Wouldn’t be surprised. I used the ‘if’ in my comment above advisedly.

Agreed.

I think a lot of people don’t realise that academic texts, especially in the humanities, are sometimes 90% quotes of someone else’s work. It’s easy to paraphrase someone a bit too close for comfort, and fail to cite previous works sufficiently or properly.

This being said, even if this poor guy did plagiarise blatantly, hardly a national news story let alone so much coverage. Something that could have been dealt with internally and reported on when it was resolved. Quite obviously a deliberate racist right wing witch hunt.

Given the context, I assume they mean that Burnham is apologising for a too pro-Israel initial response to what happened in Gaza. Something which of course would further strain the UK’s relationship with Israel.