Why is Reform UK threatening Green areas with migrant detention centres?
Coming just days before millions go to the polls, Zia Yusuf’s announcement that a Reform government would “prioritise” the siting of migrant detention centres in areas with Green MPs or councils was certainly eye-catching.“That means areas like right here in Brighton,” Reform’s shadow home secretary said with barely concealed relish in a video in which he paced the beachfront at the constituency that elected Britain’s first Green MP.The policy was accompanied by the launch of a webpage where curious voters can enter their postcode to “check” the polls and see if their area was likely to be the site of a detention centre.Inputting E8 1EA – the postcode of Hackney town hall, where the Greens are this week tipped to win council elections – brings up a red box with an exclamation sign and the warning: “Yes – on the list.Your area will be prioritised to receive a detention centre under this policy.
Stand with Reform to change that.”Cue condemnation from Reform’s opponents on the left and right – the Greens and Labour described the policy as “disgusting” and “grotesque”, while the Conservatives dismissed it as “not a serious policy” and one “made up on the spot for a social media video”.Imran Hussain, director of external affairs at Refugee Council, described it as “unworkable and profoundly un-British”.YouGov polling released on Tuesday indicated that 45% of more than 4,000 adults polled on the same day did not believe it was acceptable for a government to base decisions that affect individual constituencies on which party voters supported at a general election.Even among Reform’s own voters, 37% believed such decisions were unacceptable, with 34% believing it was acceptable to do so.
So what are Reform playing at? At one level, the simple need to garner attention on social media was clearly a factor.By Tuesday, the video in Brighton had garnered 3.7m views on the X account of Yusuf who, like Green leader Zack Polanski, is without the relative benefits of having a parliamentary podium.But a broader strategy of sorts also appears to lie behind the policy, which appears to have been largely cooked up in Yusuf’s own office, a product of a supposedly new party that Nigel Farage has characterised as less the “one man band” of old.As one party insider put it: “Zia’s office moves in marvellous and mysterious ways.
”Above all is the desire of Reform to establish itself and the Greens as the two real choices in front of the electorate this week, particularly in English council elections.“It’s clear that the failed uniparty era is over and there is a battle for the soul of our country between Reform and the Greens,” said Yusuf, who has previously repeatedly – albeit without luck – challenged Polanski to a live, head to head debate.The primary audience for the policy is also Reform’s base away from areas where the Greens are expected to make gains, such as one-time Labour strongholds in London and other cities.“Reform are a very modern political party, which farms outrage and wants people to be angry, so in a low turnout election – as local elections are – this is about ensuring that their voters continue to have something to feel strongly about,” said John McTernan, a former political adviser to Tony Blair.“Reform are genuinely an authoritarian party and they say that they want to deport tens of thousands of people because they really want to do it.
This new policy is the rhetorical flourish to get people talking about that policy.”Reform’s core deportation policy was outlined last August when the party unveiled its “Operation Restoring Justice” document, in which it pledged to deport hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, pay despotic regimes such as the Taliban to take them back, and rip up the UK’s postwar human rights commitments.A five-year “emergency programme” would identify, detain and deport illegal immigrants.Less noticed this week was how Yusuf’s new announcement marked a pivot from that original document.No mention was made of Hackney, Lambeth or Brighton on that occasion.
Instead, the party said that Secure Immigration Removal Centres (SIRCs) for the detention of up to 24,000 people would be built in “remote parts of the country”,Whether the pivot was also the result of focus grouped thinking from would-be voters is not clear – though certainly the party has the sort of war chest to fund such research,However, what cannot be discounted is the battle for a not insignificant number of voters considering a vote either for the Greens or Reform – parties which on paper are diametrically opposed but both present as populist change-agents,Reform’s policy has not gone unnoticed among Green activists pounding the streets in areas where the party believes it is in a strong position to benefit from voter desire for a change,“It hasn’t come up when we knock on doors here and talk to people who are – quite obviously – much more concerned about bread and butter things,” said James Meadway, a one-time adviser to former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who is now standing to be a Green councillor in the Bromley North ward of Tower Hamlets council.
At its root, Meadway saw Reform’s policy as an attempt to speak to its core voters,But he added: “The other thing we are seeing is that even where we are finding people who are torn between voting Reform or Green, or not voting,We’re talking about people who are upset at the state of the world and who want something to change,”
Richard Dawkins concludes AI is conscious, even if it doesn’t know it
When Richard Dawkins met Claudia it was like a whirlwind romance. Over three days last week, a conversation bounced between the evolutionary biologist and the AI bot he called Claudia. “She” wrote poems for him in the manner of Keats and Betjeman and laughed at his “delightful” jokes. Dawkins gently admonished Claudia to avoid showing off. Together, they reflected on the sadness of the AI’s possible “death”
GameStop shares fall 10% after CEO skirts questions over eBay acquisition details
GameStop’s shares fell more than 10% on Monday as questions emerged about how the company would finance its surprise $55.5bn bid for eBay.In an interview with CNBC, Ryan Cohen, GameStop’s CEO, skirted repeated inquiries about how the video games retailer could afford the deal, saying he didn’t understand the questions.A letter published on GameStop’s website outlines a half-cash, half-stock proposal to acquire eBay at $125 a share, using about $9.4bn in “cash on hand”, and a $20bn in potential debt financing from TD Securities
AI platforms reference Nigel Farage more than other leaders when prompted on UK politics, study shows
AI platforms are more likely to reference Nigel Farage than any other UK leader when prompted about British politics, according to an AI search analytics firm.“We are confident in saying that Reform are showing up significantly more than you would expect,” said Malte Landwehr, an expert at Peec AI, the firm that did the research. “So they’re doing something right when it comes to LLM [large language model] visibility.”Peec’s research tested leading AI models – including ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overview – on their responses to 5,000 different structured prompts related to British politics, including the economy and jobs, immigration, healthcare and crime. These prompts were run repeatedly over the course of several weeks, generating over 280,000 data points
Vine video-sharing app is back – and battling AI slop
As a pioneer of the short-form video format, Vine has been credited as one of the most influential – if short-lived – social media platforms.The app, which allowed users to record a looping six seconds of video, boomed in popularity after its launch in 2013, spawning a plethora of viral comedy sketches and internet memes. It hit 100 million monthly active users at its peak and helped launch the careers of influencers such as Logan Paul.It was snapped up by Twitter – now X – soon after its creation, but closed in 2017 after the platform failed to make the sums add up.Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder, is now backing an attempt to bring back a revamped version of the much-loved platform with a new philosophy: to be the short-form video app offering “freedom from AI slop”
GameStop makes $55.5bn takeover offer for eBay
US video games retailer GameStop has offered to buy eBay for $55.5bn (£41bn) in an unsolicited bid that its boss warned could turn hostile if the proposal is rebuffed by eBay’s board.GameStop, which has quietly accumulated a 5% stake in eBay, said it was willing to pay $125 a share, split 50-50 between cash and stock.It is an ambitious move by the games company, which catapulted to fame during the meme-stock craze of 2021 but is worth far less than its takeover target. GameStop had a market valuation of roughly $12bn on Friday before its bid, while eBay – originally launched as a side hobby by its founder Pierre Omidyar in 1995 – is worth about $46bn
AI facial recognition oversight lagging far behind technology, watchdogs warn
Britain’s biometrics watchdogs have warned that national oversight of AI-powered face scanning to catch criminals is lagging far behind the technology’s rapid growth.With the Metropolitan police almost doubling the number of faces they scan in London over the past 12 months and a rising use of the technology by retailers in the UK, Prof William Webster, the biometrics commissioner for England and Wales, said the “slow pace of legislation was trying to catch up with the real world” and “the cart had gone before the horse”.Dr Brian Plastow, who holds the same role in Scotland, warned the technology was “nowhere near as effective as the police claim it is” and said there was a “patchwork legal framework” throughout the UK. He said in England and Wales, police were “really just marking their own homework”.The watchdogs said new laws were needed to govern when and how police forces used live facial recognition technology, with a new regulator to clamp down on misuse
Ann Barrett obituary
Dame Shirley Porter obituary
Slow Alzheimer’s diagnoses ‘mean UK patients missing out on experimental treatments’
‘Group is a lifesaver’: strangers buy Wetherspoon’s meals for homeless people through app
Parliament must heed public opinion on assisted dying | Letters
Man produces sperm from testicular tissue frozen as a child in breakthrough trial