Today marks the beginning of the end of the 30 year failure that was privatisation of Britain's railways. This afternoon MPs will debate the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill - which will see private rail franchises taken into public ownership as they expire. 🧵

A real 20% pay rise for lecturers (+2% this year) really isn't too much to bargain for now is it? And reverse the 13% cuts since 2019. But we need a functioning @UCU general secretary to do it. Story on junior doctors getting a +22% pay offer today: bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

If we want to fix English local government, then we need to sort out both the finances and the geography of councils. Our new briefing shows how to get it done by the end of the Parliament, and it all depends on a new map for English local government that looks like this:

Cutting consultancy spending in government is a step in the right direction but unless we rebuild the UK's public sector capabilities we won't meet the country's biggest challenges. My new piece with Rosie Collington in The New Statesman on ending the 'consultancy cult' ➡️

Political and ethical philosophy cheat sheet

🧵 Just to recap, because events move so fast, it’s hard to make sense of them: firstly, a group of far right politicians, social media ‘names’ & organised fascists jumped on a tragedy to claim that the person responsible for the carnage in Southport was a Muslim / refugee. 1/13

The UK far right was at its absolute worst in the late 70s / early 80s when net migration was often negative (I.e. we had more people leaving than arriving). It's a complete fantasy to imagine a change in annual numbers would stop racism/hate.

From today's Gaza ceasefire demo in London "From Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime"

Yesterday's riots have woken people up to the scale of the far right challenge. But we’re still getting a lot of things wrong. 1/ The fascists achieved something: they have terrorised Britain’s BAME population. I’ve got people contacting me saying they don’t feel safe…

NEW: This is Labour's January 6th: let's take on and defeat Britain's fascist surge - my ⁦The New European - Think Without Borders⁩ column today theneweuropean.co.uk/the-mob-vs-sta…

On the money as usual. We need an organisation committed to defending democracy at all costs. Exactly like what the "Reichsbanner Schwarz–Rot–Gold" tried to be at the end of the Weimar Republic. A broad-church progressive force fighting to save democracy from fascism.

I don't think anyone needs to wonder how the Holocaust happened & how Nazism was able to reach the Popularity that it did, ever again.

As this chart from the Migration Observatory highlights, only a minority of British people ACTUALLY think immigration should be made more difficult. Many people think is should be made easier.

This deserves summary: Violent crime is FALLING. Most "grooming gangs" are white. Immigrants PAY US more money than they "take". 4% of all houses are standing EMPTY. Tories wasted MILLIONS on racist stunts instead of helping the poor. MOST people don't hate immigrants. FACTS.