Clive Stafford Smith

From voice to voice, heart to heart, @FowziaSiddiqui Mauritius Tour carries a message of justice, humanity, and hope for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. Every gathering is another reminder that the world has not forgotten.

Stripping people of their citizenship is the ultimate political weapon of an authoritarian state, which denies 'the right of a person to exist in a space'. You can be born in that space, have your friends and family there, go to school, be a member of the local football team - all wiped out by a Home Sec, who has no requirement to justify themselves to Parliament, on 'secret evidence' not available to your loved ones or your lawyer. Once your citizenship is stripped, all other rights are also stripped - civil, political and human. Technically, you cannot be rendered stateless, but if your other country of citizenship doesn't wish to grant you such rights either, you are left without any protection from abuse, neglect, torture or death. When I asked @FCDOGovUK for help in protecting my son from torture, they said he was no longer British so they couldn't help. Even @AmnestyUK - who campaign on behalf of all nationalities - said they had 'no capacity' to help. In other words, if you are politically shunned, both the state and non-state actors can refuse to help - the latter bc of their fear of loss of donor funds for unpopular causes. You can even be faced with death penalty abroad and the gov will say it doesn't want to 'interfere' with this (documentary evidence available on this for all journalists outraged by authoritarianism) @Jonathan_K_Cook @DalrympleWill

I know the news Andy Burnham has a route back to Westminster will divide opinion. So, before anything else, I want to speak plainly – to Labour members and voters, to those who have left us, and to anyone on the centre-left, whether you vote Green, Lib Dem, or are simply looking for a politics that hasn't given up on you. Last week's local election results were, for many of us, existential. Not disappointing. Not a setback. Existential. Look across Europe and beyond at what happens to social democratic parties that refuse to step outside the economic orthodoxy of the last forty years – the one that hollowed out our public services, privatised what was ours, drove inequality to indecent levels, and cleared the ground for the authoritarian right to march into. That is the path we are on. Keir Starmer has refused to see it, and the country cannot afford another general election spent finding out the hard way. So let me be direct. The Prime Minister should set out a timeline for an orderly transition. I have said this before. I say it again now because the stakes have changed. Reform is not a protest – it is a project. And it will not be beaten by a Labour Party that mistakes managerial caution for strategy. As regards Andy, I want to set down here that I do not see him as some kind of messiah. Far from it. As someone who has been around frontline politics for more than twenty years, he has made his fair share of mistakes. But for the last ten years he has been a serious, grounded, and effective Mayor of Greater Manchester. The party and the country need their strongest players on the pitch, and he has a great deal to offer at a moment when the national stage has rarely mattered more. I hope the NEC will listen to the overwhelming view of the Cabinet, the PLP, the membership, and the unions, and let Andy stand. And I hope and believe the people of Makerfield will send him back to Parliament. But that is not a given. We know Reform will throw everything at this by-election. We must do the same and then some. Reform have spent a year being told they are inevitable. Makerfield is where we find out whether that is true. Every advance has a limit. This is where we set it. Millions of people, including my constituents in Norwich South, need this government to succeed. They need housing, working public services, secure jobs, water and energy that serves them rather than extracts from them. That work is not finished. But the honest truth is that stopping Reform and rebuilding the country is bigger than any one party. It will take a progressive politics willing to listen, willing to cooperate where the public interest demands it, and willing to drop the tribal habits that got us here. The country is ahead of us on this. It is time we caught up. Makerfield is one of many places where Labour has lost trust. It is an area Andy knows and has lived in for many years. If selected, he will work hard to win that trust back and make the case for a Labour Party worth voting for again. That case has to be made not only to people who once voted Labour, but to everyone who believes the answer to Reform is a serious, democratic, social alternative – not a paler imitation of the politics that created the problem. This by-election is not about one seat. It is a test of whether Labour understands the moment we are in. No single party is going to stop Reform on its own. The progressive majority in this country is real – but it is scattered across Labour, the Greens, the Lib Dems, nationalists, independents, and millions of people who have stopped voting altogether. Our job is not to demand they all come back to us. It is to earn the right to work with them, on shared ground, for a shared future. To former Labour voters: come and talk to us again. To Green and Lib Dem voters: we are not enemies. To Labour members and MPs: this is the fight. Let's get on with it. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Texas celebrates its 600th execution in the "modern era" by killing intellectually disabled Edward Busby texastribune.org/2026/05/14/tex…

Exceptional hearing in the NY court today: I hope we are one step closer to #Aafia's liberty. @Aafiamovement @FowziaSiddiqui @mariakari1414 @Moazzam_Begg

Going to court in NYC in 2 hours to get the show on the road for #Aafia The govt will throw up roadblocks but we will eventually get past everything. The Arc of the Moral Universe is long but it bends towards Justice. @Aafiamovement @FowziaSiddiqui @mariakari1414 @Moazzam_Begg

Your positive influence, @GuantanamoAndy, spreads 5367 miles away to California...

Hung jury in the Majid Freeman "Support for Palestine" case novaramedia.com/2026/05/12/jur… How on earth can the UK system think it is okay to put a retrial off until September 2027 (16 MONTHS AWAY!) - Justice delayed is Justice Denied...

Headed back to New York later today for the first substantive hearing on Thursday in what I hope will be the push to secure justice for #Aafia @Aafiamovement @FowziaSiddiqui @mariakari1414 @Moazzam_Begg

Oh dear. I don't think it would "plunge the country into chaos" for Keir to accept that he has failed to inspire anyone about anything. I have been Labour for decades but he has done a solid job of losing my support...

Glad to talk to the Mail about the horrors of execution mol.im/a/15790887 via @DailyMail. It's important to not always preach the converted & the Mail reaches a lot of varied people. If it touches one person I would be glad to have talked to David Rivers...

Flying to NY City in a couple of hours for the next phase of #Aafia's case. First challenge efforts to classify the embarrassing evidence (we'll prevail on that), then next week the first hearing @Aafiamovement @FowziaSiddiqui

Thanks to Nikhil for sending me this link: facebook.com/60Minutes9/pho… Sam Jones, Louisiana electrocutioner I got to say he told his 5yo grandson Chris grandpa'd execute him if he did something wrong; obvs I asked how Chris was doing in therapy? Anyone have access to actual piece?

Important racism story: IPNO exonerated Calvin Duncan of the murder for which he spent years in prison, he got a law degree & with 68% of the vote was elected clerk of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. So the Republicans are trying to abolish it lailluminator.com/2026/04/03/orl…

When Starmer talks about banning peaceful Palestine rallies at the same time as saying nothing about hateful Islamophobic mobs outside asylum hotels he provokes division rather than healing it theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/m…

It’s Pakistan that needs to stop the bombing (they hit where I had had dinner last time was in Kabul) & rather than yell from the touch lines we need to offer how we can do positive things for women’s rights (how about we build them a women’s hospital-nobody’s against that)

The Premiership beckons: I am more about Cricket than Football, but I hope the world will agree with me that my life long team @IpswichTown (The Tractor Boys - no team has a better name, save perhaps the Tractor Girls) should be cheered to victory at Southampton this evening...

Calling it the "Department of War" tells the whole story. Not sure it gives @realDonaldTrump a leg up in the Nobel Peace Prize stakes. youtube.com/shorts/eXuBP1o…

All supporters of #Aafia do indeed need to read this @Aafiamovement We will have our first hearing in NY soon to get her out of this HellHole...

Pete Hegseth & his Christian Nationalist minister want everyone to embrace ‘Biblically informed Hatred’: they really are dangerously deranged…