Take your pick today between the late-arriving Russia Report and Tory MPs voting down protections for our NHS. Oh, all right then, here’s how generous I am: you can have both.
The report from parliament’s intelligence and security committee eventually landed with parts redacted by persons unknown (any fingers pointing at Dominic Cummings surely won’t be far off the mark).
The shorthand summary is that Theresa May and Boris Johnson turned a blind eye to allegations of Russian interference in the Brexit vote. They just didn’t want to know, basically – fingers in the ears and humming la-la-la being about the size of it.
Committee member Kevan Jones said in reference to any possible compromise of the Brexit vote: “The outrage isn’t that there was interference. The outrage is that no one [in government] would want to know if there was interference.”
Jones also suggested that Johnson repeatedly lied over the reasons for not publishing the report before last year’s election.
Leave campaigner and backer Arron Banks has been shouting down theories of Russian interference for ages. Like his fellow malign nuisance Nigel Farage, he sees the report as an exoneration of his Leave.EU organisation. Not so hasty, those self-style Bad Boys of Brexit: the report doesn’t say there was no Russian attempt to influence the vote; it suggests no one in government could be arsed to discover if that had occurred.
The 42-page report is “supplemented with a substantial annex” that is not being published “in view of the current Russian threat”. So is the real meat of this being buried under the floorboards to moulder and sprout maggots? Sure looks that way.
We should know if Russian bots and trolls unleashed on social media affected the result of the referendum, but Johnson is declining to investigate further. And that leaves the Brexit question as unanswered as it was before, however loudly Banks and Farage bellow abuse.
The other big takeaway from the report is just how much Russian influence and money has been allowed/encouraged to flow into the UK – including illicit finance washed through what is known as the London “laundromat”. Russian money has also ended up in our political parties, notably in the Conservative coffers.
If none of this smells funny to you, it may be time to have your nostrils washed out.
Do you remember all those politicians, from Boris Johnson ‘downwards’, ostentatiously clapping for NHS workers? Now MPs have voted by 340 votes to 251 against supporting an amendment that would have legally protected the NHS from any form of outside control.
Among the ranks of Tory MPs voting down this protection from future trade deals were Cabinet members Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, Grant Shapps, Alok Sharma, Chris Grayling and former health secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Happy to clap one day, content the next to wave away protections that would have guarded the NHS against predatory foreign companies.
Johnson insists that the NHS “will never be on the table” in any future trade negotiations; sadly his words are but wonky legs to that table.
So take your pick. Do you want to be pissed off about the findings of the Russia Report or the lack of real protection for the NHS. Oh, why not go for both.