Ireland: A French Military Protectorate

Why did England ever want Ireland? To prevent almost exactly that of which Eoin Drea writes:

Ireland has long been a free rider in security and defense. Officially neutral and spending an infinitesimal 0.22 percent of GDP on its military in 2025, the country is literally defenseless. With only four naval vessels available on a rotational basis, patrol ships that lack technicians to operate weapons, and zero fighter jets, Ireland is incapable of protecting itself, its waters, and the undersea infrastructure that surrounds the island and on which trans-Atlantic communications depend. Even today—in an era of heightened geopolitical threats—Dublin remains devoid of any coherent long-term security strategy.

Dublin has an immediate security problem to deal with: Embarrassed by its inability to deal with a drone incursion during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last December, Ireland is desperate to avoid similar incidents when it assumes the rotating presidency of the European Council—the intergovernmental body that is the true locus of power behind the European Union—with its summits and ministerial meetings, next month. Since it has little hope of handling security on its own, Dublin recently announced that it was seeking to engage the French Navy to provide temporary air defense during important European Council meetings.

Facing pressure from both the EU and the United States, Ireland has also embarked on a defense-spending program to start addressing its most grievous shortcomings. Here, too, Ireland is partnering with France. In January, Dublin and Paris signed a joint strategic framework that will run until 2030. In February, there followed a military cooperation agreement covering joint training, intelligence sharing, and other areas. Most significantly, Ireland has outsourced its military procurement, including legal, administrative, and logistical control, almost entirely to France.

Under the umbrella of the new treaties, Ireland and France are finalizing a series of individual government-to-government (G2G) procurement agreements. In effect, the Irish government is commissioning France to negotiate, execute, and sign contracts for critical military equipment on its behalf. France will choose the supplier, determine timelines, and set pricing terms—without any competitive tender, independent Irish technical assessment, or mechanism to verify that Ireland is receiving value for money. Paris will also control the maintenance and supply chains required for the long-term use of this equipment, while simultaneously commanding the training of relevant Irish troops.

France’s Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA), whose official stated purpose is to equip the French military and promote French arms exports, is now managing Ireland’s rearmament. Given the French state’s deep tradition of using defense procurement as industrial policy—reflected to this day by government shareholdings in Thales, Safran, and other arms conglomerates—French firms will likely be the exclusive beneficiaries of Dublin’s blank check.

Even before the latest round of Franco-Irish agreements, Thales was chosen in June 2025 to provide the Irish navy with its first-ever towed sonar, which is used by naval vessels to detect intruding submarines, in a 60-million-euro deal. In December 2025, the Irish government also approved the opening of negotiations with Paris for a 500-million-euro radar system. The Irish Times described this as Ireland “effectively outsourcing the procurement of the system to officials in Paris.” Irish Defense Minister Helen McEntee said that the French proposal was accepted because it “substantially fulfils Ireland’s capability requirements.” What she didn’t say was that this vast amount will be spent without public tender or competitive bidding. In essence, the French government decides which radar system suits Ireland best and which French supplier should get the contract.

In February, a further G2G agreement was signed with France over Ireland’s purchase of up to 800 million euros’ worth of Griffon, Jaguar, and Serval armored vehicles, the largest investment in the history of the Irish Army. Negotiations are due to finish in the coming months.

Ireland’s dependence on France has become almost exclusive. Between 2015 and 2024, Ireland ordered French military equipment worth a total of 53 million euros. Since 2025, Dublin has either signed contracts or opened negotiations with the French government for more than 1.4 billion euros. To put these numbers into perspective: Ireland’s total 2026 defense budget is only 1.5 billion euros.

Ireland’s defense marriage to France is transformational, but the dependency risks undermining Ireland’s military and strategic independence. The fixation on France is already undercutting relations with Britain, Ireland’s hitherto closest defense partner and most important neighbor—an effect that may very well have played a part in French overtures. (Ireland has relied on a secret 1950s arrangement in which Britain’s Royal Air Force monitors and intercepts hostile aircraft in Irish airspace.)

Dublin’s unprecedented dependency could also erode trans-Atlantic relations by handing France leverage over Ireland to challenge, for example, Dublin’s free-market, low-tax, U.S.-oriented economic model. France need not threaten Ireland explicitly. When Ireland next blocks a French priority at the European Council, Paris could slow-walk an arms maintenance contract or delay an upgrade cycle. For France, Ireland is also a useful client state to advance its long-held strategic objective of European defense sovereignty under French leadership.

Ireland fits into French efforts to build a network of bilateral defense partnerships parallel to NATO based on French leadership, French equipment, and French military doctrine. The template here is Capacité Motorisée, France’s 2019 strategic partnership with Belgium that was subsequently expanded to include Luxembourg. The partnership standardizes doctrine, command and control, equipment, and maintenance across their land forces. The three countries use France’s proprietary networked digital battle system—called Scorpion— for their armoured vehicles. This system will now incorporate Ireland as well. Although Scorpion is compatible with NATO networks, the software is owned by French company Eviden, hardware is supplied by Thales and other French companies, and all access and upgrades are controlled exclusively by Paris. Belgian industry has to make do with vehicle assembly and producing some add-on weapons.

Already, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg have the Scorpion-enabled ability to fight as one cohesive force, independently of NATO. Ireland will now join the Scorpion platform as a non-NATO member.

Belgium’s experience should provide a sobering warning to Dublin. In April 2025, the Belgian Court of Audit found that a contract for 442 French-made armored vehicles will end up costing almost 10 times the initial estimate—14.4 billion euros instead of 1.5 billion euros. Belgian media also reported various other contract discrepancies, in addition to intransparency over prices and conditions on the French side.

A protectorate is a state that maintains nominal sovereignty while ceding control of its security to a more powerful patron. Having reached the dead end of free riding on defense, a French protectorate is what Ireland has now chosen to become.

Contempt, Proceedings

Bianca Castro writes:

A silk accused of misleading the jury and ignoring the judge’s directions during his closing speech has been summoned to a hearing at which the court will decide whether his conduct amounted to contempt of court.

Rajiv Menon KC, called in 1993, faces allegations of contempt of court over his closing speech in a trial at Woolwich Crown Court. Menon represented one of six activists accused of breaking into the Elbit Systems Factory, near Bristol, causing an estimated £1m of damage. None of the defendants was convicted. Following a retrial, a jury found four of the defendants, including Menon’s client Charlotte Head, guilty of criminal damage.

Woolwich Crown Court decided of its own motion to proceed against Menon and referred the matter to a divisional court. The Court of Appeal found there was no jurisdiction for the Administrative Court to initiate contempt proceedings of its own motion and referred the case back to the Crown court. Last week, Mr Justice Johnson found Menon should face summary proceedings for contempt.

In a summons published today and circulated to the press, Mr Justice Nicklin orders Menon to attend the Royal Courts of Justice on 28 July for a hearing before Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, sitting as judge of the Crown court at Woolwich.

The summons states that evidence ‘raises a prima facie case that the respondent may have acted in contempt of court and that it is in the public interest for contempt proceedings to be instituted by the court’.

Menon will be entitled to give evidence at the hearing, which has been listed with an initial time estimate of two days.

In his reasons, Mr Justice Nicklin acknowledged he was not determining if Menon had committed contempt but only ‘deciding whether there is sufficient material to justify the institution of contempt proceedings and whether it is in the public interest to do so’.

He added: ‘I am satisfied that there is sufficient material to justify the institution of contempt proceedings against Mr Menon KC in respect of parts of his closing address to the jury. That material is capable of supporting allegations that, in identified respects, the address departed from rulings made by the trial judge, or was in disobedience of them, in a manner arguably capable of interfering with, or creating a real risk of impeding, the due administration of justice.’

In considering the case, Nicklin said he bore ‘fully in mind the importance of fearless advocacy’ but ‘at the same time, it is fundamental to the rule of law that orders and rulings made by a judge in the course of a criminal trial are obeyed by those participating in the proceedings’.

He said: ‘If a ruling is said to be wrong in law, or otherwise open to challenge, the law provides means by which that may be corrected. It is not for those participating in the proceedings to decide with which rulings they will comply and which they will not.

‘Where there is sufficient material to support allegations that rulings and directions given by the trial judge were disobeyed in a manner capable of affecting the due administration of justice, I am satisfied it is in the public interest that contempt proceedings be instituted so that the matter can be adjudicated in accordance with law.’

Manufacturing Necessity

Charlie Young and Max Colbert write:

Peter Thiel is an empire builder. He doesn’t just build companies, he sets the narratives that make them inevitable and indispensable.

For two decades, he has argued that liberal democracies are entering an age of permanent instability: geopolitical conflict, technological upheaval and institutional decline. In his book - governments need AI, surveillance and defence tech. Conveniently, those are the products he sells.

His companies are portrayed as islands of coherence in a sea of chaos. It’s hard to see, from dry land, that Thiel is the one making the waters rise. Palantir is the clearest expression of this strategy. Born with backing from the CIA’s venture arm, it has spent years embedding itself inside the US national security state. Having become central to America’s military and intelligence apparatus, it is now seeking to do the same across the West.

Palantir’s expansion depends on more than good software. It relies on cultivating a permanent state of crisis, convincing governments that the world is becoming too dangerous to rely on anyone or anything else. Every geopolitical warning of an AI arms race or an inevitable Third World War reinforces the idea that only Palantir can keep democratic states safe. By framing global instability as an existential threat, the company creates the political demand for its own permanent solutions, positioning itself as a fundamental force for good.

When these are called out, Palantir gets nasty, launching lawsuits and attacking critics through the media - terrified of losing its grip, especially as public backlash intensifies over its close proximity to the Trump administration, ICE and Israel.

Here’s what that looks like:

1/ The secret networks

A recently reported leak revealed attendees and agenda topics of a secretive organisation, the ‘Dialog’ society, a networking retreat for influential tech billionaires, high-profile politicians, journalists, authors and members of the intelligence community worldwide.

Dialog was co-founded by Peter Thiel and angel investor Auren Hoffman, and the leak exposed that more than 200 of the world’s most rich and powerful individuals registered for the exclusive getaway - described as a kind of ‘Bilderberg meets Silicon Valley’ phenomenon - with topics ranging from sex lives and cult-building, to “Bringing Back Nuclear”, “Battlefield Technologies” and, strikingly, “Navigating WWIII”.

Palantir, of course, has been the tip of Trump’s spear. They helped him find and capture Maduro, provided intelligence that reportedly aided in the bombardment of Iran and built AI tools for both bombing and managing the infamous aid delivery stations in Palestine. For companies whose fastest-growing markets are in defence, intelligence and national security, a world defined by permanent geopolitical emergency is also a world of permanent commercial opportunity.

Some of Dialog’s listed attendees are US military leaders, as well as foreign senior defence politicians like NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe General Alexus Grynkewich and former UK security minister Tom Tugendhat, as well Matt Clifford, who currently chairs the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) - the UK’s answer to DARPA. Both NATO and the UK’s Ministry of defence are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on Palantir’s AI war tools.

2/ The self fulfilling prophecies

Among Silicon Valley elites, the prospect of WWIII, something they frequently cite, often circles back to more investment in AI and resurrecting America’s military industrial base, perhaps unsurprising for a series of individuals who would stand to, and already have, gained substantially from militarism. Palantir’s CTO Shyam Sankar even includes the term “WWIII” in the subtitle of his recently published book.

The CEO of Thiel-backed military tech company Anduril, Palmer Luckey, has stated that the firm has a strategy that guides everything it does; “China27”, whereby “anything we are working on, anything that we are investing in, needs to be built with the assumption that sometime in 2027, China is going to move on Taiwan”.

On Monday, Anduril and Palantir were announced as the architects of a new program called Next Gen C2 - intended to act as the foundational data layer for all battlefield decisions.

But while their stranglehold on the US seems almost total, the future of these firms elsewhere is less certain. The erratic nature of Trump’s second term and reported controversies surrounding Palantir and its efficacy are spurring on calls for increased digital sovereignty.

Don’t let the power go unwatched. Max and Charlie will be back in your inbox next week tracking the forces reshaping our democracy.

3/ The growing resistance

Attempts to resist Palantir’s push into European states, are however increasingly being met with pushback; sometimes rhetorical, sometimes legal, sometimes thinly veiled threats.

As reported last week, France’s domestic intelligence agency is now ditching Palantir’s AI tools from the US, in favour of a domestic provider, to avoid “strategic dependency”, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said.

In response, Palantir’s executives lashed out against the decision, claiming “normally, we never react, but hearing this from the prime minister on social media, I never imagined that could happen. You can’t do this on Instagram. This isn’t a Hollywood spat between an actor and his girlfriend. This is a very serious matter.”

In Germany, a similar situation played out, where a top Berlin official said that the country doesn’t plan to award military contracts to the company. Palantir CEO Alex Karp hit back, criticizing the country’s decision, saying “I don’t understand how Germany believes it can afford this” and that “Every serious battlefield in the world uses parts of Palantir. There’s a reason for that”.

In England, London’s mayor Sadiq Khan, recently blocked a deal between Palantir and the Metropolitan Police, citing an alleged breach of procurement rules. His spokesperson said that Londoners wished to see public money being spent on firms that “share the values of our city”.

In this instance, Palantir was even more aggressive, and is now reportedly suing Khan over the block of the £50m contract. Its UK lead, Louis Mosley, has hit out at the Mayor, accusing him of “putting politics over public safety”.

But opposition to Palantir’s expanding influence is nevertheless becoming more pronounced at both a national and local level, as exposure to and scrutiny of the company increases.

On Thursday, the FT published NHS England’s acknowledgement that some of the claims the public body made regarding the benefits of Palantir’s now infamous Federated Data Platform contract are not ‘causationally robust’, something which has prompted MPs to call for an audit of the system, as ministers are reportedly considering ending the contract next year.

Louis Mosley has spent weeks, true to Palantir form, repeatedly claiming that Palantir has provided huge savings, increased efficiency and saved lives. He has appeared on TV and written articles in national papers calling Palantir’s detractors “ideologically motivated campaigners” and casting concerned NHS staff as a “noisy minority.”

Yet, two petitions calling on ministers to end NHSE’s Palantir contracts have attracted over 250,000 signatures while the cross-party Science, Innovation and Technology committee warn that Palantir has expanded its presence across the UK despite what it called a “clear mismatch with UK values”.

The UK is by far Palantir’s biggest foothold outside of the US, accounting for, at least, 10% of their global revenue. This isn’t just about cash, it’s also a strategic outpost for Palantir to reach much of the rest of the world. Losing the UK could be a terrifying prospect for Palantir.

This week saw another backlash. In a first for a local authority, a cross-party group from Sheffield City Council have passed an England-first motion opposing Palantir’s involvement in the NHS, backed by Medact Sheffield.

In response to the passing, Medact Sheffield’s Dr Rory Gibson said that:

“This motion passing is a heartening reminder of the power of community organising. Community organising has the power to influence decisions far beyond Sheffield and contribute to the national conversation about the future of the NHS.”

Sheffield is a small council. France is a major military strength. Germany is the EU’s largest economy and London one of the world’s biggest cities. Perhaps Palantir is losing the argument they so desperately cultivated of themselves as an essential asset to key state infrastructure.

While the future remains uncertain, for both Palantir and its client states, calls for resistance seem to be growing louder.

In The Coalmine

Jody McIntrye writes:

The attempts to dismiss an undeclared £5 million “gift” are falling flat, and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is under more pressure than ever.

The party’s largest donor, Christopher Harborne, is showing no signs of backing away from political donations. Farage says that he would “gladly” accept further contributions from the billionaire.

Although Farage has long said that his priority is putting Britain first, his main backer is a Thai citizen with shares in an arms firm that exports components to the Israeli military. Indeed, Harborne is the largest shareholder in weapons manufacturer QinetiQ. In 2022, QinetiQ were granted licenses to export over £13 million worth of aerial target and military training equipment to the Israeli state, as well as over £700,000 of military guidance/navigation equipment.

Reform, Friends of Israel

Reform have followed Labour and the Conservatives in pledging their support to the Israeli state during the assault on Gaza.

Like Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Farage has denied that a genocide is taking place. He also declared that a future Reform government would keep exporting weapons to Israel. After what we now know about his links to Harborne and QinetiQ – a company that profits from military aggression – perhaps these sentiments should not come as a surprise.

Last September, at Reform UK’s conference in Birmingham, Israeli deputy ambassador Daniela Grudsky declared: 

We do believe that we have friends here.

It was the first time an Israeli government official had attended.

Just weeks later, deputy leader Richard Tice was in occupied Palestine on a trip paid for by the newly-formed Reform Friends of Israel (RFOI), which Tice funds himself.

Reform’s deputy leader was met with Israeli president Isaac Herzog and foreign affairs minister Gideon Sa’ar, telling them that his party would:

stand rock solid with Israel.

Upon his return to the UK, Tice explained that the Israeli politicians “recognised and appreciated” Reform’s position.

Not so anti-establishment

Farage tries to portray himself as an anti-establishment figure, but Tice and Harborne are two of a host of former Conservative Party donors who have switched to his Reform project.

Millions have been raised from other sources, including Nick Candy, Jeremy Hosking, and Paul Sykes amongst others.

According to one investigation, 81% of Reform’s funding comes from current or former Tory funders.

Harborne and the Conservatives

Like Farage, former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also been accused of concealing a “gift” from Harborne. In his case, this came in the form of a private jet and pilot in January 2023 for a flight to Poland. Johnson was on his way to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

An earlier £1 million donation from Harborne to the Office of Boris Johnson had been declared in December 2022. Johnson, a long-standing supporter of Conservative Friends of Israel, refuses to say what the money was for. However, we do know that, in the run up to the 2019 general election, Farage stood down over 300 Brexit Party candidates to ensure a Johnson victory.

According to leaked documents, Harborne was travelling with Johnson on the Ukraine trip, with the schedule documenting that the former Prime Minister transferred from the private jet to an overnight sleeper train to Kyiv “with CH”. That same month, a QinetiQ-led consortium signed an £80-million, ten-year deal with the Ministry of Defence.

Worrying influence

This was not the first time QinetiQ had secured a major government contract.

In November 2021, QinetiQ were part of a Babcock-led consortium, which also included the UK-based subsidiary of Israeli arms firm Elbit Systems, awarded a £100 million contract to work on the MEWSIC electronic-warfare programme.

Then Conservative Party Defence Minister Ben Wallace described the companies involved as “key industry partners”. What Wallace did not mention was that he was previously QinetiQ’s overseas director, resigning from their board the same month as becoming an MP.

Whether Labour, the Conservatives, or Reform are in power, the arms industry continues to have a worrying influence on the political establishment. Farage claims that “no-one cares” about the £5 million he received from Harborne. However, successive by-election defeats and a challenge from ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe have put his position in jeopardy.

Andy Burnham has the marketing and media to take the reins of power, for now. However, there remains a cache of wealthy donors determined to get Farage into No. 10.

And Skwawkbox writes:

UK ‘counter-terror’ police have detained distinguished US human rights professor and international law expert, Dan Kovalik, at Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport.

Kovalik, a well-known author and activist, said on X that he had been grilled about his opposition to Israel’s Gaza genocide and to the illegal war on Iran.

In the height of irony, I was detained at John Lennon International AirPort in Liverpool, England by anti-terrorism police concerned about my opposition to the Genocide on Gaza and the war on Iran. They seized my phone, computer, fingerprints and DNA sample. More to come . . . pic.twitter.com/WOtXQLjjO2

— Dan Kovalik (@danielmkovalik) June 29, 2026

Human rights threatened under authoritarian war on speech

The Starmer regime extensively abuses anti-terror laws to detain — not arrest — journalists, activists and others who speak out against Israel’s crimes and the UK’s collaboration. By avoiding arrest and seizing victims at ports or airports, the state denies the detainee access to lawyers and the right to silence.

Refusal to disclose passwords is punishable by two years in jail. Devices are routinely seized, as in Kovalik’s case.

All these abuses are perpetrated by a regime seeking to protect Israel from scrutiny and criticism, despite wholesale condemnation from the UN, human rights groups and international law experts. None have so far been charged, but multiple UK journalists and authors have been targeted.

One journalist, Asa Winstanley, refused to disclose passwords to protect sources, but he was raided at home where protections are greater. Winstanley has not, so far, been prosecuted. A court ruled the seizure of his devices unlawful.

Liverpool stands with Kovalik

Scousers reacted furiously to the war on free speech on their ‘patch’ and were quick to express solidarity with Kovalik against the shameful detention.

Apologies@danielmkovalik The people of #Liverpool have a proud tradition of welcoming our guests, unlike our government and security services who should frankly be prosecuted for not preventing a genocide. Hope the rest of your stay is filled with peace and love.

— Liverpool Riverside Left (@LivRivLeft) June 30, 2026

National Security (State Threats) Bill

Not satisfied with abusing anti-terror laws to wage war on UK rights for Israel, the Starmer regime is ramming through further legislation allowing it to quickly designate any group it doesn’t like as ‘terrorist’.

Starmer is pushing the National Security (State Threats) Bill through Parliament in a single day without scrutiny. The bill puts the onus on its victims to prove they didn’t know a group the government later ‘designates’ was going to be banned.

Using information is included as a crime and there are no protections, even for journalists, who quote facts obtained from sources the UK government dislikes.

Craig Murray, himself a victim of an airport detention, pointed this out:

New Labour is rushing its new National Security State Threats bill through parliament in just one day.

It will be illegal to publish TRUE casualty information from Iran, from Hamas-run hospitals in Gaza, or IDF assault details from the resistance in Lebanon.

14 years in jail.

— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) June 29, 2026

Britain is an authoritarian terror state. Shamefully, presumptive new PM, Andy Burnham, has given no indication he intends to end this reign of state terror. In fact, Burnham has accepted funds from the director of an arms firm involved in the genocide.

Making this no surprise:

The Canary has been debanked by Lloyds. Despite banking with them for almost a decade they are currently withholding a substantial amount of our money. We are left with barely any funds. / Lloyds has not explained why it has taken this action. Despite multiple communications from us, the bank has not been forthcoming with its reasoning.

The Canary is now in a financially precarious situation. We do not know when our money that Lloyds is holding will be returned. Moreover, we do not know how it will affect our ability to get another bank account in the future. 

Lloyds give no explanation

We do know that multiple other politically engaged people have suffered similar actions by other banks in recent times. It is not lost on us that powerful banks are able to restrict the financial activity of anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine organisations and individuals. Whilst we do not currently know the reasons behind our debanking, we cannot afford to be naive about this.

It is an outrage that The Canary has been unceremoniously dropped into financial instability with no notice or explanation from Lloyds.

Independent media targeted

Our situation is a damning indictment of the treatment of independent media in this country – whereby you can be potentially ruined without recourse by banking giants like Lloyds.

At this moment, we do not have enough cash to pay all our staff – again, because Lloyds is holding so much of our money.

Our situation highlights just how at risk independent media is at all times. We need your support constantly. But we also need it now more than ever. If you can donate to keep The Canary afloat while we resolve our debanking crisis, then you can do so here.

Is There No Help For The Widow's Son?

The Nordic Bishops' Conference has reiterated the canonical ban on Freemasonry even in its Scandinavian citadel. The Masonic Lodges were key to the circulation of the ideas that became the French Revolution against which all three of Gaullism, the non-Gaullist French Right and the non-Marxist French Left are to many extents ongoing reactions. In the Latin world, those Lodges have ever since been organisational bases of attacks on the Church and on Her interests. They were also key to the circulation of the ideas against which the several States had to demand that the First Amendment protect their respective Established Churches.

Freemasonry has been, and to some extent remains, part of petty anti-Catholicism in this country; it was, for example, why Catholics found it so difficult to secure promotion while working for the Consett Iron Company. But it is impossible to imagine a band of men less likely to conspire to overthrow the economic, social, cultural and political order. Simply because it is impossible to imagine a band of men that better epitomised the economic, social, cultural and political order. Masonic influence over the Church in this country, and Catholic influence over the Masons, are both immemorial in certain places. I knew of a ward where the only way to get anything done was through the Catholics within the Masons within the Labour Party.

That was not a post-Conciliar phenomenon: it had ever been thus, and several of the individuals in question were Latin Mass aficionados, while they were all indefatigable battlers for Catholic schools, pro-life, and so on. All aspects of which I was told were fairly unusual but far from unique, whether then, or in the 1950s, or ever. A lot of people were surprised when one was surprised at them. Cardinal Heenan was known expressly to enjoin converts, including convert Anglican clergymen, to remain active in the Lodge. Scotland is a different story, but I should not be at all surprised if Catholics were now the single largest bloc among English Freemasons, and had been for decades. In fact, I should be thoroughly surprised if that were not the case.

To them was and is addressed the message, formulated while he was still an Anglican clergyman, of Fr Walton Hannah, who had no time for lurid Masonic conspiracy theories. It was precisely because the original Masonic rituals in this country had drawn heavily on the Book of Common Prayer, itself drawn heavily from Medieval and earlier sources, but had later been redacted to exclude expressions of orthodox Trinitarian and Christological doctrine, that they were now unconscionable to those who continued to adhere to that orthodoxy. That argument is unanswerable. On these shores, we ought therefore to deploy that, and not detain ourselves with Abroad's lurid theories, or even lurid facts, for which Fr Hannah had no time.

Awaken Your Hearts

Here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the Vatican, 29 June 2026 

Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Accomodation Costs

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

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

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

Thunderbirds Are Go?

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

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

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

On This Rock

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

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

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

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

Buy the book here.

With A Clearer Purpose To Power Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exposing The Keir Starmer Arson Mystery

Kit Klarenberg writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Wholly Irrelevant’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No Evidence’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Useful Idiot’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Proxy Attacks’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Without A Hitch?

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

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

While Duncan Hegan crystallises what some of us had 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.