A version of this article was first published in Spiked

It is virtually impossible to imagine what Metropolitan Police Sergeant Martyn Blake and his loved ones have been through in the last four years.

In 2024, Blake was cleared of murder by an Old Bailey jury after the fatal shooting of Chris Kaba in Streatham, south London, on the 5th September 2022. During the trial, he had initially been known by the codename NX121, but the judge decided to lift the anonymity order after pressure was exerted by some media organisations. This would, no doubt, only have exacerbated Blake’s feeling that he’d been thrown to the wolves.

His acquittal of the criminal charges would have provided him some welcome relief. However, this was to prove short-lived, for the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), the body which oversees the police complaints system in England and Wales, decided it would then investigate Blake under police misconduct proceedings. If found guilty, he would have faced the ignominy of dismissal. This was only withdrawn by the IOPC on the 5^th August 2026 after changes to the law on police use of force were introduced.

The withdrawal of proceedings against Martyn Blake isn’t just the end of one officer’s ordeal. It is a warning that police accountability loses legitimacy when scrutiny becomes prolonged punishment for lawful action taken under extreme pressure.

The decision should be welcomed, of course, but not treated as an end to the whole sorry affair. It is an overdue admission that the system responded inadequately to a highly trained firearms officer’s split-second decision whilst doing a job that most of us couldn’t imagine.

Even though the facts cause inconvenience to some, they still matter. Kaba was unarmed when he was shot, and that remains central to the grief and anger felt by his family and supporters. But it isn’t the whole story. He was a hardened, career criminal with a string of convictions for serious offences, and a core member of a notorious south London gang. The jury during the criminal trial didn’t know this, yet still acquitted Blake.

These details don’t make any death less tragic, nor remove the need for scrutiny when lethal force is used. But they do make it morally wrong to treat Blake as a criminal first and an officer responding to danger second. Armed policing exists because some threats cannot be safely contained by ‘ordinary’ policing. Officers in those moments have seconds, sometimes less, to decide whether their inaction might cost lives.

The reason Kaba’s car was stopped in the first place was that a vehicle with that number plate had been connected to recent, violent offences. Couple that with the reality that Kaba was, effectively, trying to ram his way out of the situation and could have gone on to hit members of the public, then most people would understand the reason why lethal force was felt necessary. No, Kaba didn’t have a gun, but he was using a car as a weapon.

One of the most troubling features of this and similar cases is the extent to which the prosecuting bodies appear conscious of wider ‘community reaction’ to any charges. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) states in its Code for Crown Prosecutors that there is an increased likelihood of a charge if ‘(t)he prevalence of an offence in a community may cause particular harm to that community, increasing the seriousness of the offending’, and the IOPC states sets out that ‘significant media attention, community interest and / or tension’ can be the basis for an investigation.

Accountability is essential, especially when a life has been taken. But it shouldn’t be institutional punishment by process. Once a jury has acquitted an officer of murder after hearing the evidence, the system should need more than community pressure or political discomfort before prolonging that officer’s agony. Public confidence matters, but ‘community tensions’ must never become a shadow legal test. Prosecutors and watchdogs are not there to satisfy pressure, manage anger or send symbolic messages. They are there to apply the evidence and the law with detachment.

If a charge or referral is brought because the evidence meets the legal threshold, it should be defended without apology. But if decision-makers are influenced, even indirectly, by fear of unrest, criticism or accusations that the system is indifferent to a particular community, the process is no longer neutral. It becomes performative accountability, with the officer and their loved ones left carrying the burden.

The examples in the Kaba case are in the public record. After Blake’s acquittal, the IOPC said the trial had been of “significant public interest”, particularly within black communities, while also recognising - secondly - the impact on firearms officers and the wider policing community. The CPS described the prosecution as “complex and sensitive” and said it was right the case be put before a jury after its test was met. But the test itself wasn’t fit for purpose.

None of that proves either body pursued Blake exclusively because of community tension. But the language matters. When institutions repeatedly emphasise confidence and sensitivity, they invite the perception that reputation management takes primacy. The legal question should have remained narrow - what did Blake honestly believe in the moment and was his use of force lawful?

The contrast with the jury’s speed is stark. After hearing the evidence, jurors took only three hours to acquit Blake. Yet the institutions around the case took years to reach a final position that should have followed much sooner. The courtroom reached clarity while the wider system remained trapped in optics and self-protection. For Blake, the result was years of suspicion after a jury had rejected the gravest of allegations against him.

Ordinary life becomes a waiting room for the next hearing. Apprehension at the sound of post coming through the letter box. Loved ones left living with uncertainty, anger and fear while the person at the centre of the case is judged and rejudged by institutions which seemingly put the potential of civil discord at the top of their list of priorities.

The IOPC said it was acutely aware of the impact on everyone involved and acknowledged the significant public interest in the case, but that is precisely why its judgement had to be visibly insulated from public pressure. Its eventual withdrawal of proceedings was correct, but it came far too late.

There is a legitimate place for investigation after a fatal police shooting. The public must know that evidence has been examined. But an investigation should be a route to truth, not an ostentatious ritual of suspicion. Once the evidence has been tested in court and an officer has been acquitted, the threshold for any further action should be extremely high.

The treatment of Blake sends a chilling signal to firearms officers. They are asked to confront violent danger, put themselves between armed criminals and ordinary citizens and make rapid decisions under pressure. Yet if they act lawfully, they may still face years of criminal, disciplinary, civil and inquest processes.

None of this means we should be indifferent to Kaba’s death or to his family’s grief. The human consequences undeniably deserve recognition. But grief can’t be allowed to turn lawful policing into moral wrongdoing. Nor should an acquitted person’s reputation remain suspended because the politics of the case are difficult.

Martyn Blake should never have endured years of suspicion for doing the dangerous job he volunteered for, and for which he was authorised and very highly trained. The withdrawal of proceedings is welcome, but sobering. The system didn’t simply scrutinise him; it placed him and his loved ones under prolonged and unnecessary strain.

If police accountability is to command public confidence, it must protect the public from abuses of power without punishing lawful acts of bravery. In this case, that balance was lost. The jury made up of ordinary citizens found clarity in hours, while institutions took years to accept what the evidence had always shown.

A version of this article was first published in spiked

At a time when public confidence in policing seems to be dwindling by the day, London’s Metropolitan Police has managed to look less like a guardian of law and order than a bloated bureaucracy itching to police the boundaries of ‘respectable’ opinion.

The latest case concerns Jack Grove, a journalist at Times Higher Education. Grove had been reporting on Cambridge professor Jason Arday and the many valid questions about his biographical claims and academic record. Grove did what journalists in a free country are meant to do; investigate, check, challenge and put difficult questions to powerful or prominent people. In a sane democracy, that isn’t suspicious conduct; it is the job description.

Yet soon afterwards, the Met opened an investigation into Grove on suspicion of ‘harassing’ the academic. Grove says officers also instructed him to make no further contact with Arday because his enquiries had affected the scholar’s ‘mental health’. During my two decades in policing, asking an individual to leave someone alone because they were getting upset was never part of any training package.

After four months, detectives concluded there was no case to answer. They contacted Grove in order to notify him that he was no longer under investigation, only to find out that nobody had initially informed him that he was – so they couldn’t even do that properly.

Four months isn’t a misunderstanding, nor is it a procedural wobble. It is a long period during which a journalist was under police investigation for doing his job. The point isn’t that no charges were brought. It is that such an investigation was thought reasonable in the first place.

Such absurdity and ineptitude would be comic if it were not so dangerous. One might have thought that the Met had enough to occupy it without treating legitimate reporting as a case for detectives. But this is what institutional activism looks like. Burglary and robbery are shrugged at, disorder tolerated, and yet a reporter asking awkward questions of a DEI poster boy is apparently enough to trigger the machinery of the state. The message is brutally simple - offend the wrong sensibilities, trespass on the wrong protected terrain and the police will come knocking.

Incidents like this should be aberration, but we know that this is merely the latest in a long list of occasions where the police have intervened in areas of life which shouldn’t concern them. The problem is that the rarified world of senior policing is now a mash-up of grievance-studies seminars, diversity workshops and failing council departments. High-ranking officers are fluent in every fashionable orthodoxy, but they become strangely tongue-tied when we ask why burglaries go unsolved, anti-social behaviour is indulged and the streets feel unsafe.

This matters because British policing rests on consent, not on cultural re-education by people with warrant cards. Yes, the notion of consent is nebulous, but it is the only reason the police possess any moral authority. The public accepts police power because it believes that power will be used impartially, proportionately and in defence of common liberties. Once people conclude that policing has become culturally captured or openly hostile to mainstream opinion, that authority will rot.

That suspicion hasn’t emerged from nowhere. For many Britons who have long been instinctively pro-police, recent controversies have made that loyalty harder to maintain. They look at the wholly avoidable tragedy of the Henry Nowak case, the enthusiasm for recording ‘Non-Crime Hate Incidents’ and the embrace of fashionable ideological causes, and they understandably ask the obvious question: whose side are the police on?

The investigation into Grove deepens that rot because it strikes at a liberty that should be non-negotiable. A free press isn’t only free when its questions are soft, soothing or pre-approved by the intelligentsia. Journalism involves pressure, persistence and asking questions the powerful and the thin-skinned would rather dodge. That isn’t harassment; it is democracy in action. As ever, the damage has been done without a prosecution. The investigation itself was the punishment. It is a warning to every other reporter tempted to dig where ‘polite’ society would rather they didn’t. That is why the Met’s conduct cannot be brushed aside as a harmless mistake.

Met Commissioner Mark Rowley has admitted, yet again, that his officers made a mistake. He said that any potential investigation into Jack Grove should have been screened out as not requiring police action. But the very fact that it wasn’t is an indictment of modern policing. The employee who first looked into this should have realised immediately that it wasn’t worthy of police action. But instead they either genuinely thought this constituted an offence, or that failing to act upon it would have seen them dragged before a misconduct board. Either way, it is symptomatic of the philosophical capture of what should be an impartial institution.

Scotland Yard hasn’t just lost its way if it can’t (or won’t) tell harassment from legitimate journalistic scrutiny. It has become a danger to the very liberties it is supposed to protect. If a police force adopts an activist posture - treating the taking of offence, distress, reputational embarrassment or ideological sensitivity as matters for law enforcement - it becomes inevitable that journalistic scrutiny will congeal.

Britain’s model of policing by consent cannot survive if citizens think that the police are quicker to pursue inquiry and dissent than they are crime itself. The Met might imagine this episode is over because Grove is no longer being investigated. It is not. The real case now is against the culture and leadership of an institution which, wilfully or otherwise, mistook scrutiny for wrongdoing. On that charge, they are guilty.

A version of this article was originally published in The Daily Sceptic

The planned early release of two men convicted over the death of PC Andrew Harper is not merely an administrative decision. It is a test of whether the justice system still places victims, police officers and public safety ahead of prison management targets. And it doesn’t look like it does.

Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole were jailed for 13 years in 2020 for the manslaughter of PC Harper. The prospect that they could be released after serving six and a half years makes a mockery of public confidence in sentencing. Under the plans approved by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, people convicted of manslaughter are still to be released halfway through their sentences. This should alarm anyone who believes a sentence handed down by a court ought to mean what it says.

Those convicted of rape and serious child sexual offences (it makes one wonder if there are such things as ‘non-serious’ child sex offences), including grooming-gang offences, will now be excluded from early release after pressure from victims and families. This concession is obviously welcome, but it only underlines the wider problem - grave offences should not be treated as variables in any calculations of prison capacity.

Lissie Harper, PC Harper’s widow, was right to describe Burnham’s decision as an “utter betrayal.” Her words perfectly capture the human cost borne by families long after the headlines have moved on. Burnham argues that further exemptions could bring the prison system to the brink of collapse ‘within months’. But a state that can’t keep serious offenders behind bars has not solved a crisis; it has transferred risk from prison governors to the public.

The suggestion that more women prisoners could be released early because of the ‘lower risk’ they pose might ease what is undoubtedly intense pressure on the estate, but it doesn’t answer the central question - why has the government allowed prison capacity to become the public’s problem?

The temporary pause in the release of 6,000 offenders was presented as a review. Yet if Bowers and Cole can still be freed by the end of the year, the review has failed its most basic test; that of reassuring the public that justice is more than just a timetable for clearing prison places.

PC Harper was investigating the theft of a quad bike in Berkshire in August 2019, when Bowers and Cole tried to flee in a car driven by Henry Long (who is not eligible for early release). PC Harper died after his ankles became caught in a tow rope and he was dragged for more than a mile along country roads. Any system that treats early release in such a case as a routine administrative outcome has completely lost sight of the gravity of what happened.

PC Harper’s mother, Debbie Adlam, has described it as a “slap in the face and an insult”. Their justified anger is a demand that punishment, deterrence and respect for victims remain central to justice. The point isn’t about vengeance. It is about justice being credible and proportionate. When the public sees those responsible for such a death walking free years before the sentence appears to require, the already-diminishing faith in the system will completely erode.

It is especially troubling that Mrs Adlam was reportedly told of the review’s outcome only after one offender had already been informed of his impending release. It seems that victims’ families are merely an afterthought in a process conducted in their name. The 13-year sentences handed to Cole and Bowers in 2020 were already inadequate. Cutting the time actually sends a disastrous message about the consequences of grave offending – or lack of.

The roots of this crisis lie in familiar and unglamourous territory - too few prison places, too little long-term planning and a willingness to present emergency releases as reform. The current government, always ready to blame the previous Conservative administration for problems of its own making, actually have a point in this case. This disaster was years in the making. But although overcrowding is undeniably real, it isn’t an argument for weakening public confidence in sentencing.

The original ‘earned progression’ scheme would have allowed serious offenders, including those convicted of killing or rape, to be released halfway through their sentences rather than after two-thirds, unless they had breached prison disciplinary rules. That approach wilfully mistakes the absence of bad behaviour in custody for justice. The same logic applies to lower-level offenders. Early release may sometimes be justified, but it should be earned through genuine rehabilitation and public protection - not dictated by a shortage of cells. After all, it is this so-called low level criminality that really blights people’s lives.

Yes, Burnham deserves credit for excluding rapists and child sexual offenders after listening to victims’ concerns. But the principle can’t stop there. If a crime is serious enough to devastate families and undermine public safety, early release should be the absolute exception, not the operating assumption.

The PM has also requested a review of prisoners given indefinite sentences between 2005 and 2012. He said the policy, known as ‘Imprisonment for Public Protection’, had left ‘hundreds of people in prison since they were young but without any prospect of release’. Automatic tagging, tougher supervision and GPS tracking are not substitutes for custody. They might reduce some risks, but they can’t restore public trust if offenders are released in ways that contradict the seriousness of their crimes.

The problem could be much reduced, indeed, eliminated, by deporting the foreign criminals currently residing at His Majesty’s Pleasure. We should not be clogged up with foreign criminals at the expense of British taxpayers and public safety. Ministry of Justice data put the prison population in England and Wales at 87,334 as of the 30th June 2025, while foreign nationals made up around one in eight prisoners, with 10,772 foreign nationals in custody on the same date.

At a time when official justice data records 6.6 million police-recorded crimes in England and Wales in 2024/25 and prison capacity remains under severe pressure, deporting eligible foreign national prisoners swiftly and automatically would free up badly needed prison places, cut the burden on the public purse, and send a message that those who come to this country and break its laws forfeit the privilege of remaining here.

Yes, there would be an inevitable return of British prisoners abroad, but they would be vastly outnumbered by foreign prisoners going the other way. The pledge to create 14,000 new prison places by 2031 is welcome, but it is an admission that the problem has been allowed to fester. Until capacity catches up with need, the political class shouldn’t be getting victims and the public to absorb the consequences of their own making.

A justice system worthy of the name must protect the public, punish serious wrongdoing and, at the very least, honour the sacrifices of those who serve. If prison overcrowding is allowed to override those duties, the state has not balanced justice with practicality - it has retreated from its most basic responsibility.

A version of this article was originally published in Spiked

This week, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided to drop the charge against 20-year-old Cody Harper of Assaulting an Emergency Worker, citing insufficient evidence for there to be any realistic prospect of a conviction.

Harper, a white man, had been arrested and charged after an incident in Birmingham in the early hours of Sunday the 21st June. In video footage, which has since gone viral, Harper is seen being pushed to the ground by a black man, while another black man tries to punch him in the back of the head. Before Harper could properly regain his footing, a female West Midlands Police (WMP) officer slams him up against a shop shutter. Harper then swings his arms and appears to strike the officer in the head, crucially, it seems, before he realises that the person in front of him is a police officer.

Harper’s arrest occurs seconds after he is assaulted by the two black men, so it is highly unlikely the police officers attending the incident would have failed to see who first used physical violence. However, they appear to let the aggressors walk away while they arrest the victim. For good measure, the arresting officer swears at Harper and calls him a ‘dick’, which isn’t very professional.

If we’re being generous, it could be said that the officers on the scene failed to distinguish between a deliberate assault and a chaotic reaction from a young man who had just been attacked, knocked down and (as Harper possibly saw it) pushed into a shutter by a number of black men. More likely, however, is that the case of Cody Harper is yet another example - as if we needed it - of two tier policing. The officers saw what happened, yet instinctively chose to arrest the white man rather than the black men.

WMP has since revealed it had identified the two men who attacked Harper, but that neither was charged and were instead given ‘out-of-court’ disposals. This is precisely the kind of disparity that fuels public anger. A young white man at the centre of a confused incident faced the serious prospect of prosecution for assaulting an emergency worker, while others, who appeared to have instigated the violence, and who were black, received much more lenient treatment.

It is now obvious that there is something rotten at the heart of UK policing. When the very culture of the institution is permeated with progressive ideology (with the truly appalling quango, the College of Policing, at its heart), is it any surprise that we see it manifested on British streets? DEI language slaps the trainee officer around the face the moment they cross the training threshold. They then must adhere to this dogma if they have any hope of career advancement or, even, keeping their job. We saw this at its most disturbing and tragic in the case of Henry Nowak, the young white man who was arrested and handcuffed as he lay dying and pleading for help, while his Sikh murderer calmly chatted with officers.

Policing has become too inconsistent, too image-conscious and too willing to pursue cases that appear progressive rather than undertaking the much more basic role of restoring and maintaining order on the streets - the role that the public overwhelmingly want them to perform. When the police are applying the law differently depending on a person’s ethnicity, political views or nature of protest, it undermines the principle that everyone is equal before the law.

This is deeply corrosive to public trust. Confidence in policing depends on the consistent, transparent and fair enforcement of the law. If large sections of the public come to believe that different groups are treated by different standards, the legitimacy of the police and the broader justice system can only be weakened, making it harder to maintain social cohesion and public confidence.

This does not, of course, excuse violence against police officers. The law must be firm, predictable and even-handed. But that principle cuts both ways. Citizens should never be more likely to be dragged through the courts because of their ethnicity, especially on evidence which later collapses under basic scrutiny. And police forces should not expect public confidence while applying judgement partially.

WMP said it acknowledged and respected the CPS decision, while maintaining that Harper’s arrest was lawful, and that it followed a police officer being hit while carrying out her duties. The force also said the incident happened spontaneously on a busy street in Birmingham city centre, where officers were dealing with several incidents in a short period of time.

This explanation may describe the pressure officers were under, but it doesn’t answer the public concern. A lawful arrest isn’t automatically an astute or wise one. A difficult street scene doesn’t remove the duty to assess what actually happened, especially if the officers were right there at the time. If the video evidence was strong enough for the CPS to conclude there was no realistic prosecution, it is fair and right to ask whether the police response was too quick to frame Harper as the offender rather than as someone caught in a volatile situation.

Police officers work in difficult, fast-moving and sometimes dangerous conditions. But difficulty isn’t a blank cheque. The public is entitled to expect discipline, proportion and even-handedness from those entrusted with coercive power. When the police get it wrong, they should say so plainly rather than shelter behind formulaic statements about procedure.

Assaults on police, paramedics and other emergency workers are serious and should be punished where the evidence supports it. But respect for the police is not strengthened when weak or questionable cases are pushed forward because of hard-wired, ideological values. Public trust depends on fairness, sound judgement and – crucially - impartiality.

A version of this article was first published in Spiked

The chilling murder of Ann Widdcombe, the former Conservative MP and minister who joined Reform UK in 2023, has stunned the country. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood paid tribute to a veteran parliamentarian who represented Maidstone in Kent for more than 20 years. Concerns were also raised about the safety of current and former MPs. Parliament has seen two murders in the past decade: those of Labour’s Jo Cox and the Conservative MP Sir David Amess. There was also an attack on Labour MP Stephen Timms, thankfully not fatal, in 2010.

Threats against politicians have increased significantly with the rise of the unholy alliance of technology coupled with political polarisation, making a serious review of their security plainly necessary. Reform UK, especially, has criticised the lack of state support for its MPs, who appear to be under the most significant threat from the ‘#BeKind’ Left. Yet the distress surrounding this appalling event has been heightened by a lack of clear, official information and a shifting account of Widdecombe’s death.

When it was first announced on the 9^th July, there was no suggestion that it was anything other than a very sad, but natural, death. Within hours, however, police said Widdecombe had been found with head injuries at her Dartmoor home. That was the first indication that something was amiss; ‘serious injuries’ aren’t generally mentioned if someone has merely suffered a fall. They then stated they were looking for somebody in connection with the incident. Their inquiries led to the arrest of a suspect in nearby Newton Abbot, who was quickly ruled out of the investigation. They quickly moved nearly 300 miles north to South Yorkshire, where a ‘28-year-old white man’ was arrested in Rotherham.

At first, police said there was no evidence to suggest that the crime was politically motivated or terrorism related. On the 13^th July, however, all that changed. Specialist counter-terrorism officers took over the investigation and the suspect was re-arrested on suspicion of commissioning, preparing or instigating acts of terrorism, under the Terrorism Act 2000.

Police continually urged the public not to speculate about any motive, yet they then reopened a likelihood they had previously - and quickly - dismissed. If they didn’t know what exactly happened or why, they should have plainly said so. This would have been no admission of failure. They could have said that they were investigating potential motives and would update the public in due course. To find out what happened and why is precisely what detectives are for.

Instead, there seems to have been an urge to keep the ill-informed masses at bay, lest more of them take to the streets, as after the 2024 Southport atrocity and the vacuum of information left by the police. But such caution can become self-defeating. Obfuscation itself leaves a void, which is far more likely to be filled by rumour, suspicion and anger, than it is by calm restraint.

We also saw this with the initially selective Greater Manchester Police (GMP) release of footage relating to the Manchester Airport assault committed by Mohammed Amaaz in July 2024. This involved an officer who was seen to kick a suspect (Amaaz) in the head. It was only when the complete footage of the incident was leaked to the media that we saw that Amaaz had originally committed an act of Grievous Bodily Harm on a female officer, breaking her nose. It seemed that GMP were prepared to see one of their own officers convicted in the court of public opinion rather than show the full context of the event. Certainly, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) seemed to care more about ‘community cohesion’ than investigating any alleged misconduct offences during the subsequent investigation into the incident.

The consequences of the silence of Southport, the selective information of Manchester Airport and other examples of police obfuscation, are many. Once public trust is squandered, every subsequent police statement becomes harder to believe, every appeal for calm less persuasive and every online rumour more potent. Confidence in counter-terrorism decisions is also weakened if terrorism is first played down and then, eventually, invoked.

In trying to prevent disorder by withholding clarity, the police risk producing the very conditions in which disorder thrives; suspicion, grievance and the belief that the public is being managed rather than informed. That distrust is already visible in the reaction. Reform UK figures have accused the police of steering the public away from the possibility that Widdecombe’s politics were relevant; one party source reportedly described the public as being ‘gaslit’ over the suspect’s motive.

Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice said journalists should apologise to Nigel Farage and Reform, while the government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, said Devon and Cornwall Police appeared to have broken a ‘golden rule’ by commenting too firmly on a live investigation before any facts were settled. He has stated that the police should admit when they do not know something rather than appear to rule it out and then reverse course as new facts emerge. He is quite right.

In many circles, even previously ‘polite’ ones, there is now open suspicion of the police and more than a degree of hostility. It is an institution seen as the paramilitary wing of the progressive intelligentsia. This should come as no surprise when shady departments within the Home Office are ready to pump us full of ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ style propaganda. Information is being withheld and the investigatory waters muddied because of a contemptuous view of the general public.

This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency, before trust – and, thereby, law and order itself - breaks down completely.

A version of this article appears in The Daily Sceptic

Does anyone remember the death of Tony Keeble? How about David Joyce, or maybe Giedrius Vasiljevas? These men were all shot dead by the police in the United Kingdom in the last three years, but I would imagine that very few people will recall them because they were white.

Contrast those with the police shooting of career gangster Chris Kaba in 2022, where selective media and ‘community’ outrage dressed up as public conscience led to a Metropolitan Police firearms officer being tried for murder. Kaba was shot in Streatham, South London, in September 2022 after he had driven towards armed officers whilst trying to ram his way out of a police roadblock. He had been stopped as part of a pre-planned operation - called a ‘hard stop’ - as he was known on intelligence databases to be a habitual carrier of firearms.

The copper who fired the fatal shot, publicly named as Sergeant Martyn Blake (despite concerns for his safety), was subsequently acquitted of murdering Kaba by a jury at the Old Bailey in October 2024, after just three hours of deliberation. However, he had still been left facing allegations of breaching professional standards and the possibility of a gross misconduct hearing that could have ended his career. But following a review of rules governing the police use of force and their retrospective application this week, it now looks as though disciplinary case against Sgt. Blake will be withdrawn. Police regulations seem to have finally caught up with common sense.

But why do we remember the likes of the Chris Kaba case or, indeed, that of Mark Duggan, but not others? The answer lies, predictably, in the politics of race and the wholesale importation of American anti-racist culture into the United Kingdom. This has led to the bizarre sight of protestors in London shouting: “Hands up, don’t shoot!” at police officers armed with nothing more dangerous than some pepper spray and a stick.

The rhetoric of some self-appointed community groups can be corrosive. Genuine concern after a death involving the police is both legitimate and necessary. Families deserve answers and the public deserves transparency. But there is a world of difference between demanding accountability and pursuing a racially based anti-police narrative that treats an armed officer as being guilty from the outset. Too often, the language of ‘community justice’ appears to leave no room for the possibility that an officer acted lawfully and honestly.

Firearms officers are also under terrifying pressure, because they know full well that a lengthy investigation will automatically follow a discharge of their weapon. Their uniform and firearm will be seized and forensically examined, they will be suspended and they will feel very much alone. Their loved ones will be placed under immense strain for a protracted period and, if all that isn’t enough, they may have to face a criminal trial at the end of it.

Activists seem far quicker to issue statements condemning police action than to acknowledge the circumstances that brought armed officers to the scene in the first place. They speak fervently about the trauma of policing but far less often about the trauma inflicted by violent offenders, the terror of the victims who call for help, or the impossible burden carried by the officers who answer those calls. Certainly, the Kaba family sought to stop the release of footage showing their boy marauding through a nightclub with a gun and shooting a man in the days before his death.

There is also a significant democratic problem when self-appointed spokespeople claim to speak for ‘the community’ while advancing their own narrow, political agendas. Communities aren’t monoliths. I know from experience that most law-abiding residents in high-crime areas want, regardless of their ethnic background, more effective policing, not less. They want police to arrive quickly, confront dangerous people decisively and keep the streets safe for their families. Their voices are too often drowned out by activists who treat policing itself as the enemy, rather than asking how it can be made fair and effective.

This matters because the pressure they generate and diffuse doesn’t remain confined to press releases and placards. It seeps into politics, management and oversight. Senior officers are reluctant to defend their own people, lest it damage their own promotion prospects – especially if race is a factor. Ministers speak the language of confidence while allowing systems to grow ever more punitive. The result is a culture in which officers may be judged less by the evidence than by the volume of performative outrage surrounding the case.

Worst of all, this approach can deepen the very mistrust it claims to heal. If every police use of force is immediately framed as proof of institutional prejudice, no verdict, investigation or factual finding will ever be enough. Acquittal becomes irrelevant, context becomes an excuse and evidence becomes secondary to the ideological narrative. That isn’t justice for families or accountability for the police. It is permanent grievance politics, and it leaves the public with a distorted picture of what armed officers actually face.

This is the impossible position into which the state places its firearms officers. They are asked to volunteer for one of the most dangerous roles in policing, to run towards armed criminals and life-threatening situations, and to make decisions in fractions of a second that others will later spend years dissecting in offices, courtrooms and inquiry rooms. If they hesitate, members of the public or their fellow officers may die. If they act, they risk prosecution, public exposure, disciplinary proceedings and professional ruin.

The figures underline how rare it is for armed police to fire, even though they are sent repeatedly into situations where others may be armed, violent or otherwise dangerous. In the year to March 2025, there were 17,249 police firearms operations in England and Wales, yet police firearms were discharged in only four incidents. There were 6,367 authorised firearms officers, of whom 5,753 were operationally deployable. These are not trigger-happy figures, and this is not the United States – despite some community leaders acting like it is. The evidence reveals a small cadre of officers, repeatedly put in high-risk encounters, who almost always resolve them without firing a shot.

Nobody is arguing that armed police should be above scrutiny. The power to use lethal force must always be subject to searching examination. But scrutiny is not the same as suspicion by ideological default. A system that treats every shooting as a potential career-ending offence, even after a criminal acquittal, risks creating precisely the paralysis that the public can’t afford when the prospect of lethal danger is immediate.

The cost of that suspicion isn’t borne by lobbyists or professional campaigners in the anti-racism industry. It is borne by the armed cop at the scene and by the public who expect police to intervene when violent people threaten others. When more than 100 Met firearms officers reportedly stepped back from armed duties after the murder charge in the Kaba case, they weren’t merely grandstanding. If armed officers conclude that their careers, liberty, anonymity and family safety are at risk simply for making a good-faith decision under colossal tension, some will step back from the role and others will hesitate when hesitation is deadly.

That wouldn’t serve justice and it wouldn’t serve the communities most often threatened by armed criminals; the very communities on behalf of which the bad actors claim to be speak.

A version of this article appears in The European Conservative

This week, ‘Sophie of Dundee’ was exonerated. The girl who was smeared, mocked and condemned online has now been proved right. She and her friends said they’d been forced to defend themselves from an abusive man. The online mob called them liars. The court showed who was telling the truth.

The image that spread online was unforgettable, and an equally memorable meme soon followed. It all happened on a street in Dundee, Scotland, in August 2025. A blurred still from phone footage showed one of the girls holding a knife and an axe, her face etched in fear. This wasn’t the face of a swaggering thug as the Left would have had us believe. It was the face of a frightened child. Because she is a minor, her name has never been published. So the internet gave her one - ‘Sophie of Dundee’.

Some people saw at once what was in front of them. Yet another British working class girl pushed into fear and self-protection because nobody else was coming to help. But plenty of others preferred a different story. They mocked the girls, cast ‘Sophie’ as the real menace and laced their abuse with all the familiar, hackneyed class snobbery. The jokes about Irn-Bru were not harmless digs. They were signals - this is the kind of girl we are allowed to despise.

But ‘Sophie’ wasn’t lying, and Dundee Sheriff Court has now established that. This week, a Bulgarian man, Ilia Belov, was found guilty of making sexual remarks to the girls. The court heard that he said, “Hello sexy, I’ll show you a good time.” When the girls called him a creep, he didn’t back off. He got angry, phoned his sister, Nadjedzha Belova, and the confrontation got worse.

Belova arrived and assaulted one of the girls, pulling her hair, dragging her to the ground and hitting her on the head. One girl’s mother said it was heartbreaking to watch the CCTV footage of her daughter being beaten. The sheriff was clear about the blame. It began with Belov’s abhorrent comments directed at a child.

Then came the second attack and, arguably, the most damaging one - the internet. The pile on against the girls, and especially against ‘Sophie’, added fresh misery to those ordinary families who were already dealing with the real world fallout. After the verdict, one of the mothers said simply that the girls had told the truth and, for that, had been slandered.

That is exactly what happened here. First, sexual remarks from an adult man and an assault by an adult woman. Then, abuse from strangers online; strangers who talk about ‘being kind’. And running through it all was the customary prejudice - the old sneer that some girls count for less than others.

Why were these girls doubted so quickly and mocked so eagerly? The answer isn’t complicated. They are working class, and in polite opinion that means disposable. Too many people heard their accents, looked at their appearance, and decided that they already knew the story. They didn’t see children in danger. They saw the kind of people they had been schooled and encouraged to look down upon. And those attitudes take us into very dark places, such as allowing an ecosystem to develop which allowed the industrial rape of young children in towns and cities across Britain.

That smug caricature of ‘Sophie’ and company fell apart in court. The sheriff described the girls’ evidence as truthful and well presented. So much for the lazy picture of violent, feral kids. So much for the people who watched one clip, felt the rising bile of class contempt and declared the case closed.

And that is what gives this story its force. It isn’t solely about ‘Sophie’. It is about the perennial habit of dismissing working class people - especially girls. Their testimony was brushed aside and they were considered inherently less believable than the migrants who attacked them. Because, in the eyes of the chattering classes, migrants are inherently good, while British working class kids are inherently bad. Class in the United Kingdom doesn’t just shape how people live; it shapes who gets heard, who gets defended and who gets written off.

This case reveals a settled custom in British public life. Working-class girls are left exposed by a state which is meant to look after them, then they are doubted and vilified when, upon being failed, they dare to speak. The people who advertise their own compassion most loudly are the quickest to withdraw it when the girl in question comes from the wrong background. Sympathy is reserved for the approved victim. Everyone else can be discarded. That is the rule this case lays bare. Not compassion, but selection. Not principle, but taste.

A culture that can watch vulnerable girls attacked, humiliated, disbelieved and smeared - yet still feel righteous - isn’t merely hypocritical. It is decaying.

A version of this article appears in The European Conservative

Belfast, Northern Ireland, was engulfed in violence this week, following the alleged ‘attempted beheading’ of a local man by a Sudanese asylum seeker. Vehicles burned, roads were blocked with flaming bins, and terrified families were led from their homes under police protection. These disturbances follow civil disorder in Southampton, England, provoked by the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak by Sikh man Vickrum Digwa, and the release of truly scandalous police bodycam footage revealing despicable treatment by the cops of a clearly dying Henry.

But in the modern ‘Yookay’ the political class thinks condemning the riots is enough. And it has learned absolutely nothing. Condemnation is easy. It lets ministers, commentators and officials strike a morally superior pose while side-stepping the public anger, grief and alienation behind these scenes. That is not leadership. It is cowardice.

Once again, Britain, and indeed, wider Europe, are witnessing grimly familiar patterns. A shocking crime sparks public anger and demands for answers. Instead of addressing those fears, the establishment lectures the public, denounces dissent and insists the real scandal is not failed policy but those who question it. People are expected to look at chaos and insecurity and be told that the true danger lies in their reaction. That is why the public no longer believes what it is told.

The alleged attempted murder in Northern Ireland did not happen in a vacuum, and neither did the anger that followed. Across the entire British Isles, people have watched their communities transformed without their consent, their concerns dismissed as prejudice and had their unease shamed into silence. They are told that mass migration is unquestionably good even as they live with pressure on housing, schools and hospitals, weaker social trust and serious - often lethal - crime.

Both the Belfast atrocity and the heart-rending murder of Henry Nowak symbolise that wider sense of abandonment. These are not only personal tragedies, but they present straightforward evidence that those in authority are more concerned with controlling the political meaning of events than confronting their reality.

That is why cases like Henry’s strike such a deep nerve. They crystallise a fear that when ordinary people suffer, powerful institutions respond ideologically rather than humanely; that instead of seeing a gravely injured teenager in need of protection and justice, the police were focused on interpreting the event through the language of race and prejudice. They seem quicker to police language than to protect victims, and keener to manage the narrative than face the truth.

What makes these situations so combustible is not immigration alone. It is the contempt shown towards those who raise concerns about it. Again and again, Europe’s citizenries are told their worries are shameful and that their experience counts for less than the delicate emotions of those people who rarely live with the consequences of the decisions they impose.

For decades, Britain’s working-class communities have been told to accept decisions made above their heads by politicians, civil servants, academics and activists who rarely bear the burden themselves. When residents object to rapid change, they are smeared as backward. When they worry about crime, they are accused of fearmongering. When they speak about a lack of social cohesion, they are branded extremists. Their questions are not answered, and their dissent is not debated in anything like good faith. People can endure much, but not forever, the sense of being treated with disdain in their own country.

The result is a deep crisis of trust. Millions no longer see the political class as merely distant or incompetent, but as actively hostile to their concerns. They watch leaders defend official, progressive narratives rather than confront painful realities, while their own fears are ignored, mocked or censored. Yet trust depends on the belief that supposedly neutral institutions will act fairly, tell the truth and put citizens’ welfare above politics. Once that belief dies, society stands on very dangerous ground.

None of this, of course, excuses the violence. Riots are destructive and self-defeating. They terrify innocent families, damage neighbourhoods and hand any moral advantage to those who would rather condemn disorder than confront its causes. But unrest cannot be understood or prevented if every eruption of anger is dismissed as ignorance, racism or misinformation. That does not solve the problem; it exacerbates it.

The deeper problem is the huge and widening gulf between rulers and ruled. Britain is increasingly governed by a self-loathing elite which seems unable or unwilling to understand the people it leads. It demands tolerance while showing little for dissent; speaks of democracy while ignoring public opinion when it is inconvenient, and pursues migration policies which ordinary working people have repeatedly opposed. Each controversy deepens the belief that one set of rules applies to an almost exclusively monocultural governing class and another to everyone else. Once that belief takes hold, it becomes politically explosive.

The fires in Belfast will die down, the damage will be cleared and the news cycle will move on. But the anger behind those scenes will not disappear just because respectable people have denounced it. It will remain as long as Britain and Europe’s leaders continue to treat public fear and dissent as things to be shut down rather than heard.

Southampton and Belfast are not isolated aberrations. They are warnings. If those warnings are ignored, they will not be the last. And the Establishment cannot say that it hasn’t been warned.

A version of this article appears in The European Conservative

Britain is no longer divided by ordinary politics. It has split into two rival nations which loathe each other, obey different moral rules and receive radically different treatment from the state.

Last Saturday’s rival demonstrations in London exposed that divide with unusual clarity. On one side stood ‘Unite The Kingdom’, the event organised primarily by the now veteran nationalist campaigner, Tommy Robinson. At this, thousands of people who are angry about immigration, national decline and the feeling that their country is being transformed without their consent gathered in order to display their frustration and patriotism.

On the other was another large ‘Nakba Day’ march, part of the now permanent cycle of pro-Palestinian activism that has dominated London’s streets since the Hamas atrocity on the 7^th October 2023. The Nakba Day event is an annual protest to commemorate The Nakba, which refers to the mass dispossession of Palestinians (as the demonstrators see it) during the 1948 Arab Israeli war surrounding the establishment of the State of Israel.

Both protests were controversial in their own ways. Both required significant policing. Yet only one was subjected to live facial recognition technology. Only one was treated as a potential security threat before a single banner had even been raised. Only one marched under extraordinary state surveillance. And only one had a number of European speakers denied entry to the UK. I’m sure you can guess which one. The message was impossible to miss. Britain’s establishment no longer simply disagrees with patriotic dissent. It increasingly treats it as dangerous.

The Metropolitan Police insist their decision was ‘intelligence-led’. A catch-all phrase if ever there was one, this wording is always deployed to head off awkward questions, as they cannot reveal intelligence sources. But public trust depends less on official explanations than on visible fairness. When sweeping surveillance powers are deployed against one political tendency but not another, accusations of double standards are inevitable and justified. And those suspicions have been building for years.

The public has watched anti-lockdown protesters vilified as extremists while eco-activists who paralysed roads and disrupted public life were often handled with virtual indulgence. They have watched sectarian chants and extremist Islamist rhetoric excused as ‘context,’ while pensioners who carry St. George’s flags or Union Jacks are treated like a threat to public order.

Against that backdrop, the policing operation around Unite the Kingdom was striking. Thousands of officers, riot units, mounted police, helicopters, reinforcements drafted in from across the country, and the sinister threat to deploy new armoured vehicles in the UK for the first time. The language surrounding the event sounded less like routine crowd control than preparation for some form of domestic insurgency.

What truly unnerves Britain’s ruling class is not disorder itself. It is the re-emergence of a politically conscious working and lower-middle class Britain that no longer accepts being ignored, economically displaced or culturally sneered at without resistance - hence the recent gaslighting centrist talk that the country is becoming ‘ungovernable’.

For decades, ordinary Britons have watched the institutions governing their country drift steadily out of alignment with them. Westminster, the BBC, universities, NGOs, the civil service and much of the professional class increasingly began speaking a political language alien to millions of voters.

Concerns about immigration across the West are dismissed as ignorance. Anxiety about Islamism is reframed as ‘Islamophobia’. Attachment to national identity is mocked as backward nostalgia. The result is a growing belief that Britain now operates under two systems; one for approved opinions and another for forbidden ones. The use of facial recognition technology at a nationalist rally only deepens that perception. It tells citizens that attending the wrong protest may place them under state scrutiny, and I know full well that some potential attendees were put of by that very thought.

Even those who despise Tommy Robinson or reject everything his supporters advocate should recognise the danger here. Exceptional powers rarely remain confined to one target. Once governments discover they can monitor and intimidate certain political groups with little resistance, those tools inevitably spread. A democracy cannot survive if large sections of the population conclude the law is enforced according to ideology rather than principle.

But Saturday exposed something deeper than political bias. It revealed a profound moral and class divide. Siobhan Whyte was about to speak at the Unite the Kingdom rally. It will be remembered that Siobhan is the mother of Rhiannon Whyte, the young woman who worked at a migrant hotel and, for her trouble, was stabbed to death with a screwdriver twenty-three times in the head and chest by one of the residents. Shortly before Siobhan Whyte addressed the crowd, activists ‘Led By Donkeys’ projected the slogan ‘Immigration makes Britain brilliant’ onto a giant screen nearby.

These so-called progressives are a distinctly self-satisfied activist group born of middle-class contempt for the 2016 Brexit vote. They regularly congratulate themselves (and so does the mainstream media) for their oh-so-witty stunts. Whatever their intention on this occasion, the effect was grotesque - a smug abstraction about diversity being ‘our strength’ looming over the grief of a bereaved mother.

For the chattering classes, mass immigration is often treated as a moral posture or cosmopolitan virtue. For working-class communities, it is experienced as competition for housing, pressure on wages, overcrowded schools, weakened cohesion and a state increasingly unable - or unwilling - to maintain order. One side speaks the language of virtue. The other speaks the language of consequences. That is why Saturday felt like more than just another London protest. It resembled a snapshot of the Two Britains.

One Britain still believes in borders, national identity and the right of a people to defend their own social fabric. The other, dominant across media, academia and cultural institutions, increasingly treats those instincts as morally suspect. The contrast between the two marches sharpened the point further. Unite the Kingdom was focused inward; borders, sovereignty, crime, security and the future of Britain itself. But it was also the happiest. The Nakba demonstration focused outward, directing its emotional energy towards a distant conflict that has become a central cause of Britain’s activist class. And this was the one which contained the most visceral hate.

Whatever one thinks of either side, the symbolism mattered. One crowd was asking what happens to Britain. The other was demanding Britain prioritise a conflict elsewhere. Of course, there were ugly elements at Unite the Kingdom; there is at any gathering. But standards only matter if they apply universally. The public notices when extremism is denounced thunderously in one context and quietly excused in another. They notice when patriotic crowds are portrayed as uniquely threatening while eliminationist and nihilist slogans elsewhere are dismissed as unfortunate excesses.

Saturday’s demonstrations were not an isolated clash. They exposed the twin crises hollowing out modern Britain; the growing belief that state power is applied selectively. Britain will not restore unity by policing dissent more aggressively or smearing patriotic anxiety as extremism. It will recover only when the law is applied equally, multiculturalism is discussed honestly and when ordinary citizens, once again, believe that their government considers them worth protecting at all.

A version of this article appears in spiked

A report published in April by the Children’s Commissioner for England on the police’s record in the strip searching of children has caused some tumult in elite circles. The document, ‘Police powers and children - strip searching and use of force’, states: “Although only 6% of the population of 10-17 year olds in the 2021 census were black, 35% of the children strip searched were of black ethnicity.” These figures certainly appear stark. But raw data rarely constitutes the whole picture.

Few statistics are deployed more aggressively in Britain’s culture wars than these. In some accounts, the disparity reaches eightfold. The conclusion, we are told, is obvious. Britain’s police are, yet again, systemically racist. That claim is not just unproven. It is intellectually lazy.

It rests on a single move. Take a disparity, strip away all context and declare motive. No serious discipline would accept that standard of evidence. Yet in modern political discourse, it has become the norm. Maybe it’s because the reality is less convenient.

Policing is not distributed evenly across the population. It is concentrated by design in the places where crime is most prevalent and where intelligence suggests it is most likely to occur. These areas are generally the most economically deprived and contain the highest number of people from ethnic minority backgrounds (that certain minorities are statistically more likely to be poorer in the first place is a separate debate outside policing). That means law enforcement activity clusters in such specific neighbourhoods, particularly in major urban centres. These areas do not resemble the country as a whole, either in crime patterns or demographics.

Once that basic fact is acknowledged, the supposed mystery of disproportionality begins to dissolve. If police activity is focused in a relatively small number of high-crime areas and those areas have distinct demographic profiles, then uneven outcomes are inevitable. Not suspicious. Not surprising. Inevitable.

Yet the dominant narrative proceeds as if this elementary point doesn’t exist. Instead, it relies on a crude comparison between national population shares and policing outcomes, as though police officers were randomly sampling children from across England and Wales. They are not. They are responding to specific intelligence, in specific places, about specific suspected offences.

And this is where the argument becomes even more selective. Critics are quick to cite disparities in enforcement but are far less willing to engage with the realities of criminality and youth exploitation in the areas where these searches occur. Policing follows those patterns because it has to. The alternative is wilful blindness. It is a sad fact that black people (of all ages) are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than other ethnic groups, so what are the activists saying – that the police shouldn’t try to prevent that from happening?

None of this requires the belief that policing is perfect. Of course officers make mistakes. Procedures are sometimes poorly followed. Oversight has, in some cases, identified serious failings in the treatment of minors. These issues deserve attention and reform. But they do not at all amount to evidence of a system animated by racial bias.

To claim ‘systemic racism’, one needs to show more than disparity. It must be demonstrated that similarly situated individuals are treated differently because of their race. That is a far higher bar than simply pointing to unequal outcomes, and it is a bar rarely cleared in febrile activist or media-driven debate. Instead, what we see is a pattern of assertion replacing analysis. Disparity is presented as proof, and anyone who questions this line, such as Dr. Tony Sewell, is accused of denial.

This is not serious thinking. It is political rhetoric. Even the commonly cited evidence does not support the sweeping conclusions drawn from it. The concentration of searches in a handful of urban forces means that national level comparisons are deeply misleading. They collapse myriad different contexts into a single headline figure, erasing the role of geography, crime distribution and operational strategy. The result is a narrative that is emotionally forceful but empirically thin.

There is also a deeper problem. The assumption that ‘intelligence-led policing’ is somehow tainted by implication reflects inbuilt left-wing scepticism toward an institution which, in recent years, has bent over backwards to appeal to those same lanyard classes. This view is fashionable but rarely constructive. In my policing experience, I know that intelligence can never be perfect, but it isn’t arbitrary either. It is built from reports, surveillance, patterns of offending and accumulated operational knowledge. To dismiss it wholesale is to deny the basic mechanisms through which policing functions.

If critics want to argue that these mechanisms are flawed, they should do so with evidence, showing where and how they produce unjustified disparities. But too often, that work is skipped in favour of sweeping moral claims. The cost of this intellectual shortcut shapes public trust, officer behaviour and, ultimately, the willingness of ordinary coppers to act decisively in high-risk situations – especially with the senior ranks’ propensity to throw them under a bus when the going gets tough. When every disparity is treated as proof of racism, the incentive is not to improve policing but to retreat from it.

That outcome serves no one, least of all the communities most affected by crime. Adolescents are drawn inexorably into a life of crime, often starting out in criminal enterprises like ‘county lines’ drug networks. Such lifestyles are seen as glamorous, partly because the only male role models these youngsters have can be seen profiting quickly from it. Yes, these are technically children and, of course, they are being exploited. But they often do it with a sense of agency, due to the perceived social status and material rewards. Despite liberals’ constant assertions, these kids are not the Baker Street Irregulars.

The truth, as ever, is less convenient than the slogans. Policing reflects the distribution of crime, the demands of public safety and the imperfect judgement of human beings operating under substantial pressure. Disparities can emerge from all of these factors without requiring a single, all-encompassing explanation. To insist otherwise is not to pursue justice. It is to impose a politically charged narrative.

Certainly, the strip-search figures deserve scrutiny. They raise fundamental questions about safeguarding, proportionality and oversight. But they do not, on their own, answer those questions - and they certainly do not justify the confident declaration of systemic racism that so often follows. If Britain is to have an honest debate about policing, it must begin by abandoning the idea that unequal outcomes are self-explanatory. They are not.

Disparity is not a verdict. It is a prompt. And until that distinction is acknowledged, the conversation will remain driven, not by evidence, but by ideology.

A version of this article was first published in The European Conservative

You can pick your favourite cliché from those the chattering classes deployed to try and wave away the results of the recent English council elections. ‘A bloody nose’, a shout from those ‘left behind’, a short-lived rebellion that will ‘ebb as tempers cool.’ The easiest mistake in explaining the rise of the populist right is to wave it away as mere protest. That reading no longer fits the facts.

Across England, this looks less like a fleeting tantrum and more like the start of a political realignment. The populist right is not just collecting discontent; it is taking in voters who once underpinned the two-party system itself. Once taken-for-granted Labour strongholds have gone forever. Conservative heartlands have ruptured. Long-standing loyalties are loosening in real time.

The local election shock matters not only for the totals, but for their source. These are places that stuck with Labour through British industrial decline, foreign-policy disasters and years of drift. These are voters who put up with managerial politics because they saw no alternative. Now they do.

Westminster and the media establishment still prefers to frame this as a plea for attention, not a serious political judgement. They are desperately trying to reassure themselves, and they are completely wrong. Many voters are not simply asking to ‘be heard’. They see themselves as having been failed by a system which is distant, technocratic and culturally out of step with their lives.

That is why the link to Brexit matters. The instincts behind the Leave vote are resurfacing; that democratic sovereignty counts, borders count, national identity counts. And that ordinary citizens should not be treated as obstacles to so-called ‘enlightened’ rule by experts and institutions who, make no mistake, despise them.

For years, much of the governing class assumed these impulses would fade. They have not. They have congealed. The surge of the populist right suggests millions still feel politically homeless in a system split between cautious managerialism on one side and cultural radicalism on the other.

That estrangement has been building for years. On the country’s biggest questions: immigration, cohesion, security, crime, energy policy and the authority of democratic institutions, many voters see little or no serious debate. Elections only swap out people; they do not bring about any change in political direction. Governments change but core, progressive assumptions do not. Britain grows more centralised, more bureaucratic and more culturally fractured, while voters are told (often threatened) that these trends are inevitable, or morally required.

The result is a growing sense that mainstream politics is no longer a vehicle for democratic choice, but a managerial system that polices the boundaries of acceptable opinion. People might occasionally grumble but they dare not truly dissent. Worry about migration and you are branded intolerant. Push back against hard-edged identity politics and you are dismissed as reactionary. Question remote technocratic rule and you are treated as a doltish, provincial barrier to progress. In time, people stop looking for validation from a cohort which holds them in contempt.

That is one reason that Reform’s rise feels bigger than the usual mid-term punishment of governing parties. This is not just anti-incumbent anger. It is a backlash against a political culture many voters see as arrogant, insulated and utterly incapable of correcting itself.

Crucially, it is not being driven mainly by fashionable activist networks or university campuses. It is coming from ordinary towns, suburbs and working communities whose worries are often treated as morally suspect by Britain’s cultural elites. The people behind this shift are not traditional revolutionaries. Most are moderate in what they ask for: secure borders, reliable public services, safe streets, affordable living and a sense that their country still belongs to them culturally as well as legally. Yet in some quarters, these basic demands are now treated as radical.

Here the Establishment has completely misjudged the mood. For years, commentators argued that Brexit support would mellow once its consequences were felt. Instead, many Leave voting areas have grown yet more distrustful. Not because they regret leaving the European Union, as many bad faith actors would have us believe, but because they think the system tried to dilute, block or morally discredit the decision they made. And they wouldn’t be wrong.

Reform’s rise draws on that resentment. It reflects a belief that the old parties either cannot or will not deliver the genuine national renewal that voters want. The Labour Party is increasingly caught between metropolitan progressivism and the socially conservative instincts of its traditional working-class base, and it has chosen the former. The Conservatives spent years promising border control, lower migration and institutional reform, then left office with trust eviscerated and many supporters disillusioned. Reform UK has stepped into the vacuum left behind.

And it is not just about Reform UK. Restore Britain, the party established and led by the MP for Great Yarmouth, Rupert Lowe, also performed well. The party won all ten seats in Great Yarmouth in the Norfolk County Council elections. As opposed to other parties, they ran a decidedly local campaign, promising to put Great Yarmouth first at every opportunity (it will be noted that leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski, stated explicitly that despite these being local elections, Palestine was one of the ‘elements on the ballot’).

Insurgent parties often benefit from the clarity of opposition. After all, diagnosing decline is easier than reversing it. Reform in particular will face the same scrutiny, compromises and internal strains that confront any movement with governing ambitions. Britain’s electoral system also punishes challengers. Winning votes is one thing; turning them into Westminster power is another. Also, let’s not forget that an entire class of supposedly neutral civil servants will be actively working against any Reform government, such is their ideological groupthink.

Still, it would be a mistake to underestimate the shift under way. The old assumption was that voters cared above all about economic competence, while questions of nationhood, culture and sovereignty sat at the margins. That no longer holds. Many voters now see economics and culture as intertwined. They think that uncontrolled migration deepens insecurity, that social trust depends on cohesion and that democratic legitimacy rests on a real sense of national solidarity. These claims are now at the heart of political debate.

Much of the Establishment response has been, yet again, contemptuous dismissal. Voters for populist parties are cast as gullible, enraged or backward, supposedly led by demagogues into voting against themselves. But that story exposes the deeper problem – far too many influential figures in politics, media and academia cannot accept that millions of voters have reached their views rationally and independently.

One defining feature of modern British politics is the widening cultural gap between governing institutions and the people they claim to represent. Many voters feel the language, values and assumptions of elite Britain bear little resemblance to everyday life. They see a political class more at ease with the jargon of international conferences than with the anxieties of its own citizens.

The central divide in Britain is no longer simply Left versus Right. It is between those who see the nation state as a real democratic community worth defending, and those who treat national identity as outdated, embarrassing or secondary to global managerial ideals - ‘Somewheres’ versus ‘Anywheres’, indeed.

That clash is no longer confined to the margins; it has moved into the mainstream. Whatever the next general election brings, one trend is increasingly hard to ignore: the political settlement that shaped Britain for decades is unravelling. Voters who once felt ignored or derided are no longer satisfied with holding their noses and ticking the least worst option. They have realised the power they have in their hands, and they mean to use it.

In that, they have echoed another English revolutionary, Oliver Cromwell, when he addressed the Rump Parliament in 1653: “You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

A version of this article is published in The Daily Sceptic

One would think that even when the police successfully detain a suspect who was alleged to have been conducting a marauding knife attack, the professional activists would have a day off.

But you would be wrong. Amid all the ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ cliché bingo, voices of criticism were heard. Among them, the blue-tick career race-baiter Shola Mos-Shogbamimu. She was quick to take to X following yesterday’s attack on the Jewish community in Golders Green, north London. The 45 year old suspect, a British national of Somali origin, had purportedly stabbed two Jewish men at random. The suspect – depressingly, inevitably – had previously been referred to the government’s counter radicalisation programme, Prevent.

Shola Mos-Shogbamimu criticised police officers who are shown kicking the suspect in the head while he is on the ground. She opined:

“Contemptible abuse of police power. Why kick him in the head several times when he’s already tasered & in your control? Should he not be alive to be brought to justice in a court of law for stabbing 2 Jews??!! Disgusting.”

Also, Green Party leader Zack Polanski, still playing at politics, was quick to condemn the actions of the arresting officers, maintaining they were:

“…essentially his (Commissioner Mark Rowley’s) officers were reportedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head when he was already incapacitated by taser.”

What Shola, Zack and other commentators do not understand - because they have never been in a life-or-death situation - is that force is not judged by how it looks in a six-second clip. It is judged by necessity in the moment. These keyboard warriors have no idea what it’s like to face immediate and possibly lethal violence armed with, often, nothing more than some irritant spray and a stick. Your priority is to keep members of the public safe, followed by yourselves as much as possible.

These officers would have had no idea in such a fast moving situation whether the suspect was acting alone or as part of a cell. He needed to be neutralised as soon as possible in order to keep people safe. He wasn’t showing his hands; he was still holding a bloodied weapon that he had just used to attack Jewish members of the public; he had been moving rapidly towards them, and they would have had no idea if he was wearing an explosive vest (wearing a coat on a warm day is never a good sign).

Policing is not theatre. It is not performed for social media approval. It is messy, fast and often brutal. Because the people officers deal with are messy, fast, and often brutal. A man armed with a knife, who has already stabbed two people, who refuses repeated commands to disarm, and who continues to pose a threat even after being tasered, is not ‘under control’. He is an active danger until the weapon is removed. That is the reality, no matter how uncomfortable it makes left-leaning commentators feel.

The idea that officers should politely wait, or somehow apply ‘gentler’ tactics while a suspect still has the capacity to kill, is not just naïve in the extreme – it is dangerous. It puts officers’ lives at risk. It puts the public at risk. And it reveals a complete detachment from reality (I am reminded of the occasion when then Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, declared that Islamic State murderer Mohammed ‘Jihadi John’ Emwazi should have been arrested in war-torn Syria rather than killed).

This is the gap at the heart of modern public debate on policing. One side deals in real-world consequences. The other deals in optics. The officers in Golders Green had seconds to act. Not minutes. Not the luxury of hindsight, slow-motion replays or viral commentary. Seconds. In those seconds, they made unquestionably the right decision; remove the threat as quickly as possible, by whatever means necessary short of lethal force. And that point matters. Because the same voices now condemning ‘excessive force’ would be the first to demand answers if those officers had hesitated and others had been stabbed.

There is also an uncomfortable truth that many would rather avoid: this attack was not just violent, it was targeted. Two visibly Jewish men were attacked in broad daylight in a part of London with a large Jewish community. That context matters. It should matter. It was part of an ever growing pattern of antisemitic attacks, carried out by people holding extreme Islamist ideologies.

Yet instead of sustained outrage about antisemitic violence, the conversation was almost immediately derailed, redirected toward the conduct of the officers who stopped it. That inversion of priorities is telling.

It reflects a culture where the instinct is no longer to back those who confront violence but to scrutinise them first, and often most harshly. Where the benefit of the doubt is extended to offenders, while those enforcing the law are expected to meet an impossible standard of perfection under extreme pressure - often from their own senior management.

And it is precisely this culture that erodes effective policing. If every split-second decision is second guessed by people with no operational understanding, officers will become more hesitant. More risk-averse. Less pro-active. That is not compassion. It is a recipe for more victims.

None of this means police should be beyond scrutiny. Of course they shouldn’t be. But scrutiny requires context. It requires full evidence. It requires intellectual honesty. A selectively edited clip on social media is not scrutiny. It is propaganda. That is the real issue here.

Not just one commentator getting it wrong, but an entire ecosystem that rewards outrage over accuracy, speed over truth and narrative over fact. The Metropolitan Police, to their credit, did something increasingly necessary: they put out the full body-worn footage. They showed the public what actually happened. And when people saw the complete picture, the narrative collapsed. Because reality is stubborn like that.

In the end, strip away the noise and the incentives of social media, and the situation becomes very simple. A violent attacker stabbed two innocent men. Two unarmed officers confronted him. They stopped him. They went home alive, and so did everyone else.

That is not a scandal. That is policing working exactly as it should.

A version of this article appears in The European Conservative

It’s that most wonderful time of the year. The 23^rd April; St. George’s Day. A time to commemorate England’s patron saint and celebrate what England and the English have given the world (apart from constant apologies). Extraordinary and lasting contributions across science, technology, culture, sport, language and governance, with the nation itself often acting as a catalyst for modernisation and global connectivity.

Except, of course, nobody will be discussing any of that.

There is a double standard at the heart of modern Britain, and much of the world. One so familiar that it often passes without comment. Expressions of Scottish, Welsh or Irish identities are routinely celebrated as rich, authentic and even heroic. Yet expressions of English identity are treated with suspicion, discomfort or outright disdain. The same political and cultural elites who champion diversity and the preservation of national traditions everywhere else recoil when the English attempt to do the same.

This imbalance becomes even more striking when set against Britain’s own historical understanding of itself. For centuries, ‘British’ and ‘English’ were largely interchangeable terms. England formed the demographic, political and cultural heart of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Its institutions, language and traditions formed the backbone of what came to be understood as ‘British’ identity. To be British, in everyday usage, often meant to participate in a largely English cultural framework; one that, crucially, was not experienced as exclusionary by most of its citizens, but as a shared national story.

This arrangement held until the late twentieth century. It was only with the political project of devolution in the United Kingdom that a more sharply defined sense of non-English national identity was institutionally reinforced. Scotland and Wales were given their own political forums, their own platforms for cultural expression and their own distinct voices within the Union. These changes did not create Scottish or Welsh identity, of course, but they amplified and legitimised them in new ways.

England did not get any of this, and was left in constitutional limbo. It had no equivalent assembly and no dedicated political space in which its identity could be articulated on its own terms. Instead, English identity was expected to remain subsumed within the broader, increasingly strained category of ‘Britishness.’ The result was a gradual uncoupling of the two concepts. As Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish identities became more explicitly defined and politically expressed (Northern Ireland as part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement), English identity began, almost by default, to emerge as something separate.

But this has never been greeted with anything like the same encouragement. The more England has tentatively sought to define itself as distinct from Britain, the more its identity has been subjected to scrutiny and suspicion. What was once the unremarked norm has become, in the eyes of many elites, a potential problem.

Consider how comfortably Scottish identity is expressed in public life. The Saltire flies proudly. Political leaders speak openly of Scotland’s distinct character, history and separate destiny. Cultural markers - dress, language, music - are celebrated without hesitation, usually defined relative to England. The same is true, in different ways, for Wales and Ireland. Irish identity in particular enjoys a kind of romantic aura, even among the British middle classes, who would never dream of applying similar sentimentality to England. This is despite the long and often murderous history of Irish republicanism, a movement that included decades of terrorism on the British mainland. Yet today, Irish nationalism is framed as a story of struggle, resilience and cultural pride.

Now compare this with England. The raising of the St. George’s Cross is still, in some circles, enough to provoke unease. Public expressions of English pride are scrutinised for hidden motives. Is it inclusive? Is it coded? Is it, heaven forfend, ‘problematic’? The assumption is that English identity, unlike that of its Celtic counterparts, carries with it a risk. It must be handled carefully or diluted, lest it provoke the unwashed peasantry to take to the streets.

This instinctive suspicion reveals more about the elites than it does the English people. It reflects a deeply ingrained narrative in which England is cast primarily as the dominant partner in the United Kingdom; a historic oppressor whose identity must be softened, even suppressed, in the interests of harmony. There is, of course, some historical truth in England’s leading role within Britain and its empire. But the leap from historical complexity to present-day cultural self-denial is neither logical nor fair.

This asymmetry becomes especially visible each year on St. George’s Day. Rather than being treated as a straightforward celebration of national identity, it is usually accompanied by contemptuous commentary from the chattering classes. We are reminded, with weary inevitability, that St. George wasn’t English himself, and that he is also the patron saint of a number of other territories. The implication is clear. English identity itself is somehow artificial, constructed or undeserving of the same emotional investment afforded to others.

It is an incoherent argument. National symbols are rarely literal in their origins. Despite St. Patrick not being Irish, the vibrancy of Irish celebration remains undimmed. National identity is built on a shared narrative and enduring traditions, not merely bloodlines. To single out England for this kind of nitpicking deconstruction is not intellectual rigour; it is cultural snobbery.

That snobbery is the defining feature of elite attitudes toward Englishness. It is not merely disagreement; it is reflexive sneering. English traditions are seen as quaint at best, crude at worst. The imagery of England - flags, football, pubs - is coded as lower-class, unsophisticated, even xenophobic. Meanwhile, the cultural expressions of other nations within the United Kingdom (and the immigrant diasporas) are elevated as authentic and enriching.

The class dimension cannot be ignored. Much of what is dismissed as ‘English nationalism’ is, in reality, the everyday cultural expression of ordinary people. It is precisely this association that makes it so uncomfortable for the elites, who are far more at ease celebrating identities which feel foreign or politically convenient. Supporting Scottish or Irish identity carries almost no personal risk. Embracing English identity, however, involves associating oneself with unfashionable sentiments or, even, unfashionable blue-collar folk.

The irony is that this does nothing whatsoever to nurture unity within Britain. On the contrary, it breeds resentment and confusion. Devolution was intended, in part, to stabilise the Union by recognising its internal diversity. Instead, it has contributed to a situation in which one part of that Union – England - finds its identity both newly distinct and persistently de-legitimised.

The old fusion of British and English identity is being untied. In this new landscape, it is not illegitimate that Englishness should seek clearer expression. What is bleak is the hostility that greets it when it does. At some point, the question must be asked - why is English identity the exception? Why is it the one form of national expression that must constantly justify itself?

Until those questions are answered honestly, the imbalance will persist. A confident nation should never be afraid of its own identity. Nor should it require permission to express it. The English, like everyone else, are entitled to a sense of belonging that is neither mocked nor mistrusted – and recognising that is not an act of extremism.

A version of this article was originally published in The European Conservative

Last week, the first report from the inquiry into the Southport killings was published.

On the 29th July 2024, Axel Rudakubana, a seventeen year old of Rwandan heritage, carried out a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed children’s dance class in Southport, north west England. He murdered three young girls: Elsie Dot Stancombe, Alice da Silva Aguiar and Bebe King. Ten other people were injured, both children and adults.

Rudakubana was tried and sentenced to a minimum of 52 years in prison. In a country and continent which have sadly grown used to mass casualty attacks, this stands out for its sheer nihilist depravity.

The Southport Inquiry was established in order to examine the circumstances surrounding the attack and the events leading up to it. And to the surprise of absolutely no-one, it turns out that ‘systemic failures’ meant it wasn’t prevented when it really could have been.

After every atrocity, the script writes itself. Reviews are commissioned and committees are convened. When the resultant report is published, it is always damning, prompting grave faced ministers to appear before the cameras and promise that “lessons will be learned.”

But they’re not, are they? With weary inevitability another attack comes along, exposing not new failures but the persistence of old ones. From the London bombings on the 7^th July 2005 to Southport, Britain has endured not just a series of violent acts, but a pattern of institutional cowardice so consistent that it has now become a ritual. A deeper tragedy is not only that these outrages occur, but that so many unfold along lines already mapped, analysed and – supposedly - corrected.

The shock of 7/7 was meant to be transformative. That fifty-two people were butchered one summer’s morning on the way to work supposedly forced a reckoning with Islamist extremism. Subsequent reviews identified familiar weaknesses: fragmented intelligence, insufficient co-ordination and a failure to grasp the nature of the threat – not least confronting the realities of full strength multiculturalism. The conclusion was clear. Systems would improve, vigilance would increase and awkward conversations would be had. Because such failures should never be repeated.

And yet. The Glasgow Airport attack in 2007 (infamously executed by those two paragons of the multiculturalists, a doctor and an engineer) raised more concerns. 2013 saw the very public slaughter of soldier Lee Rigby by individuals who openly expressed a desire to kill someone from the military. Then, the seemingly endless attacks of 2017 - Westminster Bridge, Manchester Arena and London Bridge - shattered any lingering hope that we had this beaten.

In each case, the perpetrators had previously come to official attention and warning signs were recognised but not acted upon. Systems hesitated where decisiveness was required, in no small part because those charged with looking after us were scared of being labelled as racist. These were human choices, shaped by a culture that puts political correctness over preventative action.

The pattern has repeated since. The Reading stabbings, the murder of MP Sir David Amess and the Nottingham attacks all featured perpetrators who had passed through multiple layers of state oversight. Each time, post-incident reviews returned the same conclusions: flawed risk assessments, a failure to act on what was already known and officials viewing everything through the prism of race. This is not a story of isolated lapses but of a system that knows the issues but refuses to confront them.

No serious observer claims that risk can be eliminated entirely. A free society will always remain, to some extent, vulnerable. But Britain’s recent history is not defined by unforeseeable shocks. It is defined by recurring patterns. Known individuals, known behaviours, known institutional weaknesses - all followed by familiar conclusions that fail to translate into any profound change.

Part of the failure is bureaucratic complexity, but that does not explain two decades of repetition. The real issue here is risk aversion reinforced by weak political and moral ideologies. If officialdom was to act early in these cases, it would undoubtedly risk triggering legal challenges and provoking the racism industry into megaphone activism. But when the alternative is people being murdered in what are often, at least in part, racially or religiously motivated attacks, then it shouldn’t be difficult to choose the right course of action. However, in a system paralysed by progressivism, the greater perceived risk is not failing to act but acting at all. The result is predictable. Hesitation, delay and inaction until the threat becomes undeniable - by which point people are lighting candles and singing ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ all over again.

The Prevent Programme, launched by the UK government in the wake of 7/7 and the rise of Islamist terrorism, now spends far too much time and energy amplifying the spectre of some nebulous ‘far right’ than concentrating on what it originally was set up for. But public sector groupthink means they would rather focus on something they can all agree on than confronting the truth about where their quasi-religious belief in multiculturalism has got us.

Accountability must be made real. At present, institutional failure is all too often absorbed without meaningful sanction. As police officers, we all remember sitting in an auditorium, after another outrage, listening to some senior officer stating that “key learnings will be embedded into our processes moving forward”, but we all knew that lessons were merely noted. When officers fear legal reprisal for acting in good faith, they are more likely to defer action. A system that expects decisiveness must also provide protection for those who exercise it.

Governments also need to grow a backbone. They cannot demand risk-taking from institutions while retreating at the first sign of political controversy. Professionals must be defended publicly and consistently. This requires a willingness to have those honest conversations about the actualities of ethno-religious pluralism. We need to accept difficult trade-offs and to articulate them.

Yes, this approach will provoke opposition, both genuine and performative. But the status quo carries a much greater cost; one measured in lives lost, trust eroded and a sense that the state is trapped in a cycle it cannot break. “Lessons will be learned” has become a ritual phrase, drained of any meaning through repetition. And it convinces no-one.

Credibility will not be restored by another report, however comprehensive it is. It will be restored only when the pattern is broken. When known risks are confidently acted upon by professionals who aren’t running on pre-approved opinions and who know their leaders are willing to support the tough decisions that true prevention requires.

Until then, the cycle will continue. Another attack, another vigil, another review. And each time the words will sound that little bit more hollow - and the public will be less inclined to believe them.

A version of this article was first published in The Daily Sceptic

On the nights of Palm Sunday, the 29^th March, and Tuesday the 31^st, public disorder broke out in Clapham. Hundreds of largely African-Caribbean heritage youths gathered along the high street (organised as a ‘link up’ beforehand on social media), proceeded to steal from shops and carry out acts of criminal damage – although the primary purpose seems to have been to dominate the public space through force of numbers and menacing behaviour.

The Retail Director of Marks & Spencer, whose Clapham outlet was one of the main targets of the crowd, has directly criticised London Mayor Sadiq Khan for being soft on crime. The police, yet again failing to realise that perception is everything, took a softly-softly approach and made few arrests, promising to feel the collars of the wrongdoers later.

Naturally, liberals have attempted to explain away the mayhem as it simply being a matter of there not being enough ping-pong tables for teenagers. But this was not just youth culture expressing itself. It was a public demonstration of power; brazen, co-ordinated and utterly predictable. These adolescents were sending a message - that the streets can be claimed, rules can be broken and authority can be ignored, all without consequence. And it did not occur in a vacuum. Why are the African-Caribbean youths who rioted last week so disengaged from any sense of British common life, despite being born and brought up in this country?

The first failure is the most obvious and the most routinely avoided: parenting. Too many of the young people involved in these scenes have not been properly raised. They are being managed and indulged by a timorous state and, in some cases, effectively left to raise themselves. It is visible in their behaviour. Teenagers who think it is acceptable to swarm a public space for online attention have not absorbed basic lessons about respect, restraint or responsibility.

This is not to demonise parents who are trying their best under increasing social and economic pressure. But we have to be honest; there is a growing cohort of young, black people for whom boundaries are either weak or non-existent. The word ‘no’ has lost its force. Consequences are negotiable. Authority is optional.

Another unpalatable truth in relation to the African-Caribbean diaspora in the United Kingdom is absent fathers. Where stable male role models are missing, boys in particular are more likely to seek identity and validation elsewhere, often in peer groups who revel in risk, defiance and spectacle. The ‘link up’, then, becomes a proving ground. Status is earned not through achievement but through visibility and bravado. The louder, the more chaotic, the more attention grabbing the act, the greater the renown – as witnessed by the notorious ‘Mizzy’ phenomenon a few years ago.

Into this vacuum also steps rap music. In its ‘drill’ and ‘trap’ subgenres particularly, criminality is presented as status, violence is celebrated and instant wealth is shown as only coming from illicit sources. There are documented cases where the music has intersected with actual gang conflict. The problems are only heightened by the accelerant of social media. In the absence of discipline and oversight, online platforms become tools for instant mass misbehaviour. There is no friction, no gatekeeping, no adult in the room; just a cascade of messages: ‘Be here. Bring your friends. Let’s make it big.’ And ‘big’ increasingly means disruptive, confrontational and unmanageable.

But if the family is the first line of defence, the state is the second. And here too, the record is risibly weak. Policing in situations like Clapham has become hesitant to the point of ineffectiveness. Officers are expected to maintain order while navigating a minefield of scrutiny, denunciation, political sensitivity and a total lack of support from senior officers. The result is predictable. Delay, caution and a reactive posture that allows situations to spiral before they are confronted.

This is not a criticism of individual officers. It is a criticism of the environment in which they are asked to operate. When every firm intervention risks being dissected for perceived bias or excess, the incentive is to hold back. And young people, again, are perceptive. They sense hesitation. They test it. And when they find it, they push further. From a policing point of view, no-one does a spontaneous hostile crowd like the black community. But I guess that’s not surprising, as we seem to have imported the grievance industry wholesale from the US.

The police need to rediscover their confidence, and quickly. When a gathering shows signs of turning into disorder, it should be broken up robustly before it gains momentum. Those who organise or repeatedly promote disruptive link ups should be identified and face real penalties; fines that sting, community orders that really bite and, where thresholds are crossed, criminal charges.

As well as police failure, there is also a broader failure of nerve in public discourse. Certain patterns are simply not discussed with the candour required. Why? Because the moment you attempt to analyse them, you risk being branded with that most career ending of accusations: racism. So instead, we retreat into vague language about ‘youth issues’ and ‘community tensions,’ as if euphemisms will somehow restore order.

Layered on top of this is a cultural shift that has eroded any idea of consequences. In schools, discipline is inconsistent, contested or watered down. Teachers spend as much time managing behaviour as they do delivering lessons, largely because of the permissive culture they themselves have engendered. And out on the streets, the pattern continues. Meaningless dispersal instructions are issued, crowds are moved on and the cycle repeats. For many involved, the thrill and the attention outweigh any minimal risk. That calculation must change or nothing else will.

Also, social media companies cannot continue to wash their hands of responsibility. If platforms can amplify these gatherings, they can also help curb them. This already happens with terrorist content, where police and companies generally enjoy a good working relationship. There needs to be rapid co-operation with law enforcement to identify organisers, swift removal of content directly inciting public disruption, and algorithms that do not reward escalating chaos. These are not unreasonable demands. They are the minimum expected in a society that should be taking public order seriously.

We need real honesty in how we talk about these issues. This means refusing to be bullied into silence by the fear of reflex allegations of bigotry. It means distinguishing between legitimate concern and prejudice, between analysis and accusation. If the African-Caribbean community is disproportionately affected by particular problems, the answer is not to look away. It is to engage, to understand and to act in partnership with those who want better for their children.

This requires political will, an institutional backbone and a willingness to withstand performative criticism. But the alternative is already visible; public spaces which feel less secure, authority that feels less credible and generations of useless young people turning into unproductive adults.

Clapham was not an anomaly. It was a signal. A signal that the social elite’s ideological obsession with diversity at any cost has spectacularly backfired. A signal that a pushy minority, emboldened by weak boundaries, can disrupt the many. The answer is not panic. It is resolve. Draw the lines wider society expects. Enforce the rules without apology. Support those who uphold them. And stop pretending this is a price we have to pay for ‘vibrant’ multi-culturalism.

A version of this article was first published in The European Conservative

The National Trust used to be of the United Kingdom’s most treasured institutions. Along with the BBC and Anglican Church, it represented the cultural embodiment of Orwell’s ‘deep, deep sleep of England’. But, as with these other stately bodies, it seems to have yielded to the diktats of the same progressive Stasi who stalk the corridors of all the public organisations.

The Trust is, by some way, the largest and most significant heritage and nature conservation charity in Britain. Its possessions include stately homes, castles, archaeological and industrial monuments, gardens, parks and nature reserves. It receives its funds from a multiplicity of sources, including government departments, local authorities and, notably, directly from the public through the National Heritage Lottery Fund.

However, it is currently facing censure after amending its mission statement to replace references to ‘history’ with words like ‘culture’, and removing mentions of the ‘countryside’ in what is a politically charged shift away from its founding responsibility. The changes, quietly introduced in February as part of an update to the Trust’s ‘Who We Are and What We Stand for’ section, mark an explicit departure from the organisation’s traditional language. Where it once committed to protecting ‘the nation’s coastline, historic sites, countryside and green spaces’, the charity now speaks more hazily of caring for ‘nature and landscapes’, while seeking to ‘give new life to old places.’

Its updated objectives consist of the usual word salads of throwaway niceness. They place emphasis on ‘embracing the traditions of different cultures’ and exploring ‘the stories of different histories’. This, from a charity whose very reason for existing is to protect British culture and history. Understandably, these adjustments have raised concerns among members who believe the Trust is diluting its focus on Britain’s heritage in favour of a divisive, ideological agenda. It has led to the formation of the group ‘Restore Trust’, whose supporters lobby the charity to highlight their fears about its future.

The Trust’s progressive rebrand is also accompanied by a new slogan, ‘Together We Thrive’, with messaging which frames the charity as a ‘movement (spanning) across time and place’, aiming to harness ‘the ideas of a million minds. Alive. Open’.

Quite.

Such language represents a move away from everyday conservation towards abstract activism. The Trust’s values were once rooted in the DNA of Britain, emphasising the protection of ‘nature, beauty and history in towns, cities, villages and countryside.’ This has all been replaced by meaningless statements about ‘caring for nature and culture everywhere.’

Where ‘history’ and ‘countryside’ once conveyed a clear sense of purpose rooted in Britain’s landscapes and heritage, ‘culture’ is a far more ambiguous term, one that is used to justify activities far removed from conservation. The latest membership video (in which you will struggle to see any white, opposite sex-attracted people) merely reinforces the perception that the Trust is moving beyond its conservation remit towards campaigning zeal. The rebranding coincides with a new lobbying effort urging the government to strengthen environmental protections, with members being encouraged to contact MPs on issues ranging from water quality to land use. This is not the stuff of old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn mornings.

The Trust has also highlighted what it describes as ‘unfair access to green space,’ citing cultural barriers that discourage ethnic minority communities from visiting the countryside. The Trust’s gas lighter in chief, Director General Hilary McGrady, is unapologetically pro-diversity, equity and inclusion. In 2025, speaking to MPs, she stated it was a ‘painful truth’ that over 90% of people who work in the heritage sector were white.

While few dispute the idea of widening access, reframing historic sites around contemporary cultural themes is not an appropriate response. The organisation is patronising visitors, of all backgrounds, and problematising the places in its care. It is attempting to attract ethnic minorities by incorporating what it superciliously sees as ‘their’ culture into its properties.

The Trust’s leadership has defended all this, arguing they are intended to make its work more ‘accessible’ and ‘relevant’ to a wider audience. McGrady has previously suggested that unfamiliarity with countryside ‘norms’ can deter ethnic minority visitors. She has previously pointed to uncertainties about behaviour and expectations, noting that some might feel they do not know “what am I meant to wear, how do I behave? What’s a countryside code?” She might just as well have said that black people have natural rhythm.

McGrady and the National Trust management are manufacturing a problem. They underestimate the universal appeal of Britain’s natural and historic places. The countryside has long been open to all, and the Trust’s role should be to preserve and present it rather than re-interpret it through the prism of the board’s luxury beliefs.

The shift in language has struck a chord with those concerned about the direction of all major cultural institutions in Britain. The issue is not simply one of wording but of priorities - whether organisations founded to safeguard the nation’s heritage are gradually being repurposed to reflect elite social and political agendas.

There is little evidence right now that these changes have affected visitor numbers. But that is not exactly the point. The more pressing question is what the Trust now stands for, and whether its evolving identity will continue to command the support of those who have long seen it as a guardian of Britain’s history and countryside. If the National Trust continues to try and broaden its appeal to minority communities, who may never get excited by castles and cliffs whatever is done, it will forget the traditional focus that built its reputation.

Maybe the Trust just doesn’t care. But it soon will when the vast majority of the British public, estranged from yet another of its once cherished institutions, simply stops going.

A version of this article appears in The European Conservative

Four years after the Casey Review found the Metropolitan Police Service to be ‘institutionally misogynistic’, a new review has been commissioned to see if there has been any change following that review. Yes, the ‘Fairfield Independent Review’ has been ordered by (surprise, surprise) London Mayor Sadiq Khan to see if the Met still hates women. I think we all know the conclusions which will be drawn in what will be, essentially, a pre-determined answer in search of a study.

The conviction of PC Wayne Couzens for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Sarah Everard and the exposure of serial sexual offences by PC David Carrick, both in 2021, produced a wave of public anger towards the Met which was entirely understandable. These were not merely crimes; they were grotesque abuses of authority by those entrusted with the power of the state. No civilised society can respond to such betrayals with anything other than outrage.

Yet outrage has a habit of morphing into ideology. In the months that followed, a sweeping claim hardened into orthodoxy: that the Metropolitan Police Service was institutionally misogynistic. Like the assertion of institutional racism, it is a phrase repeated so often that it now passes largely without challenge. But repetition is not proof and slogans are not analysis.

The argument rests on a sleight of hand. Two monstrous criminals are discovered within a vast institution and the conclusion drawn is not merely that the organisation failed to unearth them - which it plainly did - but that the institution itself is morally corrupted. In other words, the presence of depravity is evidence of a depraved culture.

By that standard, no large institution could survive moral inspection. The Metropolitan Police employs tens of thousands of officers and staff; drawn from the society it polices. Policing cannot recruit from a morally superior species of human being. It recruits from the same population that produces criminals, saints and everything in between. Occasionally, disastrously, the worst slip through the system.

That is a failure of vetting, oversight and internal discipline. It is not evidence of institutional misogyny. To describe the Met in such terms is to make an extraordinary claim about its everyday functioning. It would mean that the culture of Britain’s largest police force is fundamentally hostile to women, which is patently ridiculous. This is the same institution whose officers spend enormous amounts of their working lives responding to domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault and coercive control; crimes overwhelmingly committed against women. Thousands of officers dedicate their careers to protecting female victims and bringing male offenders to justice.

The Met’s female police officer strength is at the highest ever in its history, which would not be likely if the organisation despised them. As at the end of September 2022 (after the Couzens and Carrick cases became public knowledge), the Met had its highest ever female officer representation of 30.4% (10,386 police officers), with strong representation of women at all levels. Currently, approximately half of the Met’s workforce is female.

The idea that this organisation is structurally motivated by contempt for women requires an almost heroic act of ideological imagination. But what began as an accusation from activists has, as ever, been reinforced from within. The repeated apologies issued by Commissioner Mark Rowley have not merely acknowledged failures; they have echoed the language of those determined to portray the force as morally compromised.

This instinct for institutional self-flagellation is, in many ways, understandable in the modern climate of public relations. But it is also profoundly counter-productive. Every time the leadership apologises in sweeping, civilisational terms - apologising not just for procedural failures but for supposed cultural sins - it strengthens the narrative that the institution itself is rotten. Critics cite the apology as proof. The leadership apologises again. The cycle continues.

Baroness Casey’s 2022 original review into the Met concluded that the organisation was institutionally misogynistic, as well as being racist and homophobic. That’s quite the feat considering that, in 1999, the Macpherson Report declared that the organisation was only racist. While the Casey Review attracted substantial public attention and political support, its conclusion that the Metropolitan Police was misogynistic was substantially flawed on methodological, conceptual and analytical grounds.

The review relied heavily on qualitative material, including interviews, anecdotal testimonies, case studies and internal documents. While such sources can provide insight into individual experiences, they are limited in their ability to establish the scale or prevalence of misogyny across such a substantial organisation. The review certainly did not provide quantitative evidence demonstrating that misogynistic behaviour was widespread enough to justify the label of institutional misogyny. Without statistical analysis or representative sampling, conclusions about organisational culture risk being based on selective or unrepresentative accounts.

A further weakness lay in the ambiguity surrounding the term ‘institutional misogyny.’ The review frequently used this label but did not consistently define it in any clear sense. The term functioned as a judgement rather than a concept. Instances of workplace sexism, inappropriate behaviour or failures in disciplinary procedures were often treated as evidence of institutional misogyny without demonstrating that such behaviour was sustained by formal organisational structures.

The review was commissioned in the wake of scandals involving officers such as Couzens and Carrick. But using extreme criminal cases as the context for a broader cultural diagnosis will only ever skew the interpretation of evidence. The review also paid little attention to developments that might have complicated its conclusions, such as the presence of women in senior leadership roles, diversity recruitment initiatives and policy efforts addressing violence against women and girls. By focusing predominantly on negative examples and testimonies, the review presented an unbalanced portrayal of the organisation which only ever emphasised failure.

There is no sense of proportion in this currently fashionable sentiment towards the Met. A police force with more than 40,000 personnel will inevitably contain bad actors. The real test of institutional character is not whether such people exist - they exist everywhere - but whether they are protected, excused or removed. The Met’s failure in the cases of Couzens and Carrick was not that it secretly approved of misogyny. It was that bureaucratic complacency allowed dangerous individuals to remain in uniform for far too long.

That failure demands reform, tougher vetting and more ruthless internal discipline. But it does not justify the modish claim that the entire institution is morally suspect. Indeed, the constant repetition of that claim risks producing the very outcome its advocates claim to fear. A police force whose officers are told incessantly that they belong to a misogynistic institution will not become more confident, capable, or effective. It will become defensive, demoralised and risk averse. Whether we actually get the necessary reform from the senior leadership of the Met is dubious, however. They have embraced an institutional culture that leans too heavily toward contemporary progressive political priorities at the expense of their core policing mission.

Overall, the greatest victims of the progressive malaise will not be police officers but the public they serve. London requires a police force that is competent, accountable and confident in its own legitimacy. What it does not need is an endless ritual of institutional self-denunciation in which every crime committed by an officer is treated as proof that the entire system is morally bankrupt.

The crimes of Couzens and Carrick were horrific betrayals of public trust. They demand justice, reform and vigilance; not the propagation of the fiction that the Metropolitan Police itself is institutionally misogynistic - a charge which might satisfy the political moment but which ultimately lets us all down.

On the evening of Monday the 16th March 2026, Trafalgar Square, one of the most symbolically charged civic spaces in London, was transformed into the setting for a mass Islamic prayer as part of a public ‘Open Iftar’ event. The adhan, or call to prayer, resonated around the square, reverberating off the walls of the National Gallery, St Martin-in-the-Fields Church and the Canadian High Commission.

Several hundred Muslims gathered beneath Nelson’s Column, kneeling in co-ordinated observance in the heart of the British capital, along with that perennial gadfly of the progressive Left, London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Naturally, the men and women were segregated.

For some, this was presented as nothing more than a benign display of multicultural harmony. But to many, it was yet another example of Islam parking its jihadist tanks on another trusting Western lawn. It led Conservative MP and Shadow Lord Chancellor Nick Timothy to describe the event as an “act of domination (…) straight out of the Islamist playbook”. These comments have provoked the usual performative outrage, but they deserve very serious consideration.

Trafalgar Square is not merely one of London’s public squares. It is a site layered with national meaning; a monument to British naval supremacy, a focal point for remembrance, protest, celebration and a stage upon which the cultural story of the United Kingdom is continually performed. Such a public space will never be neutral.

To occupy it is to make a statement about belonging, visibility and, above all, power. When a religious group gathers in such large numbers, performs ritualised acts in unison and temporarily reshapes the function of that space, it is engaging not just in worship but in a form of assertion. It is inherently political.

For decades Britain has embraced a model of multi-culturalism which prioritises the accommodation and visibility of the newcomers. The idea is simple; allow these groups to express their identity freely and social harmony will inevitably follow. Events such as Open Iftar are often framed within this theory as gestures of inclusion, openness and shared universal experience.

Yet this model has decisively failed. The United Kingdom establishment naively assumed that all cultural expressions were of equal legitimacy, and that each incoming diaspora would respect existing British societal norms. This model refuses to distinguish between private belief and public demonstration. A small group quietly breaking fast is one thing. A large-scale, highly organised act of public prayer in a national square is quite another. The latter carries much more weight because of its scale and symbolism.

Nick Timothy’s critics argue that similar objections are not raised when Christians hold services or when other faith groups celebrate festivals in public. But this comparison is superficial and more than a little disingenuous. The question is not whether religion can be present in public life, but how it is expressed and whether that expression reinforces shared norms or challenges them. The Open Iftar threw the gauntlet down in the face of a timid and chastened British polity.

This is why the terminology of ‘domination’ makes sense. Quranic texts themselves make that very clear. Critics might find the word inflammatory, but the underlying concern is not at all irrational. It reflects an anxiety about the erosion of a common cultural framework, a framework which has historically defined Britain’s public life.

Defenders of the Trafalgar Square event argue it was open and peaceful and, by all accounts, it was. But that is not the point - perception matters as much as intention, if not more so. To many observers, particularly those already uneasy about the pace and direction of cultural change, the sight of mass Islamic prayer in such a setting is not simply a celebration of diversity; is a demonstration of demographic and cultural annexation.

That is not to say such perceptions are always fair or accurate. But they are real, and they shape public sentiment. To dismiss them outright as bigotry is to deepen divisions rather than address them, a perpetual trait of the Left. A mature society must be able to hold two ideas at once - that religious freedom is a fundamental right, and that the way in which that freedom is exercised can have broader social implications if not done fittingly.

Liberal societies pride themselves on their apparent tolerance, but, in reality, what they display is a craven indifference. They need to have confidence in their own cultures to be able to set boundaries. There is a difference between accommodating diversity and dissolving the native cultural character of shared spaces. When that distinction is lost, tolerance risks (and is) becoming a one-way process; an endless expansion of particular identities into the public sphere without a corresponding commitment to a common civic identity.

Nick Timothy’s phrasing resonates for a reason. He articulates a concern that many feel but are reluctant to express; that Britain’s public spaces and very culture are being rapidly reshaped in what used to be just the stuff of nightmares. And that process is insulated from criticism by the overbearing language of diversity and inclusion.

As Europe continues to grapple with the realities of religious and cultural diversity, we will have to confront, with greater honesty than ever before, the limits and drawbacks of our own forbearance. And, in that sense, Nick Timothy’s argument is less a provocation than a warning - that without clear boundaries, the very idea of a shared public realm will dissolve.

A version of this article appears in Spiked

Recently, we saw another unjustified dismissal of a conscientious police officer. Custody sergeant Rhodri Davies was sacked by South Wales Police after striking a violent offender whilst attempting to restrain him on the ground. The 6ft 7in suspect, Tariq Evans, who was already under arrest for affray, came to no physical or mental harm. But a misconduct panel concluded that Davies’ decision to strike him three times should cost him his twenty year career in policing.

As is often the case with police misconduct processes, the whole affair was hanging over Davies and his loved ones for a long time, no doubt accumulating the stress and anxiety for all. The original incident occurred in 2022 and the final misconduct appeal hearing (at which four other findings of misconduct against Davies were overturned) was only in January 2026.

The sacking of Rhodri Davies is not about misconduct. It is about institutional cowardice. About a policing establishment more concerned with reputational risk and bureaucratic self-preservation than it is with backing its own officers when violence erupts at the sharp end. The situation is very much reminiscent of the dismissal of PC Lorne Castle in 2025 by Dorset Police, for not treating a knife wielding suspect with enough “courtesy or respect”. Indeed, the dismissal of Davies is so unmerited that even a local Labour MP has expressed disquiet. Tonia Antoniazzi, the MP for Gower, said the force’s disciplinary procedures were “deeply flawed” and had “failed” the former officer.

Rhodri Davies was not a problem officer. He was not a repeat subject of complaints, nor a man skating on thin disciplinary ice. He had an unblemished professional record. The incident itself was exactly the kind of confrontation the public demands that the police handle; a violent suspect, physically intimidating and resisting restraint on the ground. This was not a compliant detainee. It was a live struggle, unpredictable, dangerous and potentially lethal if control was not secured quickly. In that moment, Davies struck the suspect three times.

Not with a baton. Not with a weapon. Not in a prolonged assault. Three strikes delivered by hand in the chaos of restraint - what officers are trained to use as distraction techniques to gain compliance when size, strength and resistance create an immediate physical risk. Despite what the media would have us believe, the police are still permitted (just) to strike people, using techniques taught in training and which are regularly refreshed. The suspect in this case suffered no physical injury. No lasting harm. No mental trauma. And yet Davies lost his career.

If that outcome seems disproportionate, it’s because it is. Modern police discipline in Britain has drifted away from judging actions based on necessity in the moment and towards judging them based on how they look in hindsight to the chattering classes. CCTV footage has replaced real-time threat perception as the moral yardstick. Officers are expected to display utopian levels of restraint while grappling with violent individuals in confined environments, settings where hesitation can genuinely put lives in danger. This is the absurdity of contemporary policing oversight - officers are authorised to use force but punished when force looks too forceful.

The appeal hearing in January exposed further fragility in the case against Davies. Four additional misconduct findings were overturned. That should have triggered at least a degree of institutional humility, a recognition that the original disciplinary net had been cast too wide with an eye towards constructing a narrative rather than uncovering the truth. Instead, the system doubled down.

With the ancillary allegations gone, the panel rested the entire weight of dismissal on the remaining finding: the three hand strikes. Context, record, and outcome were subordinated to symbolism. The message was clear - someone had to pay in order that South Wales Police senior management could come across as virtuous to the wider world.

This is a textbook case of risk management masquerading as accountability. Large public institutions behave predictably under pressure; they sacrifice individuals to protect the brand. Police leadership today operates in a climate shaped by activist scrutiny, media sensationalism and political hostility towards the use of force. The safest administrative move is not to defend officers; it is to distance the organisation from them and protect the careers of the higher echelons. Davies became a liability ledger entry. Dismissal allowed the force to signal moral seriousness, to reassure critics and to point to “robust standards.” But it is all theatre. And theatre has consequences.

Frontline policing depends on decisiveness. Officers must act without paralysis when violence erupts. If they begin to believe that any physical assertiveness (no matter how justified) may end their careers, behavioural drift is inevitable. Coppers will hesitate longer. They will wait for backup that may not arrive. They will prioritise procedural defensibility over immediate control. That hesitation does not make policing safer. It makes it more dangerous for officials and the public alike, and the consequences can be deadly.

There is also an ideological asymmetry embedded in cases like this. The modern disciplinary process scrutinises police force more harshly than civilian violence. A 6ft 7in suspect violently resisting restraint is treated as a situational factor; an officer’s strikes become the moral focus. Overall responsibility shifts from the aggressor to the responder.

When state agents are stripped of practical authority while still being expected to maintain order, the results are power without backing and responsibility without protection. Accountability is, of course, necessary. But accountability must be bound to proportionality and reality. There is a vast ethical gulf between punitive brutality and controlled force used to subdue a violent detainee. Davies’ case collapses that distinction.

The absence of injury should have mattered. Davies’ prior record should have mattered. The suspect’s size and violence should have mattered. The overturning of the other allegations should have mattered. Instead, the deciding factor appears to have been reputational; how the incident might look to oversight bodies, campaign groups and headline writers. What we see repeatedly today is not policing guided by principle. It is policing governed by risk aversion. Possibly the only positive consequence of stories such as these is that the officers on the receiving end are now much more prepared to go public.

Risk-averse policing produces demoralised officers, recruitment crises and declining pro-active enforcement. And these are trends already visible across much of the country. Dismissal, the profession’s ultimate sanction, should be reserved only for the most serious of allegations; for corruption, cruelty or sustained abuse of power. Deploying it against an officer engaged in a violent ground restraint - where no injury occurs - cheapens its meaning and signals institutional ingratitude toward those expected to confront danger on the public’s behalf.

When bureaucracies fear criticism more than they value courage, they cease to function as instruments of public protection and, instead, become engines of self-preservation. Rhodri Davies’ career ended not because policing failed, but because police leadership lacked the conviction to defend the realities of policing itself.

A version of this article appears in The European Conservative

Whatever one’s view of the so-called ‘special relationship’ between the United Kingdom and the United States (and I, for one, think it’s non-existent and embarrassing), the UK’s refusal to support American action against Iran marks a troubling moment in British foreign policy. The decision to prevent the United States from using joint UK-US bases while simultaneously (and endlessly) stressing Britain’s non-involvement signals a government more concerned with internal community relations than strategic reality.

Close Commonwealth allies such as Australia and Canada, not natural bedfellows of the Trump administration, recognised the necessity of confronting Iran’s aggression. Britain and its Labour government, yet again, chose hesitation. The government has suggested that legal constraints made participation impossible. That claim does not withstand scrutiny.

Lord Wolfson, the Shadow Attorney General, has outlined a clear legal basis for action. He stated that the right of self-defence exists against an imminent threat from a hostile state with a consistent record of aggression. Also, there have been Iran’s sustained campaigns against British interests; including assassination plots, cyber-attacks and threats to UK forces; not least the six year insurgency against the British military in southern Iraq by Iran-backed Shia militias. There is also the moral obligation to assist allies acting in self-defence, particularly where Iran’s nuclear ambitions pose an existential threat to Israel.

On any reasonable interpretation, Britain could have supported its allies within the framework of international law. Instead, the government chose inaction. This was an explicitly political decision; one rooted in caution and risk aversion rather than national interest.

The graver concern is that Britain’s foreign policy is increasingly shaped by domestic vulnerability. Successive governments have allowed hostile regimes and extremist networks to establish influence inside the United Kingdom. Organisations which proclaim to be NGOs standing for such noble ideals as justice and human rights, turn out to have links with nefarious international players. The Islamic Human Rights Commission, for example, has explicit associations with the Iranian regime. The result is a country that must now calculate foreign policy decisions in light of potential reprisals at home.

Iranian state activity on British soil has become a persistent reality. Plots targeting dissidents, journalists and political figures have been repeatedly uncovered. Islamist extremism remains the single largest terrorism threat facing the country by some way, yet the UK still refuses to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation - despite its direct involvement in hostile operations against British interests. This reluctance signals yet further weakness to adversaries who already view the West as lacking resolve.

Britain’s Muslim population has grown to around 6-7% percent of the total, and in some areas forms a decisive voting bloc. This was seen only last week, in the Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election being won by the Green Party, who unashamedly leveraged sectarian prejudice in order to do so.

This emergence of sectarian political campaigning in certain British constituencies is a worrying development. Recent campaigns have appealed explicitly to religious and ethnic identity, urging voters to ‘punish labour for Gaza’ and portraying political opponents as enemies of Muslim communities. This kind of politics fragments the electorate and undermines the principle of national citizenship. It risks importing the conflicts of the Middle East directly into British democracy, and this Labour government (always running scared of its politically infantile backbenchers) is looking at UK foreign policy through this prism, rather than confronting it.

Electoral fraud scandals in Birmingham and east London exposed serious weaknesses in Britain’s voting system, particularly around postal ballots and community pressure. More recent reports of coercive family voting and organised turnout in heavily Muslim constituencies suggest these vulnerabilities have not been addressed. These issues need to be confronted head on. Public confidence in elections depends on the perception, as well as the reality, of integrity. That confidence is being rapidly eroded.

Mass demonstrations across Britain since 2023 have revealed a disturbing shift in public culture. Large-scale protests have celebrated organisations openly hostile to the West while condemning democratic allies such as Israel. Marches in London have featured open displays of support for the Iranian regime and its proxies. Political figures have attended such demonstrations without apparent concern for the message being sent. At the same time, communities opposed to authoritarian regimes in the Middle East have found themselves overshadowed by louder and more organised pro-regime activism. The scale and intensity of these demonstrations suggest a country increasingly uncertain of its own values.

The government’s refusal to support action against Iran reflects a broader failure of political leadership. Britain once understood that strength deters aggression. Today it too often signals hesitation instead. By dishonestly emphasising legal technicalities and fears of escalation, ministers risk creating the impression that Britain lacks the confidence to defend its own interests. Strategic caution has become strategic paralysis. If hostile states believe Britain can be deterred by the threat of domestic unrest they will exploit that perception, utilising communities (covertly or otherwise) which have failed to fully integrate into British society - due to institutional disdain for the country or just plain cowardice.

Britain faces a clear choice. It can continue down a path where international law is treated as an end in itself, where domestic sensitivities constrain national policy and where hostile regimes operate with increasing confidence. Or it can reassert the principle that law exists to defend nations, not to weaken them. International law should serve the security and sovereignty of democratic states. When it fails to do so, it must be reinterpreted or reformed - not blindly obeyed.

A country unwilling to defend its interests will eventually lose the ability to do so. Britain must decide whether it still intends to act like a serious nation or whether it will remain trapped by a legal framework designed for a world that no longer exists, and by fear of challenging bellicose domestic Islamism.