The month formerly known as October

8 NOVEMBER 2025 | OPINION

The Month That Defies Words

From grooming gangs betrayal to sectarian fear and royal disgrace, governance became improv.

It would be easy to call October a car crash, but that sounds too tidy. This wasn’t impact and silence. It sprawled across the calendar like a bad dream you couldn’t wake from. Each headline tested how far reality could bend before it snapped. I keep waiting for the Truman Show reveal, cameras, a director, someone shouting “cut!”, but it never comes. And if you think it can’t get worse, it does.

Start with Hadush Kebatu. An Ethiopian national who arrived by small boat in June, sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and another woman within days. Convicted, sentenced, and due for deportation until 24 October, when he was wrongly released. He wandered, boarded a train, sparked a two-day manhunt, and then came the punchline: the government paid him £500 to leave quietly. A convicted sex offender rewarded to go away. If this is border control, the border is a revolving door with a tip jar.

And while ministers patted themselves on the back for “tough” immigration policies, the grooming gangs inquiry collapsed under the weight of its own hypocrisy. Survivors walked out. Jess Phillips didn’t just fail in her role; she failed the country. Her resignation was inevitable, but not enough. She should have left Parliament. This wasn’t a blunder; it was a stain on the nation’s soul. Add the “one-in, one-out” migrant return boomerang and the pattern appears: chaos dressed up as control, accountability reduced to theatre. You want standards? So do I. Keep looking.

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When Failure Turns Toxic

Then came the streets, the new frontline of collapse. Football turned into a proxy war. The Maccabi Tel Aviv row at Villa Park wasn’t about safety or “community concern”. The moment those same voices chanted “from the river to the sea” on Oxford Street, parroting Hamas, they forfeited moral outrage. This isn’t solidarity; it’s new hate. You know it. I know it. Own it.

West Midlands Police’s failure to protect Jewish fans was a national disgrace, proof Britain can no longer guarantee safety in public spaces. That isn’t policing; that’s abdication. A fear now hangs in the air – the kind you can’t disinfect with a press release.

As if October hadn’t already hit rock bottom, the Manchester synagogue attack showed us what pure evil still looks like. An act so stark it left silence in its wake – the kind that chills because it feels like history clawing back through the floorboards.

Days later, the streets filled again. Pro-Palestine rallies thundered through the cities. Some marched for peace; others for something darker. “From the river to the sea” is not coexistence; it is a threat. When that chant echoes down Oxford Street, the moral high ground collapses.

Even symbols weren’t safe. The Barnsley poppy lamppost row turned remembrance into a flashpoint – proof that even decency can be weaponised when identity politics runs riot. A town arguing over poppies in the same month as a synagogue attack; if that doesn’t tell you how fractured we’ve become, nothing will.

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Collapse In High Places

While the streets burned, the palaces trembled. Prince Andrew’s titles and privileges were stripped, a graceless humiliation for a monarchy desperate to cauterise its wounds. Don’t mistake it for redemption; it was damage control, not consequence.

Elsewhere, the China spy case collapse and the Kneecap terror trial failure exposed a state that talks tough, but can’t hold its own line. Abroad, the Israel–Gaza ceasefire framework flickered into life; fragile, and overshadowed by our own noise. Even the Nobel Peace Prize became a circus, with the “Trump snub” offered as global pantomime.

And because October wasn’t done mocking us, the Louvre jewel heist gave a touch of cinematic absurdity, while budget warnings whispered of storms ahead. Rachel Reeves’ rental licence row proved that housing policy can descend into farce when ambition collides with reality. Add the Soldier F acquittal and the Caerphilly by-election, and what you have isn’t governance, it’s improv with props.

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The Curtain Call

So there it is. A month that didn’t just bend standards; it shattered them. Governance became theatre, accountability a rumour, and public life a stage for chaos. Still waiting for that Truman Show reveal? Me too. But don’t hold your breath.