Return to questions over the U.K. Russia Report, former PM Johnson, Brexit, Conservative government, Russian oligarchs, Trump’s GOP Presidential campaign and influence on elections including the EU referendum..
Written by Peter Jukes and originally published January 2023 by ByLine Times, asking questions that are not only unresolved, but actively avoided by the Tories, media and supporters for the advantage of Putin’s Russia and oligarchs, both east and west?
‘Nothing less than the future of democracy is at stake’ says Caroline Lucas as a cross-party coalition and The Citizens win an unprecedented hearing over electoral safety and national security
19 January 2023
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his all-out war on Ukraine almost a year ago, the Kremlin’s long-term plans for imperial expansion have come under closer scrutiny, particularly its use of ‘alternative measures’ to undermine the EU through propaganda and the funding of right-wing Eurosceptic parties in France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. But what about the UK?
Though dismissed or ignored at the time, Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee’s 2018 report on disinformation and fake news outlined the impact of the Russian Embassy in London, and state-backed media outlets RT and Sputnik, in supporting the Leave campaigns.
It also revealed the role social media operations such as the Internet Research Agency and the now defunct Cambridge Analytica had in promoting Brexit. A year later, in 2019, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee concluded in its ‘Russia Report’ that Kremlin interference in elections was the “new normal” and there were “credible attempts” to meddle with the UK’s democratic processes.
For whatever reason, Boris Johnson succeeded in delaying the publication of the Russia Report in the run-up to the 2019 General Election. When – against Johnson’s wishes – it was finally published in July 2020, the report also contained the staggering admission that there had been no official investigation into the potential damage done to our democracy by what was, by then, clearly a hostile foreign power.
Johnson’s apathy over our democratic national security was not new. While Foreign Secretary in 2017, Johnson claimed there was “not a sausage” of evidence of Putin meddling in Brexit, despite his nominal role overseeing GCHQ at the time, which had been working with the FBI’s Special Counsel Robert Mueller on precisely that. Mueller had named Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud as a Russian agent in London. As the Observer and Byline reported, Mifsud met Johnson to talk about Brexit.
Alexander Temerko, a Soviet-born oligarch and a major Conservative donor, told the journalist Catherine Belton that he and Johnson spent time drinking wine while Johnson was at the Foreign Office, plotting the overthrow of then Prime Minister Theresa May. According to Temerko, Johnson had finally been persuaded to back Brexit in 2016 by a group of “eastern European businessmen”.
We do not know who these businessmen are alleged to be, but Sarah Vine, then wife of Michael Gove, wrote that Johnson agreed to join the Vote Leave campaign at a dinner with Evgeny Lebedev, owner of the Independent and Evening Standard.
Evgeny Lebedev was controversially elevated to the House of Lords by Johnson in 2020 – as Baron of Hampton in Richmond upon Thames and Siberia in the Russian Federation. His father, Alexander, a former senior KGB officer, is alleged to have been present when, as Foreign Secretary, Johnson left his security detail behind to travel to the Lebedev’s Umbrian villa following a NATO briefing on the attempted murder of defector Sergei Skripal by Russian military intelligence using the Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury. Johnson denies any official matters were discussed, but Paul Caruana Galizia has reported for Tortoise that Johnson was offered a back-channel to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov….
….In response to this glaring and potentially compromising lack of electoral and national security, a group of parliamentarians took the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last March, with the support of campaigning journalism organisation The Citizens. The cross-party group of MPs – including Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, Labour’s Ben Bradshaw and the SNP’s Alyn Smith – claim the Government is infringing our “right to free and fair elections” by failing to act on the findings of the Russia Report.
The court in Strasbourg has now indicated the case both has merit and may be designated an ‘impact case’. It has written to the Government inviting it to respond in detail to the allegations by 26 April.
Electoral Security – Not Reversing Brexit
The European Convention on Human Rights, though often falsely associated with the European Union, was set up in the aftermath of World War 2 to enshrine human rights across the continent with the support of politicians including Winston Churchill, François Mitterrand and Konrad Adenauer….
…..To Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion, nothing less than “the future of democracy is on trial”. She points out that in the two and a half years since the Russia Report, the British Government “continually turned a blind eye to its jaw-dropping findings”. “With a general election on the horizon, and with Russia’s war on Ukraine showing no sign of abating, the stakes have never been higher,” Lucas adds.
Ben Bradshaw, MP for Exeter, agrees that the Governments failure to investigate Russian interference “constitutes a very serious breach of its obligations to the British people”. “A number of us have been warning about Putin’s real intent for more than 10 years,” Bradshaw says. “We know that his long-term strategy has been to destabilise and divide Western democracies and nothing that’s happened in recent British history has done more to destabilise Europe, and Britain’s relationship with it, than Brexit”….
….“Following the 2016 EU referendum, but long before the ISC Russia Report, there was a considerable and growing body of evidence that Russia was interested in and acting to disturb Western election processes,” Ricketts continued. “It is a matter of public record that both the U.S. election in 2016 and the French election in 2017 were subject to Russian interference…. Given the evidence that has now amassed of Russian interference, it is important to establish once and for all whether Russia attempted to interfere in the EU Referendum and subsequent UK general elections.”