UK General Election 8th June: Shake it all about?

[Doktor Howl]

https://apnews.com/dfefa8fbba8546fdb5df7377b782eece


Bercow having fun.

But does nobody in the UK own a comb?

[Cain]

Jo Swinson really is doing her damndest to try and prove every left-wing critic of the Lib Dems correct, isn't she?

What's up?

She's defending her record as being involved in the Tory-Lib Dem coalition as being part of the national interest, in giving the UK a working government.

However, she's also categorically ruling out any kind of coalition with Labour, even if they are the largest party in Parliament after the election.

You may note a slight contradiction there.

[Doktor Howl]

Jo Swinson really is doing her damndest to try and prove every left-wing critic of the Lib Dems correct, isn't she?

What's up?

She's defending her record as being involved in the Tory-Lib Dem coalition as being part of the national interest, in giving the UK a working government.

However, she's also categorically ruling out any kind of coalition with Labour, even if they are the largest party in Parliament after the election.

You may note a slight contradiction there.

Gonna have to look her up on Wikipedia.  She looks like a barrel of laughs.

[Cain]

This covers her greatest hits. Businesses uber alles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Swinson#Business_Minister_(2012%E2%80%932015)

[chaotic neutral observer]

Article 54 presents: The Hustle.

A shining disco symphony for the dark days of Brexit.
Features three years worth of total bullshit, set to music.
It's the musical antidote you never imagined, for the crisis you never wanted.

[Cain]

The Times has seen some of the Russia report. While it's behind a paywall, here's the article:

Nine Russian business people who gave money to the Conservative Party are named in a secret intelligence report on the threats posed to UK democracy which was suppressed last week by Downing Street.

Oligarchs and other wealthy Tory donors were included in the report on illicit Russian activities in Britain by the cross-party intelligence and security select committee (ISC), whose publication was blocked by No 10.

Some Russian donors are personally close to the prime minister. Alexander Temerko, who has worked for the Kremlin's defence ministry and has spoken warmly about his "friend" Boris Johnson, has gifted more than £1.2m to the Conservatives over the past seven years.

MPs on the ISC, which conducted an 18-month inquiry, were also briefed on Alexander Lebedev, the former KGB spy in London whom the last Labour government allowed to buy the London Evening Standard newspaper.

Lebedev's son Evgeny invited Johnson when he was foreign secretary to parties at the family's converted castle near Perugia, Italy. The future prime minister apparently travelled without the close-protection police officers that normally accompany senior ministers of state during the trip in April 2018.

The largest Russian Tory donor is Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of Vladimir Chernukhin, a former ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. She paid £160,000 in return for a tennis match with Johnson and has donated more than £450,000 in the last year alone.

Britain's intelligence agencies are understood to be "furious" at the delay in releasing the report because measures to protect sensitive information have already been taken.

It is not known whether the Tory donors are named in the public section of the report, or whether they have been included in its confidential annex, which will remain classified indefinitely.

The government's argument that it needs more time to redact information has been dismissed by the former cabinet secretary Lord Butler, Lord Ricketts, a former national security adviser, and Lord Anderson, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation.

Last week, Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, told MPs the delay was "utterly unjustifiable, unprecedented and clearly politically motivated". She added: "I fear it is because they realise that this report will lead to other questions about the links between Russia and Brexit and the current leadership of the Tory party, which risks derailing their election campaign. What is Downing Street so worried about?"

Thornberry also raised a whistleblower's claims regarding "relationships" that Johnson's chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, made during the "mysterious three years he spent in post-communist Russia". She said the Downing Street chief of staff allegedly met Vladislav Surkov, who is known as the "grey cardinal" of the Kremlin and has close links to Russia's security agencies.

In the Commons, Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, said last week that he would not comment on security clearances, but denied the "insinuation" that No 10 was "in the grip of a Kremlin mole".

In a letter to Thornberry last week, Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, also did not deny the unusual arrangement. "Classified information, especially intelligence, is made available only to those with the appropriate security clearance," he wrote. "This applies to Mr Cummings and his access is appropriate for someone in his role."

A Conservative Party spokesman said: "We cannot speculate on what may or may not be in a leaked parliamentary report."

Andrew Gwynne, a Labour parliamentary candidate, said: "Billionaires fund the Conservative Party, so this sordid cover-up shouldn't be surprising. The Tories blocked this report and oppose tax transparency so their billionaire backers can continue to rip us off unchallenged.

"Labour is on the side of the many, not the few, so we'll get dirty money out of politics, introduce an oligarch levy and take on the vested interests selling out our people and public services."

[Doktor Howl]

The Times has seen some of the Russia report. While it's behind a paywall, here's the article:

Nine Russian business people who gave money to the Conservative Party are named in a secret intelligence report on the threats posed to UK democracy which was suppressed last week by Downing Street.

Oligarchs and other wealthy Tory donors were included in the report on illicit Russian activities in Britain by the cross-party intelligence and security select committee (ISC), whose publication was blocked by No 10.

Some Russian donors are personally close to the prime minister. Alexander Temerko, who has worked for the Kremlin's defence ministry and has spoken warmly about his "friend" Boris Johnson, has gifted more than £1.2m to the Conservatives over the past seven years.

MPs on the ISC, which conducted an 18-month inquiry, were also briefed on Alexander Lebedev, the former KGB spy in London whom the last Labour government allowed to buy the London Evening Standard newspaper.

Lebedev's son Evgeny invited Johnson when he was foreign secretary to parties at the family's converted castle near Perugia, Italy. The future prime minister apparently travelled without the close-protection police officers that normally accompany senior ministers of state during the trip in April 2018.

The largest Russian Tory donor is Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of Vladimir Chernukhin, a former ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. She paid £160,000 in return for a tennis match with Johnson and has donated more than £450,000 in the last year alone.

Britain's intelligence agencies are understood to be "furious" at the delay in releasing the report because measures to protect sensitive information have already been taken.

It is not known whether the Tory donors are named in the public section of the report, or whether they have been included in its confidential annex, which will remain classified indefinitely.

The government's argument that it needs more time to redact information has been dismissed by the former cabinet secretary Lord Butler, Lord Ricketts, a former national security adviser, and Lord Anderson, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation.

Last week, Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, told MPs the delay was "utterly unjustifiable, unprecedented and clearly politically motivated". She added: "I fear it is because they realise that this report will lead to other questions about the links between Russia and Brexit and the current leadership of the Tory party, which risks derailing their election campaign. What is Downing Street so worried about?"

Thornberry also raised a whistleblower's claims regarding "relationships" that Johnson's chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, made during the "mysterious three years he spent in post-communist Russia". She said the Downing Street chief of staff allegedly met Vladislav Surkov, who is known as the "grey cardinal" of the Kremlin and has close links to Russia's security agencies.

In the Commons, Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, said last week that he would not comment on security clearances, but denied the "insinuation" that No 10 was "in the grip of a Kremlin mole".

In a letter to Thornberry last week, Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, also did not deny the unusual arrangement. "Classified information, especially intelligence, is made available only to those with the appropriate security clearance," he wrote. "This applies to Mr Cummings and his access is appropriate for someone in his role."

A Conservative Party spokesman said: "We cannot speculate on what may or may not be in a leaked parliamentary report."

Andrew Gwynne, a Labour parliamentary candidate, said: "Billionaires fund the Conservative Party, so this sordid cover-up shouldn't be surprising. The Tories blocked this report and oppose tax transparency so their billionaire backers can continue to rip us off unchallenged.

"Labour is on the side of the many, not the few, so we'll get dirty money out of politics, introduce an oligarch levy and take on the vested interests selling out our people and public services."

Holy shit.  That's pretty blatant.

[Doktor Howl]

So I hear that Labour got DDOSed.

[Cain]

In the same day, it's been reported that the Prime Minister's office tried to censor the names of Tory part donors in the Russian intereference report.

It's 2016 all over again.

[Doktor Howl]

In the same day, it's been reported that the Prime Minister's office tried to censor the names of Tory part donors in the Russian intereference report.

It's 2016 all over again.

This is like Tammany Hall on crack.

[Cain]

Fortunately we have some rules that even Prime Ministers still have to follow:

According to Whitehall sources close to the ISC, with detailed knowledge of how it operates, Number 10 or senior ministers can order the redaction of names only if publication is regarded a matter of national security.

    One source said: "If it is simply politically inconvenient or embarrassing for Number 10 or the Conservative Party that individuals are named in a controversial report, that cannot be an official reason to issue an order that names be covered up.

    "However if Downing Street does genuinely believe these names represent a security risk, then the importance of this report and the need for its immediate publication has just grown."

[Cain]

[Cain]

The latest Sunday Times article on the still unreleased Russian interference dossier (no link because it's paywalled anyway):

Russian interference may have had an impact on the Brexit referendum, but the effect was "unquantifiable", according to a parliamentary report suppressed by No 10.

The report by the cross-party intelligence and security committee (ISC ) into illicit Russian activities in Britain could not say if it had affected the result of the 2016 vote.

Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, said the disclosure raised "serious questions" about the safeguards in place for the general election next month.

"If it is correct that our security services have been unable to reach a conclusion about the extent or impact of Russian interference in the 2016 referendum, then it raises serious questions which require serious answers," she said.

"Boris Johnson therefore needs to clear up the confusion, spin and speculation around this ISC report by publishing it in full at the earliest opportunity. If not, people will rightly continue to ask: what is he trying to hide from the British public and why?"

The ISC's 18-month study of alleged Russian interference in the referendum is understood to have criticised British intelligence services for failing to devote enough resources to tackling threats from Vladimir Putin's regime.

Anti-EU articles disseminated by such Kremlin-sanctioned media outlets as RT and Sputnik in the run-up to the referendum campaign are cited in the report. Social media analysis that was presented to the digital, culture, media and sport committee last year revealed that articles published by the Russian sites had four times more social media impact before the Brexit vote than the official leave campaigns.

More than 260 articles posted by RT and Sputnik in the six months prior to the referendum were shared so widely on Twitter that they could have been seen up to 134m times.

By comparison, tweets from Vote Leave and Leave.eu — the two biggest pro-Brexit campaign groups — generated potential impressions of 33m and 14m.

Intelligence officials who have either seen or been briefed on the document said: "The government's refusal to publish the report has been very damaging to the British intelligence community, because it suggests that we have something major to cover up."

[Junkenstein]

If the punchline to all of this is essentially that rt caused Brexit I'm never going to stop laughing.

[Doktor Howl]

If the punchline to all of this is essentially that rt caused Brexit I'm never going to stop laughing.

I wonder who was paying Johnson's bills in Brussels?