As has been widely reported, NZ Reserve Bank Governor Anna Breman was one of many central bank governors who signed a letter saying:

We stand in full solidarity with the Federal Reserve System and its Chair Jerome H. Powell. The independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in the interest of the citizens that we serve. It is therefore critical to preserve that independence, with full respect for the rule of law and democratic accountability. Chair Powell has served with integrity, focused on his mandate and an unwavering commitment to the public interest. To us, he is a respected colleague who is held in the highest regard by all who have worked with him.

On the substance I think it is entirely appropriate for central bankers to be concerned when a central banker is threatened with prosecution on a fake pretext because he has refused to lower interest rates in line with the government’s preference. In NZ I have tut tutted both John Key and Christopher Luxon for even expressing a view on what they think the Reserve Bank should or will do. What Trump has done in the US is so far out of the mainstream, it can be in a different dimension.

If a country doesn’t want independent monetary policy, that is fine. You can change the law and have the President or Prime Minister set interest rates, like Muldoon used to do. It won’t be good for the economy, but you can do it. But if the law of the land says the Reserve Bank Governor should decide the official cash rate, and sets down the criteria they should use, then they should not be threatened with prosecution for simply following the law. And please don’t argue that the prosecution threat is unrelated to Powell’s interest rate decisions. If you truly believed that your IQ would be so low, that you would be unable to tie up your shoelaces.

So ơn the substance, I fully back Breman. It was the right call.

Should she have sought advice from MFAT, and advised at a minimum the Minister of Finance in advance? Yes.

Having said that, after getting advice from MFAT, she should have still signed the statement. But MFAT and the Foreign and Finance Ministers should have been aware of the decision, so they could manage any reaction to it – presumably emphasising the Reserve Bank is independent from the Government.

Some argue that the Reserve Bank has no role in talking about US domestic politics. But that misses the point. This isn’t about the US. It is about the terrible precedent that a central banker can be threatened with prosecution simply for following the law in doing their job in a democratic country.

I used to be on the board of .nz. If the Canadian Government threatened the manager of the .ca domain with arrest because they didn’t like decisions made by the .ca manager (CIRA), I’d damn well be signing a letter supporting the .ca manager. In countries that support the rule of law, you should not face criminal consequences because your decisions annoy the head of government.

I would also note that Jerome Powell has been backed by every Fed Reserve Chair since and including Alan Greenspan who served Presidents Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2.

Maureen Pugh, the current MP for West Coast-Tasman has announced she is retiring, and Damien O’Connor the former MP has said he will not seek to stand again (but may be a Labour List candidate). This means there will be a new MP.

Maureen is a former Westland District Mayor and entered Parliament in 2016 as a List MP. She lost to O’Connor in 2014, 2017 and 2020 but beat him in 2023. She has been a tireless advocate for the West Coast, and I doubt anyone but her could have beaten O’Connor.

The seat used to a traditional red seat, and in fact was the both of the Labour Movement. Labour held Buller from 1919 to 1972 (home to Harry Holland and Bill Rowling) and Westland from 1928 to 1972.

They merged into the West Coast electorate which was also held by Labour from 1972 to 1990 when Margaret Moir won it off Kerry Burke in 1990 for the first time. Damien O’Connor won it back in 1993 and held (now with Tasman added under MMP) until 2008 when Chris Auchinvole won it for one term. O’Connor held it again from 2011 to 2023 when Pugh won it.

So there have been three one term National MPs, but otherwise a safe Labour seat. However Labour today is not the Labour of old, and I think who wins it in 2026 will very much come down to candidate quality. Also whether NZ First stand a strong candidate who might split the CR vote.

I expect O’Connor to stand for Labour on the list, but depart Parliament after the election if Labour doesn’t get into Government.

Radio NZ reports:

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has labelled the government’s so-far refusal to rule out joining US President Donald Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ an “absolute disgrace”.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has been invited to join the new organisation, saying last week he would give it “due consideration” and on Tuesday confirming it was still a possibility.

Hipkins is just playing silly games.

I am confident in saying that the probability of Christopher Luxon joining the Board of Peace is somewhere between 0.0% and 0.0000%.

Trump’s Board of Peace requires a $1 billion contribution to stay in (makes the UN look like value for money!), and the Chair (Trump) can:

• decide who is invited as members of the Board
• decide who gets renewed unless they pay $1 billion
• Approve every member country’s representative to the Board 
• approve the selection of the members of the Board of Peace’s Executive Board
• veto any decision of the Executive Board
• unilaterally adopt any resolution to implement the mission
• can dissolve the board at any time
• is the final authority on any disputes

Also Trump is the Chair for life – not just while he is the US President.

So let’s be clear – the Board of Peace is a crazy institution which New Zealand will not be joining.

But how and when you decline is important. It is well documented that Trump can take offence very easily, and his response can be to impose 100% tariffs in a country if he is offended. It’s ridiculous, but it is the reality we live in.

Hipkins and others think that doing a Hugh Grant Love Actually performance where you give the US President a verbal bollocking is what New Zealand should do. Well sure it will get you cheers on Bluesky. But when 100,000 more New Zealanders are out of work because of 100% tariffs on our exports, was that a price worth paying just so you feel tough? 100,000 families who lose their main source of income because you want to feel like you’re a tough man?

The job of the Prime Minister is to work in New Zealand’s best interests. And of course that doesn’t mean joining the Board of Peace. But it means taking your time in considering it, and when you decline, doing so in a non-insulting way. If Hipkins thinks that is disgraceful, then he is not fit to take up his old office.

Frankly our best option might be to just say nothing and hope Trump forgets he even invited us!

UPDATE: Since I wrote this, the PM has just come out and said he will not be joining the board in its current form.

There has been some discussion about the role of climate change with the terrible tragic landslides at Mt Maunganui that killed six. In discussing this it is important to understand the difference between climate change mitigation and adaptation.

First of all the scientific consensus is that increased levels of greenhouse gases in the environment will lead to more extreme weather events. That doesn’t mean any individual event can be linked to greenhouse gas levels, but that overall there is a link.

Now climate change mitigation is about reducing the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In terms of mitigation, there is absolutely nothing that NZ could do that would have reduced the probablity of the extreme weather event that caused the slides. Even if ten years ago we had magically found a way to produce no greenhouse gases, the difference would be minimal.

Today there are 423.9 parts per million of CO2. If we had been net zero for the last 10 years it would be 423.8 parts per million – a 0.024% reduction. This is a simple fact. Not opinion, not speculation. That is the data.

This is not an argument for us not mitigating climate change through our CO2 emissions. I support an ETS which uses market forces to reduce our emissions for reasons of trade access amongst other things. It is just stating a fact that no policy by the NZ government could have reduced the level of greenhouses gases enough to make Mt Maunganui even slightly less likely to occur. It is impossible.

The other part of climate change is adaptation. This is what a country does to prepare for more adverse weather events. This is where the focus should be. Mt Maunganui was known to be prone to slips. What steps were taken to make it more resilient? Was it a good idea to remove exotic trees from the mount (note any impact of this would be minimal, but it is still valid to query whether cultural purity over trees should trump resilience.) What planning had been done for slips which were a known hazard? Had the Council ever considered moving the park’s location etc? Had they considered a massive tree planting operation to stabilise areas? Had they considered retaining walls in vulnerable areas?

Any inquiry should also look at the failure of authorities to act when warned. The timeline is not flattering:

• 5am – Lisa Maclennan warns and wakes campers about the slips. Can’t find and camp staff. No answer on camp emergency number (camp is owned by the council)
• 5.47 am – 111 called. FENZ notifies TCC but does not attend
• 5.51 am – FENZ calls TCC main contact centre, but not the emergency operations centre
• 6.18 am – camper calls Police. Police said they would attend but no one did
• 7.42 am – campground manager and council staff inspect slips and drive off to surf club
• 7.45 am – council ute drives past three slips
• 8.02 am – councils closes tracks above slips, but do not close campground below them
• 9.30 am – slip kills six people including the heroic Lisa Maclennan

It is hard to think of a more preventable disaster.

Lewis Holden writes:

I come to this argument from an unusual starting point. I am not a monarchist by instinct, nor am I a republican absolutist. As many know, I am openly supportive of New Zealand becoming a republic, on the grounds that our constitutional arrangements should reflect our own democratic maturity and national identity. 

That position, however, does not require me to believe that monarchy is always and everywhere a bad idea. Constitutional arrangements are tools, not moral absolutes, and their value depends entirely on the historical, cultural, and political context in which they are applied.

This is in fact a large part of my argument for a New Zealand republic: the institution of monarchy in our context is British (no matter what silly arguments might be constructed claiming the British Royals are not in fact British). This is not the case in Iran, where monarchy was the product of thousands of years of history.

I was on the Republican Movement National Council with Lewis (and Kieran McAnulty) for many years. I broadly agree. A constitutional monarchy in the UK makes sense as it has been part of their history for 1,000 years. But in NZ, we should have a New Zealander as our head of state.

It is from that perspective that I argue the return of the Iranian monarchy would be a good thing, and quite possibly a necessary one, if Iran is ever to fully escape the grip of totalitarian theocracy and transition to liberal democracy. Iran’s circumstances are exceptional. The familiar Western assumption that a secular republic is the natural and inevitable destination for all societies fails to account for Iranian history, political culture, and the reality of where power currently lies.

Done well a constitutional monarchy can act as a unifying institution. A democratic Iran as a constitutional monarchy would be a very good thing. As present they basically have a non-hereditary monarchy with an absolute ruler for life.

The Herald reports:

A violent and unprovoked attack at a Rotorua playground over a pair of pink Crocs left a father with a broken jaw and concussion, and shattered his family’s sense of peace and security.

The victim says he now feels “hollow” after the offender, Francee Edwin Reweti Page, 51, was given what was in his opinion a “pitiful” sentence.

Page appeared in the Rotorua District Court on December 19 and was sentenced by Judge Andree Wiltens after earlier pleading guilty to a charge of injuring with intent to injure. 

The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years’ jail. He was sentenced to 150 hours’ community work and was ordered to undergo two years of intensive supervision.

Not even home detention. And the chilling thing about this attack, is it could have happened to any parent at a playground.

A police summary of facts, released to the Rotorua Daily Post, said Page’s partner approached the victim’s 6-year-old daughter and accused her of taking Page’s grandchild’s pink Crocs.

The victim intervened in support of his daughter and explained to Page’s partner that his daughter arrived at the playground wearing the pink Crocs.

The partner became enraged and raised her voice, sparking Page to hear what was happening and intervene. He raised his arms and clenched his fists before assaulting the victim by punching him three times, the summary said.

The victim fell backwards on the ground. Page continued assaulting him until a member of the public intervened.

He was hospitalised with a broken jaw, concussion and bruising and swelling to his face.

So the psycho grandmum is bad enough, while Mr Page just brutally attacks a father for simply stating the pink cross his daughter had were in fact hers.

In a victim impact statement, the 49-year-old said he had to take strong pain medication for weeks and he endured long waits to see a specialist team at Waikato Hospital, which he said heightened his frustration and anxiety.

Despite his own suffering, he said his main concern was for his daughter, who was “deeply traumatised” from witnessing the ordeal.

He said in the statement that the aftermath of the assault was marked by a “relentless cascade of challenges”, extending far beyond the initial trauma. 

Everyday tasks like eating, speaking, yawning and sleeping were a struggle, and the concussions and neck strain left him with severe headaches for many weeks, which he said added to his sleep deprivation.

Playgrounds should be safe happy places.

The victim said he was surprised Page did not get a prison or even home-detention sentence.

He said in his view 150 hours of community work was a “pitiful” sentence that was “a slap on the wrist and a complete insult to his victims”.

The victim is quite correct.

At Patreon (paywalled) I go through a year of polling data to look at who is voting for NZ First, and what do they think.

I’m taking part in The Push Up Challenge. This means I have to do 2,000 push ups from 5 to 27 February. I’m doing it for two reasons.

1. I’ve never done that many push ups. I sometimes at the gym may do three sets of 10. Doing 2,000 over 23 days will be a real challenge for me, but hopefully one which I can achieve and improve my fitness and strength.
2. It is rising funds for the Mental Health Foundation. This is a cause I am passionate about – not just because at times I have had poor mental health, but because I have realised over time how many of my amazing friends also have significant mental health challenges. What we share on Facebook tends to be the good times, not the hard times.

If you are willing to donate for my challenge, that would be amazing. You’ll also get to see updates from me as to how I am going toward the 2,000 goal. Anyone who wants to also do the challenge can easily enrol – we can even set up a team.

You can sign up and support here.

As many will know – Scott Robertson was sacked as All Blacks coach two years into a four year contract. According to David Kirk this was because “the team was not on track” – referencing the 2027 Rugby World Cup as the destination. It is more than rumour that some players were unhappy with the coaching set-up.

In 2025 there was a Public Service survey on job satisfaction. 44,000 employees (team members?) participated.

Results for some of the State entities in terms of job satisfaction appear positive:

“Ministry of Defence staff were the happiest, with 79.4% satisfied or very satisfied, followed by the new Ministry for Regulation, the Independent Children’s Monitor, the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, and the Crown Law Office, all of which sat above 75%.”

Others not so much:

“the Education Review Office had the highest share of dissatisfied or very dissatisfied staff, at 28.5%. It was followed by the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Māori Development Puni Kōkiri, and the Ministry for Women, all of which ranged from 26.4% to 19.4%.”

“Issues with management and leadership were a key issue for the five troubled departments, the Public Service Commission told the Herald.”

The article also suggests “widespread lay-offs” across the sector as a cause of dissatisfaction. This is clearly nonsense as:

June 2024 Public Sector FTEs: 63,537

Sept 2025 Public Sector FTEs: 63,162 (a decline of 0.6%)

Stanford/Seymour promised the Ministry of Education would come back to 2,700 FTEs – i.e. pre-Hipkins numbers. It Sept 2025 is was 3,939 and climbing. To get a full understanding of how Ministry of Education staff feel about their job – this is worth a read in full. Note; only 41% would recommend the MoE as a good workplace, 26% say they intend to leave within 12 months, only 62% believe the Ministry is able to give “free and frank advice” to the Minister.

“Just over 12% of public servants said they experienced bullying or harassment in the past year, including racial and sexual harassment.” … “The most common sources of inappropriate behaviour were workers’ managers and colleagues.” … “The most hopeless aspect of it all is that the ones charged with setting the tone, or dealing with the problems, are often the worst offenders.”

The level of response and anyone being held accountable is stark in comparison to the sporting example above. This from the worst organisation indicated by the survey:

“The Education Review Office (ERO), which had the highest share of dissatisfied staffers, admitted the results were “disappointing”.

A spokesman for the office said the findings “reflect a period of significant organisational change for ERO which brought some areas of pressure to the forefront”.

It had taken steps to improve the underlying issues, he said.”

I am sure the Public Service Commissioner and relevant Ministers are on top of this to ensure tax payers money is well spent in all ways to provide services of the highest quality for all New Zealanders – i.e. bringing about accountability to get the “team” on track.

[email protected]

CBS reported:

Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created the “Dilbert” comic strip, has died at the age of 68, his first ex-wife revealed on Tuesday.  Adams said last year that he was diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer.

Adams’ ex-wife, Shelly Miles, announced the news of his death during a live stream of his YouTube show, “Real Coffee with Scott Adams.” 

She read a “final message” from Adams on the show, in which he wrote that he had “an amazing life” and gave it everything he had. He urged people to “be useful” and said, “please know I loved you all to the very end.” 

I loved Dilbert. It might be my favourite adult cartoon (Calvin and Hobbes is my favourite kids one), just ahead of Giles.

Dilbert was published for 35 years and had so many great characters such as Dogbert and Catbert.

The Government has announced:

Minister and National MP for Papakura Hon Judith Collins KC is honoured that she will be appointed President of the Law Commission: Te Aka Matua o te Ture following a political career spanning 24 years.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today announced Ms Collins will be appointed to the Law Commission from mid-2026.

Ms Collins says it has been a privilege to serve New Zealand in a variety of Ministerial portfolios since being elected to represent the then electorate of Clevedon in 2002 – which later became Papakura.

“I could not have done it without the unwavering support of my husband, David, and son, James, who have kept the home fires burning since I was first elected. As all MPs know, our families are the unsung heroes who allow us to do the very public job that we do for New Zealanders.

“I want to say a huge thanks to the Prime Minister for his confidence in my abilities. I started this term with eight portfolios and I am announcing my retirement from politics with seven, having been a minister in four terms of government.

Very pleased for Judith, and for law making. The Law Commission is one of those really great institutions where they are proactive rather than reactive. They often do excellent law reform advice. Judith will bring her formidable experience as a former Attorney-General and Minister, plus here prior legal experience.

The Post reported:

Business confidence jumped sharply in the final three months of last year to the highest level since 2014, and a large number of firms are expecting to start hiring again in the coming months, according to a closely watched business survey.

Hopefully the positive sentiment flows through to actual increased jobs. The more people in employment the better for incomes and also tax for social services.

Alex Berenson writes:

As you know, Good is the 37-year-old woman shot and killed by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis last week. The shooting, like everything else that happens in the United States these days, has become the object of a partisan fight. The Trump Administration keeps calling Good a “domestic terrorist.” The left wants to put up a statue of her alongside George Floyd, patron saint of fentanyl addicts who overdosed in the right place at the right time to get their families paid.

Neither side is right. Good was no saint. She wasn’t a domestic terrorist either.

Too bad for her. If she was she’d probably still be alive.

Like many of you, I have watched the videos of the shooting and the minutes leading up to it. What is striking is how much fun Good seems to be having as she blocks traffic in her Honda Pilot. She honks her horn and bounces along to its beat. When an officer approaches the car, she says, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you.”

She wasn’t a terrorist, she was a thirty-something white woman who didn’t understand the mess she was making and the risks she was running, probably in part because she thought her white womanness would protect her.

This is a valid point. I’ve been to the US a lot. I know their authorities are armed and to be blunt much more triggers happy than NZ cops. One could argue they have to be, because so many non-police are armed. But regardless it is well known. If I ever have an encounter with armed authorities in the US, I go out of my way to do exactly what they say with maximum politeness and co-operation.

This is not always the case in NZ. I recall many years ago when a group of us were at Mt Maunganui for New Years Eve. One of us (Yes you Tomas) was giving legal advice to other party goers about how they didn’t have to do what the Police were saying etc. We nicknamed him a beach lawyer and quite enjoyed seeing him mark up the Police with his (legally correct) advice to drunk party goers.

In NZ this was fun. We knew the worst that would happen if a cop would think bad thoughts about you. In the US you could end up shot. Again I would never ever much around with US law enforcement. I don’t like around the TSA. I am ultra polite to Highway Patrol etc etc.

2: American citizens have the right to monitor ICE operations in public, as they have the right to monitor other public law-enforcement activities. Monitoring usually includes taping. They also have the right to protest ICE operations. Monitoring and protest are not terrorism.

3: But citizens don’t have the right to interfere with ICE. The line between monitoring, protest, and interference can be tricky. Yelling at agents from a sidewalk is protesting. What about blaring an air horn over and over? Trying to get between agents and someone they are trying to arrest is interference. But what about if an agent, or several agents, walk up to a protestor in an apparent effort to provoke him?

4: The line can be tricky, but it was not in this case. Good crossed it. She was blocking traffic on a public thoroughfare, giving the agents reason to arrest her.

She was breaking the law. Of course the punishment for that should be arrest, not death.

Good didn’t display common sense. She thought she could break the law without consequence. The fact that she was in her vehicle probably played a role. I spend a lot of time driving. I can attest to the fact that a 4,000-pound SUV can become almost a second home, a cocoon of sorts. She was jamming away without a care.

But when the consequence — the arrest — came, she panicked and escalated. And what seems like a cocoon from the inside feels more like a beehive to a person standing outside a few feet away, a potentially deadly threat.

Good may or may not have been thinking about the threat she posed as her girlfriend told her, “Drive, baby, drive,” and she hit the gas. But the officer in front of her car had been dragged by another vehicle only a few months before. He understood the risk – and he had the legal right to react as he did. It’s hard to see how the shooting wasn’t justifiable.

I don’t know if it was justifiable or not. It is clear the Trump Administration supports the ICE agents, so there will be no investigation. What is clear is it was avoidable. It should not have resulted in a young women losing her life.

A general good rule of thumb is to comply with any instructions given by armed police, and argue about it later in court if you think they were in the wrong.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this a second citizen has been killed by ICE. Alex Pretti. The videos of this killing make it clear that Pretti’s gun (which he was licensed to have and he did not present) had been removed from him when he was shot. It looks like an unlawful killing. The most benign interpretation is that a gun was accidentally discharged and ICE officers mistakenly thought it was Pretti and opened fire. There is no evidence he did anything that justified his shooting.

One can (and should) have multiple views on what is happening in the US. Mine include:

• Governments have the right, and even the duty to deport people who are in the country illegally. People have a right to secure borders and the ability to decide who can become citizens of their country.
• For illegal immigrants who have lived and worked in the US for a long period of time and broken no other laws, there should be a pathway to residency and citizenship as a one off thing.
• Deportations from the US have occurred under all recent US Presidents. The number per President is:
  • Reagan around 100k a year
  • Clinton: around 108k a year
  • Bush GHW: around 120k a year
  • Bush GW: around 250k a year
  • Trump 1: around 250k a year
  • Biden: around 275k a year
  • Trump 2: Around 300k in first year
  • Obama: around 400k a year
• Cities and states should co-operate with ICE to deport illegal immigrants.
• The backlash against ICE is partly driven by antipathy to Trump, but is also partly driven by the change in ICE’s tactics where they are trying to be highly visible and intimidatory
• ICE appears to have developed a very aggressive and possibly trigger happy culture which also drives some of the backlash.
• Activists who try to disrupt legal law enforcement operations are idiots
• People have the right to be idiots and not be killed
• Any killing by law enforcement officers should be fully and independently investigated.
• It is repugnant to have senior WH staff labelling Pretti an assassin, and basically sending out a message that his killing should not be properly investigated

This should be a parody, but sadly it is not.

At Patreon I have done my normal monthly analysis of the polls and fundamentals in Australia, Canada, NZ, UK and US.

I note:

In the wake of the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, the Australian Government loses support. However the beneficiary has been One Nation, rather than the Coalition.

The Herald reports:

Te Pāti Māori says it will abolish prisons by 2040 in favour of community-led solutions to address the enormous inequities facing the country’s indigenous people – if it gets into power at the next election. 

The most likely governing scenario for Te Pāti Māori is with Labour and the Greens, given the National Party has ruled out working with it. But the party would have to convince Labour to change its stance on prison abolition – Labour told the Herald today it did not support the policy as prisons were “necessary” for corrections and rehabilitation.

They only disagree on how many prisoners to release.

The last Labour Government’s policy was to empty the prisons by 30%. Te Pati Maori just wish to take that and make it 100%. So I guess they’ll compromise somewhere around 50% or so?

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution writes:

In 2015, for example, 6,852 of the 8,760 complaints submitted to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport originated from one residence in the affluent Foxhall neighborhood of northwest Washington, DC …

In 2024, for example, one individual alone submitted 20,089 complaints, accounting for 25% of all complaints! Indeed, the total number of complainants was only 188 but they complained 79,918 times (an average of 425 per individual or more than one per day.) …

In 2023, for example, 5059 sexual discrimination complaints came from a single individual–from a total of 8151 complaints. Thus, one individual accounted for 68.5% of all sexual discrimination complaints in that year.

I think all complaints bodies should be able to set a limit to how many complaints from an individual they will accept in a year. Let’s be generous and say it is 10. No one should even genuinely have more than 10 complaints in a year to the same body.

The BBC reports:

The chief constable of West Midlands Police has retired after damning criticism of a decision to ban Israeli fans from a match against Aston Villa.

Craig Guildford’s retirement was confirmed on Friday after both Downing Street and the home secretary said this week they had lost confidence in his leadership.

He faced numerous calls to resign after apologising for providing incorrect evidence to MPs, which included the denial that AI was used in a report which led to the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from the game on 6 November.

The real scandal isn’t the incorrect information, but the decision to ban Maccabi fans from the stadium. The West Midlands Police said it was because the fans were violent and would terrorise locals. This was a lie, with fake AI created evidence to justify it later. The real reason was that they thought the Maccabi fans would be attacked by Islamist elements in the UK.

So basically they banned the Jews, and blamed the Jews for their own banning, even though the actual intelligence was that the Jews would be the victims, not the aggressors.

Disgraceful.