Reform UK recently gained its first MP, former Conservative Deputy Chair Lee Anderson, who defected to the party after claiming that London Mayor Sadiq Khan had handed the city to "Islamists".

Byline Times can reveal that several Reform prospective parliamentary candidates (PPC) have shared content on their social media accounts that is racialised, denies the existence of climate change, or promotes conspiracy theories.

While investigating the party, Reform confirmed to Byline Times that North Bedfordshire PPC Nick Davies had resigned as a candidate "after we spoke to him about the content of his social media".

On 4 March, Davies shared a post which featured the text “evil doesn’t die. It reinvents itself” over pictures of Sadiq Khan and Adolf Hitler. Davies also shared posts in September and October calling immigrants an “invasion” and a “silent army housed in hotels”. 

In a statement to this newspaper, the party said: "Reform UK makes a distinction between malice and eccentricity in its activists and its supporters. Malice we take very seriously, harmless opinion is not a problem in a party that believes wholeheartedly in freedom of speech, nor should it be in the wider society."

The recent tweets of Andrew Husband, the Reform PPC for North Durham, on X (formerly Twitter) include an account claiming that “mRNA shots are the most dangerous product ever forced upon the public” and former Conservative (now independent) MP Andrew Bridgen's claim that the COVID vaccine will be considered “the greatest crime against humanity”.

He has also retweeted a video clip of US President Joe Biden talking about building regulations in relation to wildfire resilience and claimed that he had been referencing the roofs of houses that survived wildfires as evidence of the use of “direct energy weapons” to cause wildfires in Texas and Brazil. 

The ideology of the 'freedom movement’, the post-lockdown outgrowth of the anti-lockdown movement that posits that reductions in living standards are orchestrated by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as part of a 'Great Reset’, also appeared in material shared by several Reform candidates. 

The WEF is the annual gathering of politicians and the corporate executive class at Davos, which became the subject of conspiracy theories during the pandemic.

Maggie Moriondo, the Reform PPC for Bedford, retweeted a post from Wide Awake Media, a conspiracy platform, which claimed that “globalists are using the man-made climate change" lie as a pretext to deliberately collapse the food supply, so people will have no choice but to eat insects and lab-grown "meat".

She also retweeted a post from the same account claiming that broadcaster Neil Oliver “eloquently summarises the global pushback against globalist tyranny”, in relation to a speech he made in which he claimed that there is a “coordinated global conspiracy seeking domination of the world by a handful of ideologues, hellbent on a return to feudalism”. 

Dave Holland, the Reform PPC for Mid-Bedfordshire, wrote on his blog that Bill Gates and the WEF “want to reduce the population via the medium of vaccines”. The blog described the movement towards a dystopian future of lockdowns, spiralling inequality and restrictions on civil liberties, and attributed the driving force behind these outcomes to a coordinated effort between governments and corporations to create a “New World Order” overseen by the WEF.

The Reform Party's manifesto rejects "the influence of the World Economic Forum” and contains a pledge to hold a public enquiry into vaccine harms and excess deaths. 

Several Reform PPCs were previously Conservative Party councillors or PPCs.

Dr Annie Kelly, a postdoctoral researcher on conspiracy theories and correspondent for the podcast QAnon Anonymous, told Byline Times that, although the Tory Party "has been quite good at message discipline and keeping this stuff under wraps for the time being... I can see a weakened Conservative Party, not in power, being much more malleable to forces like Reform.”

Dr Kelly said that conspiracy theories of the kind promoted by some Reform PPCs often take “legitimate issues” and “point people past who is responsible towards much more shadowy nefarious enemies who can never be defeated”. 

She said that the ideology of the 'freedom movement’ has broadened out beyond COVID denial into a “general denialism”.

Another theme across the posts of several Reform PPCs was the denial of the existence of climate change.

Several Reform PPCs have regularly referred to “the climate hoax” and shared content denying a link between human industrial activity and carbon emissions, as well as attacking American climatologist Michael Mann and the 'hockey stick’ graph, which shows a rapid increase in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution. 

On 6 March, Maggie Moriondo posted on X that “we are being fed BS [bullshit] on the climate hoax. We will be force fed a diet of man-made meat whilst elites enjoy the real thing" and reposted a tweet attacking the hockey stick graph as 'junk science'".

Reform PPC for Stockton North, John McDermottroe, shared posts on his Facebook page referring to the “climate hoax” and calling people who believe in climate change as being part of “a cult”. He also wrote a post claiming that the Earth’s temperature began to rise before increases in CO2, which he argued debunks climate models.

Reform PPC for Derby, Tim Prosser, also shared videos denying climate science including by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. 

The Intercontinental Panel on Climate Change calls for a 48% reduction in emissions by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050, a target that some scientists such as the Climate Change Advisory Group, say is “too little too late”. The Reform Party denies that climate change can be averted by reducing emissions and argues that net zero is “damaging our livelihoods and economy”. 

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, told Byline Times that “the material on the Reform UK website is demonstrably false and it’s not just the result of incompetence, it’s disinformation, it’s deliberate misinformation about climate impacts”.

He added that since the Uxbridge by-election, “British media, particularly the Telegraph, Mail and Sun titles and to some extent The Times, have all started championing misinformation about climate policy".

"They largely haven’t gone down the route of promoting outright denial of the physics of climate change, but behind their claims is an implicit denial of the risks of climate change," he added. "You can only say that delaying net zero is a desirable option if you don’t accept the scientists’ assessment of the scale of the problem."

Ward said this has “allowed those with even more whacky views on climate to rear their heads again and start making ridiculous claims about the science”. 

The UK Government’s new definition of extremism is out. And its purpose, according to Communities Secretary Michael Gove is to “ensure that government does not inadvertently provide a platform to those setting out to subvert democracy and deny other people's fundamental rights.” Unfortunately, he has failed in this endeavour because by the Government’s own new definition, Michael Gove is an extremist.

The new definition, released on Thursday, describes extremism as “the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance” that aims to “negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others”, or “undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights”. It also includes those who “intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve” these aims.

Racism is Funny

Gove’s track record of extremism is, in fact, astonishing by any standard and started when he was a young man. As president-elect of the Oxford University debating society in 1987, Gove used the racist term “fuzzy wuzzies” to describe black people, arguing that the British empire was “moral” because the “fuzzy wuzzies couldn’t look after themselves.”

In 1993, while a journalist for BBC television, he used homophobic and sexist language at Cambridge University debates, including describing economist John Maynard Keynes as a “homosexualist” because “homosexuals thrive primarily on short-term relations”, and made a sexist joke about the then head of the Cambridge Union Lucy Frazer for doing “remarkably well coming as she has done from the back streets of the slums of Leeds”’.

We don’t know what Gove’s excuse for all this is because he’s refused to comment, let alone apologise. Instead, the BBC noted that a “source” close to him said that Gove made the statements "in jest" (i.e. he basically thought they were funny), but that they were not his actual views. Oh, that's ok then.

So we know that Michael Gove inhabits an alternative reality in which making jokes about people’s race, ethnicity, gender or sexuality is all fine and dandy. This perhaps explains his defence of Tory donor Frank Hester’s ‘joke’ that Diane Abbott, the longest serving Black MP, “should be shot” and makes him “want to hate all Black women”. Although Downing Street belatedly conceded that Hester’s comments were “racist and wrong”, Gove insisted that he would exercise “Christian forgiveness” over the remarks – and the Conservative Party has no intention of handing back the £10 million.

At least Hester did indeed apologise – which is more than can be said for Gove over his own racist, sexist and homophobic remarks. No wonder, then, that when confronted in Parliament over GB News co-owner and Tory donor Sir Paul Marshall liking and retweeting far-right, racist and homophobic content (including a tweet calling for a race war in Britain between Muslims and non-Muslims), Gove defended him as "a distinguished philanthropist".

Eugenics and Education

But Michael Gove’s fascination with extremist ideologies tied to racism resurfaced in 2013 when he was Education Secretary. A 237-page private thesis drafted up for Gove by his then-special advisor, Dominic Cummings, was leaked to the press. The document claimed that a child’s educational performance has more to do with their genetic make-up rather than educational standards, and called for giving “specialist education as per Eton” to “the top 2% in IQ”. 

As author of Human Genetic Engineering Pete Shanks observed, the Gove paper promoted “the blatantly eugenic association of genes with intelligence, intelligence with worth, and worth with the right to rule”.

But the bulk of the ‘science’ cited in the Gove paper came from controversial scientists affiliated with scientific racism and eugenics, some of whose work came from research funded by the Pioneer Fund, a Nazi foundation set-up in 1937 – and classified as a hate group by the civil rights law firm Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Pro-eugenics scientists cited by the Gove paper include Charles Murray, Stephen Hsu and Robert Plomin. Murray is the author of The Bell Curve, which claims that Black people are intellectually inferior to white people due to genetics and environmental causes. He’s also identified as a “white nationalist” who uses “racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics” by the SPLC. Plomin is an avid defender of Murray’s work, and has spoken and published with the racist American Eugenics Society, and addressed the racist British Eugenics Society. Hsu has promoted eugenic breeding schemes using embryo selection to improve the overall IQ of the population.

The Cummings dossier further revealed that under Gove’s leadership, Plomin was invited into the Department for Education to “explain the science of IQ and genetics to officials and ministers”.

Racist and Anti-Muslim think-tank

Gove was also closely involved since inception with the Henry Jackson Society, as a signatory to its founding statement when launched in 2005. HJS would later be described as a racist, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant organisation by two former directors, Marko Attila Hoare and Matthew Jamison.

In 2017, Gove joined HJS as a director. That was an interesting year for HJS – it was the year two other HJS directors, Douglas Murray and Alan Mendoza, spoke at the annual Restoration Weekend organised by the David Horowitz Freedom Centre. 

Held the year after Donald Trump’s election, the 2017 Restoration Weekend was a key celebration of the success of ‘Alt-Right’ nationalists who had risen to power thanks to the election of Donald Trump.

The Restoration Weekend is hosted by David Horowitz, who spent years mentoring President Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller, regarded as the driving force behind his administration’s “racist” policies – including the legal architecture of the ‘Muslim ban’. Horowitz himself has been described as “a driving force” of the “anti-black movement” by the SPLC. Just a week before the event attended by the HJS, Horowitz declared that “the country’s only serious race war” is “against whites”. 

The Restoration Weekend was a veritable Who’s Who of US white nationalism, attended by the likes of antisemitic Holocaust denier Gavin McInnes, founder of the violent Proud Boys designated as an extremist group by the FBI; notorious far-right commentator Katie Hopkins; and Sebastian Gorka, who co-founded a far-right Hungarian political party with known antisemites. Other speakers included key figures in US white nationalism such as Ann Coulter, Robert Spencer, Steve Bannon, and Milo Yiannopoulos.

At the event, Douglas Murray delivered an astonishing racist speech characterising Europe’s ethnic minorities as fundamentally “different people” who have simply “walked into that continent”. He singled out Indian and Sudanese immigrants, noting that while an Indian migrant might “vim up the local cuisine”, a wider range of cuisines in Europe would be offset by “more gang-rape and beheading.”

Murray, a longtime associate of Gove and one of his ardent defenders, is a populariser of the far-right Great Replacement conspiracy theory – the idea that Muslim immigration is endangering and replacing white populations in Europe as part of an Islamist plot.

In 2013, he complained about “white Britons” being “abolished” due to too many ethnic minorities in London. He’d previously endorsed a ban on immigration from Muslim countries and, three months before the Trump campaign announced its ‘Muslim ban’, told anti-Muslim extremist Frank Gaffney (the man cited by the Trump team to justify the policy) that such a measure could be the solution to the Muslim “demographic time-bomb”. 

Most recently, Murray has suggested “we might need to send in the army” to control pro-Palestinian protestors in London – and if that doesn’t work, that the “British public” might have to take matters into its own hands: a veiled incitement to vigilante violence.

In May 2017, while Gove was a director, the HJS executive director Alan Mendoza invited the host David Horowitz onto his YouTube television show to discuss extremism on college campuses. He claimed that all American Muslim student groups are “terrorist front groups” orchestrated and funded by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Mendoza nodded as he listened to Horowitz’s claims, even though they have been debunked as anti-Muslim conspiracy theory.  

An Orwellian Move

This is just the tip of the iceberg but it makes absolutely clear that Gove has built his career by climbing the ladder of escalating extremism. In this context, Gove’s new ‘war’ on extremism is not just absurd: it is dangerously Orwellian.  

Gove thinks racist jokes are funny, has elevated scientific racism within the Department for Education, and worked with an organisation – the Henry Jackson Society – which for years has acted as a transmission belt amplifying mainstream far-right white nationalist ideas into the centre-right of UK policymaking.

Who, then, is really using the platform of Government to subvert Britain’s liberal democracy by advancing ideas rooted in ideologies based on hatred, intolerance and indeed violence, with a view to “negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms” of minorities? It’s Michael Gove. If the Government were to actually act meaningfully on its own definition, not only Gove, but numerous organisations he and the Government have worked with and patronised would fall under its hammer.

That Gove will not allow this to happen illustrates what this Government is trying to rush through before elections later this year: the architecture of a new far-right authoritarian politics that will erode democratic accountability, expand the ideological reach of the state, elevate white nationalist and anti-Muslim ideologies, while restricting the scope for reform long after this government collapses.

In Rethinking Drug Laws: Theory, History, Politics, Toby Seddon analyses drug control policy and argues for a paradigm shift that decentres the West and recognises China’s historical and contemporary influence. Unpacking the complexity of drug law as a regulatory system, Seddon’s well-argued, insightful book calls for more inclusive, evidence-informed and democratic policymaking, writes Mark Monaghan.

Rethinking Drug Laws: Theory, History, Politics. Toby Seddon. Oxford University Press. 2023.

Based on forensic archival research, Rethinking Drug Laws: Theory, History, Politics by Toby Seddon is beautifully written and deeply insightful. Its central thesis is that we must decentre the West, especially when thinking about the origins of drug policy. Viewing drug policy from a Western vantage point is a blip because, as Seddon shows, China has long been a key player on the global stage, but drug policy analysis, with some exceptions, has not always recognised this. In this way, drug policy analysis has fallen into the trap of Occidentalism, providing a distorted view of the West’s prominence. Seddon sets out to show the folly of this and succeeds. Furthermore, he demonstrates that there are signs of regression toward the mean as China once again is becoming a primary global player, particularly through the belt and road initiative.

In drug control, inanimate objects – drugs – are not banned, but transactions that would otherwise constitute lawful economic activity are criminalised.

A defining feature of Seddon’s writing is the remarkable capacity for distilling complex historical narratives into an easily digestible schema. We see this clearly in the introduction, where he proposes a tripartite structure of race, risk and security arcs as ways to think about the origins of what has only recently become known as the “drug problem”. We are also introduced to another key idea that drug laws function through controlling the circulation of goods, ie, they are regulatory systems. In drug control, inanimate objects – drugs – are not banned, but transactions that would otherwise constitute lawful economic activity are criminalised. This is about the control of personal property rights. The right to personal property is not explicitly eroded through prohibition, but some transactions in relation to them become impermissible and there is no legal recourse for the right to conduct these transactions. In outlining this, the entire premise of drug control shifts from one of a struggle between the forces of prohibition and legalisation to understanding legalisation and prohibition within a broader system of regulation.

Seddon refers to regulatory systems as ‘exchangespace’. […] The basic premise of exchangespace is that ‘market behaviour and regulation are not separate realms but two sides of the same coin’.

Seddon elaborates on this over the following chapters and in doing so demonstrates a depth of research and scholarship that is genuinely cross-disciplinary, bringing in economics, sociology, history, political economy as well as insights from criminology, regulation theory and socio-legal perspectives. There is, however, method to this, which shapes and is shaped by the development of a new conceptual framework. Drawing on the work of Clifford Shearing and others, Seddon refers to regulatory systems as “exchangespace”, and this is painstakingly outlined in Chapter Two. The basic premise of exchangespace is that “market behaviour and regulation are not separate realms but two sides of the same coin”. The dimensions of exchangespace can be summarised as:

1. Regulation operates in networks consisting of multiple dimensions and participants.
2. Nodes are a key element of networks and facilitate communication across them. Analysis of networks should, therefore, look at the nodes because these are the locus within a system where various resources are mobilised in order to govern effectively.
3. Not all nodes exert the same amount or kind of power in the network. The most economically powerful nodes can distort the smooth operation of the entire system.
4. Networks adapt overtime. Consequently, policy does not stand still, it evolves and emerges in often unpredictable ways.

Seddon encourages us to focus on the network conditions that led to increasing control of certain substances (what we know as drugs), whilst permitting or at least freeing the trade in others (coffee, alcohol and tobacco) and to view these as complex systems.

Seddon encourages us to focus on the network conditions that led to increasing control of certain substances (what we know as drugs), whilst permitting or at least freeing the trade in others (coffee, alcohol and tobacco) and to view these as complex systems. In complex systems, the outcomes of policy depend on understanding where the starting point is. However, identifying starting points is almost impossible, not least, as Seddon contends, because we don’t yet have the theory and methods at our disposal to do so. The best we can do, then, is to try and understand elements of the wider network; that is, which nodes are exerting power in which contexts while acknowledging that these systems are unpredictable and constantly changing. Seddon uses this framework to explain the origins of Cannabis Social Clubs in Catalonia and the complex politics behind the patchy implementation of Heroin Assisted Treatment. In this way, we can start to explain the ways in which, for example, overdose prevention centres have been established in some locations and not others, or why and how drugs were decriminalised in Oregon, a decision that may now be reversed.

Seddon demonstrates how the origins of the current system can be traced to colonialism […] in the nineteenth century, even if we cannot pinpoint the exact starting point.

A complex system like drug policy can never revert to an earlier stage of development. Oregon’s post-decriminalisation society will not be the same as its pre-decriminalisation society. Fortunately, however, complex systems do have path dependency, and so it is possible, as Seddon does in Part II (Chapters Four and Five), to outline the chain of events that has led to the contemporary global drug regulatory system. Seddon demonstrates how the origins of the current system can be traced to colonialism (the race arc) in the nineteenth century, even if we cannot pinpoint the exact starting point. The key lesson here is that we need to look East rather than West to understand this. Here, the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century are a key reference point.

Taking an exchangespace perspective we see that the Opium Wars (1839-1842) were more than just about one country (Britain) establishing a right to export its products (opium) to a large market (China). More accurately, they represented a military contestation that focused on the boundaries between legal and illegal trade – a contestation that lies at the heart of drug control. The burgeoning temperance movement proved a powerful node alongside increasingly powerful US economic interests, which contributed to the realigning of opium in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a product requiring control. The Opium Wars also represent – in the form of the second opium (Arrow) war – the first moment that drug control (as opium control) became a multinational affair. In this way we can draw a direct line from the Opium Wars to global drug prohibition fifty years later.

In Part III (Chapters Six and Seven) Seddon turns to the political nodes of the regulatory network, focusing on “what is at stake when drug laws and drug policy become a matter of political contestation”. The idea here is that within exchangespace, it is impossible to stand outside of politics, as the system is inherently political. Politics is a powerful node. This section draws heavily on Loader and Sparks’ conception of public criminology and the strategies that can be used to add coolant to heated debates.

To hand over decision making to experts is to abandon any hope for democratic politics as it replaces one system of domination (populist politics) with another (experts).

For Seddon, this should not simply mean that populist ideas – such as the “war on drugs” – are replaced with technocratic, evidence-based decisions. To hand over decision making to experts is to abandon any hope for democratic politics as it replaces one system of domination (populist politics) with another (experts). Arguably, that is why it has become more commonplace to speak of evidence-informed or evidence-inspired policy. However, Seddon provides a way out of that impasse by stating that “better politics” is required more than better evidence. This has two dimensions. First, we need a more careful analysis that focuses not only on the impact or harms of current drug policies (eg, criminalisation, stigmatisation, racist stereotyping) as they occur, but considers in depth and precision how the arcs of race, risk and security perpetuate this system. Secondly, on a practical level, a more cosmopolitan, comprehensive and inclusive deliberative democracy is required which can yield discernible change. Reforms in Catalonia and Oregon point to how this can be done, but also its precarity. Scaling it up and bringing in the voice of people who use drugs as part of a social movement is essential.

The text brings us almost full circle to how a better politics might lead to a more sophisticated, fairer form of market regulation.

Seddon points to the success of prison reform movements in France in the 1970s or the radical politics of mental health campaigning organisations which sought to foreground the voices of survivors of the psychiatric system as providing a blueprint. To this we could add decades of campaigning by disability rights activists, which have shown how positive change can occur with these strategies. There is no reason why drug policy should be any different. In this way, the text brings us almost full circle to how a better politics might lead to a more sophisticated, fairer form of market regulation. Ultimately, for Seddon, this means shifting the focus of social and political science away from the way the world is, towards the deeper thinking on the kind of world we want. This is the book’s challenge. It is us up to us to deliver.

Note: This interview gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image credit: OneSideProFoto on Shutterstock.

Starmer’s repulsive party has no shame or morals and is taking members for fools

Keir Starmer’s Labour party – that gives impunity to just about every type of racism rampant among the Labour right – is using a Tory donor’s racism against Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman MP, to try to milk cash from gullible members.

In an email to members, Starmer criticises the blue-Tory version of the anti-Abbott racism as an excuse to beg for donations:

Starmer’s letter was dishonest as well as shameless – his party fawns over billionaires for their donations

The email does not mention that Ms Abbott is suspended from the Labour party for fighting anti-Black racism, which Labour disregards under Starmer who, in today’s PMQs, brazenly tried to score political points against the Tories for their racism toward Abbott.

While Starmer and a string of white MPs discussed racism toward Diane Abbott, Starmer’s pet Speaker Lindsay Hoyle prevented Ms Abbott getting a word in, ensuring that she was unable to point out the abuse of Starmer’s front bench toward her or the foul racism exposed by the leaked Labour report and barrister Martin Forde’s inquiry into it, which Starmer continues to ignore despite commissioning it.

The red-Tory version of racism is a non-issue to Keir Starmer, who has presided over wholesale deselection of Black candidates, suspended and sacked Black and Brown MPs like it’s going out of fashion – and has driven yet more to resign in disgust:

Some of the Black and Brown MPs sacked or driven out by the Starmer regime

While Starmer’s party drones protect racist councillors and functionaries, Starmer himself welcomes racist MPs back into the party – including one with an extra side of sexual harassment – with impunity and promoted Wes Streeting, whose ‘disgusting’ and ‘disgraceful’ rant in Ms Abbott’s face left her ‘shell-shocked’.

And he and his Shadow Cabinet did not even bother to contact Abbott when the news of Tory donor Frank Hester’s disgusting racism and threatening words toward her broke – but that did not (of course) prevent him using the situation to try (not very competently) to score points.

Labour is a racist and opportunist cesspit under the rule of its hard-right faction.

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