Bartholomew's Notes

In the Radio Times, Stephen Graham talks about writing the much-discussed Netflix television drama Adolescence:

“Where it came from, for me,” explains Graham, who co-created and wrote Adolescence with Jack Thorne (The Virtues, Toxic Town), “is there was an incident in Liverpool, a young girl, and she was stabbed to death by a young boy. I just thought, why?

“Then there was another young girl in south London who was stabbed to death at a bus stop. And there was this thing up North, where that young girl Brianna Ghey was lured into the park by two teenagers, and they stabbed her. I just thought, what’s going on? What is this that’s happening?”

Graham here alludes to the killing of Ava White by the unnamed “Boy A” in Liverpool in 2022, and to the killing of Elianne Andam by Hassan Sentamu in Croydon in 2023. In both cases, an altercation with a girl in a public place escalated to the girl being murdered by a boy. The Brianna Ghey case involved a different dynamic, in which a boy and a girl in a Leopold and Loeb-type relationship pre-planned the murder of a transgirl as a way to satisfy sadistic impulses. Clearly, Graham was speaking very generally about some high-profile cases of youth knife crime in which the victim was not targeted as a boy (in GQ, Graham makes a distinction with “gang-on-gang violence”, although that shouldn’t be assumed as the context when the victim of a gang member is a teenage boy).

Graham’s reference to south London got picked up by Surrey Live, which published the headline “Netflix’s Adolescence inspired by true story of Croydon girl’s horrific murder”. This overstated Graham’s comment, giving the false impression that Adolescence was an adaptation of the Sentamu case. Bad actors on social media seized their chance: Sentamu was black, yet the killer in Adolescence is white. Was the drama therefore not an attempt to obscure black crime while vilifying the white working-class? (1) The false complaint that the show “race swapped the actual killer” was amplified in particular by Ian Miles Cheong, even though his assertion was made incoherent by his reference to “real life cases” in the plural (2).

Cheong also complained that the protagonist was portrayed as having been “radicalized online by the red pill movement”. Graham’s co-author Jack Thorne has discussed this in an article published in the Guardian:

At first, we didn’t know why Jamie, the perpetrator of the attack, did it. We knew he wasn’t a product of abuse or parental trauma. But we couldn’t figure out a motive. Then someone I work with, Mariella Johnson, said: “I think you should look into ‘incel’ culture.”

I expected to be confronted by anger and aggression; what I didn’t expect was to quickly grasp the attraction of the so-called “manosphere”. I knew almost immediately that if I was an isolated kid, I would find answers as to why I felt a bit lost. One of the central ideas – that 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men – would have made adolescent me sit up and, frankly, nod. The path then becomes: what do you do to upset that equation? How do you manipulate and harm in order to reset a female-dominated world that works against you? If you believe one part of the logic, the other half becomes conducive.

This, then, provides the context for the drama, rather than the specifics of the three cases cited by Graham.

Although not mentioned in Thorne’s article, the drama includes a passing reference to Andrew Tate, who has complained in a statement to Newsweek about being linked to the story. Some online comments about Tate were gathered by GB News under the headline “Andrew Tate fans flood Netflix Adolescence with backlash as they claim influencer is victim of ‘woke agenda'”; however, their round-up ignores aspects of this “backlash” aimed at Thorne in particular personally. On Newsnight, he noted that some online posters are falsely claiming that he is Jewish, or making comments about this appearance – it is claimed that he objects to masculinity due to being slightly built (something that can hardly be said of Stephen Graham).

Notes

1. Both authors of the drama are from working-class backgrounds. Graham refers to class in his Radio Times interview:

“I wanted him to be a kid from a working-class background whose parents were hard-working. You know, his mum wasn’t an alcoholic, his dad wasn’t violent, and he hadn’t been molested by his uncle. I didn’t want there to be a reason we can go, ‘Oh, well, we blame it on this.’ I think we’re all accountable in some way. We just wanted to throw it out there, ask the question why, and see where it lands. And if it can create debate within living rooms with people watching it with their families, our objective is completed.”

2. Cheong refers to “the Southport murderer” as one such case, even though the authors haven’t mentioned Southport or Axel Rudakubana anywhere (as far as I know). However, the parents of one of the children who survived being stabbed multiple times by Rudakubana recently referred to the drama in a statement that was read out in the House of Commons by Paul Foster MP:

“…We must support parents, caregivers and schools better, not only in how they identify and support young people who may be at risk to themselves or others—we can all agree that these pathways need overhauls, and the Southport inquiry will serve this purpose—but, before that, working with all children, establishing the fundamentals of healthy relationships, friendships, and girls and boys being equal.

Our young people must be exposed to counter-messaging from what they may be consuming online, or at home. The work required is vast and complex but the long-term reduction in knife crime will only be seen if we go back to the start and raise our children better.

In the context of violence towards women and girls, current topics are important. Netflix’s show ‘Adolescence’ has opened a conversation about our children’s exposure to harmful messaging and themes about women and girls. We are grateful for the coverage happening this week, which is further highlighting the terrifying impact of Andrew Tate and others on vulnerable young boys.”

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(Updated post after more sources became available)

From the New York Post:

New York Post columnist Douglas Murray won a libel claim Tuesday over an article that falsely accused him of “supporting violent racist attacks” during anti-immigration protests in the UK last year.

Murray — a conservative author, journalist and commentator — clinched the victory against the Guardian Media Group over an Aug. 11, 2024 column by Kenan Malik in The Observer which mistakenly attributed Murray’s comments from months prior to the widespread unrest surrounding immigration in the UK last summer, Murray announced on X Tuesday.

In Malik’s piece, he used Murray’s interview with former Deputy Australian Prime Minister John Anderson about Israel and Islam — from six months earlier — claiming that Murray made the comments about migrants during the UK’s protests that erupted after the stabbing of three young girls.

Similar coverage of the outcome has appeared in the Spectator and the Jewish Chronicle. However, none of the reports explain why Malik’s mistake occurred, despite a detail on this point appearing in the joint statement that was read out in court as part of the settlement. According to Murray’s legal representative:

8. On 6 August 2024, in the immediate aftermath of the riots, an edited version of the interview was, for a short period, uploaded on Mr Anderson’s website and YouTube, which gave the misleading impression that Mr Murray was encouraging the riots.

This video has been removed, and Anderson has also deleted a post on Twitter/X that referred to it. However, it can still be accessed via the Internet Archive. Titled ” ‘They’ve Lost Control Of The Streets’ | Douglas Murray on Illegal Immigration’, it begins with Murray in full flow:

But clearly they’ve lost control of the streets. Now, is it time to send in the army? At some point probably yes, but if the Army will not be sent in then the public will have to go in and the public will have to sort this out themselves and it’ll be very very brutal. it’ll be very brutal.

I don’t want them to live here. I don’t want them here. They came under false pretenses, many of them came illegally and continue to come illegally and we don’t want them here and I’m perfectly willing to say that because it needs to be said…

Although presented as a seamless discourse, these two statements are disparate extracts taken from the full version, which was uploaded as “Israel, Immigration & Islam | Douglas Murray” on 8 November 2023 and which can still be seen here. In the full version, the “But clearly…” statement is at 01:00:19, whereas “I don’t want them to live here” was from earlier, at 00:24:28. Later on in the short video Murray says

…They have defaced and defiled all of our holy places and I think I know that the British soul is awakening and stirring with rage at what these people are doing.

In the full video from 2023, this is at 01:00:45.

The editing of the short video meant that the original context was missing. By “lost control of the streets”, Murray was actually referring to the police allowing “Muslim groups, Palestinian groups, pro-Hamas groups” to hold marches; his comment about the “rage” of the “British soul” refers to his prediction that the protestors “will again defile the Cenotaph and the statues of our dead and our war leaders” during a planned protest on Saturday 11 November 2023 (1).

So why did Anderson upload his “edited version” when he did? After a week during which rioters had been attacking mosques and hotels hosting migrants, he apparently thought it would be a good idea to promote Murray referring to “loss of control of the streets” and to the British soul “awakening and stirring with rage”. Did he think it was pertinent to the situation? If Murray is angry with Anderson’s “misleading impression” he’s not saying so publicly, despite crowing about winning what he calls a “major libel claim” over the Guardian Media Group.

Malik’s error was corrected and acknowledged when his article went online, as was noted by Murray on Twitter/X at the time:

Dear @kenanmalik . I see your own newspaper had to correct your column because of your sloppiness. They had to correct that the interview you refer to was from last October, not recent weeks. What you all failed to realize was that I was referring to Hamas leaders in Britain. Sloppy and bigoted of you as usual.

However, despite the importance attached to a context of “Hamas leaders” here, this particular complaint does not not appear in the joint statement. Here’s the context from the full video:

[00:24:17] We have thousands, tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people in the UK who have no love at all for the UK but yet live here. I don’t want them to live here. I don’t want them here… [00:25:33] We stripped citizenship from Isis members… we need to start doing the same thing with Hamas we have Hamas leaders in the UK, Hamas members in the UK.

The “probably hundreds of thousands of people” that he doesn’t want here is plainly a larger set than “Hamas leaders”.

A a couple of week after Malik’s column was published, Murray wrote a piece for the Spectator in which he complained about the police investigation into Bernie Spofforth (discussed by me here). He contrasted this with lack of police interest in Nick Lowles, who had amplified a false rumour that a rioter had committed an acid attack on a Muslim woman, but also made a passing reference to Malik:

Yet so far as I know Mr Lowles has not had his collar felt, perhaps because he enjoys the government’s favour, as well as backing from prominent left-wing philanthropists such as Trevor Chinn. Kenan Malik of the Observer similarly passed around misleading reports in print and online this week, but also seems strangely immune from the law.

Murray does not clarify what “misleading reports” he means, but readers familar with his history with Malik would have interpreted this to be a reference to Malik’s column. However, the supposed comparability with Spofforth is strained, and the inclusion seems shoehorned in.

UPDATE: As part of his crowing over the libel settlement, Murray expressed the view that “I should have noted that the Guardian group (which had to apologise and retract their falsehoods in court this morning) left X last year because of alleged ‘disinformation’ on this platform”. This caught the attention of Elon Musk, who amplified the post while adding his own view that “The Guardian is pure propaganda”. This in turn was then amplified by Murray. I would not doubt Murray’s claim that he suffered “considerable distress” from Malik’s mistake, or that felt the need to take legal action as a matter of deterrence as well as compensation. However, his insistence on taking the matter to court (once again, with the help of Mark Lewis) rather than accepting the correction as an adequate remedy also served narrative-building purposes.

Note

1. In the event, the Cenotaph was not targeted; 11 November for the protest was chosen because it was a Saturday afternoon rather than because of the symbolism of the date.

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Via the Press Association:

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said on Friday: “On Thursday 6 March we received an allegation of verbal threats made by a 67-year-old man on Friday 13 December.

“Officers are carrying out an assessment of the allegations to determine what further action may be required.”

As is widely known, the “67-year-old man” is Rupert Lowe MP, and the complainant is Zia Yusuf, the Chairman of his party, Reform UK. A few days ago, Yusuf and the party’s chief whip Lee Anderson MP issued a “Statement from Reform UK” claiming that “Mr Lowe has on occasions made threats of physcial violence against our Party Chairman. Accordingly, this matter is with the Police”.

The Yusuf/Anderson statement did not explain or even acknowledge the long delay between the alleged incidents and the police complaint, which was made the day after Lowe gave an interview to the Daily Mail in which he criticised party leader Nigel Farage as “messianic” and warned that “I’m not going to be by Nigel’s side at the next election unless we have a proper plan to change the way we govern from top to bottom.” The article also referred to Elon Musk’s stated preference for Lowe over Farage.

Perhaps Yusuf had wanted to make a complaint all along but had been holding back, but it seems more reasonable to suppose that the decision to involve police at just this moment is tactical: the existence of a police complaint lends an air of substance and seriousness to an allegation even where evidence is thin or non-existent.

Farage, meanwhile, notably fails to refer to the matter in his own statement on Lowe, which has been published in the Sunday Telegraph. Perhaps he thinks it’s a bit much: back in 2016 when he was leader of UKIP he famously described one of his MEPs punching a colleague as “one of those things that happens between men”, adding that “I don’t see any need for the police to be involved” despite the victim having been hospitalised with a (temporary) brain injury.

On the other hand, though, Farage did raise the possibility of police involvement last year when alleging that a vetting company had been deliberately negligent in weeding out unsuitable election candidates: “Lawyers have been instructed. We do not rule out police action”, he declared. The matter then disappeared from view (1), although it is unknown whether he dropped it or if the police themselves “ruled out” taking action.

Note

1. Another matter from the same period that has disappeared from view is Farage’s claim that Andrew Parker, a Reform activist filmed making racist comments, had been planted by Channel 4 (discussed here). Weak evidence collapsed under scrutiny, after which it was announced via Paul Staines that an unnamed “senior barrister” was investigating the claim on behalf of a group called “Ofcom Watch”. It is reasonable to suspect here a contrivance by which Reform UK could “move on” while not appearing to back down.

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A much-discussed front-page splash from the Mail on Sunday:

In a chilling clampdown on free speech, two police officers pay a visit to a grandmother – simply for criticising Labour politicians on Facebook.

Detectives were last night accused of acting like East Germany’s feared Stasi secret police for quizzing Helen Jones over her calls for the resignation of local councillors embroiled in the WhatsApp scandal exposed by The Mail on Sunday.

Police conceded that the 54-year-old had committed no crime – yet Mrs Jones says she has effectively been silenced by the officers, as she was intimidated by them calling at her door and is too terrified to post on social media again.

But not too terrified to give her account to a newspaper and make subsequent media appearances (inevitably, on GB News). The MoS framing in the above invites readers to draw broad inferences, and there has been much discussion online about how the incident is symptomatic of how “Starmer’s Britain” is comparable to East Germany. The article references “a string of incidents in which police have investigated people for social media posts, including newspaper columnist Allison Pearson, feminist writer Julie Bindel, and former policeman Harry Miller, whose name was added to a database for his ‘non-crime hate incident'”; I discussed the Pearson case here.

The police force’s own explanation doesn’t appear until late in the article, following condemnatory comments from the likes of Tony Young and Iain Duncan Smith:

Greater Manchester Police said last night: ‘We spoke to the woman for six minutes to advise she was the subject of a complaint of harassment and to answer any questions she may have.

‘No further action is necessary as no crime has been committed.

‘We are under a duty to inform her that she is the subject of a complaint. The genuine threats that have been made to local councillors recently have meant it has been more necessary to ensure all reports are looked at…’

According to Jones’s account, the officers said they were not allowed to tell her who had made the complaint, but then confirmed that her “thought process is correct” when she “asked if Cllr Sedgwick or his partner had made the complaint”. Jones had used social media to call on Councillor David Sedgwick to resign after it came out that he had shared a letter from a pensioner about bin collectons to a WhatsApp group where the local Labour MP, Andrew Gwynne, had responded with malicious and mocking comments about the sender. That story  had been broken by the same newspaper earlier this month – Sedgwick was quoted as repudiating Gwynne’s comments, but there is no evidence that he had done so before being asked about the matter by the paper.

The Mail on Sunday‘s initial framing of the police visit to Jones was clearly overwrought and misleading, and one suspects the editors were hoping to catch the eye of Elon Musk or JD Vance as grist for their polemics about free speech in Europe. There was no “investigation”; the police action was not a “clampdown” on people criticising “Labour politicians”; and disparate police decision-making is not made meaningfully comparable just because “social media posts” are a common feature.

However, that does not mean that there is “nothing to see here”, despite a tendency by some to disregard a story just because it has come via a Mail title. It is not clear why police “duty” cannot be tempered by discretion and common sense in cases where a complaint has no merit, or why such a “duty” must override other things they could be getting on with. It is also nonsensical that the “duty to inform” doesn’t extend to naming the complainant – how can someone be on their guard about how their actions or public statements might be weaponised against them if they don’t know who exactly is saying that they feel harassed?

What the incident actually shows is how easy it is for the police to be gamed by harassment complaints – but that has been the case for years. There are several reasons why police overzealousness when it comes to such complaints is undesirable: it’s a waste of time for all concerned; it may be intimidatory, especially when someone doesn’t know their rights, or senses that the police have invested in a false narrative; and malicious complainants will crow that there is no smoke without fire, and that someone being spoken to by the police about harassment is evidence of criminality rather than of mindless police box-ticking. The police may for the most part have given up their perniciously pseudo-legal “Police Information Notices”, but the underlying problem remains.

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From GB News:

‘Did nobody vet this lady? Why does she have direct access to our Prime Minister?!’

@PatrickChristys reacts to Keir Starmer meeting with “Muslim leaders” to discuss his “plans for change”, including Saima Aslam, who tweeted in 2015 that “Islamophobia is more dangerous than ISIS”

The Tweet was first noted by GB Politics, and then amplified by Nigel Farage with the added question “What on earth is @Keir_Starmer doing?”. Christys purports to be some sort of journalist, but the brief here was not to look into the matter but simply to reinforce the material handed to him on a plate – thus he lists off some ISIS terrorist atrocities, which he infers that Syima Aslam (to give her correct spelling) wants us to ignore.

Here’s her 2015 post in full:

Islamophobia is more dangerous than ISIS, ISIS will burn out but Muslims are underestimating the far right threat @hamzayusuf #ImamsOnline
1:05 PM · Mar 26, 2015

The context is not immediately obvious: at that time, Tweets could not be threaded, and anything related she may have posted just before or after does not appear. However, there are some clues, in the reference to Hamza Yusuf and the “IslamOnline” hashtag. It doesn’t take much effort to follow up these leads, and to see that Christys’ interpretation is both implausible and vicious.

The hashtag refers specifally to a launch event for a magazine called Haqiqah, which was put together by Imams Online to oppose ISIS. As was reported the day after Aslam’s post:

A new online magazine has been launched with the aim of “reclaiming the internet” from extremists.

Haqiqah, external – “the truth” or “the reality” – has been created by British Muslim scholars who say they want to do more to educate young people about the reality of extremist movements.

They say it is a direct response to the threat of radicalisation from groups such as Islamic State.

IS extremists have widely used social media to spread their message.

More than 100 imams gathered in London for the launch of the magazine, which has been started by the website Imams Online.

“Someone has to reclaim that territory from ISIS, and that can only be imams: religious leaders who guide and nourish their community,” according to Qari Asim, senior editor at imamsonline.com.

The comment from Hamza Yusuf that is quoted by Aslam (she’s since clarified that is what it was) is most sensibly interpreted as a contemptuous assessment of ISIS’s geopolitical pretensions – at the time, ISIS controlled a big chunk of the Middle East, but Yusuf correctly predicted that its supposed “caliphate” had no long-term prospects – unlike the far-right threat. Yusuf in fact has been so outspoken against ISIS that the terrorists responded by targeting him as an “apostate”. A search of Aslam’s posts further shows her own unequivocable opposition to ISIS. Christys’ inversion of all that is grotesque.

Aslam is a public figure who has been rightly commended for her contributions to civil society in the UK, most notably the Bradford Literary Festival. That goes some way to answering the question posed by Christys and Farage about why she was meeting Starmer, although I doubt they actually want to know.

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From the Evening Standard, a week ago:

Farmers will stage another tractor protest outside Parliament on Monday as they continue their campaign against changes to inheritance tax rules.

The tractor rally, organised by Save British Farming, comes as MPs debate an e-petition with more than 148,000 signatures calling to keep the current inheritance tax exemptions for working farms.

…Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is expected to address farmers making a pit stop on their way into London on Monday morning.

That “pit stop” was actually a distinct event called “Battle for Britain”; DeSmog has further details:

Monday’s event, which preceded over a thousand tractors descending on Westminster, was organised by the anti-vax campaign group Together Declaration and the protest organisation Farmers To Action.

Set up in 2021 to oppose mandatory Covid-19 protection measures, such as lockdowns and vaccines, the Together Declaration has since launched a “no to net zero” campaign that calls for the UK to scrap policies designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Together has also campaigned against London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone scheme, and low traffic neighbourhood schemes across the country designed to combat air pollution.

The group has recently partnered with Farmers To Action, which has used recent anti-inheritance tax campaigns to spread anti-climate views.

The leader of Farmers to Action, Justin Rogers, has spread conspiracy theories across his social media accounts. He has claimed that “climate change is one of the biggest scams that has ever been told”, propagated by “our governments and their puppet masters.”

Rogers has also claimed that oil and gas are renewable, and that carbon dioxide cannot be dangerous because it “feeds plants”.

On Twitter/X, Rogers is known as “The F in Farmer”, and his most recent post exhorts readers to “wake up” to what another poster describes as “hidden plans for a Govt Terror attack to intentionally release Foot & Mouth Disease once again”. He has also affirmed his “100%” “Anti-Zionism” (H/T @_johnbye) in reply to a user who denies anti-semitic intent but who posts claims such as “zionist Jews ran every aspect of the covid ‘pandemic’.”

The “Battle for Britain” event was heavily branded with black Together Declaration placards bearing the message “WITH OUR FARMERS”, flanked by two QR codes; an oversized version of the placard also formed the backdrop to the stage, from which Farage reportedly told the crowd that the government wants to take over farmland “because they’re planning for another five million people to come into the country”.

After the various speeches (1), the tractors made their way to Westminster to join the main protest – the Daily Express, slightly confused, saw this as part of the “Battle for Britain” rather than as a distinct event. However, not everyone was happy with the Together Declaration’s high visibility (although the group’s placards also appeared at earlier protests): conspiracy influencer James Melville of No Farmers No Food (noted for its own bright yellow placards) took to Twitter/X (H/T @_johnbye):

All I care about is the best interests of farmers. I will burn every fucking bridge against any manipulative fucker who seeks to manipulate this horrendous situation for farmers for their own means.

I saw first hand the horrendous difficulties that farmers face within my own family farm. For decades. It’s difficult to fully express how difficult it was. No money. No security. No time off. And all of this was done for the sole purpose of feeding a nation and a love of the land.

I will absolutely not accept have a bunch of non farming politico and campaign group grifters exploiting the perils of farmers for nefarious agendas that include slapping on QR codes at protests to drive folk to sign up as paid members

Curiously, however, Melville is also himself involved with #together, as a member of the group’s “cabinet”. When John Bye asked him whether he would be resigning he got a block, but Melville then also deleted the post.

I previously noted conspiracist involvement with farmers’ protests here.

Note

1. According to a flyer, the line-up comprised “Nigel Farage, Justin Rogers, Alan Miller, June Mummery, Liam Halligan, Fred Roberts, Adam Brooks, Phil Barnes, Tess Wheldon, Matt Hellyer, David Irwin, Rhianna Deeble, Darren Selkus, Marc Harvey”.

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From Mary Dejevsky at the Spectator:

Let me put my own cards on the table. I have no view on, or sense of, Letby’s innocence or guilt. I was not in the courtroom; I followed the case through media reports. As an ingrained sceptic and questioner of conventional wisdom, however, I am wary of the cast-iron certainties that marked this case, and the circumstantial nature of the evidence. It seemed to me that a consensus had been formed early on about Letby and her guilt that would have been very difficult for any trial to dislodge.

Most people like to regard themselves as sceptical and critically minded when it comes to “conventional wisdom”, although in some cases this is more likely to express itself as kneejerk rejectionism and conspiracism rather than genuine engagement with the details of some issue. But in the case of Lucy Letby, the “consensus” position since the trial tends more towards the view that her conviction is at the very least unsafe, as expressed in articles in sources ranging from the Guardian to the Telegraph; the Mail on Sunday even recently ran a front-page splash headlined “Police File Raises New Doubt Over Letby Guilt”.

In the past, journalists and campaigners who argued that someone convicted of some particuarly terrible crime might in fact be innocent would be met with a barrage of hostily, with accusations that they were morally defective and heedless of distress caused to the relatives of victims. Here, though, it seems more stigmatising to express confidence in the verdict, with calls for a book called Unmasking Lucy Letby to be withdrawn for sale. This reflects the general mood of Britain in 2025, not least with the Post Office scandal still very fresh in people’s minds. (1)

Meanwhile, articles supportive of the conviction can be found on the contrarian website Spiked!: there is a long article by the IEA’s Christopher Snowdon, which has been followed with a piece by Luke Gittos; both take a critical view of the recent press conference in Parliament, in which a panel of medical experts presented arguments that the conviction is unsafe (Snowden: “It is much easier to present a hypothesis at a press conference in a hotel in front of Peter Hitchens and Nadine Dorries than it is to be cross-examined in a court of law”).

Less polemical but still analytical assessments of the press conference can meanwhile be found from David James Smith the Independent and from Liz Hull in the Daily Mail (with a headline that overeggs her “DAMNING VERDICT”). On social media, the issues are being discussed critically by Dr Susan Oliver (who has also done a lot of work debunking anti-vax disinformation) and Deb Roberts.

Tortoise Media ran a piece on the case last September; on Twitter/X, Tortoise’s Ceri Thomas described the reaction to the conviction as “fascinating”, and asked whether “a trial which could have been run better (and left room for worries about its fairness) nevertheless delivered the right verdict?”

Note

1. The conspiracy milieu, of course, is certan of Letby’s innocence, but it frames itself in opposition to the media despite the slew of mainstream articles expressing doubts about the conviction. One example here is that of Dan Wootton, who writes that “If you have only followed the MSM on the case of nurse Lucy Letby and believe the narrative that somehow this beautiful blonde young woman turned into an angel of death, despite having no motive and there being no evidence of her murdering any baby, then please listen to me now”. The suggestion that Letby’s physical appearance has evidential value is probably just a troll, but it’s a particualrly grotesque and contemptible one.

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From the Daily Express:

Sky News uproar as star ‘tells producers to cut audio’ during Southport interview

Sky News’ Sarah-Jane Mee sparked outrage after she was caught ordering her producer to cut a conversation as she reported live outside Liverpool Crown Court.

Sky News presenter Sarah-Jane Mee has sparked controversy after being caught telling her producer to cut her audio as she interviewed a guest outside the Southport murder trial.

A clip is circulating on social media which shows Sarah-Jane Mee off camera, listening to a guest who blamed the police and government Prevent programme for failing to stop Axel Rudakubana before the Southport murders.

The camera then cut back to Sarah-Jane as she made a cut gesture across her neck, before rolling her eyes with exasperation as she realised she was on air.

Sky News have seen clarified that earlier in the programme, Sarah-Jane explained that her mic was live and she was signalling to the gallery to cut her audio so her mic wouldn’t interfere with the interview, before she was accidently shown on screen, rather than ordering her producer to cut the interview.

That last paragraph is poorly written, but it gets the point across and shows up the headline as misleading. “Cut audio” refers to her own mic rather than to the interviewee’s, and she did not “cut a conversation”. Here’s what she says immediately after the social media clip:

Sorry Nazir, I was just asking for my mic to be cut because I can’t actually hear what you’re saying. We’ve got a slight technical difficulty. So, I’m going to ask you another question, I know you can hear me.

The interview then continues. Don’t take my word for it: Sky News has uploaded its coverage for the entire day to YouTube here, and the relevant segment can be seen at 10.17:15 (I’ve also uploaded it here). It didn’t take long to find: one version of the social media clip included the on-screen caption for the segment (1), meaning it was easy to skim along the YouTube progress bar to find the right place without trawling through hours of material (it was also dark at the time of the interview, indicating it would be near the end). Mee had actually worked conscientiously throughout a gruelling day during which at times she became tearful due to the distressing details of the attacks on children.

We know that the Express hack didn’t bother to check the source, because she refers only to a “guest”: the short clip was heavily cropped, meaning that it wasn’t possible to see that the right side of the screen showed that she was interviewing the high-profile former CPS prosecutor Nazir Afzal. Instead, the Express focused on examples of the contrived “outrage” culled from Twitter/X, all saying much the same thing (links added):

Connor Tomlinson penned: “Sarah Jane signals to cut the feed as a guest blames the police and government Prevent programme for failing to stop Axel Rudakubana before the Southport murders. Sky News are containment agents. They silence this, to tell you ‘Diversity is our strength.'”

…Rael Braverman agreed: “Sky News’s Sarah Jane was caught signaling to cut an interview the moment it exposed the authorities’ incompetence in the Axel Rudakubana affair. It’s not surprising anymore, just another day in the life of a media that can’t handle the truth.”

Rael Braverman, of course, is the husband of the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman – he joined Nigel Farage’s Reform amid some fanfare last month. The Express also quotes Chris Rose and Matt Gubba, but there were many others promoting the same misleading clip: Laurence Fox and Dan Wootton (of course), David Atherton, Nile Gardiner and Visegrád24; and internationally the likes of Ian Miles Cheong. Between them, they have racked up millions of views.

The “censorship” interpretation of the clip never made any sense: the onscreen caption says “Why were the warnings missed?” and this was something that Keir Starmer had spoken about previously in some detail. Why have such a segment, if the subject is to be suppressed? However, a bogus “cover up” narrative about Southport has gained momentum despite the lack of any coherent case, and many people would rather look for confirmatory signs, no matter how implausible, than reconsider whether they are less clever than high-profile charlatans make them feel. And those who have responded to the posts by expressing anger against Mee (in some cases descending into crude abuse) won’t want to face what the real context means for their self-image.

More broadly, it’s not exactly news that social media is awash with false claims and misleading clips that people share in a spirit of self-righteous outrage without checking or later correcting. Social media influencers and commentators are often superspreaders: anything that might resonate with their followers is grist to the mill; their own information streams are corrupted with trash, which they pick from without discernment; and I suspect many of them primarily use phones and tablets, which are more fiddly when it comes to doing research and sifting through sources than a desktop computer, even if they were ever minded to do a bit of due diligence before sounding off.

Note

1. There are two versions of the misleading clip: one is 12 seconds long and shows half the TV screen; the other is just one second long and is a close-up that crops out the Sky News caption and which added accusatory text.

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From a statement by Reform leader Nigel Farage MP:

Reform UK are today calling for the Director of Public Prosecutions at the CPS to resign.

The judge made clear in his sentencing that Axel Rudakubana had a detailed interest in genocides and massacres and that he was in possession of an Al-Qaeda manual.

This barbaric and senseless attack was clearly both political and ideological.

Many crimes of much less severity have been declared as terrorism within 24 hours of the incident taking place.

The British public needs to have confidence in the CPS and our police forces. Tens of millions of British citizens will find it incomprehensible how the CPS decided this was a non terror incident and maintained that position.

The word “clearly” there is intended to convey a sense that the point is so obvious that it doesn’t need spelling out, and that anyone expressing doubt is either colluding in a “cover up” or else foolish. As such, he doesn’t bother even to acknowledge what the judge actually said on this point:

Justice Goose confirmed the offences did not reach the legal definition of terrorism because he did not kill to further a political, religious or ideological cause.

However, he told the packed courtroom that whether the “motivation was terrorism or not misses the point”.

“What he did on 29 July last year has caused such shock and revulsion to the whole nation, that it must be viewed as being at the extreme level of crime”, the judge said.

“His culpability, and the harm he caused and intended, were at the highest.”

Farage’s implicit argument is that the Al-Qaeda manual explains everything, while evidence pointing elsewhere is irrelevant. He infers nothing from the the very obvious problem that the killer did not refer to Islam either when he was arrested (1) or when he appeared in court, or the from fact that there were no signs out outward Muslim identity (I recall prejudicial speculation online that in earlier hearings he had hidden his face to obscure a beard). There certainly are “mixed motive” terrorists, in which someone identifies with a cause to give their violent urges some spurious grandiosity, but this particular massacre has much more in common with the psychopathic actions of US school shooters.

According to the Guardian:

Police believe he may have copied the stabbing methods he used in the Southport attack from an al-Qaida training manual he admitted possessing. He is also believed to have used it to attempt to make ricin.

The above suggests that he consulted the manual as a “how to” guide rather than for ideological instruction.

It is notable that Farage does not reference Islam directly, despite dropping heavy hints. This fits a pattern of hedging: in July he referred to “reports” suggesting that the killer was being “monitored by the security services”, which gave spurious credibility to the internet rumour that the killer was an asylum seeker who was on an “MI6 watchlist” without investing his credibility in the claim (there were no “reports”, just a couple of news scraper sites that had churned Bernie Spofforth’s Tweet into a story). Then in November he said that “I know a hell of a lot more than the British public know” and that “We are witnessing one of the biggest cover ups we’ve ever seen in our lives” – whatever he meant by this, the effect was to give fuel to another bogus online rumour, that the killer’s father was a Rwandan war criminal who had been settled in the UK with the personal assistance of Keir Starmer (why the family would have kept their original name was not explained). After Rudakubana pleaded guilty, Farage’s underwhelming big reveal was that he had known before the public that the killer had been excluded from school for bringing in a knife.

Elsewhere, however, “radicalised by al-Qaeda” is the explicit narrative, promoted by the likes of Farage’s former Reform associate Ben Habib (in conversation with Jeremy Kyle on Talk TV) and by Dan Wootton. Apparently Tommy Robinson has told Wootton from inside Belmarsh Prison that Rudakubana attends Islamic prayers, and Wootton also claims that the attacks were attempted beheadings. According to the judge a pathologist thought that in one case the injuries suggested an attempt (2), but Wootton’s claim is an extrapolation that does not take into account the generalised stabbing spree that occurred. Wootton also claims to have seen messages between Rudakubana and former classmates, but he doesn’t provide any information from them that might support a “radicalisation” thesis.

Also on board is Douglas Murray, who made a video statement claiming that the trial had been “pre-emptively” halted by the killer’s guilty plea. Murray’s lack of care for details (seen before) was typified by his misidentifcation of Rudakubana as “the son of Nigerian immigrants to the UK” (a significant error given that half of Nigeria’s population is Muslim, compared to a very small minority in Rwanda).

Alongside this is a more generalised cover-up narrative, based on reporting restrictions that applied before the killer turned 18 years old and then before the trial. In response to the false claim that the killer was an asylum seeker who had arrived last year, the police made a statement in early August that he had been born in Wales – accusers claim that this deliberately misrepresented him as a “Welshman”, or as a “Welsh choirboy”. Previous instances where a terrorist context was self-evident and described as such are presented as proof that things could and should have been done differently; there is also an incoherent claim that details were suppressed that somehow exonerate rioters who targeted mosques and asylum seekers. A grotesque and trivialising cartoon posted online shows Starmer as Rudakubana, wearing a jumper that is pulled up partially over his face. The issues around the legal restrictions are discussed by Joshua Rozenberg here and by Dan Hodges in the Daily Mail here.

Notes

1. Since the summer a screenshot of a WhatApp message has been circulated on Twitter/X, in which an unnamed “retired bissy [police officer] in Formby” supposedly claims to have information that Rudakubana had “been radicalized recently” and on arrest had said “Ive done what Allah wanted , please don’t hurt me”. This anonymous claim is not reflected in what has now been reported:

Deanna Heer KC, leading the prosecution, now says…There is no evidence that he ascribed to any particular political or religious ideology – he wasn’t fighting for a cause.

…While under arrest at the police station after the incident, Rudakubana was heard to say: “It’s a good thing those children are dead… I’m so glad… so happy.”

2. That detail from the judge was noted on Twitter/X by GB News, although their on-the-ground reporter Mark White said that they had taken the decision “not to go into a great deal of detail about exactly what this man did inside that building” – Wootton, who was previously fired by the channel, sneered that “GB News joins the Southport Massacre cover up”. In fact White, who later choked up during a live segment, was respecting the wishes of the victims’ families. Wootton also found time to abuse the presenters of the News Agents podcast for not having done a show about Southport, taking his lead from Mike Graham (the podcast for that day was entitled “Has Prince Harry had the last laugh over Rupert Murdoch?”, which was a reference to Graham’s employer).

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From a recent Times TV review (as quoted by Broadcast):

Naturally, even before Accused: The Fake Grooming Scandal aired, there were people on Twitter/X accusing C4 of focusing on this rare and terrible case of a young woman who fabricated abuse claims rather than the victims of the many very real crimes in Rochdale, Oldham and elsewhere. You can understand the thinking, but the truth is this three-part documentary was executed with professionalism and skill, and demonstrated the virtues of closely examining the whole story, while also showing the real danger of online vigilantism.

The three-part documentary, made for Channel 4 by Expectation TV, can be watched in the UK here. It concerns the high-profile case of Ellie Williams, a resident of Barrow-on-Furness whose conviction for perverting the course of justice at the start of 2023 was based on overwhelming evidence.

On Twitter/X, prominent denunciations came from Dan Wootton, who said that it “tells you everything you need to know about the UK’s corrupt state-owned broadcast media” and from GB News panellist Adam Brooks, who described Channel 4 as “filth” in a post pitched at Elon Musk. Brooks said that the documentary ought to have been pulled “for now”, doubtless referring to the current climate, but it’s unclear when he thinks there would be a more appropriate time. Given the lack of any actual critique, the objections were simply calls for censorship and for the victims of false accusations to be kept off-air for some supposed greater good.

Meanwhile, the Daily Express ran an article headlined “Channel 4 sparks Ofcom fury over ‘offensive’ grooming gang series after inquiry” – one might interpret “Ofcom fury” to mean that the broadcast regulator had issued some kind of censure, but the text clarifies that the phrase refers to public compaints to Ofcom rather than any Ofcom finding:

Channel 4’s latest documentary, Accused: The Fake Grooming Gang Scandal, has sparked 66 complaints to Ofcom following its broadcast on January 7.

…Ofcom confirmed viewers were left infuriated by the program’s timing and as they claimed the content were offensive to victims of genuine grooming gangs.

However, the paper did not go so far as to endorse the objections, instead quoting the positive Times review and noting that “the inclusion of a harrowing interview with Rochdale abuse survivor Nathalie underscored the seriousness of genuine crimes”.

Objections that the documentary is disproportionate attention compared to real grooming gangs is also poorly grounded: as with Carl Beech, it is natural that high-profile false allegations should receive a correspondingly high-profile media reaction when they fall apart.

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