Russian collusion and Whitehall radicalism revisited

I have been in hospital all week for treatment. Here are two letters I sent from my hospital bed on respectively,  the notorious Russia Report from the Intelligence Committee; and on radical advisors to Conservative Governments - Norman Strauss and Dom Cummings compared:


Tory involvement in Russia collusion

 The opening paragraph of the Intelligence and Security Committee “Russia Report” erroneously asserts that Russia has never left behind the Cold War paranoia  era. 

Russia has collaborated with the West by providing the transport vehicle to the International space station since the end of NASA’s Space Shuttle programme. Until Elon Musk came along recently, it was to Russia with thanks

At para 8 of the ISC report, it thanks Magnitsky Act originator American Bill Browder and ex-MI6 spook, Christopher Steele, for providing their “ very substantial expertise ”on Russia for the “classified evidence sessions”.

But in para10, ISC asserts that to avoid extensive redactions - rendering the report unreadable in its view- that it was better to exclude en bloc whole tranches of presented evidence, and shunted it all into its secret annex.

Browder told several media outlets on the day the report was published, that his submitted dossier contained 14 names of British politicians in receipt of Moscow largesse.

We may reasonably assume that these British politicians were not paid big money without the expectation of future pay back.

The ISC has dubbed this corrupt nexus as the ‘Londongrad laundromat.‘

Honest MPs and peers should surely now demand the publication of the Browder 14

Stepping on establishment toes
Andy Beckett’s peroration on the key early role radical think-tanker John Hoskyns played in delivering civil service changes in the first Thatcher term as PM (“This is the man in No10 who inspired Cummings - and he didn’t last long,” on line, 24  July 2020; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/24/no-10-dominic-cummings-john-hoskyns-margaret-thatcher-whitehall ) reminds me of an interview I conducted inauthentic of 1979 with Hoskyns’ partner at the Centre Policy Studies, Norman Strauss, a co-author of the CPS blueprint for government, “Stepping Stones”, released in November 1977.

I interviewed Strauss at 10 Downing Street in a tiny cubby hole In a stairwell -piled high with copies of the Financial Times - over Tory controversial  plans to dump U.K. nuclear technology and buy in US designs instead .

Their blueprint called for a “sea-change in Britain’s political economy” with its “demand for something morally and economically better.”

In contemporary political terms, this would be the Cummings plan to “build back better and greener.”

The Blueprint set out the essential need to “plan for the removal of political obstacles to implementation.“

Modern day read- across: the sacking of 21 anti Brexit MPs, and forced early retirement of the Cabinet Secretary.

Interestingly, the new slogan to be promoted was to be “the healthy society,” and Strauss, in charge of crafting the media strategy, warned Mrs Thatcher to win over working class voters this plan would have to be fully funded.

Full circle to the Red Wall Tory voters and post Covid19 re-prioritisation- the cunning Cummings plan.