United against hatred: the Labour MP and ex-Tory MP bringing communities together
They are nursing their cups of tea on opposing sides of the table, and sit on opposing sides of the party political divide, but Gurinder Singh Josan and Kris Hopkins find common cause when it comes to the rise of populism, 1970s-style racism and community division – and finding ways to resist it,Josan, 53, is a Labour MP; Hopkins, 62, a former Tory MP,It’s bracing how different they are: different politics, different pasts, different manners, different modes of expression, everything is different, but on this issue at least they have ended up under the same bannerBoth are trustees of Hope Unlimited Charitable Trust, one of the Guardian 2025 appeal’s five partner charities,The appeal is raising funds for practical grassroots voluntary projects that build hope, tolerance and trust as an antidote to division, hatred and despair,Josan’s interest was sparked as a student at Royal Holloway, University of London in the 1990s.
He was in the Labour club, and a member of the far-right British National party (BNP) had just started at the university as a fellow student.“That was a major thing,” says Josan.“The UK representative of the Ku Klux Klan also lived in Egham, the university town.”Josan became deeply embedded in Labour politics as a councillor in Sandwell in the West Midlands from the early 2000s.In 2024, he was elected MP for the newly created constituency of Smethwick.
He has been Hope Unlimited’s chair of trustees formore than 10 years, and oversaw its recent revamp.Hopkins’spath to Hope Unlimited came via an altogether different route.He served in the army, became a Tory MP in the coalition government in 2010, and was a minister for local government before losing his seat in 2017, since which time he has been a special adviser and a political consultant gun-for-hire.His first encounter with racist extremism came 50 years ago.“I’d be 12 years of age, sat at the stop for the 702 Braithwaite bus, and there was me and a young Pakistani-heritage guy, and a group of white lads just abusing him.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know what racism was,But the instinct sort of stepped in to say, ‘fuck off or I’ll smack you in the face’,”Hopkins was a member of Bradford council from 1998, the year after he joined the Conservative party,Like Josan, he believes passionately in the power of communities to resist the politics of division and hatred,They came by that belief, even while remaining loyal to their respective parties, by seeing what happens when people feel let down by politics.
“When mainstream parties stop doing what they should be doing,” Josan says, referring to the surge of the BNP in the mid-2000s, “stop representing the community, stop engaging, leave a vacuum, that makes it easy for populists to walk in.”“You’ve got to create environments where people can develop relationships, understand and respect each other,” Hopkins says.“Parts of Bradford are predominantly Pakistani heritage.You go to the Worth Valley, where I live, it’s predominantly white, and there’s very little interaction between the two.”Hope Unlimited gives out grants to community projects, “a little hub on the estate,” as Josan describes them: “Somewhere young people can get together, employment support can be provided, they might be running a food bank there, none of that can happen unless that facility exists.
Everybody’s struggling, and if that organisation goes, people end up with the dead end of nothing.”If those places don’t exist , there’s nowhere to congregate in a crisis.Hopkins remembers 7/7, a devastating time for Bradford, “perpetrators from not too far away, people from all communities were frightened.Hope Not Hate [the anti-racism group] brought together an event, maybe 10,000-strong, the police, the council, the NHS, the university, the third sector, but also, regular people.I wanted to go home and cuddle my daughter.
People recognised that we had to go to one place.We wanted reassurance.”“You saw it in Southport [in 2024] ” Josan adds, “the community came together very quickly, standing up and saying, ‘we’re not having this, we’re not going to let this divide us’.I genuinely believe that people are generally good.”Keeping the faith involves an element of tact: Josan and Hopkins are resolute about accepting different views.
“Diversity comes in lots of different ways,” Josan says, “when I see people put flags on lamp-posts, I don’t automatically assume, ‘Oh, they’re racist’.My constituency office has the union flag flying outside all year round, except St George’s Day, when we take it off for a St George’s flag.Black Country day, we put up the Black Country flag.We can let these symbols divide us, or we can let them bring us together.”“Politicians have a responsibility to address the reasons why people are angry,” Hopkins says, “But what we shouldn’t be doing is giving away our values to people who have become angry.
I go back to my party, and say, ‘you’ve got to represent everybody,You’ve got to look at the needs of people who aren’t throwing things’,”Josan sometimes asks at Labour party meetings, who is a school governor? Who volunteers? Who is a trustee? By the time he has finished, everyone has their hand up,“Our communities are full of people who want to do the best for the people around them,” says Josan,
From Hamnet to Bridget Christie: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
HamnetOut now Bring the tissues for this emotional Oscar hopeful which sees Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley star as none other than William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, whose son Hamnet died at the age of 11. It is based on the book by Maggie O’Farrell, and Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) directs.David Lynch: The DreamerBFI Southbank & BFI Imax, London, to 31 JanuaryMarking what would have been the director’s 80th birthday, this new season includes screenings of key films such as The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, as well as lesser-seen work, such as six of his short films and all eight episodes of his animated webseries Dumbland. There’s even a David Lynch VJ night and a quiz evening.GiantOut now Up and coming star Amir El-Masry toplines this sports drama depicting the rise of British boxer Prince Naseem Hamed, from untested no-mark all the way to world champion – with a little help from trainer Brendan Ingle (Pierce Brosnan)
The Guide #225: Everyone loves an origin story: Guardian debuts, from the Beatles to Donkey Kong
From Radiohead playing in backroom pubs as On a Friday to Timothée Chalamet’s early days as an Xbox YouTuber, it’s always fascinating to see the faltering first steps of famous folk. So in this week’s newsletter we’re launching a new regular feature, Origin stories, where we’ll look at how the Guardian first covered some now very familiar pop culture figures or institutions. And you’ll find out who the tyke above is, from a 1973 photoshoot, at the end.To the archives!The BeatlesThe Guardian, regrettably, wasn’t at the Cavern or the clubs of Hamburg for an on-the-ground report of the Fabs’ early years. Instead, the first appearance that we can find is in an article about the rise of “coffee dance clubs”, basement venues in Manchester where a “metropolitan mixture of artist, Continental girls who could be students, but may just be au pair, and young manual workers having a fairly inexpensive night on the town” would dance till they dropped (though apparently not drink much coffee)
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I too saw Spike Milligan in The Bed-Sitting Room as a 16-year-old (Letters, 30 December), on a trip organised by my church youth club. Due to the double selling of our tickets at the theatre in London, we were put in a box next to the stage. During the performance, Milligan climbed up the outside and peered over. He shouted: “There will come a time when all those in the box will sit at the back of the theatre and all those at the back will have the best seats!” He then added: “You’re not on complimentaries, are you?”On the way home, the coach driver stopped to see why there were scores of people on otherwise empty streets buying the late-night final. The date was 22 November 1963
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My friend Warren Lakin, who has died of a respiratory tract infection aged 71, for many years promoted live shows and tours by comedians, singers, poets and public speakers, latterly with Lakin McCarthy Productions, the company he ran with Mike McCarthy. Among the performers he worked with were Barry Cryer, Susan Calman, Andy Hamilton, Robin Ince, Ruby Wax, Jon Ronson and – most notably – his partner Linda Smith.Warren met Linda in the early 1980s when they were founder members of the leftwing Sheffield Popular Theatre, which, as well as producing plays, also staged the cabaret nights in which Linda performed her first standup routines.Warren was with Linda throughout her comedy career and her time as a Radio 4 stalwart. After her death in 2006, he curated her legacy with the same kind of energy that made him such a successful promoter
AI, Salman Rushdie and Elon Musk: the most anticipated documentaries of 2026
The landscape for nonfiction cinema is swift, fragile and constantly in flux in these absurd times; films we discuss now may not be released, and films we discuss a year from now may not even be the germ of an idea yet. But between the usual stable of celebrity retrospectives, music documentaries and the ongoing work to record the atrocities in Gaza, the documentary slate for 2026 already seems both full and promising. From the assassination attempt on Salman Rushdie to AI, a Billie Jean King retrospective to Elon Musk, here are 10 of the most hotly anticipated documentaries in 2026.In recent years, the Sundance film festival has become the premier destination for buzzy and/or prestige documentaries – three of the last five Oscar wins have gone to films that premiered in Utah, and the festival is now routinely alight with major celebrity retrospectives. Potentially combining both at the festival this year is Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, film-maker Alex Gibney’s nonfiction adaptation of the writer’s bestselling memoir, which detailed the 2022 onstage assassination attempt that cost him his vision in one eye
Stephen Colbert on ICE killing of Minnesota woman: ‘A senseless yet entirely predictable tragedy’
Late-night hosts expressed outrage over the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) officer in Minneapolis.Stephen Colbert opened Thursday’s Late Show on a somber note, following the killing of Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning. “It’s a senseless yet entirely predictable tragedy,” said Colbert. “And our hearts go out to Renee Good’s loved ones, friends and the community where it happened.“By now we’ve all seen the video,” he continued, referring to multiple videos shot by witnesses which show Good’s car appearing to turn away from the officer, who then fires shots into the side of her vehicle as she drove
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