The Empty City

The Palestine Action proscription case and the botched prosecution of Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh – how the Home Office, the police, and the prosecutors, are not taking terrorism law seriously

13th March 2026

Hello and welcome to The Empty City blog, the new name of which is explained here.

Terrorism law is important and should be credible

Let us start with the most basic point about terrorism law.

Terrorism law should be credible and taken seriously.

Terrorism law is a special body of law, in addition to the general laws of the land, conferring special powers and creating special rules in respect of the threat of terrorism.

As such, of all areas of law, it should be taken seriously and it should be credible.

The United Kingdom never really used to have terrorism law, at least in permanent form.

Instead we had, for example, a succession of temporary Prevention Of Terrorism Acts, of deliberately limited duration, renewed as and when by parliament.

And it was on this improvised legal basis that the United Kingdom dealt with the the terrorism that flowed from the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, which came to an end to a large extent with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

Somehow those threats had been dealt with and a sort of resolution achieved without the need for any permanent terrorism legislation.

And then something changed.

And after 2000 the United Kingdom, year-on-year, created a body of permanent terrorism law, creating a security state within the state.

This was partly because of 9/11 and what followed – though the 2000 Act received royal assent before that dreadful tragedy.

And it was partly because of (perhaps counter-intuitively) the Human Rights Act 1998, which required all interferences with the fundamental rights of individuals to have an express legal basis. In other words, some of this stuff had been going on before, but there had been no statutory framework, as it had not been needed.

But after 2000, and for whatever reasons, permanent terrorism legislation grew like topsy.

Looking at the titles of the primary legislation, you may think that the “anti-terrorism” and “counter-terrorism” Acts would cancel out the “terrorism” Acts, but: no. The effect is accumulative.

In addition to the eleven Acts listed above from 2000 to 2025, we have had other extensive primary legislation on surveillance and data retention and national security.

According the the legislation website we have also had 163 items of secondary legislation with “terrorism” in the title since 2000.

Huge piles of new legislation on terrorism since 2000.

But, still, terrorism legislation should be taken seriously and be credible. Even if one can be concerned at the ever-growing extent of terrorism law, it serves – or should serve – an important legal purpose.

Terrorism legislation provides – or should provide – a special body of law for dealing with terrorism which cannot be done with the general law of the land.

The problem is that recent events have shown that terrorism legislation is not being taken seriously – and it is not being taken seriously by those who should take it seriously: the government, the police, and the public prosecutors.

And this is obvious from how section 13 and related provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000 (as amended) are treated by those with public power.

Here are three examples.

First, the proscription of Palestine Action by the Home Secretary was been ruled unlawful by the High Court.

(On this, see my posts here and here.)

The details of the High Court judgment show a Home Office that did not take the proscription seriously, imposing the sanction on flimsy or non-existent basis.

Even if the Home Office reverse this ruling on appeal, this is the sort of measure that should not have come anywhere close to a successful legal challenge.

The courts are usually deferent on matters of national security, and the judges were not impressed by Palestine Action, but even the High Court could not buy this proscription.

And this was because the Home Secretary and the Home Office did not take terrorism legislation seriously.

Second, the botched prosecution of Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, the Kneecap rapper, shows the police not taking terrorism legislation seriously.

(See my Prospect post from yesterday here.)

The police did nothing about an alleged incident for six months, even though supposed breaches of terrorism law should presumably be dealt with swiftly and diligently.

And then the police panicked at the six-month deadline for the relevant offence – and royally mucked up because they had not got the relevant consent in time.

From Kneecap to Keystone.

These are the same anti-terrorism officers who, of course, are supposed to be keeping us safe.

And then we have the public prosecutors in the same case.

When the defendant’s lawyers rightly pointed out that the prosecution was void for want of jurisdiction – because the requisite consent was not in place in time – the Chief Magistrate of England and Wales (no less) threw out the prosecution.

But the public prosecutors could not accept this decision.

Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh simply had to be prosecuted for the alleged incident, no matter the cost to the public purse, and no matter the effect on settled case law.

The Director of Public Prosecutions resorted to the rarely used appeal by case stated to get the High Court to reverse the decision of the Chief Magistrate of England and Wales.

One would think that given the substantial delays and backlogs in the criminal justice system – some now lasting years – and which are seemingly so bad that the jury system itself may be dismantled – would mean that the Crown Prosecution Service would have better things to do.

But no, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh simply had to be prosecuted.

The High Court, however, were not impressed with the appeal.

The High Court pointed out that siding with the Director of Public Prosecutions in this matter would disrupt plain statutory provisions and settled caselaw.

The High Court even went to the extent of stating its “concern” at the “mistake” for which there should be “blame” in a classic passage of judicial understatement (emphasis added):

“It is a matter of concern that a charge which both the DPP and the Attorney General considered met both parts of the Full Code Test for Crown Prosecutors will never now be determined. There was, they decided, a realistic prospect of conviction and the prosecution was in the public interest. We have not investigated the reasons for this failure and nor do we seek to attribute blame. That is not because these circumstances are not worthy of consideration but because they are irrelevant to our decision.”

Ouch.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, of course, should not have wasted their department’s scarce (and valuable) resources on this hopeless appeal. The Crown Prosecution Service should concentrate on putting cases together, not trying to cover its back for when a mistake was made.

By the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Crown Prosecution Service pretending no mistake had been made (with an appeal based on an extraordinarily unconvincing case theory with no basis in any authority), they too showed they did not take the applicable terrorism law seriously.

By saying terrorism law should be taken seriously one is not denying that there is a purpose to terrorism law.

It is to say that terrorism law should not be taken lightly.

Credibility of any area of law can be fragile, and terrorism law deserves better than recent antics of the Home Office, the police, and the public prosecutors.

This post is also cross posted at The Empty City substack, which is run in parallel with this blog.

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Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.

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What is not happening with constitutionalism in the United States and the United Kingdom

11th March 2026

Hello and welcome to The Empty City blog on law, policy, and lore – the new name of which is explained here.

A look at constitutionalism (and the lack of it) in the United States and United Kingdom, with reference to a 1980s computer magazine column

The first journalist who I knew by name was Lloyd Mangram, the writer of a monthly round-up of news for that wonderful 1980s magazine for Sinclair Spectrum users, Crash.

(Yes, I was a Speccie – less earnest than the BBC micro users, less bombastic than the Commodore 64 users, and less exotic than a Dragon 32 user.)

The Merely Mangram column was cheerfully discursive and leisurely, and it gave a better sense of what was going on (and not going on) generally in that world – especially for this then-teenage reader – than the news reports, interviews and reviews elsewhere in the computer press.

So you can imagine the devastation when I discovered one day that Lloyd Mangram did not actually exist – that this supposed author was actually a composite persona put together by the other magazine writers.

Lloyd Mangram was a fiction!

This was when I first learned to be cynical about the media.

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Nonetheless, there is merit in that sort of discursive commentary – especially about human affairs.

News reports are necessarily narrow; op-eds often promote a preconceived “angle” with motivated reasoning; explainers invariably work backwards from what topical particular point needs to be quickly explained.

But if [A] has some connection to [B], and in the meantime [C] is not happening, then a discursive approach can sometimes give more insight in what is going on, than any news report, an op-ed, or explainer.

And as Kenneth Tynan (who I think definitely existed?) says somewhere, the job of a critic is not only to say what is happening, but also to say what is not happening. This must also be true of a commentator.

Yet commenting on something which is not happening is not really what our media is geared to do, if you think about it. There is enough going on report and analyse, without setting out what is not happening.

In respect of the United States, what is not happening explains a great deal of what is happening.

What is not happening is any overall sense of constitutionalism.

President Trump and his circle are doing the worst of things, at home and abroad. There is a general approach of cruelty and violence, from Minnesota to the Indian Ocean .

But.

There are always Trumps. There are always Vances and Millers and Hegseths and Noems.

There are always knaves and fools, and there always those those who will serve knaves and fools.

The question is how constitutional arrangements – the division of powers, the checks and balances, the rule of law and the guarantees of certain fundamental rights – have failed and are failing to prevent what is happening.

The arrangements are there: Trump and his circle could face removal by impeachment at a stroke, and their antics could be consistently held to be unlawful.

Yet that is not happening.

What is not happening is any constitutionalist approach to restrain Trump and his circle.

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Here in the United Kingdom we have a different sort of thing which is not happening in respect of constitutional matters.

We have a supposedly left-of-centre government with a former human rights lawyer as Prime Minister – and with similar lawyers and ex-lawyers in prominent positions.

But we do not have any consistent overall view to constitutionalism and constitutional reform.

Yesterday – hurrah! – there was a vote passing the removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords, some 115 years after such peers were allowed to remain in the legislature with what was intended to be a temporary stay.

This reform is the minimum required – and a great deal of Lords reform is undone, as is any (and arguably more important) Commons reform.

And also yesterday – boo! – there was a vote restricting trials by jury.

This change, of course, will make little or no difference to court backlogs, which to deal with requires resources at scale.

And as this blog has said many times, juries are less important for the powers that they have, than for the powers that they prevent others from having.

Again, this change is not part of any overall constitutional vision.

Many of the problems in the United States and United Kingdom come about from what is not not being done.

And in our focus of twenty-four news and doomscrolling, we are perhaps less able to notice what is not happening.

As one Speccie computer game character would have said:

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

(Source)

This post is also cross posted at The Empty City substack, which is run in parallel with this blog.

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Comments Policy

This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.

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The curious section 3 of the new National Security Act

10th March 2026

Hello and welcome to The Empty City blog, the new name of which is explained here.

A broad and vague provision may be a cause for concern

Last week I was asked to write a piece on the arrests of three individuals in respect of Chinese espionage. One of the individuals was noteworthy, partly because they are married to a member of parliament. It was quite a news event and the New Statesman wanted someone to explain the relevant law.

As is my general approach, I did not mention the individuals or comment on the potential merits of any legal aspect of the case. The individuals are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty, and the recent history of espionage arrests indicate that there is a fair chance the cases go no further. The job of the responsible legal commentator in such circumstances is only to set out the applicable law.

I assumed this would be straightforward: an exposition of section 1 of the new National Security Act 2023, which more-or-less replaced the old (and infamous) section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911.

But when I looked at the Metropolitan Police press release (always look at original documents when you can, rather than relying on reportage) I noticed something curious.

The arrests were not under section 1 of the new Act.

The arrests were instead under section 3 of the new Act.

With emphasis added:

“Three people arrested under National Security Act

“Three people have been arrested as part of a Counter Terrorism Policing investigation into suspected National Security Act offences.

“The men [A-C] were arrested on Wednesday, 4 March on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service, contrary to section 3 of the National Security Act, 2023. The country to which the investigation relates is China.”

Section 3 of the new Act is in respect of “Assisting a foreign intelligence service” as opposed to section 1 which is in respect of “Obtaining or disclosing protected information”.

It is a fascinating provision, which you should read in full. In essence it provides for two similarly worded but significantly different offences.

First section 3(1):

“(1) A person commits an offence if the person—

“(a) engages in conduct of any kind, and

“(b) intends that conduct to materially assist a foreign intelligence service in carrying out UK-related activities.”

And then section 3(2) (emphasis added):

“(2) A person commits an offence if the person—

“(a) engages in conduct that is likely to materially assist a foreign intelligence service in carrying out UK-related activities, and

“(b) knows, or having regard to other matters known to them ought reasonably to know, that their conduct is likely to materially assist a foreign intelligence service in carrying out UK-related activities.”

Section 3(3) then provides (emphasis added):

“Conduct that may be likely to materially assist a foreign intelligence service includes providing, or providing access to, information, goods, services or financial benefits (whether directly or indirectly).”

The section 3(1) offence is an “intention” offence.

If you look carefully, however, you will notice something which is not there. The person does not actually need to communicate anything to the foreign intelligence service. The person merely has to engage in “conduct of any kind” – even if not communicated.

The section 3(2) offence is not an “intention” offence.

Here, the person does not even need to intend to assist foreign intelligence service. Indeed, the foreign intelligence service may not even be aware of it.

The conduct only needs to be “likely” to assist, regardless of intention.

They do not even need to know they are doing it, but “ought reasonably to know”.

And again there does not need to be any communication with the foreign intelligence service – the foreign intelligence service may not even be aware of it.

On the face of it, the section 3(2) offence would cover a hobbyist following foreign affairs or even a journalist, “indirectly” providing access to information on (say) their website or reportage, even if they do not intend to assist a foreign intelligence agency, but in the opinion of the courts “ought” to have known that it would assist a foreign intelligence agency.

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There are some statutory defences to the section 3(2) offence, listed at section 3(7), but these are strictly limited in scope.

Perhaps there are provisions elsewhere in this complex legislation which mitigate the potential effect of this provision – and if so I will update this page.

Perhaps the the courts will anxiously scrutinise any application of the section 3(2) offence when it impacts upon freedom of expression and the right to share and impart information on matters of topical and public interest.

(Ho ho.)

Perhaps there is nothing to worry about.

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But.

Section 3(2) is a broad and vague provision.

One can see why the government and the security services want a broad “conduct” approach which would capture any imaginative ploy used by the culpable.

But in doing this there is a risk – as elsewhere with terrorism and national security legislation – that the prosecutorial convenience of the government and the security services is at the expense of clarity and free expression rights.

It will be interesting to see how this section 3(2) offence is used in practice.

This post is also cross posted at The Empty City substack, which is run in parallel with this blog.

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Comments Policy

This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.

More on the comments policy is here.

But what about international law – continued.

4th March 2026

Hello and welcome to The Empty City blog, the new name of which is explained here.

From time-to-time this law and policy blog touches upon international law. The last time a post was devoted to it was only in January this year, though that already seems a long time ago.

The argument put forward in that post was that even if international law cannot readily be enforced, it still nonetheless can be recognised. This means international law, like any body of law, still exists, even if it is being disregarded.

The tree still makes a noise when it falls in the forest.

But.

It is also fair to say that many are sceptical and dismissive about international law, and even some (eminent) lawyers regard it as essentially a fiction.

One problem about international law is that it can often seem one-sided.

Take for example the inability of many (though not all) European countries to say plainly that the attacks on Iran by Israel and the United States were not in accordance with international law, let alone in breach.

When a European territory (like Greenland) and a European country (Ukraine) are threatened or attacked, then European leaders are ready to invoke international law.

But when it is not a European territory or a European country at stake, there is an awkward silence.

Of course, the United Kingdom government know that the attacks on Iran were illegal – it is the necessary implication of the stated position on the validity of “defensive” attacks.

And, of course, we know why as a matter of realpolitik the United Kingdom government thinks it cannot say this aloud.

No sensible person is under any illusion on either point.

But.

One can also see why elsewhere in the world many do not take the West’s professed attachment to international law seriously.

Iran’s scattergun retaliations against those not concerned with the American and Israeli attacks are plainly against international law.

And that these retaliations are against international law is said aloud, including by the United Kingdom government.

We thereby have one without the other.

We openly say one thing is against International law, but are closed-mouthed about the other.

Yet unless international law applies to all nations (the clues are in the words “international” and “law”) then it can hardly be called international. Or law.

But in something akin to “victor’s justice”, it is a standard we only seem to invoke plainly against some countries and not others.

From the perspective of this liberal blog, international law is a good thing. In general the more international law is recognised and even enforced the better.

But international law will never get real traction when it is deployed in such a one-sided way.

A thing cannot be both universal and partial.

And so to condemn Iran for breaching international law in its reckless retaliations to attacks, but not the countries making those attacks, means you end up with a position that is neither coherent nor compelling.

Yet for international law to gain purchase in the world, the case for it needs to be coherent and compelling.

Else, like the cynics maintain, it is (or will be seen as) little more than fiction.

This post will also be cross-posted at The Empty City substack, which is run in parallel with this blog.

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Comments Policy

This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.

More on the comments policy is here.

About ‘The Empty City’ as a title for this blog

3rd March 2026

As you may have noticed this blog has a new name to go with its new domain. The name is the same as my Substack, but I thought I should explain it as the title of a blog about law (and lore) and policy.

(Spoiler warning for Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.)

Compare and contrast these two paintings.

The first is one of the Renaissance “ideal city” paintings.

Nobody knows for certain who the painter is, so I will call them “the Renaissance Master” for this post.

You will notice that the painting has regular lines of perspective and a set vanishing point; it also has proportionate, idealised architecture; and it has welcoming and well-lit colonnades and arcades.

And you will notice it has no people.

Nor shadows.

For me this painting conveys a place (and polity) in its idealised form: how it should be, at least to some people.

The second painting is Mystery and Melancholy of a Street by Giorgio de Chirico.

Here there are no regular lines of perspective and no vanishing point; the architecture is not idealised and not proportionate; and the arcades are dark and sinister.

The painting has people (or at least a person), and you are scared for who is playing with the hoop, as the shadow of another person (or of a statue) is foreboding.

And the shadows generally don’t quite add up.

(Curiously, the sky is not that different.)

This is also a painting of its time: 1914, as Europe and elsewhere fell into the Great War.

For me this paining conveys a place (and polity) in its actuality: how it is – confusing and incoherent.

I use both paintings regularly as banners and avatars and so on.

Taken together they seem to show the job of a commentator on law and policy: explaining things as they are, but with reference to how rules and principles insist those things should be.

But…

…it was not until recently I realised something about the two paintings.

And this realisation was triggered by re-reading Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

In that book some fifty-five cities are described in all their vivid variety.

But, as the narrator reveals midway in the book, they are all depictions of the very same city (Venice).

And so I realised that the Renaissance Master and Giorgio de Chirico were also not painting different cities…

…but painting the very same city, but with a different outlook.

Thank you for following this blog as it transforms into The Empty City.

Six Proposals for Improving Public Procurement

26th February 2026

Yesterday we saw what was wrong – here are suggestions for what could be put right

This is a sequel, of sorts, to the post here yesterday on what is wrong with public procurement.

Here this blog will set out six things that could be done to improve public procurement.

To an extent, this is a mirror of yesterday’s post, but it is still worth setting out something positive against (the usual lot of a law and policy blog) what is negative.

The first thing would be transparency of commercial terms.

Both the Freedom of Information Act and the Public Procurement Act should be amended so as to remove exemptions from public disclosure of the terms of any awarded public contract.

As this blog stated yesterday, contractors get enough benefit in the amounts of public money and (generally) the reliable revenue stream of public contracts. The price for these benefits should be transparency.

The exceptional circumstances where information needs to be withheld then other exemptions could apply.

Indeed, there should perhaps be a duty for the full contract terms (including commercial terms) to be published between the contract award and the start date.

The second thing would be transparency of any intention not to advertise and compete a contract.

When – as with the Palantir contracts with the Ministry of Defence – a decision is made by a public authority not to hold a competition or advertise a tender, that decision should itself be published before the decision takes effect.

The third thing would be to widen the class of those able to challenge a tender decision.

Generally, only disappointed tenderers can challenge a tender decision. As such, it is effectively a private law right for a potential contractor that has suffered damage by a wayward decision.

But: think about the phrase “public procurement” – and ask yourself what difference does or should the word “public” make?

The fundamental reason for public authorities having special duties of transparency and equal treatment and so on in public procurement is that these duties are in the public interest.

Public procurement should not just be about the closed – and indeed often cosy – club of established tenderers and their repeat customers.

Such tenderers have no incentive to upset a past and potential customer by challenging an adverse procurement decision, whatever the circumstances.

Indeed, the law of public procurement is practically geared for there to be very few challenges to procurement decisions.

And a legal regime without practical remedies can hardly be said to be a legal regime at all.

The fourth thing would be for public authorities to put more resources into practical contract management.

There is little or no point in a contract having a range of provisions to enforce against a supplier if those provisions are never enforced.

It is all very well pointing to a black-letter contract if everyone involved – officials and suppliers – know in reality the public authority will never actually assert its contractual rights.

And contract management is a skilled and important role, not an afterthought – and it is a false economy to not pay contract managers the appropriate rate for the job.

Yet public authorities who will generously budget for payments to a supplier will not make adequate provision for internal contact management.

And those public authorities then wonder why they are done-over by cynical contractors acting in their commercial self-interest.

Related to this: contract management reports should also routinely be published or disclosable on request – for there is as much a public interest in transparency of ongoing contract management as there is in the terms of the contract originally let.

The fifth thing would be for all potential public contracts a formal stage where a reasoned (and public/published) decision as to whether a COTS (commercially off the shelf) product is available.

Part of the problem with information technology/intellectual property (IT/IP) contracts is a casual and naive view by many in public authorities (though not experienced procurement professionals) that bespoke IT/IP development is somehow preferable and easy to manage.

It ain’t.

And the public authority is then often then captured by the supplier, with their hawked maintenance and support schemes, and with their dependency-culture proprietary products.

And the sixth thing would be a greater (and more enforceable) emphasis on the principles of public procurement – equal treatment, transparency, competitive tenders, no bias towards incumbents – rather than formal compliance with elaborate statutory codes.

The important thing is that the principles are complied with, not whether a detailed prescribed checklist process (that will only benefit well-resourced tenderers) is followed.

Too often in public procurement, as well in other areas, there is a victory of form over substance.

The problem, for example, with the Covid/PPE contracts was not so much that they did not follow detailed processes, but that the very principles of public procurement were abandoned.

Comments Policy

This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.

More on the comments policy is here.

Six Things Wrong About Public Procurement

25th February 2026

Public procurement, like constitutional law, should be boring.

It should be about the mundane everyday activity of public bodies purchasing things so that they can fulfil their public functions.

But it is currently exciting, and my pieces at the Financial Times and here on the Ministry of Defence contracts with Palantir were disconcertingly popular.

And do this seems as good a time as any to set out some more general concerns about public procurement – though those who follow my drivel on social media will be familiar with some of these points.

But as a preliminary remark: nothing which follows is disparaging about the greater number of those engaged in public procurement and contract management for public authorities whose professionalism keep things from being a lot worse. The public are lucky to have you.

The points below are generally about the faults of a system – and about how it benefits cynical contractors acting in their commercial self-interest and about how non-procurement officials and their political masters lack realism.

The points below are not about those that somehow stop greater abuses from happening.

The first point is about money.

Loads of money.

And as with the fog at the start of Bleak House, money everywhere.

Billions – not just millions.

If you can get a lucrative public services contract, you and your pension plan and your family are not just made for life, but also for generations.

Public procurement is an absolute geyser of cash.

And – this is the important thing – central and local government are good reliable payers.

There are hardly any defaults, and there are hardly any early terminations.

Many contracts just rollover, just like the public authorities that let them.

Public authorities suing on a contract is almost unheard of, more is the pity.

Sometimes a public authority will assert its contractual rights – and this will grab attention like any rare event – but mostly public authorities will keep funnelling the money to contractors.

And because central and local government are good reliable payers then the canny contractor can use the revenue stream effectively as security for other aspects of the business.

The returns on savings or an investment fund are nothing as the percentages a contractor will make on a public contract, especially if they then sub-contract the actual provision of goods, services or works at a discount to sub-contractors – who, in turn, are sometimes made up of the very same people who provided the same things for the public authority in-house before being out-sourced.

Some may complain (and no doubt will complain below) that the above is a horrible caricature: but in my experience there is enough truth in the depiction set out above for it to be offered as a concern on this blog.

And it gets worse.

The second point is the general lack of transparency.

Public procurement for no good reason whatsoever is shrouded in secrecy.

Routinely the facts about public procurement – that is when huge amounts of public money are spent on things (supposedly) so public functions can be discharged – are not disclosed to the, well, public.

And this is an attitude often at the highest levels of public authorities.

The magic phrase “commercial confidentiality” is constantly invoked, often by those who want you to nod-along with their mock-earnestness.

But “commercial confidentiality” in public procurement is utter balderdash and complete flapdoodle – at least after the contract has been let.

And this secrecy cloaks so may inefficiencies and abuses – on both sides of the transaction.

But those involved know that any attempts to force public disclosure of commercial information about these contracts can be avoided, at least in any timely way.

In principle – because of the amounts of public money involved and the need for public functions to be discharged, as well as because of pretty basic things like transparency and accountability – there should not be as a general rule “commercial confidentially” in public procurement.

The contractors get the benefit of huge amounts of cash, paid on a regular and reliable basis. They really should be happy with that.

And so the price of such contracts for the contractor should include full public transparency – unless there is a reason other than commercial confidentiality for non-disclosure.

The third point is that the law and practice of public procurement will often favour a small group of large providers – often with deliberately forgettable corporate names – who can afford the risk and the expense of participating in elaborate procurement exercises without guaranteed return.

Some procurement exercises with their multitude of stages and questionnaires and voluminous tender documents cost a small fortune for a bidder.

Public procurement should be about non-discrimination and avoiding bias, but – counterintuitively – the complex rules to give effect to such laudable aims have the practical effect of excluding almost all providers.

Like how profit and sustainability rules in football have the practical effect of favouring already established clubs – disclosure, Aston Villa fan here – the rules of public procurement have the effect of favouring a small group of established providers.

The fourth point is about the closeness of some (but not all) contractors and public authorities – with the famous “revolving doors”.

Those who let contracts really should not then work for the contractors to whom those contracts were let.

Even if the integrity of such individuals is beyond reproach, unbiased public procurement – like justice – not only needs to be done, it needs to be seen to be done.

The fifth point is a personal bugbear about contracts which involve informational technology and intellectual property (IT/IP).

There is a tendency by non-procurement officials in public authorities – and even their political masters – towards bespoke IT/IP development.

And this suits the contractor just fine – especially if the contractor retains the property rights and gets to charge for testing and ongoing management.

And so sometimes you end up with public authorities beholden to that contractor for the IT/IP development long after the term of the initial contract.

The public body is captured.

Of course, public authorities should use, where possible, commercially-off-the-shelf (COTS) products or open source software.

And if there is a need for proprietary bespoke software then there has to be robust exit management plans and licensing arrangements so that a public authority does not become dependent on one provider.

But it seems some non-procurement officials and their political masters like gleaming new things, with wish-lists of white-boarded specifications.

Aspire-ware, vapour-ware.

Public authorities should stick to COTS products or open source software where possible, and if there really – really, really – has to be an exception, then considerable thought needs to go into not only the terms of the contract, but also into the practical contract management and re-letting of the contract, so as to avoid capture by a supplier.

And now to the sixth point, the saddest point of all.

The only thing worse than having (often inflexible and elaborate) public procurement rules is having no public procurement rules at all.

The recent experiences of Covid and the abuses of PPE show what happens when the rules are suspended and an anything goes approach is adopted.

The sheer amounts of cash at stake mean that corruption is pretty-much inevitable.

Ideally one would have disinterested public authorities picking-and-choosing the right supplier without the fuss of public procurement rules; but instead of picking-and-choosing you will get pick-pocketing, and at a vast scale.

As some Victorian statesman once said, not all problems have solutions.

And in conclusion: we are fortunate that because of the professionalism of many procurement officers and contract managers within public authorities that things are not a lot worse.

But non-procurement officials and their political masters really need to get a grip on what is going on.

For contractors, acting cynically in their own commercial self-interest, know exactly what is going on.

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Land and Expand – how Palantir captured the Ministry of Defence

23rd February 2026

What a close reading of public domain documents tells us about two concerning contract awards

Over at the Financial Times at the weekend I had an “op-ed” column on how Palantir commercially captured the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence. That column was popular and widely shared.

The post below now unpacks the detail of that column – to show the “working-out” behind what was summarised at the Financial Times .

As a preliminary point, I do not have any strong opinions or detailed knowledge about Palantir as a company or about individuals connected with that company.

This post, like the Financial Times column, comes at the subject from a different direction.

In essence: what would a cold, close reading of the relevant public domain documents tell us?

Would those documents, in and of themselves, give rise to concerns about the contracts awarded by the Ministry of Defence to Palantir?

In adopting this approach, I am drawing on over twenty years of experience advising on and watching public procurement – and I happen to be a former central government lawyer dealing with public procurement matters (especially IT procurements).

What follows is my opinion based on the information available.

The concerns I express are about how the Ministry of Defence dealt with these procurements. In respect of Palantir, their land-and-expand approach is nothing other than what any rational if cynical economic agent would do when faced with the lucrative opportunities presented to it by Ministry of Defence. They appear to have done what they could get away with and perfectly lawfully.

In essence: Palantir commercially colonised the Ministry of Defence because the Ministry of Defence let them.

*
Let us start with the words of that eminent public procurement professional J. Arthur Prufrock:

“[…] And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions […]”

A public procurement exercise is a sequence of decisions (and indecisions), of (in a way) visions, and (often) of revisions.

Accordingly we have to re-create and trace what decisions (and indecisions) were made, and when, and by who.

The primary objective of any public procurement exercise is the letting (for that be the verb) of a contract – for goods and/or services, and even for grand works projects.

A public procurement exercise also should have regard to what happens after the contract is let – contract management and such like – and to the likely need for the contract to be re-let after a period of time.

What distinguishes public (sector) procurement from private (sector) procurement is that there are certain principles and procedures that a public body should follow when acting as a contracting authority.

In broad terms, the principles are those of transparency and equal treatment, and of the need for competitive tendering when possible. There should also not be any bias towards incumbents.

These broad principles are in turn enshrined (ho ho) in detailed procedures that are set out in legal codes. The current legal regime is primarily provided by the Procurement Act 2023 which replaced other laws, such as the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.

(The law and practice of public procurement rightly has many critics – and there is much criticism of the way it favours large bidders who can afford to go through the expensive and sometimes elaborate procurement processes, and also of its general inflexibility – but as the Covid experience showed us, the only thing worse than having rules of public procurement is not having rules of public procurement.)

Now let us look at these two Ministry of Defence contracts.

The Ministry of Defence let a contract to Palantir in 2022 and then again in 2025.

The formal notice for the 2022 contract award is here and the formal “transparency” notice for the 2025 contract award is here.

We will look at what the 2022 contract award notice (and published contract) tells us, and then we shall consider what should have happened next, and then we shall look at 2025 award transparency notice tells us. Regard will also be had to this this parliamentary debate of 10 February 2026 and to various press releases.

The 2022 Ministry of Defence contract award to Palantir

The notice tells us the following basic information about the award: it was for a three-year contract for “software package and information systems” to start in 2022, and the value of that contract was £75,215,711.11.

The date of the notice tells us that it was before the current Procurement Act was in force – and it it seems that the Public Contact Regulations 2015 were followed (though there were also special defence procurement regulations).

The notice also tells us this:

Procedure type Negotiated procedure without prior publication (above threshold) What is a negotiated procedure without prior publication (above threshold)? The opportunity was not advertised, because for example only one supplier is capable of delivering the requirement, or due to extreme urgency brought about by unforeseen events. This procedure can be used for procurements above the relevant contract value threshold.

This passage tells us the following:

the contract was not advertised (“…without prior publication”);
it was a direct award;
such direct awards usually are because of urgency or that only one supplier is capable of delivering the requirement.

Now we need to look at the (then) applicable law (assuming that is the 2015 regulations).

The starting point is that there should have been a competitive tender unless an exception applied.

The relevant threshold at that time appears to have been £138,760 (well below the £75,215,711.11 value of this contract.)

So what exception?

Under regulation 32, “[i]n the specific cases and circumstances laid down in this regulation, contracting authorities may award public contracts by a negotiated procedure without prior publication”.

Those cases are circumstances are:

where no tenders, no suitable tenders, no requests to participate or no suitable requests to participate have been submitted in response to an open procedure or a restricted procedure – and we can assume this was not the case;
where the works, supplies or services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator for any of the following reasons:—

(i) the aim of the procurement is the creation or acquisition of a unique work of art or artistic performance,

(ii) competition is absent for technical reasons,

(iii) the protection of exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights,

but only, in the case of paragraphs (ii) and (iii), where no reasonable alternative or substitute exists and the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement; and

insofar as is strictly necessary where, for reasons of extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable by the contracting authority, the time limits for the open or rest – and we can assume this also was not the case.

So we can assume it is the middle bullet-point condition.

We can also assume that the software package was not “a unique work of art or artistic performance”.

So it must be [ii] or [iii] of the middle bullet-point condition.

Given the procurement was the proprietary software then we can assume it was [iii] – though legally it would be the same if it had been [ii].

Therefore, if it was [ii] or [iii] the law then provides it there can only be such a direct award “where no reasonable alternative or substitute exists and the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement”.

Now turning back to the 2022 procurement exercise, and following Prufrock, what decisions and indecisions had to have been taken by the Ministry of Defence at this point for there to have been a contract ward without publication?

First, there would (or should) have been an output-based specification prepared within the Ministry of Defence. Normally this would be set out in neutral terms in a discrete specification department. Setting out what is required in terms of outputs would avoid supplier or product bias. There would (or should) have also been a business case.

Second, there would (or should) have been a decision by the Ministry of Defence that only one supplier was capable of meeting that (neutral) requirement – that “no reasonable alternative or substitute exists”. This decision (or should) have involved market sourcing and analysis. It would (or should) not have been assumed that there was no reasonable alternative or substitute exists without, well, reasoning – and that reasoning based on data. The Ministry of Defence would have to be persuaded that there was no alternative.

Third, the Ministry of Defence would have been mindful that “the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement”.

What should not happen is that from the beginning the objective was always just to contract with one supplier for their proprietary product, regardless of market research. This is not least that then there would not be any informed decision that “no reasonable alternative or substitute exists”.

As there was no advertisement published we will never know whether there was a reasonable alternative or substitute available for meeting any output-based specification.

At the time there was a press release from Palatir. The content of this press release would either have been agreed between the Ministry of Defence and Palantir or at least would have been known to the Minsitry of Defence.

The press release quoted an official from the Ministry of Defence:

“Palantir’s Enterprise Agreement with the MOD will accelerate the UK Armed Forces’ journey to become a truly integrated force. We’re proud to expand our long-standing relationship with the MOD through our partnership with Defence Digital, and look forward to delivering world-leading software capabilities to enable greater operational outcomes.”

That press release described the software package as follows (emphasis added):

“Worth £75 million over three years, the partnership will support the MOD’s digital transformation as it becomes a world-leading agile force of the future. Spearheaded by Defence Digital and powered by Palantir, the digital transformation will see the MOD treat data as a strategic asset, harnessing its power to deliver superior military advantage and greater efficiency across the enterprise, from headquarters to the front lines.

“This partnership aims to accelerate Defence Digital’s ambitious vision of where the UK needs to be by 2030, providing secure access to its data across all operational domains, Top Level Budgets and UK Armed Forces bases.

“Working in close collaboration with Defence Digital, Palantir software will enable the MOD to exploit data at scale and speed to make faster, better decisions across Defence. Building on more than a decade of partnership, the agreement will enable any part of UK Defence to gain access to Palantir software across multiple classifications, wherever and however it can help – turning the MOD’s digital vision into reality at pace.

“Palantir builds leading digital platforms for data-driven operations and decision-making. By helping develop a data-backed representation of Defence assets, personnel and workstreams, Palantir software brings all the data that matters into a single view through a modeling concept known as an ‘ontology.’

“As disparate data sources are integrated into Palantir software, it digests the information, cleaning and harmonising the data and mapping it to an ontology. The ontology allows users to see data not as rows and columns but as objects, properties, and the relationships between them.

“With this sophisticated, intuitive data model in place, MOD personnel can perform advance scenario planning, testing hypotheses and modelling how they would play out in real-time. Whether for front-line operations, budget decisions or maintenance planning with industry partners, Palantir’s software gives the MOD the ability to understand outcomes before making decisions.”

What this press release tells is that even in 2022 the procurement was expressly seen by both the Ministry of Defence and Palantir as the beginning of a long-term project – “journey to become a truly integrated force” – that would take until at least 2030 – “this partnership aims to accelerate Defence Digital’s ambitious vision of where the UK needs to be by 2030” – in respect of something which would become absolutely critical for the Ministry of Defence.

Yet this “journey” to “where the UK needs to be by 2030” was to be on a three-year contract – starting in 2022 and ending in 2025.

So that placed the Ministry of Defence in a difficult situation.

Normally a contracting authority will make provision in the agreement for a contractor to be able to “exit” after the term of the agreement so that an alternative provider can be appointed. In this way a contracting authority does not get captured by a supplier to which the authority becomes beholden.

This is especially the case where there is bespoke development and/or proprietary software (or other intellectual property) on which a public authority can become dependent.

Otherwise the contracting authority becomes trapped into a contractual relationship, unable to appoint another provider.

And a trapped contracting authority then is at the mercy at whatever the contractor wants to charge for the next contract.

A contractor will have landed and expanded.

The curious incident of the Exit Management Plan

We have a version of the the contract signed in 2022. This is published by the government with its notice for the 2022 contract award.

And you will see in the table of contents that Schedule 17 has headed “Exit Management Plan”.

An Exit Management Plan ensures, among other things, that a contract can be effectively re-competed at the end of the term.

(The schedules, including Schedule 17, have not been published – though this is not unusual with published government contracts.)

There is no substantive clause in the main contract incorporating schedule 17 as a whole (Alan Hansen wince at poor drafting – it is probably in Schedule 1, which is also not published) but Schedule 17 is referred to clause 32A, which provides:

The Authority’s rights of use to Project Specific Intellectual Property and Contractor owned COTS software shall be licensed in accordance with Schedules 10, 15, 17 and 22 respectively.

(“COTS software” means Commercially Off The Shelf software – like Windows etc.)

“Project Specific Intellectual Property” is not defined in the main contract – again it is probably defined in the unpublished Schedule 1 – but we can assume it means the intellectual property of Palantir which the Ministry of Defence is paying for in respect of services under the contract.

If so, Palantir was under an obligation to license the software to the Ministry of Defence in the event of an exit from providing services to the Ministry of Defence.

As this was a three-year contract for a critical service, it would have been essential for the Ministry of Defence and Palantir to agree a practical, realistic and robust exit management plan under Schedule 17, including the rights of the Ministry of Defence to use the Palantir software in accordance with clause 32A during that exit.

We do not know whether there was an exit management plan under Schedule 17, as the schedules to this contract have not been published.

If there was an exit management plan under Schedule 17, we do not know how much serious and meaningful effort was put into formulating the plan for exit after three years, in view of the express “journey” to “where the UK needs to be by 2030”.

But.

What we do know, by inference, is that whatever exit management plan there was (if any) was not practical, realistic and robust enough for there to be a competition for the follow-on contract from 2025.

This was a severe public procurement failure, even if there was a case for not advertising the first contract.

The 2025 Ministry of Defence contract award to Palantir

The reason we know, by inference, that whatever exit management plan there was (if any) was not practical, realistic and robust enough for there to be a competition for the follow-on contract from 2025 is because of the 2025 contract award transparency notice (published in January 2026).

(The 2025 award was under the new Procurement Act 2023.)

This transparency notice stated:

“United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MoD), intends to award a follow on enterprise agreement to Palantir Technologies UK Limited (Palantir) for continued licencing and support to data analytics capabilities supporting critical strategic, tactical and live operational decision making across classifications across defence and interoperable with NATO and other allied nations Palantir systems.”

The transparency notice then said that there had been a direct award.

There had been no competition (again) and no advertisement (again).

What was the justification for the direct award?

Direct award justification

Single supplier – technical reasons

It is considered that the contract can be awarded directly in accordance Section 41 of the Procurement Act 2023 together with paragraph 6 (absence of competition for technical reasons) and paragraph 7 (existing services where a change of supplier would result in disproportionate technical difficulties) of Schedule 5.

This is because MoD’s data analytics capabilities use Palantir data analytics architecture that only Palantir is able licence, and which only Palantir has the design familiarity and technical expertise to fully support.

Changing supplier for this requirement would involve

rebuild of the underlying data analytics architecture needing support;

reaccreditation of the new solutions at the required security levels; and

retraining of MoD personnel;

at significant cost (including to the current of level capability and interoperability with NATO and allied partners), diversion of resource, and disruption to in-train military operations and planning.

(Links added, and quotation broke into smaller (sub-)paragraphs and emphasis added.)

And what was the value of this new three-year contract, compared with the £75,215,711.11 value of the initial contract?

The value of the new contract was £240,600,000.

This is over three times as much – and note the transparency notice says that the “underlying data analytics architecture” is already in place.

For completeness, the new Act’s direct award justifications relevant here are:

The following conditions are met in relation to the public contract—

(a) due to an absence of competition for technical reasons, only a particular supplier can supply the goods, services or works required, and

(b) there are no reasonable alternatives to those goods, services or works.

And:

The public contract concerns the supply of goods, services or works by the existing supplier which are intended as an extension to, or partial replacement of, existing goods, services or works in circumstances where—

(a) a change in supplier would result in the contracting authority receiving goods, services or works that are different from, or incompatible with, the existing goods, services or works, and

(b) the difference or incompatibility would result in disproportionate technical difficulties in operation or maintenance.

Somebody at the Ministry of Defence will have been persuaded and then decided in 2025 that:

due to an absence of competition for technical reasons, only a particular supplier can supply the services required, and there are no reasonable alternatives to those services; and
the contract concerns the supply of services by the existing supplier which are intended as an extension to, or partial replacement of, existing services in circumstances where a change in supplier would result in the contracting authority receiving services that are different from, or incompatible with, the existing services, and the difference or incompatibility would result in disproportionate technical difficulties in operation or maintenance.

These issues, of course, were foreseeable in 2022 and this is why there needed to be a practical, realistic and robust exit management plan.

Had there been a practical, realistic and robust exit management plan then an authority would not need to use these direct award justifications.

The Ministry of Defence had become dependent on the software service it purchased in 2022, notwithstanding the supposed three-year contract and an exit management plan.

There is no explanation in the contract notices for why the value of the contract had shot up so much.

In parliament last month a minister said new commitments had been added:

“As part of the development of the new enterprise agreement, the MOD negotiated a strategic partnership with Palantir last September. The SPA reaffirms the strong relationship developed between UK defence and Palantir over the past decade, and includes new commitments that this Government secured from Palantir, including £1.5 billion investment into the UK, a new UK defence tech SME mentoring scheme to help companies grow and access the US market, and a commitment that London is to be the company’s European defence headquarters.”

None of these additional capabilities also seem to have been advertised.

An earlier government press release set out these claims, word for word:

“The UK will be at the leading edge of defence innovation as the government signs a new partnership with Palantir to unlock billions in investment and deliver on the Government’s Plan for Change.

[…]

New strategic partnership with Palantir to unlock up to £1.5bn investment into the UK to deliver new jobs, growth and national security.

Palantir announces plans to make the UK its European HQ for defence and create up to 350 new high-skilled jobs, cementing the UK as a state-of-the-art defence technology hub.

Palantir and UK military to develop AI-powered capabilities already tested in Ukraine to speed up decision making, military planning and targeting.

“It will see Palantir invest up to £1.5bn to help make the UK a defence innovation leader and create up to 350 new jobs, making defence an engine for growth.

“The new partnership, signed today (18 September) by Defence Secretary John Healey, will help the UK military develop the latest digital tools and harness AI technology to accelerate decision making, improve targeting and keep the British people safe from evolving threats. Palantir has also announced plans for London to become the base for Palantir’s European defence business, establishing Britain as a hub for defence technology innovation across Europe.

“The arrangement will also support the growth of British Defence Tech companies across the supply chain, with Palantir helping to mentor and develop UK companies. This will include helping British defence start-ups and SMEs to expand into US markets, including an offering on a pro bono basis.”

Here presumably the “£1.5 billion investment” would not have been a relevant consideration for awarding the contract, as contracts should not be rewarded for the promise of monies flowing elsewhere.

On the face of it, there is now nothing stopping Palantir having the contract awarded again and again, every three year cycle, perhaps tripling the amount each time.

If the government was not able to have an exit management plan that would have allowed an advertised competition in 2025 then it is unlikely to have one in 2028 and 2031 and so on, as we go on this “journey” to “where the UK needs to be by 2030”.

Palantir have landed-and-expanded.

The Ministry of Defence is now Palantir’s new commercial colony.

As I concluded in my Financial Times column:

”This is a public procurement failure. Even if the 2022 contract without any advertisement was justified, the MoD should have been preparing for a competition for the next contract. Instead, Palantir’s tools were embedded in the department and the company was awarded a second contract worth over three times as much as the first.

“Indeed, had Palantir suggested 10 times as much, the MoD would have been put in a difficult position. It also looks as if this is not the only Whitehall department facing a so-called land-and-expand tactic by the company.

“We cannot know from the public documents whether any other supplier could have provided services against the same specification because no specification has been published. In three years’ time, and in every three-year cycle, it is possible that the same will happen again. Unless evidence to the contrary is provided to the public, it appears as if the government department responsible for defence has commercially surrendered to a single service provider.”

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This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.

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Misconducting in public office

20th February 2026

An ancient offence is in the news – and how it usually is used only for junior officials

If conduct is a verb, then misconducting must be a verb too.

And when a someone in public office – what we can call a public official – is misconducting in that public office then that is an offence under the common law of England and Wales.

Being a common law offence means that it is not set out in any Act of Parliament or other statutory instrument. It is instead an offence which we put together by a combination of law reports (of old judgments) and judicial reasoning: judge-made law.

(Murder is another common law offence.)

Misconduct in public office is an ancient offence. One can trace it back to early modern, even medieval times. It was an offence for those with trusted public offices when they did something to betray that trust. As such it was deliberately, helpfully vague: misconduct in a public office can take many forms and so there was no point in the law being too exact. One would know misconduct in public office when one saw it.

And then, in the 1800s and early 1900s, the law was pretty much forgotten about.

And then, at the end of the 1900s, the law began to revive, especially with police officer cases where the alleged misconduct of the police officer did not fit easily into more defined criminal categories.

The law of misconduct in public office was taken off the common law bookshelves and the dust blown away.

But the law was still vague, and so in 2004 the Court of Appeal in a reference from the Attorney General reframed the judge-made law for modern times, so as to make it a little less vague.

The key paragraph of the judgment says (referring to other paragraphs of the judgment):

The circumstances in which the offence may be committed are broad and the conduct which may give rise to it is diverse. A summary of its elements must be considered on the basis of the contents of the preceding paragraphs. The elements of the offence of misconduct in a public office are:

1. A public officer acting as such (paragraph 54).

2. Wilfully neglects to perform his duty and/or wilfully misconducts himself (paragraphs 28, 30, 45 and 55).

3. To such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder (paragraphs 46 and 56 to 59).

4. Without reasonable excuse or justification (paragraph 60).

As with other criminal charges, it will be for the judge to decide whether there is evidence capable of establishing guilt of the offence and, if so, for the jury to decide whether the offence is proved.

*
With this re-statement, the law continued to be used mainly on police officers (and also now prison officers) whose misconducting did not fit neatly into other offences.

And then when the hacking and press standards scandal exploded, and evidence was revealed of unauthorised disclosures by police and prison officers and by other junior or mid-ranking officials, then the law was used to punish the disclosing officials.

This was the once famous Operation Elveden.

Significantly, it did not strictly matter if an unauthorised disclosure was in return for money: the offence was made out when there was an unauthorised disclosure which amounted to misconduct in public office.

And so again, the law was used because of facts that did not fit neatly into established criminal law categories.

The Crown Prosecution Service, however, generally came a cropper when they sought to extend the offence, via “aiding and abetting” etc – to the reporters who received the information.

(One wonders whatever happened to the then head of the Crown Prosecution Service?)

One significant feature of the law of misconduct in public office – at least in its modern incarnation – is that is has never been successfully used against a high-profile individual.

It seems so far to be an offence for the junior officer class, and not for the senior officer class.

A couple of attempts to use it against politicians have failed.

And the politicians who went down with the expenses and other scandals were prosecuted under fraud and other offences.

One problem with the the offence is what also makes it so useful: its vagueness.

The Law Commission who did an impressive report on the offence says that its vagueness leaves it open to challenge on human rights grounds. This is because criminal law should always be sufficiently certain so that individuals can regulate their own conduct (and misconduct).

The government accepted this and the current (stalled) Hillsborough law contains replacement laws.

But those more defined laws are not in place.

Recent news reports indicate that the offence may be used in high-profile cases.

But, if so, nobody should assume that such prosecutions will be easy.

Though, that said: if such a law exists, then it really should not be an offence only for the junior ranks.

For the senior ranks of public officials can go about misconducting too.

***

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Any comments entered below speculating on individual cases will not be published.

Will the Carnival ever end?

Shrove Tuesday, 2026

The Contest between Carnival and Lent

by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (source)

Today is Shrove Tuesday, a moveable date which is reckoned as forty days before Palm Sunday.

Not long ago it was Candlemas, a fixed date – 2nd February – which is reckoned as forty days after Christmas.

(Candlemas, of course, has a special place on this blog.)

The gap between these dates is really a bridge between midwinter and the coming of spring.

It appears that the earliest possible date for Shrove Tuesday is 3rd February. The last time it was that early was in 1818. It seems the next time will be in 2285.

And so the two forty day periods reckoned respectively by Christmas and Easter can never actually overlap.

This blog has previously noted that the political culture of the United States – and to an extent in other places including the United Kingdom – is akin to the Carnival before Lent:

There are signs of push-back in the United States: with grand juries and state governments, and even in Congress and federal courts.

But the agents of misrule still are generally in power.

Many watching are waiting for the mid-term elections this November to see whether the current chaos can be paused; some are even actively seeking to avoid such an outcome.

But even if the mid-terms bring some relief from the carnival of cruelty in the United States, it will take far more than forty days to reverse the mess that has been created.

This is not a religious blog (I happen to be a non-militant atheist) but it is one concerned with lore as well as law, and a great deal of lore is to do with the passage of time and/or with the competing states of order and disorder.

Once the mid-terms come and go – whatever their outcome – what is happening now will be seen as having the inevitable consequence of what happens then.

Hindsight is perhaps the greatest and trickiest of hobgoblins.

As it stands, however, the outcome of what is now happening is uncertain.

We do not know who will win this contest between Carnival and Lent; we do not even know if it currently amounts to much of a contest.

But disorder, like order, is never bound to last forever.

Carnivals can and do eventually come to an end, even if not promptly forty days before an arbitrary date.

***

Comments Policy

This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.

More on the comments policy is here.