We have a defence secretary who used 1,2,3,4 as his pass code…

…so what are we worried about, asks Tom Peck. The nation’s security is in safe hands. Grant Shapps is more devious than this looks. After all, Grant Shapps isn’t the only name he’s ever used…

Shapps’s bizarre digital past is well documented (PA Wire)

Grant Shapps is almost certainly the first digital concept ever to be appointed secretary of state for defence. It is certainly a risky move from Rishi Sunak, but in these febrile times of cyber warfare, there’s a chance it could pay off.

Putin, after all, has already defeated the analogue method. To take but one of Shapps’s many recent predecessors in the role who were forced to resign in disgrace, Gavin Williamson told Russia to shut up and go away – but it was, somewhat inevitably, he who had to go away, after he was found to be incapable of shutting up.

(Gavin Williamson was fired from his job for leaking information from the National Security Council. It is important, for legal reasons, to state that he denies doing this. But it is also important, for truth-based reasons, to add that those denials were not believed by the people who had the actual evidence in front of them, who then sacked him.)