The left is splintering

Britain is becoming a borderless state with a boundaried people. While jihadists are quietly airlifted into London, it is ordinary citizens who find themselves monitored, red-flagged, and silenced. The Afghan evacuation scandal isn’t just a tale of bureaucratic failure, but one of moral inversion: those who fought against Britain are resettled in its capital, while those who question it are labelled extremists.

This week, Contra Brief tracks the collapse: a government that hides behind injunctions and censors, a Treasury that treats Bitcoin like Brown once treated gold, and a Labour Party now flanked by both Reform and a revived radical left. Power is fragmenting. Trust is corroding. And the establishment’s answer is not reform, but repression.

In this issue: the regime imports chaos and exports surveillance; Dominic Cummings outlines the first real post-party blueprint since Brexit; prosecutions of smuggling gangs collapse under Labour’s watch; and Corbyn’s new vehicle threatens to split the left like Reform did the right.

Silence is policy. Strategy is sabotage. And the borders are no longer where you think they are.

Comment

In a functioning state, foreign fighters with blood on their hands are kept out. In Britain, they are flown in under government protection while the public is placed under surveillance.

This week, The Telegraph revealed that former Taliban combatants have been resettled in the UK through Operation Rubific, a secretive evacuation scheme set up after a catastrophic Ministry of Defence data breach. The programme was so mismanaged that corrupt Afghan officials exploited it to smuggle in Taliban-linked individuals as “family members” or “dependents”. One was imprisoned for selling weapons to the Taliban. Others were vouched for by regime insiders who worked closely with British personnel. Names were flagged. Cases were raised. Nothing stopped the airlifts.

The British public was kept in the dark by a High Court super-injunction. It was only lifted this month. Until then, no one could legally question why thousands of unvetted people were arriving under cover of national shame and bureaucratic panic. According to former Afghan officials, the very people who fought our soldiers are now “being fed by Brits in London”. And the government knew.

So what is being done? Not a clampdown on fraudulent applications. Not a clear-out of those smuggled in under false pretences. Instead, the state is targeting you.

A new elite “internet intelligence” unit is being stood up to monitor British social media for anti-migrant sentiment. The Home Office wants to pre-empt unrest by policing online speech, surveilling what people say about immigration in real time. This Orwellian taskforce will operate out of Westminster, using AI and lawfare to suppress dissent faster than it can trend.

There is no serious attempt to rebuild the border. Only an escalating drive to criminalise those who notice it has collapsed. The inversion is now complete: the same government that cannot keep jihadists out is mobilising against its own population for pointing it out.

This isn’t failure. It’s strategy. To Britain’s ruling class, immigration isn’t a problem to be solved—it’s a reality to be managed through censorship and distraction. The goal is not security, but silence.

If the Taliban can breach our borders but British citizens can’t breach polite opinion, then it’s clear whose side this government is on. And it isn’t yours.

The Polemic

In his latest Substack blog post, Dominic Cummings delivers one of his brutal, wide-ranging assessment of Britain’s ruling regime - from grooming gang coverups and ECHR sabotage to financial drift and AI denial. His central claim is simple: the British state is a fake system held together by fake meetings, fake decisions and fake ministers. Power lies not with elected officials, but with an unelected caste of civil servants who protect their own, suppress scrutiny, and sabotage any attempt at reform.

Cummings accuses both Tory and Labour elites of aiding the collapse by destroying border control, enabling organised abuse and gaslighting the public with ever-shifting official narratives. He charts how the Cabinet Office has morphed into an anti-responsibility machine, where legal advice protects terrorists but jails citizens for tweets. Starmer is described as a “non-player character” fronting a Treasury-led doom loop of tax rises, welfare sprawl and economic stagnation.

This is both a polemic and a playbook. Cummings outlines a step-by-step plan for regime change: abolish the Cabinet Office, take back procurement and long-term budgets, embed science and AI at the centre of No10, and dismantle the HR caste system that rewards mediocrity and blocks talent. He likens today’s rot to the 1840s - pre-revolutionary, decadent and heading for a break.

The coming flashpoints? Mass disenchantment. A mis-priced financial crisis. AI shocks the regime can’t understand, let alone control. Political violence, if elites continue to suppress democratic pressure. In the wreckage, Cummings sees a path: build new education systems, develop a digital campaigning machine, and prepare a Startup Party that can seize power when the old guard finally falls.

An online rant, maybe, but also the first serious blueprint for total regime overhaul since Brexit.

Full essay here →

Comment

In a week when Britain’s political architecture looked shakier than ever, Jeremy Corbyn quietly lit the fuse on a potential electoral earthquake. His new political party - still nameless, but already boasting 80,000 supporters (email subscribers) - is a potential strategic threat to Labour in the era of fragmented loyalties and post-centrist realignment.

As The Times reported, the launch was confused. The website was called “Your Party,” which turned out not to be the party’s actual name, prompting Zarah Sultana to step in and clarify. But while the branding was amateurish, the implications are not. Reform UK sees it as a gift. Corbyn’s radicalism, pro-Gaza stance, and nostalgia-fuelled following could siphon off thousands of votes in Labour strongholds. According to The Times, No. 10 is rattled.

This isn’t just about the left eating itself but about seat-level arithmetic. The Times points to Leicester East, where independent Gaza candidates helped the Tories win. Labour’s own MPs are now admitting, privately, that the party is sleepwalking into the same fate that gutted the Tories in 2024. One told the paper: “There are no safe seats.”

The heart of the matter is disaffection. Reform draws the disillusioned rightwards. Corbyn’s movement offers the alienated left a moral and ideological home. In between sits Starmer, managerial, centrist, and increasingly vulnerable from both flanks. The danger isn't just losing a few MPs. It's that Labour is no longer capable of cohering a national majority under a single banner. The two-party model is dissolving.

Starmer’s team hopes voters will stick with Labour to “keep Farage out.” But that defensive message may falter in the face of multiple insurgencies. The electorate is not behaving predictably. In a multiparty world, small movements of a few thousand voters can topple entire constituencies.

The real question is whether Corbyn’s new outfit, for all its ideological baggage, will be dismissed as a crank sideshow or emerge as the final nail in the coffin of Labour’s claim to represent Britain’s left. Right now, the party has no name. But it already has Labour’s attention—and Reform’s gratitude.

Worth watching

A searing indictment of Britain's asylum chaos and elite denial. This video unpacks how mass migration, state secrecy, and cultural fragmentation are fuelling riots, eroding trust, and exposing a government that governs by obfuscation. From Epping to Southport, the crisis isn't manufactured by extremists—it's created by a ruling class that refuses to listen.

Quote of the week

Until next time,