I’ll quote it in full:

We send our love and support to the Jewish community in Manchester and beyond who last night gathered to remember Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby, who were killed defending their synagogue last year. My thoughts are with their families and all those who have been affected by the attack.

I know for many Jewish people, the sorrow and fear from that day has not lifted and I know we must do more to protect communities across the country.

I want Jewish people to know that their safety is a priority of mine and I’m determined to stamp out antisemitism for good.

It sounds good, doesn’t it? How could anyone object to such fine, warm words?

Let’s ignore the trite notion that Burnham could “stamp out antisemitism for good”. Jew hate has existed for thousands of years and it’s not going to go away because Andy Burnham says he’s determined to end it. I can’t decide if it’s hubris, narcissism or simply stupidity that lies behind such a statement. Probably a bit of all three.

On second thoughts let’s not ignore it, because it exemplifies the overall hypocrisy of his words. The pledge that Burnham is determined to end antisemitism is self-evidently meaningless. He knows, as will anyone reading his post, that he won’t – he can’t, even if he dedicated his every waking moment to it – end antisemitism. But that hasn’t stopped him writing it.

That’s because the entire post is meaningless. It talks of love and support for the Jewish community, doing more to protect it and stamping out Jew hate. But while those are warm words, that’s all they are. Words. When it comes to actions, Burnham shows the very opposite – that when it comes to his priorities, he couldn’t give a damn about the Jewish community or the views of British Jews about our safety.

At the most basic level, the very first extended interview he gave was with Gary Lineker, a man who has repeatedly demonstrated why many – I would say most – Jews regard him as one of the worst antisemites in the country. Anyone truly bothered by antisemitism would shun Lineker, not reward him with an interview.

But the hypocrisy goes far deeper than that, of course. Under his predecessor, Keir Starmer, Labour has spent the past two years rewarding Hamas for its massacre on October 7 2023 by such means as recognising Palestine, thus giving the terrorists the evidence to claim that theirs was the only way to secure such a move.

Burnham, however, has turbocharged this and is poised to announce sanctions on Israel. These are dressed up as sanctions on West Bank trade, but since in most instances it is physically and logistically impossible to separate this from Israeli trade generally, it’s clear what is really going on. Worse, the sanctions aren’t really about Israel or Palestine as such. They are about Labour’s domestic issues – its fear of the sectarian Muslim vote which secured four seats in 2024 and threatens to win many more at the next election.

Burnham (or rather his staff) might have put together some warm words about antisemitism but his actions show that his actual priority is to do whatever he can to win back sectarian Muslim support – and that means treating Israel not as an ally but as an enemy. And if that puts British Jews’ security even more at risk – which it does – so be it.

There’s a horrible saying about politicians, which is a product of the idea that they are a bunch of untrustworthy charlatans: How can you tell when a politician is lying? Their lips move. I hate that cynical attitude because public service is not only important, it is honourable. But the cynicism of Andy Burnham makes it ever more difficult to make that case.

I had that reaction this morning when I saw this BBC story reporting how hundreds of veterans are being chased by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to pay back thousands of pounds they were given as part of their pension – tens of thousands in many cases –after being told that because of a clerical error they have been overpaid.

According to the BBC, more than 1000 retired service personnel are being pursued for their “debt”. 335 of them were overpaid £5.1m as a result of incorrect National Insurance calculations.

The key point is this: none of the overpayments were their fault. They are ordinary ex-soldiers who were simply handed the money by Equiniti, the company which administers the pension scheme on behalf of the MoD. The soldiers took the money in good faith, as any of us would do.

One ex-soldier received a letter from Equiniti in July which baldly told him that as a result of a systems error he owed £8,000 after six years of overpayments. Peremptorily, his monthly military pension was then cut from £550 to £365.

It’s a devastating double whammy. First, he thought his pension was £550 a month and has planned his life accordingly; now he has been told it’s £185 a month less. And on top of that he is now being chased to pay back £8000 in past overpayments. As he told the BBC, “I haven’t got £8,000 to pay out”.

The Forces Pension Society, which supports military retirees, says it knows of many cases where tens of thousands of pounds are owed. Some veterans have even been told they owe six-figure sums.

Since 2023 the scheme has been run by Sopra Steria, which subcontracted admin of the scheme to Equiniti. A Sopra Steria spokesperson told the BBC that “errors that led to incorrect pension payments originated over a decade before Sopra Steria took over the contract”.

The MoD says that a third of the 335 whose pension was wrong because of National Insurance errors have now paid off their debt in full and 52 have an agreed repayment plan.

Are we supposed to be cheered by this? The government says it has a responsibility to taxpayers to recover the funds while the MoD says it understands that errors to pension payments “may cause uncertainty”. Too bloody right it may.

But what of the other side of the coin? None of this is the victims’ fault, yet their lives are being destroyed – I doubt this is an exaggeration, given the sums they are being told to find – when they have done nothing wrong. I can barely imagine the stress and hardship of those who have already paid off their debt “in full” or have agreed a plan to pay it off.

If this was the result of fraud then obviously those responsible should be held accountable. But it isn’t; it’s the result of a cock-up by the pension administrators at the time.

Yes, it may indeed be galling for the affected pensioners to have to cope with receiving a significantly lower sum from now on than they have been used to. But that’s fair enough now the correct amounts have been calculated.

What is not remotely fair, however, is that these pensioners should be held liable for the money they have previously received in good faith and had no conceivable reason to suspect was incorrect. Most will have spent it, given that even the overpaid sums were hardly lavish.

That the victims are veterans makes it all the more unconscionable that they are being chased for money they don’t have because of a mistake they didn’t make. These people have given years of their lives to serve us and the way we – through the government – now thank them is by ruining their retirements by coming after them for money they could not possibly have known they ‘owed’.

What an utter disgrace.

The obvious response is ‘Who cares?’. Newsnight has been a waste of time and money since May 2024 when it was ‘relaunched’ as a panel discussion programme instead of a serious news show with dedicated correspondents and reports. I was surprised when I searched for the date – I hadn’t realised it was well over two years ago, which shows how long it’s been since I last watched it. The last thing the world – and certainly the BBC – needs is another panel show.

But anyone who cares about the BBC, about news and about how we pay for broadcasting should indeed care – because the way Newsnight has been treated is symptomatic of so many of the mistakes that the BBC repeatedly makes and how it gets its programming so profoundly wrong.

There is only one serious argument that can be made for the licence fee model of broadcasting, especially in today’s world. It’s that a publicly funded broadcaster offers programming that as a society we think should be produced but which commercial broadcasters won’t bother with. That’s a pretty good argument, I think – or it would be if the publicly funded broadcaster, the BBC, did that. The problem is that it doesn’t to the extent it should.

Radio 3 is a classic example of the case for public broadcasting (pun intended). There are many classical music stations world-wide but they are more like Classic FM. That’s fine as far as it goes, but Radio 3 offers a much richer, deeper experience. If Radio 3 (and to lesser extent Radio 4) were examples of how the BBC understands its role as a public broadcaster then the argument for the licence fee would be strong. The problem is that they are now exceptional examples - and serve mainly to show how, overall, the BBC has lost its way. Indeed the more recent attempts to make Radio 3 more like Classic FM are themselves further examples of that very problem.

Whatever one thinks of issues like BBC bias, Newsnight was originally intended as a serious, in-depth programme – and succeeded in that intention. It offered reporting and analysis on a scale and regularity that no other broadcaster could provide. It was, in other words, exactly the sort of programme that the licence fee is meant to provide for. That is the point of the licence fee: to provide programming that commercial broadcasters won’t.

I am always struck by how few BBC executives seem to grasp the basic purpose of the BBC, especially in the modern broadcasting world. The BBC spent years chipping away at Newsnight, cutting its budget and denying it a proper complement of staff. And guess what happened? The quality fell. It then became a vicious cycle as the programme was deemed to be less worthwhile than it had been, and so its budget was cut further.

The sensible approach would have to been to champion a programme like Newsnight – and shows like Analysis on Radio 4 – as the exemplar of what the BBC was about, to make its funding a priority and to use it to show what the licence fee could do. But sense and the BBC are usually strangers, so instead the execs saw falling ratings and took an axe to the show – as if ratings should be the marker by which programme quality in a public broadcaster should be judged. No wonder we now have wall to wall entertainment schlock on the BBC. Newsnight is now part of that schlock as yet another discussion show of the kind that can be found 24 hours a day on commercial TV and radio.

Now the argument is that Newsnight doesn’t add very much, so it might as well be scrapped. This is the very definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course it doesn’t, because the BBC’s decision was to ensure it added nothing to the world.

The great historian Robert Conquest came up with three laws of politics, the third of which might have been written solely to explain the behaviour of BBC management: The behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation can best be understood by assuming it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.

You would think the British government has taken leave of its sense. And you would be right, although none of this has to be imagined.

In 2011 the ‘Contest’ review of counter-terrorist strategy found that the greatest threat to the UK came from terrorist groups operating in Pakistan. And between 2001 and last year, 186 Pakistani nationals were arrested in the UK for terrorism-related offences. Pakistan has long been one of the worst sources of global terrorism, and specifically of groups which threaten the UK.

That should all be viewed in the context of Pakistan’s threat that it will consider taking back any illegal migrants to Britain if we force it to accept the deportation of Shabir Ahmed, the 73-year-old Rochdale rape gang leader, who was a joint Pakistan-British citizen before being stripped of his British citizenship. Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, has said she will change immigration laws to close the loophole that prevented the Home Office from deporting Ahmed.

According to reports, the Pakistan government has taken umbrage at suggestions that we are willing to imposition sanctions – such as visa bans on Pakistanis – if they refuse to take back Ahmed. Then say he has renounced his Pakistani citizenship and spent much of his life in the UK so he is Britain’s problem.

To be blunt: the rape gang culprits are disproportionately Pakistani in origin. The overewhelming majority of identified perpetrators have been males of Pakistini heritage. This is a Pakistani problem, imported into the UK.
Ahmed is not alone: 306 Pakistanis were held in UK jails as of June 30. None should be here.

Our message should be short, swift and unambiguous. As the very first move, we should tell them that if Pakistan refuses to accept Ahmed by a given date – perhaps 1 October – then we will instantly cancel all aid payments.

Indeed, the very idea that we are handing over aid to a country wealthy enough to have its own nuclear weapons programme - and untrustworthy enough to harbour an eye-watering collection of terrorists – is preposterous. There are repeated claims that these groups operate with a blind eye turned by the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Tariba (LeT military and intelligence services.

For too long, Western nations have ignored the most basic fact of foreign and defence policy. We need to decide who are our allies and who our enemies. We too often treat allies as enemies (such as with Israel under this Labour government) and too often our enemies as our allies – as with Pakistan. Until Pakistan proves otherwise – a process that would start with it accepting Ahmed back to Pakistan - it should be treated as an enemy.

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