The Russian report was published yesterday and as expected revealed very little additional detail but has caused quite a furore nevertheless. The intelligence and security committee cleverly avoided the details, knowing they would be redacted anyway but focused on the bigger picture. What they were shocked to learn is that behind the government's - and Johnsons's, - consistent stonewalling answer that they had seen no evidence of any Russian interference, was the fact that they hadn't looked for any. This is perhaps the most shocking thing of all.
It is tantamount to a policeman turning up unexpectedly at the scene of an incident outside a jeweller's shop with a lot of shamefaced people standing around a broken window and not thinking to ask what's going on 'ere?
The only conclusion you can draw is that the policeman is somehow in cahoots with the robbers.
I think we all know what happened. There was the suspicion that the Russians did interfere, if not at the time, certainly after Trump's election in November 2016 and the US discovered the Russians were behind the leaking of embarrassing emails from the Clinton campaign. But Brexiteers did not want Brexit investigated and Theresa May would have looked like she was a remainer, had she launched an investigation. It was even less likely that Johnson would do it given his and Cumming's connections to the Kremlin and Russia.
What is notable is the government's 20 page response, published immediately afterwards. The most important recommendation in the ISC's report is that the government, accused of not looking for any evidence remember, should now get on and do so:
Para 47 - We have not been provided with any post-referendum assessment of Russian attempts at interference, ***.53 This situation is in stark contrast to the US handling of allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, where an intelligence community assessment54 was produced within two months of the vote, with an unclassified summary being made public. Whilst the issues at stake in the EU referendum campaign are less clear-cut, it is nonetheless the Committee’s view that the UK intelligence and security community should produce an analogous assessment of potential Russian interference in the EU referendum and that an unclassified summary of it be published.”
This is what you might call the central accusation of the entire report. That the government looked the other way, turned a blind eye to the possibility because it didn't want to know. The objective of leaving the EU had been achieved and if it was with the help of a foreign power - so what?
To admit the Russians had interfered would be a tacit admission of collusion with an adversary to achieve the adversary's objective. They couldn't do it - and they still can't.
This is the British government's official response (see page 15) to a charge of complacency:
"We have seen no evidence of successful interference in the EU Referendum."
To the charge of complacency they offer more complacency. Even now, with all that we know of Russia's threat to democracy around the world the response is to keep the blind eye trained on Moscow.
One might almost conclude that the leaders of both the USA and Britain are in the pocket of Vladimir Putin. Russia has had plenty of opportunity and the expertise, to obtain kompromat on both men - so who knows? I don't suppose we will ever know the truth and this is Russia's aim isn't it? To make us doubt everything and to suspect everyone.
