Cover-ups always get found out

Politicians never learn. What really gets to people are cover-ups. We appear to have two going on at the moment: one in the US over the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and here in the UK over the release of personal data about thousands of Afghans who worked for the British in the war in Afghanistan and the names of special forces and MI6 personnel who backed them. The Epstein conspiracy theories, both about his supposed secret client list and his death in a prison cell in 2019 have been running for a long time but have suddenly leapt again into the headlines because the Wall Street Journal has reported that Donald Trump wrote a letter to Epstein on his 50th birthday and included a hand-drawn picture of a naked woman with his partial signature written over it. Trump has said it's a total fabrication and denies ever writing such a letter, let alone drawing a picture of a naked woman. He is suing the paper and, as Trump would say, we'll see what happens next. Also Pam Bondi, the attorney general, has confused everyone by first saying she had an Epstein client list on her desk and then denied having any such thing. So whether it's a cover up or not, it seems like one to most people. So, unless Trump wants this to linger on all summer, total transparency should be the order of the day. Let it all out. Likewise in the UK, this gross leak identifying thousands of potentially vulnerable Afghans and the superinjunction imposed to stop anyone knowing about it should be sorted as quickly as possible. Conservative defence ministers from the last government who were responsible for covering it all up have said they did it to save lives. Prove it.