Bartholomew's Notes

From BBC News:

A man has been found guilty of making sexual remarks to a group of girls aged between 12 and 14 in Dundee before grabbing and pushing one of them to the ground.

Ilia Belov, 22, claimed he confronted the girls after receiving abusive remarks and said he saw one of the girls with a knife in her waistband before the assault.

His sister Nadjedzha Belova, 20, previously admitted assaulting a 13-year-old girl by seizing and pulling her hair, dragging her to the ground, and striking her on the head to her injury during the incident.

A clip of the girl brandishing a knife and an axe went viral last year, widely interpreted as either a brave young girl defending her sister from a predator or a feral racist child threatening an innocent migrant couple going about their business.

The latter version was promoted, perhaps unexpectedly, by the Daily Mail, which ran an “EXCLUSIVE” by Douglas Walker in which a man who identifed himself as the girl’s target gave his account of being threatened and abused. As introduced by Walker:

The ugly video clip from a Dundee housing estate in which a schoolgirl brandished a knife and an axe soon went viral… Now we can reveal the man being threatened is a family man who has been living in the UK for four years – and who was accompanied by his wife on the way to the shops when the incident occurred.

Far from being fresh off a cross-channel small inflatable, as implied by [Tommy] Robinson and [Elon] Musk, Fatos Ali Dumana, 21, says he came to Britain legally from Bulgaria and he and his wife have an eight-month-old baby.

So how come Fatos Ali Dumana in the Daily Mail now Ilia Belov? And why are photographs in the article inconsistent with Belov’s image in the BBC article, the most strikingly with the absence of a large cross tattoo on Dumana’s neck?

Although the “exclusive” was billed as “the truth”, Walker appears to hedge his bets by stating that

Police have officially refused to divulge the nationality or identity of Mr Dumana or what prompted the disagreement.

One interepretation is that some completely different person was put forward by the Mail as being the man who has now been convicted in relation to the confrontation, with his wife taking the place of Belov’s sister. Or altneratively, the Mail facilitated someone using an alias, with a fake tattoo forming part of the contrivance. Shenanigans of some sort.

Left: Fatos Ali Dumana in the Daily Mail; right: Ilia Belov on BBC News.

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Although it hasn’t so far made the mainstream news, Ant Middleton has been welcomed by Reform UK at the Makerfield by-election campaign: images on social media show the former soldier and SAS: Who Dares Wins TV presenter posing with local canvassers and with the candidate, Rob Kenyon, as well as with the party’s failed Gorton & Denton candidate, Matt Goodwin. Goodwin, as usual channelling his inner Partridge, has expressed his excitement at the development with the comment “LFG Makerfield” (1). It is not explicit that Middleton has come to support Reform over Rupert Lowe’s Restore, which threatens Kenyon’s prospects from the right, but it is a reasonable assumption [UPDATE: and has now been confirmed].

However, when an endorsement is gratefully received it works both ways – Reform previously passed Middleton over as its prospective candidate for mayor of London, yet now embraces a man who is an ally of Tommy Robinson and who has articulated an openly racist position on ethnic minority participation in politics:

1st, 2nd & 3rd generation immigrants SHOULD NOT hold top tier government positions! Our great nation, our culture and our great people are not naturally at the forefront of their hearts & minds! It’s just not in their nature or DNA! […] Our Capital City of our Christian country needs to be run by a native Brit with generational Christian values, principles and morals coursing through their veins from which our very society was built, thrived and was forged upon.

Prior to that, Middleton promoted at least one post that contrasted him with “Pakistan-origin Mayor Sadiq Khan”. It’s not clear whether he is simply exhorting people to reject candidates based on their ethnicity or if he wants them banned from standing for office.

Back on 24 March 2025 Middleton promised to “release my side of the story tomorrow here on X” regarding the circumstances that saw him made a disqualified company director over £1 million in unpaid tax. He has not been pressed to fulfil this promise.

UPDATE (12 June): One thing I didn’t mention in the above was Middleton’s 2013 conviction for assulting a female police officer while drunk. I knew about it, of course, but decided that Reform could very reasonably say that he has paid his debt to society and sobered up, and that an unhappy incident from so long ago unrelated to political activism ought not to be held against him forever. However, Labour has had no such qualms; and Middleton’s response, bizarrely, has been to deny that the incident ever happened, and to mock someone for citing a report about it from the Daily Mirror.

Note

1. “LFG” apparently stands for “Let’s Fucking Go”. Performative profanity seems to be part of populist right identity, presumably to signal contempt for old-fashioned “taste and decency” conservatism. This extends to Christian nationalism, with Middleton riling up the crowd at a Tommy Robinson rally last year with the assertion that “we can’t even fucking celebrate Christmas these days without offending someone”. At the most recent Robinson rally, attendees held placards stating “Fuck Islam Christ is King”.

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From the International Business Times:

Protesters across parts of the United Kingdom have begun reviving the ‘take the knee’ gesture following the murder of Southampton student Henry Nowak and the release of police body-worn camera footage showing officers handcuffing him as he lay fatally injured.

…Images and videos shared on social media have shown people kneeling outside police stations and public buildings in what organisers describe as a response to the handling of the case.

Commentary on Nowak’s death has been extensive, with many writers saying much the same thing. We know that Nowak’s killer, Vickrum Digwa, gave a false account to police, as a result of which police handcuffed Nowak and intially disbelieved his claim to have been stabbed. The pathologist found that nothing could have been done to save his life (although, inevitably, a fringe theory that police likely dislodged a blood clot is doing the rounds), but Nowak died without dignity, thinking that the police believed him to be a racist attacker. Much of the debate focuses on to what extent the police attitude and incompetence are attributable to Digwa being able to leverage a false allegation of racism.

Nowak’s last words were “I can’t breathe”, which was evocative of George Floyd’s final moments in Minneapolis six years ago. The circumstances of Floyd’s death appeared to vindicate Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem at sport events as a protest against police brutality against African Americans, and after Floyd’s death Kaepernick’s gesture was copied in solidarity in the UK first by football teams and then by some politicians – including Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner. Some police officers also joined in, signalling their solidarity with “Black Lives Matter” protestors.

Not everyone approved, and divorced from the context of refusing to stand it was derided by some as a kneeling gesture of submission – and even specifically as a gesture of white submission to ethnic minories. Last year, for instance, Richard Holden MP referred to the NHS as “taking the knee to damaging and oppressive cultural practices” because of a document on a website that argued against a ban on cousin marriage.

The populist right adopting a gesture that it has previously repudiated and tried to stigmatise is an odd way to protest on behalf of a cause. As such, its appearance can hardly be called a “revival” so much as an ironic appropriation meant as a rebuke against the 2020 protestors and the “Black Lives Matter” slogan. As expressed by Tommy Robinson:

As Southampton police refuse to “take a knee” for Henry Nowak.

Reminder of them doing it outside UK Parliament for George Floyd’s fentanyl overdose!

This also points toward another use of Nowak’s death, as a somewhat perverse way to downplay what happened in Minneapolis. As Elon Musk puts it:

In both cases, police were uncaring, but only in one case does Starmer bend the knee

Musk here was commenting on a social media post by Kevin Sorbo, who referred to Starmer (misspelt as “kier Starmer”) as “kneeling for fentanyl addict George Floyd, who died of an overdose”.

No-one is arguing that Southampton police murdered Nowak, who was stabbed during an altercation, but the police officer who restrained Floyd is currently in prison for murder. The cases become more comparable, however, if Floyd wasn’t killed by police after all. The claim that Floyd died of an overdose has become “common knowledge” on the populist right through repetition, having been spread by Kanye West and Candace Owens in 2022 and repeated by Marjorie Taylor Greene last year.

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From CBS:

Police estimated that around 60,000 people attended the “Unite the Kingdom” march, making it one of the largest right-wing mobilizations seen in Britain in recent years, though smaller than a similar Robinson-led rally last September… Crowds carrying St. George’s Cross and Union flags marched through central London chanting “we want Starmer out” and “Christ is King.” Some wore red “Make England Great Again” hats, echoing President Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.

At the Guardian, Ben Quinn described the rally as a “far-right Glastonbury” that was nonetheless “low energy”; the festival vibe was also noted by Fred Sculthorp at the Critic, who reported one marcher complaining about it being more “middle class and established” than the previous march in September,”as if this were some undiscovered festival that had been ruined now that word had got around”. At UnHerd, Cosmo Adair similarly judged that

It hadn’t erupted into the orgiastic hate of which both Starmer and the Metropolitan Police warned, but it also hadn’t had quite the take-off Robinson expected. If it heralded anything, it was the arrival of a Right-wing Omnicause. There were Pahlavists and anti-vaxxers in attendance, rubbing shoulders with hooligans and country gents. Neo-Nazis mixed with ordinary concerned citizens.

In contrast, Nadeine Asbali, writing in Metro, found the rally “noticeably more sinister” than previous events:

Someone who calls himself the Scottish Korean appeared on stage for a cello performance wearing bacon on his shoulders to ward off the Muslims (because, clearly, like vampires and garlic, we self-implode at the mere sight of a dead pig).

…So-called feminist group Collectif Nemesis wore niqabs on stage before stripping them off as the crowd laughed, jeered and chanted ‘take it off’ (I don’t know about you, but nothing screams feminism like the idea of thousands of drunk men shouting at women to undress!).

Kellie-Jay Keen, best known for her anti-trans activism, stood on the stage demanding that Islam be taken out of every ‘area of authority’ in the UK, whatever that means.

Emily Lawford, at the New Stateman, reported hearing one audience member express the belief (hope?) that Collectif Némésis trio were “strippers”. As for the religious element, Lawford found that “not everyone at the march was a Christian, but most were happy to mumble along to the Lord’s Prayer and join in chants of ‘Christ is King’ when instructed”.

Meanwhile, Hope Not Hate has the most comprehensive round-up of the various speakers, although even they failed to identify the man who “performed the cello while draped in bacon” – this was actually an influencer named Ryan Williams, whose rasher-wearing antics brought him fame in Australia last September.

Hope Not Hate also notes the religious angle:

Kevin Carroll, a cousin of Lennon [i.e., Tommy Robinson] and a founding member of the English Defence League, opened by declaring that Christianity in Britain was “under attack”, while praising Donald Trump and leading the crowd in the Lord’s Prayer… Actor-turned-activist Laurence Fox delivered a rambling religiously themed speech, reading from the Bible and describing Britain as “God’s Kingdom”.

Also on stage, once again, were Bishop Ceiron Dewar and Rikki Doolan – and Doolan now says he intends to sue Piers Morgan for using a clip that shows him singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” out of tune, which Doolan claims was faked. The Religion Media Centre further notes that Bishop Jwan Zhumbes, an Anglican bishop from Bukuru in Nigeria “spoke about the persecution of Christians by the Islamist group Boko Haram, and urged the crowd not to depart from the UK’s Christian principles”.

One distinguising feature of the rally was the presence of wooden crosses held by members of the crowd; according to Dewar these were made by his associate Deacon Pete Prosser and his son and daughter. A report by Elliot Harvey for EWTN noted among the attendees one “Luke Barker from The Lord’s Work Trust”, who was handing out a leaflet titled Common Sense: What the Bible Has to Say on the Issue of Immigration.

The event might have been more of a “red meat” affair had a number of international speakers not been refused entry into the UK (although the risible conspiracy theorist and libeller Glenn Beck was apparently seen as harmless enough to get through). In particular, the cartoonish Valentina Gomez would probably have generated some easy copy for joutnalists with her conspiracist and abusive rants, such as her claim that the recent drowning accident in Brighton was the work of “rapists Muslims” (1). When Gomez was denied her visa in April, she denounced the home secretary as a “dirty Pakistani Muslim” – Robinson did not object, although Carl Benjamin, who opened the rally, complained  on social media that it made “everyone look bad”. This provoked a row that Robinson tried to laugh off.

Also banned from attending was a Polish politician named Dominik Tarczynski. This might have put Nigel Farage in a difficult position, as he knows Tarczynski – but speaking up might undermine the distance the Reform UK leader wants to keep from Robinson. His solution, apparently, was to express a view privately to his associate Lois Perry, who then relayed it to a Polish television channel. According to her account, Farage said Tarczynski was “a good friend” and that he “knew him from his time in the European Parliament”. (2)

Farage also referred to “patriotic Brits” attending the rally, presumably in contrast to a Government statement that described Unite the Kingdom as “unpatriotic” – a misjudged scolding adjective unlikely to convince anyone attracted by Robinson’s rhetoric.

Notes

1. Three women recently drowned in the sea at Brighton after a night out: it appears they had been paddling and perhaps misjudged the edge of a coastal shelf, but the initial information void was the usual gift to opportunists. In contrast to Gomez, Robinson adopted a “just asking questions” pose (“Wtf is going on?”). Ant Middleton, who sent a message to the rally, concurred with Gomez’s allegation of murder by replying to her social media post with a “bullseye” symbol, which he later deleted.

The deaths came two weeks after it was reported that two Sudanese women had died in a small boat that had run aground on a beach in northern France. The two women were reportedly suffocated in the stampede this caused, but an unsubstantiated story has done the rounds, based on a supposed “Border Force” source, claiming that they were murdered by male migrants. Among those spreading the claim was Don Keith, another American scheduled to speak at the rally who was denied a visa.

2. Tarczynski and other speakers denied visas have instructed an Italian lawyer named Francesco Gargallo di Castel Lentini to issue a “letter of claim” against Keir Starmer:

I hereby submit this letter in the name and on behalf of Don Keith, Ada Lluch, Joey Mannarino, MEP Dominik Tarczyński, Eva Lotte Louise Vlaardingerbroek, who have granted me express mandate to formally contest, for all legal purposes and effects under international law, the law of Great Britain, the law of the United States of America, the law of Spain, the law of the Netherlands, the law of Poland, the public declaration issued on 12 May 2026 by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in which he referred to my Clients as “far-right agitators”, and in the public declaration issued on 15 May 2026 in which he referred to my Clients as “those who seek to stir it [hatred that manifests as violence] up”.

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From France 3:

Un feu de végétation a provoqué l’incendie de l’église de Montenach en Moselle à la frontière Luxembourgeoise ce jeudi 30 avril 2026. Une partie du clocher s’est effondrée, la charpente a été entièrement brûlée, 60 pompiers et 40 véhicules étaient engagés pour circonscrire le sinistre maîtrisé en fin d’après-midi.

News that a brushfire in eastern France had spread to a church ought to be a subject of merely local interest – however, images of the blaze, but not links to the news reports, are currently doing the rounds on social media, based on the assumption that when churches catch fire the reason must be arson, and that the arsonists must be Muslims, who always get away unobserved and without leaving any incriminating evidence. Followers of the likes of Tommy Robinson congratulate themselves for penetrating the mystery through their superior deductive abilities.

This is a regular occurence – back in 2019, Full Fact noted the existence of a map that purported to show acts of arson at churches all around France:

A post on Facebook claims that a heavily annotated map of France shows how many churches have been “destroyed” there in the last four years. It has had over 1,700 shares.

However:

The pins on the map don’t just show churches that were “destroyed”; they also include vandalism incidents, like graffiti, as well as theft, violent incidents at churches and religious buildings, plus incidents where priests were attacked or threatened.

The map was promoted five years later by Darren Grimes, one of Reform UK’s less guarded councillors, in a social media post in which he accused “France’s newcomers” and claimed that it explained the fire at Rouen Cathedral’s spire – a blaze that was most likely caused by a welding spark touching plastic sheeting in the context of works that were going on at the time.

Of course, that does not mean there is no church arson: in 2022 in the UK a teenager named John Brady was given a hospital order for “a string of devastating arson attacks on schools and churches” in Derbyshire, while a man named Ryan Haggerty was jailed for starting a church fire in Glasgow. Fires at churches in Europe, when started deliberately, are almost invariably the work of vandals or pyromaniacs (the 1990s Black Metal-related church attacks in Norway and the occasional self-styled Satanist excepted).

The trend of blaming Muslims for starting church fires without evidence, or even in the teeth of counter-evidence, perhaps began with Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019. Recent cases include the Institution des Chartreux (Chartreux boarding school) in Lyon, France (likely an electrical fault) and the Monastero della Bernaga (Bernaga Monastery) in Lombardy, Italy (also electrical). In the UK, a fire at a Victorian Gothic building in Weymouth last year was taken to be another church fire – in that instance, the structure was actually a former eye hospital that had been converted into a restaurant, giving conspiracists the bonus complaint about the media not calling it a church. Also last year, a church fire in Doirí Beaga, Donegal was falsely attributed to Afghans by Radio Europe; footage of the blaze is still being posted, in one case at least incorrectly relocated across the border to Northern Ireland. One might diagnose apophenia, the tendency to see connections where none exist, were there not so much grift and bad faith involved.

Fires at churches are also useful for building a resentment narrative that arson at mosques is being given too much consideration. Thus when the home secretary wrote last October that “reports today of an attack on a mosque in Peacehaven in East Sussex are deeply concerning”, conspiracist pop duo Right Said Fred rejoined with images of a church fire at St Mary’s Church in Beachamwell, Norfolk (caused by a welding spark) and All Saints Church in Fleet, Hampshire (arson committed by a teenager named Daniel Finnerty in 2015). Populist commentators such as Mike Graham showed more interest in Peacehaven when there was speculation that a Muslim might have done it (1), but less so once white Britons were charged – one of whom, Ricky Ryder, has now admitted arson.

Note

1. Graham was confused due to a case of attempted arson at a mosque in Kettering, Northamptonshire, around the same time. The arsonist in that case was a man named Arif Ali Rafiq, who had absconded during day release from a mental healt unit and reported hearing a voice in his head telling him to commit the offence. The damage was minimal, and he called police himself to report his actions. The incident was conflated with Peacehaven by numerous people on Twitter/X. Internet detectives also misinterpreted a fragment of a taxi-driver speaking Urdu that became attached to footage from Peacehaven.

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Although undoubtedly accidental, posts on Twitter/X posted by GB News “National Reporter” Charlie Peters yesterday have had the effect of breathing new life into conspiracist interpretations of the arson trial in which three young men are accused of having set fire to property associated with Keir Starmer. As discussed yesterday, the prosecution case is as follows, as reported by Sky News (emphasis added):

Continuing to outline his case, Duncan Atkinson KC says that the three defendants acted motivated by money and not political or ideological reasons.

…”It is not part of your considerations to decide who ‘El Money’ is and what reason he might have had to coordinate the actions of these defendants against these properties and this car associated with the prime minister,” Atkinson says.

“That is because you do not have to decide what motivated these three defendants.”

Conspiracists, however, assert without evidence and despite the obvious implausibilities that the three men were “rent boys” with a private grudge against Starmer. Normal media restraint prior to the trial was treated as a sinister conspiracy of silence which some (e.g. Andrew Bridgen) continue to assert exists despite widespread publicity now that the trial is underway. Peters quite properly does not refer to any of this nonsense, but a thread he posted yesterday obscures Atkinson’s assertion as to a financial motive (with phone transcripts presented as supporting evidence), and is written in such a way that most of the time it is not immediately clear whether the jury is being addressed by the prosecutor or instructed by the judge.

Here is the first of three:

I’m at the Old Bailey for the case against three men accused of arson attacks at properties and a vehicle linked to Keir Starmer.

The men are said to have not shown any political or ideological motivation and were paid by a Russian-speaking Telegram account called “El Money”.

This leaves open the question of what their motivation actually was, even though as reported by Sky News (a few minutes before his post) the prosecutor explicitly stated that they were motivated by money.

Next:

The jury has been told not to consider who “El Money” is and why he coordinated the arson attacks.

Jurors have also been told by the prosecution that they do not have to decide what motivated the defendants, only if they conspired to commit arson.

The men deny the charges.

This post has taken on a life of its own, via screenshots that separate it from the thread context. The clarification “told by the prosecution” at last appears, but its connection to the second line leaves the first line ambiguous – and those promoting the post as a screenshot have explicitly interpreted it incorrectly as an instruction from the judge (see this nested farrago of nonsense for an example)

Moving on:

The jury was also told that it does not matter whether the defendants knew that the vehicle and properties they were targeting were connected to Keir Starmer.

Jurors were also told not to consider if the links to the prime minister were part of their motivation for the attacks.

“Told not to consider” puts it more strongly than “you do not have to decide” – it creates an impression of the jury being warned not to do something, rather than advised they don’t need to do something. Thus motive is implicitly framed as something to be excluded, rather than as superfluous to the prosecution case. This is something that conspiracists will exploit to the full.

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From BBC News:

A Russian speaker recruited and offered money to Ukrainian men to carry out arson attacks on properties connected to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, a court has heard.

…The prosecutor said analysis of messages from phones recovered from, and connected with, the defendants showed “communication between them before and during the relevant period”.

He said [Roman] Lavrynovych was offered payment to set the fires by a contact using the name or pseudonym “El Money” on the Telegram messaging app.

The three defendants deny the charges, and while the trial is in progress commentary must be respectual of the law as regards contempt of court.

However, we can say that the first day of the trial has destroyed online conspiracist claims forming no part of the case, that the three men were rent boys with a grudge against the Prime Minister, who for some reason had decided to commit arson rather than sell their story to the press. This conspiracy theory had been allowed to fester online despite being it being obviously prejudicial, and it exploited the fact that once the defendants had been charged then further details were very unlikely to be published until the trial. Dark suspicions were raised of some sort of gagging order on the media, or if not some inexplicable conspiracy of silence that would have included media outlets usually viciously hostile towards Starmer on a daily basis. The speculation reached fever pitch on Monday, due to the media’s failure to report the non-story of some trial preliminaries. The first day of evidence was today, and the trial has now been covered extensively in the media (Sky News in particular has a very informative live thread).

Among those who spread the conspiracy claims, either directly or through insinuation, included the likes of Tommy Robinson, James Melville, Andrew Bridgen, David Atherton and George Galloway. Monday’s non-reporting also inspired media commentary on the left-wing site Canary, which was then amplified by Toby Young.

Mention must also be made of Reform UK’s Richard Tice, who in August amplified a photo of a banner over a motorway walkway that read “Starmer hates Brits, loves rapists, invaders & and rent boys”. Tice disingenuously shared the photo (posted on Twitter/X by @GBPolitics) as evidence of the “depths to which PM has lost confidence across the UK”, rather than because he was winking a sex smear against a political opponent arising from what appears to have been a crime targeting him.

UPDATE: John Bye notes further examples, including posts by Carl Benjamin, Gareth Icke, Jacqui Deevoy and John O’Looney

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From BBC News, 15 April:

Police are yet to identify a group of men who raped a woman outside a church in Surrey, four days after the incident.

The woman, in her 20s, was followed after leaving Labyrinth Epsom nightclub and attacked by several men outside Epsom Methodist Church in the early hours on Saturday.

The allegation was here reported as fact, but it relied purely on the woman’s account; and on 18 April, Surrey Police announced that after reviewing “an extensive amount of CCTV footage” and “interviewing potential witnesses, carrying out forensics investigations and conducting house-to-house enquiries” no evidence could be found. The investigation has now concluded, with police stating that the offence had not occured, and that the woman had given a “confused report” following an “accidential head injury”. In the meantime, Epsom has experienced public disorder orchestrated by right-wing elements led by Danny Tommo, most notoriously with a home for vulnerable adults coming under attack in the mistaken belief that it was housing refugees. (1)

The initial BBC report could very reasonably have begun with “Police are yet to identify any suspects after a woman reported that she had been raped by a group of men outside a church in Surrey”. However, it was perhaps natural to take the woman’s account at face value: everyone knows there are false accusers – Carl Beech, Ellie Williams – but signalling a position of agnosticism might have come across as pedantic scepticism and as downplaying a serious crime with similarities to a recent genuine case in Brighton. Also, the woman was not accusing anyone specifically, and so there was no need to be mindful of the rights of a suspect.

Naturally, the case attracted commentary from opportunists:  on 16 April, Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick was quick to demand that Surrey Police “share what they can about the horrific rape in Epsom”, the implication being that they might be remiss in doing so. Jenrick referred back to the Southport killings, stating that “the authorities were silent” and that this made “a bad situation worse”. This of course ignores that the police were limited in what they could say, and that one thing that made things “worse” was Nigel Farage suggesting a cover-up and giving spurious credibility to an online rumour. (2)

In this way, Jenrick invited the public draw adverse inferences from the fact that Surrey Police did not have anything to share – and once again, suspicion and disinformation flourished. On Twitter/X, CCTV images from an unrelated 2025 case in Humberside did the rounds as supposed images of Epsom suspects; they were debunked, but the high-profile Reform-adjacent activist David Atherton then addressed Surrey Police with the claim “I have just been sent images which purport to show the suspects from the gang rape in Epsom.” He went on: “Can I DM them to you for verification. No one is going to be shocked, if true.” Were these the same Humberside images, or something else? Atherton never clarified, although by claiming to be in the know he helped to whip things up while increasing his profile.

Next, on 21 April, a police officer answering questions from a hostile and abusive crowd in Epsom referred to the woman “the victim”. More properly, she ought to have said “the complainant”, but at this stage it would have sounded pointed and suggestive of scepticism, and it might have riled up the mob (3). The clip was exploited as a “gotcha” by Dan Wootton, with Atherton suggesting that it meant the police had lied about not having any evidence.

“Head injury” may be a strong defence against a charge of wasting police time, but some may feel that it is not a satisfactory resolution. Conspiracists have a window for contining to claim there has been a cover up, although more reasonably we might infer that the police would prefer not to prosecute in case it deters genuine victims from coming forward in future.

UPDATE: There’s a useful overview from Alan Rusbridger in Prospect.

Notes

1. Tommy Robinson was not present, but happily noted that a protestors had “hit a suspected HMO [House in Multiple Occupation] housing unvetted migrant men”.

2.  Jenrick also cites Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, who was quoted as saying that “I personally think that more information could have been put out safely without compromising potential criminal proceedings”. Hall, though, was unhelpfully vague about what information he meant exactly. Farage claims to have been vindicated by Hall – even though Hall was concerned with police countering the kind of disinformation that he was promoting.

3. The 2016 Henriques Report, by Sir Richard Henriques KC in the wake of the Operation Midland fiasco, criticised police procedures that instructed officers to automatically “believe” complainants, and recommended using the word “complainant” rather than “victim”. However, old habits die hard, and when presented with someone in distress who says she has just been attacked any sympathetic person might find it difficult to suspend belief.

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From Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick, on Twitter/X:

We’re told Starmer is “furious”.

Well only because he’s trying to save his own skin again over paedo pal, Peter Mandelson…

The lack of any article or pronoun before “paedo pal” (“his” or “the”) creates ambiguity, although the most natural reading is that Starmer has a paedo pal, who is Peter Mandelson. However, the post also includes a short clip from Jenrick speaking in Parliament, in which he refers to “the paedophile pal Peter”, more clearly denoting a reference to Peter Mandelson as a “pal” of Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson famously described himself as Epstein’s “best pal” back in 2003, several years prior to Epstein’s first arrest – although this is shaky ground for an attack from the right, given that the quote is from the same Epstein birthday book in which Donald Trump is also alleged to have also called Epstein “a pal”.

Unlike Trump, though, Mandelson remained friends with Epstein following his conviction, although this was no secret and he was hardly alone in being part of Epstein’s attempted social rehabilitation before his final fall. In September, it was further revealed that Mandelson had commiserated with Epstein over his original conviction, which he appears to have believed was unjust.

This poor judgement in matter of private friendship has since been overshadowed by more substantive allegations of wrongdoing: Epstein emails show that Mandelson shared confidential government business with him. His failed vetting prior to his appointment to an ambassadorial role perhaps rested in part on the reputational risk of his Epstein association, but also likely involved conflicts of interest over his business career. Jenrick, though, collapses all this into what he calls “a paedophile scandal”, a tacky and demagogic framing of Starmer’s predicament intended to inflame rather than inform the public.

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An X post from Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice:

After his nice messages at Eid and Ramadan, we look forward to a warm Easter message from King Charles III in his role as Defender of the Faith of the Church of England

Tice, of course, is here striking a sarcastic pose: his post obviously refers to a GB News story from a few hours beforehand, headlined “Buckingham Palace confirms King Charles will not issue Easter message this year”. His fiancée Isabel Oakeshott clarifies the point, while also exposing the cynicism behind it, in a coarser social media post of her own (redaction of “holy fuck” in her original):

THE King is head of the Church of England. He issued Ramadan and Eid messages, but apparently isn’t bothering with Easter this year. What the holy f***? Not ok.

The grievance is currently ubiquitous on X, with some conspiracy influencers also suggesting that the king is secretly a Muslim convert (what he does with the various alcoholic beverages he has been shown quaffing in public is unexplained). As noted by John Bye, Dan Wootton claims that Charles has “refused” to issue a statement, while the most unhinged rhetoric, from Laurence Fox, is a call to “bring back hanging, drawing and quartering for traitors”, posted alongside a video of Charles sending a Ramadan greeting in 2021.

However, a careful reading of the GB News source shows some false equivalence:

Buckingham Palace has confirmed King Charles will not issue an Easter message this year.

GB News understands that it is not a message that the Palace releases every year, unlike its annual Christmas speech.

The late Queen Elizabeth II did not frequently issue an Easter message either, opting to do so only during the coronavirus pandemic.

…Buckingham Palace’s decision not to release an Easter message will likely ruffle some feathers among Christians, given that in February, the King and Queen’s social media account faced backlash for issuing Muslims a “blessed and peaceful Ramadan” on Shrove Tuesday.

The first three paragraphs imply an “Easter message” as a “speech” comparable to what we get at Christmas, whereas the Ramadan message refers to a short text posted to social media – as was also the case with Eid. These texts are thin grounds on which to build a “double standard” resentment narrative, hence the recourse to other material: the 2021 greeting, which was a Covid-era morale booster (1), or some pleasantries about Ramadan made by Charles at a recent state banquet for the President of Nigeria.

The vitriol expressed this year goes beyond the usual culture wars clichés about the word “Easter” not appearing on chocolate eggs, and it is reasonable to suppose that the some of it has been spurred on by recent displays of Christian-nationalist religiosity involving Donald Trump and his court evangelists.

One GB News story headlines how a bishop is “bitterly disappointed” – only three paragraphs into the article is the bishop identified as none other than Ceirion Dewar, and readers are not burdened with the detail that he is the “missionary bishop” of an obscure Anglican offshoot based in Tennessee. Nor is there any mention of his association with Tommy Robinson.

Note

1. Inevitably, some sources mislead about how long ago Charles made the video: a clip posted to YouTube by Sky News Australia is entitled “King Charles under fire for issuing Ramadan speech but not Easter message”. This implies a false contemporaneity, not least because it obscures that he made the Ramadan speech as Prince Charles.

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