Why thousands of Afghans were secretly relocated to the UK
They were advised not to take phone calls or respond to messages or emails from unknown contacts, to limit access to their social media, to consider closing their accounts, and to only go online via a private connection. Understandably, they were terrified.
Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian's defence and security editor, tells Helen Pidd how 24 hours later, John Healey, the defence secretary, apologised for probably the biggest – and most expensive — data leak in British government history. And the former Afghan judge Marzia Babakarkhail tells Helen about how Afghans fear the data list could could endanger their lives.
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Spectator
21 minutes ago
- Spectator
Starmer's Palestine policy is perverse
Keir Starmer's declaration that Britain will recognise a Palestinian state unless Israel takes 'substantive steps' to end the war in Gaza is, on its face, a symbolic diplomatic gesture. Yet symbols, particularly in international affairs, carry weight. And this one is a blow to Israel, both politically and strategically. The question is not whether this decision is consequential, but how and for whom. Framed as a humanitarian imperative, the British ultimatum appears, on closer inspection, to rest on an unsettling inversion of logic. The precondition for recognition of a Palestinian state is not reform or renunciation of violence by the Palestinian leadership, nor a credible commitment to peaceful coexistence, good governance, or democratic legitimacy. Rather, it is Israel's conduct alone, its willingness to agree to a ceasefire, to deliver aid, and to move toward a long-term peace process, that is made the determining factor. Starmer's conditions should of course mention Hamas's responsibility, and that of the Palestinian Authority with its decades-long record of corruption, incitement, and rejectionism, for the horrific war. This is the peculiarity at the heart of Starmer's announcement. Recognition of statehood is offered as a punitive measure. It is effectively, a sanction imposed on Israel for continuing a war it did not start, and whose most basic defensive aims are not yet fulfilled. The attack of 7 October, in which Hamas-led forces massacred, raped, and abducted Israeli civilians in the deadliest day of anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust, appears in this logic not as a disqualifying atrocity but as the trigger for Western diplomatic reward and a capitulation to the demands of the worst parts of Starmer's domestic pressures. That reward, moreover, creates perverse incentives. If recognition is contingent on Israel achieving a ceasefire, then Hamas has every reason to prolong the conflict rather than agree to the proposals already agreed on by Israel. In fact, in recent rounds of negotiations, it has been Hamas, not Israel, that has rejected US- and Egypt-brokered proposals for truce. Britain's move risks reinforcing the calculus that terrorism and intransigence are politically productive strategies. Why compromise when war advances your diplomatic standing? If Hamas holds out until September Britain will reward them recognition. If they agree to a ceasefire, then that recognition will most likely fall away. The broader implication is chilling: terrorism works. What the Palestinians could not gain from Oslo, Camp David, or the Annapolis process, they now edge closer to achieving by Hamas-led butchery. And the lesson will not be lost on other Islamic terrorist groups. If the United Kingdom, long a proponent of negotiated two-state coexistence, can shift towards unilateral recognition without requiring any substantive improvement in Palestinian behaviour, then the deterrent against future atrocities weakens. The incentive structure is reversed. Violence is vindicated, and increased violence can tip the balance in their favour. Indeed, Starmer's conditions underscore a deeper asymmetry. While Israel is asked to prove its readiness for peace by making strategic concessions, the Palestinians are exempt from analogous expectations. There is no requirement to fully dismantle all terrorist infrastructure, to end incitement, to hold elections, or to stop paying stipends to the families of terrorist killers as a reward and incentive. The Palestinian Authority, far from being a credible alternative to Hamas, continues to glorify violence and undermine coexistence. Just who does Starmer think will run this state and what policies will they take towards Israel, Jews, deradicalisation, and peace? What sort of state would such leadership produce? The most likely answer is a new Islamic terror state, making Britain's decision not a gesture of peace but a leap into further delusion. It bypasses the very preconditions that any serious two-state solution must entail: mutual recognition, renunciation of violence, and the emergence of stable, responsible governance. Recognition without those anchors risks institutionalising the very dynamics that have kept the conflict alive. None of this is to deny the suffering in Gaza. Civilian suffering is immense, and better aid solutions are important. But conflating humanitarian concern with state recognition is both analytically unsound and strategically counterproductive. In truth, Britain's posture is less an act of moral courage than a transparent diplomatic sleight of hand. It pretends to reward Palestinian aspirations, but in fact punishes Israeli resilience. It offers a vision of peace, while reinforcing the machinery of perpetual war. On 7 October, Israel learned that its enemies are prepared to cross every moral line. Starmer's proposal risks confirming that lesson with a dangerous corollary: such depravity not only pays, it persuades. Hamas, in other words, sought to invert the moral foundations of Israel's legitimacy by orchestrating an atrocity so extreme that it would provoke a devastating retaliation — one whose humanitarian toll, cynically manufactured and then weaponised through propaganda, could be falsely presented to the world as a mirror image of the Holocaust, thereby compelling the very same nations that once affirmed Israel's right to exist to now affirm the Palestinian claim to statehood. It seems to have worked on many History will judge whether this gesture was, in the end, merely symbolic. But it already sends a signal that cannot be unheard. And that signal, to Israel and the world, is not one of peace, but of peril.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Jon Burrows: UUP's newest MLA carries on tradition of men in uniform
Jon Burrows is the newest Stormont MLA for the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), but he is not the only former police officer the party has tried to attract News NI understands the party approached Jim Gamble, the former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command Centre in the United Kingdom, to be its North Down candidate in the Westminster election in July immediately turned down the Gamble declined to comment when approached by the BBC. Instead, the party went for the former Army officer Colonel Tim Collins, who failed to win the notoriously told the BBC at the election count that the people of North Down "don't want someone who doesn't live in Northern Ireland"."They're interested in local politics," he added."They're not interested in cutting VAT, they're not interested in international affairs. "They're interested in potholes and hedges."He had already complained during the campaign that he could insure his Rolls Royce in England, where he lived, for what it costs to insure a Ford Fiesta in north the recruitment of Jon Burrows to replace Colin Crawford, who lasted less than a year in the North Antrim Stormont seat, carries on a tradition within the UUP of seeking to attract oven-ready high(ish) profile representatives who are no strangers to of the past four leaders of the UUP have been:Steve Aiken, a former Royal Navy submarine commanderDoug Beattie, a former Royal Irish Regiment officer well known for his service in Iraq and AfghanistanMike Nesbitt, a former TV news presenterIn addition, one of its nine current assembly members, Andy Allen, was seriously injured while serving in the Army in leader Robbie Butler is a former firefighter. The policy of bringing in high profile people from other walks of life is not entirely unique to the example, Sinn Féin now has an MP, Pat Cullen, better known for her role as boss of a UK-wide nursing trade the UUP unarguably is way out in front for bringing in candidates already well known in other fields. So why?"There is something that attracts seniority to the UUP," says former party staffer Michael Shilliday. "In the old days that was just "big house unionism". "Maybe it's still that."But really it is what the 'decent people' shtick from 2005 was all about."That's why these people see themselves reflected in the UUP."That is a reference to a disastrous 2005 general election campaign slogan: "Decent People Vote Ulster Unionist". I remember being in the BBC office in Stormont one morning when the party press officer walked in introducing a man he said was a former Royal Navy submarine what seemed like no time at all, Steve Aiken, to use the hackneyed line, went from the command of one sinking ship to he stepped down, he was replaced by Doug Beattie who promised a "union of people", before things the latest changes is Mike Nesbitt, another man who had no grounding in elected politics when he swapped his news anchor role at UTV for an even hotter seat at quitting the leadership the first time, following a disappointing assembly election, he is because there was no other obvious candidate and partly because he represented the best chance of salvation for a party which is rapidly using up its quota of last to former UUP director of communications Alex Kane "it's a hangover from the 1920s when the Ulster Unionists saw themselves as the party of service". "They still do," he adds."Service to the people, service to the country and for them that is represented by a uniform."In a way, Mike Nesbitt is the same. "He was seen in people's living rooms on television each night and that is a form of service too. "The problem is times have changed."But it also reflects a lack of candidates from those already within the ranks who have the track record necessary to win elections and that, long-term, is a problem for the once mighty party of unionism.
New Statesman
an hour ago
- New Statesman
Donald Trump, the king of Scotland
Illustration by André Carrilho The world is not exactly lacking conspiracy theories about Donald Trump, but here's another: the President of the United States of America still thinks he's on a reality show. For years, the people around him have simply referred to the whole business – the elections, the criminal trials, the assassination attempt, the Epstein subplot, the presidency itself – as The Show. As far as he's concerned, this is all for the cameras. Summits and speeches are talked about as shoots and episodes; other world leaders are referred to as characters. Before a meeting or a press conference, aides will brief him on his script for the scene. Hundreds of people spend their time reassuring a nearly 80-year-old man in charge of 5,244 nuclear warheads that he and everyone he meets are just characters in a loosely scripted series. The problem with this theory is that it's obviously true. Donald Trump has been closely involved with the fake rivalries and mock combat of WrestleMania since the late 1980s. In 2004 he was hired by the British reality TV producer Mark Burnett as a pantomime businessman on The Apprentice. Burnett remains Trump's friend, adviser and his special envoy to the United Kingdom. Trump's meetings with world leaders at the White House this year have had the unmistakable confected drama of semi-scripted reality television, in which characters enter into staged confrontations over their interior design choices, or who's dating whom, or (in this series) the fate of Western democracy. Trump himself openly acknowledged this when he wrapped one of these scenes – his hour-long harangue of Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in February – by announcing: 'I think we've seen enough. This is going to be great television.' The arrival of the Trump show in Scotland allowed its star to try out some new material. 'Trump takes time out to open Scottish golf course,' the BBC reported, but this was backwards. He took time out from his real job of promoting his own businesses to travel not exactly to Scotland, but to the bits of it he owns (hotels and golf courses) to play golf and do a little diplomacy. This was international relations as practised by Henry VIII, who in 1520 travelled not exactly to France, but to the bit of it that he owned (Calais) for some sport and a little diplomacy. The décor for that summit included fountains that flowed with wine and a pair of live monkeys that had somehow been covered with gold leaf. Trump was pleased with the new ballroom in his hotel; he devoted almost as much time to it in his press conferences with Ursula von der Leyen and Keir Starmer as he did to the trade deals he'd agreed with both leaders. At other moments he gestured to his golf course outside. 'Even though I own it,' he observed, 'it's probably the best course in the world.' Footage emerged of Trump, who claims to be an expert golfer, and whose best scores are always recorded at clubs he owns, arriving near a bunker in a buggy. A few metres ahead of him, a caddy could be seen discreetly dropping a ball on to the course for him to play, rather than the ball he'd hit into the sand or the long grass. Who cares? It's not cheating, because it's not real. Also on display was Trump's capacity for comic timing. When he met the Starmers on the steps of his golf resort, Turnberry, there was a moment in which they were all supposed to stand while a bagpiper played. Any other politician would have waited for the music to end. Trump, with his gift for farce, began taking questions immediately. The journalists had to yell over the blaring, dissonant noise of music being squeezed out of a leather sack. Victoria Starmer's mouth was set into such a perfectly flat line that her expression could have been used to calibrate a spirit level. Trump's mockery of Starmer was delightful to watch. The Prime Minister, he observed, is: 'Slightly liberal. Not that liberal. Slightly.' He grouped Starmer together with his friend, Nigel Farage: 'They're both good men.' When it did not seem the PM could wince any harder, Trump declared: 'I respect him much more today than I did before, because I just met his wife… and family', he added, just a little more quietly. 'He's got a perfect wife. And family.' He declared his love for Scotland, the land of his mother, especially those parts of it which he has had bulldozed for golf courses and hotels. The natural beauty of Scotland is augmented by golf courses and hotels, but ruined by wind turbines (which he calls 'windmills', which is funnier, and which he opposes because he thinks they ruin the view from the 18th hole of one of his golf courses). Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe 'Wind is the most expensive form of energy,' he declared (it's actually the cheapest form of electricity), 'and it destroys the beauty of your fields and your plains and your fields and your waterways… If you shoot a bald eagle, in the United States, they put you in jail for five years. And yet windmills knock down hundreds of them.' The monstrous eagle-mashers are also bad for the mental health of whales. 'It's driving them loco. It's driving them crazy.' There is nothing in which Trump cannot immediately be an expert, because this is a TV show and no one knows anything anyway. He was asked about the UK's problem with illegal immigration in small boats: 'I know nothing about the boats,' he declared, but he knew who was on them: 'They'll be murderers, they'll be drug dealers.' He claimed to have stopped six wars. 'I'm averaging about a war a month.' India and Pakistan were now at peace, thanks to him. He had put an end to the Congo-Rwanda conflict: 'They've been fighting for 500 years… but we solved that war.' Before Trump brought peace to the land, the situation was just: 'Machetes. Machetes all over the place.' He said hostages who were taken by Hamas during the 7 October massacre have since been to see him in the Oval Office. This is what he asked them: 'When you were a hostage, and you have all of these people from Hamas around you… did they ever wink at you and say, like, 'Don't worry, you're going to be OK?'' He cited the more noble situations he has seen in 'the movies' – 'you even see it with Germany, where people would be let into a house, and live in an attic in secret' – as if they were real, because for him they are. When someone lives in reality TV, rather than reality itself, they see no line between what can be material and what should not be. And so Trump continued his comic pace even when talking about 'what they used to call the Gaza Strip. You don't hear that line too much any more.' He spoke about the $60m in aid the US has sent as if it were generous (his government spends that in less than five minutes) and opined: 'You really, at least want to have somebody say thank you'. Asked if he believed the people of Gaza were starving, he replied: 'I don't know. I mean, based on television I would say, not particularly, because – those children look very hungry, but we're giving a lot of money and a lot of food.' Later he would try to appear more concerned: 'Some of those kids are… that's real starvation stuff. I see it. And you can't fake that.' It is truly grim is to see leaders who live in the real world nodding along, powerless or unwilling to describe the situation in Gaza as anything other than, as Starmer put it in response, 'a humanitarian crisis… an absolute catastrophe', as if the bloodshed and mass starvation were the result of a natural disaster rather than the deliberate actions of soldiers and the Israeli cabinet. It reveals who has the power to make jokes about anything, and who is the butt of them. And that is the point at which the Trump show stops being funny. [See more: A Trump-shaped elephant] Related
