What I aim to focus on most in 2026

 I've never been one for New Year's resolutions. Whilst admittedly January certainly brought some much-needed relief after the difficulties I experienced last year which I talked about in the previous blog, I've never thought that coming up with concretely different things you want to do in a new year is very productive.

There are two reasons for this. One is that they very rarely stick - if we all look at what we planned to do last new year, I think very few of us would honestly be able to say we stuck with what we intended. The other reason is that I think we can all resolve to be better people, and these decisions need to be made as and when we realise their importance. There's nothing specific that you have to wait until 1st January to do.

So this is not going to be a list of things I intend to achieve in 2026. This is going to be what I intend to focus on this year. This is different, because there isn't going to be anything here that is remotely measurable - nothing I'll be able to look back at in twelve months time and think, 'Well, that went out the window, didn't it?' Instead, this is just a collection of things that I really hope will make this year more satisfactory than last year was.

1. I want to write more

This is almost redundant, because I write all the time. I'm an absolutely chronic social media user - I'm the original person that never grew out of commenting on everything on Facebook. I also use Reddit continuously, very often to discuss literature, television soaps or whatever takes my fancy.

And I won't describe this as time-wasting, although I know a lot of people would. It is something that's kept me going day by day, particularly over the last year. It reminds me that there's a world out there and stuff going on, and to an extent that I'm capable of formulating a coherent thought and writing it down, which is a useful thing to remember.

That said, there are multiple projects involving writing that I don't follow up. I am writing two different books that I hope to be published eventually - one fiction and one non-fiction. I'm writing a Waterloo Road fanfic (don't ask). I have this blog, which I really hope to update more this year than last year (actually, at two posts this year to zero last year, I've already managed that - give the man a medal).

My partner Owen and I used to have all sorts of play scripts and TV scripts that we wrote together, and we don't do that anywhere near enough anymore. The reason we don't do it enough is that it's so demotivating when no one takes us seriously in the industry (more on that in my next resolution). But writing is not just about the end product - it's also about the process, and I am a much happier and more productive and intelligent person when I'm writing regularly on something structured.

2. I want to progress with the Campaign for Fair Play

I don't believe I have ever written about the Campaign for Fair Play on this blog before (I think Owen and I came up with the idea during my radio silence from blogging).

I will most likely write a whole blog on this project at some point, but just to summarise - the Campaign for Fair Play is a campaign group composed of various creatives that we've worked with at various points, and aims to create a fairer and more accessible situation for struggling creatives in the industry. Owen and I are very jaded by how impossible it is to get anywhere if you're trying to break into the arts. In fact, having done both, we can say for certain that you receive less bullying, less gaslighting and fewer people telling you you can't do something when you're standing as an inexperienced socialist independent General Election candidate in a very tight Labour-Tory marginal than you do even attempting to get a career in the arts. This was the thing that kickstarted this idea for us - in 2024, we temporarily shelved all our creative projects in favour of working on Owen's Parliamentary campaign, and surprisingly, everyone else working on the election, irrespective of their politics, was encouraging, kind and supportive. You don't expect politics to be like that. Going back into the arts after that, with the constant snootiness and rudeness and bureaucracy, almost felt like going back into an abusive relationship.

The demands of the Campaign for Fair Play are: 1) Free legal advice for those working in the arts; 2) A revamp of the Arts Council and of funding decisions more generally; 3) An acknowledgement from the Department for Work and Pensions about how it is to primarily do short-term contract work; 4) A clearer career path and protections from being blacklisted; and 5) Protection for arts venues from having to close down. Something that's particularly important about the campaign is that it comprises people from all areas of the arts. Very often I find that people in different professions end up competing against one another (for example, you get criticised for hiring actors if you're not paying them enough, which on one hand is fair enough because it's hard to earn anything decent as an actor, but at the same time it's often impossible to get funding so without doing that only the very rich end up making anything at all). This is something we should be able to unite on, not fight amongst ourselves.

The Campaign for Fair Play is truthfully the political movement that I currently feel most strongly about. I know this might sound odd, because of all the disastrous and horrible things happening in the world that need to be dealt with, creating a fairer arts industry might not seem like it should be the thing that we focus on most. But I also think that if the arts is functioning well, the rest of the world will follow it. Art can do incredible things. Many of the most amazing political movements were inspired by things people had read, watched or witnessed. If art is a reflection of how everyone, and not just the most privileged, sees the world, it will be easier to campaign for whatever we feel passionate about. That's why there's such a lack of recognition or support of the arts from successive Governments, in spite of the fact that it's one of the few industries in which the UK is still a major global player - it's something that threatens the establishment.

At the start of last year, we were making quite a bit of progress with the Campaign for Fair Play. Unfortunately, my mental health has been so bad that we haven't done very much with it for six months or so, but I aim very much to build it up again this year. Watch this space.

3. I want to promote equality amongst marginalised groups

This I hope is a given for everyone, but one of the things I was most concerned by in 2025 was what I perceived as a radical decrease in recognition of certain groups of people. Perhaps my saying it was a decrease is a sign of my own privilege - maybe these groups were recognised so little to begin with that there wasn't very much to decrease, and in reality the only thing that's changed is my own understanding of it.

There are three parts of this that I've been especially concerned about. The first is, unsurprisingly, an increase in casual racism. The reason this is unsurprising is that I think this has been happening steadily for pretty much the entire time I've been politically aware. Where I live in Abergavenny, there is talk of opening a new mosque in town, and there are a lot of people who are very vocally against this idea. Thankfully, I do think anti-racist movements are increasing in traction a lot - there was one instance where I was at a pro-Palestine movement on the same day as an Islamophobic march took to the streets, and we clearly significantly outnumbered them.

The second is an extremely radical increase in transphobia. Since the Supreme Court ruling on For Women Scotland last April, it feels as though the amount of misgendering and suspicion around transgender people has been almost relentless. I must confess to being a bit shocked by how bad it's become, although perhaps I shouldn't have been shocked. I really hope this year to talk to more people about this and improve cis and trans people's relationships with one another. One particularly interesting thing that happened to me last year was that I went with a friend to a trans rights rally in Cardiff. Across the police line was the counter-protest, the anti-trans group - and what really struck me was that in that group, there was not one single non-white face. Whereas on our side of the divide, we were of all religions, ethnicities and backgrounds. The reason this is important is that so often when we talk about acceptance of different cultures, there's this idea that certain groups of people (read: Muslims) aren't respectful of what we call 'British values', which is usually code for LGBTQ+ people. As an LGBTQ+ person, I can actually say that this is not my own personal experience. The overwhelming majority of homophobia I have experienced in my life (not that I've experienced all that much) has come from white people.

The third is the way we see disabled people. Thankfully I do think this one is moving in a positive direction, even if it's not moving anywhere near fast enough. I think people with disabilities and mental health concerns are getting far better at talking about it, there seems to be much less stigma than there used to be around acknowledging that you're vulnerable (hence why in the previous blog I talked about my nervous breakdown last September). In terms of how it manifests itself for me, I really want to sort out all the issues with my partner's charity, The Gathering, which I referred to in the previous blog. There are plans for this - I really hope it comes off.

4. I want to look after myself and get better

I've left this one until last, but I suppose it's the most important thing on the list. Nothing else I want to achieve will or can happen unless I myself am able to function, and I suppose one positive to having had such a bad year last year is that it's made me far more aware of my own vulnerabilities and how susceptible I am to being harmed if too many things aren't going my way.

I can't really say how I can look after myself. It may come from trying to get more money, or making new friends, or taking part in more quizzes, or reading more about politics, or all of these things, or none of them. You often can't know until you get there exactly what you'll need - but it is important to know yourself and be able to recognise it at the time.

One final point on this - I feel very strongly that the worse your day is going, the more essential it is to be kind to others. There are two reasons for this. The first is that being kind to others can make you happy as well - very often when we're low we can immediately dismiss ourselves as not having time for other people, and that actually doesn't help. But more importantly, I think all the worst things in the world, both in our personal lives and on a wider global scale, are committed by people who are rightly, rationally and intelligently, extremely unhappy and feel hard done by. They feel as though they're the victim. And sometimes they are, but if their reaction to that is to create more victims, we're all worse off from that. It's so important to be able to separate ourselves from that and decide that that domino effect of callousness and insensitivity will stop with us.

So there we are. Four things I want to focus on. Will I manage them all? I have no idea. But I'm looking forward to finding out.

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Why 2025 was one of the worst years of my life

I'm back.

2025 was not the first time I've gone an entire year without updating my blog - my blog history shows I didn't do an update in 2021 (actually I'm impressed that there's only been one prior to this), and there are a few other years that I've updated it very infrequently). I find it hard to update if I don't have momentum - I go through a phase of updating it regularly, then if for whatever reason it falls by the wayside I feel guilty for there being so many things in the world that I've failed to reference, and then it just starts to spiral. This has happened in the past, and undoubtedly will again.

But this is certainly the time I've felt the worst for going a long time without blogging, because in early 2024 I was writing all the time and picking up quite a lot of traffic on here, and suddenly I lost all that momentum. I'm not quite sure exactly what caused me to stop updating it in the first place - I think when my partner Owen stood for Parliament in 2024, I was so focussed on that that I got out of the habit (though I did update it a few times during the election campaign) and then after that it was hard to get that back. I did plan to update more in 2025, but 2025 turned out to be a year that took an enormously negative toll on my mental health. I got a bit more paid work hosting pub quiz nights, put on a great stage show and my oldest friend had a child - but aside from that, almost everything that happened to me just made it impossible for me to focus on the best parts of myself, culminating in a major mental breakdown I had in September that pretty much wiped me out for the last four months of the year. I breathed a great sigh of relief at new year - 2025 is over, 2026 is here and hopefully I'll be able to make this year a little better.

As for why 2025 was so awful? Well, this is the subject of this blog. There were of course so many important things in the world that I should have mentioned on here (more awful climate change effects, the situation in Palestine getting worse and worse, the never-ending list of Donald Trump's faults, increasing amounts of racism and transphobia in the UK, the hope that the launch of Your Party brought being short-lived) - plus a few good things as well (I've been quite impressed by Zack Polanski's leadership of the Green Party, for instance). But one thing I believe quite strongly is that what's happening in politics and the wider world is inextricably linked with what's happening in one's personal life, and vice versa. This is something I've become aware of more and more the older I've got - that even as a child, things that were very challenging to me on a personal level coincided with major world events that I was only semi-aware of, such as 9/11. I also think that as we become more aware of mental health and the causes of it, it is an important act of rebellion to be able to speak out when you're vulnerable and be able to express why.

So here is a list of the worst things that happened to me in 2025.

The grotesque abuse of power at The Gathering

I've written about The Gathering on here quite a bit before. The Gathering is a volunteer-run community group (which now has charity status) which my partner Owen founded in Abergavenny, where we live. The group was set up with the aim of replacing some of the services for vulnerable and disabled adults which had been cut by Monmouthshire County Council, and was a culmination of our campaigns to save Tudor Street Day Centre from demolition.

In December 2024, after having run in Abergavenny in a similar but not fully accessible building nearby, we were delighted to finally manage to get both charity status and access to Tudor Street Day Centre, the building we'd been campaigning to save for the last couple of years. It was such an exciting thing to happen - it's so rare that you feel like a political campaign has comprehensively succeeded, and for a few precious weeks it felt like we'd managed to save an important resource as a lifeline for some of the least validated people in our community.

But that was short-lived. Truthfully, I believe that the situation for the most vulnerable people in Abergavenny and the surrounding areas is even worse now than it was before we set up the campaign. This, fundamentally, is the reason we're still going with it. Many, many times people in the community have sympathetically suggested that maybe it's better for our own wellbeing just to take a step back and distance ourselves from the project. And if it hadn't been a project that we'd set up, that is most likely what we would have done. But we can't, because we're part of the cause of this. None of this would be happening had we not pushed a campaign to save this building, and it would be morally wrong now to step away and let others pick up the pieces.

It has become apparent that people with whom we worked on the campaign in good faith, who we believed had the best interests of vulnerable people at heart, actually had an entirely different agenda. To protect the innocent, and particularly the most vulnerable, I will not be mentioning anyone's names here, but I will say that there was one in particular that did greatly shock me. This was someone that Owen and I have had in our home, stood next to at fundraising events, encouraged Owen to stand for Parliament and whom Owen once even nominated for an award - and, as a result, we gave significant amounts of influence to within the group, because they were one of the people we trusted most.

Our trust has been abused. After gaining access to Tudor Street Day Centre, a number of individuals immediately proceeded with a hate campaign against Owen, and by extension against myself. At first we didn't realise how big a problem this was going to turn out to be - the first couple of instances were just snide comments, many of which by people with learning difficulties or mental health issues who we thought had probably just misunderstood or misheard something. But then there were more and more issues - frightening and aggressive emails, shouting matches at trustee meetings, and more besides. When vulnerable individuals reported unpleasant or abusive behaviour they'd experienced/witnessed, the complaints procedures were intentionally interfered with. We heard that untrue and defamatory rumours, particularly about Owen, had been spread throughout the town - there was a suggestion that in the past he'd been sacked from working there, which wasn't true and had never been true. Many similar things have happened to other people involved - essentially, to anyone trying to keep the charity running to something of a professional standard and to enforce appropriate boundaries between trustees and service-users.

For about two thirds of the last year, there has been dispute between Owen and the charity as to whether he is actually still a trustee. The trustees conducted a vote to remove him, in a way which was not covered by the charity's Governing Document and which we've been advised by a solicitor is illegal. Subsequently to this 'removal', Owen continued to receive harassing and threatening emails from someone on the trustee team, some of them late at night or when we were on holiday, none of which had been provoked or warranted in any way. This thankfully has now stopped after we reported this behaviour to the police, although we are aware that other people have received similar treatment from this person.

With this kind of thing going on, it has been hard to remain aware of how the charity is being run day-to-day, but we are in touch with many people who've given us tidbits. I can't go into detail about anything, but I have heard about a number of situations involving vulnerable people that unquestionably constitute abuse. What I know is only through the grapevine, so there are probably other instances that I don't even know about yet. It is also the case that the Charity Commission, which is meant to regulate charities and similar bodies, has proven itself profoundly unhelpful and I would argue potentially complicit in these problems, to the extent that they didn't even respond to a formal letter from Owen's solicitor.

In 2018, a woman called Alana (who in the 1990s founded an involuntary celibacy project for people of all genders unlucky in love, which eventually led on to the modern incel movement, a deeply misogynistic hate movement) described feeling as though she was the scientist who figured out nuclear fission and later discovered it was being used as a weapon for war. I have similar feelings, having co-founded a community group which now actively harms some of the most vulnerable people. This isn't a situation I have ever been in before, or that I feel able to know how to mentally deal with now. This has been the most significant thing that has harmed me in 2025 - the guilt of my involvement with this, the constant 'what if?' questions, the intimidation I feel when my partner constantly receives threatening and frightening emails and the knowledge that no matter how bad I'm having it, there are others (including my own partner) experiencing far worse.

Thankfully I do believe the worst is now over. After much pushing and arguing, it does seem as though finally the council is taking notice. The thing I'm most concerned about is whether they'll then use this as an excuse to demolish Tudor Street Day Centre again. If they do, the campaign to save it restarts.

Fallouts with the Online Quiz League

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this on the blog, but I absolutely love quizzing. I've always been an enormous quiz enthusiast, ever since I caught a bit of Weakest Link when I was a child. Quizzing is actually something I do for a living now, asking the questions at pub quizzes at pubs and bars (one of the few good things that happened to me in 2025 was an increase in the amount of this kind of work I get).

More importantly, quizzing is how I switch off from politics. Everyone who is politically active needs a hobby, and this is mine. I have many lefty friends who hate the BBC so much that they've cancelled their TV licenses, and I have great admiration for them for doing so (the BBC has enormous numbers of flaws, that will probably be the subject of a different blog); but I myself cannot do this because I rely on the quiz shows to keep me sane. Particularly if you struggle with mental health, quizzing is quite a good thing for sanity because it's so reliable and straightforward, with correct and incorrect answers. Quizzing doesn't care if you're having a bad day or if you've done something you regret; it only cares if you know the year Sir Keir Starmer became an MP (spoiler: it's 2015). More importantly, the quiz won't judge you if you don't know. That's a feeling I think we could all do with more often.

But in 2025, I had a major falling out with the people who ran the Online Quiz League, for whom I'd given up many hours of my time to voluntarily read the questions for the previous couple of years. The fallout came as a result of a throwaway comment I made on a social media post about how as a reader I wasn't necessarily all that strict about keeping people to the 15-second time limit. Before I knew it, I was suddenly subjected to an official formal warning from the people who ran the league, and more distressing than that, an enormous amount of aggressive and pretty nasty comments, including from some well-known quizzers, attacking my character, calling me arrogant and a 'bellend' and essentially a level of bullying that I wouldn't accept from a group of nine-year-olds, let alone fully grown adults.

I think most of these people had not actually witnessed any of my quizzes. I wasn't all that strict about keeping people to time because I didn't need to be, because the participants self-regulated effectively - if they hadn't I'd have done things differently. 'Not being strict about timings' manifested itself by me starting a quiz by saying 'If you're having a slow brain day it's okay, take your time' and that was pretty much it. I felt that as an accessibility rights campaigner it was only fair to give everyone the benefit of the doubt unless they were clearly abusing it, and I cannot think of a single situation in which anyone did. We behaved like adults, and I don't recall ever having a single dispute with anyone over this, or a time when the outcome of a game had changed because of the way I handled it.

Nevertheless, I wasn't really given much opportunity to explain this. The action the OQL took was punitive and aggressive, and distressed me greatly. What distressed me more was that no action was ever taken about the horrible, bullying, aggressive comments I'd received on a series of public posts. When I explained my side of the story I was told I could carry on reading the questions if I wanted. I responded by politely suggesting that we work together to create an anti-bullying policy so that such a situation could never happen again. The OQL refused to have the slightest interaction with me on this. So I left - I could not continue to represent an organisation that cared so little about the wellbeing of the people in it.

I'm glad that I stood up for myself. I undoubtedly did the right thing by leaving, and I did receive some really kind and supportive comments from the people I quizzed with so it was nice to know that not everyone agreed with how I was treated. But it was an absolute wrench to leave all the same, because I loved doing it, I cared (and still care) deeply about quizzing as a sport and, particularly because of all the other difficult things happening with the Gathering and so on, it was a lovely thing to do to switch off, which everyone needs at times. I miss doing it and the people I used to do it with, if not the minutiae of the running of it.

Job Centre hell

I am no longer a Universal Credit recipient. I closed my account following my meltdown in September, which happened in the Job Centre.

It probably isn't necessary to go into great detail about quite how unpleasant and uncaring the staff at Job Centres can be, because that's detailed pretty thoroughly elsewhere and I imagine anyone that reads this blog will know quite how bad it can be. If anyone reading this is struggling with their benefit claim, I recommend this website.

For most of the time I was claiming, if I say so myself I was pretty good at dealing with the dismissive and unpleasant way they deal with people there. I met their attitude with good humour whilst also being quite assertive about things I wasn't happy with (for instance, the fact that they were completely inexperienced in helping anyone in my industry). But, with the other things going on and my declining state of mental health, eventually I was unable to cope anymore. I have no embarrassment about saying that I had a nervous breakdown right in the middle of the Job Centre in front of all the staff. It was a mental health thing, and a reaction to how they were treating me and speaking to me and how absolutely awful I felt within myself.

I'm not ashamed of this - I was ill and doing my best to cope, and it's important to be able to be upfront when you're vulnerable about things. I am continuing a complaints process against the staff at Abergavenny Job Centre and against Restart (the less said about Restart the better). I will not drop my complaint until it is successful - not for my own benefit (I have no intention of ever returning) but for the benefit of anyone else who isn't as able to walk away as I am.

There was one other thing that made last year incredibly difficult - I lost someone who I'd believed was becoming one of the closest friends I'd ever had. I don't want to go into detail about who they were or what caused that to happen (and to be honest, I'm not sure I really understand a lot of it myself - I've had a number of increasingly anxiety-inducing conversations with that person about why our formerly very supportive connection had become so toxic, and I still don't think I've really heard the truth. Perhaps the person doesn't even quite know themselves.) Some of my best friendships are ones that have been on ice for a while, so I sincerely hope that one day I'll be able to reconnect with this person as well, even if it's not for a couple of years. I don't blame them for it, although sometimes it's hard not to. But what I can say is that I think if that person had been there for me a bit more, all these other things might have been a little more bearable. And I just want to raise that to highlight the importance of having close friends, especially if you're someone who's politically active. If you're blessed with strong opinions and feel compelled to share them, people like to get in touch with you, and sometimes quite nasty people. There have been way too many days that I've spent too much time arguing lost causes on social media or fighting against unfeeling bureaucrats. I can do it, and I believe I'm quite good at it - but it can be energy-sapping as well, and it's essential that at the end of it, you have someone in your life that you can go for a coffee with and who makes you feel safe. I think I perhaps mistakenly put too many eggs in one basket, in that I relied too much on one specific person for this, and felt utterly lost and bewildered when they weren't there anymore. It's had a lasting effect on my self-esteem and my ability to form friendships. I guess you live and you learn... I probably won't rely quite so heavily on one person again. But just as equally, I think we can all think of times when we haven't been as good a friend to someone else as we ideally should be, and I raise this to urge anyone to reach out to someone like that, especially if you think that person might be struggling with life.

So there we are. A really hard year that took a great toll on my mental health, and now it's January in a year that I really hope will turn out to be an improvement. And I'd love to be able to say that I'm better, but I'm not. I still have many days when I have no energy, evenings when I feel worked up and angry, and moments in the day when emotion hits me and I just spontaneously want to cry. But thankfully, I can say that I'm getting better, and I'm finding things to do in my day that will help. Writing this blog is one of them, and I hope to write more going forward.

I will no longer publish blogs on, or update, my Twitter account - I tried to keep it going for a bit, but I've accepted that Elon Musk has ruined it now. I'm considering getting BlueSky, I know a lot of left-wing commentary types are on it. I also signed up for a SubStack account a while back that I haven't used since - maybe I'll look into that! If anyone has any ideas for ways to make progress, let me know.

But I would just l
ike to finish with a poem I wrote a few days ago. I wrote this to keep me going one evening when suddenly the emotion hit me, as described above. I find poetry a really therapeutic way to process your emotions and I've written a fair bit over the last couple of years. This one is only very short, but I think we can all use it to keep ourselves going when life is tough:

You know what you are doing
You know what must be done
It’s hard to remain steadfast
When you want to scream and run

You know what you are doing
The future’s on its way
As long as you keep stoic
For just another day

Happy new year everyone!

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An open letter to the UK's climate political prisoners

The following is a joint email I wrote to all of the UK's current political prisoners who have been jailed due to their climate activism. You can do the same at emailallprisoners@gmail.com. Or, if you'd prefer to email individual prisoners directly, a complete list of their contact details can be found here.

Dear Amy, Noah, Ella, Margaret, Indigo, Daniel K, Paul, George, Gale, Theresa, Paul, Phoebe, Cressie, Roger, Lou, Daniel S, Lucia, Rosa, Rory, Adam, Luke W and Luke E,

My name is George Harold Millman, and I'm a political campaigner and blogger based in South Wales. My blog, which I've been writing since I was seventeen, is called The Rebel Without A Clause, and I try to use it to whip up support for progressive politics, social justice and to empower ordinary people to make a stand against the establishment.

I am writing to you mainly to thank you for all your hard work. I cannot imagine how intimidating it must be (though I'm sure not as intimidating as the climate catastrophe) to stand in front of a judge and stay true to your principles in the way you have done. The courage and tenacity you have displayed is an inspiration to all of us. Nearly everything we have today, from the right to vote for women to the abolition of slavery, was fought for by brave activists, some of whom were jailed or even killed for their work. I believe that you are the modern-day equivalent. You are on the right side of history, I hope you know that.

I am not a climate scientist, but I do read a lot of the commentary from scientists, and I would also like to say that I believe that we will win this fight and avert the worst of the climate emergency. Perhaps this is naive of me. However, I think this win is already happening. There's a quote, commonly attributed to Gandhi (although I don't believe in reality he ever actually said it: 'First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.' I actually think the entire reason world Governments and powers are being so heavy-handed just at the minute is that we are winning - if not from a scientific level then from a social one. More people are aware of climate change than ever before, and are willing to take the action that needs to be taken in order to deal with the problem. The fact that we haven't solved it yet is entirely on world leaders, and world leaders are both replaceable and persuadable. I will continue to write and campaign to get you released. I have written to my MP about the case of those of you who have become known as the Whole Truth Five specifically, and the fact that you were not able to properly state your case in court. Unfortunately, my MP has not as of yet responded, but I will not let this matter go, and I will continue to talk about it with as many people as I can.

I have a suggestion as well. Recently, the subject of prison overcrowding has been quite a hot topic, particularly with the new Government. There have been people who have been convicted of far lesser offences than yours who have only received suspended sentences, with prison overcrowding cited as one of the reasons. Have you considered having a sit-in and refusing en masse to leave prison when it comes to the end of your sentence? Or, if you're physically removed, sit outside as close to the prison gates as you can? Perhaps this action would a) send the message that prison is not a deterrent to climate action and that you aren't afraid and b) make an important point about political prisoners being detained when the prisons are overcrowded in the first place. Maybe I'm wrong and that it wouldn't work, but I thought I'd suggest it in case it hasn't been thought of.

At any rate, I hope that my email has given you each of you one less dark night, and has reminded you that there are still people out here fighting both for your release, and for an end to the environmentally destructive neocapitalist system which has enslaved us for too long and is destroying the only home we've ever known. You are not forgotten, will not be forgotten, and we will win this.

Best wishes,

George Harold Millman

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The perpetual helplessness of politicians

'If I spend my life on the losing side, you can lay me down knowing that I tried' Grace Petrie

 The Prime Minister Keir Starmer will announce that 'things will get worse before they get better' in his first keystone speech as Prime Minister this week. It's a stark contrast to the slogan 'Things can only get better' that Tony Blair was elected on in 1997, and whose campaign Keir Starmer and the current incarnation of the Labour Party seems to be most inspired by. (And, to be fair to Blair, a fair few things did get better for ordinary people in the pre-Iraq days, and I say that as someone who is no fan of Blairism).

The Government and the Prime Minister at the moment seem very keen to manage expectations. They say that things are far worse than they anticipated before the election, that the Tories have caused so much harm that it's going to take time to clear up. Personally, I'm quite sceptical about this. During the election campaign, the Institute for Fiscal Studies criticised both Labour and the Tories for what they called a 'conspiracy of silence' - essentially, that they'd been shady and unclear about exactly how they'd deal with the country's economic woes. This was then dismissed by Keir Starmer as 'defeatism'. I don't think the party can reasonably claim that it's only recently learned of information that has caused them to have to backtrack on things. I doubt they're telling the truth, but even if they are, it's not a very good look for a new Government to have not made themselves aware of these matters beforehand.

I want to talk about something else though, and that is the way that upon being elected to Government in coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 2010, the Conservative Party led by David Cameron portrayed a very similar narrative. We were repeatedly told of this note that had supposedly been left for them by the outgoing Labour Government that said, 'Good luck, there's no money left!' Whenever the Government was doing anything that was unpopular with the public, it was never done on moral principle. It was always because the previous Government did such an awful job that we simply have to save money, and there is no alternative. We were fed economic gibberish like 'Labour maxed out this country's credit card' to justify the necessity of policies that harmed the most vulnerable people in our society.

In reality, there's quite a lot wrong with this kind of message. To start with, there isn't a national credit card, so it can't be maxed out. The budget for a country is quite significantly different than a budget for a household, because the money you spend on a country will be replenished when people have more disposable income. It's a line that was invented to take advantage of the fact that most people haven't been taught how economics actually works. Secondly, it's untrue that any incoming Government doesn't know how bad (or otherwise) things are. Their entire job in opposition was to scrutinise the previous Government, establish what they were doing and what they themselves would do differently. Thirdly, there is no discernible difference between the modus operandi of either of the two main parties. Whichever one is in power at any one time always says that the previous Government did things badly - but the things they did that were bad are just being continued ad nauseam.

Think about that for a moment. In 2010, the Tory-Lib Dem coalition Government criticised Labour under Blair and Gordon Brown for mismanaging the country's finances, and announced that there'd have to be cuts to public services to make up for it. Now, the new Labour Government is criticising the previous Tory Government and their five Prime Ministers for exactly the same thing, and announcing there'll have to be cuts to things like winter fuel payments to make up for it. And if the Tories ever get back in, no doubt they'll accuse Labour of the same thing. And how will it need to be made up for? Almost certainly, by continuing to harm the most vulnerable, whilst the super-rich get progressively wealthier. This is always the solution, no matter who's in power - and the public finances never improve for the ordinary, because the system just does not work.

There's a reason why the actions of successive Governments always have this justification. The reason is that if politicians told the truth - that they are ideologically opposed to social progress and equality for all - there is no way that ordinary people would put up with it. The only way to justify the unjustifiable is to say, 'We had to do it! The other guys left us with no choice!' And note that it's very rare that the exact logic here is explained - precisely how the previous Government got it wrong, and precisely how the course of action being taken now is going to deal with that problem. Politicians are generally pretty vague when challenged on that, and they take advantage of the fact that political education in the UK is sorely lacking to get away with it. Still, it doesn't work forever. Eventually the people get fed up with hearing excuse after excuse, and are ready to vote them out. And when that happens, the other party is always there to present itself as a sensible option who's ready to resolve all the problems (well, almost ready. They will be ready after a few years, when they've made a few more cuts that the other guys forced them to do) and the whole ghastly cycle starts over again. There's never a point when the crisis is over and we can get on with our lives. The crisis is permanent. That's how the system operates.

The thing that I'm the most sick of in politics, especially politics that pretends to be progressive, is the constant helplessness. Everything about politicians is utterly helpless. Ask a politician for anything, anything at all, that would benefit your life, and 99% of the time the response you will get is something along the lines of, 'We'd love to be able to do this, we hope to be able to do this in the future, we're going to work towards doing this, but we can't do it right now because of xyz.' I've written multiple times on this blog about mine and my partner Owen's work towards re-opening Tudor Street Day Centre in Abergavenny, a former hub for vulnerable adults which was closed down during the 2020 lockdown. It was in late 2022 that it was announced that the building would be demolished, and we've been campaigning to reverse this decision and re-open it ever since. The campaign has become extremely well-known and popular in the local area, and Owen stood as a Parliamentary candidate for Monmouthshire on this platform at the 2024 General Election. Recently, we received the very welcome news that the campaign has been successful, and that Tudor Street Day Centre will re-open its doors later this year.

Make no mistake, the reasons why the building is re-opening are as follows:

1) Because the campaign became very well-known and popular locally

2) Because my partner's decision to stand for Parliament made this an election issue, raised at every hustings

3) Because the local community group The Gathering, which is run by volunteers, created a convincing pitch on exactly how the service could be run going into the future

You might notice that none of these things have very much to do with politicians' imagination or creativity. This is because they don't. For the last few years, we've been given excuse after excuse from politicians, of all parties, for not re-opening this building. We've been told everything - the money doesn't exist, they need that space to house the homeless, none of the vulnerable adults who used the building want it anymore, the building has fallen into disrepair and will need far too much maintenance for it to be worth the energy - and none of it was true. All of this came from the inclination almost all politicians have to make excuses for not doing things rather than finding ways in which they can, and the only reason it's changed now is because ordinary people have made it too embarrassing for them to carry on pretending. We only found out a few weeks ago that the campaign has been successful, and we're hoping the building will be re-opened within the next month. So in reality, it hasn't taken very long to organise. It really hits home what could have been done years ago, had the politicians involved not wasted time with ineffectual excuses.

In our society, we've become so accustomed to this kind of political helplessness that you even see non-politicians engaging in it. This was incredibly evident as the partner of an independent election candidate - Owen and I had even close friends say to me, 'You won't win' upon learning what we were doing, and I really didn't think that was the most helpful comment, and I still don't. I saw quite an interesting forum discussion recently about Shockat Adam, the independent candidate who unseated Labour's Jon Ashworth in the constituency of Leicester South on a pro-Palestine stance. I was quite taken aback by the number of people who were quite scathing about this new independent MP and the fact that his constituents chose him over an experienced Labour Party candidate. The suggestion from a lot of people was, 'Well, what will he do about Palestine? We have very little control over the Israelis.' And whether that's true or not really depends on how you look at it, and in what respect we're talking about 'we' (as an entire Government, I think we could do something about Israel if we actually decided to, but admittedly an independent MP may struggle). But I think a question of more importance is, if the situation in Gaza is the most important thing to you, why shouldn't you vote out a representative of a party that isn't taking a strong stand against Israel? Why should you give the benefit of the doubt to someone like that? If we've got at least the pretence of a democracy, doesn't that mean your vote should actually be trying to achieve something?

I cannot exaggerate enough how capable human beings are when they put their minds to something. It's quite common to look at humans for their flaws rather than their strengths, and given how much we've damaged the planet it's understandable to do that, but I think we're capable of pretty great things as well. We're an exceptionally creative and social species. We've invented astonishing amounts of technology. We've learned insanely sophisticated things about human psychology and philosophy. We've even put people on the fucking moon. We've achieved so much in the few thousand years we've been on this planet of ours, and none of it was done by making excuses. The resources exist to do absolutely anything we set our minds to, if we allow ourselves. But if we're going to do that, we have to let go of this tendency we have to just be utterly helpless, act as if history is over and that because of the actions of other people, the current status quo is the only way things are ever going to be from now on.

It doesn't have to be like this. We can come together and change systems in a single day if we decide to. We do not exist to find reasons not to do things, and politicians are certainly not elected for that.

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The Imane Khelif case shows how prejudice harms everyone

 For the last few weeks, the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif has been in the news frequently. Her success at the 2024 Olympics, winning a gold medal in the women's welterweight, has led to much speculation on social media that she might actually be a man. A similar situation has occurred with the Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting, although to less public scrutiny.

To make clear to anyone who isn't sure, Imane Khelif is not a trans woman. In her native Algeria, trans people are not accepted, and there is no way she would be allowed to compete as a woman had she not been assigned female at birth. She isn't, to the best of anyone's understanding, even intersex. There was an occasion last year when she and Lin were disqualified from the International Boxing Association 's Women's World Boxing Champions, allegedly for failing eligibility tests. However, the International Boxing Association is not considered by the International Olympic Committee to be a reliable body. Later last year, it was formally stripped of its international federation status, having previously been suspended due to governance, finance and corruption issues. The exact testing methodology that Khelif and Lin apparently failed has never been revealed. There is no evidence that their chromosomes had any relevance to this decision. Given that the body that made this decision is discredited, its opinion on this matter, and on all matters, should be treated with scepticism anyway.

In all the discourse around Imane Khelif, I've seen quite a few people on the left say, 'But what if she had been a trans woman? Would you defend her then?' And that's a fair question. To be clear, I do not believe it would matter if Imane Khelif had been a trans woman. I do not believe it would matter if she had been intersex. I'm a firm believer in trans athletes being able to compete as a member of their considered gender in sports, and truthfully I think that most sportspeople are as well. If we're going to start policing the differences in people's bodies to that degree, it creates an absolutely impossible precedent to enforce, because every successful sportsperson in history has had some kind of biological advantage over their peers. As an example, the reason Michael Phelps was able to hold his breath underwater for such a long time is because his body had a quirk which meant he produced half the lactic acid that most people's do. In the twenty years trans sportspeople have been able to compete in the category of their preferred gender in the UK, there hasn't been an influx of trans champions (i.e. more than the law of averages would expect). I think most people would struggle to name three trans sportspeople.

But the fact that this has caused a cis woman so much harm emphasises a point that I've been trying to make for a long time, which is that transphobia harms cis people. We hear quite often people arguing that women's toilets, changing rooms, refuges and so on should not include trans women 'for safety measures'. It's a bullshit argument anyway because trans women are some of the most unsafe people in the world, but to keep this logic going, how exactly would this be enforced? Are we intending to have genital inspections for everyone who wants to enter? Is this the way you intend to keep women safe? There is never an answer, because as I've said in the past, this conversation has never been about finding a solution. All it's about is stoking up hate and suspicion between each other. Not to mention the fact that even if those kind of extreme measures were enforced, Imane Khelif would still pass that test. She's a cis woman, she has female genitalia, she was assigned female at birth. Although it's such a serious case of cruelty and aggression towards an innocent person, it is also quite laughable that a group of bigots who have spent years insisting that the only thing that makes you a man or a woman is what genitals you have suddenly backtracking and saying that it's about something else as well. These people will move the goalposts whenever they like to back up whichever toxic point they're trying to make at the time, because there is no consistent logic behind the argument. The argument is motivated purely by spite.

I know that some people will question why, as an advocate for social justice, I've focussed my blog about how prejudice harms privileged majorities rather than marginalised minorities. The reason is that I think we already know about small vulnerable communities and how much they are harmed by prejudice, and I don't think my voice would add very much to that argument. I think prejudice is an awful, terrible thing, and it's something I've experienced myself. But a valid question to ask whenever someone doesn't like something is, 'Is anyone better off as a result of this thing?' And the answer, in this case at least, is no. No one is better off as a result of prejudice. If they were, I still wouldn't like it but I'd have a little more patience with it, because at least I'd know that someone's quality of life had improved because of it even if not everyone's had. But it doesn't work like that.

A few years ago I read an article by Dr Jessica Taylor (which has since been taken down, and unfortunately the author turned out to be a bit transphobic herself but she was right about this) entitled 'Why I Don't Want Women To Become Equal To Men'. Admittedly I read it because I can never resist a controversial title, but I was really intrigued by her points. Her argument was that in saying that women should be equal to men, we're presenting the current male experience as something that women should aspire towards having, and that this would actually not be at all desirable. If women were equal to men, it wouldn't just be things like being paid more or being respected more. It would also mean that women would commit violent crime at the same rates as men do, be unable to express their emotions in ways other than anger, would have increased cancer mortality rates because of shame preventing them from seeking treatment the first time they find a lump. The fact that men experience these things is because the patriarchy harms them as well as harming women, and if the aim of feminism is to dismantle the patriarchy, this is something that men would experience a net benefit from.

Men do not benefit from the patriarchy. Cis people do not benefit from transphobia. White people do not benefit from racism. Straight people do not benefit from homophobia. If you're unfortunate enough to live in a patriarchal, transphobic, racist, homophobic society (and we are all unfortunate enough to live there) the best you can hope for is to have a marginally less hard time of it than someone else. Not everyone suffers from prejudice to the same extent, but if it exists we all suffer from it somewhat. This is the reason why the far-right is so successful in perpetuating these forms of prejudice; because ultimately everyone knows that they're suffering, and when they're constantly being told how privileged they are and they really don't feel very privileged it can be very easy to be persuaded to fear the 'other'. And then the whole ghastly thing continues to spiral, and nothing ever improves.

There should be no opposition, even from the world's most selfish person, to break down our systems and rebuild them with equality in mind. If we did that, every single one of us would be happier. This ought to be the least controversial proposal in the world, and I believe that if we stopped pitting us all against one another we would be capable of doing so.

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The mental gymnastics at the heart of the Zionist movement

 Earlier this year, at a screening of the film Israelism hosted by my local Palestine society, I asked the question, 'Is it possible to say something about Israel that is derogatory and incorrect, but isn't an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory?'

The response I got was that even negative statements about Israel that are correct are considered to be anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. I think everyone who tries to secure freedom for Palestinians has experienced this at times, but for the sake of this argument I wanted to focus on things that were incorrect. No one is right 100% of the time. Everyone goes through life at some point being led to believe something about someone else that turns out not to be true, often things that are unflattering. Upon learning something is untrue, sometimes your opinion about that person or that body changes. At other times it doesn't change, because your general opinion of them was built on other things that were true rather than just the one that isn't (for example, I don't believe that Keir Starmer was the reason that Jimmy Savile wasn't convicted in his lifetime, from what I've seen I think this claim is unfair, but my giving Starmer the benefit of the doubt on that one thing doesn't change my negative opinion of the hordes of other things he's done of which I disapprove).

Every state in the world will occasionally have people make claims about it that turn out not to be true. Sometimes these claims might be made on purpose to spread disinformation, and sometimes someone may have just made a mistake. Israel is not exempt from this. But I have never heard an inaccurate statement on Israel being corrected without the person concerned being accused of spreading an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. Naturally, some inaccurate claims might be; if a claim relied on offensive tropes about the Jewish community (such as the idea that Jews have great money and power, for example) I can understand why that would be anti-Semitic. But if something was just inaccurate, in the same way a claim about China or Russia might be, the anti-Semitism complaint doesn't quite seem to make sense.

A prominent example of this is when the then Labour MP Rebecca Long-Bailey was sacked from her role as Shadow Education Secretary after she shared an article from the Independent on Twitter by the actress Maxine Peake. The article, which was about police brutality and had only mentioned Israel in passing, had claimed that the technique used to kill George Floyd in the USA (kneeling on his neck) had been taught by the Israeli secret services. This, of course, is not provable. Even if that technique is used by Israeli law enforcement (something I have no idea on) it cannot be proved that that this was where the officer who killed George Floyd learned of it. Peake herself acknowledged that making this claim had been a mistake, and apologised. But Rebecca Long-Bailey's decision to share the article (which was published in the Independent, considered to be a reputable news source) caused her to be accused of spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Is suffocating people by kneeling on their necks something that's typically associated with Jews? If so, I have never heard of it. I think Maxine Peake shouldn't have made that claim and it's right that she apologised for doing so, but I think she was just wrong rather than acting with racist intent.

Of course, as I said at the very start, accusations of anti-Semitism fly around constantly even when people say accurate things about the actions of the state of Israel, let alone inaccurate ones. The ongoing genocidal war in Gaza has had countless instances where people have been accused of anti-Semitism merely for calling it a genocide, even when the highest courts in the world have argued a plausible case for this. It's important to make clear that there is very little consistency here in terms of what words or actions constitute anti-Semitism. The only consistency in it comes from not what the person has said, but from what politics they support. Most of UK politics subscribes to the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, not all of which I agree with, but there are a fair few points that I do support as well. For instance, I agree strongly with the IHRA's assertion that Jewish people should not be held collectively responsible for the actions of the state of Israel. Judaism is a peaceful religion, and I have met so many Jews, many of them through Palestine campaigns, who are appalled by the actions of the state of Israel and are indignant to be used as a justification for them. But this rule is applied very inconsistently. The rules about not equating Zionism inherently with Jewishness only apply to people who oppose Zionism. People who support Zionism equate the two things all the time without any criticism or consequences. And anti-Semitic tropes are used frequently in other ways as well. A few years ago, Labour MP Lisa Nandy appeared on BBC Radio 4 to talk about kicking anti-Semitism out of the Labour Party, during which she described anti-Semitism as 'a very specific form of racism that punches up rather than punching down'. To the best of my knowledge, Nandy has never qualified what she meant by this, but it seems to me that her logic did rely on an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. The concepts of punching up or punching down mean the morality difference between attacking someone of higher or lower social standing to you (for instance, a stand-up comedian making fun of the Prime Minister is in a very morally different place to someone who makes fun of a disabled child). For anti-Semitism to primarily involve punching up, you have to take it as read that Jews are likely to be people of high social standing - those with power, money and influence. This is one of the most common anti-Semitic tropes and if a politician on the left had made that comment they'd surely get into trouble for it (and I would support them getting into trouble for it as well). But because of the general political standpoint that Lisa Nandy had, she apparently didn't face any consequences for this and is still a senior frontbencher within the Labour Party.

With what's been happening in Gaza over the last year, the way that anti-Semitic discourse has increased in public life far outshines the days when you could argue about punching up or punching down though. Within the last week, Labour MP Clive Lewis has faced calls to have the whip withdrawn after writing this tweet:

Lewis' tweet does not mention Jews at all. In fact, aside from in the screenshot which is from the Guardian, it doesn't even mention Israel. It only mentions the daily inhumanity being meted out to Palestinians, which is inarguable, and the link between that and rising Islamophobia in the UK. There is only one way of interpreting this comment as being anti-Semitic, and it involves using logic which considers support for the murder of children and Islamophobia as inextricable parts of being Jewish. I think almost any Jewish person would strongly object to this characterisation of Judaism. If I heard any of my comrades opposing the genocide in Gaza characterising Jews in this way, I would say to them in no uncertain terms that they are absolutely not my comrade. But again, if you're in support of the state of Israel, you can say this kind of thing. The rules apply only to people with certain kinds of politics.

I don't believe Clive Lewis will be suspended from the party for this tweet, mainly because I think it would have happened by now if it was going to. But more broadly, if we're to achieve any kind of peace, either domestically or internationally, we need to be abundantly clear what the rules are about what you can and can't say, and be safe in the knowledge that they apply equally to everyone. If they're applied inconsistently, we all suffer - but Jews are some of the ones who suffer most. The actress Miriam Margolyes, who is Jewish, has been quoted as saying that the way in which the Zionist movement has caused the peaceful Jewish community to look on the international stage almost feels as if Hitler has won. I was very moved to hear this, and I know a lot of Jewish people who feel similarly. The mental gymnastics that are used just to shut up political opponents on this will in the long run benefit no one.

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Do all lives still matter?

 The phrase 'All Lives Matter' was used frequently in the latter part of the 2010s decade in response to the Black Lives Matter protests, which opposed violence towards black communities particularly by the police. The phrase seems to have largely fallen out of usage now, it's been a little while since I've heard it, but the suggestion behind it was that in saying 'Black Lives Matter' that people were saying that only black lives matter. This was one of the most cynical misinterpretations of a political slogan I have ever seen, because that was not what was meant by the slogan and nor did anyone associated with it ever insinuate that this was what was meant by it. Black lives were (and, unfortunately, still are) treated as though they did not matter, and therefore stressing that black lives do matter was necessary in calling out institutional racism. Saying that one thing matters does not mean that something else does not.

Truthfully I think most of the people saying 'All Lives Matter' weren't really especially concerned about racism and were doing it just to undermine legitimate protest. Nevertheless, I can see why someone who hasn't put much thought into it or wasn't aware of the scale of institutional racism in society might think that 'All Lives Matter' is a better phrase. After all, it sounds inclusive, right? But in 2024, it's quite laughable to see the UK's reaction to a brutal murder of three children by someone who happens to be of Rwandan heritage, and think that the right-wing of society ever, ever, ever believed that all lives matter.

This is the first time I've written about the Southport murders and the racism riots which have followed it. Truthfully, the reason I haven't written about it before now is because I've struggled to think of anything original to say about it. There have been so many articles published, many of which have great insight into the mindset of the rioters and the sociopolitical circumstances that led here (I particularly recommend Inferiority and an absence of genuine politics behind UK race riots, by Steve Hall, James Treadwell and Simon Winslow in Transforming Society) but I've struggled to think what I can say myself that will add to this. I've been horrified by the level of animosity people have towards their fellow human beings, and I'd like politicians of all colours to take some accountability for this. But I think what I can say is where my own personal experience takes me on this.

I was born in Bristol in the early 1990s. Bristol is a city that became wealthy off the back of the slave trade. It's a very multi-ethnic city, and many of the residents are descended from slaves. I lived very near where the statue of Edward Colston was pulled down a couple of years ago, and I found it really curious to suddenly hear people who weren't from Bristol and didn't understand the local culture talking about this as though it was at all controversial. That statue had been very deeply unpopular. There had been frequent campaigns to remove it legally since before I was even born. You'll find very few Bristolians who miss it at all. Everyone in Bristol has heard of Edward Colston because there are huge numbers of things that are named after him (including three different schools). Since the removal of the statue, they've pretty much all changed their names. It's a matter of great shame that they waited until then to do so, but regardless, I think it says something about the strength of feeling about the matter that they all acquiesced following the statue's removal.

So this culture, that was uniquely aware of its history in the slave trade and wanted to make amends for that, is one that I grew up in. (Having said that, I'm sure it could still be better - Bristol is quite gentrified, I don't want it to sound like a beacon of anti-racism in all aspects.) But more than this, I spend pretty much my entire childhood living with foreign nationals. At any given point, there were usually two lodgers in my home, usually students and most often from overseas. Predominantly I lived with people from European countries, but there was a fairly high number of Chinese people, and at different times this included people from Malaysia, Palestine, South Korea and India, to name a few. I grew up becoming close to these people and treating them like family. Often, they stayed in touch when they moved out. Whenever I've been on foreign holidays, it's most often been to visit people I once lived with. And of course, from going to friends' houses I quickly understood that most people didn't live like this, but it's only been fairly recently that I've come to realise how much of a different viewpoint on life it's given me.

My earliest understanding of any immigration issues were when I was living with people who were trying to extend their visas for whatever reason. I remember being very confused about this when I was a child, not understanding why it would matter to anyone else whether they were in the UK for a bit longer or not. I didn't have to prove my right to live somewhere or access public services, so why should someone else? As an adult, truthfully I still don't quite see how immigration concerns benefit anyone. All it strikes me as is a lot of unnecessary paperwork just to have more control over people's lives. But I understand more now why it looks different to other people to how it does to me. It's because to most people, particularly if they live in an area where there aren't many immigrants, it's easy to avoid seeing the human side of this. If you're struggling with money and opportunities, it's straightforward logic to think, 'There's only a certain amount to go around, and someone else has come and taken what's rightfully mine.'  But for someone like me, having actually lived with these people, I can see how it's not like that. When these people were in my home, their presence in my life and in my home was benefitting me - I enjoyed their company, they became family members and it was educational to learn about their lives and their cultures. I believe that this is actually true of everyone - the more immigrants we have, the more we can learn from them and the more we grow as human beings. I think there are very few things more beneficial, both for yourself as an individual and for society at large, than going to live in a different country, sharing your values with the people there and learning new values from them. I'd like to actively increase immigration, not just in the UK but all over the world.

Some people say that we can't take new immigrants because 'we're full'. This is not true. There is no evidence whatsoever that the UK cannot take more people. If there were, we'd have to do something about UK nationals having babies as well. And I suppose you could say that isn't it at least theoretically possible that there might not be enough space at some point if we keep letting in more people? Well, yes. But that doesn't take into account the number of UK nationals who decide to go and live in other countries. If there was serious evidence that there just wasn't the space anymore, we could have that conversation, but that clearly isn't true (the number of empty houses is a testament to that) and the conversation is motivated more by a tendency to justify a pre-determined conclusion than anything else.

This thing about being 'full' also doesn't take into account the fallacy of the 'perpetual foreigner'. The 'perpetual foreigner' fallacy is based around the notion that if someone is an immigrant, their children and grandchildren and further descendants will continue to be perceived as being foreign, even if they've been born here and grown up in this culture. A couple of years ago, Lady Susan Hussey got into quite a lot of trouble by repeatedly asking Ngozi Fulani, a charity executive and the daughter of Windrush immigrants from the Caribbean, where she was 'really from', the suggestion being that because of her dark skin she couldn't be originally from the UK. The perpetual foreigner fallacy is crucial in the current discussion about the race riots. The 17-year-old who murdered three children is British. He was born in Wales, grew up in the UK and there is no suggestion that his Rwandan heritage had any bearing on his decision to commit the acts that he did. If he was white, these riots would not be happening, just as they didn't happen when Ian Huntley killed Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, or when Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering babies on the Special Care Baby Unit where she worked as a nurse. It's inevitable that in a society composed of people with all kinds of different heritage, that sometimes a murderer will happen to be dark-skinned. It is not a result of having immigration. And yet, when it happens, dark-skinned people who have also been here throughout their lives feel compelled to justify their presence.

Although I'll admit that this is often how I think of them, it's important to me not to just decry the people doing the rioting as 'racist thugs'. These things don't just happen in a vacuum. It's very easy to get swept up by strong emotion, and particularly if you haven't had good access to education or been taught to think critically, it's easy to assign the blame for your own circumstances in the wrong place. It's very interesting to me that we had riots in 2011 shortly after the Tories came to power, and now we're getting them again shortly after Labour has come to power. This to me says that it's a reflection of the inherent problems in society - the fact that we're pretty much all getting poorer, with no prospects and no immediately accessible way of improving our circumstances. However, the one major difference between these riots and the ones in 2011 is that I really don't believe the 2011 ones were motivated particularly by racism (on the contrary, a major provocation for them was the murder by the police of Mark Duggan). The change in attitude from then to now is, I believe, a reflection of the constant anti-immigration sentiment which has been drip-fed over and over again by mainstream politicians, commentators and newspapers. They created a collective enemy in Schrodinger's immigrant, and there is almost no one who I do not believe needs to take some degree of accountability for this. It was only a few weeks ago that the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced big immigration raids of small businesses searching for people from countries like Bangladesh. If you say that kind of thing, you cannot be surprised when people from Bangladesh are targeted in circumstances like these.

I am an optimist, and I'm hopeful that this will make us all realise just how toxic our 'legitimate concerns' around immigration have become, to the extent that a lot of it has turned into plain racism quite a lot of the time. I've also been really heartened by how many people have come out to defend our streets, our public services and the most vulnerable people in our communities, particularly in my home city of Bristol. I also think this has started to cause some of the most virulent far-right commentators to start turning on one another and tying themselves in knots, and I really hope we can rise to the occasion and use it to become a more accepting and peaceful society. Otherwise it's just going to continue to be like Lord of the Flies, and no one wants that. If a few years ago you were telling us that you think all lives matter, it's time to put that into action.

NOTE: This blog was edited on 13th August to make a correction. It previously stated that the man who killed the girls in Southport had been born in England, whereas in fact he was born in Wales.

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