My P.G. Wodehouse summer
Wimbledon, as P.G. Wodehouse aficionados know, is Ukridge territory. His Aunt Julia lived there, and I am taking a leaf out of his book by keeping quails in Somerset. I bought a few to get started but now want to breed some more. Mr Bezos, despite being so busy with his nuptials, has kindly delivered an incubator and other essentials so I hope to do a bit better than Ukridge did with his chickens, or indeed his proposed duck farm. I must see if I can get a pig next.
The Conservative party may be short of votes but Conservatism is brimming over with ideas. Leading the charge is Radomir Tylecote at the Prosperity Institute, formerly Legatum, and I was honoured to be asked to speak at its summer party. I was the warm-up act for Nigel Farage, who you never want to follow. I argued we need to reunite the right; he demurred, but at the next election we need a mandate in votes as well as a majority of seats. One without the other ends in tears, as Keir Starmer is discovering.
In eight years at educational establishments on the Thames I never once went on the river, but since my son Thomas has taken up rowing – he is the cox for an Eton crew – I am beginning to learn about it. Indeed, I have been taught the difference between rowing and sculling and with this new knowledge I greatly enjoyed my first visit to the Henley Regatta. It was a perfect day, warm but not too hot, in the company of long-standing friends. It is a wonderfully English event, everyone is properly dressed with the happy sensation of being transported, in my case forward, to the Victorian era. Although the trains would have worked better in those days.
Returning to London, my wife Helena and I set off to The Spectator's summer party. As we sauntered along Old Queen Street we bumped into the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. I first met him many years ago when he greeted me saying: 'You don't even think I am a bishop.' It was a point I had not intended to make but it is a reminder that Leo XIII was the pope of Apostolicae Curae as well as Rerum Novarum. As it happens, Welby was not going to the party last week, but I was glad to see him as I had not done so since he resigned. I feel he has been harshly treated and is fundamentally a holy man. The scandal of abuse, in all walks of life but especially the churches, is not ameliorated by finding scapegoats who were not in charge at the time.
The Spectator puts on a fine party but, like my late father, I am not good at mingling and tend to stand in a corner fiddling with my cufflinks in the hope that people will take pity on me and come to say hello. Fortunately they did, and my glass seemed to be topped up after each sip. Pol Roger, in this case, or Bollinger, which I tend to serve at home, make a party jolly and are much to be encouraged. Meanwhile, Helena, who is more socially adept, managed to speak to everyone including Nigel Farage and the editor. She could fill me in on the political gossip as we went home.
When I was an MP, Fridays were always busy with constituency duties. Now they are quite quiet, so it seemed like old times when the friends of Cameley Church came to see me. They are fundraising to preserve the remarkable medieval wall paintings of this wonderful 12th-century church. When I was Lord President of the Council I watched the list of burial grounds to be closed attentively as Cameley is quite full and I plan to end up in the church yard where generations of Moggs and Rees-Moggs are buried. On the day of the bodily resurrection, I expect we will all pop up and fiddle with our cufflinks before ruminating on the beautiful Somerset countryside.
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6 hours ago
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Heritage Foundation founder Feulner dies at 83
July 19 (Reuters) - Edwin Feulner, founder and longtime president of the influential U.S. conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, has died at age 83, Heritage said in a statement. The Friday statement did not say when Feulner died or the cause. Feulner, a Chicago-born political scientist, founded Heritage in 1973 and became its president in 1977, a position he held until 2013. Republican President Ronald Regan awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal in 1989. Current Heritage president Kevin Roberts and Board of Trustees Chairman Barb Van Andel-Gaby, wrote in a joint statement that Feulner founded Heritage to plant "a flag for truth in a town too often seduced by power." "What started as a small outpost for conservative ideas became - under Ed's tireless leadership - the intellectual arsenal for the Reagan Revolution and the modern conservative movement," they wrote. Heritage continues to deeply impact American conservatism - including being the institution that created Project 2025, widely considered the policy blueprint of President Donald Trump's quick-moving second term. Senator Mitch McConnell, a longtime leader of Congressional Republicans, wrote on social media that Feulner "was a great man" and that "his dedication to promoting peace through strength at the end of the Cold War offers a particularly enduring lesson." Representative Steve Scalise, a Republican and majority leader in the House of Representatives, wrote on social media that Feulner "was one of the architects who built the conservative movement in this country."
Times
9 hours ago
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How spies and soldiers will face the blame over Afghan data breach
On a dark winter's day in December 2023, John Healey was escorted into a secure briefing room at the Ministry of Defence and handed a brown envelope. The shadow defence secretary had just received a superinjunction, prohibiting him from repeating a word of what he was about to be told by James Heappey, the armed forces minister. The contents of their discussion would not become public for another 18 months, as the Conservative government used the courts to prevent The Times and other newspapers from revealing a catastrophic data leak involving thousands of Afghans seeking refuge in Britain from the Taliban. Healey left the building shocked by the gravity of the situation, knowing he would almost certainly have to handle the fallout when the veil of secrecy was finally lifted. That moment arrived on Tuesday. In parliament, Healey, now the defence secretary, told MPs how a defence official had inadvertently leaked a list containing the details of nearly 19,000 Afghans in February 2022. It also contained the names of more than 100 British special forces troops, MI6 spies and military officers who had vouched for some of the Afghans. The previous government's response had been to spend hundreds of millions of pounds bringing several thousand impacted individuals and their families to the UK via a secret Afghan Response Route (ARR), without parliament or voters knowing. Sir Keir Starmer and shadow senior cabinet ministers had been looped in shortly after entering government but Healey's wife only discovered what her husband had been dealing with when he delivered the statement. After days of recriminations and Conservative buck-passing, many questions around the scandal remain unanswered this weekend. In Westminster, the defence committee has vowed to investigate the cover-up, with Sir Ben Wallace and Sir Grant Shapps, the former defence secretaries, likely to be interrogated when MPs return from summer recess. • Grant Shapps 'trying to rewrite history' on Afghan leak While both have defended the superinjunction, Rishi Sunak, the prime minister who presided over it, has not said a word and is overseas. The intelligence and security committee (ISC), a body made up of peers and MPs that scrutinises the UK's spy agencies, is furious it was kept in the dark and has demanded a host of government documents around the leak and the cover-up. It has statutory powers, and will launch its own inquiry in due course. Lord Beamish, who chairs the committee, is equally incensed by MI6's failure to inform the committee of the potential disclosure of its agents' identities. Despite providing quarterly updates to the ISC on any major developments, the service failed to mention the issue at any point. The ISC has demanded answers from MI6 and the committee is set to summon Sir Richard Moore, the outgoing chief of the intelligence service, or his successor, Blaise Metreweli, to explain the omission. Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, has also commissioned a review into how the government gagged senior parliamentary figures, himself and the Lord Speaker included, and the constitutional issues this raises. He hopes to update MPs either on Monday or Tuesday. But the biggest unknown is the long-term impact on public perception of parliament, the two main political parties, and British democracy itself. By the time Healey was ushered into the MoD's briefing room in 2023 he had already been made aware of a series of failings relating to the Afghan evacuation. In September 2021, a month after Kabul fell to the Taliban, he had pressed Wallace, the defence secretary, over a human error that resulted in the personal information of 265 Afghans who had worked alongside British troops being shared with hundreds of others who were on the same email distribution list. Wallace apologised and insisted action had been taken to prevent it from happening again; earlier this year, the Afghans affected were told they would be able to claim up to £4,000 in compensation. • How top military chief's role in Afghan data leak was hidden But by August 2023, Healey had identified a total of four data breaches associated with the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap), the main route for bringing over personnel who had served alongside the UK armed forces. On August 13, he released them to the media in a 'Dossier of Failure'. He would not know until later, but the following day the MoD discovered it had another leak — this time bigger than any before. It was decided three months later that he should be informed. Healey's allies believe this was only because he was continually grilling Tory ministers on problems with the Arap scheme. Healey received one more briefing on the secret Afghan operation in opposition, early in the new year. By the time he entered the MoD as defence secretary in July last year, the scheme had been running for months. But beyond a monthly trickle of Afghan relocations to the UK, little had changed. Healey believed it needed to, and was alarmed not just at what his predecessors had left him to deal with, but the apparent secretive mindset that had set in among civil servants. This complaint has been echoed by a number of senior aides who worked for Sunak in No 10. 'For the scale of catastrophe it was, I was very surprised at the lack of urgency from officials in getting people out [of Afghanistan],' said one. 'There was quite a churn of officials working on it.' Healey began to push for a reassessment of the threat posed by the Taliban to the Afghans on the list — the reason for the superinjunction remaining in place — but even this took months of internal debate within Whitehall to get started. • Who knew about the Afghan data breach — and who was in the dark? At the beginning of this year, Paul Rimmer, a retired deputy chief of defence intelligence, was finally commissioned to lead a review. By June, Rimmer had determined that the leaked document had not spread as widely as feared and that its value to the Taliban, as well as its risk to the Afghans named in it, had diminished sufficiently. Decisions were finally made: only a portion of the Afghans had a legitimate right to come to Britain, many of whom had already arrived. The secret route would end and the MoD would no longer fight to keep the superinjunction in place. Healey's team believe that Tory ministers were genuinely determined to protect the Afghans when they first sought the superinjunction. But as time wore on, they suspect a desire to protect reputations crept into the decision-making process. While Shapps has in recent days expressed 'surprise' that it lasted as long as it did, they point out that last summer he successfully appealed against a decision to lift the superinjunction, right in the middle of the general election campaign. Healey is determined that the culture of cover-ups and the persistent issues with data security — stretching well beyond Afghanistan — are permanently resolved in the MoD. A new chief information officer has been brought in and, in January, new software was introduced on MoD computers to more securely share data. Recently a review of the Afghan data leak was completed to ensure information was being held at the right security classification and in the right location. That no one has been sacked for the scandal has also raised uncomfortable questions about accountability. To this end, Healey's long-term defence reforms will establish clearer chains of command. Under a new military strategic headquarters, the chiefs of the RAF, army and navy will formally report to the chief of defence staff for the first time, with Healey overseeing a department more clearly focused on policy development. Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director of the Royal United Services Institute, is also joining Healey as his strategic director and will be responsible for challenging and reviewing all major decisions. Chalmers is hugely experienced in foreign, defence and security policy: he was previously a visiting professor in the war studies department at King's College London and served as an adviser to Jack Straw when he was foreign secretary. Healey has described him as a 'one-man intellectual powerhouse'. An MoD source said: 'We're continuing to drive the biggest defence reforms in 50 years — that means proper accountability, better transparency for parliament and a stronger internal challenge to the MoD status quo.' And yet, the mistakes keep happening. This weekend, The Sunday Times has revealed how a publication associated with a senior British Army regiment has been routinely disclosing the identities of special forces personnel in its ranks. The MoD was warned about the security breach two months ago, and yet the documents are still online after they initially appeared to have been taken down. Healey has demanded an investigation. In No 10, Starmer's aides are also contemplating their next steps, amid growing calls for a public inquiry. This has not yet been ruled out, although Downing Street believes the defence committee and the ISC should be given space to conduct their own investigations. However, the wider consequences of the Afghan debacle will persist. According to government sources, approximately 24,000 impacted Afghans and their families will come to the UK via all available schemes. Of those, 4,500 Afghans have already arrived or are en route via the ARR and given indefinite leave to remain. This allows them to apply for British residency and, ultimately, citizenship. A further 2,400 have been earmarked for relocation over the coming months, with the total costs associated with the secret route expected to hit £850 million. On average, impacted Afghans have brought eight family members with them — the highest number is reported to have been 22 — placing added pressure on already tight housing stocks and stretched public services. Officials had originally hoped they would bring only their wife and two children. They have each been offered 'transitional accommodation' lasting up to nine months. Many of the Afghans clandestinely flown to the UK were originally put up in disused army barracks, under an operation codenamed 'Lazurite'. In 2023, Weeton Barracks near Blackpool was used to house more than 50 families, although it is unclear whether they were individuals caught up in the leak. Many Afghans were then moved into service accommodation, which is usually set aside for military personnel and their families. At its peak, 12 per cent of military homes were being used, although that has fallen below 2 per cent. The MoD has now decided to end the scheme. Others, however, have been dispersed to various local authorities around the country to be housed, including, in some cases, hotels. The secrecy around the Afghans has made locating them difficult, although Bracknell Forest council in Berkshire, which covers the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, said it had received about 320 new Afghan residents alone this year. The sudden influx appears to have created tension with locals. In May, the council was forced to issue an explanatory note saying: 'The council and its partners are aware of some misinformation circulating regarding our new Afghan families. While this misinformation is being circulated by a small number of individuals, we want to make sure all our residents have the facts. We would like to reiterate that our new families are not illegal immigrants, asylum seekers or refugees. They have indefinite leave to remain and so are now UK residents.' A year on from a summer of rioting prompted by the Southport atrocity, there are growing concerns over the national impact on community cohesion — a point also raised in Rimmer's report. No 10 argues the government's response has reduced the possibility of such violence reoccurring, noting that the strategy for announcing the Afghan leak drew heavily on Starmer's response to the Southport riots and the delayed charging of Axel Rudakubana with terror and biological weapons offences. A senior source said: 'We know we are operating in a very low trust environment, which is why we are being as transparent as humanly possible.' A YouGov poll published on Wednesday suggests this approach is working, with 49 per cent of respondents supporting the superinjunction and the need to protect the Afghans, compared with 20 per cent who disapproved. However, the attacks on police officers during violent protests outside an asylum hotel in Epping, Essex, over an unrelated arrest of an asylum seeker on suspicion of alleged sexual assaults in the town, has highlighted how quickly things could escalate again. Luke Tryl, director of the think tank More in Common, said: 'The leak is likely to deepen voters' frustrations about the competence of government and the civil service, confirming their suspicions that they are just not up to the job.' For now, the greatest risk for Starmer is that the Afghan leak entrenches the belief that Britain's political system is broken, regardless of which party is in charge.
Western Telegraph
9 hours ago
- Western Telegraph
Senedd to dissolve covid committee after members quit
At least 13,000 people died in Wales during the pandemic, but more than five years later, Senedd scrutiny of the decisions made in Cardiff Bay has stalled – if it ever got going. Elin Jones, the Senedd's speaker or Llywydd, announced the end of the 'Wales covid-19 inquiry special purpose committee,' which was set up to look at gaps in the UK inquiry. In March, Tom Giffard, its co-chair, and his Conservative colleague Sam Rowlands quit the committee after Labour blocked calls for witnesses to swear an oath. He said he had no confidence in the committee, saying he would no longer associate himself with a process 'seemingly designed to protect those it is supposed to hold to account.' The Welsh Government refused to set up a judge-led Wales-specific inquiry in the wake of the pandemic like in Scotland where a public inquiry was established to learn lessons. Ms Jones announced the committee would be dissolved in autumn after months of wrangling behind closed doors, with the Senedd's public accounts committee picking up the baton. In a statement on July 16, she said: 'Due to the breakdown of the co-chair model that was adopted, it hasn't been possible for the committee to proceed with its work. 'It's been evident through discussions… that a different model will be required to move forward with the committee's scrutiny of this vital work.' Mark Isherwood chairs the public accounts committee which will now lead scrutiny of gaps identified by the covid committee in its report on module one. The Conservative expressed concerns about the committee's capacity and the limited time left in this Senedd term, with an election on the horizon in May 2026. Mr Giffard said resigning from the committee he co-chaired was never his preferred outcome but it was better than the alternative: 'Presiding over a kangaroo court that would never have got to the bottom of the issues that the families deserve.' Julie James, for the Welsh Government, urged Mr Giffard, a public accounts committee member, to reflect on his 'disgraceful' depiction of the covid committee as a kangaroo court.
