Awaken Your Hearts

Here:

To The Reverend Davide Pagliarani, Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X

With a paternal heart, and aware of the responsibility entrusted to me by the Lord as the Successor of the Apostle Peter, I address you and, through you, the bishops, priests, seminarians and faithful connected to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X.

The Church recognizes the devotion to liturgical life, commitment to priestly formation, apostolic zeal and desire for fidelity to Tradition that characterize many people and communities connected to your Fraternity. This has motivated the attentive and generous attitude that my Predecessors have consistently shown to you.

In this spirit, and filled with Christian affection, I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back! I urge you to consider carefully the spiritual good of the faithful, because the schismatic act you are about to undertake would deprive them of the licit and, in some cases, even valid reception of the Sacraments, which they love and seek for their sanctification.

The Church is open to a path of dialogue and understanding that the Holy Spirit can make possible and fruitful.

I pray for you, because to tear the seamless garment of Christ is a sin of extreme gravity. May the Lord enlighten your consciences and awaken your hearts. With a sorrowful yet hopeful heart, I feel it is my duty, through the authority received from Christ, to ask you to desist from your intended act. I entrust these intentions to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of Good Counsel.

From the Vatican, 29 June 2026 

Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul

Nothing could be more obviously schismatic than to confer the Episcopate in express defiance of the Roman Pontiff. Lefebvrism is certainly not "just traditional Catholicism", or even just Catholicism as widely practised during the Pianische Monolothismus. Rather, it makes sense only in certain very specific terms peculiar to France. Terms that, for very French reasons, it assumes to be universal when they are not. Lefevbrist devotional and disciplinary practice is an obvious expression of, if not direct Jansenist influence, though probably so, then at least the strain in the French character that made it receptive to Jansenism. Likewise, Lefebvrist theory and organisational practice are no less obviously expressions of a very advanced Gallicanism indeed.

For example, rule of the Society of Saint Pius X is by a General Chapter in which not only do bishops and simple presbyters have equal status, but it was considered an aberration that the last Superior-General was a bishop, rather than being a simple presbyter to whom the Society's bishops would have been subject, and once again are. Shades of the extreme Gallican attempts to prove a Dominical institution of the office of parish priest. And shades of the structural arrangements of Anglo-Catholic traditionalism, echoing the extent to which that movement has always tapped into the same English and Welsh organisational traits that made Congregationalism so popular, and many of the same English and Welsh devotional traits that made Methodism so popular, just as Lefebvrism has tapped into the same French traits that had previously manifested themselves as Gallicanism and Jansenism.

Lefebvrism gives perhaps the first ever formal institutional shape to the situation created by the seventeenth century, which began with three competing parties in the French Church, but which ended with two, the Gallicans and the Jansenists having effectively merged against the Ultramontanes due to the deployment of Gallican ecclesiological arguments against the Papal condemnations of Jansenist soteriological ones. By the wayside had fallen such features as Jansenist belief, with the sole if notable exception of Blaise Pascal, in the infallibility of Papal definitions ex cathedra, and Gallican use of belief in Our Lady's Immaculate Conception as a mark of party identity due to its having been defined by the Council of Basel. The popular attraction of the SSPX clergy in terms of the old Latin Mass and traditional or "traditional" devotions echoes that of the Gallican clergy in terms of the old diocesan Missals and Breviaries and a sympathy for the entrenched local devotional practices reviled by the Ultramontanes.

The French Church, or an idea of the French Church, is assumed to be fundamentally autonomous, so that the incompatibility of Dignitatis Humanae with a very specifically French Counter-Revolutionary theory of the relationship between Church and State means that it is the Conciliar Declaration that must yield. This is simply taken to be self-evident. In reality, such a position is as schismatic and as heretical as John Courtney Murray's attempt to conform Dignitatis Humanae to the American republican tradition's reading of the First Amendment as taught to high school students, an approach comprehensible only within Manifest Destiny and all that. American "conservative" Catholicism sees the American Church as autonomous as surely as does American "liberal" Catholicism, and freely disregards Catholic Teaching on social justice and on peace as surely as the other side freely disregards Catholic Teaching on bioethical and sexual issues. As a result, both alike are blind to the Magisterium's unique and brilliant global witness to the inseparability of all of those concerns. In both the French and the American cases, there is a strange inability to recognise that what one was taught at 13 or 14 might not always be the last word.

The Dutch Remonstrant Brotherhood, the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland, the Socinian 'New Licht' within the early Free Church of Scotland, the rise of Unitarianism among the English Presbyterians, and the descent of New England Puritanism into "the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Neighborhood of Boston": all alike are stark and timely warnings of the perils of hyper-Augustinianism. Efforts at Catholicism-without-the-Pope, always of the view that they would in principle accept the Papacy if it did this or that of the schismatics' own haeresis, have similarly sorry histories of doctrinal error, political extremism, sexual deviancy, and either an obsession with, or a disregard for, ceremonial minutiae.

The Old Catholics, with their Jansenist and Gallican roots, have combined both fates. So, too, did the Petite Église of always Gallican and often Jansenist dissidents from the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and from the Napoleonic Concordat. Like the Bezpopovtsy, the Petite Église ended up with no bishops and thus no priests. So instead the local congregation chose its leading layman to administer Baptism and to lead a service of popular non-sacramental devotions. Slow but inexorable decline followed. The Old Catholics are not far from that, with the Lefebvrists only a couple of generations behind.

Or else they will apply their purported argument from necessity to the conferral of sacramental Ordination by certain abbots, including one in England, to whom Medieval Popes had granted that privilege, which the four Cistercian Proto-Abbots were exercising without hindrance in respect of the Diaconate into the seventeenth century. Of course, they would simply ignore the need for a special exercise of the Papal power for the valid exercise of this potestas ligata contained, like that to confirm, in the priestly power of consecration. If, that is, any such potestas ligata existed at all. It would exist to them if they said so.

In either event, their adoption of a presbyterian or a congregational polity alongside the advanced liberal theology of those who were once Augustinian, but who had had no Magisterial restraint on their pursuit of that system to whatever fallacious conclusion, will conform to a very easily recognisable historical pattern. As will, and as already does, their accumulation of theological, political, sexual and general oddballs who believed that there ought to be a Pope, so long as he agreed with them. In the absence of such a Pontiff, they just do as they like. The line between the most exaggerated devotees of Saint Augustine and the perennial reemergence of Donatism is always a fine one. It is an old story, and the Lefebvrists are about to become, as they are already becoming, only the latest in the long line of those who have acted it out.

Accomodation Costs

Later today, Shabana Mahmood will announce that asylum seekers were to pay back their accomodation costs out of their benefits. Take as long as you need. Although this is the kind of doolally policy that the Blair and Brown Governments used to throw up all the time, it will no doubt be claimed by Reform UK as a sign that Labour was running scared. There may even be some truth in that.

But scared of whom? Of Nigel Farage, whose financial arrangements have come close to sending him into hiding? Of Richard Tice, who sees Andy Burnham's Number 10 North and raises him Number 11 Dubai? Of Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, who granted Hadi Alodid's indefinite leave to remain? Or of Zia Yusuf, officially a less acceptable parliamentary candidate than a man who had publicly expressed the desire to smell and lick the backside of Carol Vorderman?

Nor is that the only misplaced fear. Where else does anyone mention the bond markets very much, if at all, never mind give them a veto over the appointment of the First and Second Lords of the Treasury? The intentional running down of manufacturing and heavy industry in favour of financial services was obviously unnecessary, since Britain used to be world class at both. So no, the City is not keeping the rest of us out of the goodness of its heart. And no, we are not grateful.

Thunderbirds Are Go?

Nobody just gives up a million dollar salary in the capital of the world for the £67,505 of a British Cabinet Minister, and that without even the £98,599 of a member of the House of Commons.

Indeed, a peerage would in practice prevent David Miliband from ever becoming Prime Minister, which David Cameron had already been in addition to being independently wealthy.

At 60, why is Miliband considering this? There must be something very badly wrong with the International Rescue Committee, and he needs to get out of town. Who is going to take a look?

On This Rock

Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam Meam.

Considering the claims that the See of Rome makes, then, while individual Popes might be or have been charlatans or lunatics, the institution itself is either telling the truth in making those claims, or else it is indeed the Antichrist, and any professing Christian who does not submit to Rome on Rome’s own terms must believe it to be so.

Who will call good evil by pointing to the Papacy’s defence and promotion of metaphysical realism, of Biblical historicity, of credal and Chalcedonian orthodoxy, of the sanctity of human life, of Biblical standards of sexual morality, of social justice, and of peace, and by then saying, “Behold, the Antichrist”? That is the question.

Ah, Faith of Our Fathers. Father Faber, like a striking number of Tractarian or Tractarian-influenced converts, had an ancestry that was largely Huguenot, as is part of mine, although another side is Highland Catholic. So his “fathers chained in prisons dark” were not quite as his thoroughly rousing hymn would suggest. I have no idea why people think that that hymn is Irish. Faber actively disliked the Irish.

Buy the book here.

With A Clearer Purpose To Power Up

As well as what is universally acknowledged to be my overdue peerage, I am angling for Andy Burnham to make me Ambassador to Washington so that I might visit an historic landmark that I longed to see, namely the childhood council house of Bridget Phillipson, which had no heating upstairs into the twenty-first century even though the householder was a councillor, and which the Phillipsons later sold on at an enormous profit despite its privations. In what must the buyer have been living, that even this was a step up? Perhaps such sacrifices had been to pay private school fees? I do not defend VAT on those fees, which raises a negligible sum and which cannot be a permanent source of revenue if it is also to be a blow against those institutions, but on average between 50 and 80 of them close every year, and their number has gone up. The plural of anecdote is not data. If you are opposed to breakfast clubs, then you are morally disqualified from opposing this.

Phillipson’s ostensible origin story is all very Burnham. If he were succeeded by Darren Jones, then would much of the Downing Street operation move to Bristol? Here in the North East, we feel no more affinity with Manchester than with London, a train journey of the same duration. Three years is the length of a Parliament in Australia, so Burnham could get plenty done. Unfortunately, he intends to do so, by handing over money and powers to Reform UK Council Leaders and existing or likely Mayors, even if it is true that, just as Christopher Harborne registers to vote in Berkshire, Reform is one point behind Labour in the latest opinion poll. Within the margin of error, but even so. Why, then, does Burnham want to give away so much power to Reform’s installed politicians? If not to restore and expand the great national project of industry, infrastructure, social housing, and publicly owned utilities, then why does Burnham want to be Prime Minister?

Not that there is any shortage of responsibilities that ought indeed to be returned to the local level at which they were exercised during that great national project. Burnham rightly wants to devolve power away from Holyrood, the Senedd, Stormont and City Hall, yet he wants to impose their model on the rest of us. Would we then have to wait another generation? Left behind, indeed. And left behind to whose tender mercies? If he had been English or living in England, then Peter Murrell would have been a quintessential figure of the municipal right-wing Labour machine. Reform actively cultivates links with the DUP.

In 2021, the DUP’s MPs and MLAs unanimously elected Jeffrey Donaldson as Leader, and we may now say with confidence that each of them knew at least something of his other life, with Emma Little-Pengelly and Ian Paisley having been company directors with Donaldson and his brother, of two different companies in the case of Little-Pengelly. That second existed mostly or entirely to send Jeffrey Donaldson around the world, at the expense of the Foreign Office, to promote peace deals such as he was opposing at home. In 2019, the MPs had already made him their Leader at Westminster, where he had been Chief Whip throughout the time that the DUP had provided the Government’s majority, when his character had been known to the entire Westminster Village. What would the BBC have broadcast if he had been acquitted? That recording must be somewhere. Let us see it.

During that time, in 2018, Theresa May first promised the conversion therapy ban that the present Government, insofar as there could be said to be one, was now proposing to introduce, thereby enshrining gender identity in law without defining it. So long as it kept getting more money, then the DUP illustrated its Irishness by treating the English as a moral and spiritual lost cause. As on, for example, Net Zero, the Conservatives were no use on this when they were in office, and their ranks included several people who were now leading members of Reform, even if, as Housing Secretary, Robert Jenrick did begin the process that has led to today’s repeal of the Vagrancy Act.

Alas, today is also the day on which we become subject to the Crime and Policing Act. The Police must now consider the “cumulative disruption” of previous demonstrations when restricting a new one even if it was unrelated, and the Police may now create create 24-hour “no mask zones” that would prevent many people from protesting without fear of reprisal, all while we were still waiting for the outcome of the Government’s own review of protest legislation. This is the background against which the right to trial by jury is being curtailed, the automatic right of appeal from the Magistrates’ Court to the Crown Court is being abolished, under-16s are to be banned from social media so as to force digital ID on all of us, facial recognition is being rolled out all over the place, and there is talk of even further State regulation of the Press, since the last Government gave itself, and the present one has used, the power to decide who may or may not own a newspaper. Yet while David Lammy wants rid of juries, Shabana Mahmood wants a lay Independent Immigration Appeals Authority. Put our people on it. Put our people on everything. Sign up our institutions to sponsor refugees. Even if we had to set up those institutions from scratch.

Exposing The Keir Starmer Arson Mystery

Kit Klarenberg writes:

On June 15th, two young Ukrainians were found guilty of conspiring to carry out arson attacks on two homes and a vehicle intimately connected to former British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Curious details of the trial unreported in the mainstream, and a post-conviction propaganda blitz led by the BBC blaming Russian intelligence actors for directing the pair’s incendiary crimes, raise a number of ominous questions about precisely what happened, and why. The scandal has only grown more perplexing in the wake of Starmer’s resignation.

On May 8th 2025, a Toyota car previously owned by Starmer was set ablaze in north London, not far from where he’d previously resided. Three days later, flats in Islington Starmer managed years previously were similarly put to the torch, then on May 12th a home where he once resided now leased to his sister-in-law was also set ablaze. That same day, 22-year-old Ukrainian national Roman Lavrynovych was arrested by British police for his purported role in the arson.

Despite the Prime Minister being personally targeted in a highly organised, repeated and potentially lethal manner, major news outlets within and without the country exhibited bizarrely muted interest. Starmer describing the incidents in parliament on May 14th that year as “an attack on all of us, on democracy and the values that we stand for” - condemnation Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians echoed - elicited some headlines. However, basic facts about the case, and discussion of its obvious potential national security implications, remained stubbornly unforthcoming.

This seeming omerta endured when on May 17th, 26-year-old Ukrainian-born Romanian national Stanislav Carpiuc was arrested at Luton airport for his role in the attacks, attempting to flee. Four days later, 34-year-old Ukrainian national Petro Pochynok was arrested, accused of conspiring with Carpiuc, Lavrynovych, “and others unknown to damage by fire property belonging to another.” The names and nationalities of two further individuals arrested in the case - a 48-year-old on June 2nd that year, and a 19-year-old in January 2026 - were never released.

Police investigations into these anonymous suspects were eventually dropped, without fanfare. Who they were, why they became subjects of interest, and the grounds for their elimination from enquiries, hasn’t been revealed and wasn’t discussed at trial. There were apparently no “others unknown” with whom Carpiuc and Lavrynovych colluded after all. Pochynok was acquitted, successfully arguing he was “deceived” by the pair and had no idea they intended to start fires with his help. Notably, all three were charged with mere arson, not national security offences.

This aspect is striking, given when the trial commenced on April 28th, prosecution lawyers immediately declared the trio’s arson assault was directed by a Russian-speaking Telegram user, for cash. The December 2023 National Security Act grants British authorities sweeping powers to severely punish people who break the law at the behest of “hostile states”. Repeatedly since the Starmer-linked attacks, British citizens have been jailed for national security offences after being recruited to commit crimes, including arson, via Telegram by supposed Russian actors.

All along, alarm has been sounded about Iranian intelligence using Telegram for similar purposes, in particular “[hiring] anyone who can harm Israeli interests or individuals” in Britain. Yet, a coordinated criminal conspiracy targeting the Prime Minister, which required access to sensitive private information on Starmer not readily available to average citizens, allegedly orchestrated by a malign foreign actor, mysteriously didn’t qualify as national security-related. Moreover, jurors and the public alike were strictly prohibited from learning anything about the group’s alleged recruiter.

‘Wholly Irrelevant’

On the trial’s first day, after dropping the bombshell that Lavrynovych was “recruited, instructed and promised with payment for the fires that he was told to start” by a Russian-speaking source known as “EL Money”, the lead prosecutor promptly ordered jurors to leave the entire issue alone. It was “no part of your considerations to decide who ‘EL Money’ is and what reason he might have had to coordinate the actions of these defendants,” they forcefully asserted, before adding:

“It does not matter whether they knew that the property they were targeting was connected to the Prime Minister or whether that formed part of their motivation.”

As such, the trial centred solely around the extremely limited question of whether the accused committed arson. All other avenues of inquiry weren’t up for discussion or investigation in open court. While the financial motivation of the three accused was explored, the identity, connections and motives of the individual - or individuals - who commissioned and directed the attacks on Starmer was effectively inadmissible. This was despite Lavrynovych’s defence hinging on claiming to have felt intimidated by EL Money, and therefore acting under duress.

The BBC reports how during the trial in the jury’s absence, Lavrynovych’s lawyers applied for prosecutors to hand over wider information held by authorities on EL Money. This included whether the account was associated with intelligence services or a state informant, and where it was based. They argued the actions of EL Money were “redolent of tradecraft” - in other words, cloak-and-dagger techniques employed by spies. But the judge flatly rejected the application, inexplicably ruling these burning queries to be “wholly irrelevant” to issues before the jury.

Nonetheless, it did emerge at the trial that EL Money sent messages to Lavrynovych on May 12th, following the final arson, notifying him “there is news, you’ll get crypto” and “you need to throw away the clothes.” Subsequently, EL Money warned him “you attacked the home of a very high-ranking person in Britain,” and “you need to leave the city.” Lavrynovych was arrested hours later, indicating he was already in law enforcement’s crosshairs by this time. How he came to police attention isn’t clear.

Apparently, EL Money’s central role in the attacks on Starmer wasn’t ascertained until long after Carpiuc and Lavrynovych were in custody, with legal proceedings well-underway. At a pretrial hearing in late May 2025, prosecution lawyers said the arrested Ukrainian pair’s conspiracy was “unexplained”. A contemporary Financial Times report noted counter-terror cops leading the probe were “keeping an open mind about motive.” Nameless government officials stressed “many different versions of the events” remained under investigation, “and nothing had been ruled out at this stage.”

‘No Evidence’

How prosecutors settled on the “version of events” they dramatically presented in court, before directing jurors to disregard considerations of EL Money entirely, is likewise unknown. Only a small number of messages the user exchanged with Lavrynovych - in which EL Money notably communicated in reportedly “perfect” Russian and Ukrainian - were presented in court. However, within just hours of the pair’s conviction, the BBC released a dedicated Panorama documentary, and 3,500-word long-read on the Starmer-linked arson’s “Russian connection”.

Miraculously, “using open-source tools,” Britain’s state broadcaster was able to crack the case to an extent police purportedly couldn’t. The BBC named EL Money as a young “Russian diplomat, schooled in information warfare by spies and propagandists, who is close to the highest levels of power in Moscow.” Posing as EL Money, the 23-year-old supposedly sought to bribe many Ukrainians in Britain into perpetrating a variety of criminal activities, via dedicated local jobs groups, while also oddly deploying “deeply offensive Russian terms for Ukrainian people.”

“Messages from the [EL Money] account in various Telegram channels show him glorifying [Vladimir] Putin and Russia, attacking the Ukrainian people and promoting Russian narratives,” the BBC claimed. Its investigation acknowledged the trial of Carpiuc, Lavrynovych and Pochynok “was strange, mainly because the true author of the drama was never revealed,” with the conundrum of EL Money’s identity “deliberately avoided.” Speculation can only abound as to why the British state broadcaster unravelled this crucial riddle, rather than courts and/or law enforcement.

Even more suspectly, the BBC quoted a senior British counter-terror police chief as saying while the aim of the attacks on Starmer’s properties was “to intimidate and create fear for the Prime Minister and to attack the UK,” law enforcement had “not been able to prove the identity of [EL Money] or who he was working for.” They categorically declared, “we’ve got no evidence to suggest this was a state-backed threat.” But the BBC is somehow better informed than the police.

“Sources have told us that authorities in the UK and in Ukraine have privately concluded Russia was behind the arson attacks,” the British state broadcaster boasted. One might reasonably enquire why Kiev has apparently taken it upon herself to solve a British criminal case, although Ukraine’s SBU is certainly an authority on recruiting chaos agents via Telegram, and other messaging apps. The heavily CIA and MI6-infiltrated agency has over many years exploited this technique to blackmail and bribe Russians into perpetrating serious crimes at home.

These scandalous activities have been universally ignored by the Western media. By contrast, numerous major news outlets instantly seized on the BBC blaming Russia for the arson attacks. The Financial Times published a slick investigation the same day, replete with photos, videos, and graphics, documenting EL Money’s contacts with and payments to Lavrynovych. Shady Bellingcat-linked investigative website The Insider went so far as to release extensive biographical information and photos of the 23-year-old Russian named by the BBC as EL Money.

Other outlets have produced quotes from Lavrynovych’s trial testimony, in which he states EL Money “wanted to see [the arson] on the news.” Of course, the attacks barely registered in the media contemporaneously, while the overwhelmingly majority of what was said at the trial by all parties went unreported, with only select excerpts emerging immediately afterwards. In all the post-trial political and media rush to convict Russia too, not a single source mentioned British police avowedly possess “no evidence” indicating the arson attacks were sponsored by any state.

‘Useful Idiot’

Having diligently attempted to follow “every piece of evidence” in court throughout the entire 21-day-long trial, independent journalist Crispin Flintoff was “furious” when the duplicitous BBC-led blame Russia game erupted. A fascinating personal account of his first-hand experiences spectating the trial reveals much about what was said by defendants, prosecutors, and defence lawyers no major outlet reported. His insider observations can only intensify suspicions about a concerted state coverup to conceal inconvenient truths, and misdirect the public as to what was established in court:

“There were obvious questions from the start. How did these men know details about Starmer’s former car and two addresses connected to him? Why had they been held in Britain’s highest-security prison [Belmarsh]? Who exactly was ‘EL Money’? And why, if this was such a serious case involving the Prime Minister, were so few people there to watch it?”

By the time the trial was over, none of these queries had been satisfactorily addressed, let alone answered. The court’s almost empty public gallery, virtually total lack of ‘journalists’ in attendance, and pronounced lack of wider media interest - particularly “if this really was a Russian operation directed at the Prime Minister” - was palpable to Flintoff at every step of proceedings. The lead prosecution lawyer also “seemed keen to tell the judge what those of us in the public gallery could or could not report.”

Meanwhile, “the judge repeatedly warned the public gallery that anything said in court while the jury were not present could not be reported and that doing so could amount to contempt of court and even lead to imprisonment.” Intriguingly, this included any and all mention of EL Money, beyond the prosecution’s initial announcement “he” spoke Russian. That EL Money was also versed in Ukrainian - a language barely spoken by Russians - appears to have first emerged accidentally.

Flintoff reports how an interpreter mentioned “some of the Telegram messages” sent by EL Money were in Ukrainian. The media-unfriendly judge “rebuked her, saying it was ‘not for the translator to give evidence.’” Strikingly too, later in the trial, Lavrynovych claimed he “could not tell where EL Money was from because messages were in both languages.” Subsequently, he referred to El Money as “they”, while under cross-examination expressing his belief at least one woman was involved in his recruitment and handling.

Lavrynovych referred to EL Money stating, “my husband” was checking up on the Toyota car owned by Starmer. He speculated “possibly more” women, “as well as two or three men” could’ve also been involved. This explosive point wasn’t explored further, save for when a defence lawyer in summing up described EL Money as “this person, or people.” However, EL Money - whoever they might be - wasn’t in the dock, despite the judge describing Lavrynovych as their “pawn”, and “useful idiot”.

‘Proxy Attacks’

Flintoff doesn’t “claim to know the truth of what happened,” but is certain “the BBC’s story is a fictional conspiracy theory that doesn’t tally with the evidence heard in court.” In a bitter irony, the media’s publication of names, ages, and mugshots of Carpiuc, Lavronyvych and Pochynok created a fecund environment for ‘conspiracy theorising’. Social media users large and small easily identified profiles of Carpiuc and Lavroyvych on modelling websites. Fleetingly, they were even referred to as “models” by certain outlets.

Several sources - including prominent figures ranging from independent broadcaster George Galloway to Zionist agitator Tommy Robinson - speculated, partially tongue-in-cheek in many cases, the Ukrainians might be sex workers with whom Starmer incurred unpaid debts. The BBC long-read repeatedly took aim at “far-right anti-Islam activist” Robinson and “accounts based in Russia” for posting “lies about the motive for the arson attacks.” The British state broadcaster firmly asserted: “they were not sex workers.”

Meanwhile, on June 15th - not long after the trial’s verdict landed - The i Paper declared, “Starmer was targeted by sex worker conspiracy straight from Putin’s playbook.” The outlet sought to convict the Kremlin not only of the arson attacks, but the proliferation of “a conspiracy theory falsely claiming that the arsonists were male prostitutes seeking revenge on the Prime Minister.” Markedly, The i Paper teamed up with the highly controversial Center for Countering Digital Hate to reach its findings.

CCDH was created by Labour Together, a shadowy ‘think tank’ tied to right-wing Labour figures and Zionist tycoons, which played a central role in Starmer’s deeply corrupt - if not outright criminal - rise to power. Throughout its existence, the Center has carried out brazenly politicised, devastating attacks on individuals and organisations purportedly disseminating “disinformation”. For example, one of CCDH’s first responsibilities post-launch was to “destroy” popular, independent pro-Jeremy Corbyn news site The Canary, in order to neutralise the then-Labour leader’s support base.

CCDH recently claimed trillionaire Elon Musk was “instrumental” in stoking violent, racist rioting in Occupied Ireland. Local monitoring groups beg to differ, branding the charge a “fallacy” intended to distract from the unrest being orchestrated by Loyalist paramilitary groups, which maintain clandestine relations with the British state today. This begs the obvious question of who or what might have tasked CCDH with investigating alleged “disinformation” relating to the ever-mysterious arson attacks targeting Keir Starmer.

An answer might be provided by a June 17th press conference on the G7’s sidelines. Starmer refused to comment on BBC and other mainstream reports linking the arson to Russia, while conversely claiming an “aggressive” Moscow was responsible for “proxy attacks” on Britain and “across Europe”. He added, “some of the evidence that came out of trial speaks for itself.” But of course, this is a lie. By design, no such evidence emerged, while many leads pointing away from Russia were shut down, and unmentioned by the media. Ask yourself why.

Without A Hitch?

As soon as I read this, then I knew that we would be able to rely on Peter Hitchens:

Many of us have said for years that the extradition treaty between Britain and the USA was heavily biased towards America. I think that’s more or less proven. But now comes news of an American airman, accused of a serious crime against a British woman on British soil, whose case ended up being investigated by US military police and was tried at a US base by a US court-martial. This episode really does make us look like an American colony.

While Duncan Hegan crystallises what some of us have always thought about Christopher Hitchens:

It is something of a commonplace that “religion” is contrary to reason. Science is opposed to faith. A rational, intelligent person cannot actually believe in something that cannot be empirically proven, like “god”. Instead, religion must rely on appeals to unverifiable things like experience and emotion and cannot actually withstand serious critical analysis. Consequently, intelligent people do not believe in religion.

This was a central plank of the “New Atheist” platform and, while that particular movement is no longer fashionable, that idea lingers in wider society — in the same way that a wave, even after disappearing, leaves the sand on the shore a different shape, so the New Atheist movement reshaped the way our society thinks about religion.

This idea is so much a part of the “water” we all swim in that, despite identifying as a Christian, I sort of absorbed some of it by osmosis. When I began tentatively making my way back to the pews, I was very concerned with Apologetics — arguments for the existence of God, the truth of the Gospel etc. I was convinced that Christianity was good for me and good for society, but that wasn’t enough — I had to satisfy my critical faculties that it was real, and that a rational, intelligent person not only should believe, it but could.

I am convinced that this is the biggest problem facing the church in the West — that people cannot intellectually assent to the core claims of Christianity (the existence of God, the incarnation, the resurrection, etc.) and see it as incompatible with their commitment to science and all the improvements to human life that flow from it. Once people are satisfied that that hurdle can be overcome, and that in fact Christianity is the best explanation we have for the universe, our place in it and our experience of it, then it’s a different story.

I felt I owed it to the opposing “side” in the argument to give them a fair hearing, and so I sat down to watch a Christopher Hitchens debate. I am not exaggerating when I say that this was a pivotal moment in my return to the fold — which has subsequently led to my ordination to the priesthood. It being some years ago now my memory of the details of the debate is somewhat hazy, but for those who are interested to look it up themselves, it was Hitchens vs Dr William Lane Craig debating the existence of God in a packed theatre somewhere on an American university campus. It was precisely the sort of intellectual bloodsport which Americans adore and at which Hitchens excelled.

Dr Craig spoke first and laid out, very simply, logically and from first principles, what he called the “Kalam” Cosmological Argument for the existence of God. In brief, this is the argument that the universe must be finite, rather than infinite regression of events, and therefore must have been created by an infinite being. I am probably doing Dr Craig and his argument a grave disservice here, but the point is that the argument was logical, rational and made no appeals to faith or experience. After giving his opening argument, Dr Craig sat down. Mr Hitchens took the podium. He may have lent on it in a manner considered louche, as one who has done this so many times before that it has become a tiresome routine. In any event, posture notwithstanding, he completely ignored everything his opponent had said and made no attempt to engage with Dr Craig’s argument. Instead, he treated the audience to an exhilarating series of rhetorical flourishes and witty bon mots. The most substantial argument he advanced was a (very finely constructed) form of the problem of evil. The rest of his address was witticisms delivered in a posh English accent which, of course, drove the American audience into a frenzy of delight.

Hitchens was, undoubtedly, a great wit and a first-class orator, but his real gift on display here was for asserting the intellectual high ground and then behaving as though he still occupied it, no matter what happened in the debate. A debate is not like football. There is no objective scoreline. In such a context, if you look like you’re winning, people will generally assume that you are, and will believe the story that you tell them about the two sides of the debate — namely, “mine is the side of reason, wit and intelligence and if you are intelligent then you will agree with me”.

If you are someone who wants to feel intelligent, this is a very difficult charm to resist. I realised at that moment that that’s what the whole thing was. In this particular debate, it was pretty clear which side logic and reason was on, and it wasn’t atheism, no matter how much Hitchens asserted that it was. This decoupling of “atheism” from “exercise of the critical faculties” in my mind was a crucial development, and, of all people, it was Christopher Hitchens who caused it. The Spirit moves in mysterious ways.

Three weeks on, and the School of Christopher Hitchens, headed by Oliver Kamm, has still failed to say whether or not it agreed with the call from within the Green Party for a ban on the medically unnecessary circumcision of children. Moreover, Kamm was sound on the scandal of Harry Dunn and Anne Sacoolas, so what does he have to say about Sarah Steele and Jacob Wulfson?