Someone in Downing Street calculated that it was less embarrassing to suppress the intelligence and security committee’s report into Russian interference in the UK than it was to publish it.
Boris Johnson’s refusal to allow voters to read the report made waves in parliament a week ago, yet the election campaign has offered a convenient distraction since then. The government can survive one uncomfortable news cycle; but a 50-page report full of revelations about rich Russians funding political parties and associating with politicians, as well as Russian bots meddling in the referendum, could have fed the media for days.
The report will only emerge once we have a new parliament, by which stage any revelations it contains will have lost their power, and thus be safely ignored. This is a shame, because the toxic relationship between the Russian and British elites is something that needs full exposure. They have been collaborating to their mutual enrichment, and to the detriment of democracy and accountability everywhere, for decades. » | Oliver Bullough | Wednesday, November 13, 2019
