From the comments – which of course you’re reading – a phenomenon to ponder. A small but telling feature of our unrelentingly progressive times.
It began with this exchange from Question Time, the BBC’s flagship political debate programme, in which Green Party candidate Sarah Wakefield struggled with causality. Specifically, the apparently alien notion that a rapidly growing UK population – overwhelmingly a result of immigration – requires more housing. And thus the two topics – immigration and housing availability – being very much related.
🚨 WATCH: The Reform and Green candidate in the Makerfield clash over immigration
Sarah Wakefield: “Do you think if we locked down our borders, we’re going solve the housing crisis?”
Rob Kenyon: “The more people you have in the country, the more houses you need” #BBCQT pic.twitter.com/Fsog3KOFz8
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) June 4, 2026
Ms Wakefield is, it seems, somehow unaware that immigration accounts for almost all population growth over the last six years, and the vast majority of such growth over the last twenty years.
When not struggling with simple arithmetic, Ms Wakefield spends her time announcing that farming is riddled with “white supremacy” and is in need of “decolonisation.” British food production, says she, “entrenches racial oppression.”
Still, whatever her shortcomings in terms of readily available facts and observable reality, she does put her face to eye-catching use.
Which prompted the following from your host:
I’ve seen this same facial theatre many times, not least among left-leaning women who’ve been appointed to positions for which they are clearly ill-suited. An observation that would itself most likely result in the ‘eww’ face.
And,
Again, the conceit seems to be that doing what is necessary, and right, will somehow never entail saying no. As if the correct and imperative decision could never entail doing things that might seem unfashionable or insufficiently accommodating of the latest Designated Victim Group, if only among one’s equally pretentious peers.
As if saying, “No, the entire third world may not come here and live entirely at the expense of the indigenous until the system collapses” were just some gratuitous meanness. For instance.
In reply, commenter [+] shared a link to this video, which may amuse, and deployed the term Longhouse Face.
Which in turn brought us this not implausible observation:
Dicentra added,
She was evaluating the STATUS conferred by expressing a particular opinion. His comment was LOW STATUS, so it had to be disdained.
Quite.
This facial phenomenon has subsequently, and happily, attracted wider attention. Among the commentary to be found elsewhere, this caught my eye:
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