A very convenient secretThe best of The Observer, from across our newsroom |
Basia Cummings and Brad Gray • Thursday 17 July 2025 |
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There are lots of things that make journalism complicated. Sorting fact from fiction, for example, or paying attention to the right things at the right time. But perhaps the hardest, the one that remains most challenging day in, day out, is which seam to follow. In a vortex of noise, distraction and deception, finding the right seam of stories to report on is the difference between a newsroom buffeted by the obsessions of the day, and a newsroom that is an anchor in the storm of information. So allow me to praise my colleague, Ceri Thomas, who months ago reported on a man called Gen Sir Gwyn Jenkins.
In May, Ceri Thomas reported that it was Jenkins who oversaw the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, known as Arap, a programme set up to allow Afghan soldiers who had worked closely with British special forces to resettle in the UK. Except that, under Jenkins, almost every application under this scheme had been rejected in the initial run.
It had also been alleged that some of these Afghan soldiers applying to the Arap scheme may have witnessed British war crimes. So a question followed: were they being denied entry to the UK because of what they had seen, and what they might be compelled to tell a future inquiry?
The MoD is adamant that Jenkins had no involvement in decision-making in Arap cases. Now he is back in the news, given the extraordinary story of a data leak of 33,000 Afghans who had worked with British authorities. Ceri writes:
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"At the heart of the MoD's response to the debacle there is a moral question: when it decided not to tell people who appeared on the leaked list that their safety had potentially been compromised, was the MoD acting in their interests or its own?
"Once the initial decision had been taken to keep the leak secret so the Taliban would not find out about it, the chain of consequences that followed had a relentless logic. Nobody could know, so the secrecy had to be air-tight, and the surest way to achieve that was through a super-injunction. The MoD may have decided on secrecy for entirely principled reasons, but it would have known that it came with collateral benefits the size of an aircraft carrier: a secret screw-up couldn't be investigated and couldn't be audited, and nobody could be held to account. Secrecy took one senior person above all out of the line of fire – the First Sea Lord, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins."
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"The enemy of nonsense" – George Orwell |
'They know not what they do'
The felling of the Sycamore Gap tree unleashed a wave of emotion in this country. So perhaps it was inevitable that this emotion would leak into their trial and to their sentencing. This week, Adam Carruthers and Daniel Graham were both handed four-year jail sentences. To this day, neither of them have given a proper reason for why they did what they did. Earlier this year Andrew Hankinson wrote a sublime piece that delved into the backgrounds of the pair. He was in the courtroom for the sentencing this week too. He writes: "I've been told a play and documentary are planned. I expect they will be premature: the most revealing part of the story will be what happens to the two men after prison." This story is not over. Click here to read more → |
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It's a privilege to choose my own bedtime by Melanie Reid Melanie Reid's column this week starts with a question: "If you lost your physical independence, what would you miss the most?" Melanie comes to the conclusion that the thing she mourned most was the "nuanced freedom" to choose when to be able to go to bed. Melanie is a tetraplegic following a horse-riding accident in 2010. She writes how, with her movement so reliant on a carer, the right to go lie down in the afternoon, or to stay up a little later to watch one more episode of a show she was enjoying, was taken away. Now, after purchasing a rotating bed that turns into a chair, Melanie has been slowly reclaiming that right. She says: "It has been transformational … I have the bliss of loitering in solitude in the kitchen or my office, wasting nobody's time but my own."
Click here to read more → |
Mark Gatiss is surviving by Rich Pelley The latest This Much I Know column features the writer and actor Mark Gatiss. He is beloved for his work on The League of Gentlemen and the BBC's Sherlock, which debuted 15 years ago. But Gatiss is uncomfortable with artificial anniversaries. He tells Rich Pelley: "You can't mark everything, as you'd spend your entire life memorialising." He also speaks about how the deaths of his parents, as well as his sister, and how that has shaped him. "Life becomes increasingly difficult," he says, "but as long as you're surviving, that's a victory."
Click here to read more → |
Music review: Billie Eilish's stage whispers by Kitty Empire With the recent explosion in popstar talent, you'd be forgiven for briefly forgetting about Billie Eilish, whose landmark debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was released when she was just 17. Our pop critic Kitty Empire was at the fourth night of six at London's O2 Arena. Now 23, Eilish is used to selling out arenas and putting on blockbuster concerts. Empire writes about how she is made for a stage of that size, alternating between "hushed vocals somewhere between ASMR and the last voice you might ever hear" and "howls, with an entire arena on backing vocals".
Click here to read more → |
Daily Sensemaker The future of pro-Gaza protests Since the government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, dozens of people across the country have been arrested on suspicion of terror offences, for allegedly supporting the group Click here to listen → |
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Thanks for reading. We'll be back tomorrow. Basia Cummings Editor, digital The Observer
Brad Gray Production editor, newsletters The Observer
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