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In Downing Street, a coronation as new Cabinet Secretary is anticipated for Antonia Romeo. So impressed is the Prime Minister that an expedited process is being sought so the Home Office permanent secretary can be appointed at speed. 

Romeo would become the first ever woman to hold the position of Cabinet Secretary, though a whisper campaign against her has already formed. 

Last week, Lord McDonald launched an unprecedented attack via Channel 4, inviting Downing Street to go looking for bodies in Romeo’s resume.

In his televised interview, the former Head of Diplomatic Service said: “Due diligence is vitally important, the Prime Minister has recent bitter experience of doing the due diligence too late. It would be an unnecessary tragedy to repeat that mistake… if [Romeo] is the one, in my view, the due diligence has some way still to go.”

That intervention meant that previous allegations of bullying and questions about her use of expenses in 2017 resurfaced – despite the fact they were investigated at the time and Romeo cleared. 

The interview also brought into the light an animus that has been an open secret in Whitehall for years. It began, it seems, around the time McDonald was appointed Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign Office in 2015. In his memoir, Leadership, McDonald describes a “senior colleague” as “stylish, energetic, warm, a bit iconoclastic and a bit marmite”, though he adds “preternaturally sensitive to” feedback. 

The ”senior colleague” is widely assumed to be Romeo, who was special envoy to US tech firms at the time and was the subject of an investigation into bullying and expenses during his time at the helm.

While he managed the investigation, the ultimate arbiter was Jeremy Heywood. In his memoir, McDonald described his conclusions as “comprehensive and damning” and said her impending promotion to permanent secretary should have been paused or cancelled altogether. However, Heywood intervened to protect his mentee, Romeo, and the promotion still went ahead. 

In another section, McDonald recounted blocking the “senior colleague” from what appears to be the US ambassador’s job in 2019. 

“The senior ranks of the civil service are chock-a-block with people who didn’t do anything for very long – they agitate to move on and up quickly. Apparent success must be banked professionally before its shortcomings come to light.”

McDonald was on scathing form, describing how Romeo had cashed in on her success managing reforms around probation, before the changes were revealed to be an unmitigated disaster. 

He said: “The most senior civil servants had moved on, promoted on the back of a single ‘success’… none of whom has ever suffered professionally for the flawed advice on which the Lord Chancellor based his decisions… The self-promoters not only relentlessly push their own claim, but they deter others from having a go.”

Friends of Romeo label much of the chatter around her sexist – no other senior civil servant has faced as much judgement outside the realms of performance and delivery, or as much focus on their character. 

One top civil servant, an ally of Romeo, described McDonald’s behaviour as outrageous.

“At all levels of the civil service, there is a feeling of sheer outrage that a retired civil servant could launch an attack on an existing one, knowing she can’t defend herself against it. It is a drive-by on her, and deeply damaging to the institution.”

She confounds the old nostrums of the civil service

Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, tells The House: “She’s an ambitious woman who doesn’t mind a bit of publicity. A lot of underlying rumours around her are an example of sexist, misogynistic culture. Lord McDonald’s talk around vetting is nonsense. She’s been vetted within an inch of her life already; she can see documents that cabinet ministers don’t have access to.

“She’s quite a dynamic, people-focused leader. I was quite impressed with that, and I’m of the view that senior leadership in the civil service should have more of a profile. She’s much more in the leadership role than the courtier role, and that’s what the civil service needs right now.”

That being said, concerns around bullying behaviour still require probing. One civil servant who worked under Romeo says she responded poorly to bullying allegations levelled at former cabinet minister Dominic Raab, and had ignored a slew of staff leaving his private office. 

Penman disagrees: he sees Romeo as the only permanent secretary to have been shown by the investigation to have confronted Raab on his behaviour. 

Others are more robust – albeit from behind the cloak of anonymity. A minister was quoted in The Sun as saying McDonald was part of a “posse of old baldies throwing dirt on a brilliant woman for having a bit of chutzpah”.

Sir Matthew Rycroft, a former colleague, and Rupert McNeil, the former head of government HR, are among those who have defended Romeo on the record. 

Allies bill Romeo as a reformer, eager to enact change within Whitehall at the best of the government. In her office, a poster reading “Keep Calm and Carry On Transforming” sat above her desk, unwilling to accept stasis within the government. 

Through this reputation, Romeo has built an unlikely list of allies: She was Liz Truss’ first choice for permanent secretary of the Treasury, before ultimately renegeging and preferring a Treasury insider. Now, numerous Labour advisors are admirers, with Shabana Mahmood’s success at the Home Office being ably supported by Romeo. 

Robert Buckland, who worked with her during her time at the Department for Justice, offers a glowing endorsement.

“I think she is an extremely impressive person. She’s not a conventional backroom figure; she’s not scared of publicly projecting herself, but that shouldn’t be a block on her becoming first female cabinet secretary.

“She confounds some of the old nostrums of the civil service. Seen not heard, be aware of the hierarchy. As a politician, I didn’t have time for that. Running a department during Covid, I needed flat structures and quick decisions. 

“She doesn’t play the old civil service game, hiding behind hierarchies and using delay as a tactic.”

Alex Chalk, a former justice minister, describes Romeo in similarly favourable terms to The House magazine: “She is whip-smart, highly intelligent and knows Whitehall inside out. She also has good judgement, meaning she gives candid and practical advice about how best to deliver on ministerial priorities. Crucially, her instinct is to develop solutions, not simply point to problems. She is the reboot the civil service urgently needs.”

Former secretary of state Brandon Lewis echoes this, crediting Romeo for bringing an end to the bar strike and relieving pressure on prison spaces. “[Romeo] is focused, engaging and always has a smile to share, great to work with and a real leader of her team,” he says.

However, one policy wonk points back to her time in probation at justice as an example of the double-edged sword of being popular with officials. 

“In 2014, the probation reforms were rushed on the behest of Chris Grayling, as he wanted to be appointed home secretary after the election. The data wasn’t ready, contractors were excluded from bidding in order to meet political goals. If Romeo hadn’t been so popular with politicians, perhaps the reforms would have been more successful.”

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “Antonia Romeo is an outstanding leader with 25 years of public service. She has been appointed to three different Permanent Secretary roles and has led hundreds of thousands of public servants to deliver for governments of all stripes.

“As we have repeatedly said, one formal complaint was raised 9 years ago, which was thoroughly investigated. The allegations were dismissed on the basis that there was no case to answer.

“It is entirely inappropriate to resurface dismissed HR proceedings almost a decade later.”

Lord McDonald declined to comment on the book excerpts.

Serious UK prime ministers should be afraid to discipline special forces troops over war crimes because they are so popular with the public. That’s according to Dr. Simon Anglim, who wrote a lengthy essay on the UK’s new ranger and special operations units.

The essay makes a range of (in fairness, very interesting) points about shadowy deployments overseas — including to Ukraine. But the King’s College War Studies lecturer — yes, it’s the KCL War Studies people again — also warned that the current Haddon-Cave inquiry into war crimes in Afghanistan could have serious implications for the use of UK Special Forces (UKSF).

UKSF is distinct from the ranger units and remains heavily protected from even basic democratic scrutiny. The government refuses to comment on what they do — even in parliament.

It’s a distinctly British practice. None of our major allies refuse point blank to comment on their special forces operations. Yet we do. As the now-defunct Remote Control project pointed out in a 2016 report:

this blanket opacity policy is not standard practice, and the UK is lagging behind its allies on transparency over its use of Special Operations Forces (SOF). The US, Australia, and Canada are all more transparent about their deployment of SOF than the UK.

The practice is also deeply undemocratic:

This leaves the British public, and the parliament that represents them, among the least-informed of their foreign allies about the government’s current military activities in places like Syria and Libya stymying informed debate about the UK’s role in some of the most important conflicts of our age.

So what’s happening then?

Special Forces afraid of the light

Anglim said the threat of accountability over the Afghan allegations was “a shadow hanging over UKSF”:

The ongoing Inquiry, presided over by Lord Justice Haddon-Cave, investigating allegations that UKSF members committed unlawful killings in Afghanistan in 2010.

Ireland legacy allegations were also an issue. The SAS investigation:

runs concurrently with the Northern Ireland Coroner’s ruling that soldiers of 22 SAS were ‘not justified’ in killing three members of the Irish Republican Army in an ambush at Clonoe in Northern Ireland in 1992, and the stream of further allegations of unlawful conduct it has set off.

As Anglim pointed out, the cases are sub judice — ongoing — currently. But he expressed a concern they:

could strengthen demands for UKSF to face greater Parliamentary scrutiny, possibly via a Select Committee similar to the one overseeing Intelligence.

Clearly, public scrutiny is a terrifying prospect.

Scrutiny and pressure

This, Anglim said, could result in political pressures which might limit the use of SF:

Given the potential for security breaches and increased hostile scrutiny, this may have a freezing effect on future UKSF deployments and could alter the relationship between the Directorate and its political masters.

Presumably by ‘hostile scrutiny’ he means from the press and public. Anglim suggested he might write about it more once the cases are resolved:

but it is worth noting that, given their high status with the British public, no serious Prime Minister would want to impose collective punishment on Britain’s Special Forces and besides, they are too valuable as national assets to do this too severely if at all.

Anglim makes some very good points in his essay. He is also the definition of an establishment academic. He has worked with the US Department of Defence (currently ridiculously rebranded as the Department of War), the Sultanate of Oman, various establishment think-tanks and has given evidence on readiness to the defence committee.

Here he is talking about how Covid and Brexit affected the military:

But his warnings that some sort of basic accountability could reduce Britain’s ability to conduct secret military operations are telling. As with all things the British establishment says you must turn them upside down to understand them.

Public and journalistic scrutiny are good, actually, because they are a threat to the British ruling class’s hunger for war, war-profits — and for staying close to US imperial foreign policy whatever the cost and whoever is president. The more scrutiny, then, the better. And if ‘serious’ prime ministers would be afraid of the light of said scrutiny, let’s hope for an ‘unserious’ one.

Featured image via the Canary

Seven Kent County councillors and two North Northamptonshire County Councillors have joined Restore Britain. Reform UK previously expelled six of them.

Most of these were thrown out of Reform UK when @LeaderofKCC had her meltdown in the ‘suck it up’ cabinet meeting and the video was leaked. https://t.co/w5NmJN5AH8

— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) February 17, 2026

How do you even get expelled from Reform? Not taking bribes from Russia?

According to the Independent:

The new Restore Britain group members are Paul Thomas, Oliver Bradshaw and Brian Black, who have been sitting as the Independent Group; Robert Ford and Isabella Kemp from the current Independent Reformers Group, and independent-sitting councillors Maxine Fothergill and Dean Burns.

Nigel Farage hoped that Kent County Council would be his flagship Reform council. Look how that one turned out.

Reform won control of Kent County Council in May last year, securing 57 of 81 seats. However, only 48 councillors remain. Nine were removed after they leaked a video showing council leader Ms Kemkaran shouting and swearing at her members.

The Canary’s Joe Glenton described the video as:

a group of dysregulated middle-aged toddlers having an incredibly puerile row

Is it a picture of what’s to come with Restore?

Kent Council was described as being “a window to what a Reform UK government would be like”….

It’s been chaos, full of lies and a wannabe dictator leading it…..so they weren’t wrong!

— AxoAndy (@AxoAndy) February 17, 2026

After all, it’s the same faces, just with a few different letters.

In North Northamptonshire, Jack Goncalvez and Darren Rance have both also defected to Restore.

But Restore Britain has not even registered with the Electoral Commission yet.

Rupert – can you point me towards your Registration Details on the Electoral Commission website… pic.twitter.com/hJEnjmm3cW

— 🦋 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗲𝗺𝗲 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗜𝗧 🧵 🌹 (@graeme_from_IT) February 17, 2026

Restore Britain even more racist than Reform

I can’t believe I’m saying this (except I really can), but this clown show is competing for a number one spot in the  ‘more racist than Reform’ show.

BREAKING 🚨🚨🚨

Restore Britain Party members forced to elect Rupert Lowe as leader after their original 1st choice candidate shot himself in a bunker in 1945. pic.twitter.com/2L0P6cFA2X

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— Politics For You (@PoliticoForYou) February 16, 2026

Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party is promising to sweep ‘Anti-British”, “anti-white” elements out of our universities and schools. Doing so, he is copying the Nazi playbook of 1933. If you’re not worried now, you should be. https://t.co/cLV2qCDF36

— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) February 18, 2026

But hey, what’s one more shade of blue? They’re all the same racist, ‘we hate every other country’ but Israel-loving muppets. I wonder if there’s some sort of blue attire-for-hire company setting up in Westminster.

If not, I want a commission when it goes live.

Rupert Lowe is welcoming these vile, racist muppets that are too embarrassing even for Nigel Farage and Reform with open arms.

He’s not even scraping the bottom of the barrel. He’s scraping the dregs up off the floor that no doubt have the remnants of rat shit in them.

Feature image via HG

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Fake foxes covered in blood with League ‘hunter’ on the streets of London outside the National Gallery.

A huge pile of bloody foxes appeared in central London yesterday [Tuesday] to highlight the scale of illegal hunting in England and Wales that has continued since the government took power.

National animal welfare charity the League Against Cruel Sports was behind the stunt, which saw a “hunter” dump 648 foxes in Trafalgar Square – one for each report the charity has received of a fox being chased by hunts since the summer of 2024.

Meanwhile, animal welfare campaigners from the League-led Time for Change Coalition Against Hunting handed in an open letter signed by more than 36,000 people in just one month to Sir Keir Starmer at 10 Downing Street.

The letter, which calls on his government to keep its promise to properly ban hunting wild animals with dogs, comes a year after a 104,000-signature petition calling for stronger hunting laws was handed in to Number 10 on the twentieth anniversary of the Hunting Act coming into force.

Emma Slawinski, League Against Cruel Sports chief executive, said: “The government isn’t keeping its promises, and the dumped bloodied foxes are there to show the scale of illegality that the government is failing to get to grips with.

“The public is repulsed by trail hunting, which is just a smokescreen for foxes and other wild animals still being chased and torn apart by hunt hounds, so we are urging the government to act immediately to end this savage blood sport once and for all.”

The government pledged to ban so-called trail hunting in its manifesto, and further promised to launch a public consultation “in the new year” when it launched its animal welfare strategy before Christmas.

This has not happened.

Emma said: “The time for change is now and the government must urgently launch its consultation, which should also include the removal of the exemptions in the Hunting Act that hunts exploit to get around the current weak law, the introduction of custodial sentences, and the outlawing of reckless, or ‘accidental’ hunting.” 

Polling commissioned by the League Against Cruel Sports and carried out independently by FindOutNow with further analysis by Electoral Calculus in March/April 2024 found that 76 per cent of the public supported stronger fox hunting laws, with only seven per cent disagreeing.

A clear majority of voters in rural as well as urban areas backed new laws to stop foxes being chased by hounds and killed, with 70 per cent of people in the countryside supporting the proposal.

More about how to take part in the consultation, and how people can make their voice heard, is available here: https://www.league.org.uk/hunting_consultation

Cynthia Erivo has insisted that she’s not letting any of the discussions online about her new play Dracula affect her performance.

However, the Oscar nominee has told BBC News that what people have to say about her performance on the internet isn’t something she’s paying all that much attention to.

Cynthia explained: “I’m not paying attention to any of them as no-one knows the experience except me. It’s not for me.

“I have a job to do and I want to do it as well as I can and I want to do it with all my heart. I don’t let the comments take the energy that I should be spending on the stage.”

The British actor conceded that she was “still learning my lines and figuring it out” during her first week of shows, and while Cynthia’s performance has been widely-praised, some reviews from press night acknowledged that there was some “stumbling over her words” and “fumbling” of lines on occasion.

While primarily known for her Oscar-nominated performances in movies like Wicked and Harriet, Cynthia got her start in live theatre, winning a Tony in 2016 for her work in the Broadway musical The Color Purple.

Her new stage venture is directed by Kip Williams, who has previously enjoyed success for his stage adaptations of Jekyll & Hyde and the Olivier-winning The Portrait Of Dorian Gray, the latter of which was also a one-person production starring Succession actor Sarah Snook.

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