When the left's not right

Call us progressive but where's the progress lol

Sep 04, 2025

Okay, I’ve had another week off and I am back and raring to go.

A lot has happened in my absence… not least ‘Operation Raise the Colours’, where nationalists swept the country, spray painting the St George’s Flag on roundabouts.

We’ve also seen massive protests at hotels housing asylum seekers (including one outside my co-working space), where people have gathered to show their anger towards those coming to the UK as refugees.

The rising tensions surrounding immigration have many facets, and I will share some links below for those who want to learn more about what’s going on.

But this week, I wanted to talk a bit about empathy—not just empathising with those who are facing injustice but also those who are dishing out hate. More on that as we go on.

Let’s start with the simple facts.

This country is divided.

As a nation, we simply can’t agree.

Who benefits from us being divided? If we can’t come to a shared understanding of what’s good for our country, especially if we lose faith altogether, then we allow the louder voices at the fringes of society to take hold. Think fascists, Far Right, and that sort of thing.

We are living in fear. How can we afford our mortgages if rates go up again? What about utilities? What about if we lose our jobs? All of these worries are making us feel seriously insecure, directly risking our foundational needs as humans (shelter, food, community, resources, etc.)

As Yoda said, "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

And who benefits from us being angry?

We are all angry, albeit at different things (or so we think).

Politicians benefit from our anger, especially if we aren’t angry with them, but with other (more vulnerable) groups of society, like immigrants.

The other significant beneficiaries are Big Tech companies like Meta, X, and other social channels that generate revenue from turbulent discussions through clickbait, increasing dwell time, and opportunities to serve advertisements (not to mention selling your data, lol).

The quality of life and cost of living are poor and getting worse. Prices are going up, wages are stagnating, and there’s little to no affordable housing. So, we can agree, we are all in the same (not so small) boat… even though it doesn’t feel like it.

What we can’t agree on is who is to blame for all this shit?

Those spray-painting roundabouts and crowding asylum hotels are all convinced that immigrants are to blame. They are coming here (on small boats, in many cases) to steal our jobs, assault women and girls, and generally bleed the state dry.

If you’re reading this, then you probably know this isn’t the case. I’ve created a bit of an echo chamber here, and I would be surprised if anyone with significant anti-immigrant sentiment subscribed.

But it’s worth highlighting that illegal immigration is not the cause of our issues.

Small boats are pictured on just about every newspaper cover this week, despite illegal immigration making up around 1-2% of the total UK population, 82% of which are NOT from small boat crossings, but actually the result of overstayed visas. Overstayed visas actually come as a result of stricter and more convoluted immigration policies (so technically, tighter immigration policies actually increase illegal immigration)

While 70-75% of people who apply for refugee status are deemed to be genuine— this means they are fleeing countries affected by wars, climate disasters and/or persecution.

It is not illegal to seek refuge in the UK.

We, as a nation, have a duty to offer a safe place to asylum seekers, not least because we are (in many, many cases) partially responsible for the disasters they flee, whether that’s as former colonisers, wagers of war (see Middle East), or climate-related destruction due to mining for fuel and other resources (see impact of copper mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo).

The left is wrong

I hate to be this person, but I don’t agree with sharing smug posts like “well St George was Turkish and his ma was Palestinian… so you're wrong”.

I know it feels good to say this sort of thing, because it helps us feel ‘in the right’. Like we’ve ‘won’. But engaging on this level is making us losers.

But what these arguments actually do is two things:

1. It further increases the divide between the right and left

This is what THEY (big tech, newspapers, politicans) want! We are leaning right into their grasp when we do these things. I am not saying we shouldn’t engage in political discussion. In fact, I am saying the opposite.

We should enter these conversations with as much of an intention to listen as to talk, and never simply to win points. Seek to empathise with people who disagree; only then will you start to understand where they are coming from and find common ground.

People are scared, on both sides of the political spectrum. By taking the time to understand why this is the case, we get closer to working as a collective against the real enemy, rather than creating even more hoops to jump through.

2. It perpetuates the idea that the left is for clever people and the right is all stupid

This is a big one I am seeing more and more, especially on social media, as we witness videos of protests at asylum hotels, for example, with the caption about how stupid these people all are. I am not immune to this— I’ve called many a man a gammon in my time. But I am starting to think that this is actually counterintuitive.

Need I remind you again that people are scared, they are angry because they are at risk of losing the very things that they hold dearest.

They are directing anger to the wrong place, and I do not excuse violence in any shape or form (the videos of people crying inside the asylum hotels have been particularly upsetting this week), but I am trying really, really hard to empathise with the cause of the right.

Because if we sit here on the left and simply assume they are all thick, then that’s when we disengage from meaningful discussion and, before you know it, we’re back here in 2029 with Reform in power and wondering how we missed it.

Animated GIF from The Simpsons of two aliens hiding in suits at a political debate - the crowd is shocked.

I don’t really have a concrete solution to *all of this*, but what I can say for sure is that our current approach is not working. Racist violence is through the roof, protestors are turning violent (and yet it’s Palestine Action advocates who occupy police cells).

We ALL have to unite against the real enemy, and we will only do that by listening to what EVERYONE has to say— not talking down to people or ridiculing them. If anything this is actually another step in hyper-individualism that got us there in the first place.

The more united we stand, the stronger we are.

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

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