The report into Russian interference was completed over a year ago, though only this morning released. The government had hitherto been suppressing the report, and only relented when their hand was forced by Parliamentary manoeuvres.
Many ‘journalists’ have been claiming for years, their claims buoyed and ever more frequent by this suppressed report that the Conservative Party is in the pocket of the Russians, and that Brexit itself was a Russian project.
“Release the Russia report! Traitor” shouted one Momentum plant as Boris visited the floods last year. Labour’s Emily Thornberry described the publication delay as “nothing more than an attempt to suppress the truth”. Boris described claims surrounding the report as “Complete Bermuda Triangle stuff”. Our Trans-Atlantic friends in the US got in on it too, with Hillary Clinton describing the decision not to release the report as “dumbfounding”. One of the most popular TV ‘News’ hosts in the US, Rachel Maddow told her viewers:
“To be clear about what a freaking mess this is, this [Dominic Cummings] is the PM’s top advisor…He was the director of Vote Leave which has been referred to the police…Cummings himself has unexplained links to the Russian government, and now the pro Brexit PM refuses to release the report on Russian interference into Brexit…Take comfort America, it’s not just us, our closest ally is living out the same nightmare as us” Today the report is out. There is nothing in it, and reportedly not one scintilla of Russia involvement into the Brexit vote, though they did allegedly attempt to interfere in the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum. The only interference of note in our most recent general election, were the leaked trade documents, which the Labour party attempted to exploit for their own benefit. Yet in this post-truth age those who have made careers out of Rusophobic Mcarthyite hysteria need to justify their own existence. Tim Walker of the New European, sensing defeat, retreated to the racist redoubt of saying association with Russian citizens was some sort of transgression:
Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr who has made a career out of conspiracy, took to Twitter today to direct her followers to a Rory Bremner sketch about the Tories and Russia. Who cares what the report actually says, when we could just live in our own reality?
David Schneider, after months if not years of Russia derangement, told us It doesn't matter what the Russia Report says, because the Tories have received £3.5 M in donations from Russians in the past decade. Is anyone counting how much from Americans, or Saudis, or Flemish?
Femi did some weird humble brag about how many degrees he has, pinning his hopes on just one little morsel of interference with which Russia can be blamed for people voting against him (and his many degrees).
For the sake of our collective sanity, and even in the interests and good fortune of the British left, who like the US Democrats have in some cases fallen into the gutter of baseless conspiracy, return to actual real debate. Scapegoating Russia because working class people broke ranks and voted with independent minds is no substitute for electoral strategy, it wont win elections, and more than anything, it's tedious, classist, and xenophobic.
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