Where’s The Russia Report?

As broadcast media obediently shows its viewers the reopening of shopping centres, and marvels over the length of queues outside the local Primark outlet, alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his pals will be rubbing their hands with glee. Because while everyone Looks Over There, very few people are going to ask about his chief polecat Dominic Cummings. Or that pesky report on Russian interference.

You forgot the Russia Report? That should have been published before the General Election? Last November, the Guardian reported, “Downing Street indicated on Monday that it would not allow a 50-page dossier from the intelligence and security committee to be published before the election, prompting a string of complaints over its suppression. The committee’s chairman, Dominic Grieve, called the decision ‘jaw dropping’”.

By January, with the Tories back in power, “Ian Blackford, the leader of the third-largest party in the Commons, called on the prime minister to begin appointing members of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, necessary to allow the controversial document to be released”. By March, we learned why Bozo didn’t want to publish.

“Russia has been accused of hiring a network of British politicians and consultants to help advance its criminal interests and to ‘go after’ Vladimir Putin’s enemies in London, MPs who drew up the Russia report suppressed by Boris Johnson were told”. Which politicians might those be? “The alleged intermediaries include politicians from both Labour and the Conservative parties”. The Guardian published the evidence that included those claims.

That the Russia Report should be published was demonstrated when the Guardian returned to the subject of disinformation six days later: “Ministers have been told they can no longer say there have been ‘no successful examples’ of Russian disinformation affecting UK elections, after the apparent hacking of an NHS dossier seized on by Labour during the last campaign. The dropping of the old line is the first official admission of the impact of Kremlin efforts to distort Britain’s political processes”.

And that is as far as the mainstream investigative journalism went. It is as far as Bozo and Dom want it to go. But if there is nothing incriminating in the Russia Report, why not publish it, given that the Tories got their election victory? Ah well. A Twitter hashtag #ReleaseThe RussiaReport is once again trending, but it may make little difference.

A difference might be made if Labour leader Keir Starmer were to join other party leaders - like Ian Blackford, the SNP’s Westminster leader - in calling unequivocally for the Russia Report to be released. His silence is becoming deafening, and knowing that claims have been made that some Labour MPs have, knowingly or otherwise, been intermediaries for the gangsterist régime in the Kremlin makes further silence indefensible.

Looking over there at retailers reopening their doors will not make this one go away. It is time for the Russia Report to be dragged, blinking, into the light of day.

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