Interested Persons

Always answer them with this. John McEvoy writes:

A pre-inquest review opened on 21 September into the killing of three British citizens working as security consultants for World Central Kitchen (WCK) in Gaza. James ‘Jim’ Henderson, 33, James Kirby, 47, and John Chapman, 57, were among seven aid workers killed in a series of Israeli drone strikes on 1 April 2024. Then UK prime minister Rishi Sunak told Benjamin Netanyahu he was “appalled” by the incident while current foreign secretary Ed Miliband described the killings as “cold-blooded”. Nochi Mendel, the colonel who ordered the strike, said he is “not sorry” and the Israeli military recently announced it would not pursue any criminal investigations.

At Avon Coroner’s Court in Bristol, lawyers for the aid workers’ families demanded a full investigation into the incident including the actions and policies of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) as well as the munitions used. They want the inquest to establish whether the aid workers were unlawfully killed and whether the strikes were conducted in accordance with Israel’s targeting and deconfliction policies, with the coroner already indicating she will include the IDF and Mendel as interested persons. The families have also requested that enquiries be made to Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) amid questions about intelligence sharing with Israel, with a view to also including that department as an interested person.

This comes after Declassified revealed a British surveillance aircraft overflew Gaza shortly before the attack, with the UK government refusing to release the footage or even disclose the aircraft’s flight path. In a statement outside the court, the Kirby family said: “The coroner told us today that Colonel Mendel, the Israeli military and the Israeli government are going to be made interested persons in this inquest. We also have questions for the British government. An RAF surveillance plane was flying over Gaza on the day James died. The Ministry of Defence has the footage from that flight but will not tell us whether it shows the area where the convoy was hit. We think the coroner should be given it. We are now asking the Government to give the Coroner whatever it has, and to keep pressing Israel for the drone footage and the other evidence. If Israel says no, people should be told that. There is no other independent investigation into James’ death. This inquest is all we have, and we are going to see it through.”

The massacre 

Over the past two years, an Australian government investigation alongside various media and firsthand accounts have shed light on what happened the night of the attack. Shortly after 11pm local time, the aid workers were targeted by three Israeli drone strikes launched roughly four minutes apart while travelling in a WCK convoy towards Rafah. Earlier that evening, the convoy had escorted aid trucks from a makeshift pier to the WCK welcome centre in Deir el-Balah, where locally contracted security guards boarded the vehicles, according to the Australian investigation. Some of those local guards were armed, according to IDF officers who were monitoring the operation from above with surveillance drones, with one allegedly firing a gun into the air.

The IDF claimed the presence of the local guards indicated a hijacking by Hamas, despite the convoy continuing along its planned route and unloading the aid at a WCK warehouse some three miles south. After unloading the aid, IDF drones continued to watch from the skies as the WCK convoy departed west towards the coastal road while a car carrying the local guards drove north. The WCK convoy was supposed to return via the welcome centre, but a decision was made to travel directly to the accommodation in Rafah due to the operation being delayed, according to the Australian investigation.

While this amounted to a modification in the route, it did not impact the decision to target the convoy because the IDF only became aware of this diversion later on. The IDF says it then “mistakenly believed that the vehicles” travelling south “contained Hamas military operatives and therefore struck the vehicles”, with one account suggesting a bag put into one of the WCK vehicles was erroneously thought to be a weapon. When the airstrikes were launched, the WCK convoy was nowhere near any Israeli troops and posed no reasonable threat to the IDF. In written submissions to the coroner’s court, lawyers for the Henderson family argued the IDF’s narrative is “contradicted by all of the available evidence”.

“At its highest”, they wrote, “there was an alleged mistaken identification of a bag being placed into one of the cars being a gun or containing a gun”. Pete Weatherby, representing the Henderson family, noted how the lawyers were “piecing together from open source material either from Mendel or the Israeli official position different and not entirely consistent narratives”. He said it would therefore be useful for the Israeli government to finally outline “what they say actually happened factually as a starting point for the investigation”. The strikes were “intentionally lethal”, lawyers added in written submissions, “and the postmortem finding shows that Jim’s injuries were so severe they resulted in his immediate death”. When asked about WCK, Mendel previously said: “Unfortunately, they aren’t really a neutral organisation. Not really an organisation you can say is innocent and completely clean… It has ties to Hamas”.

Scope of the inquest

Given Israel’s failure to provide a full account of the incident or pursue a criminal investigation, lawyers for the families have requested that the coroner launch a thorough and independent investigation into how the deaths came about. The investigation, they contend, should go beyond the immediate circumstances of the incident to the IDF’s policies on targeting and deconfliction with the goal of determining whether the aid workers were killed unlawfully. This is particularly important within the context of the IDF carrying out a pattern of strikes on aid convoys and premises during the six months prior to the WCK massacre.

“It appears prima facie that this is a case where three British citizens (and others) were unlawfully killed by the military of an allied nation”, the Hendersons’ lawyers argued in written submissions. They pointed to a recent investigation in The Guardian which found the WCK strikes were “in line with a general policy employed by the Israeli military of… ‘incrimination’, which gives commanders in the field wide discretion on designating someone as a ‘terrorist’.” The coroner’s court also heard that the strikes were launched with a Hermes 450 drone, alleged by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) to be powered by UK-made engines.

“There has been a great deal of public concern around the possibility that UK manufactured components or UK based research and development contributed to the killing of Jim and his colleagues”, the lawyers submitted. Establishing the source of weaponry used in the attack is therefore “central” to understanding how the aid workers came to their death and “should be investigated”. The lawyers also pointed to how an inquest jury previously found Tom Hurndall, another British national who died in Gaza in 2006, had been “unlawfully and intentionally killed” by the IDF.

Surveillance footage

The lawyers also requested that Britain’s MoD disclose whether it holds relevant surveillance or intelligence data relating to the incident. The MoD previously informed Declassified that it holds video surveillance footage of Gaza from the day of the aid worker massacre but is refusing to publish the tape. The footage was taken by a RAF surveillance plane which spent approximately five hours above the strip that day, returning to base shortly before the airstrikes took place. The MoD may therefore have collected footage of events leading up to the tragedy, which could provide clarity over Israeli claims regarding Hamas “gunmen” near the convoy.

To this end, lawyers submitted that “the British Ministry of Defence… should be given the opportunity to be interested persons in these inquest proceedings”. The lawyers specifically noted how any footage taken over Gaza that day “is obviously potentially relevant, and may show the progress and actions of the convoy”. The coroner suggested that initial questions will be put to the MoD before deciding whether to include the department as an interested person. Further information was requested from the Foreign Office with regard to what measures were in place to keep British aid workers in Gaza safe prior to April 2024, and what additional actions have been taken since the incident.

Elbit Systems has also been recommended as an interested person given the company could provide a witness statement confirming “whether any part of the [drone] originated in the UK”. “As you know Elbit operates 16 facilities in the UK, the centrepiece is very close to where we are now in Bristol,” the lawyers said today. In terms of allaying public concern we would say this is a key part of this particular inquisitorial process and therefore evidence should be obtained from Elbit and they should be invited to take part in the process.”

In addition, the coroner has been requested to seek disclosure of IDF drone footage and audio, the IDF’s investigation file, IDF policy and procedures documents, and internal material from WCK. The Foreign Office recently announced: “The World Central Kitchen attack is one of countless incidents in Gaza where there has been no accountability. In Gaza, humanitarian workers continue to work tirelessly to support civilians in desperate need, risking their lives whilst working in the most perilous conditions. Yet despite the fragile ceasefire, Gaza remains the deadliest place to deliver aid, with 186 humanitarian workers killed in 2025. Israel must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law, and must do more to ensure that humanitarian staff can carry out their work safely. Lessons must be learnt from this tragedy”. The coroner is now expected to seek disclosure from interested persons as well as other relevant parties before a second pre-inquest review takes place on 5 March 2027.

Put The Fear

It has taken them since the Cameron Government, via the ferocious support of Theresa May and of Boris Johnson, but they have got round to it, as Janet Eastham, Amy Gibbons and Daniel Martin write:

Labour’s controversial new trans law risks criminalising prayer, the Church of England has warned. The Anglican Church said the legislation must not “unintentionally criminalise” providing prayer and pastoral support, and that it must allow for discussion and disagreement. A spokesman told The Telegraph that Church leaders would raise these concerns with MPs and peers scrutinising the draft Conversion Practices Bill. Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church have also voiced concerns about the bill and called for it to be abandoned.

The legislation threatens people with five years in prison for trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill would cover parents, meaning mothers and fathers risk arrest for asking their child whether they really want to change gender. The Telegraph has launched a campaign for the proposed legislation to be scrapped amid warnings that it would have a chilling effect on family relationships. Opponents have said the bill could also apply to prayer. The warning from the Church will be seen as a blow by ministers who have touted the Church’s support for the controversial law. On Friday, Cabinet Office officials told The Telegraph that there was “support for our draft bill from the Church of England” and cited an earlier endorsement from the Bishop of Manchester.

However, in a statement, a spokesman for the Church of England said: “We believe that everyone is made in the image of God and should be cherished for who they are. In 2017, the General Synod voted overwhelmingly to call on the Government to bring forward a ban on conversion therapy with respect to sexual orientation, which has since been echoed by senior leaders. It is, however, important to ensure that any legislation does not unintentionally criminalise providing appropriate prayer and pastoral care to those who seek it, and we will reflect this concern in our evidence to the pre-legislative scrutiny process. Of course, pastoral care and prayer should never be coercive. A ban on conversion therapy must still allow space for discussion and disagreement. We want to prevent abuses of power and coercive practices, which should be the focus of any legislation.”

Parents and religious leaders ‘at risk of criminalisation’

The vote at General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – was passed before the proposed law was expanded to include attempts to change someone’s gender identity. Ministers insist the legislation is needed to close loopholes that leave gay and transgender people vulnerable to abuse, while setting “high bars which protect freedom of expression”, including for religious leaders. However, opponents argue that abusive practices such as assault, threats and harassment are already illegal, and warn that the new offence could criminalise concerned parents, as well as therapists and religious leaders providing pastoral care.

Leaders from the Catholic Church have also revealed they oppose the bill. John Sherrington, the Archbishop of Liverpool and the chairman of the department of social justice of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said that the bishops “recognise that it is important for governments to use appropriate legislation to protect people from abuse”. But he added that they believe “current legislation already covers such abusive practices and makes them illegal”.

He said: “There is a danger that this legislation will create uncertainty around lawful pastoral care by the Church, family life and the legality of open conversations that might take place in a range of social settings. There are clearly a range of scenarios under this proposed legislation in which legal action of various types may be taken against individuals or organisations, including parents of children who express well-informed opinions and make well-intentioned statements. We are concerned that this legislation will challenge the Church’s ability to fulfil its calling to proclaim an authentic understanding of the human person with clarity, simplicity, love and respect. People of faith must remain free to express their beliefs through speech and prayer. We call on politicians to abandon this bill and focus instead on enforcement of existing protections and accessible support for anyone facing abuse or coercion.”

Law’s ‘overreach into normal family life’

Bishop Brian McGee, the vice-president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, echoed these concerns, telling The Telegraph: “Nobody should fear violence, abuse, or coercion, and the law must do all it can to make sure everybody is protected from such behaviour. This law, however, appears to go far beyond the protection of citizens, overreaching into normal daily family life, pastoral conversations and everyday teaching.”

Some religious figures told The Telegraph they feared that liberal campaigners would use the law to silence people with more traditional views on issues such as marriage and gender. Simon Calvert, the deputy director of the charity The Christian Institute, said it was “quite clear” that the legislation could “criminalise parents praying for their children”. He told The Telegraph: “It is a bizarre new approach to the criminal law which makes all kinds of legitimate speech vulnerable to police investigation. Lawyers are lining up to condemn the way it’s drafted. And the activists the Government are trying to placate are quite open that they really do want the law to ‘put the fear’ into parents over their family prayers.”

Mr Calvert added: “Elizabeth I famously declined to make windows into men’s souls. This bill makes a window and will force police, prosecutors and courts to peer through it to decide if your intentions, your beliefs, mean your conversation with your gay or trans friend was a criminal offence.”

On Monday, MPs scrutinising the draft bill were told that it should include a ban on prayers aimed at changing someone’s gender identity or sexuality. Giving evidence to the bill committee, Jayne Ozanne, a gay evangelical Christian and the founder of the Ban Conversion Practices Coalition, insisted the practice should be illegal. Asked whether such prayers should be criminalised, including in a family setting, she said: “I think we need to be clear about what is wrong and right. Stealing is stealing. Whether you steal a sweet or a car, it is still stealing.”

Ms Ozanne, who said she had been traumatised by people praying for her to be straight, said the issue lay with “the impact on the individual in front of you”. She added: “A lot of prayer will be directed – somebody will have their hand on you and pray. It is the fact that they are trying to pray for you to be changed to a thing that they think you ought to be as opposed to praying for you to find a point of peace. You might say that that is too subtle a difference, but they are worlds apart. Helping me come to a place where I know who I ought to be is very different from telling me that I have to be straight.”

A Government spokesman said: “Our draft bill would outlaw a specific form of abuse, setting high bars which protect freedom of expression, including for religious leaders, while ensuring no one is free to commit abuse. LGBT+ people should never, without exception, have to suffer coercion or abuse in an effort to change who they are. Successive governments have agreed for almost a decade that conversion practices have no place in modern Britain. This Government is clear that freedom of belief, whether faith-based or wider, will be respected by the ban, while our draft bill has already been welcomed by religious groups.”

The Double-Sided Flag

In Uruguay, Holy Week is officially called Tourism Week and Christmas Day is officially called Family Day. But people feel the need for more. The Pope has arrived there to a rapturous reception.

Meanwhile, in staunchly Catholic Paraguay, President Santiago Peña has been impeached and placed under house arrest after the people took to the streets because of the overnight collapse of Ueno Bank, leaving 60 per cent of Paraguayans without access to their money.

Peña is closely allied to Javier Milei, and this cashless nightmare is what the Nationalist International has in mind for all of us. But the Pope, so robust both on the opportunities and on the dangers of Artificial Intelligence, will be going next to Argentina. On This Rock.

When Will We Learn?

No less than fiscal policy, monetary policy needs to be under democratic political control, as it used to be, and as no Government was ever elected with a mandate for it not to be. We now see the alternative, if it can be so described, as identified by Richard Murphy:

The Bank of England has raised interest rates to 4%, supposedly to tackle inflation. There is just one problem with this decision. The Bank knows that much of the inflation we are suffering is being driven by rising oil and energy prices, largely resulting from conflict in the Middle East. It also knows that raising interest rates cannot reduce those prices.

So why is it doing this? The answer is that the Bank believes it must suppress demand elsewhere in the economy to compensate for rising energy costs. In other words, it is deliberately making mortgages more expensive, increasing business borrowing costs, discouraging investment and reducing household spending power. And all this when people are already struggling with higher energy bills. That is problem number one.

There is, however, another problem. Higher interest rates increase costs for businesses, which can then feed through into higher prices. They can, in that case, add to inflation rather than reduce it. The Bank is imposing economic pain to address a problem its chosen policy cannot directly solve. That is not sound economic management. It is the consequence of an economic dogma that refuses to recognise the difference between inflation caused by excessive demand and inflation caused by supply shocks. When will we learn?

Instead of this, anyone wishing to emulate Nigel Lawson, who never did it, should be calling for the taxation of wealth at the same rate as earnings, which he restored in 1988. But in 1998, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown put the clock back to the Chancellor of the Exchequer who had gone on, as First Lord of the Treasury, to introduce monetarism to Britain 50 years ago next month. On that as on Bank of England “independence”, Blair and Brown were much less social democratic than Lawson or, therefore, than Margaret Thatcher. Must the same be said of Andy Burnham and John Healey?

Family Values, Indeed

There has been whining that certain mind-boggling categories of pornography had today become illegal in England and Wales, a ban that proved the technical possibility of a total ban. There cannot be a “free” market in general, yet not in drugs, or prostitution, or pornography, or unrestricted alcohol, or unrestricted gambling. That is an important part of why there must not be a “free” market in general, which is a political choice, not a law of nature. Enacting and enforcing laws against drugs, prostitution and pornography, and regulating alcohol, tobacco and gambling, are clear examples of State intervention in, and regulation of, the economy. Radical change would be impossible if the workers, the youth and the poor were in a state of stupefaction. Contrived in the past, that baleful situation is being contrived again.

For example, pornography is now being legalised in Ukraine to pay for the war. It had been legally prohibited and practically unknown in the Soviet Union, but post-Soviet Russia was flooded with it, to placate the young male population during the larceny of their country by means of the economic “shock therapy” that created today’s oligarchs. “Sex work” of various kinds has always been encouraged when the young men have needed to be stupefied, and it still is. The corporate capitalist pornogrification of our own society is no accident. In welcoming the endorsement of Bonnie Blue, Reform UK has picked its side, the same side as the Green Party on this as on the war.

One complaint from people with the indignity to make them is that “incest porn” has been criminalised while marriage between first cousins was legal, and we all know who goes in for that, eh, eh, eh. But in point of fact, sex between first cousins is not incestuous under the law of this land. Although earlier this year, Dr Luke Evans presented the First Cousins (Prohibited Relationships) Bill, which would ban not only marriage and civil partnerships between first cousins, but also sexual relations between them. At last, someone in this debate has got to the point. Cousin marriage is unconditionally legal in 18 of the United States plus the District of Columbia, and conditionally legal in a further six. Proponents of a ban here should ask themselves why there was not one already. There did used to be. Until the Reformation, the Late Roman ban on marriage to the fourth degree of consanguinity had obtained, extended to affinity because in marriage, “the two shall become one flesh”. Catholic Canon Law has therefore always banned cousin marriage, at one time to the seventh degree, although with possibilities of dispensation since the ban was not in the Bible.

Such dispensations did the Habsburgs no good, but our own Royal Family would agree with NHS England that cousin marriage, not least where one party was an immigrant, had “benefits” that included “stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages”. Queen Victoria and the immigrant Prince Albert were first cousins. By descent from that marriage, the King’s parents were third cousins, while they were also second cousins once removed through a different line. Prince Philip was not only an immigrant, but an asylum seeker who took refuge in Britain because he had relatives here, one of whom he married. Britain intervened militarily in his native land to restore his family to the Throne. Talk about bringing their troubles to our door.

It was not a happy marriage between Victoria and Albert’s granddaughter, Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and their grandson, Grand Duke Ernest Louis of Hesse and by Rhine, although rather more successful was the union between Ernest Louis’s sister, Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine, and another of Victoria and Albert’s grandsons, Prince Henry of Prussia, even if two of their three sons were haemophiliacs. The other one did not die until 1978. Did Queen Elizabeth II never meet him? At any rate, cousin marriage was the most uncompromisingly Protestant thing about her public life. Ernest Louis and Victoria Melita were known in the Royal Family as Ernie and Ducky, but she was not the only ducky in the marriage, which was dissolved after only six years in 1901.

That brings us to the fact that the legality of marriages between first cousins was a product of the Reformation. Its prevalence until the First World War, and as recently as that, was a badge of Protestant honour, since Henry VIII had legalised it when he had wanted to marry Catherine Howard, who was Anne Boleyn’s first cousin, and since although William and Mary never had children (there’s that Ducky thing again), the intention had been that they would, and they were first cousins whose marriage would not ordinarily have been possible in the Catholic Church. Does the Orange Order, named after a fruit, now wish to ban a marriage such as William of Orange’s? Would the four stripes of Northern Irish Unionist in the House of Commons vote for that ban? We may be about to find out.

This seems to be about the Two Cultures. Although Charles and Emma Darwin were first cousins who had 10 children, and although Albert and Elsa Einstein were both maternal first cousins, and paternal second cousins such that her maiden name was Einstein, the mere thought of this practice is profoundly shocking to scientists. But to people formed by the study of literature and history, then, while that is where it belongs, that is where you will find it routinely. Mainstream British society was educated out of it, and not very long ago, so that can obviously be done. South Asians are hardly unreceptive to education.

Anglo-Saxons and Scotch-Irish still regularly marry their first cousins in several of the parts of the United States that voted for Donald Trump, and they did so as a matter of course into the very recent past. But if the argument is that this was something that certain other ethnic groups did, then it may be better to treat the matter as one of health education rather than of criminal law. After all, that was what worked with everyone else. Nineteenth-century novels are full of marriages between first cousins as the most normal thing in the world.

In HMS Pinafore, Sir Joseph Porter marries his adoring Cousin Hebe. Between 1979 and 1981, the makers and viewers of To the Manor Born took it as read that Audrey fforbes-Hamilton’s late husband had been her cousin. Although Coronation Street does not, both Emmerdale and EastEnders still feature such arrangements between white characters whose families were supposed to have lived in Emmerdale or Walford since time out of mind, and that seems to raise no eyebrows. Still, the King is a last great hurrah of that sort of thing. His mother was one of the least inbred monarchs ever, and his son and grandson are not at all inbred. Educate people, and it will mostly or entirely die out. That worked with everyone else. Even the Royal Family.

Yet since the intention would apparently be to prevent genetic defects, which is not the only reason to oppose cousin marriage, then it would be pointless without the criminalisation of sex between first cousins. So be it, but we have already raised the age of marriage to two years above the age of consent, a literally preposterous arrangement. It is now legally impossible to do the decent thing, but not to do the indecent thing. Pity poor Imam Ashraf Osmani of Northampton, who in January was handed a suspended sentence of 15 weeks’ imprisonment for having performed a nikah, which has no legal status whatever, so that two 16-year-olds could have a perfectly lawful sexual relationship without sinning. The second time as farce.

Something similar applies to polygamy. As you could marry your cousin by nikah, with no legal standing, and the two of you could then have children perfectly legally as you could have done anyway, so you can take three more wives alongside your legal one by nikah, with no legal standing, and have children with all of them. Or you could take all four wives by nikah alone. In fact, any man can have children with four different women simultaneously if they will let him. Doing so with two, often in arrangements that lasted decades, has never been especially uncommon, and nor has sending the bill to the DWP or its predecessors. Whatever else that may be, it is certainly not un-British.

Batch Cooking

At Alton Towers, did The World of David Walliams feature Sebastian Love? If not, why not? Whatever Thomas Markle or Russell Brand may have done, neither of them handpicked the enormous 2024 Labour intake of MPs, nor did either of them conduct the 2025 Ministerial reshuffle as the de facto Deputy Prime Minister for the third time. On the man who did both of those, Kate Whannel writes:

The government is preparing to publish more documents about the appointment of Lord Mandelson as US ambassador. Batches of papers were published in March and June - but others were withheld because they were part of a Metropolitan Police investigation. The Cabinet Office has now said a number of extra documents will be published, likely before Christmas. Some will still be withheld at the request of the Met. Cat Little, permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, said that some of the documents could "now be published without prejudicing their investigation".

The Met Police had launched an investigation over allegations that, while he was serving as a government minister, Lord Mandelson had passed on market-sensitive government information to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Writing to the chair of Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, Little said: "The Cabinet Office is now beginning the process to prepare these documents so that they may be laid before the House in response to the humble address motion as soon as possible." She said the documents would be reviewed and in some instances may need to be redacted "for the purposes of avoiding prejudice to national security or international relations". 

The process is expected to be completed before Parliament rises for the Christmas recess on 17 December. Lord Mandelson was arrested on 23 February on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He has repeatedly let it be known that he believes he has not acted criminally, did not act for personal gain and is cooperating with the police. "Our investigation into alleged misconduct in public office is ongoing," the Met Police said in a statement.

The lifelong Labour politician became the British ambassador to the US in February 2025, but was sacked in September after Downing Street said new information about the extent of his relationship with Epstein had emerged. After his sacking, the government - then led by Sir Keir Starmer - was heavily criticised for giving Lord Mandelson the job and in February MPs voted to force the government to publish papers relating to his appointment. Mike Wood, shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: "We still haven't got to the bottom of the Mandelson scandal. "Labour did their utmost to hold this information back and it was only released because of the Conservatives' humble address."

While Connor Stringer and Benedict Smith write:

Democrats will try to force the department of justice to hand over the unredacted Epstein files needed by Scotland Yard to prosecute Lord Mandelson, The Telegraph can reveal. The party plans to use its forthcoming control of Congress to compel the Trump administration to release the documents that may help bring a charge. There have been calls to charge Lord Mandelson with misconduct in public office. Democrats also want to make a “renewed push” to hear evidence from the peer after he declined invitations to speak to Congress as part of their investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, sources said. The move could be a lifeline for the Met’s case against the peer, which has stalled because the department of justice has delayed handing over the unredacted files.

A senior source on the House oversight committee, which has been investigating Epstein’s links to the rich and powerful, said it might also provide the London force with never-before-seen documents from the late paedophile’s estate. “We would be pushing the DoJ to be at least cooperative to the UK law agencies as a minimum,” the source said. Lord Mandelson was sacked as Britain’s ambassador to the US last year over his relationship with Epstein. He was later placed under criminal investigation for misconduct in public office after the files appeared to show that he passed market-sensitive documents to Epstein during the 2008 financial crisis. He has always denied any wrongdoing.

The original files are considered crucial for any prosecution case because Lord Mandelson’s lawyers could argue that the partially redacted emails published online lack context and do not tell the full story. Neither the DoJ nor the FBI has responded to the Metropolitan Police’s request for the documents, which was initially made under an informal agreement to share information between the law-enforcement agencies. The Met escalated the request through the formal mutual legal assistance process, but this could take years. It is widely believed that the impasse has come about, in part, because the US administration is reluctant to release files that may embroil Donald Trump further in the Epstein saga and set a precedent for other cases that could reignite the scandal.

Democrats swept to control of Congress in the midterms on Tuesday, giving them expansive legal powers through control of the committee system, including the powerful house oversight committee. The party concedes that its power to force cooperation between the DoJ and the Crown Prosecution Service is limited, as the decision ultimately lies at the discretion of Todd Blanche, the US attorney general. While they can push for the files to be handed over, they do not have any guarantee of success. They could, however, hold hearings into why the DoJ had limited its cooperation with British police, subpoena communications between the US and Britain, and demand explanations from top officials. 

Democrats are also hoping for cooperation with other foreign police forces once they take control of Congress from January, as they intend to scrutinise Epstein’s inner circle and connections with Mr Trump’s allies. “We would want people to cooperate with us ... if we needed documents from the UK, France or the Virgin Islands,” the senior official added. Lord Mandelson declined the request to appear before the House oversight committee last year. His lawyer responded to politicians, saying it was impossible while he was under police investigation in Britain. He cannot be legally compelled to testify before Congress because he is not an American citizen.

Lord Mandelson resigned from the Labour Party and quit the House of Lords in February after the files appeared to show he leaked information to Epstein while a minister under Gordon Brown. His arrest followed a tip-off shared by Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, suggesting that Lord Mandelson planned to fly to the British Virgin Islands. Lord Mandelson’s lawyers dismissed the claim as baseless. He has never been charged, and denies any wrongdoing.

We Do Not Want Or Need A British FBI

The Morning Star editorialises:

Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley’s demands for an FBI-style National Police Service are in line with plans set out by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in January. Like the fact Mahmood remains in office, this reflects a worrying continuity with the repressive agenda of the Starmer government — and even a failure of imagination. Some fresh thinking is required if Andy Burnham’s government is to attempt the reshaping of the British state and economy he promised. Like Mahmood before him, Rowley presents centralisation as a necessary modernisation, citing rapidly developing cross-border-organised and cyber crime. Yet the Met already wields a range of national powers to tackle such crimes — and it is not obvious that further centralisation is the best defence against them.

Last month’s cyber attack on supermarket freezers across 11 European countries, seeing their temperature controls overridden remotely and spoiling tons of food, was only possible because food retail is too centralised — corporate supermarkets outsourcing control of in-store functions to large third-party providers to cut labour costs and increase profit margins. That’s outwith the scope of policing powers, but like Rowley’s complaint that police resources are diverted to tackle mental health problems, it illustrates the need to approach the question of security — which does include resilience of food and energy supplies disrupted by climate change and war — with a wider eye to increasingly urgent social and economic reform. Our government cannot think beyond military and policing “solutions.” 

For policing that solution is no neutral response to technological change (even if the application of new technologies were neutral, which it isn’t) but political. Mahmood’s January white paper tied the proposed national police service to “the largest-ever rollout of facial recognition” technology and increased use of AI, despite privacy, accuracy and race-bias concerns. Advocates of greater surveillance and repressive power for state agencies seek support from popular exasperation at neighbourhood crime and anti-social behaviour, though the causes lie less in an underpowered police than a hollowed-out public realm: the lack of conductors and guards on public transport, the reduction of staffing in retail and public services, remove barriers to problematic behaviour itself rooted in the Thatcherite destruction of community.

Nor should we ignore the records of those advocating major restructuring of the British police when considering their motivation. Rowley has been a very political Met Commissioner, imposing unprecedented restrictions on the mass mobilisations for Palestine — regularly obstructing planned routes, for example — on the basis of lies, such as the claim that organisers sought to march past synagogues. He also consulted pro-Israel lobby groups on the policing of such protests while refusing to meet the Palestine Coalition that organises them. And the connections of US surveillance-tech firm Palantir to violent racist repression in the United States through its use by the Ice agency in mass arrests and deportations, and to war crimes by the Israeli military, did not deter him from contracting it to help police British citizens — until blocked by the mayor of London, something likely impossible in a national police service set-up.

Mahmood’s plans explicitly include giving the home secretary the power to sack chief constables — a further politicisation of policing by a minister who helped force the resignation of West Midlands Chief Constable Craig Guildford for entirely political reasons. His ban on fans of an Israeli football club with a history of violent disorder, Maccabi Tel Aviv, attending a match against Aston Villa could conveniently serve the government’s strategy of smearing Israel critics as antisemites, so Labour ministers led a character-assassinating witch-hunt. We do not want or need a British FBI. The rationale for one does not withstand scrutiny, and its advocates are demonstrably enemies of our civil rights. Nor does such centralisation tie in with Burnham’s stated ambition to devolve and localise power. He should face pressure to disown this Starmer-era scheme.