Andrew Gilligan

The name of the government’s highly-controversial ‘special representative’ to oversee its equally controversial definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ will be announced this week, ministers told Muslim groups at Downing Street yesterday. I understand that the shortlist of 12 includes, though is not limited to: Sayeeda Warsi, the former Tory co-chair and now crossbench peer; Dilwar Hussain, the former No. 10 cohesion adviser under Keir Starmer; Dominic Grieve, the chair of the working group which drew up the definition; Wajid Khan, the Labour peer and a former faith minister under Starmer; Afzal Khan, the backbench Labour MP; Farmida Bi, a senior lawyer and Labour peer;   Qari Asim, a Leeds imam, lawyer and activist.

Jonathan Powell was not security vetted before being given his post as Britain’s national security adviser, The Spectator can report. In a previously unreported aspect of his evidence to parliament about the Peter Mandelson affair, Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, said: It didn’t jump out to me as a problem that [Mandelson’s] DV [developed vetting] was happening after the announcement [of his appointment]. That is what happened in the case of the National Security Adviser. McSweeney also said that 'Jonathan Powell, too, got appointed before the necessary work' and that 'we made a political appointment for National Security Adviser, in Jonathan Powell. As far as I remember, we appointed him and then we began the DV [developed vetting]'.

Sarah Helm, the wife of Britain’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell, has had a busy 24 hours. The Spectator revealed yesterday that she had (among other things) defended Hamas, questioned the UN investigation into mass rape by the terror group, blamed the 7/10 attacks on the creation of Israel in 1948 and compared Israel to the Nazis. Since then, Helm has been frantically doubling down. She has reposted a tweet saying that ‘Zionism [is] racism,’ the thing that got Zack Polanski’s Greens into such trouble, and that ‘almost the entire British political and media classes are RACIST.

Sarah Helm, the wife of Britain’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, took flak last week after appearing to support Palestine Action, the banned terror group, on Twitter. The police looked, but took no further action. The Spectator can reveal that there is vastly more material, far more controversial than this, in Helm’s tweets. Helm has defended Hamas, questioned reports of mass rape by the terror group, blamed the 7 October attacks on the creation of Israel in 1948, compared Israel to the Nazis, and appeared to praise Syria’s then dictator Bashar al-Assad for remarks in which he had called the Jewish state an ‘outlaw colonial entity’ populated by ‘herds of settlers that are closer to barbarism than to humanity.

As the National Trust takes over Rules, London’s oldest restaurant, I have a vague feeling of dread. Like many people, I mildly dislike the National Trust, whose idea of 'inclusion' always feels like Beatrice Webb handing out gifts to the servants in 1905. The people they’re trying to target don’t want to be patronised. And if you want to be 'accessible', cutting your ticket prices or laying on bus services for people without cars would be far more useful, if alas more costly, than prattling about Black History Month on your social media. Does the Trust realise that Rules is a place which at least until recently specialised in serving things which have been shot? How does that square with its bien-pensant worldview?

This week, The Spectator exposed how the British Muslim Trust (BMT), paid millions of pounds by the Government as its official monitor of anti-Muslim hatred, has made multiple claims about attacks on mosques which are not true, and others for which it refuses to provide evidence. They were either not attacks, or were not directed against mosques, or both On Thursday, the BMT chose to double down. Probably because of our piece on Tuesday, they finally, six weeks after promising it, published a report purporting to prove their claim that “one mosque [was] attacked every five days” between July 2025 and July 2026. That is indeed the title of the report. But what it actually proves is that the BMT is even shoddier and more dishonest than we feared.

A new body paid millions of pounds to be the Government’s official monitor of anti-Muslim hatred has made multiple false claims about attacks on mosques, and other claims for which it refuses to provide evidence, The Spectator can reveal. One of the most serious supposed attacks on mosques was actually on a building labelled as a synagogue. At least two of the supposed attacks on mosques never took place. One of the most serious supposed attacks on mosques was actually on a building labelled as a synagogue.

You know what the SAS’s problem is, according to Monica Grenfell, a civil servant who worked at their HQ? They 'swear all the time,' she said, which was not acceptable in other workplaces, adding: 'You can't go into M&S and say [someone] is a f***ing c***.'  As she put it, 'there are nasty characters there and nasty characters who really ruled the roost.' I am not making this up. She really did say it in an interview with the Times. It hasn’t had anything like the attention it needs as an illustration of how far some of our public servants have lost contact with reality.  I hate to break this to Monica Grenfell, but soldiers of all regiments swear a lot. The SAS have a quite different job from sales assistants in clothes shops.

Many of Britain’s institutions are being destroyed from within by leaders who do not seem to understand what they are for. But even by those standards, the Church of England is a special case, as shown by its decision to spend the 25th anniversary of 9/11 giving a supporter of Osama bin Laden a prize for ‘reconciliation and interfaith cooperation.’ The tragedy of the Church of England – and it is a tragedy – is that we have seldom been in greater need of spiritual and moral leadership. As Matthew Arnold’s famous Dover Beach, lamenting the Sea of Faith’s ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,’ puts it: ‘We are here as on a darkling plain/ Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fight/ Where ignorant armies clash by night.

A man called Lester Holloway has written a savage attack on black reporters who covered the Jason Arday scandal, saying they “have blood on [their] hands” and suggesting that they should put their supposed loyalty to their race above their duty as journalists. In a piece for the Voice newspaper, Holloway says: “Jason told me and others that articles written by black people had hurt him most…. We as a community need serious introspection, because our people – his people – wounded Jason most deeply…. Some of our community have blood on our hands.” He also claimed there was “emerging evidence that Jason’s amazing achievements could actually be true” (we have previously dealt with some of this evidence.

Cambridge University’s “independent inquiry” into the events around Jason Arday appears already to have decided what its outcome will be. We can say this for a few reasons. The first is a small, but critical, difference between two statements about the inquiry made by the university on Friday. One was a message to students and staff from the Vice-Chancellor, Deborah Prentice. This said that the second part of the inquiry would include a “broader review… of the support available to academics who are subjected to excessive public and media scrutiny.” It just won’t do.

The principal of Homerton College, Cambridge, has insisted he was telling the “truth” when he said that Jason Arday was murdered – or in his words, was the victim of a “lynching” and a “public assassination” by people who had decided that “Jason doesn’t deserve to be alive.” The reaction of Woolley’s fellow activists to our initial post was, inevitably, to say that questioning all these untruths was racist In a LinkedIn post Simon Woolley, Lord Woolley, has doubled down on his factually false and racially inflammatory claims, saying he was “speak[ing] truth to power” and “nor would I change my actions. Not for a moment.

A man stands at a rally in Trafalgar Square, ranting that Jason Arday was murdered in a 'lynching' and 'public assassination' by 'rabid wolves' and 'dogs of hell' who had decided that 'Jason doesn’t deserve to be alive'. Some rabble-rouser from the lower shallows of race activism? No, or at least not solely. The man who said these inflammatory words is a peer of the realm and the principal of Homerton College, Cambridge: Simon Woolley, Lord Woolley of Woodford. His behaviour at the rally last week, surely unprecedented for someone in those roles, is further evidence that unsuitable appointments at Cambridge did not begin with Jason Arday.

Professor Hilary Cremin, the head of Cambridge University’s education faculty, is best known as the woman who fawned over her new hire, Jason Arday, as “the best in the world.” Now here is further evidence that Cremin, and the department she runs, have completely lost their faculties. Cam, the university’s alumni magazine, runs a regular feature entitled “This idea must die.” Last month, in a bizarre, stream-of-consciousness contribution to that slot, Professor Cremin nominated for death….the school system. “Many schools function a bit like a prison, a factory or the army,” Cremin claims “Many schools function a bit like a prison, a factory or the army,” she claims.