James Hanson
The Jason Arday story is becoming a national scandal. What began as a vaguely amusing parable of our times, a schadenfreude-filled exposé of the left’s remarkable gullibility, has now morphed into something far more sinister. For now we learn that Scotland Yard attempted to silence a journalist who tried to expose Arday’s claims. In fact, they spent four months investigating him.
Even by the appallingly low standards of the Met, it is a startling revelation. When Jack Grove, a reporter for Times Higher Education, emailed Arday a series of questions about his academic record, officers told him to stop contacting the professor because his mental health had been affected. Arday also hired the law firm Carter-Ruck (who don’t come cheap), who claimed Grove’s ‘apparent attack’ on their client ‘may be… racially motivated’.
The UK’s biggest police force attempted to shut down a journalistic investigation, apparently because the man at the centre of it played the race card
Let’s be really clear about what this means. The UK’s biggest police force attempted to shut down a journalistic investigation, apparently because the man at the centre of it played the race card. As Grove himself states, ‘I was just doing my job. Journalists should be free to ask questions of anyone, even star professors.’
