Over the last couple of days, Tonia has been repeatedly transphobic on X the everything app. Calling for and being smug about the segregation of a minority should be a disciplinary offence, but we all know it won’t be because Labour is institutionally transphobic.

Will post screenshots in the comments because I know I can’t put them here.

Hello,

I don't imagine this is going to win me any friends - not least because of how long it is - but this post is, after all, why I created a Reddit account, and it seems the time has come, otherwise I'll just carry on sniping angry comments on things while half-cut (cathartic though that occasionally is).

Yes, it is very long. Sorry about that. I'll say it, and I'll get out of your hair. I am not a Labour member, or even a Labour voter - I live in a Tory/LD marginal and have spent my life voting LD as a result. What I am is someone directly affected by the horrendous things your party is doing and who would very much like you to stop doing them.

I've spent a lot of time lurking in here - I'm a trans woman and, I don't know, I suppose I was doomscrolling, but often I wanted to see if there was any hope bubbling under in the Labour party, I suppose. Maybe that fact is why this seems so screamingly obvious to me. I am both exceptionally, viscerally angry with Labour and extremely scared. I think this is a final attempt to grab some of you and shake you awake before I bite the bullet and run for safety.

I keep seeing Labour's authoritarian and reactionary decisions described as cowardice, triangulation or fear of the press - as though the people making them do not believe in them. What I see very often is people saying things like we have to stop Reform or we'll end up with Bannon's politics, or Labour are still a progressive party; that sort of thing.

Honestly, I don't think you're seeing the wood for the trees. Blue Labour is doing all of this intentionally and the destination they have in mind for us is not a good one.

I'm going to present a chronology here - every item is on the public record, and the source is provided. Where later reporting exposed earlier conduct, I have labelled both dates.

2009–2011: early stuff

• 2009 - Blue Labour first emerges as an organised current within Labour, led intellectually by Maurice Glasman. Prospect
• 2009 - Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel writes: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”, and advocates technological and territorial “escape from politics”. Cato Unbound
• 2011 - Glasman advocates temporarily stopping immigration, with limited exceptions; he later acknowledges mishandling the controversy. The Guardian

2017–2020: they take over the party

• 2017 - Morgan McSweeney takes over and relaunches Labour Together. A strategy paper later reported by the Guardian states its mission: “Move the Labour party from the hard left when JC steps down as leader”, and find a candidate for the political platform it was developing. The Guardian
• 2017–2020 - Labour Together fails to report about £739,000 in donations on time while McSweeney runs it. The Guardian
• 2018 - Palantir hires Peter Mandelson's firm Global Counsel to position it as “a respectable partner to the British government”. The Guardian
• 2018 - Later-released emails show Jeffrey Epstein advising Steve Bannon on European political strategy, years after Epstein's conviction. Associated Press
• 2020 - McSweeney runs Keir Starmer's successful leadership campaign, then leaves Labour Together to become Starmer's chief of staff. Labour Together later says it played a key role in the campaign. The Guardian

2021–2023: naughty money things while Palantir get quietly plugged in to the UK state

• September 2021 - The Electoral Commission finds multiple Labour Together reporting offences and imposes £14,250 in penalties. Electoral Commission
• 2022 - Peter Thiel gives about $15m to JD Vance's successful US Senate campaign. Reuters
• 2023 - A Palantir-led consortium wins the NHS Federated Data Platform contract, worth up to £330m over seven years. This contract is awarded under the Conservative government. NHS England
• Late 2023 (reported February 2026) - Labour Together hires US public-affairs firm APCO for £36,000 to investigate journalists who scrutinised its undeclared donations and identify their sources. The Guardian

2024: all the stuff they said they'd do, they start doing it

• 2024 - Former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson becomes a part-time adviser to Palantir and accompanies its UK chief at Labour Party conferences. The Guardian
• 30 April 2024 - Before the Supreme Court judgement, Starmer says his position on trans issues “starts with biology” and backs blocking trans women from female-only hospital wards and prisons. The Independent
• 1 July 2024 - Still more than nine months before the judgement, Starmer says trans women with Gender Recognition Certificates “don't have” the right to enter women-only spaces and “shouldn't”. The Times · Attitude summary
• July–October 2024 - After co-directing Labour's election campaign, McSweeney enters Downing Street as head of political strategy in July and becomes chief of staff in October. The Guardian · The Guardian
• 6 November 2024 - The day after Trump’s election victory, around 30 influential figures gather for a closed-door Policy Exchange symposium on “the future of the left” and the rise of populism. Participants include Maurice Glasman, Jonathan Rutherford, Jon Cruddas, Munira Mirza, Trevor Phillips and David Goodhart. Morgan McSweeney is expected to speak; he enters during Glasman’s remarks, observes the gathering and leaves without speaking. The New World
• 11 December 2024 - Labour makes restrictions on the private prescribing and supply of puberty blockers for under-18 gender dysphoria or incongruence indefinite, with a review due in 2027. NHS routine prescribing had already ended under the Conservatives in March 2024. GOV.UK
• December 2024 - Glasman celebrates Trump's victory as “world historical”, says “Kamala Harris was for they/them, President Trump is for you”, and calls for a “decimation of the institutions”. LabourList
• December 2024 - Starmer selects Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the United States. Reuters

January–April 2025: they're confident enough to openly start declaring MAGA-alignment

• January 2025 - Vance invites Glasman to Trump's inauguration, reportedly as the only Labour parliamentarian attending. Before the visit, No 10 reportedly tells him: “Make friends with anyone you can.” He spends days with Bannon and meets Vance at the White House. Prospect · The Times
• January 2025 - Glasman tells Bannon: “progressives are the enemy” and “progressivism is a sickness to me, it's a palsy”. LabourList
• 30 January 2025 - Labour introduces the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, creating a framework for new offences, enhanced powers, data sharing and the Border Security Command. GOV.UK
• February 2025 - Glasman says of McSweeney, now Starmer's chief of staff: “Morgan is one of ours, we love him.” The Guardian
• February 2025 - A parliamentary Blue Labour caucus launches, with Hinder, Brash, Smith and Carden named as core MPs and membership reportedly in double digits. Brash says there is not a “hair's breadth of difference” between its aims and Labour's manifesto. LabourList
• February 2025 (reported in September) - Curtis Yarvin appears at the ARC summit in London. ARC’s advisory board includes Glasman and Reform policy chief James Orr; Peter Thiel joins the summit by livestream. Yarvin has argued for replacing democracy with an unelected “CEO” or corporate monarchies. Byline Times
• February 2025 (reported in September) - Glasman meets Yarvin in London. Glasman says he rejected Yarvin’s racist language, but remained interested in his views on AI and would continue engaging with him. Byline Times
• February 2025 - Labour releases footage of immigration raids and deportations while boasting of removal figures. The Guardian
• February 2025 - Starmer visits Palantir's Washington office with Mandelson and meets its chief executive, Alex Karp, and UK chief, Louis Mosley. The visit is not initially listed in the prime ministerial transparency register. Financial Times
• 24 February 2025 (reporting an earlier speech) - Prospect quotes Glasman: “the only place to build a house now is on the left side of MAGA square”. Prospect
• 16 April 2025 - The Supreme Court's own summary defines the case as one of statutory interpretation: the meaning of “man”, “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act. It also says trans people remain protected from discrimination. UK Supreme Court
• 22 April 2025 - Starmer calls the Supreme Court ruling “a welcome step forward”; Phillipson welcomes it for the government and says a trans woman must use male toilets where only male and female facilities exist. She tells Parliament NHS and other single-sex provision will be based on 'biological sex'. The Guardian · Hansard
• 30 April 2025 (reporting a London Civic Future event) - Hinder says too many working-class people see Labour as the party of immigrants, minorities and benefit recipients. He urges drastic immigration cuts, including prioritising democratic decisions over international legal constraints; calls the ECHR “not working”, with nothing off the table; and is “not that disappointed” if reduced immigration makes universities go bust. LabourList

May–December 2025: right-wing policies are implemented while you get gaslit with pish about how they love the ECHR

• 2 May 2025 - The Labour government continues the Home Office appeal defending Suella Braverman's anti-protest regulations; the Court of Appeal confirms that the regulations were unlawful. Public Law Project
• 12 May 2025 - Starmer says of his immigration crackdown: “I am doing this because it is right ... and because it is what I believe in”, then warns that Britain risks becoming “an island of strangers”. GOV.UK
• 12 May 2025 - Labour's immigration white paper proposes doubling the standard qualifying period for settlement to ten years, raising the main skilled-worker threshold to degree level and extending English-language requirements, including to adult dependants. GOV.UK
• 13 May 2025 - A peer-reviewed study argues that mainstream parties can legitimise far-right politics, citing Labour's immigration spectacle, transphobic moral panic and treatment of protesters as examples. Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics
• June 2025 - Starmer says he “deeply regrets” the “island of strangers” phrase after criticism that it echoed Enoch Powell. The Guardian
• June 2025 - Blue Labour urges ministers to “root out DEI”; the Guardian reports that the faction is influencing Downing Street's attempt to win Reform voters. The Guardian
• 1–5 July 2025 - Labour proscribes Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act. Membership, inviting support or recklessly expressing support can carry up to 14 years' imprisonment. GOV.UK
• 4 September 2025 - The government stops accepting new refugee family-reunion applications; partners and children can no longer use that route to join a refugee in the UK. GOV.UK
• September 2025 - Home secretary Shabana Mahmood says she has a “natural affinity for the faith, flag and family element of Blue Labour”. The Guardian
• 18 September 2025 - Labour signs a Palantir defence partnership identifying opportunities worth up to £750m. Palantir plans a London European defence base; joint AI work includes intelligence, decision support, targeting and the military “kill chain”. The announcement says it builds on the Trump–Starmer Tech Prosperity Deal. GOV.UK
• 18–25 September 2025 - Byline Times reports that Glasman was initially billed as co-leading Policy Exchange’s “Future of the Left” programme, designed to send papers and proposals to No 10. The programme director says Glasman is no longer operationally involved. Byline Times
• 25 September 2025 - Byline Times reports that McSweeney tasked Glasman with making contacts in the Trump administration and that Glasman initially reported back almost daily to No 10. It also reports that Glasman met Peter Thiel at the inauguration. Byline Times
• 25 September 2025 - Byline Times reports that Glasman sits on Civic Future’s board. One of its sponsors, Emergent Ventures, was launched with $1m from the Thiel Foundation; its director, Tyler Cowen, sits on Civic Future’s board alongside Glasman. Byline Times
• September 2025 - Epstein estate schedules released by Congress list planned post-conviction meetings with Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon. Reuters says it is unclear whether every meeting occurred and reports no allegation of wrongdoing by either man. Reuters
• 3 October 2025 - Blue Labour publishes a programme calling for radically reduced immigration, if necessary prioritising domestic politics over the “rule of international lawyers”; ending positive discrimination; limiting judicial review; and reforming or closing quangos. Blue Labour
• 3 October 2025 (published 14 October) - Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Michael O'Flaherty says the Supreme Court did not address the relevant human-rights issues. He warns that blanket exclusions could force trans people to out themselves, engage Article 8 privacy rights and increase vulnerability to harassment, abuse and violence. Council of Europe letter
• 5 October 2025 - Labour announces powers allowing police to consider the cumulative impact of repeated protests, move them elsewhere and review whether existing powers to ban protests outright are sufficient. GOV.UK
• 15 October 2025 - Mahmood replies that it is “unacceptable to question the validity of the Supreme Court” and “disappointing” to cast aspersions on its decision, although O'Flaherty's letter explicitly concerned the human-rights consequences of implementation after the judgement. Mahmood's reply · O'Flaherty's original letter
• 20 October 2025 - O'Flaherty publicly corrects Mahmood: his letter “in no way calls into question the role of the Supreme Court”; it concerns “the steps that now need to be taken following the Court's judgment”. Council of Europe
• 22 October 2025 - Hinder becomes an unpaid director of Blue Labour Campaign Limited. UK Parliament register of interests
• 17 November 2025 - Byline Times reports that McSweeney held a 90-minute meeting with Glasman shortly before Mahmood’s asylum announcement. Glasman had publicly praised Mahmood’s commitment to “secure the borders” and attacked the “rule of lawyers”. Byline Times
• 17 November 2025 - Mahmood proposes 30-month renewable refugee status, a 20-year settlement route and restricted family reunion. The programme would also remove the statutory asylum-support duty, make support conditional and require contributions from people with income or assets. GOV.UK
• 2 December 2025 - The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill receives Royal Assent, creating enhanced border powers, offences and data-sharing arrangements. GOV.UK

January–April 2026: the networks are exposed but apparently nobody really notices

• January 2026 - Trump appoints Tony Blair to the founding executive board of his “Board of Peace”, alongside Rubio, Witkoff and Kushner. Blair thanks Trump for his leadership and says he is honoured to be appointed. White House · Tony Blair Institute
• February 2026 - Released records appear to show $75,000 in payments from Jeffrey Epstein to Mandelson-linked accounts and Mandelson forwarding Epstein a confidential government briefing. Mandelson says he does not recall the payments and denies wrongdoing. Reuters
• February 2026 - Starmer apologises to Epstein's victims for appointing Mandelson as ambassador. Reuters
• February 2026 - McSweeney resigns as Downing Street chief of staff, accepting responsibility for advising Starmer to appoint Mandelson. The Guardian
• February 2026 - Reports describe Mandelson's Global Counsel helping arrange Starmer's Palantir meeting and a subsequent roughly £241m MoD contract awarded directly to the firm. The government says Mandelson had no influence over the contract decision. CIPR · The Guardian
• February 2026 - Emails show Labour Together director Josh Simons falsely linking journalists to a “pro-Kremlin” network while approaching GCHQ's NCSC. NCSC declines to investigate; the original reporting came from Labour whistleblower material, not a Russian hack. The Guardian
• 24 February 2026 - Phillipson's schools white paper launches “Mission North East” and “Mission Coastal”, designed to improve local outcomes “including white working-class children”. Its wider funding reform is framed around poverty and SEND. GOV.UK
• 28 February 2026 - Simons resigns as a minister after the Labour Together affair. The Guardian
• 2 March 2026 - Labour implements temporary refugee status for new adult applicants, reviewed every 30 months; the government says its reformed system will require a 20-year wait for settlement unless a refugee switches to another visa route, and family reunion remains paused. GOV.UK
• 5 March 2026 - Labour lays measures revoking the statutory duty to provide asylum support and accommodation and replacing it with conditional support; the measures are due to take effect in June. GOV.UK
• 23 March 2026 - In Parliament, Hinder calls the planned puberty-blocker trial “profoundly unethical” and says it would mean “the British state sterilising healthy little children in plain sight - not by accident, but consciously and deliberately”. Hansard
• 14 April 2026 - When another MP warns that draft guidance could require staff to judge people’s sex from their appearance, Hinder replies: “Does she think that it would be difficult for someone to determine whether I, given the way I look, should be in a women’s single-sex space?” Hansard

May–July 2026: trans exclusion, human-rights narrowing, and the Palantir route

• 21 May 2026 - Phillipson lays the EHRC's updated draft services code before Parliament. It excludes trans people from single-sex toilets and changing rooms matching their gender identity and specifies wards by 'biological sex' where mixed accommodation is unavailable. The government's impact assessment describes the likely effect on trans people as “negative”. GOV.UK · The Guardian
• 3 June 2026 - Released correspondence shows Mandelson urging No 10 to arrange a meeting between Starmer and Peter Thiel, whom he calls a “celebrated techie”. Hansard
• 30 June 2026 - Mahmood says ECHR membership is “firmly in our national interest” while announcing legislation to narrow Article 8's definition of family, make blocking deportation exceptional and restrict some modern-slavery claims and protections. GOV.UK
• July 2026 - An investigation reports Palantir paid Global Counsel over £30,000 a month for an account codenamed “Project Onion”; the firm organised dinners and political access for Palantir. The Guardian

September–October 2026: the revolving door and the policy consequences are in plain sight

• 9 September 2026 - Labour creates a new equalities unit examining class and socioeconomic disparities across all ethnic groups, but makes white working-class inequality a stated priority and abolishes the Social Mobility Commission. The Guardian
• 18 September 2026 - Tom Watson moves from part-time adviser to full-time Palantir senior vice-president. The Guardian
• 2 October 2026 - Martha Dalton, co-founder of a lobbying firm that worked for Palantir in 2024 and 2025, is reported to have worked closely on Andy Burnham's leadership campaign. She took unpaid leave; the firm says she had no client contact during it, and Labour says its conflict procedures were followed. The Guardian
• 9 October 2026 - Watson warns ministers against “mob rule” in procurement and says they could get themselves “in a lot of trouble”. Asked about working with a Reform government on immigration crackdowns, he says “yes, of course we would”. The report also notes Palantir supplies software to the Israeli military and the Trump administration’s ICE crackdown. The Guardian
• 15 October 2026 - NHS England guidance says trans patients should be accommodated in line with 'biological sex'; female-only wards, toilets and changing rooms will no longer be used according to gender identity. Previous guidance allowed placement by gender identity. The Guardian
• October 2026 - The government's annual counter-terrorism report records 3,034 terrorism-related arrests in 2025, of which 2,779 (92%) were linked to supporting Palestine Action after its proscription; 486 of the 3,034 arrests had resulted in a charge by year-end. GOV.UK report (PDF)
• 17 October 2026 - Freedom of information responses show numerous NHS trusts are not using Palantir's platform and some reverted to previous systems after trials. The Guardian

I will say this as plainly as possible. If you, Labour members, do not stop Blue Labour, and MAGA wins a complete victory in the US: the destination for British democracy is to be subsumed into American fascism. It is Bannon-MAGA politics. It is the tech-bro oligarchy. That's where we're going. Blue Labour will not save us from Steve Bannon.

Please join the dots

This did not appear overnight. The chronology above is supposed to show how this has evolved and to join it all together, because I don't think anyone has yet, although Byline Times have certainly got the closest - they've reported all the pieces but just not combined them into one whole.

• Blue Labour's exclusionary nationalism was visible by 2011.
• Labour Together built the organisational route to the leadership behind opaque funding.
• Palantir used Mandelson's lobbying firm to gain British political access.
• The same Labour machine reached Downing Street as Glasman openly aligned Blue Labour with MAGA.
• Blue Labour also acquired an organised parliamentary caucus whose core members included Hinder, who publicly linked drastic immigration reduction, hostility to international legal constraints and aggressive anti-trans campaigning.
• In office, Labour did not merely use right-wing language: it made the private puberty-blocker restrictions indefinite, televised immigration raids, tightened settlement and family reunion, expanded protest restrictions, used terrorism law against Palestine Action support, implemented 'biological-sex' toilet and hospital policies, announced legislation to narrow the domestic application of Article 8 and made white working-class inequality a named equalities priority. So far.
• Labour's exclusionary position on trans people's access to wards and women's spaces was publicly stated before the Supreme Court judgement. When the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner later warned that blanket implementation could engage Article 8 and expose trans people to harm, Mahmood recast his intervention as an attack on the Court and was publicly corrected.
• Labour simultaneously deepened Palantir's role in defence and public services.
• The later revelations and revolving-door appointments did not create this pattern; they made an existing process easier to see.

Every item above is on the public record, as I said.

The people involved keep telling us what they believe, who they admire, who they work with and what they are building. The government keeps showing us what it will do. I am begging you to join the dots. This is not the Labour Party many of you still think it is.

Ask yourself, do you think it plausible that the people and networks outlined above just stepped aside, uncontested, to let a new Prime Minister take all their hard work in the opposite direction?

The scariest bit might be how much I've left out (i know, right).

A coup is happening under your nose. If you wish for British democracy to survive, you must stop them. The stakes are that high.

You may now proceed to the absolutely-slagging-me-off stage, as is traditional.

I won't bother you with a ludicrously long post again - I'm afraid I have the messy business of becoming a political refugee to sort out - but I hope to God you do something about it, for all our sakes. Shit is dark.

This is a long read, but BoE management of the economy to benefit the City rather than the country is why you can't pay your mortgage or feed your family. Interest rate rises to reduce inflation that has external causes just makes bankers richer and you poorer. Did you cause the economic crash in 2008?

New research from Michigan State University finds that popular music has gradually become less explicit about emotion and relationships — both across generations of artists and within artists’ careers.

The study, published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, is the largest of its kind to analyze song lyrics. The final dataset includes 38,467 songs from 230 artists spanning close to a century of popular music from 1947 to 2024. Discographies were manually checked by a team of roughly 30 research assistants after the initial lyric collection.

“A lot of previous work has asked whether music changes across decades, but much less has examined whether the same artists change across the course of their careers,” said Jan Brascamp, co-author of the study and associate professor in the Department of Psychology. “By looking at both at once, we can begin separating changes that happen within artists from broader shifts in culture and the music industry.”

The study found that lyrics became less emotional and less socially focused over time. Within artists’ careers, both positive and negative words declined, as did references to family and friends. Specific shifts show that anxiety-related language increased while sadness declined in lyrics.

The researchers found similar historical patterns when comparing artists from different eras. These broader historical differences were generally larger than the changes that occurred within individual artists’ careers.