When I awake in the morning, I have a routine as I drink my early morning cup of tea, put on ClassicFM and start to compose some of the blog to be published on the following day. As I write at the moment, they are playing the Mozart clarinet concerto first heard when I was about 13 and in bed suffering from ‘Asian ‘flu’ which was then sweeping the country and I have never forgotten it. The sheer exuberance of it is calculated to lift anyone’s spirits on even the worst of mornings. I am conscious that I often write about the ‘bad’ things that are happening in America but last night’s news was jaw-dropping.I was following the eminent ex-NewsNight journalist, Emily Maitlis, who was giving an interview to James O’Brien on LBC but picked up in a Sky News video clip. She had discovered that hundreds and probably thousands of completely undocumented flights are taking pace after suspects are scooped off the streets by ICE agents, taken to deportation centres and then transported by plane to hell-hole prisons in El Salvador without ever coming before a court in the USA. Many of these are USA citizens but probably the ‘wrong’ skin colour and hence ‘liable’ to deportation. A description of these prisons was found on the internet and ‘hell-hole’ is an accurate description. El Salvador’s ‘hell-hole’ prisons, most notably the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), represent a, extreme, maximum-security system designed to detain tens of thousands of alleged gang members under severe conditions. Opened in 2023 by President Nayib Bukele, the facility is part of a massive crackdown on gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18, intended to be a permanent, ‘living nightmare’ for those incarcerated. Located in Tecoluca, CECOT is designed to hold 40,000 inmates, making it one of the largest prisons in the world. The facility features 11-metre-high concrete walls, electric fencing, and is designed to be inescapable. Prisoners sleep on bare metal bunks without mattresses or sheets. They are subjected to constant surveillance, no outdoor time, and no communication with the outside world. Reports suggest that once inmates enter, they are not expected to leave, with some officials telling incoming detainees they will never see sunlight again. International observers and reports, including a November 2025 Human Rights Watch report, describe the environment as a site of torture, abuse, and potential war crimes. Inmates have reported being packed shoulder-to-shoulder, forced to sit motionless, and subjected to violence. There are reports of inadequate food, little to no medical care, and, in some cases, the denial of water. Fungal skin diseases and untreated infections are rampant. People who have heard about these absolute atrocities happening in America are warning us that this is fascism started in 1930’s with the extermination of the Jewish ghettoes and scooping people off the streets and deporting them with no due process has a terrible parallel. It also being said that this is what Nigel Farage and a Reform government would do if elected and if this sounds completely far-fetched then the American scenario sounds equally far fetched – except that we know that it is happening. There will be Congressional mid-term elections held in the USA in about November. but the amount of damage to be done to the American social structure is incalculable. And one has to ask the question whether the average American citizen shrugs their shoulders and thinks that we did vote as a society for illegal immigrants to be deported so now we have a government that is doing it. What is so terrifying about the process is that people who are scooped off the street and detained then have to prove that they are Americans and have the right to be in the USA and sometimes these papers are not as accessible to people as they ought to be (after a house fire or a forced eviction for example where even precious documents can get lost)
The breaking political news yesterday was the defection of Suella Braverman from the Tories to the Reform party. This has come as no real surprise to anybody because, whilst a standard bearer of the right, she did hold the office of Home Secretary. But she was sacked twice and failed in a leadership bid for the Tory party, after which she rather kept herself to herself. She has terrible reputation for the bullying of staff and, in particular, junior staff and her demeanour was such that she had to be sanctioned for this behaviour whilst a minister and it was claimed that she often shouted at and harangued civil servants if she did not get she wanted. My own take on this is that any minister who engages in this type of behaviour and who cannot argue their case probably should never have been promoted to a ministerial office in the first place. It is reported that Braverman feels like she has ‘come home’ and increases the number of ex-Tory MPs who have defected to Reform UK to eight. Braverman has poured vitriol on her former party and has made the following declaration after hr defection – ‘I am calling time. I am calling time on Tory betrayal. I am calling time on Tory lies. I am calling time on a party that keeps making promises with zero intention of keeping them. Britain is indeed broken. She is suffering. She is not well. Immigration is out of control. Our public services are on their knees. People do not feel safe.’ So the Braverman vitriol, previously reserved for her opponents, is now heaped upon her former colleagues.
The government has announced plans for far-reaching reforms of the police services in the UK. The principal reform is a dramatic reduction in the number of police forces from 43 to about 12 which may may be too dramatic a reform but only time will tell. In effect, we are seeing the end of county forces and the emergence of regional units which given the mobility of the modern criminal gangs is probably a worthwhile reform. At the same time, Facial recognition technology is to be rolled out across England and Wales to help all police forces, under sweeping reforms announced by the home secretary. The minister also announced in the Commons that all forces across England and Wales will be given artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help reduce the amount of time that officers must spend behind a desk, allowing them to be on the beat more instead. Finally, the shake-up will create a new National Police Service (NPS) to fight the most complex cross-border crime and there will be other far-reaching reforms as the Home secretary wants to create a licence to practice for police officers similar to the one for doctors, and to give herself the power to remove a chief constable for poor performance.