The Milburn review presents itself as a plan to help young people into work, but Dr DYLAN MURPHY argues it is laying the groundwork for a harsher benefits regime
A GAGGLE of far-right transphobes descended upon my town in south-east London a couple of weeks ago to protest against Magical Storytelling, a drag queen storytelling event for kids at the Honor Oak pub.
The protest was organised by the uber-conservative, so-called “student movement” Turning Point UK (TPUK) — though few, if any, of their mob that I saw resemble the fresh-faced youngsters used in the organisation’s online paraphernalia.
And the same morons are planning another ruckus for this Friday morning (March 10) at 11am at The Great Exhibition pub in East Dulwich, south London. Strangely, though, the pub says there isn’t and never has been a drag queen storytelling event scheduled to take place at the pub on that date. Still, the locals and London-based anti-racists are planning to oppose them.
TPUK is the British franchise of Turning Point USA and is apparently backed by Tory backbench MP Marco Longhi. It claims to be the largest conservative activist movement in this country. Well, I hope it is, because it only managed to muster up about 30 people for this crusade against drag queens reading books to children.
“It’s wigs and make-up, what’re you so afraid of?” I chanted with the roughly 300 anti-fascist counter-protesters who blocked the far-right goons from getting anywhere near my local.
TPUK’s raison d'être, it seems, is to provide fuel for the culture war and to make sure that the piss of GB News viewers and The S*n readers never stops boiling.
Its latest tactic is to drum up fear of the far-right folk devil du jour: trans, non-binary and genderfluid people.
If true, the photo’s history is a damning indictment of the systematic exploitation of non-Western journalists by Western media organisations – a pattern that persists today, posit KATE CANTRELL and ALISON BEDFORD
Two inspring books — that’s your New Year’s musing from me on January 2 2026
SYMON HILL looks at Tommy Robinson’s bid to use Christmas to spread division and hate — and reminds us that’s the opposite of Jesus’s message
Britain’s proud asylum history, from sheltering the Kindertransport escaping Hitler to Basque children fleeing fascist Spain, required tireless campaigning against persistent opposition — and it’s up to all of us to do our part today, writes SABINA PRICE


