Foriegn Officer Minister Leo Docherty this week confirmed to Parliament that there has been widespread Russian interference in British politics going back at least to 2015. The Russia ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Office to explain why the FSB has systematically hacked and impersonated British politicians.
This follows on from the 2020 Intelligence Select Committee report that revealed widespread Russian interference in the Brexit vote.
I have catalogued over a decade of interference in British politics by the Russian FSB. Mostly this was aimed at the Conservative Party, however from the latest revelations we know that the Jeremy Corbyn used information hacked by Russian intelligence in the 2019 General Election despite denying it.
I have known about this for years, and so will any one who reads my blog. The obvious question is why wasn’t anything done about it,.
Reading the 2020 report it is clear that MI5 felt that some areas were off limis to security forces, who didn’t want to be seem to be themselves interfering in British politics
But there are 2 bigger reasons:
- Facing up to the extent of Russian interference would mean facing up to the real problems with the Brexit vote – clearly there were breaches of electoral law and, and widespread Russian intererference. The Electoral Commission ruled that if this had been a binding referendum it would have been anulled. There is, however, a real fear among politicians about re-opening this debate. Partly this is fear of the electoral consequences, partly it is the shadow of the death of Jo Cox
- The people who are in power now are people who benefited from Russian interference. Their careeers blossomed as the Russians spied and interfered. They have no incentive to stop Russia. now
This last point is hugely important as we face a UK General Election, and the US a presidential election next year. The last 13 years have been a golden age for Russian influence in UK and US politics. They won’t want to give that up without a fight, and there are plenty of British and American conservatives who are happy to help them.
So far as a nation we have treated the relationship between certain politicians and Russian intelligence services as an accident – the politicians who benefited from Russian help were unwitting beneficiares.
With each new set of revelations it is harder to sustain this belief. Eventually we are going to have to talk about treason.