UK Column News — 28th September 2026

Mike Robinson (0:08)

Good afternoon, it's Monday the 20th of September, 2026, just after one o'clock. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me in the studio today is Brian Gerrish. Welcome to the program, Brian.

Brian Gerrish (0:18)

Pleasure to be here.

Mike Robinson (0:19)

Well, and we're also surprised, joined by Charles Malet by the video link as well. Now, later in the program, we'll be reporting on rogue AI and asking if it's really a weapon of mass destruction. Britain's, we'll also look at Britain's drive for war and space, latest from Ukraine and Yemen. And we'll also have news on the prosecution of a long time UK Column colleague. But of course, we're going to start today with RAF Fairford and the so-called major incident at Fairford, which everyone will know about by now. So let's just bring this on screen because this is the image that, well, at least one image that's doing the rounds at the moment, along with the footage of the bomb disposal robot going at these vans. But I thought we should just take a look at a timeline of events here. Because this all started apparently at quarter to one in the morning. Yesterday morning, police received a call about three suspicious vehicles traveling towards RAF Fairford allegedly. Shortly after that, no time given, five men were arrested in a village called Welford under the Explosives Act. They were later further arrested on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act. But it wasn't until 7am that Welford residents were evacuated. And this information has come from an account given to mainstream media by a resident of the village. Police haven't stated a time. And then another time not quite given on Sunday morning, Gloucestershire Police said properties were being evacuated in the Army's bomb disposal team was examining vehicles. They didn't say that explosives had been found. And then around 5 o'clock in the evening, again, the exact time not quite known.

Donald Trump spoke to reporters at a PGA golf event in Illinois saying that the suspects were looking to do big damage. We'll come on to that again in a second. Just take that off again, William, please. And also at around 5 o'clock, The National published its UK Police Find Explosives headline. The police, as I say, had not said that at the time. And as far as I know, they still haven't said that.

Then Rolling Out reported that no one had been charged and the men had not been named. That was later in the evening. And then as far as I'm aware, before we came on the news program, police made no statement confirming explosives. They haven't actually confirmed the target. They haven't confirmed the suspect's identities. And they haven't confirmed an Iran link because of course, that of course is doing the rounds at the moment that Iran may have been possible with this.

Gloucester Police has said nothing about the event on the front page of their website. In fact, the only banner headline they've got there at the very top is they think it's much more important to know that they're doing maintenance on their website at the moment. And they didn't publish anything on their website or on their Facebook account until 18 a.m. yesterday, and nothing on their Facebook account until around 10 a.m. yesterday. So they clearly weren't that concerned, yet they claimed to have plans in place for dealing with exactly this kind of incident.

So then we have the statement from the farmer covered by the BBC here on the BBC's live page who said that she saw a large group of hooded and mass men lingering near a tree line. So this seems to be not quite the same as the earlier statements about seeing vans driving towards RAF Fairford. She also said according to the BBC, when they saw me, they ran ahead of me, some into the field and some towards the neighbouring village. I then realised that something highly unusual was taking place. She said, and this is also strange in my opinion, she said she immediately called the Ministry of Defence, but the phone rang out, so it wasn't answered. And then her instincts told her to call 999

And they quote her then as saying, within 10 minutes, the village was full of armed police. I think it was pure luck that I arrived in the village at a similar time to the vans. And she went on to say, I'm absolutely staggered that it was left to me as a member of the public to see and report this. I believe that my 999 call foiled whatever plans they had. So keep that in mind as we go on here. But Brian, the BBC had some other magic to give us here.