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 experience 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?

Case Notes

Am I misremembering this in the heat, or did not the valiant Donald Trump overthrow the brutal dictatorship in Venezuela? Yet in relation to the earthquakes, our own fearless Fourth Estate continues to interview only exiled Opposition figures. Why are they still two thousand miles away in New York? And why is it unconscionable to ask anyone from the Government on the ground? Still, if such persons are to be given airtime, then how about asking them, not who they were against, but what they were in favour of? Some of us already know.

This is what real regime change looks like. They will all have known that Nick Thomas-Symonds had been investigated over his inappropriate texts to women. But now they are making it known to the rest of us. Thomas-Symonds is one of Keir Starmer’s closest allies, and text messages will be the very, very least of it. Andy Burnham’s Downing Street will be no nunnery, any more than was that of Gordon Brown, Theresa May or Rishi Sunak. But it will not be the bordello of Starmer, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, David Cameron or Tony Blair.

Speaking of the Johnson depravity, Simon Case came up through GCHQ and the Royal Households, as a spook and a courtier, to become the Prime Minister’s handler and fixer, in that order, for such is seen as the real role of the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service. Case was said to be on the brink of quitting over the Lockdown Files, but he never did. His name always came up far too often, but his appointment was a triumph for the Court Party that the then Prince Charles had spent decades creating and consolidating, ably assisted in recent years by Prince William. That is now firmly established as an alternative centre of power and patronage in London. For example, it has become impossible to imagine the approval of any planning application to which the King had taken exception.

Fair play to Prince William, who is considerably older than Stormzy, for being Stormzy’s gym buddy, thus linking his court to Jeremy Corbyn’s. But as times changed, so the tactic shifted to the installation of the Prince’s Private Secretary as Downing Street Permanent Secretary with a view to elevating him as quickly as possible to Head of the Home Civil Service. That was achieved. Was Case at any of the Downing Street parties? It is wildly improbable that he did not attend even so much as one of them. Yet he was put in charge of investigating them. Even though, at that point, they had officially never happened. When it turned out that they had, then he was not sacked. He never was. Nor was he fined the £10,000 that, unlike many other people in the same position, he would easily have been able to pay. Having been found medically unfit to appear before the Covid-19 Inquiry, he has since been raised to the peerage, appointed to chair the £200 million Team Barrow partnership, and appointed to the Ethics Board of Electric Twin, Ben Warner’s AI startup. And now he has given a keynote interview to the Daily Telegraph. Shades of Eleanor Donaldson, whom I for one fully expect to be ennobled in due season.

Rest In Power, David Hencke

Kevin Rawlinson writes:

The acclaimed journalist David Hencke, whose career at The Guardian spanned more than three decades, has died of liver cancer aged 79.

As Westminster correspondent, Hencke was instrumental in exposing the cash-for-questions scandal that forced the resignations of two Conservative ministers, and the scoop that led to Peter Mandelson’s first resignation from government.

The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, said: “David Hencke was a true Fleet Street legend. He worked for the Guardian for more than 30 years and was responsible for breaking some of the biggest political stories of the time.

“David became the most feared journalist in Westminster because of his acute nose for political scandal and wrongdoing. He worked with an enthusiasm and energy that inspired colleagues and rivals over an impressively long and important career.”

Francis Beckett, a distinguished journalist who worked with Hencke on three books, said: “David discovered early in life something he loved doing and was very good at. And he was a lucky man; he was able to do it for all of his working life. And what he loved was finding things out that rich and powerful people didn’t want us to know, and telling us.

“Working with him on the three books we did together, I saw regularly the excitement it gave him to find something that was genuinely new, that somebody powerful had tried to hide, and put it in the book.”

Beckett recalled how Hencke’s relaxed demeanour and keen nose for a story made him a formidable scoop getter. “He looked and sounded completely harmless. If I had been a politician with a secret and I had looked at David, I can perfectly well imagine I would have confided in him.”

Hencke was, he revealed, still working on a story until a week before his death on Friday. “That was what he loved doing.”

Hencke joined the paper as a reporter in 1976 before graduating to his role as Westminster correspondent, a position he held until his departure in 2009. He went on to work as an investigative journalist.

Hencke was named reporter of the year in 1994 for his coverage of the cash-for-questions scandal. The story was key in raising the public’s awareness of Tory sleaze in the 1990s, a prominent issue at the 1997 general election that ended 18 years of Conservative rule.

It eventually led to the resignations of the ministers Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith. The latter stepped down as an MP, while the former was defeated by the journalist Martin Bell, who stood on an anti-corruption platform.

Hencke also won scoop of the year in 1998 for revealing Peter Mandelson’s secret £373,000 home loan with his beleaguered government colleague Geoffrey Robinson. The cash, Hencke and his colleagues reported, enabled Mandelson to buy his £475,000 Notting Hill home.

Spotlight

Keir Starmer is too weak to sack Mike Tapp, and Shabana Mahmood is too weak to resign. Still, after 20 July, the one thing that Tapp will never again be is a Junior Minister. What Cabinet Minister would have him? There were people who wanted another three years of this.

Those people's latest line is that Andy Burnham is unqualified for the Premiership. In reality, Burnham joined the Cabinet six and a half years before the earliest date on which Starmer could possibly have joined the Labour Party. Like Tony Blair and David Cameron, Starmer became Prime Minister without ever having been an MP for the governing party. But like them, he passed the class and regional tests, since no one ever really quite believed that Blair sat for Sedgefield, a place with nothing to show for 10 years of representation by the Prime Minister, and his family home was always in London.

Burnham will be the first Prime Minister to be a male product of a mixed secondary school, something that the Epstein Class is peculiarly desperate to stop, just as, at least in Britain, it has a peculiar scorn for the very word "buses". We saw that when Jeremy Corbyn once tried to raise bus services at Prime Minister's Questions, and we are seeing it again from, of all people, John Major of the Cones Hotline.

Not that the Epstein Class is doing well. Having demanded the death penalty for Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, and 176 years in prison for Julian Assange, John Bolton himself now stands convicted under the Espionage Act. Reform UK, which Peter Thiel presumed to endorse when James Orr invited him to speak at Cambridge, is falling apart, with David Bull telling Nigel Farage to get lost because he was an embarrassment, and with Zia Yusuf admitting on Question Time that he had been refused selection as a by-election candidate, something that the party extended even to Robert Kenyon. And an oddly precise £1,539.45 has had to be handed back to Zack Polanski because he had not been on the electoral register when he had given it to the party of which he was already the Leader, the Green Party of Noam Chomsky and of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's protective elder brother.

Speaking of the King, if he and the Queen are not going to be living in the residential part of Buckingham Palace, then who is? While it is possible to resign from His Majesty's Privy Council, as Jeffrey Donaldson has done, it is not possible to resign an honour. Only the King may take that away from you; for example, for all that he sent back his medal, Elizabeth II never stripped John Lennon of his MBE, with which he died whether he liked it or not. But the King was always going to deknight Donaldson, who is still engaging in pure cant.

He is not the only one. There is no way that the BBC made this between Monday and Friday, and its main message is in any case that everyone who was anyone always knew about Donaldson. Of course the British State uses kompromat. And a "gay sauna" operated for years right opposite MI6 in Vauxhall, just over the water from the Palace of Westminster, but we are expected to believe that two senior officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland just happened to see Donaldson go into it as they were passing? Pull the other one. So to speak.

The whole thing is as fanciful as this, which was purportedly made in a single afternoon, which has sunk without trace along with Blair's heavily hyped recent intervention, and which the Police have gone so far as to insist publicly had no basis in fact, with neither Roman Lavrynovych nor Stanislav Carpiuc sentenced as a terrorist, as absolutely any convict may now be at the judge's discretion, despite supposedly having acted on behalf of a foreign power to firebomb the Prime Minister's old house, very old flat, and old car. Starmer is under pressure to compile a Resignation Honours List after all. Look out for the team behind that Panorama, or they would have legitimate cause for complaint, having made complete and utter fools of themselves. Did Two Year Keir's resignation really have nothing to do with his babymommas, his sugar daddies, or his rent boys? Burnham will bring many things to Downing Street. But those will not be among them.