Left News Wire

Minneapolis, MN – On Tuesday, December 9, at least 100 immigrant rights advocates packed the Minneapolis sanctuary ordinance public hearing to demand a stronger separation between the Minneapolis Police Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Community members witnessed the Minneapolis Police Department assist ICE in an operation in the community on June 3 and spoke up against this collaboration.

The groups Minnesota Immigrant Movement and the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) organized community members to show up in support of immigrant rights.

Testimonies demanded a stronger sanctuary ordinance that prohibits cover-ups, collusion and crowd control, with real consequences for officers who violate the city’s sanctuary ordinance. Members of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee delivered 2890 petition signatures to the city council in support of these demands.

Pressure from immigrant rights activists has already made an impact, with Mayor Jacob Frey releasing an executive order stating that certain city property cannot be used to stage civil immigration enforcement activity. This order came after organizers staged a sit-in at the mayor’s office. Public pressure also led to MPD Chief O'Hara ordering officers to intervene to prevent violent ICE misconduct.

Miguel Hernandez, a member of MIRAC, testified, “The voices of our immigrant leaders are being pushed into hiding and I hope I can do them justice – we knew this was coming. In a year’s time, history tells itself. 2 million people who looked like me in the 1930s were taken, even if they have this,” gesturing to his passport. In the background, activists held signs that read “ICE out of Minneapolis.”

On Thursday, December 11, Minneapolis city council members voted unanimously to support this stronger sanctuary ordinance. Mayor Frey has five business days to either sign it off or veto it.

If you are a Minneapolis resident, call Mayor Frey in support of this stronger separation ordinance.

Immigrant rights groups, including MIRAC, will continue to stand up against ICE and let them know they are not welcome in Minnesota. The fight doesn’t end here!

#MinneapolisMN #ImmigrantRights #ICE #MIRAC

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Minneapolis, MN – On December 8, despite subzero temperatures and snow, 300 people gathered at Mayday Plaza for a rally in solidarity with the Somali and Afghan communities in Minneapolis. The event was organized by the Free Palestine Coalition, with a wide range of grass roots organizations participating in the event.

The event was organized in response to the racist rhetoric that has been directed at the Somali community from the Trump administration. While ICE has been active in Minnesota since at least June of this year, the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to direct ICE agents to also focus on detaining members of the Somali community. The Twin Cities has the largest concentration of Somalis in the United States.

“It’s been an incredibly emotionally taxing time,” said Malika Dahir, one of the event organizers. “We are a small community in a large landscape of the United States and in Minnesota quietly living our lives, and now we’re on a national stage getting national exposure being identified and targeted based on how you look. I’m also getting reports from our community members of people who just look Somali, whether they’re Ethiopian or Kenyan – getting picked up and targeted.”

The event happened less than 12 hours after a mosque in Prior Lake caught fire, although the cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Montana Hirsch, an organizer with the MN Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) stated, “We did have a recent win – Jacob Frey made an executive order last week that said ICE cannot use public parking lots or ramps to stage raids! This is not Frey doing this out of the goodness of his own heart. This was won after MIRAC and other immigrant rights groups and all of us fought for this. We sat in Frey’s office, got thousands of petition signatures and demanded this! This is a win that only happened because we fought for it!”

Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Minnesota branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said, “We have heard multiple – and it’s been reported by local channels as well – of incidents of sexual assault, incidents of police brutality that has been committed by ICE through this operation. We are learning of family separation of children, of U.S. lawful residents. We believe this is the tactic of the ICE operation.”

Protesters expressed commitment to continue to protest if these attacks continue.

#MinneapolisMN #MN #ImmigrantRights #Somali #ICE #Afghan #Trump #MIRAC

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Ultranationalist Israeli politicians, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, wore golden noose-shaped lapel pins to a meeting on Monday in order to show their “commitment” to advancing a widely condemned bill to mandate the death penalty for “terrorists” who kill Israelis. The pins resemble the yellow ribbon pins that Israeli leaders have worn throughout their genocide to to…

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A leaked memo by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi directs the Justice Department and FBI to compile a list of groups that may be labeled “domestic terrorism” organizations based on political views related to immigration, gender and U.S. policy. The memo was obtained by independent investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein, who joins us to discuss how it expands on President Donald Trump’s NSPM-7…

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Support for the Green party in Britain has been steadily rising for the past few decades. However, few predicted that when Zack Polanski took office as Green party leader in September, membership would surge from 70,000 to 150,000 members in a matter of months. According to the latest polling, the party’s share of the vote has soared too: growing from 10 to 17 per cent.

In front of a live audience at EartH Hackney, Zack tells the story of his first few months in office, and how the party’s plans from two months ago are already outdated. What are the core values, red lines and top priorities for the Greens in this new era? How broad a church will the Green party be? Is it a socialist party, or a party with socialists in it? And what exactly is their strategy to take on the floundering Labour party, as well as the looming threat of Reform?

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Recently, Elon Musk announced that his Twitter/X platform would be revealing the location data that every user posts from. People have anticipated this day for some time, as they suspected many far-right accounts are actually foreign individuals cosplaying as Western reactionaries to farm clicks:

Inevitable West slipped up again and quickly deleted it. pic.twitter.com/t4kmk5pPZU

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) June 11, 2025

Now, people are starting to see the location data, and as expected, many of the site’s most prominent far-right nationalists are actually international grifters:

Confirmation that this account is Indian. pic.twitter.com/myNTIrfTPR

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) November 23, 2025

And as we’ll get to, one of the exposed accounts was reportedly the US Department of Homeland Security.

Chaos with Twitter location data

The accounts exposed via the Twitter location data update so far include the following:

We have a new heat map showing where most MAGA accounts on X operate pic.twitter.com/McarTTVh7o

— Right Wing Cope (@RightWingCope) November 23, 2025

Location: India https://t.co/YfrQ1MbpUe

— Philip Proudfoot (@PhilipProudfoot) November 23, 2025

Revealing the real location is the best thing that has ever happened on this app! pic.twitter.com/ZGzObksaJO

— PaulC (@PaulConRO) November 23, 2025

Here’s a fun story, remember all of those “I’m an independent Trump supporting woman” accounts on X that pretended to be real people in the US supporting trump?

Due to recent location updates, we now know almost all of them are based in Thailand.

Let’s take a look pic.twitter.com/7kRdlcPqHS

— Benjamin Strick (@BenDoBrown) November 22, 2025

The Right Wing Cope account published a ‘heat map’:

We have a new heat map showing where most MAGA accounts on X operate pic.twitter.com/McarTTVh7o

— Right Wing Cope (@RightWingCope) November 23, 2025

Many have reported that Twitter ‘paused’ or ‘ended’ the programme:

Twitter exposes location of accounts Thousands of MAGA propaganda accounts are non-US Twitter pauses feature pic.twitter.com/KbwwI5hq1G

— nyara (@nyaraVT) November 22, 2025

It was difficult to prove this, as Twitter is incredibly buggy, so sometimes different people have different user experiences. At the same time, the feature is back online for most.

‘Home’ land

There’s no way Musk didn’t know the Twitter location data update would expose right-wing grifter accounts. Saying that, he probably didn’t expect it to expose the US government:

So…X activated locations last night which showed US gov accounts like DHS opened and operating from Israel. Then 20 mins later, X deactivated the feature and today, Gov accts are “exempt” from the location feature. https://t.co/8kiU541EDg pic.twitter.com/3DvM2NkrEM

— GenXGirl (@GenXGirl1994) November 23, 2025

BREAKING:

Screen recording shows the department of homeland security is based out of Israel…

Is this why the location feature was abruptly removed? pic.twitter.com/Uki6W3eb1M

— ADAM (@AdameMedia) November 22, 2025

While many didn’t find the situation funny, the (alleged) Israelis running the Homeland Security account are not among them:

https://t.co/Xe6MVghyfV pic.twitter.com/4PJNovdEQT

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) November 22, 2025

This isn’t funny. You’re the Department of Homeland security and you’re not even based in my homeland.

Treason. pic.twitter.com/6E2NcugOUG

— Belthan (@Belthan_) November 22, 2025

The account data now says they’re based in the United States, but it has a circled ‘i’ next to it (what some people are describing as an ‘exclamation point’):

As people have highlighted, the symbol signifies that the account is using a VPN to hide their actual location:

Remember to always look for the exclamation mark on the opposite side of where it says “account based in” when they post screenshots of the new location feature. It means they’re using a VPN and keep an eye on the people who crop it out.

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) November 22, 2025

Wild times

Fair play to Elon Musk, this change to his social media site is actually a positive one. Does it make up for his years of negative choices? Not even slightly, but it has at least exposed some of the worst people on the website.

Featured image via Daniel Oberhaus (Flickr) / Public Domain

By Willem Moore

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Keir Starmer took to Facebook to claim that he had a hard upbringing. And, the majority couldn’t help but laugh. The prime minister said:

Growing up, we didn’t have much. I remember our landline being cut off because we couldn’t pay the bill. I know what it’s like to sit around your kitchen table worrying about the cost of living. People want more money in their pocket to do the things that matter to them; give the kids a treat, go out for a meal, have a holiday. That’s why the upcoming Budget will be a Labour Budget, with Labour values running right through it; focused on protecting our public services and improving the cost of living. That’s what I’m focused on. That’s what this government is all about.

Starmer: not the best approach

Respondents quickly ratioed the post with 26,000 laugh emojis and 24,000 comments compared to 2,700 likes at the time of writing. And a number of users pointed out a flaw in his story of early woes:

You must have had a few quid to have a landline most of us used a phone box then.

In 1970, when Starmer was growing up, only 35% of households had a landline.

Another user commented:

Had your land line cut off ; your dad owned a factory !!

Whether Starmer’s dad owned a factory is unclear, but he did own Oxted Tool Company. Besides, the idea that a person’s background means they cannot join the elite through protecting them in parliament is questionable. Margaret Thatcher was born into a lower middle class family with a grocer for a father and she conducted far-reaching class war in favour of elites, privatising public assets, deregulating the financial sector, and crushing unions.

On the flipside, Friedrich Engels was born into an upper class German family and he went on to co-author the Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx. These examples show why Starmer’s ‘my childhood was tough’ mantra falls flat, on top of the fact he’s lying: he was clearly reasonably well-off.

Starmer publicly mentioned his father’s job as a ‘toolmaker’ at least 29 times from 2020-2024.

Starmer’s government

What’s more, it’s clear that this Labour government is not “protecting our public services” nor “improving the cost of living”. Since Starmer came to power, NHS privatisation has increased by up to 71% in some areas and at an average of 10% in just one year. This means private corporations leeching more money from public healthcare budgets.

And Labour is doing nothing to address the root causes of the manufactured cost of living crisis. In the past five years, UK food prices have gone up by 37% under the neoliberal system Starmer is protecting. Over the same period, Tesco’s operating profit has skyrocketed from £1.8bn in 2020/21 to £3.1bn in 2024/25, an increase of 72%.

And, as of 2023, the super rich extracted a whopping 45% of the UK’s entire national income in profiteering rent, meaning everyone could almost be twice as well off. On the flipside, only 55% of national income went to working people.

While there’s a role for the free market with small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), it’s clear that capitalist extraction shouldn’t serve as a blueprint of the whole of society. Nonetheless, Starmer ditched his pledges to bring key utilities back into public ownership, which would reduce costs for every household and business.

No one’s bothered about Starmer 50 years ago – what’s important is what he’s doing now. As he descends further in the polls, it’s time for him to pack it in.

Featured image via the Canary

By James Wright

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Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee released a report Thursday detailing how much more the average American family in every US state is having to spend monthly to cover the rising costs of food, shelter, energy, and other necessities under the leadership of President Donald Trump. The panel released its report on the same day the Trump administration was supposed to…

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Sarah, a 44-year-old single mother in Maryland, was down to the last $20 on her EBT card as of Monday, wondering how she would feed herself and her two preteen boys as the government shutdown dragged on. She’d been out of work since May, after the Trump administration made sweeping cuts to federal contracts and eliminated her job in public health.

She had been rationing her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits for over a month, unsure of when, if ever, the deposit would hit her account again. “It’s been awful,” said Sarah, who asked to be identified by her first name only because she fears speaking out could hurt her job search. But the Maryland mom said she was willing to sacrifice if it meant millions of Americans could afford their health insurance.

“The pitch they made, it made sense,” Sarah told The Intercept. “Everyone knew it was going to be painful, but it was important … and they just wasted it all.”

On Sunday, a group of eight Democratic senators, including Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., cut a deal with Republican leadership to end the government shutdown. They did it without forcing Republicans to agree to any of the major concessions Democrats said they were fighting to secure, which included a reversal of Medicaid cuts and an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies. The deal is slated for a vote in the House on Wednesday evening, and it looks likely to pass.

[

Related

Key Senate Dem Says Party Caved on Shutdown to Make a Symbolic Point About the GOP](https://theintercept.com/2025/11/10/democrats-republicans-government-shutdown-aca-deal/)

While Senate Republican leadership agreed to hold a vote on the subsidies, the legislation is more than likely dead in the water, especially since Democrats forfeited their main piece of leverage. As a result, tens of millions of Americans are projected to see their premiums skyrocket, and an estimated 7.8 million low-income Americans will outright lose their insurance through Medicaid.

The Intercept spoke with four SNAP recipients who said they’re furious that Democrats squandered the sacrifice they made for the last month to ensure access to health care for millions of Americans — just as voters rewarded the party for finally fighting back against Republicans with major electoral victories last week.

“We sacrificed and we would continue to sacrifice because we understood what the stakes were. People’s health care was at stake,” said Delight Worthyn, 67, a SNAP recipient with lupus living in New Haven, Connecticut. “And that they would cave for nothing after we have all gone through. … I only feel betrayed.”

Though the Supreme Court has paused a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration pay full SNAP benefits for the month of November, some recipients have started receiving full or partial benefits. The SNAP funding available varies by state.

“Don’t talk about me and my food insecurity to justify kicking people like me off of my health care.”

Sasha Slansky, 33, a full-time master’s student at Queens College at the City University of New York who works a series of odd jobs to pay her bills, said it’s “insulting” for Democrats to use SNAP recipients as a justification for caving to Republicans and President Donald Trump**.** In his floor speech, Durbin invoked SNAP recipients as one of the reasons he was agreeing to Republicans’ shutdown deal.

“Don’t talk about me and my food insecurity to justify kicking people like me off of my health care,” said Slansky, noting that Democrats seem not to have taken into account the overlap between SNAP recipients and people who receive Medicaid and their insurance through the Affordable Care Act. “It’s insane, and it’s insulting, and it’s also just so wildly out of touch.”

Nearly 30 million of the 38.3 million people who received SNAP in 2022 were enrolled in Medicaid. The number of SNAP recipients has since risen to 42 million people, as of this year.

“I’m also on Medicaid,” Slansky said. “And as Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani and many, many Democrats have made clear, this has the potential to kick [millions] of Americans off of Medicaid, which likely includes me.”

Natalie, a delivery driver living in Lynnwood, Washington, said she managed to spend only half of her SNAP benefits for the month, stretching meals that would normally last her two days to three or four. She received her benefits for the first time since October on Tuesday, but she said it doesn’t erase the hardship of the last month.

Though the Supreme Court has paused a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration pay full SNAP benefits for the month of November, some recipients have started receiving full or partial benefits. The SNAP funding available varies by state.

“It felt like we were making a small sacrifice, skipping [meals], because we felt like we were doing something to help save people, and that we were doing something good for the country, and to have our only leverage just handed over,” said Natalie, who asked to be identified by her first name because she’s transgender and wanted to avoid transphobic harassment. “It feels like it wasn’t for anything.”

[

Related

The President Is Perfectly Fine If You Starve](https://theintercept.com/2025/11/07/government-shutdown-snap-trump-hunger/)

Natalie said she wishes that Democrats had built off of their electoral victories in New York, Virginia, New Jersey, and California earlier this month to pressure Republicans, instead of immediately disarming when they had the upper hand.

“The MAGA Republicans were on the ropes. They were getting the blame. Why didn’t they keep using that and pushing the narrative, the truth, on social media and traditional news that Republicans are doing this to people?” said Natalie. “That was a really strong message, and it was one that people were willing to sacrifice for.”

The post SNAP Recipients Crushed by Democrats Caving on Shutdown: “They Just Wasted It All” appeared first on The Intercept.

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Actors and filmmakers who have spoken out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and in solidarity with Palestinians against oppression and occupation are being blacklisted by media giant Paramount since its takeover by Zionist billionaire David Ellison, according to reports in Israeli media.

The McCarthyite move signals what is likely to become a systematic campaign to suppress pro-Palestine voices in the industry under the guise of combating supposed ‘antisemitism’, which the Israel lobby assiduously — and antisemitically — conflates with opposition to Israel’s genocide, occupation and apartheid.

Of Paramount importance

The $7.7 billion merger with Ellison’s Skydance Media – he is the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, one of the biggest donors to Israeli occupation forces and pro-Israel causes – has also seen the appointment of “notorious racist” and “genocide denier” Bari Weiss, a vocal defender of Israel’s ‘war’ (that is, slaughter of Palestinians) in Gaza, as editor-in-chief of Paramount-owned CBS News.

Weiss, who has said she is “happy to be called a Zionist fanatic,” is known for her anti-diversity views. Add to this attacks on the campus anti-genocide protest movement.

“If I get killed by Israeli bombs or my family is harmed, I blame Bari Weiss and her likes” — Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer after Weiss claimed he had joked about dead Israeli babies; Alareer was murdered, along with family members, by Israeli forces in a targeted bombing during the genocide.

Weiss was called out this week by a Code Pink anti-genocide protester as she addressed a right-wing gathering:

https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ikW_InIwtmMmrtMe1.mp4

Weiss’s far-right politics and lack of experience or qualification have been highlighted even by milquetoast UK ‘mainstream’ media. In a video take-down on his show last month, US-based UK commentator John Oliver said of Weiss that:

she’s never run a TV network, has no experience directing television coverage, and as one 60 Minutes producer pointed out, is not even a reporter. That is true. She didn’t come up through the news side of a newspaper, but through the opinion pages, which are a very different thing.

But she’s ‘fanatically’ pro-Israel and that’s apparently all that matters.

Paramount’s decision to blacklist actors who stand against mass murder and to side with genocide shouldn’t be taken lightly. It should be treated like any organisation that supports the genocide or blacklists people for doing the right thing.

If you have a Paramount subscription, cancel it — and if you see a film produced by it, stay away. Meet blacklist with boycott and give Paramount the Starbucks and McDonald’s treatment.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) has declared a critical incident, which GMB union has labelled a “crisis waiting to happen”.

We have declared a Critical Incident due to sustained pressures across the Trust, in particular in A&E. Please only use our A&E in a life-threatening accident or emergency, using other services such as GPs, NHS111 and pharmacies in all other cases. pic.twitter.com/rzfSjVELZi

— Nottingham University Hospitals (@nottmhospitals) November 4, 2025

NHS: critical in Nottingham

Workers raised the alarm on Sunday 2 November, as they observed 38 ambulances parked outside Queen’s Medical Centre. The overflowing A&E department forced patients and paramedics to wait inside their vehicles for up to 12 hours.

The backlog meant that the majority of the ambulance fleet was stuck waiting. This meant that paramedics were unable to respond to other 999 calls.

One 88-year-old with sepsis had to wait four hours for the department to let her. Sepsis is a life-threatening and fast-moving medical emergency, and waiting can be the difference between life and death.

NUH then declared the critical incident just after 4pm on Tuesday, November 4. At that time, the trust reported 24 ambulances waiting outside A&E and “large numbers” of people in the department.

Colin Todd, GMB Organiser, said:

This is a crisis waiting to happen; it could happen again next week and patients would again be left without the critical support our members provide.

This is an issue that has been building for years; now patients are suffering.

We need a root and branch action plan to resolve the crisis in emergency, primary and social care.

The trust has reported that issues with the rollout of new electronic patient record software are adding to the current pressure.

The software, which belongs to Nervecentre, supposedly “drives digital transformation”. The NHS is rolling it out across several trusts.

But clearly, the software is already creating more problems with its ‘slow performance’.

The trust is reminding people to only use A&E in a “life-threatening accident or emergency”. However, planned surgeries and appointments are going ahead as usual.

This comes as a brand new state-of-the-art National Rehabilitation Centre is set to be opened by NUH.

Take a sneak peek at the brand new, state-of-the-art National Rehabilitation Centre, run and staffed by @nottmhospitals, designed from the ground up to help people rebuild their lives after life-changing illness or injuries pic.twitter.com/CfS2XkPOYP

— National Rehabilitation Centre NRC UK (@NRCrehabUK) November 5, 2025

Mismanagement of the NHS

Of course, this would probably not be happening if Wes Streeting was not royally fucking up the management of the NHS.

The crisis in NUH – it was entirely predictable. The Independent reported that over the summer, the trust made more than 500,000 patients wait over 12 hours to be seen in A&E. This was more than the total number for the entire winter period of 2021/22. Hospitals are already at breaking point. Hospitals are treating patients in makeshift wards. This includes corridors, offices, and even a Costa Coffee cafe, due to a severe shortage of beds.

Clearly, the writing has been on the wall for some time. So what has Streeting been doing about all this in preparation for winter?

In true Weasel Wes fashion, he has refused to give doctors pay rises – or any pay deal at all. Pathetically, he offered to pay exam fees and Royal College memberships, along with moving up plans to create training place, but he has not budged on pay rises.

Instead of a fair pay deal, he’s been out trying to manufacture public consent for his crappy offer to doctors who hold people’s lives in their hands. Naturally, to do that, he blamed underpaid and massively overworked doctors for the strikes – when it’s obviously actually all on him.

Feature image via David Lally/ Wikimedia Commons

By HG

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Earlier today, Rachel Reeves gave a teaser for her fast-approaching budget. While teasers can work well for upcoming movies, they prove less effective for something that no one is looking forward to. In fact, many are probably dreading the budget speech:

Reeves, making a speech on he economy at 8 in the morning, communicates just one message: she’s panicked, and she and Labout are scared witless by the decisions they have to make whilst clueless about what to do.

— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) November 4, 2025

Rabbit in the headlights

While Reeves’ speech was vague, people have interpreted it as meaning she will raise taxes:

Rachel Reeves delivers big pitch-rolling speech for tax-rising budget later this month… after promising last year taxes wouldn’t have to go up again.

But chancellor says: “My job is to deal with the world as I find it, not the world as I might wish it to be”. pic.twitter.com/AOtC9cIOdG

— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) November 4, 2025

David Osland was among those arguing Reeves should be instating some sort of wealth tax:

The super-rich pay a lower rate of tax on their unearned income than ‘greedy’ nurses do on the £30k they work shifts all year round to earn. If Rachel Reeves needs to raise taxes, that’s where she should be looking.

— David__Osland (@David__Osland) November 4, 2025

He noted this isn’t unreasonable when you compare it to how much graduates pay on student loans:

In a country that imposes a de facto 9% tax on graduates earning the average wage, the case against a 2% tax on multimillionaires looks remarkably weak

— David__Osland (@David__Osland) November 4, 2025

Economist Richard Murphy described Reeves’ performance as follows:

Rachel Reeves is panicking. There is no other description that I can offer of her behaviour this morning.

She stood up at exactly 08:10 to coincide with the news cycle and presented a speech at a podium in Downing Street that was unprecedented. Three weeks or so before her budget, she is offering an explanation of why it is going to be truly so terrible for everyone in the UK except the City of London. She looked frightened; she acted frightened; and she will have panicked everyone but the City of London.

Murphy has four potential explanations for Reeves’ performance:

She’s getting her excuses in early because she thinks a market crash is happening.She’s reacting to Nigel Farage’s claim there will be a sovereign debt crisis.She’s seen figures for the Office for Budget Responsibility that are so bad she feels the need to lay the groundwork for what’s coming.She’s folded to pressure from the finance sector in the City of London.

Murphy is leaning towards the latter.

Growth

Novara’s Aaron Bastani suggested this was all very predictable:

Reeves is going to increase income tax.

This is a complete failure of the media, who were broadly incapable of scrutinising what they were saying in opposition.

They had no plans for growth, or generating more public revenue. Zero. pic.twitter.com/LW7yqoyjVM

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) November 4, 2025

Is Bastani forgetting that Labour made ‘GROWTH, GROWTH, GROWTH’ their slogan?

Investment in Britain.

Jobs in Britain.

Growth in Britain. pic.twitter.com/z3cFtKapCS

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) October 9, 2025

We know Bastani is saying Labour had no plan to make this growth happen, but what if simply repeating ‘growth’ was the plan?

If it was, it certainly hasn’t worked.

There was another big problem with Labour’s growth strategy, and it’s that growth wouldn’t necessarily improve our conditions. We had growth (albeit meagre) for most of the 2010 – 2024 period; at the same time, we experienced:

Growing in-work poverty.Increased child poverty.Worsening public services.

Starmer’s growth argument was the age-old aphorism that ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’. The problem is we’ve seen this doesn’t happen anymore, and Labour has no clue how to change that.

Panic in the City of London

We don’t know what Reeves hoped to get out of all this, but the primary result so far has been a market slump. To be fair, there are many good decisions she could have made which would have caused panic in the financial sector – a sector which has far too much power – we just don’t think Labour are going to make a good decision here.

Featured image via Times News

By Willem Moore

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