.
Go on, it might even stop mighty Venezuela from sailing up the Thames and cleaning out the City of London.
Meantime, my disregards to your chum Nigel in Clacton. Keep up the fight against 1917!😊
It is now 17 years since the 2008 Greatest Depression.
And we still have "austerity" and a "cost of living crisis", plus deliberately inflicted increasing poverty, plus never-ending wars, plus corporate and billionaires tax-free looting of the economy, plus corporate media corrupt propaganda lies, plus institutional racism and xenophobia.
Which is why Starmer/Reeves are bought-and-paid-for irrelevant. Their empty-head fascist type, agog with their own unimportance, are always hired and fired to suit circumstances. The British 2025 equivalent of 1930s Wilhelmstrasse bureaucrat sell outs. Soon to be replaced by more "advanced" and "nuanced" party hacks without the haken-kreuz and the uniforms.
Britain 2025. A seedy country with no moral centre, just the Most Corrupt Capital In The World (™️ Roberto Saviano, organised crime expert). A Ruritanian banana monarchy clinging to the boots of the gun-toting US empire. An all too predictable 21st century version of Edward Gibbon's account of an earlier era.
All avoidable, all unnecessarily mass lethal, supported only by weasel words morons and mediocre apologists.
And even worse "policies" to come, domestic and international. You've seen nothing yet. Best get ready for it.
The Blackshirts are back! Well in Reform! Well done Nigel! That'll keep the Alf Garnetts and gammons happy!
https://reformfc.com/products/collectors
https://youtu.be/cMNFexjtDyg?si=3iZvhSLqYJ9h2pHS
Almost unrecognisable, Tankie! Much better.
A number of indisputable observations and colourful descriptions (with the usual absence of any serious attempt at suggesting 'what is to be done', however), and the habitual weakness for false equivalence (London and Rome? Starmer and Weimar?) But the absence of rant makes it much more readable.
And I suppose that if you're stuck with 'we are living under outright fascism' (rather than just admitting that it was a lazy and absurd claim and, like Farage, you were younger then and it was just 'banter') you're always going to be floundering.
The ending is predictably apocalyptic but if you're into that kind of thing I recommend T.J.Clark's brilliant piece 'The Job' in the latest London Review of Books, where he examines Trump's speech to the Knesset, Stephen Miller's homily for Charlie Kirk and what they say about the reduction of politics to the simple exercising of power as spectacle, where the brazenness of the Trumpworld's brandishing of its stupidity, 'all the drivelling banalities, the selfishness, the contempt for others, the lack of interest in anything the world has to offer except personal gain, the malice, the ignorance, the ludicrous certainties', becomes itself the defiant proof of that power.
And Clark's final paragraphs make your dire predictions sound almost comforting.
Highly recommended.
Here in detail is one of the roots of Britain's turn towards fascism: police corruption and lies to avoid their responsibilities for the Hillsborough Disaster of 1989.... even worse, to blame the victims.
One example of the utter cowardly corruption of the British Establishment and its employees, corporate media and weasel apologists.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/hillsborough-disaster-everything-we-know-about-the-12-officers-the-iopc-found-had-a-case-to-answer/ar-AA1RyLd9
The Blackshirts are back! Well in LABOUR ! Well done Kier !
https://shop.labour.org.uk/product/labour-wave-large-logo-black-sweatshirt
...and right on cue, another post chock with cliched, hackneyed nonsense from our fave Spartist.
Better yet, a quote from the far lefts answer to the Telegraph, the Canary. A site about as reliable as a source as a plumbers estimate.
Good to see his fan club out in force mind.
Never mind that, Tim.
Thames Water have cleared £400 millions profits while turning that river into a rancid sewage ditch the local mugs are paying for.
The Great Stink is back.
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2025/12/03/thames-water-profits/
10:15.
Aaaand, *drumroll*! It's MICAWBER2! *bumtish"!
The Reform candidate for Murdochland! Roll up, roll up! See the Page 3 art! Join the attacks on deadly grandpas and grandmas, the NHS, unions, the undeserving poor and welfare receivers! Wave the flag! Resist the peacemongers! Wage war on everybody! Read the Sun, the Mail, the Express, the Telegraph, the Guardian! Most of all STOP THE DEADLY BOATS and LOVE BIG BROTHER!
Oh my aching sides.
No doubt who above"anonymous" is.
I'm not Trotsky but even i know The Canary was polled as one of the most reliable news outlets. But then, Bertie is never one for the truth is he.
Quisling "Labour", its other British governments and their cowardly corporate media are engaged in fascist genocide across the globe.
All of it led by the psychopathic religious lunatic Netanyahu. Predictably grovelled to by the fascist Zionist-without-qualification Starmer.
Here's the proof:
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/03/08/israel-genocide-media-complicit/?__s=uz55l0so3dahoy2dwvld
Here's not-at-all fascist Quisling Lammy's "contribution" to "democracy". Roland Freisler would have approved.
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2025/12/03/jury-trials-lammy-knows/
OUTRIGHT FASCISM LATEST
The Quiffed Quisling has formed an alliance with Norway, the homeland of his notorious WW2 Nasjonal Samling namesake, in a new threat to the Russian submarines which carry peace-loving Moscow seniors on sight-seeing cruises of the iconic communication cables and pipelines in the North Atlantic. Putin warns against this ‘Pact of Steel provocation’ accusing the West of ‘forging a new Rome-Berlin Axis’.
(UK and Norway form naval alliance to hunt Russian submarines
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3v152ep9l0o)
(In other news: Jeremy Corbyn warns against ‘rushing ahead of the evidence’ on 2018 Salisbury Skripal poisoning).
Oh dear.
If you can't detect expression, style, tone and content differences between me and 'the above anonymous', Ed, then I should steer clear of embarrassing yourself in future in this way. Any Poundshop AI could do better. Disappointing.
I think your difficulty, like many of your persuasion, is that you can't believe that there is more than one person in the world who doesn't follow the same noughties bien-pensant liberal-left line as yourself.
Grovelling at the combat boots of the USA Britain 2025 each day sinks further into fascism.
From 22 years ago, here's the reason why. Described by much missed Gore Vidal and other besieged dissidents - the best way to deal with slippery apologists is to get right in their gammon faces:
https://youtu.be/sUTjhaOjPTU?si=591DLR92CCD-tfAS
Where's the beef?
The European and British version of capitalist fascism is making tremendous strides.
Stürmer and co. and their candy floss apologists?....... Pffffft..... dispensable useful idiots.....
https://youtu.be/7uvSVi4NOWk?si=EhdwqzKsc-epfBWf
12.48.
Reading your posts really is good for someones self esteem. Such utter childish rubbish, written without any thought or intelligence behind it, makes any of my posts seem like pure literature gold. Thanks for a much needed boost in these God awful times.
Do me favour some time though. Read back, to yourself, out loud, one of your posts. If your cringe reflex 'doesn't' cause your face to fold in on itself, well...
Ed, I am not Bertie. Even our foaming friend has worked that out. Oh, and the Canary has polled nothing of the sort. It is ranked 'medium credibility' by the bias and credibility ranking sites, which is on par with - the Daily Express. So, hardly a paragon of reliability then...
Our fave Spart has gone very quiet on that little titbit. I suspect because Putins, um, 'wise words' coupled with the quiff quislings alliance with the real quislings homeland caused the first example of human nuclear fission.
His fan club can dry their eyes though, as once the devastation has been cleared, and the fallout reached background levels, we'll soon see him restored back to his redoubtable self..
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