Police officers with protesters as trouble flares during an anti-immigration demonstration outside the Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, August 4, 2024
RIOTERS stormed a Holiday Inn housing asylum-seekers in Rotherham today and attempted to set it ablaze, marking the latest in a series of horrific far-right attacks.
Violence has escalated across the country after fascists seized on the fatal stabbing of three young girls in Southport to whip up hatred and incite riots.
Over 35 rallies supported by the far right took place across Britain and Northern Ireland at the weekend, with anti-fascists mobilising in opposition.
On Friday gangs burnt a Citizens’ Advice bureau to the ground and attacked a mosque in Sunderland after a rally held under the slogan “Enough is Enough.”
Unrest spread to Hull the following day where another hotel housing asylum-seekers was attacked while mobs looted shops on the high street.
In Liverpool, a library that serves one of the country’s most deprived communities was torched by youths in Walton.
Home Secretary and Defence Secretary – as well as their boss Keir Starmer and ousted colleagues – validate anti-refugee bigotry
Labour government figures have spoken against the far-right’s racist violence and destruction – but the red Tory faction running the government and party have an appalling record of pandering to and inciting the anti-immigrant bigotry now running rampant on our streets.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was behind Labour’s infamous racist ‘controls on immigration’ mug – and was rightly lambasted for it by thousands of respondents after she went through the motions of condemning the fascist violence:
Cut the nonsense you care.
You and people in your Party like Jonathan Ashworth whipped up hate during the GE campaign espeically against Bangladeshi people to get support for Reform-Voters
And arson attempt now in Tamworth. It's also appalling that during GE @UKLabour was demonising migrants to win racist votes. Eg both Starmer and loser Ashworth talking on the same day about sending Bangladeshis back. Still got your anti-immigrant mug?
Osborne– who was chancellor under David Cameron’s government and was instrumental in bringing about austerity – said that the cuts announced by Reeves on Monday were “almost identical in structure and form” to those he made in 2010, when he announced £6.2bn worth of cuts.
…
“I don’t think there was anything she announced that I would have violently disagreed with or not done myself.
“In fact, it was almost identical in structure and form to what I did in the first couple of months that I was Chancellor of the Exchequer.
“So, you know, ‘Continuity Osborne.”
Sharing a clip from the podcast on social media, SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said: “No comment.”
Live facial recognition is already used by the Metropolitan police and South Wales police. Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images
PM accused of ignoring civil rights and aping autocracies as he proposes new powers after far-right unrest
Civil liberties campaigners have said that a proposal made by Keir Starmer on Thursday to expand the use of live facial recognition technology would amount to the effective introduction of a national ID card system based on people’s faces.
“Expanding live facial recognition means millions of innocent Britons being subjected to automated ID checks,” said Carlo. “These are the surveillance tactics of China and Russia and Starmer seems ignorant of the civil liberties implications.”
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Promising to create a national police capability to tackle the rioting, the new prime minister said forces needed to work better together, sharing intelligence and engaging in a “wider deployment of facial recognition technology”.
Details were scant but immediately after, Starmer suggested that trouble-makers could be subject to “criminal behaviour orders to restrict their movements before they can even board a train” – implying a wider use of live facial recognition at transport hubs such as railway stations.
Daragh Murray, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, said: “There is a clear danger that in responding to a tragedy and public unrest we expand and entrench police surveillance without appropriate scrutiny. Given that the police have responded to disorder and riots for decades, why is facial recognition needed now?”
A host of parliamentarians were previously employed by agencies with fossil fuel clients.
At least 24 newly elected MPs used to work for public relations, consultancy and lobbying firms that have a history of representing oil and gas companies, DeSmog can reveal.
A DeSmog analysis of the MPs entering Parliament after the 2024 general election found that two dozen had a background working for oil and gas giants, coal power station conglomerates, as well as other highly polluting clients.
The findings have sparked concerns that fossil fuel interests in Parliament may influence policy-making.
“I entered politics after working as an engineer in the renewables industry exactly because I could see we had the technology to make the transition to clean and green energy, but we were lacking the political will to make it happen,” said Green Party co-leader and Bristol Central MP Carla Denyer.
“Part of what stops this transition from occurring is the embedded influence of the fossil fuels industry in politics.”
Labour’s new Ossett and Denby Dale MP Jade Botterill started working at lobbying firm Portland after her parliamentary candidacy was announced in September 2023. Portland’s clients include oil major BP, French energy firm EDF, Heathrow Airport, and Chinese state-owned oil company CNOOC. Another Labour MP – Laura Kyrke-Smith – worked for Portland several years ago. She told DeSmog that she didn’t represent any oil firms while working for the company.
Portland told DeSmog that they “do not comment on client relationships”.
At least three new Labour MPs – Oliver Ryan, Mary Creagh, and Steve Race – previously worked for Lexington Communications, a lobbying firm that works for oil giant Phillips 66, the International Airlines Group (IAG), and Eren Holding, a firm that runs coal-fired power stations in Turkey.
New Conservative MP for Bromsgrove Bradley Thomas spent at least five years working for Phillips 66, latterly as a strategy lead, before becoming an independent consultant to the sector.
Almost a third of Labour’s new MPs have a background working in communications and lobbying, according to the Sunday Times, a similar share to the Conservatives. Due to the UK’s limited transparency rules around lobbying, it’s often impossible to know whether these individuals worked on behalf of oil and gas clients.
However, we do know that several other major lobbying and consultancy firms with fossil fuel links – in addition to Lexington and Portland – used to employ a number of new MPs. These include:
Teneo (clients include BHP, Centrica, and EnQuest)
Four Communications emphasised that its work for the Oman Oil Company ended in 2019, though the firm also has offices in the petrostates United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
In June 2024, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said that PR agencies had “aided and abetted” the fossil fuel industry, “acting as enablers to planetary destruction”. He called on these agencies to stop taking on new fossil fuel clients, and to set out plans to drop their existing ones.
“Fossil fuels are not only poisoning our planet – they’re toxic for your brand,” he said.
All the MPs named in this article were approached for comment.
Gas Lobbyists and Energy Consultants
Several new MPs have also worked for much smaller groups with links to the energy industry. This includes Labour’s new Cannock Chase MP Josh Newbury, who between 2019 and 2022 worked as senior parliamentary officer for the Energy and Utilities Alliance (EUA) – a trade group for the gas industry and fossil fuel boiler manufacturers.
DeSmog revealed in 2023 that the EUA, which is led by former Labour MP Mike Foster, was behind a barrage of negative press attacking heat pumps as a home heating source. Foster has repeatedly labelled pro-heat pump campaigners as a “green cult”.
New Liberal Democrat MP for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire Ian Sollom worked as the principal of StrategicFit, an energy sector strategic consultancy that has worked for the oil major ExxonMobil, and the Chinese state oil firm CNOOC.
Sollom told DeSmog that “as a scientist entering Parliament, I am committed to the phasing out of fossil fuels, and my previous career primarily focused on improving decision making and collaboration between energy companies, regulators and other stakeholders”.
Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham Max Wilkinson used to work for Camargue, which lobbied politicians in Westminster on behalf of the oil company Esso while he was employed by the firm.
A spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats stressed that Wilkinson did not work for any oil and gas clients.
Fossil fuel companies have extensive existing ties to Westminster politics. DeSmog revealed that, from the 2019 general election to the start of the 2024 election campaign, the Conservative Party received £8.4 million from oil and gas interests, climate science deniers, and polluting industries.
Meanwhile, a number of leading right-wing think tanks have received direct funding from the fossil fuel industry. Onward, which hosted the most government meetings of any think tank in 2023, receives funding from Shell and BP.
All the agencies named in this article were approached for comment.
