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Of all the things Britain might need after the sudden death of former Cambridge professor Jason Arday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham has decided the country could use a little reflection.
Burnham says this isn’t the time to rush to judgment, but rather to reflect on how things came to this. I actually agree with him on one thing: Britain could stand to some reflecting. I’m just not sure Burnham and I would be looking in the same direction.
Because somehow the people finally started asking uncomfortable questions about Arday are already becoming part of the problem. As Darleen laid out yesterday, there were plenty of questions to ask. Including serious allegations about plagiarism and some pretty extraordinary claims about his life and accomplishments. Yet all of that is already beginning to take a back seat to accusations of racism, harassment and public shaming.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Arday’s death was “a tragedy on so many levels.”
“It’s not a moment for any rushing to judgment. It’s a moment for reflection, I would say, reflecting on how things came to this,” Burnham told reporters. – Politico
Britain is calling for reflection when what it really needs is a long, uncomfortable look in the mirror.
Some people have already finished reflecting, however.
A group of politicians, academics, activists and celebrities is now demanding a public inquiry into Arday’s death, and they’re not exactly waiting around for the coroner before assigning blame. Their letter declares that his death was the direct result of press harassment and that racism was at the heart of the coverage.
🚨NEWS: A number of politicians and left wing activists have signed a letter demanding Andy Burnham open a public inquiry into the death of disgraced Cambridge Professor Jason Arday
Some of the usual race grifters to have signed include:
Diane Abbott, MP
Dr Kehinde Andrews
Bell… pic.twitter.com/jUPZKpyYFD— Basil the Great (@BasilTheGreat) August 16, 2026
If you don’t want to click on the link for the letter, here is the beginning of it:
To: UK Prime Minister, UK Culture Secretary
Enough is enough.There cannot be any doubt that Dr Arday’s tragic death was the direct, foreseeable and foreseen result of press harassment. A significant element in that harassment was the colour of his skin. Self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed.
Several weeks ago, Simon Baron-Cohen, director of Cambridge University’s Autism Research centre, warned publicly that “1 in 4 autistic people have planned or attempted suicide” and talked of the “relentless bullying of a vulnerable autistic man” which “raises safe-guarding issues”. Many of the signatories to this letter warned multiple media outlets privately that their relentless pursuit of Dr Arday risked his suicide.
Two weeks of relentless harassment followed, continuing even after his resignation as a Professor when the reasonable public interest in the story had diminished or evaporated. Yesterday, Dr Arday died in the most tragic circumstances. His tragic death did not result from the allegations of plagiarism but from the press coverage.
There cannot be any doubt that racism lay at the heart of this story.
Wow, that’s a lot. Apparently the problem wasn’t the plagiarism allegations, the questionable claims, or the institutions that failed to catch any of it. The problem was that eventually someone noticed.
Well, that didn’t take long. Burnham says this isn’t the time to rush to judgment, and almost immediately we have a letter declaring there can be no doubt about what happened and who bears responsibility for it.
We don’t even have an official cause of death yet. Police are pussy-footing around the description, calling Arday’s death unexpected but not suspicious, while everyone else seems to understand exactly what is being implied. That’s worth noting, but it’s not really the point.
The point is that Britain has somehow skipped right over waiting for all the facts and moved directly to assigning blame. The press did it. Racism did it. The people who investigated Arday did it. There are already demands for a public inquiry based on that conclusion.
That’s a pretty remarkable amount of certainty from people who were just told not to rush to judgment.
And there’s an even bigger problem with this rush to find a villain: it requires pretending there was something wrong with scrutinizing Jason Arday in the first place.
And there it is. The media is supposed to feel guilty for scrutinizing a man who had spent years putting his own false story into the public square. Arday appeared on television, gave talks, promoted his remarkably life story and had a memoir coming out. Cambridge was certainly happy to promote him as its youngest black professor.
So who put him in the public square in the first place?
Burnham wants Britain to reflect on how things came to this. There’s his answer. The questions weren’t the problem. The fact that apparently too few people asked them soon enough was.
Britain doesn’t need to hunt for someone to blame because uncomfortable facts eventually came to light. It needs to ask why the institutions responsible for checking those facts failed in the first place.
Featured image: original graphic by Darleen Click
Edward Lunny says: After the exposure of his fraud and the assistance of the disreputable university and press, reality knocked on his door and had a word about consequences and his future. He chose his own exit strategy, no one forced his hand. He chose.
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