Lock and Load

Scrapping the triple lock on the state pension would raise nothing approaching enough money to introduce a National Care Service, or even the free personal care for the elderly that, since it already existed in Scotland, ought to exist throughout the United Kingdom to stem the side of Daniel Thomas-style English nationalism. That is what is most likely to happen, so note well that the triple lock in Scotland does not render free personal care "unaffordable" any more than vice versa.

In any case, the relentless campaign against the triple lock, the logic of which would be the abolition of the state pension itself, has already decided that the money should instead be spent on "defence", making it obvious where that campaign's very high level of organisation was coming from. And John Healey, who contributed to the fall of Keir Starmer by resigning because there was not enough "defence" spending, knows that it is a lie that "the money is simply not there" for anything else. Now Chancellor of the Exchequer, Healey has in his time been both Economic Secretary to the Treasury and Financial Secretary to the Treasury. To pay for a war, then he would remember how the money supply worked. Well, that is just how the money supply works.

The Great Class Inversion

94 per cent of us lost the class war in 1994, when a Labour Party that had already been on course for a year and a half to win the subsequent General Election gave its Leadership, and thus the Premiership as soon as that Election came, to a man whose only qualification was that he had a public school accent. Labour is a party of extremely right-wing people who lack the social connections to make it in the Conservative Party, and whose two defining experiences were being brought up to spit on everyone below them, which was everyone else where they grew up, and discovering in their first 36 hours at university that they were nowhere near the top of the class system, a discovery that embittered them for life. So none of this is new. Nevertheless, John Rentoul writes:

Labour conference will be suffused with the imagery of class politics. Most of the speeches will refer to “working people”, and imply that the party represents the poor and middle-income majority against the rich. None of it is true. This year, it is less true than ever. Labour voters are richer, better-educated and more middle-class than Conservative and Reform supporters.

Peter Kellner, the polling guru, reports a new survey from Norstat. The company interviewed 5,500 people straight after the 2024 election, and then again this month. The results show that 57 per cent of Labour supporters were middle class (social grades ABC1) two years ago, which has now risen to 63 per cent. The proportions of graduates and of those earning more than £40,000 a year have also risen sharply.

The study confirms that the Great Class Inversion in British politics, after the Brexit vote 10 years ago, was no temporary blip but a long-run trend that is still happening. All the pollsters consistently report now that Labour voters are the most middle class, Reform voters the most working class (social grades C2DE), and the Conservatives somewhere in between, leaning towards the working class. Greens and Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, tend to be middle class, but not as much as Labour supporters.

This is going to make Labour’s annual conference one long exercise in cognitive dissonance. When Andy Burnham promises breathing space on the cost of living, he is offering respite to people who do not intend to vote for him, on the whole. Labour supporters tend to be the ones who can afford the rent or the mortgage.

When delegate after delegate comes to the lectern to talk about the class struggle, they will be talking about someone else’s class, most of whose members think that Labour does not represent them. If they urge solidarity with the workers, they may mean public sector workers in secure jobs with good pensions rather than the low-paid who feel more of an affinity with Nigel Farage.

The Labour movement has always had middle-class leaders, and it has long been an alliance between intellectuals and organised labour, but this is something different. This is now a party of well-off graduates, with a tiny outhouse of the genuinely disadvantaged attached at the back.

The class inversion has unexpected implications. It may explain why Labour members and supporters are more concerned about issues such as Gaza rather than immigration, which is what bothers the working class. Perhaps it is why Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer misjudged the pensioners’ winter fuel payment – if most pensioners they know give it to Greenpeace or spend it on wine.

It makes Burnham’s northern working-class appeal seem like a form of historical re-enactment. When he talks about “reindustrialisation” or reversing 40 years of Thatcherism, this feels like an attempt to identify with a mythical working-class past idealised by many middle-class people with working-class origins. It may reflect the tendency of people who are objectively middle class to describe themselves as working class. The self-described working class has expanded since 1948, while the number of people in actual working-class jobs has declined.

Equally, however, Burnham’s provincial working-class ham act could be the key to the electoral coalition that Labour needs. The other important finding of Norstat’s research highlighted by Kellner is that since the last election, Labour has lost more votes to the right – to Reform and the Tories – than to the left, to the Greens and the Lib Dems.

This could mean that Burnham’s working-class pitch is exactly what Labour needs to win back those voters who have defected from the party of the middle class to one of the working-class parties. Especially as the battleground for the next election will overwhelmingly be seats fought between Labour on one side and either the Tories or Reform. There are not many Labour-Green or Labour-Lib Dem marginals.

As we head to Liverpool, prepare for a lot of middle-class people play-acting as working class.

Making Allowance

Professor Prem Sikka, Lord Sikka writes:

Chancellor John Healey is set to present his first budget. Like his recent predecessors, he wants to see sustained economic growth which has remained elusive. The UK economy grew by an annual average of 3% between 1993 and 2007. The growth rate shrank to 1.5% between 2009 and 2023, 1% in 2024; 1.3% in 2025, and is forecast to grow by 1.1% in 2026.

Depleted Purchasing Power

Sustained economic growth can’t be achieved without a major boost to the purchasing power of the bottom 50% of the population. Economic statistics show that in the absence of state intervention wealth has not trickled-down. After 50-years of economic growth workers’ share of gross value added has declined from 71.9% in 1975, to 59.7%. The average real wage has hardly grown since 2008. In August 2026, the median gross pay of a payrolled employee was £31,884, resulting in take-home pay of £26,476 after paying income tax and national insurance. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that single working-age adult needs to earn £31,500 a year to reach a minimum income standard and live a life with dignity. A lone parent with 2 children needs £67,600 a year, while a couple with 2 children needs to earn £77,400 a year between them. Unsurprisingly, 25.3m people, including 14.9m working adults and 7.7m children, live below minimum income standards and are not in a position to play a significant role in economic revival. 

A large proportion of the population can’t dip into a savings buffer to support consumption and economic growth. 1 in 6 UK adults (16% or 8.9m people) have no savings. 2 in 5 Brits (39%) have £1,000 or less in savings. At the same time, the richest 1% of Britons owns more wealth than the bottom 70% of the population combined. Just 50 richest families hold more wealth than the poorest half of the population, comprising more than 34m people. The concentration of wealth in fewer hands has not provided the necessary economic stimulus.

The tax system should be used to boost the purchasing power of the bottom 50%, but it has done the reverse and hit the poorest the hardest. The poorest 20% pay a higher proportion of their income in direct and indirect taxes than the richest 20%. In 2021, the personal allowance was frozen at £12,570 a year and 26.6m people paid income tax at the basic rate of 20%. By 2026-27, due to the freeze, 31.4m people became liable to pay income tax at the basic rate. If personal allowance had risen in line with the rate of inflation, it would have been around £16,070 for 2026/27. Due to frozen income tax thresholds, a minimum wage earner in England will pay additional £980 in income tax and national insurance in 2026-27 alone. Without change, it will be worse in 2027-28. Pensioners have been particularly hit hard. In 200-21, 6.47m pensioners paid income tax. In 2026-27, 9.58m pensioners became liable to income tax. Nearly 2m pensioners live in poverty.

Increasing Personal Allowance

A substantial increase in tax free income tax personal allowance is the quickest way to boost people’s purchasing power. The tax cost of each £1,000 increase in personal allowance is around £10bn a year though the real cost would be considerably less as higher household spending would increase government yield from VAT and other indirect taxes. An immediate £3,000 increase in personal allowance to £15,570 would cost around £30bn and boost gross domestic product by around 1.2%. Neoliberals don’t ask any questions about the resources for bank bailouts and corporate welfare programmes, but they always ask ‘how is it going to be paid’ whenever redistribution is mentioned.

The £30bn cost would be met by ending subsidies to highly profitable commercial banks. Since 2006, the Bank of England has paid interest on central bank reserve deposits to commercial banks. Central bank reserves are deposits held by commercial banks at the Bank of England (BoE) and are used to settle payments between banks. They are also used by the BoE to manage interest rates through tools such as quantitative easing. The interest payments accelerated in 2009 as quantitative easing took hold. As interest rates rose, payments to commercial banks increased. The EU had similar arrangements but in 2023 virtually eliminated the practice, saving about £5.2bn a year. The Swiss central bank also stopped paying interest on minimum reserves. The UK continues to pay and has paid £100bn in the last three years alone, which is an average of more than £30bn a year. Currently, the government hands subsidies to banks and then seeks to clawback a tiny portion by levying windfall taxes.

A £3,000 increase in personal allowance would be worth £600 in cash to 31.4m basic rate income taxpayers. However, higher personal allowance would disproportionately boost the post-tax income of the higher rate (40%) taxpayers by £1,200 and even more for additional rate (45%) taxpayers. However, there are clawback arrangements. In general, currently personal allowance is reduced by £1 for every £2 of income above £100,000. The net effect is that personal allowance is zero for incomes of £125,140 or above. That said there would still be higher benefit to people in the 40% and 45% income tax bracket, which will increase inequalities.

The government can tackle such effects by addressing tax anomalies mainly benefitting the wealthy, which in turn would generate even more resources for redistribution. For example, gains arising from the sale of second homes, buy-to-let properties, shares, art, antiques, businesses and cryptocurrencies, generally accrue to wealthy individuals. Capital gains are normally taxed at marginal rates of 18% to 24% (there is an additional rate of 32% for City fund managers who are exempt from paying income tax) and are not subjected to national insurance contributions. In contrast, wages are taxed at marginal rates of 20% to 45% and are subject to national insurance payments. By taxing capital gains at the same rates as wages, around £12bn – £14bn could be raised. More, if national insurance is levied.

So who would be impacted? The capital gains tax regime benefits less than 1% of the population. In 2024-25, 584,000 people paid £24.2bn capital gains tax (CGT) on gains of £127.3bn, an effective rate of just over 19%. Most CGT comes from the small number of taxpayers who make the largest gains. In 2024-2025, 45% of CGT came from those who made gains of £5 million or more. This group represents less than 1% of CGT taxpayers each year. They paid ultra low rates of tax. According to HMRC, 52% of gains for CGT-liable individuals came from the 17% of individuals with taxable incomes above £125,140, the additional rate threshold for income Tax. The benefit of lower CGT is spread unevenly. 234,000 individuals in London and the South East of England benefitted, compared to 33,000 in East Midlands, 34,000 in Yorkshire and 18,000 in Wales. Lower CGT rates widen regional inequalities. The alignment of capital gains rates with those applied to wages would also reduce regional inequalities.

There are also additional ways of clawing back gains from the rich. For example, dividends are taxed at marginal rates of 8.75% to 39.35%. Around £6 billion a year could be generated if dividends are taxed at the same rate as wages, and even more if national insurance is also charged. The wealthy are major recipients of dividends. The Institute for Fiscal studies (IFS) reported that the top 1% of income tax payers receive more of their income in the form of partnership income or dividends. Some self-employed and owner-managers pay themselves in dividends instead of a salary to take advantage of lower tax rates. The government states that over “90% of UK taxpayers do not receive taxable dividend income” and majority of pensioners do not receive dividends outside the tax-free ISA wrapper.

Altogether, the Chancellor needs to make a political decision but can easily increase personal allowance by £3,000 a year by ending bank subsidies. This would lift millions out of poverty, increase spending power of the less well-off, lighten the cost-of-living crisis and boost economic growth. He can go further and restore the real value (since 2021) of personal allowance by aligning taxation of capital gains and dividends with wage rates. This change would also end tax avoidance schemes designed to convert incomes to capital gains. It would nullify strategies for concocting dividends to enable some to avoid income tax and national insurance contributions.

The above proposals transfer wealth from the wealthy to the less well-off. They do not require any increase in the rates of income tax, VAT or corporation tax. Unlike the Reform UK proposals, they do not call for cuts in spending on social security, public services or the state pension.

Do They Hear Us? We Were Right

Paul Knaggs writes:

Three years ago, at Labour’s conference in Liverpool, Keir Starmer was asked by LBC’s Nick Ferrari whether a siege was appropriate: “Cutting off power, cutting off water?” His answer was plain enough. “I think that Israel does have that right.” His office later said he meant only Israel’s right to self-defence, and Starmer insisted it had never been his view that Israel could withhold water, food, fuel or medicine. But the words were on tape, and the country heard them.

Now Liverpool again, and a different sound entirely. Ed Miliband, Foreign Secretary in Andy Burnham’s government, told conference that the suffering inflicted on Gaza and the West Bank by Netanyahu’s government is “a stain on the conscience of the world”. Then came the line that brought the hall to its feet. To the millions moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people, he said: “We hear you. You were right.”

Let us be fair, because fairness is the point. What Miliband announced is real. A ban on goods from illegal settlements. A pledge to cut off British finance, construction and services to them. Ministers now openly naming settler ethnic cleansing, the evidence of war crimes in Gaza and Israel’s illegal occupation. No British government has gone this far, and those who marched for three years deserve to see it.

But listen to who is speaking. Miliband was not a lonely voice on the backbenches. He sat on Starmer’s front bench in opposition and at his cabinet table in government, through every month in which the old line held. “You were right” is a generous thing to say to the public. It is also, whether he intends it or not, a verdict on the room he sat in. If the millions were right, the government they were arguing against was wrong, and the people who served in it owe more than an applause line.

And how were those millions treated while they were being right? The Starmer government proscribed Palestine Action. On the Sunday before Miliband spoke, police arrested around 150 people outside the conference for holding placards that read “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” One day the state arrests you for your sign. The next, the Foreign Secretary thanks you for your conscience. Both cannot be the settled position of the same party.

The genocide case brought by South Africa remains before the International Court of Justice, and the legal question will be answered there. But the dead do not wait on judgments, and they do not disappear because Labour has found a new vocabulary. So here is the test, and it is not a test of language. If Labour believes its critics were right, it should review the proscription that is still filling police vans outside its own conference. It should give a full, public account of what ministers knew and decided on arms exports while Gaza was being flattened. And it should stop asking the country to hear the new words and forget the old ones. Orwell saw this trick long ago. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” This time the Party is telling you to trust your eyes and ears. Good. Then let it answer for what they said.

And, since the Fairford Five had mocked up their van as Fuel2U in case they were stopped and asked why they had so much diesel, making it is obvious what their game was and it was not the Islamic Revolution:

Two bail decisions came within a single week. On Friday, a 37-year-old roofer named Daniel Thomas, known to his supporters as Danny Tommo, appeared at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court. He pleaded not guilty to criminal damage after allegedly slashing a boat in the Channel with an emergency responder on board. He also denied refusing to give police the PIN to his phone. He was refused bail and sent to prison to await trial. On Monday, five young men from London, arrested in the dead of night beside an RAF base used by American bombers, were released. They had been held on suspicion of Explosives Act offences and preparing a terrorist act. Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, head of Counter Terrorism Policing, told reporters outside New Scotland Yard that they were leaving custody on police bail under “stringent conditions”.

Many readers will look at those two outcomes and conclude the system has its thumb on the scale. The feeling is understandable. Honesty requires us to say the cases are not the same. Thomas has been charged, and a court judged whether he should wait for trial behind bars. The Fairford five have not been charged. Police released them because, for now, they either lack the evidence to charge or the grounds to ask a court for more time. That distinction matters. It also opens a more troubling question than the one being shouted on social media.

WHAT WAS IN THE VANS? 

On Sunday the country watched aerial footage of a bomb disposal robot circling three white vans near the village of Whelford. Two had their rear doors open. Large black objects lay scattered around them. Reporters near the perimeter fence heard what sounded like two controlled detonations. At least 85 homes were evacuated. By Monday afternoon every suspect was walking free, the cordon was being scaled back and residents were being told they could go home. Police have still not said what, if anything, was in those vans. 

Plenty of people will be exasperated by this, and they are entitled to be. For a day and a half the public was invited to believe that a serious bomb plot had been stopped on the edge of the Cotswolds. The authorities’ own conduct since then tells a smaller story. Suspects in a live plot to bomb an airbase are not usually back on the streets within 36 hours. Either the evidence is thinner than Sunday’s headlines suggested, or the state is asking us to trust it without showing why. Either there was a viable explosive device, or there was not. The public is owed the answer. 

If there was a working device, releasing five men without charge after so short a time is extraordinary, and ministers should explain it. If there was not, the country deserves to know why Sunday’s story looks so different by Monday. Bail in national-security cases is not unheard of: in a separate case, the husband of Labour MP Joani Reid and two other men were bailed after being arrested by counter-terrorism officers on suspicion of spying for China. What is unusual is the distance between the drama of the operation and the modesty of its result.

WHO HAS BEEN BRIEFING, AND WHY? 

Before anyone had been charged, the Daily Telegraph reported that police are understood to suspect Iran as the most likely state actor. The Iranian Embassy in London “categorically” rejected the claim. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting then said the farmer who raised the alarm “had a partial picture”. She had tried the base’s own hotline, got no answer, dialled 999, and later told the BBC the authorities had “dropped the ball”. Context matters here. In March, Keir Starmer, then Prime Minister, allowed US strikes on Iranian missile sites to be launched from Fairford. A government that has tied British soil to an American war has an obvious interest in a story about Iranian aggression on English soil. That does not make the story false. It means the story should be tested in a courtroom, not settled by anonymous briefings to friendly newspapers.

ONE LAW, FOR EVERYONE 

The principled answer to Basingstoke is not to demand that the Fairford men be locked up. It is to insist on the same standard for everyone. The presumption of liberty before trial belongs to a far-right activist accused of slashing a dinghy and to five Londoners picked up near an airbase. Those who want the state to show its evidence in one case should want it in the other. The left forgot this once. The right is forgetting it now. Thomas’s lawyers will apply again at Portsmouth Crown Court. The Fairford investigation continues. In both cases the question is the same, and it is the only one that should matter: what can the state prove? Justice is judged on evidence, not headlines, and nobody should be jailed or cleared by press briefing.

The Wood For The Trees

Suspected terrorists do not get bail. So that’s that. According to the fabled farmer, the Police have not contacted her to ask what she saw, but there were between eight and 10 men in the woods near RAF Fairford, yet only five have been arrested. If those London boys from central casting had been caught redhanded with explosives in that vicinity, then they would have been charged by now. But if their hands were red, then it was from red diesel, although their oil drums were empty, so they must not yet have contributed to the 120 per cent increase in fuel theft from farms compared to last year, with 8000 litres of diesel stolen in March from a farm only 24 miles away.

Such crimes result in no small measure from Donald Trump’s war, but any other attempt to pin this on Iran has been laughed out from Tehran to Tetbury, so while it cannot be ruled out in what was already the beleaguered Gloucestershire Constabulary, regime change in Iran seems most unlikely to follow from this even indirectly. Regime change to what? There are two realistic possibilities. One is the weirdest political cult in the world, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (Mojahedin-e-Khalq). That has been based in exile since 1981, leaving it no constituency in a country of which half the population was under 30, yet the longstanding neoconservative and liberal-interventionist aim was to install it in Tehran, so the Americans relocated it to Albania between 2013 and 2016. It remains there, not without local resistance, while also maintaining a considerable presence in the France of Emmanuel Macron, as well as an office in Cricklewood.

Consider how the world turns, since that outfit was headquartered for many years in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, where it participated in atrocities committed by the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard. During the Iraq War, Biden’s, Bush’s and Blair’s Boys bombed the PMOI/MEK into surrender, as part of a deal with Iran to hand over certain al-Qaeda suspects who were of course in any case opponents of the Iranian regime. Oh, how the world does turn. Opponents of the Iraq War were screamed down as Islamists and revolutionary Marxists due to the presence of a few of each in our enormous ranks. But these people really did and do manage the remarkable feat of being both, yet they were nevertheless closely allied to Saddam Hussein.

The other possibility is Reza Pahlavi, hitherto a ridiculous fantasist supported by almost no one else in the world apart from a mostly elderly three per cent of Iranian-Americans, heavily concentrated in and around Los Angeles. But the cause of Henry Tudor was ridiculous once. We now know that the Whig magnates were in constant contact with the Jacobite court in exile, just in case. Bourbon and Bonaparte Restorations were romantic fantasies until they happened. People scoffed at the Eastern European governments in exile in London until they were installed in their own capitals. Why, the overthrown Tsar of Bulgaria even came back as Prime Minister. And here we are.

Rajavi is most put out. Using her stage name, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, she alleges that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has been infiltrating demonstrations and shouting for the Shah, or else overdubbing recordings of demonstrations in those terms and circulating them on social media. In every case of the former, says Rajavi, the real demonstrators have responded with her own slogans of opposition both to the Supreme Leader and to the Shah. Like the Eskandari founders of the Tudeh Party, she is a member of the Qajar dynasty that reigned until the Pahlavis overthrew it in 1925. As was the great Mohammad Mosaddegh, but that does provide some context.

In calling for Pahlavi himself to run Iran, all the old munchers of freedom fries are now advocating an absolute monarchy. The hardest British republicanism is among the Blairites. Such are the centrists who, agreeing with the populist Right in principle as they usually do, are also cheering on the war against Iran. They think that monarchy is backward, as any American or Israeli politician or commentator does axiomatically. And like those, they think that Iranians want and need a monarchy, albeit one that turned 100 only last December and which reigned for all of 54 years in the vast sweep of Persian history. Remember, though, that it is we who have doubts who are the racists.

Blue Lights, Dark Orange

Tomorrow’s return of Blue Lights is the most serendipitous piece of the BBC scheduling since House of Cards in November 1990.

Far from a line’s having been crossed at Drumcree, the point is that a line has not been crossed. Who are now The Men Behind The Wire?

Although it has aged dramatically, the Orange Order has survived 29 years without this parade, marching at hundreds of other locations. This one did not seem to commemorate anything especially important.

But the murder of the Quinn brothers, in particular, hung over it, and not from the distant past or with disputed facts. Its revival would have been sheer bad taste. It still would be. Why do this now? To what end?

Not Taken In

By hosting the American bases, Britain is up to its eyeballs in the war on Iran, and Iran is reacting accordingly, as it has always been clear that it would. The court media are being allowed to fly a helicopter over RAF Fairford, which ought in any case to be called USAF Fairford to end the pretence, and to convey the images obtained to the users of social media, complete with the locations of, well, pretty much everything on the site. As even Frank Gardiner puts it, “I don’t understand why Donald Trump is saying we had these people under view for a long time. I don’t know where he got that from, because if they did then how on earth were they allowed to wander round Gloucestershire putting on masks and driving vans allegedly with explosives in them?” As Paul Knaggs writes:

At a quarter to one on Sunday morning, ‘police got a call’ about three vehicles heading towards RAF Fairford. By breakfast, around 85 households in Whelford had been told to leave their homes. A 400-metre cordon surrounded the vans, and an Army bomb-disposal team was working through them. Five men were in custody. They were arrested first under the Explosives Act, then on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act. Counter Terrorism Policing has taken over the investigation. Two months earlier, the man responsible for the defence of this country told us not to worry too much.

On Sunday 26 July, Iran’s foreign ministry had just warned that Britain would “bear responsibility” for letting American forces strike Iran from British soil. BBC Breakfast asked Wes Streeting whether Iran could target the UK. “I think we shouldn’t put too much stock in the sabre-rattling of Iran,” he said, and added that Britain would not be intimidated. That same month, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were more specific. According to the Tasnim news agency, they declared any base used to invade Iranian territory a legitimate target, and they cited bomber flights from Fairford by name.

RAF Fairford Iran Threat Was Explicit in July 

It is worth being precise here, because precision is what was missing in July. Nobody has established that Iran had anything to do with Whelford. Police have not said who the five men are or what was in those vans. Reports say a possible Iranian connection is one line of inquiry. That is all it is. If this turns out to be something else entirely, this publication will say so. But the case against Streeting’s answer never depended on how Sunday turned out. There is a fair defence of what he said: a Defence Secretary should not give a hostile regime the satisfaction of visible British panic, and some composure comes with the job. Agreed. But refusing to be intimidated is one thing, and telling the public not to take a threat seriously is another. The first is resolve.

The second is a judgement about risk, and it was a poor one. British security officials have repeatedly said that proxies linked to Iran were behind arson and sabotage attempts on British soil, and they have warned that Tehran could widen its targets if the war dragged on. The threat was not theoretical when Streeting dismissed it. It was already in the government’s own intelligence reporting.

Then there is the part Westminster would rather we skipped. Fairford is not a random dot on a map. It became worth threatening because of a political choice. In March, Keir Starmer allowed American bombers to fly what he called “specific and limited defensive” missions against Iran from Gloucestershire. Burnham inherited that arrangement and kept it. There was no vote in Parliament, and no honest conversation with the people living beside the runway. Nobody asked Whelford whether it wanted to host the launch pad for a war the government insists it is not fighting. The residents were simply woken in the night and sent to the leisure centre. 

That is the real charge. The problem is not one clumsy phrase from a minister. It is that a government put British soil in the line of fire and then told the public the fire was mostly noise. Streeting should now answer three questions, in Parliament rather than on a breakfast sofa. What security assessment lay behind his July remarks? What was done to protect Fairford and the villages around it? Does he still think the threat deserves so little attention? And MPs should finally get a vote on whether British bases go on serving this war. You cannot lend out the runway and then call the consequences sabre-rattling.

And as Ricky D. Hale writes:

For the past few months, we’ve been told by people with a crystal ball that an attack on UK soil was imminent, and now it’s finally happened. There was an incident at RAF Fairford last night that resulted in 85 homes being evacuated. The media would like you to know this incident was terrifying. So terrifying, in fact, that you should probably get ready for war. This is an emerging story, but here’s what I’ve managed to piece together so far. Given the media seems to be making this up as it goes along, some of the details are probably gonna change. Needless to say, they have plot holes to fill.

A farmer was driving home in the early hours of the morning and she noticed three white vans blocking the road. No one was inside them. She turned around and spotted a bunch of Middle Eastern-looking boys running off into the woods. Those woods were incredibly dark, but thankfully, she has the eyes of an owl. She was able to work out their ethnicity through the shadow of the trees, despite the fact they were wearing masks. She called an emergency line that locals had been given for just such a scenario, but no one could be bothered to answer. She called 999 and police came out within ten minutes of her call. When they arrived, they said they’d first been notified nearly an hour ago, but hadn’t bothered doing anything. There were no routine security patrols around the base either. It’s basically the sloppiest security effort since Netanyahu gave standdown orders on October 7.

Luckily for the police, those Middle-Eastern-looking boys were still hanging around 25 minutes later and were arrested under the Explosives Act. We are told the vans had been driving around the base for hours before they parked up. It’s like they were making their arrival as visible as possible and then they just waited around to be caught. Either it was deliberate or they were just as useless as base security. Somehow it gets even worse. The vans were parked just six metres from houses, and the company names and telephone numbers on them were fake. Yet it took police around five hours to give evacuation orders. Maybe they knew the vans weren’t a threat, or maybe they’re staggeringly incompetent. I guess it could be both.

Prior to the incident, the base was on its highest alert, and one local said they’d been stopped at gunpoint by Americans. If you didn’t know, this is an American base on our soil, or a “fort” as Trump called it. The US president was giving interviews about the incident shortly after it happened. He said “it worked out great”, which is an odd choice of words, don’t you think? Trump said the US had been investigating the suspects for a long time. Not sure if he meant “investigating” or actually meant “working with”. All I know is the British are insisting the arrests weren’t intelligence-led and that a farmer basically saved the country.

We are now being told by the war-hungry media it was Iran, Iran, Iran… or maybe Russia, according to one news reader who mumbled something about this is why we need tactical nukes. Yelp. Now I’m still not clear what these “Iranians” were hoping to achieve. Park vans packed with explosives near a base and blow the whole thing up? Unless they had a nuke, best they’d achieve is damage to a few nearby houses and trees. If the Iranians wanted to pull this off, they would not hire a bunch of kids to drive in circles for hours around a base that’s on its highest alert and then hide in the woods until they were caught. They would quickly launch drones and disappear.

It seems more likely this was a performance rather than a serious attack. Shortly after it happened, we had a news crew flying above Fairford in a helicopter, showing the location of B1 Stealth Bombers and other sensitive things. If there was a real threat, that’s the last thing they would allow. Now you have to ask yourself which parties would benefit from this. Israel needs us to join its war, the US needs to keep using Fairford to bomb Iran, and the UK needs to justify its involvement. Even though we attacked Iran first, they will probably spin it into something like this: “Iran is attacking the UK, even though we are a neutral party. Therefore we have no choice but to get involved”. This would be a terrible legal and moral argument, but it just needs to convince stupid people. We have to make sure stupid people are not taken in by this crap.

The only way to have these questions asked in Parliament is for Holborn and St Pancras to elect George Galloway.