Standing together
It may not have escaped the notice of some of the politically conscious readers of this blog that there is one person who I have studiously avoided quoting or referring to in the past 72 hours or so and an open goal that I have pointedly refrained from taking aim at.
That it because this county used to have a tradition - which the majority of MPs of all parties continue to respect - that "politics ends at the water's edge."
According to that tradition, when your country is involved in a confrontation with a hostile foreign power - and sadly, that is what Putin has evidently decided Russia under his leadership will be - you make every effort to stand together, and put together a united front against our country's enemies.
As Labour MP Pat McFadden told the House of Commons yesterday and as I quoted this morning,
"Responding with strength and resolve when your country is under threat is an essential component of political leadership. There is a Labour tradition that understands that, and it has been understood by Prime Ministers of all parties who have stood at that Dispatch Box."
The fact that most Labour MPs have shown that they are willing to support the Prime Minister of our country when we have been the target of a despicable external attack does not make them "red tories" and the fact that I choose to recognise their support does not make me soft of socialism.
It is about standing together against a bully who is culpable for acts of attempted and actual murder in our country and who is a threat to the country all of us love.
Expressing the point very well, here is a link to an article by Labour MP Anna Turley explaining why she agrees with Theresa May about Russia
That it because this county used to have a tradition - which the majority of MPs of all parties continue to respect - that "politics ends at the water's edge."
According to that tradition, when your country is involved in a confrontation with a hostile foreign power - and sadly, that is what Putin has evidently decided Russia under his leadership will be - you make every effort to stand together, and put together a united front against our country's enemies.
As Labour MP Pat McFadden told the House of Commons yesterday and as I quoted this morning,
"Responding with strength and resolve when your country is under threat is an essential component of political leadership. There is a Labour tradition that understands that, and it has been understood by Prime Ministers of all parties who have stood at that Dispatch Box."
The fact that most Labour MPs have shown that they are willing to support the Prime Minister of our country when we have been the target of a despicable external attack does not make them "red tories" and the fact that I choose to recognise their support does not make me soft of socialism.
It is about standing together against a bully who is culpable for acts of attempted and actual murder in our country and who is a threat to the country all of us love.
Expressing the point very well, here is a link to an article by Labour MP Anna Turley explaining why she agrees with Theresa May about Russia
Comments
I note that in the past 48 hours Presidents Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel, all of whom were making cautious statements similar to your comment above at the beginning of the week, have now approved strong statements of support for the UK position.
The evidence which has been published is enough to indicate a very strong probability that the Russians are behind it.
It has been suggested - and I find this highly plausible - that the UK government have privately shown the US, French and German governments further evidence which they do not want to make public but which has convinced those governments that Russia was culpable.
If you demand absolute proof of complicity of a foreign regime before you take any action at all, then you will never respond to anything and will become an easy target. It is right to demand strong evidence but, frankly, I believe we have it.
Russia were asked to enter a plea, they did so, they entered a Plea of NOT GUILTY. Now we have to prove them guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. We have to do this, in order to hold any sort of high moral ground we absolutely must.
INNOCENT until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt is one of the key stones of being British
Where this relates to something on which it is not essential to take a positi0on, then you can respond by simply not taking a position.
For example, I don't have a position on whether Pharoah Akhenaten ascended to that office on the death of his father Amenhotep III or was co-ruler with him for a time, because the evidence which might have enabled us to answer that question were largely destroyed when Horemheb, the successor but one to Akhenaten's son Tutankhamun, adopted a policy of "Damnatio Memorae" in which he attempted to destroy all evidence that the half-a-dozen reigns between Amenhotep III had ever happened and tried - largely successfully until the tomb of Tutankhamun and the ruins of the city of Armana were found - to make history show that he had directly succeeded Amenhotep III.
But this is not an issue like what happened in Egypt well over three thousand years ago on which we don't need to take a position. It is something which is happening now and to which it is important that our government responds.
Unfortunately when you have good reason to believe that a foreign power is murdering or attempting to murder people on the streets of your country, which is unacceptable enough, and doing so using nerve agents which pose a risk to bystanders, which makes matters even worse, you have to make a decision on the BEST EVIDENCE AVAILABLE.
Insisting on total proof is equivalent to saying that you will let foreign powers murder people on our streets with impunity because you will hardly ever get total proof.
As the Prime Minister said, there are two plausible explanations for what happened in Salisbury: either the Russian state organised the attack, or they have lost control of a nerve poison they manufactured. She gave them an opportunity to say what happened, and they declined to respond.
There is clearly information which has not yet been published, possibly for very good reasons. The Russian News agency Tass quotes the Russian Ambassador to the UK as saying that Britain has told Russia that the nerve poison used in Salisbury was Chemical A234 (one of the Novichok group of poisons.)
Britain has not confirmed that in public but it is fairly obvious that they have more evidence than has yet been published, which has so far only been shared with other governments, possibly including the Russians.
Would a rational person have complete faith in the British state?
No.
Should a rational person regard the British or Russian state as more likely to tell the truth?
The British, and that question is not remotely difficult to answer.
Just ask yourself this question about the four UK prime ministers over the last twenty years and about Putin: How many critics, rivals, journalists asking awkward questions about them or whistleblowers have turned up dead in worrying or suspicious circumstances or been arrested on dubious charges?
For Blair and Brown the answer is one dubious arrest and one worrying death between them (David Kelly and Damian Green) and for David Cameron and Theresa May the answer is none. For Putin there were at least ten suspicious deaths as of a week ago - so eleven now counting Nikolai Glushkov - and dozens of dubious arrests.
For the avoidance of doubt I am not directly accusing the Russian government of having assassinated Nikolai Glushkov. I am saying that when a the number of critics of a regime who die in suspicious circumstances or are arrested on dubious charges reaches the number that it has for Putin's government, a wise person bears this history in mind.
Vladimir Putin actually went on Russian TV at the time Skripal and other people who had spied for us was exchanged for some of the Russian agents the West we had caught spying, such as Anna Chapman, and made some not-very-guarded threats against the people he was releasing. Putin is sending a message to anyone who crosses him that there is nowhere they will be safe.
In a normal democracy like Britain you would have to be mad to carry out anything like the Salisbury attack just before an election because it would cost you votes. In present-day Russia Putin is calculating that nobody loves a traitor, that he will be seen as stronger for standing up to the West, and it will actually gain him support. Unfortunately he may well be right.