Long Terms All Round?

Academic plagiarism is not bigger news than the corruption of the Secretary of State for Defence. It was bad enough when Wes Streeting was hawking the NHS to Palantir, which in 2024 paid only two million pounds in British corporation tax, despite revenue here of £247 million and profits of £25.3 million. But now, Robert Mendick, Tony Diver and Gordon Rayner write:

Wes Streeting was bankrolled by a think tank linked to one of the world’s most notorious fraudsters, The Telegraph can disclose.

Mr Streeting, who is now the Defence Secretary, accepted £37,500 in donations from Labour for the Long Term (LLT) over 2022 and 2023 despite significant concerns among some senior figures in the party over the source of the funds.

Just one month before LLT made its first donation, its founder, David Lawrence, had accepted a £500,000 gift from Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cryptocurrency billionaire, who was subsequently sentenced to 25 years in jail for fraud after stealing billions of dollars from his customers.

Senior Labour sources claimed that other shadow ministers had been advised not to accept donations from LLT. Mr Lawrence, who disputes this, later stood down as a parliamentary candidate after discussion about his connections to Bankman-Fried, known as the “Crypto King”.

It is understood Labour has never raised any suspicions about the source of Mr Streeting’s funding with the Electoral Commission.

It is illegal for MPs and political parties to accept donations over £500 from foreigners. However, organisations such as LLT can take advantage of a loophole that allows them to accept money from abroad.

The donations pose a serious difficulty for Mr Streeting, who played a key part in the downfall of Sir Keir Starmer and has now returned to the Cabinet in Andy Burnham’s Government.

They raise questions over whether the Defence Secretary benefited from funds originally stolen from clients of Bankman-Fried, who became one of the richest people in the world through his digital currency business FTX.

Bankman-Fried was previously accused of secretly funnelling cash to Democrats in the US to advance a philosophy called effective altruism, in which entrepreneurs are encouraged to use their wealth to influence politics in pursuit of good causes.

Labour has attacked both the Tories and Reform over foreign donations.

Alex Burghart, shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said: “The Defence Secretary has serious questions to answer. He must immediately come clean about the source of his donations and any possible connections with the disgraced crook Sam Bankman-Fried. The public deserve total transparency.”

LLT registered its website on June 20, 2022. Court documents related to the Bankman-Fried fraud case and unearthed by The Telegraph show that Mr Lawrence was given the £500,000 gift ten days later by the crypto billionaire.

Mr Lawrence then arranged a £30,000 LLT donation to Mr Streeting, which was made on Aug 3 that year to fund a policy adviser, Dr Thomas Gardiner.

In December that year, Bankman-Fried was charged with seven counts of fraud, accused of stealing billions of dollars from customers of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Mr Streeting accepted a final donation from LLT worth £7,500 on Aug 3, 2023.

The Telegraph has been told by a senior Labour source that several other shadow cabinet ministers were approached, including Darren Jones, who went on to serve as chief secretary to Sir Keir, but the offers were rejected after concerns from Labour about the source of the funds.

Mr Lawrence said this was not true.

Although MPs cannot accept money coming from foreign citizens, a loophole allows unincorporated associations such as think tanks to accept money without having to make the source public – meaning they can potentially be used to funnel foreign donations to politicians.

The Electoral Commission has called for the loophole to be closed, and Labour is planning to introduce stricter rules.

Mr Lawrence told The Telegraph that he donated Bankman-Fried’s money to UK-based charities that work on disaster relief, prevention of cruelty to animals, and child poverty, and did not use it to fund LLT.

He added: “I unreservedly condemn Bankman-Fried’s actions and had no knowledge or suspicion of any criminal activity until it was reported in the news.”

Mr Lawrence claimed that LLT’s donation to Mr Streeting was in fact funded by another donor.

However, Electoral Commission records show that the donor he named, a City investor, only started giving money to LLT in February 2023, around seven months after its first donation to Mr Streeting.

Mr Lawrence declined to explain this discrepancy. When asked for clarification, he said: “LLT had a range of donors (all UK-based) and declarations were made in accordance with Electoral Commission requirements.

“LLT did not receive any donations from the FTX Foundation or Mr Bankman-Fried.”

Mr Lawrence’s donation paid for Dr Gardiner to work for Mr Streeting for two days a week, on a salary of £2,500 a month.

Dr Gardiner, a GP who also has links to the effective altruism movement, continued to work for Mr Streeting when Labour was voted into power in July 2024, and was an influential member of Mr Streeting’s team of advisers inside the Department of Health.

There is no suggestion that Mr Streeting was aware of the source for the donation from Labour for the Long Term when he accepted it. A spokesman said he had never had any contact with Bankman-Fried, and his name was never mentioned in discussions with LLT.

Mr Streeting’s team asked LLT for a list of its donors before accepting the money. Mr Lawrence was on this list, but Bankman-Fried was not.

Both Mr Lawrence and Bankman-Fried support effective altruism, which encourages entrepreneurs to make as much money as possible and then use it to change the world by funnelling it into charities and political projects.

Bankman-Fried used stolen funds to make more than $100m (£74m) of campaign contributions before the 2022 mid-term US elections, mostly to the Democrats.

Prosecutors claimed he made some donations under the names of other people to get around spending laws.

Other effective altruists have been accused of meddling in defence, Mr Streeting’s current policy brief. There is no suggestion they have influenced Mr Streeting’s policies in the role.

In the US, the artificial intelligence company Anthropic – founded by two effective altruists – clashed with the department of defence over the use of AI in weapons systems.

It has also been accused of pushing for regulations that would stifle its competitors, and has hired a string of former officials in the Biden administration.

LLT has also weighed in on defence policy, calling for international agreements on how AI could be used in relation to nuclear weapons in evidence to Parliament in 2023.

Mr Lawrence, who became an adherent to effective altruism while studying at Oxford, was regarded as a rising star in Westminster and was selected as Labour’s candidate in Basingstoke in December 2022, six months after he donated to Mr Streeting’s office.

However, after court papers detailing Bankman-Fried’s sizeable gift were circulated in Labour headquarters the following year, the party asked Mr Lawrence to give assurances that the billionaire’s money had not been used to fund his campaign.

Mr Lawrence denied that any of the gift had been used for political purposes, but was unable to reassure party bosses with his own financial records, senior Labour sources told The Telegraph.

He agreed to step down as the candidate in November 2023, one month after Bankman-Fried’s records were published, and released a statement explaining he would not contest the seat for “personal reasons”.

Mr Lawrence said: “The FTX scandal emerged at the same time as the birth of my child which compounded the stressful circumstances. I raised the situation with party staff and, after discussions, decided to stand down.”

Mr Streeting will inevitably now come under scrutiny over the due diligence carried out before he accepted the £37,500 from LLT. Mr Streeting’s spokesman told The Telegraph that all due diligence processes had been followed before he accepted the donation, including with the involvement of the Labour Party, and that the list of donors to the think tank that his team reviewed did not include Bankman-Fried.

“None of this due diligence gave any indication that the money came from anywhere other than the declared sources,” the spokesman said.

“Wes has had no contact with this individual and he was never mentioned in any discussions with LLT. All donations were and are declared in the proper way, in accordance with the rules.”

A Labour Party spokesman said: “The Labour Party carried out due diligence checks ahead of these donations being received, through which no issues were identified.”

Bankman-Fried, who was once the richest person in the world under the age of 30, was arrested in December 2022 after his cryptocurrency business FTX collapsed with billions of dollars of debt. He was jailed in 2024 for one of the biggest frauds in history.

It is thought Bankman-Fried and Mr Lawrence were introduced through William MacAskill, an Oxford professor who is one of the founders of the effective altruism movement.

Effective altruism has become a popular cause in Silicon Valley circles. Supporters include Dustin Moskovitz, a Facebook billionaire and former roommate of Mark Zuckerberg, who paid the salaries of a group of aides in the Biden administration.

The disclosure of Bankman-Fried’s gift will raise further concerns about the use of unincorporated associations, including some Westminster think tanks, which can act as a funnel for foreign money into British politics.

The organisations do not need to have a formal structure, file accounts or declare the source of their funding, although their own political donations must be reported to the Electoral Commission.

The emergence of the source of the donation comes at a time when funding of political parties is under the spotlight.

Nigel Farage’s political future has been cast into doubt over his acceptance of a £5m gift from Christopher Harborne, one of Britain’s richest men, who also made his fortune from cryptocurrency and now lives in Thailand.

Mr Farage is accused of failing to declare the gift when he became an MP – he denies he has done anything wrong – while Labour is trying to implement a £100,000 cap on donations from British citizens who live abroad.

Labour has sought to attack Reform over its links to crypto traders. An attack ad released on Facebook earlier this year asked: “Are Reform the party of the people? Or the party of crypto billionaires?”

Not Dropping The Ball, But Picking A Side

Knowing what we know now, and perhaps what specialists knew then, many academics a generation ago were autistic. Or at least they were at Durham, that sometime seat of Jason Arday, who will of course be fine. He has got out of academia at the right moment. In a couple of years’ time, large numbers of his former peers will be scratching a living heaven knew how, but something like the dancing or the jungle will have set him up on popular television. He did not award his doctorate, and if that and his subsequent publications were at once rubbish and plagiarised, then what of the original material? Where are its authors now? Meanwhile, Paul Knaggs writes:

Sir Mark Rowley went on LBC this week and said the quiet part out loud. Asked why the Metropolitan Police spent four months investigating a journalist for the crime of asking questions, the Commissioner told Nick Ferrari: “We dropped the ball on that one, let’s not beat around the bush.” He added, more revealingly, that the complaint should never have got past the front desk in the first place.

It was meant to sound like candour. It reads more like a confession.

The journalist is Jack Grove, a reporter at Times Higher Education. His offence was emailing Professor Jason Arday, a sociology of education professor at Cambridge, with questions about his academic record, after academics tipped him off to apparent similarities between parts of Arday’s PhD thesis and another student’s work. Grove also asked about Arday’s claimed fundraising total and his ultra-distance running feats. Ordinary reporting. The kind of thing journalism exists to do.

Somebody, and it still isn’t clear exactly who, rang the police. Cambridge University has since said flatly that it never made a complaint and wasn’t aware of one being made. Whoever it was, the Met treated a plagiarism inquiry as a potential crime and sat on it for four months. Grove was never interviewed. He learned he’d been under investigation only when officers rang to say the case was closed, and told him not to contact Arday again because the professor’s “mental health” had been affected. Arday’s lawyers, Carter-Ruck, then wrote to Grove’s editors suggesting the paper’s scrutiny of a Black academic “may be” racially motivated, a charge that dissolves the moment you notice the questions were about a PhD thesis, not his skin colour.

Here is the part Rowley’s radio apology conveniently left out. Arday has since admitted the running challenge he publicised took twice as long as claimed, that he didn’t personally raise the sum for charity he was credited with but was one of roughly a hundred people in a syndicate he can’t name due to a non-disclosure agreement, and that he falsely claimed a visiting professorship at Ohio State. On Wednesday, under what he called “unrelenting” scrutiny, he resigned. The Met also passed a harassment complaint about a second academic who was independently looking into Arday’s record to another police force, which had the sense to decline it. This was not one overworked officer making a bad call. It was a pattern, and the pattern only stopped because journalism did its job faster than Scotland Yard could obstruct it.

The Process is the Punishment

Nobody had to charge him with anything. Four months of being under investigation did the work a prosecution never needed to.

This publication has been here before. We covered the surveillance operation Whitehall ran against the press under Starmer’s Home Office, and the way successive governments have used the machinery of the state, quietly, procedurally, without ever needing to pass a headline law, to make journalism a costlier and more frightening trade than it used to be. Grove’s case fits that shape exactly. Nobody had to charge him with anything. Four months of being under investigation, and a phone call telling him to back off, did the work a prosecution never needed to.

It is not an isolated habit, either. In 2013, David Miranda, partner of the Guardian journalist who broke the Snowden files, was held for nine hours at Heathrow under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, a power the Court of Appeal later found incompatible with press freedom protections under human rights law. In 2023, French publisher Ernest Moret was detained at St Pancras and questioned about his views on Emmanuel Macron. The same year, Grayzone journalist Kit Klarenberg was pulled aside at Luton and interrogated for hours. Palestine peace activist Sarah Wilkinson. In August 2024, freelance reporter Richard Medhurst was handcuffed by six officers at Heathrow and held for almost a day, prompting the National Union of Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists to warn of a “chilling effect” on journalism itself. 

George Galloway, former MP, was stopped by officers under Schedule 3 of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act after arriving from Moscow via Abu Dhabi. The legislation allows authorities to stop, question, search and detain individuals at borders to determine if they have engaged in alleged “hostile activity”, a conveniently elastic definition that can apparently stretch to cover any political position the government finds inconvenient. None of these people were terrorists. All of them were reporters whose questions someone in power found inconvenient. And Julian Assange spent 1,901 days in Belmarsh before he was finally released in 2024 on a plea deal that forced him, in his own words, to plead guilty to journalism, the first publisher ever convicted under the US Espionage Act.

Reporters Without Borders published its 2026 World Press Freedom Index this year showing the UK’s overall ranking has actually crept up to 18th out of 180. Don’t let that flatter anyone. RSF’s own assessment of Britain names the specific rot: lawsuits aimed at gagging journalists, alongside a global finding that anti-terror and national security law is now the fastest-growing weapon against the press worldwide. That is precisely the mechanism used against Grove, dressed up as a welfare concern instead of a terrorism charge, but built from the same instinct: treat scrutiny of the powerful as a threat to be managed rather than a right to be protected.

So ask the only question that actually matters here. In whose interests does a police force spend four months investigating a reporter it never once speaks to, while the person he was investigating turns out to have been telling the public lies? And to whom, exactly, is that force accountable, when the only consequence for getting it catastrophically wrong is a radio interview and a shrug?

An apology costs Sir Mark Rowley nothing. A police force willing to act as a professor’s private security detail against the press costs the rest of us something we can’t easily get back.

The Case Against A Codified Constitution

How would the Attlee Government have fared against what was usually meant by a written Constitution? Why do you think that Lib Dems and New Labour types want one? As David Coates writes:

Whether it’s fiscal devolution or WASPI women, Andy Burnham has a knack for opening discussions on topics he seems not to have properly considered. The latest is his suggestion that his devolution proposals “increase the case” for a written constitution.

In the first instance, there is a technical difference between a written constitution and a codified constitution, which presumably is what Andy Burnham is recommending. Our constitution is largely written, but uncodified, and scattered through numerous Acts of Parliament, constitutional conventions, Parliamentary procedures and works of authority, such as Erskine May or A.V Dicey’s “Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution”.

Typically, however, what people mean when they talk of a “written” constitution is a codified one: a specific document which provides the rules and structure of a community’s political system, and from which all political authority ultimately derives. Such, for instance, are the codified constitutions which operate in the USA, France, and Germany. In each of these instances, the constitution operates at a higher level of authority than mere legislation, and legislation which is passed contrary to the constitution can be struck down by the body responsible for interpreting the provisions of the constitution; in the USA this function is performed by the Supreme Court.

This constitutional approach is a “clean different thing” from the British settlement. In Britain, sovereignty resides — de jure — in the Crown-in-Parliament: legislation is passed by both houses of parliament, and becomes law upon receipt of Royal Assent from the monarch. No Parliament can bind its successor, and any legislation is open to repeal or amendment through the passage of a simple majority in Parliament. Although de jure sovereignty resides in the Crown-in-Parliament, in practice it is the House of Commons, responsible to the electorate at routine elections, which is de facto sovereign.

In countries which operate a codified constitution, it is that document which is the de jure sovereign. It is the highest law, and all else derives authority from it. It can only be amended, with enormous labour, by provisions contained within its own procedures, and in certain instances — such as the “eternity clauses” in Article 79(3) of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany — there are constitutional principles which cannot be amended by any mechanism.

A document can neither interpret itself, nor enforce itself. All documents require interpretation; hence the enormous clash between Catholics and Protestants over the authority not just of scripture, but more importantly its interpretation. The latter claim that the Bible contains a plenitude of material necessary to salvation — but who is to say what constitutes scripture, or to adjudicate what it actually means?

The constitution must have a body of people who are responsible for interpreting it, and this will necessarily be some body such as a Supreme Court. The constitution will be de jure sovereign, but in practice this legal priesthood will be responsible for adjudicating on a contested and contestable document. This body will be de facto sovereign, as they will have the full authority to interpret the provisions of both constitutional clauses and of legislative and administrative acts in order to determine their conformity with the constitution.

This leaves the basic legislative arrangements of the nation almost entirely outside the scope of responsible politicians who are democratically accountable to electors. To take a series of American examples, the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was adopted in 1868 as one of the “Reconstruction” amendments following the US Civil War. Intended to provide “equal protection” to all citizens, it was nevertheless interpreted by the US Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) to be compatible with segregation, before the Supreme Court determined the opposite in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). No legislation dictated this, it was simply a different legal priesthood interpreting the same constitution differently. The Fourteenth Amendment was also discovered, 105 years later, to permit abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973), before different members of the Supreme Court discovered 50 years later in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) that it didn’t.

Is this the type of settlement that Andy Burnham is proposing? It is difficult to tell, as he has an irritating habit of raising complex issues and then swiftly dropping them once the complexities become obvious. However, it seems reasonable to assume that he is in favour of some manner of constitutional settlement which enshrines certain rights and political arrangements such that they are beyond the adjudication of the crown-in-parliament, and can only be amended by an amendment of that document.

This could operate something like a halfway-house between Parliamentary sovereignty and the constraints imposed on Parliament by legislation passed by it. We have this already, with the Human Rights Act (1998), which ultimately makes the administration of British law subordinate to the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights in Strasbourg. Similarly, our membership of the European Union severely constrained the ability of Parliament to determine immigration, trade, fiscal, and industrial policy. However, in both of these examples the constraints on Parliament ultimately derive from legislation which Parliament has passed, and which Parliament can repeal. Parliament passed the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, removing this constraint, and would be able through a simple majority to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the ECHR.

If this is what Burnham is going for then it is merely a frustrating addition to the general trend of deferring important political decisions to bodies which are politically irresponsible. We have already seen his hostility to the prospect of local authorities using their fiscal powers to reduce tax and spending. He is only in favour of devolution to the extent that those bodies do what he wants them to do. If he is to create a new structure of local government he will do this through primary legislation in the houses of parliament. Even if he gives this framework the veneer of a ‘constitution’ it would remain repealable by Parliament, just as the Fixed Term Parliament Act (2011), which imposed severe constraints even on the possibility of simple majorities forcing a general election, was nevertheless repealable through a simple majority.

However, if Burnham is legitimately hoping to establish a fully codified constitution on the American, French, or German model then he needs to reckon with the consequences of an entirely new political order, which reverses centuries of British constitutional development, and which would establish an entirely new model. The establishment of such a constitution would need to effectively abolish the Houses of Parliament as it is presently constituted and elect new bodies in their place, which would not themselves have the power to amend the constitution which gives them authority except through the mechanisms the constitution itself provides. As the House of Commons is currently responsible for determining the Prime Minister — who remains so only for as long as he retains the confidence of that House — this new constitutional settlement would need to entirely replace our whole approach to governance and authority.

One consequence of this would be that whatever ideas happened to be the political obsessions of the day would become permanently enshrined in law and would be astonishingly difficult to change; America’s 2nd Amendment enables gun laws which were no doubt perfectly appropriate to the late-eighteenth century, but which are less appropriate in the year of that nation’s 250th anniversary. Burnham has suggested his constitutional settlement could contain a ”commitment to equivalent living standards”. The mind boggles at the thought of what our courts — who are already dictating to supermarkets what wage differentials they are permitted to offer to different job types — would do with such authority.

The most disappointing element of the “Burnham kite” however, is that it fails to recognise that the absence of a codified constitution is Britain’s greatest boast. When a society breaks down, when law is suspended, when invading armies occupy your country or dictators seize power — in each of these cases a blank slate is created on which a constitutional settlement needs to be imposed. Britain has never had this. Our constitution is not codified, but it is the gradual development of centuries. Despite all the vicissitudes of politics, wars and civil conflict, our constitution has endured and flourished. To abolish it, in order to imitate the second-order arrangements which have endured on the continent, and which have been created out of the necessity of destruction, would be a grotesque innovation by Andy Burnham, who would be casting away a pearl richer than all his tribe.

How Europe Conquered Hungary

Thomas Fazi writes:

Operation Purgatory. It sounds like a Pete Hegseth fever dream. In fact, it’s Péter Magyar’s name for his assault on the Orbán system and all its works. Blending legislative and administrative measures, the cornerstone of the new Hungarian government’s offensive is a vast constitutional overhaul: a series of sweeping amendments to Hungary’s so-called “Fundamental Law”, designed to destroy what’s left of the ancien régime — and ensure it can never return to power.

The most consequential provision is without doubt the 16th Amendment to the constitution, which imposes a lifetime term limit of eight years (two parliamentary terms) on the prime minister. Effective retroactively, the measure is obviously targeted at Viktor Orbán. Given he’s already served for a total of 20 years, the new law bars him from ever returning to office. Quite apart from its nakedly ad hominem character, which critics have already dubbed the “Lex Orbán”, the provision has no defensible logic. Why should voters be prevented from re-electing a leader, or rather a parliamentary majority that supports him, if they choose to do so? Indeed, virtually no parliamentary democracy — where, unlike in presidential systems, executive power is shared with a cabinet and remains fundamentally dependent on maintaining a parliamentary majority — imposes a term limit on the head of government.

But the new government didn’t stop there. Another provision, the 17th Amendment, sets a 12-year term limit for members of parliament. Again the ad hominem — or in this case ad partem — nature of the law is clear. Conveniently, no sitting MP from Magyar’s Tisza Party is affected: only the opposition. Fidesz and its allied party KDNP, having dominated frontline politics since 1990, stand to lose their entire senior cadre. One might call this Lex Fidesz, though other parties are caught in the net as well. The blow falls equally hard on the political Left, disqualifying most of its veteran figures and rendering a progressive resurgence all but impossible.

Equally striking is the manner in which the new government ousted the incumbent president, Tamás Sulyok, who had been elected by the previous parliament in February 2024 and whose term was supposed to run until 2029. Magyar, who accused Sulyok of being an Orbán puppet, targeted him from the moment of his victory speech and did everything possible to force him to resign. When Sulyok refused to step down, the new government could have initiated an impeachment procedure, the only mechanism for removal provided for by the Fundamental Law.

Instead, Magyar chose simply to slip a line into one of the constitutional amendments which literally reads: “the term of office of the incumbent President of the Republic terminates today”. Meaning: removal by legislative fiat, what we may call Lex Sulyok. Even Amnesty International Hungary criticised the constitutional coup aimed at unseating the president. It is worth noting that Sulyok also appealed to the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe body that advises states on constitutional and rule-of-law questions, to review the amendment. The Commission’s reply, following a brief trip to Hungary? That it would rule on his motion at its next plenary session in October, neatly coming months after his removal.

The judiciary has not been spared either. Magyar’s 17th Amendment reintroduces a mandatory retirement age of 70 for Constitutional Court judges, effectively removing the chief justice and three other judges, and handing Magyar the opportunity to flip the political balance of the court within his first term. The same amendment further establishes a new body, the National Office for Asset Recovery and Asset Protection, tasked with “the tracing and recovery of public assets that have been unlawfully managed or used” by the previous government. Creating a body to investigate alleged corruption might not seem particularly nefarious: until one realises that Hungary, like every European country, already possesses institutions devoted to precisely this purpose.

What makes this one unique is that it’s charged solely with investigating the alleged wrongdoings of a single party — Fidesz — outside judicial and societal oversight. As András Schiffer, the former leader of the green party LMP, put it, the body’s aim is to “make it morally impossible for Fidesz to compete through a series of trials — spiced with staged theatrical performances — and inquisitorial proceedings”. The new government’s decision to join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), itself a highly politicised body effectively operating under the Commission’s control, will only reinforce this.

Magyar has defended these actions by invoking “the exceptional mandate received from the electorate” and as a “precondition for the restoration of constitutional democracy”. The new prime minister’s argument is simple: since Orbán created a “mafia state” that trampled the rule of law, its restoration requires the complete destruction of the Fidesz system. The constitutional amendments, indeed, are only part of a much wider offensive, which includes shutting down the news output of the public media; closing Fidesz-aligned cultural institutions such as MCC and the Danube Institute; and launching a judicial raid on the offices housing Fidesz’s servers to seize its databases, taking the party’s website offline (it still is at the time of writing). For their part, Orbán and his party have accused the new government of dismantling the rule of law, eliminating the system of checks and balances, and persecuting the opposition — of creating, in essence, precisely the authoritarian regime that the liberal establishment always accused Orbán’s government of being.

My purpose is not to convince you that Orbán is right. It is rather to reflect on what the post-Orbán transition tells us about the vanishing meaning of words like “rule of law”, “democracy” and “tyranny” in our post-everything age — and to highlight some of the contradictions within both the liberal and the Orbán camps.

Let us start by clarifying that, technically speaking, the new government’s measures are not illegal. Post-communist Hungary has always been defined by what might be called a hyper-parliamentary system: simply put, a government with a two-thirds majority can amend the Fundamental Law, or even replace it wholesale, in a single chamber, in a single vote, without facing any substantive review by judges. A two-thirds majority also controls the so-called “cardinal laws” — electoral rules, media, judiciary, central bank — and key appointments like constitutional judges and the prosecutor general. The Hungarian parliament thus faces far fewer obstacles in its legislative functions than most of its European counterparts, where constitutional revision tends to require multiple votes, referendums or even general elections. In Germany, certain constitutional fundamentals are outright unamendable — permanently beyond the reach of any parliamentary majority, no matter the size. In Hungary, by contrast, a government with a two-thirds parliamentary majority faces effectively no institutional veto at all.

Orbán himself mastered this institutional logic better than anyone before him — and in fact reinforced it after 2010, severely curtailing the Constitutional Court’s power to review constitutional changes. The following year, Fidesz then used its own supermajority to adopt an entirely new constitution, redefining the country’s constitutional identity in explicitly national-conservative terms. From there it expanded the court from 11 to 15 judges, handing itself the opportunity to immediately pick four new justices, even as it consolidated a powerful pro-government media machine.

In this sense, you can argue that Magyar is simply following the democratic logic established by Orbán: that a government with a strong mandate should be free to implement sweeping changes that reflect the popular will, and use its constitutional majority to entrench the ruling party’s political interests. Somewhat ironically, Tisza itself benefited from Orbán’s 2011 electoral reform, which raised the share of single-member constituencies from about 45% to 53%, boosting the majoritarian, winner-take-all component of the system. As a result, Tisza’s 53% of the vote translated to roughly 71% of seats. Certainly, Fidesz’s accusation that Tisza is “dismantling the rule of law”, “eliminating the system of checks and balances” and “destroying the legitimacy of independent institutions” rings rather hollow — even as it mirrors the accusations the EU establishment directed at Orbán for years.

All the same, it is true that Tisza has crossed red lines that Orbán never dared to cross: no previous government, for instance, had ever ousted a sitting president by decree. In this sense, some of the new government’s actions, while not technically illegal, undoubtedly violate well-established constitutional principles — such as the inviolability of the president.

But are we sure this is a principle worth defending from a popular-democratic perspective? Setting aside the specifics of the Hungarian case for a moment, the reality is that many of the “independent” institutions that make up the edifice of modern liberal democracies — presidential offices, independent central banks, constitutional courts and the like — do not limit themselves to “upholding the constitution and the rule of law”. Rather, they pursue their own political and institutional logic, independent of that declared or pursued by the political leadership of the day, and more often than not reflective of entrenched elite (and increasingly supranational) interests. Supreme and constitutional courts, for example, frequently rule against government policies — especially when it comes to controversial issues like immigration. The way in which the Bank of England derailed Liz Truss’s infamous mini-budget is arguably another example.

In other words, they exist to limit the popular will — and indeed routinely rule against elected governments — according to the logic of what we might call “constrained democracy”. This is obviously not to claim that there should be no limits whatsoever on an elected government’s actions. But the current model is deeply flawed — and in this sense the fact that Hungary’s system is much less constrained than elsewhere should be viewed as a positive thing.

Returning to the Hungarian case, then, can we really blame the new government for not wanting to spend four years contending with a president appointed by its predecessor? And if the roles were reversed — if Fidesz had won a two-thirds majority and found itself saddled with a staunchly pro-EU president — would conservatives blame it for wanting to get rid of him? After 2010, indeed, Orbán made sure to appoint presidents aligned with his government’s agenda, and I would argue that this made perfect sense from a popular-democratic standpoint.

Ultimately, then, I would claim that the new government’s measures should not be challenged on procedural grounds — with arguments that often echo those the EU establishment deployed against Orbán in the past — but on their substance. The real question is what the government’s measures are for, not how they are done. And on this point there is little doubt: they are aimed at essentially destroying the opposition in Hungary — at making sure Fidesz never returns to power — and thereby “locking in” Hungary’s EU-dictated economic and foreign policy agenda forever.

What that agenda entails is no mystery. It means dismantling Orbán’s heterodox economic model — starting with price caps and energy subsidies, and which the new government has already started to unwind. It also means phasing out Russian oil and gas, whatever the cost to Hungarian households and industry. And above all it means full alignment on Ukraine: within weeks of taking office, Magyar had lifted Hungary’s veto on the European Peace Facility, the Orwellian-named off-budget fund through which the EU, whose own treaties bar its budget from financing military operations, reimburses member states for weapons shipped to Ukraine. At the same time, Hungary no longer now opposes opening accession talks for Ukrainian EU membership, with Magyar further signalling that he would no longer block sanctions against Russia.

Beyond the policy questions here, there is simply no way this brazen attack on the opposition can be defended on democratic grounds — and indeed Orbán himself, for all the EU establishment’s claims about the allegedly autocratic nature of his government, never dared to legislate his opponents out of existence. This brings us to the contradictions of the liberal camp. Because regardless of what one makes of liberal-democratic dogmas, there is no doubt that the Magyar government’s measures represent a blatant violation of the rule of law as defined by Brussels itself. It is remarkable watching the EU establishment, which spent a decade and a half accusing Orbán of being a proto-dictator on “rule-of-law” grounds, now reward much graver violations by the new government.

Indeed, the EU’s main response to Operation Purgatory has been to unblock €10 billion in post-pandemic funds which Brussels had blocked Orbán from receiving. Nor is it just the EU. Hungary’s liberal legal scholars — the same experts who spent years cataloguing Orbán’s every constitutional sin — have proved remarkably accommodating now that the shoe is on the other foot. As one of them put it on Verfassungsblog, the house organ of European rule-of-law orthodoxy: since “the previous legislator has obviously violated the fundamental values of the EU”, and the new majority is “laying the foundations for a new republic, committed to EU fundamental values”, it follows that “the swift removal of the head of state is, exceptionally, acceptable”. In other words, the rule of law may be suspended, provided it is suspended in the name of the rule of law — and, crucially, in the name of “EU fundamental values”.

We have seen this film before. After coming to power in Poland in 2023, the pro-EU coalition led by Donald Tusk launched an unparalleled attack on the rule of law: seizing control of the public media and the judiciary, sidelining constitutional norms and undermining institutional independence. Yet as in Hungary today, all this was met with silence or enthusiasm in Brussels — in that case as well, funds that had been frozen for years were rapidly released. All of which is further confirmation that the European Commission’s insistence on democracy, values and the rule of law is, more than anything, a convenient pretext for targeting dissenting governments that resist aligning with the EU’s expanding supranational authority and broader political agenda. Indeed, when it comes to supporting its own emissaries, there is apparently no red line the EU will not cross — up to and including greenlighting the outright annulment of entire elections when they go the wrong way, as we saw in Romania in 2024. As for Hungary, the strategy seems clear: the EU is bent on punishing the rebellious colony — by making sure it can’t rebel ever again.

A Singular Combination

On Sunday, Peter Hitchens will no doubt refer to “Roderick Liddle”, but take the paper back to the shop for a refund if he did not also refer to “James Cricket”. Neil Clark writes:

‘I used to be afraid of the dark. Yesterday, I got my electricity bill. Now I’m afraid of the light’. One more: ‘I went to the solicitor’s and said: “I want to make a will”. He said: “Fine, leave it to me”. I said: “But I hardly know you”.

These are just two jokes by the late Jimmy Cricket, the Northern Irish comedian who died yesterday, aged 80. Jimmy’s death has left me feeling profoundly sad. Sad for Jimmy, his beloved wife of 52 years ‘Lady’ May, and his dear family, but also about the way comedy has changed in recent years.

We used to have the balance just right. There were always ‘blue’ comedians, comedians who were ‘near the mark’, comedians who swore, comedians who loved to shock. But don’t we have too much of that nowadays? And not enough of the old-school comics who just simply wanted to make us laugh and not lecture us? Jimmy Cricket’s humour, with its blend of clever word play and hilarious visual gags, never set out to cause offence. This ironically made him quite ‘alternative’ in the current climate, where offending people is seen (wrongly) as the essence of good comedy.

‘I try to keep my act topical, but I never want to offend anyone. I’d run a mile before I’d do that’ he told me in late 2022 when I interviewed him to mark his 50 years in show business. He went on: ‘My comedy is genuinely inclusive. I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable.’

No one felt uncomfortable watching Jimmy. His humour was, in the words of television producer John Fisher, ‘underpinned by a warmth and kindness that is rare in comedy today’. A working-class lad from Cookstown with no family links to the entertainment business, Jimmy came up the hard way, graduating from working in holiday camps to the northern club circuit in the 1970s. His big break only came in 1980 when he reached the final of Search for a Star, but his trademark costume of floppy hat, tailcoat, cut-off evening trousers and Wellington boots marked ‘L’ and ‘R’ (invariably worn on the wrong feet), only came after he was asked to wear the outfit for an appearance on the BBC’s music hall celebration programme, The Good Old Days.

It’s easy to forget today just how big a star Jimmy became in the mid-to-late 1980s. He had his own prime time Saturday night ITV series, in an era when Saturday night TV was all about family entertainment. In the 90s though things began to change. Variety shows were seen as passé, and acts like Jimmy’s began to disappear from our screens.

Comedy became a lot crueller, with satirical shows like Have I Got News for You and later, Mock the Week representing the new zeitgeist. But there should always have been room in the schedules for the likes of Jimmy Cricket. That there is public demand for gentler, less abrasive comedy can be seen by the enduring popularity of shows like Dad’s Army, which still gets very decent ratings when repeated on BBC2. I saw Jimmy perform in Crosby in 2022 at a Talking Pictures TV event and the audience loved him. I stayed friends with him afterwards and discovered what a genuinely kind man he was. It wasn’t just the lovely, humorous Christmas cards he sent each year. When he learnt my father had died and I was feeling bereft he rang me up and spent a good 20 minutes on the phone trying to console me. That meant so much to me when I was at my lowest ebb.

Underpinning everything Jimmy did was his Christian faith. I was reminded by a friend yesterday who used to work in television that on the 1987 edition of This is Your Life featuring Jimmy, Roy Hudd, another great comic, said by way of tribute: ‘It’s an awfully old-fashioned word to use these days, but he’s a real Christian.’ Indeed, Jimmy received a Papal knighthood from Pope Francis in 2015 in recognition of all the work he did for charity. But going beyond that, he was the friendliest and most approachable of men. RIP Jimmy, and thanks for all the laughs. Let’s hope your style of comedy returns to our TV screens again.

And Toby Hadoke writes:

“I’m sorry I’m late – I couldn’t find the M6 motorway … I had to go up the M3 twice,” was a line typical of the comedian Jimmy Cricket, who has died aged 80. He became a household name in the 1980s thanks to his barrage of daft jokes, trademark catchphrase of “And there’s more!”, and unmistakable outfit – floppy bowler hat, tattered evening dress, fingerless gloves and askew welly boots with the R and L demonstrably on the wrong side.

With a cherubic, beaming face and innocent demeanour he was really an old-fashioned clown: stooped, guileless, gazing around on stage as if he might find the answer to life’s imponderables in the wings. He was a singular combination: a madcap humorist with totally clean material; an uncynical, abstemious family man of deep personal faith who succeeded in a sometimes coarse trade.

His act was not merely silly wordplay though – he juggled, did prop gags and threw in whole-hearted physicality when required. And he could disarm the toughest audience – gesturing at them to “C’me ’ere” as he delivered his jokes with conspiratorial bonhomie and open-eyed wonder. His comedy had no victim and no agenda bar the joy of making people laugh. And if his material was decidedly old-fashioned, his work ethic was such that he constantly tried new things and updated his routines with modern references.

In his heyday he was rarely off the nation’s television sets, performing at the Royal Variety Performance in 1984 and seven times at the Children’s Royal Variety Performance (1983-93). He headlined his own ITV show, And There’s More (1985-88), which ran for four series, a tally matched by his 1990s BBC Radio 2 series Jimmy’s Cricket Team.

He was born in Cookstown, County Tyrone, in Northern Ireland, the last of six children of Philomena (nee Conlon) and Frank Mulgrew. Frank was an undertaker, publican, taxi driver and part-time auctioneer – after his death in 1953 Philomena took on a number of jobs to make ends meet, including working at the local Lucozade factory.

Jimmy left St Patrick’s college, Bearnageeha, in Belfast, aged 15 with no qualifications but the knowledge that, as the classroom clown, he could make people laugh. He undertook odd jobs – supermarket delivery boy, labourer, betting shop cashier – while entering talent shows doing comical dances or miming to pop songs.

In 1966, having performed standup with some success around the local clubs, he became a redcoat at Butlin’s holiday camp in Mosney, County Meath: it was a perfect environment for him, engaging in friendly chit-chat with holidaymakers, organising games, honing his craft on stage and learning from experienced comics.

The next decade was spent either at Butlin’s or Pontins, mixing odd jobs out-of-season with gigs on the northern comedy circuit. While the gags were sometimes old and pilfered (a common practice then), he perfected his persona until it was unique, adopting a stage name inspired by the Walt Disney character Jiminy Cricket from the animated film Pinocchio.

His TV breakthrough came in 1980 when he was runner-up in the final of LWT’s Search for a Star. He did not look back, appearing in programmes including Crackerjack! (1982), Blankety Blank (1985) and The Generation Game (1996), as well as many more. He felt the skew-whiff Edwardian music hall costume provided by the BBC for his first appearance on The Good Old Days (1981) suited his act so well that he bought it and wore it thereafter. By 1983 he was well known enough to turn down a Blackpool season in favour of headlining his own sell-out shows on the Isle of Wight.

Come the 21st century, when comics like Jimmy were deemed outdated by television producers, he was still busy with live work. His humour being multigenerational in appeal, he was also perfect for pantomime, and played a variety of roles – from Buttons to Muddles to Baron Hardup – over the decades.

Latterly he was warmly embraced by the next generation of comics – featuring on Peter Kay’s (I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles Comic Relief video (2007), John Bishop’s Only Joking TV show (2013) and Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (2019).

No dinosaur, he supported emerging talent, was quick to praise other comedians (he greatly admired Milton Jones and Tim Vine) and played alternative comedy venues with the same enthusiasm as he did the clubs and cruise ships.

In 2012 he and another veteran stalwart, Mick Miller, took a show to the Edinburgh fringe, proving that their brand of unstinting punchlines and hard-wrought stagecraft could work with modern audiences. Cricket was, according to one critic, “disarming charm personified”.

He was awarded a papal knighthood by Pope Francis in 2015 for his services to charity – Cricket, who made his home in Rochdale, would frequently put on shows to raise funds for Francis House children’s hospice, in Manchester, and a portion of the profit from his 2023 autobiography, Come ’ere There’s More, went to Mary’s Meals, which provides nourishment for children in poverty worldwide.

Still working hard in May, he was fully booked for 2026 and had a joke book planned for Christmas, but was recently taken ill and ultimately unable to heed his own advice: “If you want to live longer, find out where you’re going to die and stay away from there.”

While working at Pontins, Morecambe, in 1972 he met May Tweedie, a waitress who also had a singing act with her sisters, and they married in 1974.

She survives him, as do their children, Dale, Frankie, Jamie and Katie – who is also a comedian – and four grandchildren.

It Is Good That We Are Here

At the Transfiguration, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him,” echoes Abraham to Isaac, God’s adoption of King David, His words to the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, and the voice at the Baptism of Jesus. It is echoed in the profession of the centurion at the foot of the Cross.

As here, it is with Peter, James and John that Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, and when He raises the daughter of Jairus. Peter is the first to confess Him as the Messiah. James was the first of the Apostles to be martyred. John is preeminent in love for Him, to the point that He entrusts His Mother to him from the Cross. At the Transfiguration, they see Him as our confession of Him, our suffering for Him, and our love of Him, offer us the path to seeing Him. Not for nothing is the Transfiguration the titular feast day of the seat of the Pope, the Archbasilica Cathedral of the Most Holy Saviour and of Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist in the Lateran.

Moses and Elijah are of course the Law and the Prophets, fulfilled. And as at the Baptism of Jesus, all Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity are present in a manner capable of sensory perception. At the Transfiguration, the Holy Spirit is made manifest as the cloud, from which the voice of the Father is heard.

My friend Fr Dwight Longenecker writes:

At the Transfiguration Christ’s glory is revealed to the Apostles in the midst of Elijah and Moses because they were given the same grace: Moses on Mt Sinai, and then Elijah on Mt Horeb (and did you know that Horeb is just another name for Sinai?).

So Elijah went to the same holy mountain where Moses had encountered God. But their epiphanies were complementary. Moses beheld God in the earthquake, fire and thunder on the mountain. Elijah in the still, small voice.

Both pointed to the coming of Christ the Tiger. He who comes with the power and majesty of God, but in the form of the meek and gentle Master. He is both the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God.

And:

You probably know that most liberal New Testament scholars don’t have time for miracles. All those miracles stories and supernatural events? They’re all pious fiction. Somebody made it up. It’s “mythical.” 

They say the early Christians added that fairy tale stuff to make Jesus more special. They added that stuff to make it seem like he was fulfilling Old Testament prophecy. They cooked up those stories to make him into the Son of God. 

“Pshaw!” they sneer, “It never happened! How gullible are you? C’mon. Get real. He was just an ordinary country preacher who had a run of bad luck.”

They might continue the debunking: “What could be more supernatural than the experience of the Transfiguration? Jesus takes his friends up a mountain and hey! He starts to float off the ground and goes all radiant, and guess what — he conveniently fulfills the prophecy of Daniel who saw a radiant man in the sky who was the Son of God. Then Moses and Elijah appeared — but how did they know they were Moses and Elijah — did they wear labels?”

Okay. Let’s get down to earth a little and look closely at the story. There are five reasons why this story must have happened as it was written. Let’s look at the story from the Gospel of Mark:

Jesus took Peter, James and his brother John, and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them. Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified. Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them. As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.

The first reason this must have happened as reported is something New Testament scholars call the “criterion of embarrassment.” Basically, if part of a story puts Jesus or the disciples in a bad light it is not likely to have been either invented or airbrushed. Let’s face it — Peter looks like a dunce in this story. He doesn’t really get what is going on, and puts his foot in his mouth with his comment about building tents for everyone.

Furthermore, this is from Mark’s gospel and the tradition says that Mark’s gospel was based on Peter’s memoirs and sermons. Therefore the homely detail about Peter not knowing which end was up was likely to come from Peter himself. The same goes for the detail at the end that they didn’t have a clue what Jesus was talking about concerning rising from the dead.

The second reason why the story is likely to be true is the “tents” themselves. Mark is writing to a Gentile audience, and like us, they wouldn’t know what on earth the line about the tents is about. In fact Peter was suggesting that he build three little tabernacles for Jesus, Elijah and Moses.

This was like the Tent of Meeting that Moses built when the glory of God came down. This connects with the Jewish feast of Tabernacles when they all built little tents to serve as holy places — like the Tent of Meeting. The fact that this detail was kept in rather than excised for the Gentile audience attests to the story’s authenticity.

Thirdly, Matthew places this story directly after Jesus’ conversation with Peter in which Peter acknowledges Jesus as the Messiah and Jesus says, “You are Peter and on this Rock I will build my Church.” That Peter not having a clue what was going on is placed directly after the bold claim for Peter in the chapter before indicates that this detail of the story is a direct memory of an eyewitness account — otherwise, Matthew (out of respect for Peter) would have airbrushed that embarrassing detail out of the story.

Fourth: the criterion of impossibility comes into play. Basically, the more supernatural a story is, the less it was likely to have been made up. If someone reports to you that they saw a ghost you tend to believe that they really saw something and had some sort of weird experience because to tell people that you’ve seen a ghost or a Jewish rabbi all radiant like a god is overwhelmingly embarrassing. While you can’t say what happened when weird things are reported, it is very reasonable to say something happened. If people are making up stories they would make up believable ones. Because the transfiguration is so “unbelievable” they must have had a genuine mystical experience.

Finally, the idea that the supernatural stories about Jesus were just a pious fiction or a myth were clearly circulating in the early days of the Church. The first reading from the second epistle of Peter says this:

Beloved: We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that unique declaration came to him from the majestic glory, “This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain. Moreover, we possess the prophetic message that is altogether reliable. You will do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Scholars debate whether 2 Peter is really written by Peter (here’s a good article supporting Petrine authorship) but there is no reason to reject the idea that the epistle at least echoes Peter’s voice and may be based on Peter’s preaching. Therefore we can hear Peter himself correcting any idea that the Transfiguration was some kind of pious fiction.

De-mythologizers? They were clearly around within the first few decades of the Church, and Peter puts paid to the idea that the supernatural dimension to the story is a “cleverly devised myth.” Peter, the first pope, says clearly that he was an eyewitness to that extraordinary revelation. So we should be skeptical of the skeptics.

Most of all we should ask a more fundamental question. “Why do people want to get rid of the supernatural element in religion?” After all, that’s what religion is about. It’s about the encounter between God and human beings, about the interface between this world and the next, the interruption of this order by the divine.

If you get rid of the supernatural from religion, it’s not a religion anymore — it’s just a set of table manners.

Father recommends this book. But no doubt rather more fulsomely this one:

Article 1. Whether it was fitting that Christ should be transfigured?

Objection 1. It would seem that it was not fitting that Christ should be transfigured. For it is not fitting for a true body to be changed into various shapes [figuras, but only for an imaginary body. Now Christ's body was not imaginary, but real, as stated above (III:5:1). Therefore it seems that it should not have been transfigured.

Objection 2. Further, figure is in the fourth species of quality, whereas clarity is in the third, since it is a sensible quality. Therefore Christ's assuming clarity should not be called a transfiguration.

Objection 3. Further, a glorified body has four gifts, as we shall state farther on (Supplement:82), viz. impassibility, agility, subtlety, and clarity. Therefore His transfiguration should not have consisted in an assumption of clarity rather than of the other gifts.

On the contrary, It is written (Matthew 17:2) that Jesus "was transfigured" in the presence of three of His disciples.

I answer that, Our Lord, after foretelling His Passion to His disciples, had exhorted them to follow the path of His sufferings (Matthew 16:21-24). Now in order that anyone go straight along a road, he must have some knowledge of the end: thus an archer will not shoot the arrow straight unless he first see the target. Hence Thomas said (John 14:5): "Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way?" Above all is this necessary when hard and rough is the road, heavy the going, but delightful the end. Now by His Passion Christ achieved glory, not only of His soul, not only of His soul, which He had from the first moment of His conception, but also of His body; according to Luke (24:26): "Christ ought [Vulgate: 'ought not Christ'] to have suffered these things, and so to enter into His glory (?)." To which glory He brings those who follow the footsteps of His Passion, according to Acts 14:21: "Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore it was fitting that He should show His disciples the glory of His clarity (which is to be transfigured), to which He will configure those who are His; according to Philippians 3:21: "(Who) will reform the body of our lowness configured [Douay: 'made like'] to the body of His glory." Hence Bede says on Mark 8:39: "By His loving foresight He allowed them to taste for a short time the contemplation of eternal joy, so that they might bear persecution bravely."

Reply to Objection 1. As Jerome says on Matthew 17:2: "Let no one suppose that Christ," through being said to be transfigured, "laid aside His natural shape and countenance, or substituted an imaginary or aerial body for His real body. The Evangelist describes the manner of His transfiguration when he says: 'His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as snow.' Brightness of face and whiteness of garments argue not a change of substance, but a putting on of glory." 

Reply to Objection 2. Figure is seen in the outline of a body, for it is "that which is enclosed by one or more boundaries" [Euclid, bk i, def. xiv]. Therefore whatever has to do with the outline of a body seems to pertain to the figure. Now the clarity, just as the color, of a non-transparent body is seen on its surface, and consequently the assumption of clarity is called transfiguration.

Reply to Objection 3. Of those four gifts, clarity alone is a quality of the very person in himself; whereas the other three are not perceptible, save in some action or movement, or in some passion. Christ, then, did show in Himself certain indications of those three gifts—of agility, for instance, when He walked on the waves of the sea; of subtlety, when He came forth from the closed womb of the Virgin; of impassibility, when He escaped unhurt from the hands of the Jews who wished to hurl Him down or to stone Him. And yet He is not said, on account of this, to be transfigured, but only on account of clarity, which pertains to the aspect of His Person.

Article 2. Whether this clarity was the clarity of glory?

Objection 1. It would seem that this clarity was not the clarity of glory. For a gloss of Bede on Matthew 17:2, "He was transfigured before them," says: "In His mortal body He shows forth, not the state of immortality, but clarity like to that of future immortality." But the clarity of glory is the clarity of immortality. Therefore the clarity which Christ showed to His disciples was not the clarity of glory.

Objection 2. Further, on Luke 9:27 "(That) shall not taste death unless [Vulgate: 'till'] they see the kingdom of God," Bede's gloss says: "That is, the glorification of the body in an imaginary vision of future beatitude." But the image of a thing is not the thing itself. Therefore this was not the clarity of beatitude.

Objection 3. Further, the clarity of glory is only in a human body. But this clarity of the transfiguration was seen not only in Christ's body, but also in His garments, and in "the bright cloud" which "overshaded" the disciples. Therefore it seems that this was not the clarity of glory.

On the contrary, Jerome says on the words "He was transfigured before them" (Matthew 17:2): "He appeared to the Apostles such as He will appear on the day of judgment." And on Matthew 16:28, "Till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom," Chrysostom says: "Wishing to show with what kind of glory He is afterwards to come, so far as it was possible for them to learn it, He showed it to them in their present life, that they might not grieve even over the death of their Lord."

I answer that, The clarity which Christ assumed in His transfiguration was the clarity of glory as to its essence, but not as to its mode of being. For the clarity of the glorified body is derived from that of the soul, as Augustine says (Ep. ad Diosc. cxviii). And in like manner the clarity of Christ's body in His transfiguration was derived from His God. head, as Damascene says (Orat. de Transfig.) and from the glory of His soul. That the glory of His soul did not overflow into His body from the first moment of Christ's conception was due to a certain Divine dispensation, that, as stated above (III:14:1 ad 2), He might fulfil the mysteries of our redemption in a passible body. This did not, however, deprive Christ of His power of outpouring the glory of His soul into His body. And this He did, as to clarity, in His transfiguration, but otherwise than in a glorified body. For the clarity of the soul overflows into a glorified body, by way of a permanent quality affecting the body. Hence bodily refulgence is not miraculous in a glorified body. But in Christ's transfiguration clarity overflowed from His Godhead and from His soul into His body, not as an immanent quality affecting His very body, but rather after the manner of a transient passion, as when the air is lit up by the sun. Consequently the refulgence, which appeared in Christ's body then, was miraculous: just as was the fact of His walking on the waves of the sea. Hence Dionysius says (Ep. ad Cai. iv): "Christ excelled man in doing that which is proper to man: this is shown in His supernatural conception of a virgin and in the unstable waters bearing the weight of material and earthly feet."

Wherefore we must not say, as Hugh of St. Victor [Innocent III, De Myst. Miss. iv] said, that Christ assumed the gift of clarity in the transfiguration, of agility in walking on the sea, and of subtlety in coming forth from the Virgin's closed womb: because the gifts are immanent qualities of a glorified body. On the contrary, whatever pertained to the gifts, that He had miraculously. The same is to be said, as to the soul, of the vision in which Paul saw God in a rapture, as we have stated in the II-II:175:3 ad 2.

Reply to Objection 1. The words quoted prove, not that the clarity of Christ was not that of glory, but that it was not the clarity of a glorified body, since Christ's body was not as yet immortal. And just as it was by dispensation that in Christ the glory of the soul should not overflow into the body so was it possible that by dispensation it might overflow as to the gift of clarity and not as to that of impassibility.

Reply to Objection 2. This clarity is said to have been imaginary, not as though it were not really the clarity of glory, but because it was a kind of image representing that perfection of glory, in virtue of which the body will be glorious.

Reply to Objection 3. Just as the clarity which was in Christ's body was a representation of His body's future clarity, so the clarity which was in His garments signified the future clarity of the saints, which will be surpassed by that of Christ, just as the brightness of the snow is surpassed by that of the sun. Hence Gregory says (Moral. xxxii) that Christ's garments became resplendent, "because in the height of heavenly clarity all the saints will cling to Him in the refulgence of righteousness. For His garments signify the righteous, because He will unite them to Himself," according to Isaiah 49:18: "Thou shalt be clothed with all these as with an ornament."

The bright cloud signifies the glory of the Holy Ghost or the "power of the Father," as Origen says (Tract. iii in Matth.), by which in the glory to come the saints will be covered. Or, again, it may be said fittingly that it signifies the clarity of the world redeemed, which clarity will cover the saints as a tent. Hence when Peter proposed to make tents, "a bright cloud overshaded" the disciples.

Article 3. Whether the witnesses of the transfiguration were fittingly chosen?

Objection 1. It would seem that the witnesses of the transfiguration were unfittingly chosen. For everyone is a better witness of things that he knows. But at the time of Christ's transfiguration no one but the angels had as yet any knowledge from experience of the glory to come. Therefore the witnesses of the transfiguration should have been angels rather than men.

Objection 2. Further, truth, not fiction, is becoming in a witness of the truth. Now, Moses and Elias were there, not really, but only in appearance; for a gloss on Luke 9:30, "They were Moses and Elias," says: "It must be observed that Moses and Elias were there neither in body nor in soul"; but that those bodies were formed "of some available matter. It is also credible that this was the result of the angelic ministries, through the angels impersonating them." Therefore it seems that they were unsuitable witnesses.

Objection 3. Further, it is said (Acts 10:43) that "all the prophets give testimony" to Christ. Therefore not only Moses and Elias, but also all the prophets, should have been present as witnesses. 

Objection 4. Further, Christ's glory is promised as a reward to all the faithful (2 Corinthians 3:18; Philippians 3:21), in whom He wished by His transfiguration to enkindle a desire of that glory. Therefore He should have taken not only Peter, James, and John, but all His disciples, to be witnesses of His transfiguration.

On the contrary is the authority of the Gospel.

I answer that, Christ wished to be transfigured in order to show men His glory, and to arouse men to a desire of it, as stated above (Article 1). Now men are brought to the glory of eternal beatitude by Christ—not only those who lived after Him, but also those who preceded Him; therefore, when He was approaching His Passion, both "the multitude that followed" and that "which went before, cried saying: 'Hosanna,'" as related Matthew 21:9, beseeching Him, as it were, to save them. Consequently it was fitting that witnesses should be present from among those who preceded Him—namely, Moses and Elias—and from those who followed after Him—namely, Peter, James, and John—that "in the mouth of two or three witnesses" this word might stand.

Reply to Objection 1. By His transfiguration Christ manifested to His disciples the glory of His body, which belongs to men only. It was therefore fitting that He should choose men and not angels as witnesses.

Reply to Objection 2. This gloss is said to be taken from a book entitled On the Marvels of Holy Scripture. It is not an authentic work, but is wrongly ascribed to St. Augustine; consequently we need not stand by it. For Jerome says on Matthew 17:3: "Observe that when the Scribes and Pharisees asked for a sign from heaven, He refused to give one; whereas here in order to increase the apostles' faith, He gives a sign from heaven, Elias coming down thence, whither he had ascended, and Moses arising from the nether world." This is not to be understood as though the soul of Moses was reunited to his body, but that his soul appeared through some assumed body, just as the angels do. But Elias appeared in his own body, not that he was brought down from the empyrean heaven, but from some place on high whither he was taken up in the fiery chariot.

Reply to Objection 3. As Chrysostom says on Matthew 17:3: "Moses and Elias are brought forward for many reasons." And, first of all, "because the multitude said He was Elias or Jeremias or one of the prophets, He brings the leaders of the prophets with Him; that hereby at least they might see the difference between the servants and their Lord." Another reason was ". . . that Moses gave the Law . . . while Elias . . . was jealous for the glory of God." Therefore by appearing together with Christ, they show how falsely the Jews "accused Him of transgressing the Law, and of blasphemously appropriating to Himself the glory of God." A third reason was "to show that He has power of death and life, and that He is the judge of the dead and the living; by bringing with Him Moses who had died, and Elias who still lived." A fourth reason was because, as Luke says (9:31), "they spoke" with Him "of His decease that He should accomplish in Jerusalem," i.e. of His Passion and death. Therefore, "in order to strengthen the hearts of His disciples with a view to this," He sets before them those who had exposed themselves to death for God's sake: since Moses braved death in opposing Pharaoh, and Elias in opposing Achab. A fifth reason was that "He wished His disciples to imitate the meekness of Moses and the zeal of Elias." Hilary adds a sixth reason—namely, in order to signify that He had been foretold by the Law, which Moses gave them, and by the prophets, of whom Elias was the principal.

Reply to Objection 4. Lofty mysteries should not be immediately explained to everyone, but should be handed down through superiors to others in their proper turn. Consequently, as Chrysostom says (on Matthew 17:3), "He took these three as being superior to the rest." For "Peter excelled in the love" he bore to Christ and in the power bestowed on him; John in the privilege of Christ's love for him on account of his virginity, and, again, on account of his being privileged to be an Evangelist; James on account of the privilege of martyrdom. Nevertheless He did not wish them to tell others what they had seen before His Resurrection; "lest," as Jerome says on Matthew 17:19, "such a wonderful thing should seem incredible to them; and lest, after hearing of so great glory, they should be scandalized at the Cross" that followed; or, again, "lest [the Cross] should be entirely hindered by the people" [Bede, Hom. xviii; cf. Catena Aurea; and "in order that they might then be witnesses of spiritual things when they should be filled with the Holy Ghost" [Hilary, in Matth. xvii].

Article 4. Whether the testimony of the Father's voice, saying, "This is My beloved Son," was fittingly added?

Objection 1. It would seem that the testimony of the Father's voice, saying, "This is My beloved Son," was not fittingly added; for, as it is written (Job 33:14), "God speaketh once, and repeateth not the selfsame thing the second time." But the Father's voice had testified to this at the time of (Christ's) baptism. Therefore it was not fitting that He should bear witness to it a second time.

Objection 2. Further, at the baptism the Holy Ghost appeared under the form of a dove at the same time as the Father's voice was heard. But this did not happen at the transfiguration. Therefore it seems that the testimony of the Father was made in an unfitting manner.

Objection 3. Further, Christ began to teach after His baptism. Nevertheless, the Father's voice did not then command men to hear him. Therefore neither should it have so commanded at the transfiguration.

Objection 4. Further, things should not be said to those who cannot bear them, according to John 16:12: "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now." But the disciples could not bear the Father's voice; for it is written (Matthew 17:6) that "the disciples hearing, fell upon their face, and were very much afraid." Therefore the Father's voice should not have been addressed to them.

On the contrary is the authority of the Gospel.

I answer that, The adoption of the sons of God is through a certain conformity of image to the natural Son of God. Now this takes place in two ways: first, by the grace of the wayfarer, which is imperfect conformity; secondly, by glory, which is perfect conformity, according to 1 John 3:2: "We are now the sons of God, and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be: we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like to Him, because we shall see Him as He is." Since, therefore, it is in baptism that we acquire grace, while the clarity of the glory to come was foreshadowed in the transfiguration, therefore both in His baptism and in His transfiguration the natural sonship of Christ was fittingly made known by the testimony of the Father: because He alone with the Son and Holy Ghost is perfectly conscious of that perfect generation.

Reply to Objection 1. The words quoted are to be understood of God's eternal speaking, by which God the Father uttered the only-begotten and co-eternal Word. Nevertheless, it can be said that God uttered the same thing twice in a bodily voice, yet not for the same purpose, but in order to show the divers modes in which men can be partakers of the likeness of the eternal Sonship.

Reply to Objection 2. Just as in the Baptism, where the mystery of the first regeneration was proclaimed, the operation of the whole Trinity was made manifest, because the Son Incarnate was there, the Holy Ghost appeared under the form of a dove, and the Father made Himself known in the voice; so also in the transfiguration, which is the mystery of the second regeneration, the whole Trinity appears—the Father in the voice, the Son in the man, the Holy Ghost in the bright cloud; for just as in baptism He confers innocence, signified by the simplicity of the dove, so in the resurrection will He give His elect the clarity of glory and refreshment from all sorts of evil, which are signified by the bright cloud.

Reply to Objection 3. Christ came to give grace actually, and to promise glory by His words. Therefore it was fitting at the time of His transfiguration, and not at the time of His baptism, that men should be commanded to hear Him.

Reply to Objection 4. It was fitting that the disciples should be afraid and fall down on hearing the voice of the Father, to show that the glory which was then being revealed surpasses in excellence the sense and faculty of all mortal beings; according to Exodus 33:20: "Man shall not see Me and live." This is what Jerome says on Matthew 17:6: "Such is human frailty that it cannot bear to gaze on such great glory." But men are healed of this frailty by Christ when He brings them into glory. And this is signified by what He says to them: "Arise, and fear not."