Storbritannien: Brexit ett faktum, vilka är konsekvenserna? (2016-06-24)

The UK government will not bow to growing pressure to publish an investigation into alleged Russian interference in British politics, even though the contents have been signed off by intelligence agencies and senior Whitehall officials.

The 50-page inquiry, conducted by parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), was intended for publication before the House of Commons is dissolved for the general election at midnight on Tuesday.

But Boris Johnson, prime minister, is refusing to release the dossier, prompting claims from Labour that it is being suppressed for fear of damaging Tory campaign prospects.

The ISC’s inquiry examines allegations of Russian activity in British politics, including the 2016 Brexit referendum, in which Mr Johnson was a leading campaigner for Leave.

Dominic Grieve, the ISC committee chairman, told MPs on Tuesday that the report had been sent to the prime minister for “final confirmation” on October 17, and that it was “unprecedented” that he had received “no response at all explaining why any further delay is required in this case”.

The Liberal Democrats on Tuesday ruled out propping up a government led by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in the event of a hung parliament, as one MP floated the possibility of post-election pacts with the two biggest parties.

Launching her party’s campaign in central London, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said she was “absolutely categorically ruling out” using her party’s votes to help get Mr Corbyn into Downing Street, as he was “not fit for the job of prime minister”.

Yet today’s Labour Party high-command contains several people who are more starry-eyed than gimlet-eyed when it comes to the Russian revolution. Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader, has remained remarkably silent on revolutionary Russia given the amount of praise he has lathered on Venezuela and Cuba, much of it in the pages of the Morning Star, a newspaper once partially funded by the Soviet Union. The same cannot be said of Seumas Milne, his head of strategy and a man who, according to a statement from Mr Corbyn’s people on his appointment, “shares Jeremy’s worldview almost to the letter…they sing from the same hymn sheet.” Mr Milne got his start in journalism at Straight Left, a magazine that took the “Tankie” side in the argument between Eurocommunists, who were critical of the Soviet regime, and traditionalists, or Tankies, who were critical of the criticism. He then moved to the Guardian by way of The Economist and was a reliable warrior for the hard left. “For all its brutalities and failures,” he once wrote, “communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality.”

John McDonnell, Labour’s shadow chancellor, has claimed that his worldview has been shaped by “the fundamental Marxist writers of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky”, according to an interview unearthed by the New Statesman. He has also doffed his cap to two troubling Marxist ideas. One is Antonio Gramsci’s notion of “the long march through the institutions”: you work within existing institutions in order to convert them to the revolutionary cause. The other is Leon Trotsky’s notion of a “transitional programme”: you make demands that you know are unachievable, in order to stir up more discontent with the system.

One of Mr Corbyn’s key supporters in the trade-union movement, Andrew Murray, makes both Mr Milne and Mr McDonnell look like right-wing deviationists. He is chief of staff to Len McCluskey, the head of Unite, Britain’s most powerful union, and was seconded by the Labour Party headquarters during the recent election campaign. A long-standing member of the Communist Party before joining Labour last year, Mr Murray had a reputation as not just a Tankie but a super-Tankie, because of his unswerving support for the Soviet Union and Uncle Joe. He once wrote an article for the Morning Star which, while lamenting Stalin’s “harsh measures”, quoted Nikita Khrushchev’s statement that “against imperialists, we are all Stalinists”. On November 4th Mr Murray is due to join Tosh McDonald, the boss of the ASLEF trade union, at a celebration of the Russian centenary.

The prospect of a majority Labour government worries most economists. It is not clear that Britain’s public finances are strong enough to allow for a borrowing binge, especially in the face of an ageing population. A credible commitment from the central bank to keep inflation under control, and from the government to respect private-property rights, are the building blocks of a sustainable economy.

Britain is almost uniquely vulnerable to a radical shift in policy. The country runs a current-account deficit of 5% of gdp, large by rich-country standards, meaning that it is highly reliant on inflows of foreign capital. Foreigners own a quarter of the outstanding stock of British government bonds. Investors’ trust in the British government and the country’s institutions, which rose during the 1990s (see chart 1), has already been tested by the financial crisis, the Scottish independence referendum of 2014 and Brexit. A loss of faith would send the pound plunging, increase the cost of government borrowing and imperil financial stability.