A Dereliction of Duty
From Mandelson to schools our institutions are failing to protect the public
Towering Columns
In The Telegraph, Tom Harris says the Mandelson vetting row has become a test of Starmer’s honesty and authority, because either he misled Parliament or his government failed to tell him crucial facts.
The Prime Minister’s constant parroting of his determination to put the country’s best interests first – as if he were the first holder of the office to realise that’s what the job has always been about – has put him in a bear trap of his own making. And the oft-shared video of Starmer telling an applauding audience that “I never turn on my staff, you should never turn on your staff” has gained a wider reach in the wake of his sacking of two chiefs-of-staff at Number 10 and now Robbins.
Given that he knew of his boss’s repeated commitment to putting the national interest before everything else – even before the desire to appoint a political celebrity from a bygone era to a senior diplomatic post – would it not have occurred to Robbins that allowing the Prime Minister to go ahead with Mandelson’s appointment against the advice of our security services might not comply with his stated principle? If the appointment was, in the view of security officials, not in Britain’s national interests, is that not a pertinent piece of information that should have been shared with at least one minister?
Instead we are asked to believe that this was known only to Robbins, who thought it best to withhold it from Starmer, and the rest of the Government, including his own boss, the then Foreign Secretary.
In The Critic, Aleks Eror argues that despite a change of governing party, policies implemented in Hungary may not change much.
Little is known about the incoming prime minister. He claims to be a conservative and there’s good reason to believe him. A former mid-ranking civil servant in Orbán’s once-dominant Fidesz party, he was reportedly passed up for promotion by the party hierarchy multiple times until he eventually lost patience and quit in February 2024 while going public with allegations of corruption against a number of Fidesz insiders. He launched his political campaign the following month, promising to clean up Hungarian politics and also mend relations with the EU. Since then, he’s served as a perfect blank canvas onto which all of Orbán’s critics could project their hopes and dreams.
This has led to a weird situation where he has been portrayed as some sort of democratic freedom fighter by both the liberal media and Brussels elites alike, even though he promised to keep Orbán’s big beautiful border fence, refused to comment on Fidesz’s attempted cancellation gay parades last year, and expressed only lukewarm support for Ukraine — all while wearing traditional folkloric shirts that would probably be described as “white nationalist” coded by the #FBPE crowd. The only reasonable assessment of Magyar at this moment is that he’s an unknown quantity and that we can only speculate about his true convictions and how they will affect Hungarian politics.
For now, the only thing that is likely to change is a shift in tone from confrontational illiberalism to a more restrained patriotic conservatism because Magyar’s focus will be on purging state institutions of Fidesz appointees so he can rule with a free hand and unlock some €18 billion in frozen EU recovery and cohesion funds that Brussels withheld from Orbán. His response to Budapest Pride this summer will be a possible indicator of just how far he intends to dismantle the Orbánist state. State officials with Fidesz loyalties are almost certainly doomed, but the Hungarian capital could yet remain a bastion for rightwing think tanks and networks that will help sustain Fidesz-style populism as a political force in the long run.
In The Telegraph, Guy Dampier illustrates how one obscure case in Diego Garcia displays the ineffectiveness and impracticality of Britain’s asylum system.
They began by trying to process the asylum claims, with Home Office asylum interviewers “seconded” to the authorities and the cases reviewed by independent reviewers, who were mainly retired judges and barristers. However, a legal challenge by lawyers in London against the process led to it being withdrawn, all negative decisions revoked, and the whole thing having to begin again. For three long years the migrants were stuck there, in a camp costing British taxpayers over £108,000 a day.
The asylum seekers were housed in military tents on a site nicknamed “Thunder Cove”. They leaked and soon ended up infested with rats. There were sexual assaults and harassment, as well as hunger strikes, suicide attempts and self-harm. Some asylum seekers had to be sent to Rwanda for medical treatment. Others chose voluntary return. The total cost rose into the tens of millions, with the Foreign Office warning it could rise to £50m a year. Attempts to restrict the asylum seekers from leaving the camp, to prevent them wandering into the base, have been ruled illegal, meaning that compensation is likely to be paid.
Following the general election in 2024, 39 of the asylum seekers were granted humanitarian visas to come to Britain, although this did not constitute permanent settlement or recognition of their refugee claims. When this was announced in the camp, most of the single men who were not granted these visas began to self-harm, some in front of children. There were also two suicide attempts. This blackmail worked, with the visas extended to cover 61 of the 64 remaining migrants. Those excluded were the three who had criminal convictions.
In UnHerd, Andrew O’Brien outlines Britain’s unique vulnerability to external economic shocks and why this means American threats matter.
Trump is not stupid. He knows that Britain needs easy access to American markets to sustain its fragile economy. Keir Starmer also knows this, and has said that he wants to get closer to Europe to reduce dependence on the United States. This is to misdiagnose the problem. The British economy needs America precisely because of its imbalanced trading relationship with the European Union.
There are three great trade powers in the world at present: the United States, the European Union and China. Britain is currently running trade deficits with two of them: China and the European Union. The British economy is importing £42 billion more from China than it generates in exports. The deficit with the European Union, however, is more than twice as large and stands at just under £90 billion a year. The only major success in terms of trade is with the US, where Britain’s surplus currently stands at roughly £73 billion.
In essence, the problem is that Britain can sell services very easily to the United States because of cultural, linguistic and historic ties, but it is much more difficult to sell them to the EU. On the flip side, demand for European goods has never been greater. This has nothing to do with Brexit but with the country’s dependence on Europe’s energy and goods while solely selling services. In 1999, Britain’s trade deficit with the EU was £11 billion, but by 2015 it had reached £69 billion.
For Conservative Home, Bob Seely says Britain risks being crippled by hybrid warfare because political leaders still think too slowly about defence.
It’s very likely that China and Russia have malware in the UK’s critical national infrastructure. How do we know? Because China has done so on the US grid and the US has been public about the problem: hidden kill switches in solar panels, persistent access to the US electricity grids and hackers embedded into the US infrastructure. Russia has also embedded itself into US systems; in the highly significant 2020 SolarWinds cyber-attack, Russia maintained a persistent presence on US government servers for months. If they have done it in the US, they will have done it here.
Any sustained cyber-attack, potentially backed up with physical sabotage of the system, might knock out the grid for days, weeks or months even. Worse, it may be controlled by others with the ability to turn it off and on.
Most people are not prepared for a world without electricity; no lights, no heat, and for some, no cooking. Our just-in-time supply chain is designed for speed and efficiency, not resilience. The average person stores three days of food. Within a few weeks food might have to be rationed. We saw panic buying at the start of Covid, especially in large urban centres. How long would social cohesion survive? Judging by the rampaging mobs in south London, we seem to have enough difficulty keeping law and order even in times of plenty.
For The Telegraph, Danny Cohen highlights the serious threat posed by the Green Party.
There is no doubt that many voters have lost faith in the mainstream parties that have dominated British politics over the last century. Their failures in government, along with a sense that the UK is stagnating, have led growing numbers to feel they have nothing to lose, that they may as well roll the dice and try something different.
But there is more to it than that. Gaza has clearly been a driver of Green Party support amongst the disgruntled far Left and some sections of the Muslim community. The Greens have a lot more to say about a war taking place thousands of miles away than any issue that would improve the day-to-day lives of British people. But do these pro-Gaza voters also want to legalise Class A drugs and prostitution? Have they taken a proper look at the policies they would be supporting?
Increasingly, voters appear to be ignoring what political parties actually say they plan to do. It’s dangerous and the consequences could be far-reaching for us all.
So if you don’t want to tank the UK economy, if you believe Britain should have borders and you are not in favour of legalising heroin and crack cocaine please think carefully before voting Green. This is no joke. The future of our nation may depend on it.
In The Telegraph, Ian Acheson describes how our weak institutions helped make the Rudakubana tragedy possible.
Prevent, the very scheme that should have escalated this kind of case to urgent intervention by others, was treated as a box-ticking exercise. Rudakubana was referred three times, but each referral was prematurely closed because he did not fit the neat category of a clearly defined terrorist ideology. The inquiry shows officers following processes while missing the point: a dangerous young man obsessed with violence, whose ideology was incoherent but whose trajectory was obvious. Compliance with paperwork became a substitute for professional curiosity and moral courage.
Mental health services fare no better. The inquiry describes emails never answered, assessments delayed for months, and a specialist high-risk children’s service that never saw Rudakubana because he fell between bureaucratic stools. His autism diagnosis became a reason not to act decisively on risk, as if neurodiversity were a shield against serious intervention rather than part of a complex, dangerous mix. Time after time, professionals accepted the most comforting interpretation of his behaviour and moved him on.
Layered over this is a suffocating ideological capture. In children’s services and mental health, the language of vulnerability and trauma has crowded out an honest recognition of dangerousness. Rudakubana was seen through the lens of “a child in need”. I heard this mantra repeated at a gathering of Home Office officials and NGOs convened ostensibly to encourage reflection after these ghastly events. The result is a system exquisitely sensitive to causing offence, soaked in the lexicon of piety and compassion but strangely numb to the potential and actuality of mass murder.
In Conservative Home, Sarah Ingham argues France now outperforms Britain militarily because it spends smarter, plans better and takes sovereignty more seriously.
France is, in corporate-speak, Britain’s peer competitor, but recent events are highlighting its defence superiority.
Defence procurement in Britain is currently synonymous with wasting time and money. The current defence crisis raises many questions, not least why France is apparently getting more bang for its buck – or should that be plus bang pour l’euro?
NATO’s former longstanding target of spending 2 per cent GDP on defence is a rough guide to an alliance member’s commitment to investment in national security. In 2024, Britain spent 2.28 per cent and France 2.04 per cent. In 2024/25, Britain spent £60.2 billion on defence: last year the Ministère des Armées’ budget was €61.8 billion. (£53.7 billion at yesterday’s rates)
France’s Armed Forces’ regular strength was almost 200,000 in 2025: in January, Britain’s was 143,560. France has one aircraft carrier to Britain’s two, but in most other classes – frigates, destroyers, corvettes – it has more ships. A database for military geeks suggests the Armée de l’Air et de l’Espace has 988 active aircraft, the RAF 640.
An in-depth study by Britain on how France’s Armed Forces are getting more for less is now urgent. Le Crunch last month was the final, thrilling, match of the Six Nations. Le Crunch Nouveau is French vs British defence.
President Macron alluded to the “reordering of US priorities” in relation to NATO. Should the US leave the alliance, it will be like the current exodus of the world’s wealthiest from Britain: celebrated by most in Labour, disastrous for the national bank balance as the capability gaps would need to be plugged.
Wonky Thinking
Policy Exchange’s new report on schools and gender safeguarding argues that far too many schools are still mishandling issues related to gender. It highlights that social transitioning is often facilitated by schools without informing parents, with unclear guidance facilitating inconsistent practices. The report calls for clearer guidance on gender in schools with clear statutory rules and stronger enforcement.
Nevertheless, in the majority of cases, schools adopted an inconsistent approach across the questions asked, meaning that vulnerable children were not always afforded the necessary safeguarding protections. For example, in cases of gender distress, some schools involved parents but did not inform the Designated Safeguarding Lead or a medical professional. Some schools involved some of the relevant parties but still adopted a broadly permissive approach to social transition, often indicating that they were struggling to balance their responsibilities to promote equality and provide anti-bullying and pastoral support with their safeguarding duties.
Moreover, the rights and interests of other pupils in school were not consistently upheld. Some schools required other pupils to accept a transitioning child’s new name and pronouns, potentially infringing on their right to freedom of expression. This was frequently justified on the basis of equality, pastoral care, or anti-bullying considerations. While most schools maintained single-sex toilets and changing facilities, many did not maintain single-sex sports or, if they did, only did for some sports. Schools often suggested that this was not a priority, instead indicating that decisions would be made on a case-by-case basis, with reference to safety considerations, but rarely to fairness, dignity, or privacy.
Most strikingly, a minority of schools continued to adopt a broadly permissive approach. 10% of schools did not inform parents when a child disclosed feelings of gender distress while also operating a policy of self-identification. In practice, this meant that some schools permitted a child to self-identify as a different gender and begin a social transition within the school environment without parental involvement. In such cases, vulnerable children may be denied access to multi-agency support and instead supported to begin a process of transition in school without full consideration of the potential risks or long-term implications. In these instances, contested beliefs about gender identity appear to have become embedded within school practice, shaping responses to vulnerable children in ways that risk compromising the effective discharge of safeguarding duties.
Podcast of the Week
Pollster Scarlett Maguire joined The New Statesman’s Anoosh Chakelian and Emily Lawford to discuss findings from Merlin Strategy polling that suggest young white women are becoming radicalised.
Quick Links
The COVID inquiry finds the UK’s vaccine rollout was an ‘extraordinary feat’.
The V&A changed catalogues at request of Chinese publisher.
A Jewish university student highlights growing antisemitism on campuses.
Prime Minister claims he did not know Mandelson had failed vetting.
The Chancellor u-turns and calls for a ramp up of North Sea drilling.