Bartholomew's Notes

From Mediaite:

President Donald Trump called on a friendly reporter during a press conference with Prime Minister Keir Starmer as part of his state visit to the United Kingdom on Thursday, who complimented the American president on being a “proud Christian leader.”

Bev Turner with GB News then asked Starmer, “Having been in DC for a few weeks, it’s really interesting to see how you run the country as a proud Christian leader. And it really begs the question to the prime minister, if you don’t mind, are we still a Christian country?”

Trump previously encountered Turner in Scotland in July, and she says that he remembered her when she visited the Oval Office earlier this month in the company of Nigel Farage.

I would have answered such a question by advising Turner to consult a sociologist of religion, but that obviously was not the point she was interested in: Starmer is known not be a man of faith, having stated in a Sunday Times Magazine interview from 2021 that he does not believe in God, and Turner was hopeful that his answer would be something that would alienate Trump and American viewers.

Instead, though, Starmer responded with some brief acknowledgement of what we might call Britain’s Christian heritage, and how that has been part of his own life:

“Yeah. Look, I mean, in terms of a Christian country, I was christened. So, that is my church, has been all my life,” Starmer began. “And we are, you know, that is wired into our informal constitution. Of course, we celebrate many other faiths as well. And I’m really proud that we’re able to do so as a country.”

This is the sort of answer you might expect from a politician: diplomatic and a bit vague, but also an attempt to emphasise common ground with a wide range of voters.

The press conference then moved on, but Turner thought she had sniffed out a gotcha and she returned to the subject later, as Trump boarded his plane. She told Trump that Starmer had said in his Times interview that he is a “convicted atheist” – not actually his self-description (1) – and she asked him whether he thought Starmer was “the kind of guy that says something when you’re there…”. However, Trump declined to be steered, and instead described Starmer as “nice” and a “fine person”, before discussing a couple of areas of disagreement. The idea of Trump of all people being asked to pass judgment on another politician’s sincerity in matters of religion is particularly ludicrous.

On social media, Turner followed up by promoting the views of an American fundamentalist who characterised Starmer’s answer as evidence that the UK is “a nation ruled by liars and Satanists”. Turner has frequently promoted conspiracism on social media (e.g. here, here and here), and at one point last year even toyed with the possibility that Trump himself is a “psyop”.

Meanwhile, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said in August that she lost her faith in 2008 after reading about the crimes of Josef Fritzl, while Nigel Farage has suggested that he avoids church because the vicar would subject him to a “Marxist lecture”.

Footnote

1. The 2021 interview can be read here. Starmer stated:

“This is going to sound odd, but I do believe in faith. I’ve a lot of time and respect for faith. I am not of faith, I don’t believe in God — but I can see the power of faith and the way it brings people together.”

Condensing this into “convicted atheist” gives an impression of a rather more antagonistic view of religion.

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The Daily Mail notes some curious rhetoric from Saturday’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally in London, which Tommy Robinson had billed as a “free speech festival”:

…speakers included New Zealand Christian fundamentalist Brian Tamaki, who told the crowd: ‘Christianity versus the rest. Islam, Hinduism, Bahai, Buddhism, whatever else you’re into — they’re all false. We gotta clean our countries up.

‘Ban any type of public expression in our Christian nation from other religions. Ban halal. Ban burqas. Ban mosques, temples, shrines. We don’t want those in our countries.’

I extracted the clip here, and the wider context is available here. Tamaki, who heads the neo-Pentecostal Destiny Church, is of Māori heritage; his act began with members of his church performing a haka, and after his speech they tore apart a series of flags, starting with a plain white one inscribed with “SECULAR HUMANISM” and “NO RELIGION”. This was followed by flags representing the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State, and then the Palestinian national flag, described as representing “the Palestinian religion of lies and corruption” (1).

Tamaki was no outlier; David Campanale, reporting for Premier Christianity magazine, noted

There was a praise and worship band on the main platform, featuring Pastor Rikki Doolan (who was once caught on camera by an Al-Jazeera investigation offering to help launder dirty money), while a cleric in bishop’s garb led the assembled mass of humanity in the Lord’s Prayer.

…Tommy Robinson also picked up on the Christian messaging, telling the crowd, “There has been a globalist revolution. They have attacked the family. They’ve attacked Christianity. They’ve opened the borders. They’ve flooded our nations. We are the start of a counter revolution”.

He was followed by far-right and nationalist politicians from across Europe, including an AFD MP from Germany, the cancelled Romanian presidential candidate George Simion, who urged respect for “God, faith, family, homeland.” Dutch Catholic Eva Vlaardingerbroek spoke, as did representatives of extreme Belgian party Vlaams Belang, the Danish People’s Party and Polish MEP from Law and Justice, Dominik Tarczyński, who used to work at Westminster’s Catholic cathedral.

Campandale also noted the prevalence of “people wearing Crusader outfits”, and “flags with Bible verses such as ‘Jesus the Way, the Truth, the Life’, or ‘Jesus is Lord’ and ‘Turn back to God'”. However, “some people I interviewed in the crowd carrying Jesus flags said they were not Christians and would not be in church on Sunday”. His interviewing was cut short when he was chased off by two drunk men who had determined he was a “leftie”.

The “cleric  in bishop’s garb” noted by Campandale was Bishop Ceirion Dewar of the Confessing Anglican Church (2), who was prominent in Robinson’s previous rally in July last year – this year, he was in the second row of march, and one photo shows him standing behind Robinson, Laurence Fox and Katie Hopkins. His presence was noted by Hope Not Hate, along with “Rev. Brett Murphy and Right Rev. Dr. David Nicholls from Morecambe, Lancashire”. The white-haired Nicholls, holding a wooden crozier and also wearing bishop’s garb, can be seen in a photograph published by the Daily Mail, although not identified by the paper (3).

One speaker not noted by Campandale was the Texas Republican Congressional candidate Valentina Gomez, who told the crowd that “we either fight now or we die, and we’re fighters, we are warriors of Jesus Christ”. Gomez characterised Keir Starmer as “the biggest paedophile-protector in history” and called for a new prime minister who will “send all of these rapist Muslims and dirty rugs back to their shariah nations”. One hostile social media interlocutor who afterwards reacted to an upload of her speech was dismissed as a “dirty pakistani Muslim”.

Christianity and Christian values as Britain’s culture were also emphasised by ex-SAS soldier and sometime TV presenter Ant Middleton, including the perennial complaint that “we can’t even fucking celebrate Christmas these days without offending someone” (4).

Footnotes

1. Tamaki also had a warning for the king:

King Charles is supposed to be the defender of the faith, he took a oath. He has not defended Christianity, he’s defended Islam. He’s defended other religions. And I’m telling you on behalf of Australia and New Zealand and [at least probably?] Canada… You do not come out and declare that Christianity must be the official religion of our countries again, then we’re going to pull away from the monarchy and we’ll form a Christian alliance, a legion of nations. We’ll join the United States of America.

This anti-Royalist strand of the populist right is worth keeping an eye on.

2. Dewar’s website says that he was ordained in 1999 and consecrated in 2005, but does say by whom. On LinkedIn, he describes himself as a Pentecostal, and posts on Facebook indicate that he is close to the American Prosperity Gospel preacher Mike Murdock (previously blogged here in relation to another British associate) and to various UK-based British-African church leaders. In 2012 he was involved in a financial dispute with an elderly woman, in which a court ordered him to pay £1000.

3. Murphy was ordained in the Anglican Church of Australia but moved over to the Free Church of England in 2023, which he managed to stay with for a whole 13 months before being dismissed. Nicholls, meanwhile, is described as a “Retired Bishop” of the Communion of International Catholic Communities (based in Rockwell, Texas): he is also variously Vice-Chancellor of St. Andrews Theological University International in India and Chief of Chaplains of the Pontifical Walsingham Guard of the United Roman-Ruthenian Church. Their Emmanuel Church in Morecambe describes itself as Anglican and as part of the Church of England, although it is actually under the oversight of Archbishop-Bishop Frederick Belmonte of the the Anglican Church in the Philippines (Traditional). This is part of Anglican Church Traditional, which is not to be confused with the Traditional Anglican Church.

4. Ant Middleton also used his speech to announce his intention to stand for mayor of London, although this is a subject he has already referred to frequently on social media. There, he cites Sadiq Kahn’s ethnicity as a reason not not vote for him: he argues that “1st, 2nd & 3rd generation immigrants SHOULD NOT hold top tier government positions” and that “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”. Earlier this year, he was disqualified as a company director over £1 million unpaid tax; in March, he promised to “release my side of the story tomorrow”, but as far as I know it has not yet appeared.

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Wedger’s comments endorsed by Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp

A front-page splash at the Daily Express:

Sadiq Khan is facing pressure to resign over his failure to accept there is a grooming gang problem in London

It comes after a police whistleblower revealed to the Express that the “horrific crime” has been rife in London for 20 years.

…Decorated former detective Jon Wedger claims he uncovered a trove of evidence suggesting that there is organised sexual exploitation of children in the capital on a level that goes way beyond notorious scandals in towns like Rotherham or Rochdale.

…”They were being sold in crack houses, swapped for nine rocks of crack, then taken to hotels to have sex with builders that were working in central London. After that, the kids would then be taken to upmarket Arab restaurants in Mayfair around the Curzon Street, where they would be traded for as much as £2,000 each. That was happening on a daily basis.”

…The former detective said Mr Khan should be “removed immediately” for repeatedly refusing to accept the problem and continuing a policy of “willful neglect” that, he felt, amounted to an “act of malfeasance in high office.”

Readers of the Express with reasonably long memories may wonder how it is that Jon Wedger is “revealing” anything at all in 2025, given that he was quoted extensively by the newspaper as a supposed “whistleblower” way back in 2017. At that time, a month after he had taken “ill health retirement”, he claimed that he had been forced out after investigating a “a well known prostitute in 2004 who was suspected of using children”. This individual

would ply youngsters, including a 14-year-old girl, with drugs and alcohol and then pimp them out to men in budget hotels near Paddington railway station in west London.

Wedger alleged he had been warned off by a senior officer after discovering links with organised crime and corrupt officers. A bit of digging by the Hoaxtead website a couple of years later showed that he was referring to the case of Fiona Walsh, although his claims of cover-ups and conspiracies failed to withstand scrutiny, not least because Walsh was tried and convicted and sent to prison in 2006.

It is notable that Wedger’s earlier story makes no mention of “upmarket Arab restaurants in Mayfair”, and it reasonable to suppose that this is an attempt to add an ethnic element to his (old) story that would resonate with accounts of Muslim-heritage “grooming gangs”. This then provides rather tortuous grounds for his criticism of Sadiq Khan, who did not become mayor of London unil 2016. Wedger’s complaint is based on a video clip of an exchange between Kahn and Conservative London Assembly member Susan Hall, which has been transcribed here.

The new Express article comes with a reaction quote from Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, who has also posted it to Twitter/X:

The comments by Jon Wedger are damning. This is yet another example of a cover up by the police who shut down his investigations into child sexual exploitation in London.

Sadiq Khan should be leaving no stone unturned to get to the bottom of organised child sexual exploitation in London – instead he has been facilitating a cover up.

Philp’s confidence in Wedger here as someone who has particular insight into police cover ups is somewhat problematic given broader allegations he has made. Take, for instance, a series of interviews Wedger provided to one John Cooper in 2023, which Cooper is selling on Amazon under the title The Great Reveal: Ex-Scotland Yard Detective Exposes Child Trafficking and Satanic Ritual Abuse Going All the Way to the Top. In 2019 Wedger heavily promoted wide-ranging SRA claims by a fanatic named Wilfred Wong, and he has since advocated for Wong’s freedom after he was convicted of abducting a child at knifepoint. Wedger’s self-description of being a police whistleblower has also been challenged by the Independent Police Support Group.

I noted a previous example of Chris Philp making an ill-considered investment in a particular narrative here.

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From the Independent, last week:

The Government has been accused of making “almost no progress” on plans to investigate grooming gangs as ministers are recruiting a chairperson to lead a national inquiry.

Home Office minister Jess Phillips told MPs the appointment process was in its “final stages” and a panel of survivors and victims would be part of the final approval after Sir Keir Starmer committed to a fresh national inquiry in June.

…Ms Phillips replied: “The victims of this crime have sat in front of me with tears in their eyes and said they hate it when we shout at each other about these things, and they wish we would work together.”

She later added that police were involved in the perpetration of these crimes, as well as the cover-ups.

“I would be lying if I said that over the years, I have not met girls who talk to me about how police were part of the perpetration, not just the cover-up, and we need to make sure that victims can come and give that testimony,” Ms Phillips said.

Two retired South Yorkshire Police officers were arrested over alleged involvement in historic child sexual exploitation and abuse in Rotherham in December and January, and more general allegations about “corrupt police officers” working with grooming gangs in the area were reported in July.

Phillips’ apparently off-the-cuff comment has been seized on as an admission that she had information that ought to have been acted on long ago; populist-right commentators suggest the matter has relevance to her October 2024 reply to Oldham Council, in which she explained the government’s (then) position that “it is for Oldham Council alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the Government to intervene”. This was framed by right-wing media as a cover-up, with Elon Musk accusing her of being a “rape genocide apologist”.

Phillips is not without faults, but conspiring to cover up sex offences is not among them. Some clarity, though, would be helpful. Did she really mean to say she had “met girls”, or did she mean young women who had previously been abused as girls?

It also occured to me that she may be referring back to a specific claim about organised abuse that she promoted back in 2017; not “grooming” offences, but supposed ritualistic abuse involving a church and “VIPs” – including her constituency predecessor, John Hemming. The allegations were false, and Hemming wrote about the matter in 2019:

Many people will know that my family and I have been subject to a campaign of false allegations by Esther Baker for the past 4 1/2 years. Yesterday there was a court judgment Baker v Hemming [2019] EWHC 2950 (QB) which formally confirmed that the allegations were false… There is a good summary in the Daily Mail here.

…A substantial campaign was built up to promote allegations which had no substance to them. Various Labour MPs and in particular Jess Phillips and Tom Watson supported this campaign. Jess Phillips is not and never has been the constituency member of parliament for the Esther Baker. However, she dedicated a considerable amount of time to ensuring that the allegations got the maximum publicity including inviting Baker to meet her in the House of Commons.

Baker alleged that some abuse had occurred in woodland, with police standing guard.

There is also this curious report from left-wing website Skwawkbox in 2017, which I previously noted here:

The SKWAWKBOX has also spoken to a serving MP who was one of several witnesses present at the time that a positive identification was made by a young adult who had suffered sexual abuse since childhood. The MP told this blog,

We were all in the Strangers’ Bar [in the Houses of Parliament]. The young victim was holding a phone and looking through pictures online, looking for someone else. Suddenly s/he screamed, dropped the phone and stood there shaking and crying, saying ‘it’s him, it’s him!’ The picture on the screen was that of a serving Chief Constable. It was a very real and spontaneous reaction.

A retired Metropolitan Police officer was also among the witnesses. After they reported the allegations, the MP and Ms Evans were both interviewed at length by the police force – not that of the accused senior officer – to which the accusation was reported…

Was Jess Phillips the unnamed MP? And if so, was this incident the basis for her comment in the House of Commons?

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From BBC News:

Reform UK has distanced itself from a conference speaker who suggested that Covid vaccines were linked to the King’s and the Princess of Wales’ cancers.

Aseem Malholtra, an adviser to US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, said: “One of Britain’s most eminent oncologists Professor Angus Dalgleish said to me to share with you today that he thinks it’s highly likely that the Covid vaccines have been a significant factor in the cancers in the royal family.”

…The party said that it “does not endorse what he said but does believe in free speech”.

Malhotra has been celebrated within the conspiracy milieu since 2022 – this was when he published a review essay in which he claimed that Covid vaccination caused accelerated heart disease, based on his personal incredulity about the cause of his own father’s death several months after he had advised him to stop taking statins.

The idea that cancer and heart disease are supposedly being caused by Covid vaccination acts as spurious reassurance that prophecies of mass mortality have not failed after all, and speculation about the Princess of Wales in particular has been rife. Of course Farage and Reform would rather talk about “free speech” rather than their poor judgement in giving Malhotra a platform.

But how convincing is the supposed “distancing” from Malhotra, given that cited Dalgleish as his authority? Here is Reform deputy leader Richard Tice in February, quoting Piers Morgan:

Safe & Effective the experts told us….. Now even PIERS MORGAN: “I was with one of the top cancer experts in Britain for lunch a couple of days ago, who was utterly scathing about the long-term impact of the mRNA vaccines … and says that they’re reaping a whirlwind in the world of cancer as a result of the vaccines.“

By not providing a name, Morgan asks us to be impressed by credentials while simultaneously shielding his source from scrutiny – although it’s almost certain he was talking about Dalgleish, who has long been known to Farage from UKIP days and from more than one interview on GB News.

Dalgleish has also been promoted by Allison Pearson, who yesterday introduced Lucy Connolly to the conference.

UPDATE: Don McGowan notes that Malhotra is “Chief Health Advisor” to Action on World Health, and anti-WHO campaigning group that was launched by Nigel Farage in May last year.

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Much has been written about the Daily Telegraph‘s front page interview with Lucy Connolly, conducted by Allison Pearson, but here’s a detail worth unpacking a bit further:

She now believes that cases like hers were used to deflect attention away from the Islamist savagery that took the lives of Alice, Bebe and Elsie Dot at that Southport dance class. “I was so shocked. People appear to be more bothered by my political views than by children being murdered.”

Connolly, infamously, had reacted to news of the Southport murders by writing online “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them” – a statement based on the false rumour that the killer was an asylum-seeker. For Connolly’s defenders, the formulation “for all I care” meant that she was merely expressing contemptuous indifference rather than inciting violence, although in context the meaning appears to be that people should not hold back from setting fire to hotels if it achieves the stated purpose of “mass deportation”. As such, the case was prosecuted as a instance of incitement – and the context of widespread disorder was treated as an aggravating factor, comparable to prosecutions for online posts during the 2011 rioting. The prosecution and sentencing are thus perfectly explicable without recourse to a “deflection” claim, and the implied rebuke that what happened to her reflects people being insufficently concerned with “children being murdered” comes across as self-serving and unattractive.

And that’s before we get onto the supposed “Islamist savagery”. This is the theory that the killer, Axel Rudakubana, was motivated by Islamic extremism. The primary basis for this claim is that he had downloaded an al-Qaeda manual and attempted to make ricin, although Pearson’s own pet theory, expressed in response to criticism of the above-quoted detail, is that there is a connection between Rudakubana targeting a Taylor Swift dance class and ISIS targeting Taylor Swift concerts – although it’s not clear what this connection is, given that the Austria plot was not exposd in the media until a week after the Southport massacre. But even if you find this plausible, it remains speculative and Pearson misleads her readers by slipping it into her write-up as if it’s something we all “know” about the incident. The theory has no explanation for why Rudakubana did not identify himself as ideologically motivated in court, or why no evidence of even a superficial identification with jihadism could be found by prosecutors. The simplest explanation for the al-Qaeda manual is that it was consulted as a “how to” guide for someone obsessed with violence and killing.

Ahead of the interview, Connolly was photographed standing between Pearson and Dan Wootton, and the Telegraph and Wootton both boast of having secured her “first” interview. This indicates a dual media strategy, in which Pearson promotes Connolly through the (much squandered) reputational legacy of the Telegraph as mainstream media while Wootton brings her to to conspiracist and alt-right audiences . Wootton’s advocacy of Connolly previously included mocking up a photo of Connolly with facial injuries along with the heading “Lucy Connolly Prison Attack”. This was extrapolated from claims made by Pearson and Reform’s Richard Tice that she had suffered bruising to her wrists from handcuffs. Pearson charactered the incident as “mistreatment”, even though she “slid to the floor” to resist transfer to a different prison wing.

I previously noted Pearson’s own experience of an incitement complaint here.

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Populist ideologue Matt Goodwin celebrates the recent outbreak of national flag fetishism in England:

The English philosopher Sir Roger Scruton once said “the English are reluctant to display their identity — reluctant to sing their national anthem, to wave their flag, or to affirm their nationhood … But the cost of this reluctance is the steady erosion of something precious —a shared first-person plural.”

What he meant by that was the erosion of a “we” —the erosion of a community, an identity, a home.

The quote struck me as somewhat  undeveloped. Is the “steady erosion” caused by this alleged English reluctance, or is it rather that the reluctance allows “steady erosion” by some other factor? And what are the causes of this “reluctance”? There is no actual argument here, just a portentous banality about how nationist rituals promote community feeling. We’re supposed to take this observation as self-evidently insightful because it issues forth from Roger Scruton.

Perhaps there’s some nuance of meaning that has been lost by the three dots – but good luck finding out what it is that has been excised. Goodwin doesn’t provide the source, and although the vocabulary echoes Scruton I’ve been unable to find it anywhere online – not in the Internet Archive, not on Google Books, not by searching several of Scruton’s titles on Amazon’s “search inside the book” function, and not on a website devoted to his work. No-one else has quoted it, either. Of course, that doesn’t prove that the quote is apocryphal, but given Scruton’s quotability the obscurity of its provenance is surprising. We cannot discount the possibility that it is from some uncollected magazine article or speech, or perhaps from Confessions of a Heretic, which is published by a small press that does not allow its books to be included in electronic repositories, but it is reasonable to be doubtful –  and if that aggrieves Goodwin he has only himself to blame for not providing a reference.

Goodwin appears to have a stock of quotes that are difficult to pin down. Here’s anotherone he attributed to Scruton in July:

A nation is not merely a collection of people, it is a collection of obligations: inherited, assumed and passed on.

It sounds Scrutonesque, but again, where is it actually from?

And here he is writing in the Sun earlier this month, making a foray into Classics:

In Ancient Greece, the writer ­Pericles warned that leaders will only hold their state together so long as they listen to the people they lead, “for only then can leaders rule with their trust”.

And in Ancient Rome, too, the statesman Cicero reached the same conclusion, warning the leaders of the city state that unless they look after their own people first — which he considered their “highest duty” — then their civilisation will rapidly crumble from within and become vulnerable to external invaders.

Reference to “the writer Pericles” is not encouraging: there are speeches attributed to the statesman in ancient sources, but no actual writings. And as with the Scruton quote, we are again presented with banal maxims, here formulated in such a vague and offhand way that that original passages are difficult or impossible to identify and contextualise.

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From the Sunday Telegraph:

Elite police squad to monitor anti-migrant posts on social media

An elite team of police officers is to monitor social media for anti-migrant sentiment amid fears of summer riots.

Detectives will be drawn from forces across the country to take part in a new investigations unit that will flag up early signs of potential civil unrest.

The division, assembled by the Home Office, will aim to “maximise social media intelligence” gathering after police forces were criticised over their response to last year’s riots.

The article has been received with apocalyptic fury online, with Reform’s Zia Yusuf calling it “terrifying” and populist ideologue Matt Goodwin warning that “we will all soon be with Lucy Connolly folks” (more on Connolly here). The article itself including condemnations from Nigel Farage and from Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, who sneered that “Two-tier Keir can’t police the streets, so he’s trying to police opinions instead.” Rupert Lowe has written with performative discourtesy (“what are you playing at?”) to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (although he doesn’t deign to use her name) demanding answers.

The article is based on letter sent by Diana Johnson, Minister  of State for Crime, Policing and Fire of the United Kingdom, on 17 July. It is publicly available on the UK Parliament website, and it unsurprising to note that in fact it makes no reference anywhere to “anti-migrant sentiment”.

The letter was written to the Conservative MP Karen Bradley, who as  Chair of the Home Affairs Committee had asked for “more detail on the Government’s plans for building police capability to gather open source intelligence from social media”, following on from the the Government’s response to the Committee’s Report into the policing response to the 2024 summer disorder. Bradley wrote on 1 July:

Given the recent scenes in Northern Ireland, where social media has again been used as a means of inciting and organising disorder, I am sure you will agree that the way police forces use social media is becoming an increasingly important component of many police responses.

Bradley’s very reasonable observation has now been undercut by her Conservative colleague Philp, who apparently takes the view that the police have no business taking account of how “social media has again been used as a means of inciting and organising disorder” and that “building police capacity to gather open source intelligence” is a sinister conspiracy by the government to suppress criticism.

Here is what Johnson actually wrote in reply to Bradley – some of it is quoted directly by the Telegraph, but those investing in the newspaper’s narrative framing don’t seem to have bothered checking the original source before mouthing off:

Dear Dame Karen,

Thank you for your letter of 1 July regarding the Government’s response to the Committee’s recent report into the policing response to the 2024 summer disorder. As you have requested, I am pleased to set out the further information below.

You asked about current plans to build police capability for using social media intelligence at force and national levels. We are carefully considering recommendations made by the Committee and HMICFRS in this area, including building a National Internet Intelligence Investigations team as part of the National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC).

This team will provide a national capability to monitor social media intelligence and advise on its use to inform local operational decision making. This will be a dedicated function at a national level for exploiting internet intelligence to help local forces manage public safety threats and risks. Funding for this capability beyond 25/26 will need to be considered in line with future funding priorities but I am confident that as a first step, this new central team will help build capability across forces to maximise social media intelligence…

Although the Telegraph article does mention “intelligence”, the headline reference to “anti-migrant posts”, and this is why Philp and other critics appear to believe it is about opinions.

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From the Guardian, a couple of days ago:

From tomorrow social media companies must introduce child safety measures under the Online Safety Act. It is a key moment for a British government attempting, like so many others, to rein in tech firms and prevent children encountering harmful content on the internet.

Passed by parliament in 2023, the landmark legislation significantly empowers the regulator Ofcom… Social media companies operating in the UK now risk hefty fines if they fail to take strong action against content that is harmful to children such as pornography or material that encourages self-harm.

The Act has previously been criticised on the grounds that it might have unintended consequences, and/or will be ineffective. However, populists have come up with a new interpretation, which is that the purpose of the Act is instead to censor the news. Thus on Twitter/X, Annunziata Rees-Mogg:

The Online Safety Act, effective by July 2025, may be censoring violent protest footage in the UK, as noted in related posts, with Ofcom enforcing rules that could limit access to such content, raising questions about free speech versus public safety.

We live in a police state where the police have never been so mistrusted. 😡

And:

Hiding the truth increases fear.

Frightened people lash out.

This is dangerous.

“Frightened people lash out” would appear to be a pre-emptive apology for violence, similar to Nigel Farage‘s implication that the presence of counter-protestors at anti-migrant protests obliges protestors to smash up police vans and attack officers.

One supposedly suppressed clip in particular is cited by Rees-Mogg and others: it was uploaded by a user with the name Keira Diss, and shows police restraining and arresting a man at a protest in Leeds. Although fairly tame, some users are now seeing the message “Due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X esimates your age”. Both the clip and the text accompanying it are affected.

The restriction doesn’t affect me, as accounts created during or before 2012 are assumed to belong to adults. Nor does it affect anyone who has verified their identity on the plaform. If the purpose is government-directed news censorship, then it is rather poor effort. And the clip has not been “censored” by anyone in the UK: the decision to restrict the clip was made in America.

Four possibilities come to mind: (1) the clip has been flagged up either in error, or by someone gaming the reporting system for some reason; (2) Twitter/X decided to restrict access out of an abundance of caution; (3) Musk sees the development as useful in getting users to pay for verification; and/or (4) Musk wants to whip up resentment that will be directed at the UK government rather than at him.

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From the Independent:

Police say claims that officers “bussed” counter-demonstrators to a protest outside a hotel housing asylum seekers, are “categorically wrong”.

Essex Police have denied the claims circulating on social media; claims of which Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said that the force’s chief constable should resign for.

… a force spokesperson said: “There are claims on social media that Essex Police officers ‘bussed’ protesters to the protest outside the Bell Hotel on Thursday July 17.

“This is categorically wrong.

“Officers did provide a foot cordon around protesters on their way to the protest, where they and others were allowed to exercise their right to protest.

“Later, some people who were clearly at risk of being hurt were also escorted by vehicle away from the area for their safety.

“To reiterate, we categorically did not drive any counter-protesters to the site on any occasion.”

Farage’s claim was based on a short clip from a video that he said was “proof” of counter-protestors “arriving at the station and literally, by Essex Police, being bussed to the Bell Hotel”. However, it didn’t take much effort to establish from background details that the video of counter-protestors getting into police vans had been filmed at a location some distance from the station (1). A longer version of the video cited by Farage (easily found on social media) also includes its narrator asking “why don’t they just go home if they are local?”, which obviously implies a context of people leaving the area rather than heading for the hotel. It is not clear whether Reform deliberately left this out or whether they simply relied on one of their preferred information sources, such as Dan Wootton.

Farage has now more or less conceded the mistake, although he goes no further than to say that “If I was slightly out on accuracy I apologise”. But he also now pretends that there is no difference between a “foot cordon” and “bussing”, although it’s not clear what course of action he would have preferred. Maybe his view is that police ought to have kettled counter-protestors at Epping Station, making a mockery of his “free speech” credentials; or maybe he thinks they ought have just allowed two groups of angry rival protestors to roam around Epping (2).

Some of the counter-protestors were masked, from which Farage concludes with typical confidence that they were “Anifa”. He also appears to believe that their presence explains why the protest at the hotel turned violent, although he has also conceded the presence of some “far-right thugs”. I did see one short video of an unmasked counter-protestor fighting with a protestor on a road near the hotel (apparently from an earlier protest a few days before), but it was probably no good for Farage’s purposes due to the person filming it abusing the counter-protestor as a “fucking faggot” and a “poof” (3).

Last year, Farage famously amplified false claims that the Southport killer had been known to the security services, which was a guarded reformulation of the internet rumour that he had been on an “MI6 watchlist” and which in turn gave credence to claims that he was an asylum seeker. Farage later reformulated what he had said as “known to the authorities”.

UPDATE: A follow-up story about a protest in Aldershot, from the Daily Mail:

A second police force has come under fire after a video emerged showing officers escorting pro-migrant activists to a protest outside an asylum seeker hotel.

…The latest clip of officers ‘bussing’ counter-protesters saw one activist brandishing a placard supporting the campaign Stand Up to Racism – which is partly funded by trade unions and led by suspended Labour MP, Diane Abbott.

Those scare-quotes appear to be an attempt to suggest that the word “bussing” can have a metaphorical meaning of “escorting”. Such a usage is strained beyond reason, and is obviously an attempt to obfuscate rather than report.

Notes

1. The video was filmed at the top of St John’s Road in Epping, at a junction where Coronation Hill meets Lower Swaines.

2. Populist ideologue Matt Goodwin speculates that the police escorted the counter-protestors to the site because “parts of the British state are deliberately stoking conflict as a way of delegitimising public protest over mass migration and broken borders”. In reply, Sunder Katwala cites a 1999 precedent on freedom of expression, summarised by Sunder as that the police “must facilitate & can not disallow either protest or counterprotest by antagonistic groups, until participants on one or both sides stir up or intimidate”.

3. The counter-protestor was stocky and bald, meaning it was unclear at first which side he was on.

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