Sarah Murphy
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13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Sarah Murphy
@13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
43K followers 1.4K following 2.9K posts
Welcome to my shiny new echo chamber… hoping here that I can keep it clean and tidy and ‘woke’.

IRL - lawyer (of the lefty, campaigning variety).
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13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
If people no longer want to come here, it’ll be because the country is fucked. Not because we’re a success story but have closed our borders to immigrants.

Ps. We will not be a success story without immigration.
As long as we remain a relatively prosperous, law-abiding and safe country then there will always be people wanting to come here. To pretend otherwise is not only to attempt to fool your own voters, but also to fool yourself. Keir Starmer's Government is now falling into exactly the same trap.
November 15, 2025 at 7:34 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Meanwhile… the grifting liar and Brexiter in chief, Farage… rakes it in from jobs *other than* being a constituency MP… and his constituency rots. Made poorer and angrier by his Brexit.

When they say everything is broken, this is what they mean.
(Private Eye)
JUST FANCY THAT! 3 Oct 2025: Nigel Farage updates his register of financial interests. Since becoming MP for Clacton in July last year he has earned £1.2m from his second jobs, more than any other MP. 30 Oct 2025: The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's index of multiple deprivation reveals that Jaywick, in Farage's Clacton constituency, is the most deprived area in England. Farage says it is "obviously sad that things aren't improving more quickly" but that having him as their MP has "definitely helped".
November 14, 2025 at 6:18 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Farage earns more than any other MP for NOT being an MP. He says it’s “obviously sad” that part of his constituency is the most deprived area in England.
But everything he’s ever done, said and wanted has made sure of it.
This is the whole country if he gets into power.
(Private Eye)
JUST FANCY THAT! 3 Oct 2025: Nigel Farage updates his register of financial interests. Since becoming MP for Clacton in July last year he has earned £1.2m from his second jobs, more than any other MP. 30 Oct 2025: The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's index of multiple deprivation reveals that Jaywick, in Farage's Clacton constituency, is the most deprived area in England. Farage says it is "obviously sad that things aren't improving more quickly" but that having him as their MP has "definitely helped".
November 14, 2025 at 7:48 AM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
The Telegraph sides with Trump against the BBC and, so, the country.

Private Eye sums up its feeble-minded, fawning betrayal beautifully.
The Telegraph This is how Trump can sue the BBC and make them pay The US president has shown he knows how to take on media organisations and win THE DAILY TRUMPOGRAPH Trump Praises Trumpograph For Praising Trump LAST night President Trump trumpeted the Trumpograph for its fearless praising of Donald Trump. "Unlike the corrupt and failing BBC, the Trumpograph is not afraid to be completely unbiased in its total adoration of Donald Trump," said Trump. In response the Daily Trumpograph said, "It is vital we objectively report on how great Trump is for praising us." ******* * * * * ON OTHER PAGES • Why Donald Trump should ask Elon Musk to buy the Telegraph and save us all, writes Sir Charles Moore-Trump-Please.
November 13, 2025 at 7:30 AM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Burning it all down is not the answer but it’s the one that populists use because it’s a hell of a lot easier to say everything is crap than to do the hard yards of difficult - but honest - messaging and responsible governance. See Brexit.
And so politics stays trapped in the doom loop: distrusted governments are afraid to take unpopular but necessary decisions; hard problems are deferred; things do not get better; governments become less popular and their room for manoeuvre is even more constrained. Each cycle stokes the appetite for demagogic simplism - the Trumpian model of holding the system itself responsible for failure and insisting that salvation requires breaking all the rules.
November 12, 2025 at 9:02 AM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Farage is a GB news shareholder and is paid through a private company for his appearances on the channel.
So, here he is shit-stirring with Trump over the BBC and grifting his nasty little arse off…
There is really nothing of ours he won’t ruin to grab for power and wealth for himself.
(iPaper+LFF)
White House is going all out to make GB News feel at home Simon Marks (Extract from article) When Donald Trump visited the UK in mid-September; not not enough attention was paid at the time to one history-making element of his joint press conference with Sir Keir Starmer: Both men proffered their traditional opening statements, and then turned to questions from the assembled press corps. After Starmer invited Trump to select an American reporter to pose a question. Trump instead directed his gaze at Bev Turner, the GB News anchor who had recently relocated to Washington, DC. Turner had travelled back to the UK aboard Air Force One, and, for the first time in recorded history, an American president failed at first blush to pick a reporter representing a US-based news outlet to ask a question while on foreign soil. Today, as Trump threatens to sue the BBC for $Ibn ($760m) over Panorama's clumsy editing of his 6 January 2021 speech ahead of the Capitol riots, GB News is in the ascendancy at the White House. From the moment Turner arrived to expand the network's Washington bureau, Trump and his top lieutenants have embraced her nightly, two-hour live broadeast as a vehicle for advancing the US President's agenda. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has slammed the BBC, posting on X over the weekend that BBC News "is dying because they are anti-Trump Fake News" while going on to say that "everyone should watch GBNEWS!” Nigel Farage's admission that he discussed the BBC crisis with Trump on Friday is also a fresh indication of trouble ahead for Starmer, who should fear the open communication between the two political soulmates, as well as the US administration's backing of GB News. In short: Trump has got the BBC and its fact-based journalism on the run - and GB News is enthusiastically on his side. * LEFT FOOT FORWARD Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has increased his shareholding in GB News, as the arch Brexiteer continues to deepen his relationship with the right-wing channel. According to the latest documents filed to Companies House this week, Farage has increased his shares from 300,000 to 500,000. It comes as Farage continues to rake it in from the channel, making £60,000 for just 20 hours of work according to his latest register of interests.
November 12, 2025 at 7:27 AM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
‘Complete and utter bollocks’ you say, Mr Johnson. Oh well, we’ll put all the actual evidence in the shredder, shall we?
: INDEPENDENT PREMIUM COMMENT One man is responsible for bringing the BBC so low - Boris Johnson What began as an editorial blunder has spiralled into a full-blown crisis for the corporation, says Chris Blackhurst - one that the former prime minister has his fingerprints all over... and is now more than happy to exploit
November 11, 2025 at 8:12 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Can you imagine…?
Grifting GBnews-shareholder, Farage, and not-a-clue Dorries working out a plan for the BBC. What could possibly go right?

liveapp.inews.co.uk/category/403...

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...
Farage (below) said he would work with the former culture secretary Nadine Dorries - who defected from the Conservatives to Reform in September - to draw up detailed plans for the corporation's future. Reveals ignorance of Channel 4's funding model During a select committee appearance on 24 November 2021, the former secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, to give her her full title, wrongly claimed that Channel 4 was "in receipt of public money" therein entirely undermining her insistence that it should be privatised and, arguably, her credibility in the job.
November 11, 2025 at 7:31 AM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
This is a genuinely intolerable reality…
Instead of some proportion from much of the British media class, we are treated to the tragicomic absurdity of a former British prime minister willing to admonish the national broadcaster and demand the resignation of its Director General, all in the name of defending Donald Trump's reputation for truth-telling. But it's worse than that- it is a textbook example of how populists win. We have the ridiculous carnival of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, of all people, admonishing the BBC for its lack of integrity. And they can get away with it, because no-one expects anything from them and yet we expect everything from the people and places who actually give a damn.
November 10, 2025 at 11:01 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
I see your Martin Daubney… and raise you…
David Bull wearing a panty-pad of sympathy on his ear when Trump got shot.
Now Reform party chairman.
It *cannot* possibly get more feeble-mindedly fawning than this.
David Bull on Talk TV. Wearing a panty pad of sympathy on his ear when Trump got shot
November 10, 2025 at 9:45 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
“Its enemies hate the BBC with the same venom they detest the NHS, as publicly owned and popular social endeavours. Can the institution survive?”

Farage, Johnson, Truss… (all the most dismal, dishonest people in our political landscape) hope not.

There’s really nothing they won’t vengefully ruin.
It bears a near-impossible burden. The BBC will fail frequently in its thousands of hours of output across the world. Large numbers of people (myself included) will often shout at their television sets, gnashing teeth at choices made by the BBC newsroom. Those journalists are fallible, subjected to a cat's cradle of conflicting pressures to "inform, educate and entertain" while subjected to political, social and religious lobbying. Yet the BBC remains by miles the most watched, listened to and read of all platforms in the UK. It is the most trusted, at 60%, with the FT at 57%, ITV and Channel 4 at 56%, followed by the Guardian at 51% - according to the Reuters Institute. (Telegraph trust stands at 42%, the Mail at 24%.) Having spent seven years in a BBC newsroom, I saw how the attempt to walk the line of balance consumes everyone there.
November 10, 2025 at 7:47 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
As ever, the loathsome Farage rubs his greedy little hands with glee as he hopes that GB’news’ will profit from the ‘scandal’ he helped to whip up…
Honest to god… why do we have to be so kicked about by these ultra-cynical right wing hysterics?
(iPaper)
The BBC's reporting is widely viewed in the US, with the corporation positioning itself as an impartial alternative to partisan networks like Fox News. The UK's right-wing GB News is winning friends in the White House and could be awarded reporting credentials after launching a new Washington DC show. One BBC News figure said: "This will have serious repercussions for the BBC's Washington team. If Trump launches a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the BBC, as he has with US networks, that would be disastrous. Tim needs to give a grovelling apology personally to the President."
November 10, 2025 at 9:12 AM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
The Panorama edit was clumsy. But the facts remain. It was a violent insurrection to upend a democratic vote. Looking at the wild outrage here, we’d be forgiven for thinking Jan 6th never happened. In terms of bias, this is off the scale worse. With Farage delighting in the damage.
(Extracts iPaper)
The White House's press secre-tary, Karoline Leavitt, poked fun at Davie's resignation. On X, she wrote "shot" above a screenshot of a Telegraph headline saying "Trump goes to war with 'fake news' BBC". Leavitt then added "chaser" above a second screenshot from the BBC website announcing Davie's departure. Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr, wrote on X that UK reporters were "just as dishonest" as "the ones here in America". Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the resignations must be "the start of wholesale change" The BBC's reporting is widely viewed in the US, with the corporation positioning itself as an impartial alternative to partisan networks like Fox News. The UK's right-wing GB News is winning friends in the White House and could be awarded reporting credentials after launching a new Washington DC show. One BBC News figure said: "This will have serious repercussions for the BBC's Washington team. If Trump launches a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the BBC, as he has with US networks, that would be disastrous. Tim needs to give a grovelling apology personally to the President."
November 10, 2025 at 8:09 AM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
This has been one of the worst recent developments… the media shrug at the brazen racism of the right… passing it off as an expression of concern or patriotism, when they should have been calling it out in the strongest terms.
The damage this has done to our communities is unforgivable.
Yet as soon as the opposition to the Government became the Conservatives and then Reform, the media's all-consuming concern with eradicating racism from our politics seemed to evaporate. Suddenly racism was not only treated as being something not worth the media focusing their attention upon, but as an important expression of the public's "legitimate concerns" against immigration.
November 8, 2025 at 5:45 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Loved this…
The sheer ineptitude on display has been staggering - and oddly endearing. In this celebrity version of the show, it's become clear that overt analytical intelligence won't get anyone very far. David Olusoga's torturous circular monologues have been so consistently misguided that you actually began to retrospectively doubt the veracity of his highly regarded documentaries (imagine overthinking things to the point that you're left suspecting the most obviously faithful faithful in Traitors history, Nick Mohammed). Stephen Fry generally hemmed and hawed like Bagpuss's Professor Yaffle before eventually nominating David Olusoga again. And Kate Garraway - a literal news journalist, lest we forget - frequently blundered around like someone trying to burst a birthday piñata during a bomb disposal operation. "Kate Garraway repeating things" has become something of a meme since the show began.
November 6, 2025 at 10:34 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Flagmania is racist bunting and we all know it.
Poppy-policing is more of the same menacing ‘patriotism’.

“Those who oppose the UK’s emboldened far right need to speak out” not cower before Farage and the Daily Mail

Otherwise what *exactly* are we remembering?
www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-f...
Photo of paper poppies Like the union flag, the poppy is being weaponised by the far right while politicians look the other way. Image: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty One or two men with a cherry picker and some cable ties can put up hundreds of flags in a night. The displays across the country are of this sort, not spontaneous widespread patriotic fervour: these same far right movements could barely mobilise 3,000 people nationwide to their "days of anger" protests. The results of their nocturnal efforts are surely beyond their belief. They have emboldened racists and their champions, and brought misery to those they hate. This is a reminder of the power of symbols, and of the need to fight for those symbols. As it stands, the flags are being ceded without a fight, and some bastardisation of the poppy's meaning is being allowed to feed into it.
November 6, 2025 at 5:57 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Not sure why anyone other than deeply dismal politicians and useful right wing idiots and ghouls would still be on X. It’s not a town square where people are engaging in good faith. It’s a dangerous radicalisation machine that seeks to upend our democracy and - in the US - has already shown it can.
Photo of flagmania in the UK Elon Musk joined the Unite the Kingdom rally in September via video call He has used his social media platform X to encourage British people to fly English flags and has endorsed fringe right-wing politicians. In a recent post, he compared illegal immigrants to monstrous fictional characters in JRR Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings, and suggested all English people would die if they did not support Mr Robinson. The significant influence that Elon Musk had in using his social media platform to sway opinion in the run-up to Donald Trump's re-election has been widely reported. Mr Daisley thinks that X has the power to shape political conversations in the UK, too. "Elon Musk bought Twitter to have an influence in American politics, he thinks it helped elevate him to the top of the political conversation in the US. And so to some extent the product can do the same here," he told Sky News.
November 6, 2025 at 9:43 AM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
And with no hint of shame, humility or personal responsibility, the Tory who detonated the economy with his mini budget and whose party trashed the place with austerity and Brexit, then scorched the earth with unaffordable pre-election tax cuts, tells Reeves to apologise.
Insufferable.
(iPaper)
By Kwasi Kwarteng Former Conservative MP and chancellor Reeves brutally weaponised my mini-Budget - now she is paying the price For Keir Starmer and his Chancellor, this is a nightmare which has only just begun It would perhaps be better simply to apologise - and do so in an act of genuine contrition. That is more realistic and believable than simply trying to pin the blame on other people, like a schoolchild who has been caught out saying: "It wasn't me, Miss!"
November 5, 2025 at 8:26 AM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
“Human rights are not obstacles to good governance, but its very foundation.”

Very well said.
As humanists, we must resist this false narrative with clarity and conviction. Without the ECHR, ordinary people would lose their essential safeguard against state overreach. Victims of domestic violence, whistleblowers, people facing discrimination, those challenging unlawful detention - all would be left without recourse when domestic courts fail them. We must defend the ECHR not as a perfect instrument, but as an indispensable one, and make the case that human rights are not obstacles to good governance, but its very foundation.
November 4, 2025 at 9:16 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Once again, this isn’t journalism. It’s stroking the ego of a politician who’s done great national harm.
WhyTF should we take Farage seriously? Just because he wants power? Even more reason for ruthless scrutiny.
His track record is racist and ruinous. Any serious journalist would say so.
(iPaper)
COMMENT The joke's over: Farage plays it straight in bid to be PM Nick Robinson Extract: I t is the surest sign - although blink, and you just might have missed it. The man who can hardly start a sentence without adding a gag, or a grin, or a chortle, gave a speech about his approach to the economy in which he barely produced any. Nigel is trying to get serious. What that tells me is that Mr Farage really does want power: He senses it is within his grasp. He smells it and, most importantly of all, he wants it. Badly. The leader of Reform UK declared that "above all we will be responsible and realistic". In so doing he seemed to admit that the policies he ran on at the last election were something of a joke. No one remotely serious believed they remotely serious because, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies said, the sums in Reform UK's manifesto did "not add up". Back then - scarcely more than a year ago - Farage said you could have pretty much everything you wanted from a government whilst actually paying less for it - much less. Taxes would be cut, and cut big time. It was going to be happy hour all day long. Every day. All year: Yet now what he wants us to hear is very different. Now the man who really does want to be our next prime minister is saying, in eftect: I'm awfully sorry, but we can't cut your taxes until we get our nationa! debt back under control. Trust me, he's saying, I can be the straight man as well as the funny guy. . . . . Now he does have to show us all that he knows how to turn his words into reality, just as his lieutenants who are running councils up and down the land are discovering. We know Farage really does want to be our next prime minister. It is time we all took that prospect seriously, and stopped treating him as a come turn or a pantomime villain in the national soap opera. Serious times deserve serious answers. Let's see if Farage can provide them.
November 4, 2025 at 6:50 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
We live in a political era where politicians actively (and dishonestly) campaign to remove our rights to grub for power for themselves….
People who hope to be charged with running the country, exploiting prejudice to persuade us to abandon our right to be protected from abusive actions of the state.
They called on politicians to stop "using our human rights as a scapegoat, level with the British public about the significant costs of ECHR withdrawal (such as the impact on the Good Friday Agreement) and end the escalating, irresponsible rhetoric targeting migrant and minoritised communities, which has devastating real-world consequences for people who are often already made vulnerable by wider social and economic marginalisation and stigmatisation."
November 3, 2025 at 6:59 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
What Farage means (but never admits and is rarely asked about) is that a race to the bottom has been squandered. Brexit as the route to promoting profiteering for his moneyed mates while binning protections and rocket-boosting exploitation (aka “deregulation”) for the rest of us.
For example…
Photo of Farage at his lectern Nigel Farage says Reform UK could cut minimum wage for young people - and... 2 hours ago Sky News
November 3, 2025 at 5:07 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Farage is due to make a speech today about his new economic policy.. (having been laughed out of the room with his last one)…
Let’s just take a quick look at his ideological track record…
And then put all his ideas straight into the shredder.

www.theguardian.com/business/202...
Productivity 'The money machine is misfiring': City blames Brexit for UK's £20Bn productivity headache Poor output since the leave vote has landed Rachel Reeves with a bigger-than-forecast budget spending gap However, experts say it is increasingly clear that Brexit has played a significant role, exacerbating the post-2008 slump by hitting sectors with EU ties, and as the political turmoil led businesses to put investments on ice. Erecting tougher trade barriers with the UK's largest partner is expected to cut Britain's long-term productivity by about 4% relative to a remain scenario. The OBR could update this estimate at the 26 November budget. Business investment has flatlined since the Brexit referendum
November 3, 2025 at 7:43 AM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Urgh. What a repulsive bunch of racist shit-stirrers. And, of course, Farage never far from the stink.
Wherever we looked for the prominent flaggers and leaders of this movement, we found people smugglers and sex doll salesmen, people with dubious criminal pasts and people willing to put in a good word for Adolf Hitler. Farage told us the flag-raisers were just ordinary folk sticking it to the system. A few months worth of local journalism later, that now looks like a shaky claim.
November 2, 2025 at 3:28 PM
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
The world is not X or Spectator parties. Reform and Tory politicians seem to think brazen racism is their meal ticket. In a country that’s far more tolerant and decent than they are, that needs to be an election-losing strategy. It’s up to us to make sure of it.
www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/the-racism...
The Racism Premium Far from being a disadvantage, hostility to people from different races and cultures has now become an active requirement for career advancement on the right of British politics ADAM BIENKOV For these reasons I still believe that if both Reform and the Conservatives go into the next general election as parties in complete opposition to the modern, diverse face of Britain as we know it, then it is an election they are likely to lose. While racism and hate crime is on the rise, Britain is still not a majority racist For these reasons I still believe that if both Reform and the Conservatives go into the next general election as parties in complete opposition to the modern, diverse face of Britain as we know it, then it is an election they are likely to lose. While racism and hate crime is on the rise, Britain is still not a majority racist country and there is an electoral disadvantage to portraying your political party as being on the wrong side of that divide. The fact that seven out of ten ethnic minority voters and a plurality of voters overall, see Reform as being a 'racist party' demonstrates the gap between how things are seen in Westminster and how these things are seen in the world outside. and there is an electoral disadvantage to portraying your political party as being on the wrong side of that divide. The fact that seven out of ten ethnic minority voters and a plurality of voters overall, see Reform as being a 'racist party' demonstrates the gap between how things are seen in Westminster and how these things are seen in the world outside.
November 1, 2025 at 1:24 PM