A party seeking to secure its youth vote without having done the political legwork to earn it is reckless.

The personal details of British spies and special forces personnel were included in the Afghan data breach that led to an unprecedented superinjunction, it has emerged.

It was previously reported that a list accidentally sent in an insecure email by a military official contained information relating to almost 19,000 Afghans who helped to support British forces in the fight against the Taliban.

Following the lifting of the two-year superinjunction on Tuesday, it has been revealed that the document also held data relating to more than 100 British people.

They included MI6 spies as well as special forces and SAS personnel.

The data breach, which happened in February 2022, was only discovered by the government when an extract was posted on Facebook 18 months later.

Then-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace asked a judge for an injunction to prevent the information contained in the dataset being published.

However, the judge instead placed the case under a superinjunction, preventing any details about the breach or the injunction itself from being published.

Meanwhile, the largest covert evacuation in peacetime history was launched to get Afghans out of the country, out of concern their lives could be at risk from the Taliban.

The programme, named the Afghanistan Response Route, has cost around £400 million so far and could cost around £850 million by the time it ends.

Defence Secretary John Healey told MPs on Tuesday: ‘This serious data incident should never have happened.

‘It may have occurred three years ago under the previous government, but to all those whose information was compromised, I offer a sincere apology today on behalf of the British Government, and I trust the shadow defence secretary, as a former defence minister, will join me.’

Iraq veteran and Lib Dem defence spokesperson Helen Maguire MP called for the government to ‘immediately launch an inquiry into this devastating scandal’.

She said: ‘The more we find out about this data leak, the worse it gets.

‘Highly confidential details, including our own special forces’ personal identities – should never have been somewhere where they could accidentally be shared, and potentially fall into the hands of the Taliban.’

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Prime Minister Keir Starmer, right, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, left, chat during their meeting in London (Photo by Frank Augstein-WPA Pool/Getty Images)

During a visit to the UK today, Sir Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Frie…

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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will announce a law change, one week after French President Emmanuel Macron also promised changes to combat illegal migration to the UK.

On Tuesday, it was revealed for the first time that the British Government had used a superinjunction to keep a secret from the public.

The term ‘superinjunction’ may be familiar to people who paid attention to the news in the 2010s, thanks to their deployment by several high-profile figures who wanted to stop people reading about their private lives.

It is a court order a step above an injunction, which is used to stop details of the case being published in public.

In a case with a superinjunction, not even the existence of the injunction can be made public.

These orders are powerful enough when used by an individual. The use of one by the government to keep the entire UK in the dark is unprecedented.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money was spent without the public’s knowledge, to bring a large number of individuals to the UK from Afghanistan without anyone being allowed to learn why.

It all stemmed from an accidental data breach in February 2022, which exposed the personal details of more than 18,000 Afghans who had assisted British forces in their fight against the Taliban.

When the government learned about this breach 18 months after it happened, then-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace requested an injunction in the courts.

The reason for this, according to court documents, was to ‘preserve the confidentiality of the personal information for as long as possible in order that His Majesty’s Government may do everything it reasonably can to help those who might have been put at further risk by the data compromise’.

But when the time came for the injunction to be placed, Judge Robin Knowles decided to go a step further.

He wrote: ‘I conclude that it is an environment of no publication that best protects lives, although again the matter must and will be kept under constant review.’

This decision was made for eight reasons listed in the judgement:

• ‘The risk in question is to the lives of many individuals and their families, and of torture.’
• The confidentiality of the data was not completely lost, though it had been breached.
• The order would create a period of time where the data compromise is ‘not known or widely known’.
• It would be less likely for the information to fall into the wrong hands during that period.
• The period would provide an opportunity for the government to do ‘everything it reasonably can’ to help those at risk.
• The impact on freedom of expression was ‘justified in the particular and exceptional circumstances of this case’.
• The fact the injunction would probably no longer be needed at some point and be lifted would limit that impact.
• The operation and duration of the injunction would be kept under close review.

This order was so stringent, then-shadow Defence Secretary John Healey did not tell his party leader about the situation when he was briefed before last year’s election.

Instead, Sir Keir Starmer learned about it after he became Prime Minister.

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The Prime Minister has suspended four MPs from the Labour Party.

The move comes after a vote in Parliament over the planned – and controversial – welfare reforms earlier this month.

Sir Keir’s welfare bill passed by 335 votes to 260 after last-minute changes to the proposal to have it approved after uproar over the plans to cut Universal Credit and Pip payments.

Despite the changes, some MPs rebelled in the final vote, and they have now been suspended.

Which Labour MPs have been suspended?

The Labour leader has suspended three first-year MPs – Neil Duncan-Jordan, Brian Leishman and Chris Hinchliff – and one, Rachael Maskell, who has been the MP for York Central since 2015.

Mr Duncan-Jordan and Ms Leishman confirmed the suspension.

Mr Hinchliff’s suspension was first reported by The Times.

Why have they been suspended?

The suspension means the four have ‘lost the whip’ after they voted against the government’s planned welfare reforms on July 1.

MPs who belong to a party are expected to vote in Parliament as the party leadership desires.

The MPs are now expelled from the Labour Party as disciplinary action.

However, expelled politicians can continue as MPs, but they no longer have to follow the party line during voting.

Mr Duncan-Jordan, an MP for Poole, said after the news emerged: ‘Since being elected, I have consistently spoken up for my constituents on a range of issues, including most recently on cuts to disability benefits.

‘I understood this could come at a cost, but I couldn’t support making disabled people poorer.

‘Although I’ve been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party today, I’ve been part of the Labour and trade union movement for 40 years and remain as committed as ever to its values.’

Meanwhile, Mr Leishman, who represents Alloa and Grangemouth, said: ‘I wish to remain a Labour MP and deliver the positive change many voters are craving.

‘I have voted against the Government on issues because I want to effectively represent and be the voice for communities across Alloa and Grangemouth.

‘I firmly believe that it is not my duty as an MP to make people poorer, especially those that have suffered because of austerity and its dire consequences.’

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The Chancellor has set out plans to encourage people to invest their savings.

The Afghans who are being relocated helped to support British forces in their country (Picture: MOD/AFP via Getty Images)

Hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on a secret scheme to relocate Afghan victims of a data leak to the UK…

The government says the changes could give a boost to tens of thousands of people trying to get on the property ladder.

The government says the changes could give a boost to tens of thousands of people trying to get on the property ladder.

The subsidy will apply to new electric vehicles worth less than £37,000.

The US President will arrive in the UK on September 17.

A new report lays bare just how disillusioned the UK has become with the current system.

Macron looked a little uncomfortable with his baffling choice of a three-piece suit as the temperature rose inside too.

Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have been deep in discussion over the past two days.

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The recommendations came in a new review from Sir Brian Leveson.

On May 22 2024, Rishi Sunak stood outside of Downing Street in the pouring rain and announced he was calling a General Election.

Six weeks later, Sir Keir Starmer pulled up in his car to No 10 on July 5. As he stepped out, the sun came out.

The metaphor was clear. In contrast to the bleak, miserable end to the Tories’ time in charge, here was a new leader promising brighter days ahead.

During his first speech, he told the nation: ‘If you voted for Labour yesterday, we will carry the responsibility of your trust, as we rebuild our country. 

‘But whether you voted Labour or not, in fact – especially if you did not, I say to you, directly, my government will serve you.’ 

Looking back at that day a year on, it might not be too hard to argue that optimistic idea about Starmer bringing a warm glow to the country was quite a pathetic fallacy.

Labour’s polling numbers have collapsed since that day, and the party is now consistently stuck several points behind Reform. The PM himself is doing only marginally better, with a net favourability rating of -34 according to YouGov.

On Tuesday, the government suffered its biggest ever rebellion despite gutting its flagship welfare bill. The following day, the Chancellor wept openly during PMQs.

By Thursday evening, one of Starmer’s MPs, Zarah Sultana, announced she was leaving the Labour party and would ‘co-lead the founding of a new party’ with the ex-Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn. He said discussions were ‘ongoing’ after the announcement.

Outlining her reasons for leaving the party, Sultana accused the Labour Government of failing to improve people’s lives, and claimed it ‘wants to make disabled people suffer’ in reference to ministers’ proposals to reform welfare – a claim that was rejected by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.

So where did it all go so wrong?

A fateful speech

It’s impossible to pick a particular moment where the trouble started. But if we were going to have a shot regardless, polls wouldn’t be a bad place to start looking.

They seem to suggest Starmer’s approval rating falls off a bit of a cliff around the end of July 2024 – barely three weeks after he started his new job.

What was happening politically around the end of July? Well, one big thing happened on July 29: that was the day Rachel Reeves stood up in Parliament and declared a massive cut to the winter fuel payment.

In hindsight, it’s a little baffling. Starmer’s government was still defining itself to voters, trying to project an image about who they were and what they represented.

There’s an argument that the Chancellor was aiming to get the tough but necessary decisions out of the way as early as possible, so they would have faded to the back of voters’ minds by the next general election.

But clearly, first impressions matter. Despite the recent backtrack, in which the payment was returned to everyone receiving a pension who has an income below a £35,000 threshold, this might have been the moment many voters made up their mind about the PM and his ministers.

All-consuming black hole

And of course, the Winter Fuel Payment was not the only announcement in this vein. There was inheritance tax on farms, and the retention of the two-child benefit cap.

All these ‘tough decisions’ circled around something else mentioned for the first time in that July 29 speech: the ‘£22 billion black hole’ in the public finances that Reeves said she had found left over by the Conservatives.

Many of Labour’s woes in government can be traced back to this figure. According to the Parliamentary transcript Hansard, the phrase ‘£22 billion black hole’ has been used in the House of Commons no fewer than 287 times since last July, largely in the context of justifying unpopular choices.

Plenty of political goodwill has been spent on filling it but, as might be expected from a black hole, everything else has been sucked into it too.

Several of the government’s policies enjoy broad public support – charging VAT on private school fees to fund state education; closer alignment with the European Union; and expanding free school meals, for example.

But it’s the tricky decisions that the government says it must make to get the country on a firmer fiscal footing that really stick with people.

As a result, a year after the party’s landslide victory, the Labour government has found itself defined more by the things it didn’t want to have to do, than the things it did want to do.

This week, the sun was blazing again ahead of the first Starmiversary. But the Prime Minister may well have spent those days wondering how much longer it’ll be until the clouds clear for him.

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Male tears are sincere. Female tears are a story, a scandal.

The Chancellor was making her first appearance in public since PMQs yesterday.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the NHS would need to ‘reform or die’.

The images prompted concern from across the political spectrum and from the markets.

Kemi Badenoch said the Chancellor looked ‘absolutely miserable’ at the session this afternoon.

MPs voted to pass a watered-down version of the bill yesterday evening.