Friday, July 17, 2020

Pull the other one

The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) is the committee of Parliament with statutory responsibility for oversight of the UK Intelligence Community.

At the beginning of this week the Government, which nominates its members, tried to steamroller Chris Grayling into the role of chair.

The other nominees rebelled and elected Julian Lewis instead, prompting an embarrassed Downing Street to remove the whip from the victor.

The Lewis led committee then confirmed it will publish the long-delayed report into Russian infiltration in the UK next week  before parliament goes into recess.

The former chair of the committee Dominic Grieve said the report had been sent to Downing Street on 17 October last year and was ready for publication once it had been signed off, a process that usually takes up to 10 days.

Yesterday, by an extraordinary coincidence, Downing St accused Putin's hackers of attempting to steal the UK's Covid-19 vaccine research, and also briefed that the Kremlin 'played Jeremy Corbyn as a useful idiot' to publicise classified documents.

Why now? The report will come out before Wednesday. It has been sat on because it will reveal unsavoury details of Tory involvement . My guess is funding by oligarchs to gain influence. Yesterday's shenanigans are a clumsy attempt to pull the sting of next week's embarrassment by creating a fairy story in which this government has always stood up to the assertive Russian bear.

What kind of idiots do they think we are?

3 comments:

Nick Browne said...

Simon, I was sorry to hear that Peter Green has died. Am I right in thinking that there is a song of your dad's about you that he plays on?

Simon Brunning said...

Yup: https://twitter.com/brunns/status/1287055909294931968

Very sad day.

Nick Browne said...

Thanks Simon, I follow you on Twitter but missed that post.