Newton Dunn - Pants On Fire

The sheer shamelessness of Rupe’s downmarket troops at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun can be a sight to behold sometimes, and after Young Dave had told the Commons that an RAF drone had targeted and executed two British citizens in Syria, along with another IS fighter - the legal justification for that one will make interesting reading - non-bullying political editor Tom Newton Dunn was in his element.

In fact, he’d been in his element rather earlier, as he loftily told his Twitter followers “It appears PM's counter-terrorism statement on Syria this afternoon, made alongside his refugees plan, will be quite substantial”. And how might Sir have known that, a matter of hours before Cameron stood up to address the House? Has the Sun been the beneficiary of one of those privileged and yet off the record leaks?

Then, as Dave made his statement, Newton Dunn enthusiastically noted “Breaking: Cameron tells MPs MI5/police have stopped 6 ISIL plots to attack UK in last 12 months”. To be over-egged in tomorrow’s Sun, no doubt. And there was more: “PM confirms Khan and Amin's killing is 1st assassination carried out by an RAF drone outside of a war. Tells MPs: ‘This is a new departure’”. Then came the whopper.

“Why the PM acted: Hussain and Khan tried to bomb Armed Forces Day - the plot was exposed by @TheSun”. See the switch there? The two British citizens killed in the drone strike were Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin. Newton Dunn is trying to suggest that Junaid Hussain, featured in a Sun scare story in late June, was one of them. He was killed in a drone strike - but a US one. We weren’t involved.

It gets worse: the Sun story, debunked on Zelo Street HERE, pretended that there had been a plot to hit Armed Forces Day commemorations in London. But what the Sun said was that someone they believed to be in Syria had told one of their hacks, posing as an IS follower, how to make a bomb using a pressure cooker. There was no “IS Plot”. And what there was did not feature any of those killed in the RAF drone strike.

Even worse for Cameron and the Sun, Reyaad Khan had already been reported killed a month before the PM claimed in the Commons: the Telegraph named him in an article published on July 21. All of that suggests that Tom Newton Dunn is going to drop himself in the mire big time if he’s going to claim that anyone killed in the RAF drone strike was part of a supposed plot that his paper didn’t really foil.

Still, it will be a good way of getting Sun readers to “look over there” and not notice what former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown has discovered: “Minister in the Lords just confirmed refugee orphans and children brought in under Cameron's scheme will be deported at age 18”. Bring them to the UK, let them rebuild their lives, let them get settled, then chuck them out and return them to God Knows What.

What you will not read in the Sun, where the political editor’s pants are on fire.