Day: May 13, 2025

Birmingham, Brighton, London and Manchester suspend participation over lack of protection for trans rights

The UK’s largest Pride organisers have suspended political party participation in their events in “unequivocal solidarity” with the transgender community.

In a joint statement, the organisers of Pride events in Birmingham, Brighton, London and Manchester said the move was a “direct call for accountability and a refusal to platform those who have not protected our rights” after the UK supreme court ruling last month.

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Home secretary says PM’s words on immigration were ‘completely different’ when asked about comparisons with notorious Rivers of Blood speech

Good morning. Yesterday Keir Starmer unveiled the government’s immigration white paper, a significant policy intervention on a topic that is near the top of the public’s list of concerns. Yet today the debate is dominated not by the actual policies – even though they could cause big problems in some sectors of the economy, as we explain here – but by the language Starmer used to defend them.

To recap, in one section of his speech yesterday Starmer said:

Nations depend on rules – fair rules. Sometimes they’re written down, often they’re not, but either way, they give shape to our values. They guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to one another. Now, in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.

While, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.

They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted.

Labour and Labour governments have always listened to people in terms of their concerns about their security and the opportunities that they want to have for themselves and their children. And when we see something that we understand that people believe is unfair, then we are going to take action on that. That’s what the British people expect us to do, that’s what Labour governments do.

I don’t think it’s right to make those comparisons [between Starmer’s speech and Powell’s]. It’s completely different. And the prime minister said yesterday, I think almost in the same breath, talked about the diverse country that we are and that being part of our strength.

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