There are occasions when British current affairs stops resembling serious news and starts looking like an episode of Slow Horses written by the team behind Only Fools and Horses.

The extraordinary events around RAF Fairford may yet turn out to be extremely serious. Counter Terrorism Policing is still investigating, including the possibility of people acting on behalf of a foreign state. Five men were arrested on suspicion of explosives offences and preparing a terrorist act, and nobody outside that investigation knows exactly what they were doing.

That bit is important.

Because apparently nobody told Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Robert Jenrick and half the population of Angry Facebookshire.

Donald has cracked the case

Before British investigators had established publicly what had happened, Donald Trump announced that the men were “looking to do big damage”.

He also claimed: “We had them under investigation.”

Which was slightly awkward because reports in Britain subsequently said the police operation was not intelligence-led. It began after a member of the public spotted suspicious vans and called the police.

The woman who raised the alarm understandably seemed somewhat bemused by Trump’s version of events, observing that if the suspects really had been under surveillance, perhaps someone could have “kept a closer tab on them”.

Fair point.

Nothing screams elite international surveillance operation quite like a local farmer effectively saying:

“Excuse me, lads. You might want to have a look at those blokes in balaclavas wandering around by the American airbase.”

Enter Nigel Bollockchops, stage right

Nigel Farage was also rapidly on the case. As the silly cunt always is.

Before the identities or backgrounds of the suspects had been established publicly, our Nige sensibly announced:

“I have been warning both in and out of Parliament for many months about Iranian agents coming into the UK via small boats across the Channel.”

He then demanded the truth about the “Fairford bomb plotters’ identities”.

You can probably guess what happened next. It’s comically predictable.

Counter Terrorism Policing confirmed that all five suspects were British nationals.

Bugger. Nige made to look a cunt again, not that his supporters care. They are cunts as well.

Not quite the dinghy-load of Iranian commandos some people appeared to have ordered from central casting.

Of course, being British does not rule out terrorism, criminality or acting for a foreign state. That is precisely why the police investigation continues.

What it does demonstrate is why normal people generally wait for evidence before deciding who committed a crime, where they came from and which immigration policy is responsible.

Robert ‘Cuntface’ Jenrick enters the chat

Robert Jenrick had already suggested that “we may now be seeing the consequences” of Home Office “complacency” over terrorists supposedly entering Britain via small boats.

Then, after the five suspects were released on bail, he complained that it “looks insane on the face of it”.

There is a clue in those last four words. Robert Jenrick is fucking insane. How anyone believes a word that comes out of that little cunt’s mouth is beyond me.

None of us knows what evidence the police have.

That is generally how criminal investigations work and always have done, at least until DCI Farage, Tice and Jenrick decided they know more than counter terrorist police.

Arrest does not mean conviction. Suspicion does not mean guilt. Bail does not mean innocence. And Robert Jenrick seeing something on social media does not constitute a meeting of COBRA. You may of guessed I really can’t stand that prick.

And then America Doubled Down

Trump later said he was surprised the suspects had been released and that he “wouldn’t have done that”. Asked whether Iran might be involved, he replied: “might be”. Words of a towering intellect to rival Roosevelt, Eisenhower and JFK.

Fellow retard, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio went considerably further, declaring that the incident “clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor”, while publicly providing no evidence identifying who that actor was. It’s beyond ridicolous.

Meanwhile British counter-terrorism police were saying, in rather less Hollywood language, that they were investigating every possible angle and asking people to stop speculating while they established what actually happened.

How terribly old fashioned. How dare they try to be calm. We need hysteria and we need it now. Calm heads don’t win populist votes for fucks sake!

The missing Hollywood ending

And this is where the whole thing becomes almost as funny as it is ridiculous.

Because after the breathless talk of terrorists, Iran, foreign agents, small boats and an attack on an American airbase, the five men were released on bail while enquiries continued. Authorities have not reported finding viable explosives.

It remains entirely possible that something serious was being planned. If evidence emerges of a terrorist or foreign-state plot, then it should obviously be treated with the seriousness it deserves.

But at the moment there is also something gloriously British about the possibility that an incident presented online like Mission Impossible: Gloucestershire could eventually turn out to have a considerably more mundane explanation.

My friend Stewart summed up the absurdity rather beautifully by comparing it to Slow Horses.

You can almost picture Gary Oldman emerging from a Transit van in a stained vest and asking whether anyone has considered the possibility that they were just a collection of Herberts up to something considerably less sophisticated.

Perhaps they were international terrorists.

Perhaps they were working for a foreign government.

Perhaps they were planning something extremely serious.

Perhaps the investigation will reveal something else entirely.

That is why we have investigations.

Fear first, facts later

What interests me more is the extraordinary eagerness of some politicians and social-media warriors to fill every information vacuum with foreigners, refugees, terrorists and small boats. Are they just thick as shit, or plainly vindictive? Probably both.

Three suspicious vans appear near an airbase and within minutes the internet apparently becomes MI6. “I’m not racist but…” barstool detectives spouting absolute shite made up in their own heads.

Iran.

Small boats.

Foreign agents.

Asylum seekers.

Why won’t they tell us who they are?

Then the police say they’re British men in their 20s from London.

Ah.

But what sort of British?

And so the goalposts begin their traditional journey across the pitch.

Another mega cunt, Richard Tice subsequently shared questions including: “Ethnicity? Dual nationals? Asylum seekers? Previous convictions? Known to Prevent / Authorities? Benefits claimants? Living in social housing?”

Benefits claimants?

We have somehow travelled from an alleged international terror conspiracy to checking whether somebody’s nan gets Housing Benefit despite having a small pension from her 20 years working at Budgens.

Keep everyone frightened

There is a wider lesson in all this.

Fear is politically useful. We should all know that by now but so many people don’t watch or listen to anything other than YouTube videos of fuckwits slashing lifeboats or footie results.

If you can convince people that terrorists are pouring across the Channel, foreigners are lurking around every corner and the country is permanently five minutes from catastrophe, frightened people may stop asking boring questions about housing, wages, public services, taxation and whether the people frightening them actually have sensible answers.

That doesn’t mean border security isn’t important.

It doesn’t mean terrorism isn’t real.

It doesn’t mean hostile states aren’t a genuine threat.

They are.

It means serious subjects deserve serious evidence, rather than politicians racing onto social media to force every breaking story into whatever narrative they were selling yesterday.

Politicians can make their claims. The rest of us can look at the evidence, including what later turns out to be wrong, and decide for ourselves how much credibility to give them.

Welcome to RAF Fairford

So, for now, the great Fairford mystery continues.

Five British men.

Three white vans.

A farmer returning home from a party who spotted something odd.

A huge counter-terrorism response.

Donald Trump announcing “big damage”.

Farage reaching for the small boats.

Jenrick reaching for the Home Office.

Rubio reaching for a foreign power.

And British counter-terrorism police quietly asking everyone to stop guessing while they work out what actually happened. They’d probably like to say “Stop acting like cunts whilst we work this out, for fucks sake”.

If it eventually turns out to have been an international terrorist conspiracy, then the early alarm will look rather more prescient.

If it turns out to have been a bunch of idiots attempting to nick diesel, Slow Horses may reject the script for being too far-fetched.

Until we know, perhaps there is a revolutionary concept worth trying.

Wait for the fucking evidence and stop listening to cretins like Farage, Tice, Jenrick and Trump.