Newsletter #45: Fortune favours Nigel Farage

On Bacha Bazigate

Good morning.

Only one story today, for this was the week of Bacha Bazigate.

This newsletter’s agenda: Bacha Bazigate: Fortune favours Nigel Farage (free/paid).

Bacha Bazigate: Fortune favours Nigel Farage

The story of the week, and the reason for the delay on this piece (so as to see how everything played out) was of course the revelation of the massive cover up of a scheme to relocate Afghans to Britain. For those who haven’t been following, data on 18,800 Afghans who had applied for the existing Afghan resettlement scheme, ARAP (Afghans Relocations and Assistance Policy), had been leaked by the Ministry of Defence in February 2022, putting (in the opinion of Ministry of Defence officials) thousands of Afghans at the risk of death from Taliban reprisals. This list included some legitimate (according to the current rules) claimants; but it also included people who had been rejected for very sound reasons. Some were even rejected for the reason that they had committed sex offences. All in all, of the 18,800 people listed, 15,400 had been rejected, and some sources claim that as few as one in sixteen were actually eligible for ARAP.

The leak was discovered after an Afghan, who had been resettled here, threatened to spread this information on Facebook. The same month, the Facebook post was removed and a superinjunction was granted at the request of Defence Minister Ben Wallace, meaning that journalists were banned from discussing it, including the fact that an injunction existed. This was, according to The Guardian, the first ever superinjunction requested by a government in British history, and was also the longest-lasting superinjunction in history. A secret initiative, the Afghan Response Route (ARR), was launched in December 2023 to allow some of those who were affected by the data leak, including people who would not otherwise be eligible for resettlement, to settle in Britain. In January 2025, the Labour Defence Minister John Healey commissioned a review of the superinjunction, which concluded that it was not proportionate. In the fourth High Court review judgement on the matter, now taking into consideration the recent review report, the superinjunction was then ordered lifted, ending the media gag.

This story had everything. In many ways, it encapsulated the modern British state. The fallout from a pointless conflict that we hurtled into thanks to the unthinking Atlanticism of our elites, unmoored from any real conception of the British interest. A bungled, incompetent response, featuring a data leak thanks to Civil Service failings. A cover up, on the thin justification of protecting Afghans, perpetrated by a class of arrogant Tory politicians, enabled by a judiciary who seem to only care about liberty when it comes to liberty for foreigners to rape and kill. The exploiting of the words ‘Forces’ and ‘Defence’ by these people in order to justify literally anything and everything. The importation of some of the world’s most dangerous people, with astronomical crime rates, deported from all of their neighbours for ‘national security reasons’ (more on this next week). A genuinely manic desire to give money to foreigners, in this case, literally billions (£7bn total on Afghan resettlement, and £850m for the ARR scheme alone), for unclear purpose, hidden from the public. And, to top it all off, although the stated purpose of the superinjunction was to protect Afghans, it seems equally plausible that the real purpose (especially given that it lasted years) was political; to keep the British public from knowing what taxpayer money was actually being used for, and how many people were arriving, and why. What else is being hidden from us?

Somewhat astonishingly, in the judgement which lifted the superinjunction (though maintaining a ban on disclosing the personal information in the dataset), it was admitted that ‘…there was a significant chance that [the superinjunction] was in fact endangering some of [those who would be relocated]. The effect of the superinjunction on the larger non-relocation cohort was likely to be adverse overall.’ In other words, it was failing to achieve even its (as we shall see, dubious) stated purpose. It was becoming increasingly likely that the Taliban had already obtained the dataset in spite of the superinjunction, though this has never been confirmed either way. Indeed, this was the rationale for the High Court Judgement no.3 ruling that the superinjunction should be ended; however, this itself was overruled by the Court of Appeals.

(As an aside, nowhere at all in the fourth judgement or the (admittedly redacted) review report attached is the special forces angle mentioned as a potential reason for a superinjunction. This should lead us strongly towards the view that Grant Shapps’ defence of the decision is either a lie or confabulated.)

Additionally, payroll and other biometric details on police and military employees, their families, and potentially also information on informants, were handed over to the Taliban immediately after their victory, calling into question how important such a dataset would be in persecuting someone, since the dataset contained far less information than they already had. Moreover, given the nature of Afghan society, it was noted that it was generally no secret who had collaborated locally anyway, so a dataset was of limited importance. Indeed, worries were expressed that ‘…given the cost and scale of the proposed ARR pipeline, as this becomes public, it may perpetuate a perception that the dataset provides information of considerably higher value than this review judges it to in reality.’

The review report, ordered by Healey, also took the view that ‘it appears unlikely that merely being on the dataset would be grounds for targeting’. In fact, the attached review report goes further: it states that there is ‘little evidence of intent’ for a campaign of retribution by the Taliban, and ‘no evidence’ of a sustained campaign at present at all; indeed, this was the ‘overwhelming consensus’. While some killings took place in violation of a promise of general amnesty in the months after their victory, risks to former collaborators are now not high. Instead, the Taliban are more focused on suppressing current opposition to the regime, rather than settling old scores, and managing increasing internal disputes between ministers in Kabul and the leadership in Kandahar (the Taliban’s old base) and the general economic crisis the country is facing.

The fourth judgement, and the review report, in effect come very close to saying that we spent £850m and gagged the media for years for absolutely no reason at all, even if we accept the basic premises for us doing so in the first place. They do not quite say that — and leave open the possibility that the dataset could be used by the Taliban — but this is clearly the logical conclusion to the evidence presented.

So what did the key players on the British Right have to say about Afghan translators and the fallout of this scandal? The opinion of the Tory mainstream should be obvious enough (‘import every Afghan who has ever seen a British soldier’). Ministers like Grant Shapps and the ghastly Ben Wallace (why did he not run for Tory leadership again?) were totally unrepentant. But what about the Tory Right? In the case of Jenrick and Braverman, everything was pretty clear: that they all basically deserved to be here, because they ‘served our country’ in some way — mostly very poorly, and they were paid plenty of money to do so, but since when did that matter to anyone? Meanwhile, Reform’s Richard Tice has repeatedly defended Afghans being allowed to settle here, almost regardless of the costs, now suddenly u-turning. Much the same was true of ex-Tory Lee Anderson. More surprisingly, even Rupert Lowe was found to have previously expressed support, and Sarah Pochin’s past attitude had caused controversy when she was selected.

Seemingly, the only person in all of British politics to not have compromised himself on this issue was none other than Nigel Farage.