This past Sunday morning, I woke up to a BBC News Notification - as I’m sure many of you did as well. Now, with the BBC Notifications news prioritisation algorithm veering wildly between “HALF OF LONDON IS ON FIRE!!!” and “PEOPLE UPSET ABOUT EU FLAGS AT PROMS FOR 10TH YEAR IN A ROW!”, it really is like opening that proverbial box of chocolates in so far as you never know what you’re going to get.
This time though, I would say it was pretty important.
Five men, it told me, had been arrested outside the RAF Fairford base. Bombs were mentioned. A cordon was noted. It was, by all accounts, a very serious situation.
So, I did what every normal person would do - I went about my day until more news came out. And the news did come out throughout Sunday, and then subsequently into Monday. There were several statements from the police. The Defence Secretary made a statement. The word “developing” was used a lot by newsreaders. All largely how I would expect things to go.
At the same time, another now also expected situation was happening in the parrallell universe known as X.
The “Major-News-Weapons-Grade-Panic-Attack”. You know the one.
It’s that incredibly strange impulse that sits especially, but not exclusively, within the right-wing ecosphere of commentators, Reform and Restore politicians and, sadly, journalists as well, to take any major or critical event and start, for the lack of a better word, insinuating.
Now this will be met by many of them telling me terribly earnestly that “they’re just asking questions” or why I, as a gay bear with a MacBook, are so intent on keeping the public in the dark. That the people have a right to know what’s happening.
And on that last point, I absolutely agree. I am also quite interested to know what five young men were doing skulking about an airfield in the early hours of the morning. But there is a vast difference between me wanting to know, and me wanting what happened to fit what I hoped would be a story that validates my own worldview.
For what is a pretty spectacular example of the latter happening in real time, I would like us now to turn our attention to Isabel Oakeshott, Dubai “Expat” and one of the main commentators pushing forward the noble causes Reform UK. Her X feed was chosen in this case because it provides a remarkably complete record of how this particular panic-attack unfolded, though I will note, she was far from the only contributor.
Nigel Farage, in his usual video-with-some-trees-with-fantastic-lighting, was doing his utmost to connect the arrests to Iranian agents arriving on dinghies in Kent. Robert Jenrick nattered on about the fact that we may finally (finally, guys!) be seeing the consequences of weak border security. Rupert Lowe was seconds away from loudly shouting “BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM!?” and demanding the suspect’s DNA and ancestry.com username and passwords. Patrick Chrysties of GB News was dismayed that on the day a “terror plot to attack an RAF base in Britain” was foiled, we were still allowing asylum seekers to cross the English Channel.
All of these commentators and politicians were already building a story. A story about immigration and terror.
Oakeshott herself, kicked her own telling of this tale off with questions about a photograph that, as at that stage, did not yet exist.
The Mugshots Will Explain Everything
In our first exhibit, I would like you to note those quotation marks. The ones around “British born.”
Now, by the time this post was thrown into the X aether, police had announced that they had made five arrests on suspicion of explosives offences and preparing a terrorist act. The cordon was explained, as was the evacuation of the nearby homes. At this stage, much to the chagrin of the X commentariat, they had not publicly established where the men were born, what they looked like, what they had intended to do or whether they were guilty of anything.
Which, of course tracks - as this was approximately 14 hours or so since the arrests had been made.
That did not, however, give Ms Oakeshott any sort of pause, with her palpable anticipation to finally see those mugshots, presumably because a person’s face can instantly tell you which passport they hold, where they were born, and, of course, whether the police had described them honestly.
I myself became a British citizen in 2022, and do have to note that nobody at the ceremony mentioned that my citizenship would remain subject to visual inspection by a woman on Twitter. If there is a required mark I am supposed to have, it was not issued to me. This could be down to the fact that my ceremony was done on zoom, so I may still need to go get it done. I dunno.
The implication, however, is what’s important in this particular tweet - and it was, very importantly, left for her readers and followers to fill in those pesky gaps. This is the incredibly convenient thing about insinuation - you as poster cane make your audience do all the grubby bits, while at the same time insisting that you never said it yourself.
The Amazing Number of Things that fit in Three Vans
By around eight that evening, after everyone had had their dinner/tea/supper (circle whichever is appropriate), we had moved from five men arrested in Fairford to:
Hamas
Red carpets for asylum seekers
Two tier justice
The “catastrophic degradation of our defences”
I will here admit, that while I knew that vans were capable of taking huge loads, that is still an impressive amount to fit inside three of them.
Up to this stage, none of those subjects had been publicly or officially connected to any of the five men arrested - Ms Oakeshott had simply taken what was, in and of itself, a very alarming incident on its own, and attached her existing list of grievances straight to it.
In the ecosphere of the online-right, even though the event was still, and is, still being investigated, its political meaning had already been settled before the Carte Blanche outro was even starting1.
To be fair to Ms Oakeshott here, the media itself was not being particularly helpful in this regard. The earliest reports spoke confidently of a “foiled bomb plot,” with some even saying that explosives had been found.
By yesterday, we had an update that after forensic investigation by the counterterrorism police, no viable explosives had been found, and as of the time of writing, there had not been a final account of what was actually in the three vans.
The investigation may, of course, still establish a serious plot - however, there is a pretty meaningful distance between police investigating a plot and a plot having been proved.
The Cover-Up Begins Remarkably Early
Not ten minutes after Ms Oakeshott took us on the guided tour of the Great British Grievance Cinematic Universe, the next post went out. In this one it was suggested that ministers and police asking people to not speculate might mean they’re trying to cover up their own culpability.
This post was particularly fascinating. It has that tang of a free speech complaint brewing in the background - this of course despite no on telling Ms Oakeshott that she could not, in fact, speak.
The advice on speculation though has less to do with free speech, and more to do with the facts, at that stage, were not yet fully confirmed or verified.
At that stage, the five men had been arrested, but not charged. The people living in the cordon zone had not yet been allowed to return to their homes.
With this in mind, unfounded claims about identities and motives could frighten these residents even more than they already must have been, it could contaminate the accounts yet to be given from witnesses or it could cast suspicions over people with no connection to the case whatsoever.
Does that mean that I think either the police, security services or government should never be scrutinised? Of course bloody not. We do unfortunately have a rather long and sordid history in this country of all three of these bodies getting things wrong. Disastrously so.
Is the right time to do so less than 24 hours into what is potentially a terror plot?
Absolutely not.
The Suspicious Sounds of Several Police Statements
By the next morning, Ms Oakeshott was concerned that “the longer they are quiet the more suspicious we become.”
As a self-confessed news junky, I understand wanting more updates. At that stage, the residents around Fairford had spent a full night away from their homes, and some of the most important questions about the suspects and the vehicles remained largely unanswered.
The problem with this is that the authorities hadn’t been quiet.
Gloucestershire police had issued a statement by 8:18 on Sunday morning, the Counter Terrorism Policing had issued one by 14:02 the same day. The local police force went into more detail by 14:15.
And while all this was happening, investigators had been spending their night fully examining the scene - and despite what CSI and so many other shows about forensics tell us, the answers are not instant, they are not completely infallible, and sometimes, they don’t get shared at all.
What Ms Oakeshott meant by “quiet”, I suspect, is that up to that point the police had not issued the very particular information that she really wanted - but as it turned out, some of that information, was just a few hours away.
British - but Which Kind of British?
Not long after the complaints about the authorities being too “quiet”, a statement was issued by Counter Terrorism Policing.
They announced that all five of the men arrested the day before were UK nationals. They were aged between 23 and 25 and all of them were resident in London. Investigators at this stage noted that they had not yet established the men’s activities, nor had they determined a possible motivation.
Oakeshott responded to this with the tidbit that there are 6 types of British nationality - which, is largely a correct classification2.
The bigger question is why this technical distinction suddenly became central to an investigation into three vans near an airbase? There was a sudden great interest in not only who these men were, but:
How and when they had obtained British nationality?
Had they been born in the United Kingdom?
If not to the above, their country of origin?
Am I saying that a person’s background is completely irrelevant when it comes to criminal investigations? Of course not - but at this stage, there was still no evidence that a birthplace, rather than what the men did or intended to do, would explain the situation in Fairford.
These questions were posed by Oakeshott because “UK Nationals” had, from the looks of things, failed to deliver an answer that didn’t quite fit the story she had been subtly advancing.
Again, she is not alone here - Farage had the small boat connection and Jenrick had suggested a border security connection (both unproven at the time of writing).
Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform and Oakeshott’s partner, then reposted her comment and added his own questions around ethnicity, dual nationality, asylum status, previous convictions, Prevent referrals and even benefits and social housing.
This is the point where anyone sane would go “this is all a bit daft, isn’t it?”
The information that the police supplied was that these five men were “British Nationals”, and immediately influential British politicians and commentators responded by finding anything, anything, to make them sound less British.
Each qualifier, from these men potentially being born elsewhere to whether they were benefit claimants, was offered to an audience already being encouraged to associate immigration with what happened at Fairford and therefore subject to being even further maligned - despite the fact that it was not even 36 hours since the investigation had been kicked off.
Two Bail Decisions and a Very Convenient Comparison
Late on Monday afternoon, I got the next update from the BBC App Notification. Counter Terrorism Policing had announced that the five men that had been arrested would be released on police bail while remaining under investigation and subject to what police described as stringent conditions on their movements and contact with others.
That was unexpected - to say the least.
To Ms Oakeshott though? It was the perfect opportunity to immediately compare their release with that of Danny “Tommo” Thomas, him of the Black-Shorts and GoFundMe fame, who last week had been arrested over an alleged incident involving a dinghy in the English Channel.
And if you squint very hard, and don’t think about too much, this comparison might sound persuasive. It could even make you think that the two tier justice that Farage and co have been banging on about for two years may, in fact, be a thing.
Except the two cases were, of course, completely different.
In the case of Thomas, he had already been charged with criminal damage and allegedly failing to provide the PIN for his mobile phone. Thomas denied both charges and he appeared in court and was refused bail.
The Fairford suspects, as at the time of writing this, had not yet been charged - the police released them on conditional bail while they continue their investigation.
Different decisions made by different people at very different stages of different cases.
Want to question a bail decision? By all means - do so. In the case of the Fairford men, there really are questions about the bail condition, but for me personally, the questions are around whether there had been a massive misunderstanding.
Putting them side by side with another one and then loudly shouting “TWO-TIER JUSTICE!”, however, gives us no indication of why or how a decision was made - but it absolutely does tell us rather a lot about which interpretation the comparison encourages.
An Anatomy of a Fannywobble
The whole situation around Fairford is truly a brilliant learning opportunity for some of the ways in which the right-wing media ecosphere operates, and my thanks to Isabel Oakeshott who displayed so many of the now well known tactics.
In this episode we saw
The anticipation at the photographs that would confirm her worst suspicions.
The loading of a yet unknown incident with all the grievances she holds.
A request to avoid speculation being reframed as conspiracy.
Several police statements not meeting a personal bar of how many is enough.
On confirmation of British nationalism, the atomisation to create distance and increase suspicion on an outgroup.
And once the suspects were released on bail, an inaccurate comparison with a separate case to further the pet cause of “two-tier justice”.
And at no point was there the question that should have been asked: What do we know now that may require me to rethink what I said earlier, or to issue a correction or clarification.
As I already mentioned, this is not isolated to Oakeshott’s account - we saw the same story play out on the X accounts of Robert Jenrick, Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe, Zia Yusuf and an exceedinly large number of US based commentators as well.
The early media coverage is also worth considering, with the description of a “foiled bomb plot” being published without it yet being known whether this was the case. An allegation like that can, of course, be addressed in the seventh paragraph of an article report - but the truth is, far too many people don’t make it that low down into meaty pieces of writing, and the headline is what sticks.
There are also consequences to both this style of commentary and reporting. There are groups of people like migrants and asylum seekers who are placed, yet again, under a microscope for something they had nothing to do with. British citizens of a different hue or with a funny accent have their nationality placed in quotation marks before being subjected to a knock off version of “Who Do You Think You Are.” People who quite rightly ask us all to wait for evidence before jumping to conclusions become immediately complicit of concealing said evidence.
Now the very strong caveat here - this post was not written as an attempt to minimise what happened at RAF Fairford. We live in a dangerous world with Russia and Iran both being a genuine threat to the safety of the United Kingdom. Three suspicious vehicles outside an RAF facility absolutely warrants an urgent response and robust investigation.
This is a serious situation.
And it’s when these situations are this serious that the kind of insinuations we’ve seen over the past several days is most likely to do the most damage. Uncertainty being spread by the Media and Commentators could genuinely put people at risk, and information released by the police too early can cause serious issues later down the line.
I want to understand what happened at Fairford, and I am not the only one. I want to know what was in the vans, what these men were doing there in the early hours of a Sunday morning. I want to know whether someone directed them. Whether a hostile state was involved. I want to have the reassurance that the security services are in the best possible position to protect me and my family.
What I absolutely do not need is a collection of commentators treating a British passport as the start of a cross-examination and calling it journalism because they put a question mark at the end.
This post was written between 05:00 and 08:00 on Tuesday 29 September and may not contain the latest information on the Fairford situation. For the latest updates, please refer to trusted news organisations and to statements made by Counter Terrorism Policing.
IYKYK
I have it on good authority from Terry on BlueSky that these are:
Cyclists
Lanyard Class
Mage (and all other magic users)
The Hoard
C*nts
Arseholes.
Mr Thomas was stated as being NFA, so of No Fixed Abode, which will have had a bearing on the refusal of bail.
Oakshit and her fellow travellers are desperate for non white people to commit offences so they can prove their prejudiced assertions.
They aren’t in the least bit interested in the security of this country.
I don't remember where I saw this because it was literally decades ago, (possibly Private Eye), but it was something to the effect that being released on police bail is sort of code for 'we don't think anything is going to stick but we don't want to admit it yet'. It's a vague memory & I am very much not a lawyer, so *insert shrug*. But so far it really does feel like this is going to turn out to be not the plot they're looking for.
Oakeshott & co are disgusting.