DAILY MAIL COMMENT: With his resignation raising questions for Cambridge University, the Metropolitan Police and the Left, why was Jason Arday able to fool everyone?

Published: 01:00, 7 August 2026 | Updated: 01:20, 7 August 2026 Jason Arday's resignation from the University of Cambridge raises uncomfortable questions right across the board. The university itself is under pressure to explain the abysmal vetting failures that underpin this entire fiasco. No proper checks appear to have been carried out into Mr Arday's CV or his impressive-sounding credentials. Even when concerns were aired as long ago as 2023 about the possibility of plagiarism in his PhD thesis, nothing seems to have been done. Yet perhaps even more troubling were Cambridge's attempts to defend Mr Arday as the gaps in his story became embarrassingly obvious. Only at the very last minute – and only after a series of hugely damaging revelations – did the university decide to launch an investigation. It is quite extraordinary that one of the world's most esteemed seats of learning – an institution renowned for its academic rigour – has effectively jeopardised its own reputation in this manner. Were education chiefs really so impressed by Mr Arday's apparent achievements, as well as his extraordinary claims of athletic feats and fundraising endeavours, that they failed to run the rule over him properly? Or was it more that they were dazzled by the thought of appointing a poster boy for diversity to a prestigious position? It also beggars belief that the Met carried out a four-month investigation into a journalist who questioned Mr Arday's academic record. Even if the reporter's suspicions had ultimately proved groundless, the average citizen might think that knife crime, shoplifting and the phone-snatching epidemic should be bigger concerns for the police. Were education chiefs really so impressed by Jason Arday's apparent achievements, as well as his extraordinary claims of athletic feats and fundraising endeavours, that they failed to run the rule over him properly? Granted, Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has acknowledged that the force 'dropped the ball' in this instance. But it is yet another egregious example of wokery and skewed priorities in policing. Perhaps the most predictable reaction of all throughout this whole sorry saga has been from the Left. Anyone who dared to query any part of Mr Arday's unlikely-sounding backstory was – in typical kneejerk fashion – immediately smeared as racist. None of this has stopped at least some of the truth of the affair being brought into the public domain. We still don't know the full details of this peculiar tale. But if Cambridge, the Met and the Left had succeeded in hushing the entire thing up, we wouldn't know any of them. Following a landmark Supreme Court judgment, it has taken almost 18 months for rules on single-sex spaces to come into effect. Yet if that delay was bad enough, it is far worse that a group of Left-wing councils are now threatening to ignore the regulations on the grounds that they 'will feel like an attack on the countless trans people in our communities'. Even by the standards we have come to expect from political zealots and crackpots, this is an outrage. It is difficult to imagine what these jumped-up agitators believe qualifies them to effectively send a two-fingered salute to the highest court in the land. In an open letter to Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson, they say that trans people are 'simply trying to live their lives in safety and wish to be treated with respect'. Not a word, though, for the far bigger numbers of biological women affected by this. Is there some reason they shouldn't be allowed use public toilets and changing rooms in a safe and respectful environment as well?