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David Williams, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, has been forced to resign in the wake of the Afghan data breach in what we should all see as a deep injustice and a failure of political integrity.

Williams did not cause the breach – that much is clear.

The leak—which catastrophically exposed the identities of around 19,000 Afghan nationals seeking UK asylum and more than 100 British personnel, including special forces and MI6 staff—was the result of a basic but devastating operational error: a spreadsheet sent to the wrong recipient from within UK Special Forces HQ.

It was a failure of procedure, not policy.

Yet it is Williams who will go, while the individual directly responsible remains unnamed, unaccounted for, and possibly still in-post.

This is not accountability – it’s scapegoating.

As the MoD’s top civil servant since 2021, David Williams has led the department through an unprecedented period of turbulence—supporting Ukraine, steering a defence review, managing procurement reform, and responding to a volatile global security landscape.

By all reports, he was respected in Whitehall and trusted to implement systemic changes.

Now, at precisely the moment when the UK is being told to “arm up” in response to rising threats, the government is discarding one of its most experienced defence administrators.

The timing is not just ironic—it’s strategically incoherent.

If we are truly entering a more dangerous world, as the Prime Minister and Defence Secretary insist, then why cast off institutional memory and crisis-tested leadership?

The answer, of course, lies in political optics.

The Afghan breach was embarrassing.

It endangered lives.

And it became public only after months of concealment and a super-injunction.

Someone had to be seen to pay.

But rather than acknowledge the specific operational failures—or address why the breach went undetected for so long—the government has taken the path of least resistance: remove the most senior figure on the org chart, and move on.

This approach sends a dangerous message: not only does it reinforce the idea that public accountability is more about PR than principle, it also suggests that operational negligence can be buried, while strategic leadership is expendable.

It is entirely right that Parliament’s Defence Committee has opened an inquiry. But if that inquiry fails to ask who actually sent the email, who oversaw that process, what safeguards failed, and what changes have been made, it risks becoming just another exercise in procedural face-saving.

Accountability should mean owning up to mistakes and fixing systems—not throwing competent people under the bus for mistakes they didn’t make.

David Williams didn’t leak the data. But now, he carries the political consequence, while the real culprit stays in the shadows. That’s not justice – it’s a cover-up by proxy.

And in a world increasingly defined by instability, we can ill afford a Ministry of Defence that treats competence as collateral damage.

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