Johnson Blames His Brexit Enemies for Row Over Russia Report
U.K.’s Johnson Says There’s ‘No Smoking Gun’ in Russia Report
(Bloomberg) -- Boris Johnson blamed bitter anti-Brexit campaigners for escalating criticism of the U.K. government, after a damning report warned officials failed to investigate whether Russia influenced the vote to leave the European Union.
The British leader urged opponents of Britain’s departure from the EU to “move on,” saying the report by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee had found no evidence that Russia swayed the 2016 referendum.
“What we have here is the rage and fury of the Remainer elite finding that there is in fact nothing in this report, no smoking gun whatever,” Johnson told the House of Commons on Wednesday. “After all that froth and fury, suddenly all those who want to remain in the EU find that they have no argument to stand on. They should simply move on.”
The ISC report, published on Tuesday, said the U.K. “actively avoided” looking into whether Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum. The government dismissed the findings of the report, rejecting the panel’s call for a full review into whether the Kremlin swayed the vote.
For Johnson, the report is potentially explosive because he led the pro-Brexit campaign and is now leading the government. If the legitimacy of the referendum is called into question, the risk is it will compromise his political mandate to push ahead with leaving the EU’s single market and customs union at the end of this year without a full trade deal in place.
Leader of the opposition Labour Party Keir Starmer asked Johnson why had he “sat” on the report for 10 months when it “concludes that Russia poses an immediate and urgent threat to our national security and is engaged in a range of activities that includes espionage, interfering in democratic processes and serious crime.”
Johnson said Starmer’s criticisms were motivated by a desire to undermine the referendum, the result of which “he simply cannot bring himself to accept.”
Also in the U.K.:
- Johnson is considering a range of measures to overhaul the U.K.’s security regime in the wake of the ISC study.
- The U.K. could require foreign states’ spies operating in the country to register with the government.
- A visa program allowing immigrants investing more than two million pounds ($2.6 million) to reside in the U.K. may be overhauled following the ISC’s criticism of how “robust” checks on applicants from Russia had been.
- The Law Commission is reviewing the Official Secrets Act, which was branded “out of date” by the ISC in its report. As the law stands, foreign agents are only guilty of breaking the act when passing secrets on.
- Giving evidence in a libel trial in London court, former British agent Christopher Steele said U.S. President Donald Trump may have posed a serious risk to U.K. national security over Russian intelligence.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.