What don't we know about the Novichok attack?

Perhaps it's time for Theresa May to tell all of us what she told the EU the other day. The intelligence titbits she revealed to the EU convinced all of them to support the UK in its fight with Russia over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. For those not on the need-to-know list - ie the general public - we are pretty sure Russia was behind the nerve agent poisoning for the following reasons: Novichok, the nerve agent, is a military substance only ever made in Russian laboratories as far as we know; the Russian KGB/FSB have done this before, they have a whole department that creates the nastiest poisons for operational use against people their president has on a hit list (the hit list is an educated presumption on my part); the Alexander Litvinenko case wasn't the first poisonining on British soil linked to Moscow, but the similarities with the Salisbury attack are stark and believable; Putin has publically threatened with a grim end anyone who betrays the Motherland. All these ingredients add up to a very convincing case. But Mrs May knows more than this. MI6 and/or MI5 have come up with some tasty intel which has made her even more sure than us lot that Moscow/Putin is guilty. After Moscow's totally outrageous expulsion of another 50 British diplomats, on top of the 23 already told to leave, it's time for the UK prime minister to reveal at least part of the secret intelligence which she acquired from her spymasters. Is there something so devastating - like definite proof of Putin's signature on the plot - that she has absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Moscow is to blame for the Salisbury poisoning? If so, why is she still trolling out the same phrase about it being most likely that Russia is guilty. A court of law would never convict on the phrase "most likely" or "probably". The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming but is that enough to get a conviction? Well, of course, we don't yet have any individuals under suspicion - apart from Putin - so the court of law scenario does not yet apply. But a dramatic piece of intelligence disclosed in a statement from the PM in the House of Commons would help the public to get to grips with this appalling incident and might turn the screws on Moscow. It's a risk. It's always tricky to reveal secret intelligence in case it points the finger at sources. But there will come a time when we will need to be told. At present it looks like a long long police investigation ahead of us and a never-ending diplomatic war. At least Yulia is getting better but I am assuming she knows nothing about the circmstances that led to her falling unconscious on a park bench next to her father.

Tit-for-tat-for-tit-for-tat

Once the Cold War was declared over - about 50 times over a period of ten years! - the old game of tit-for-tat should have been scrapped for ever. It was always pointless anyway. After the initial impact and stern statements from respective governments involved, things sort of got back to normal and eventually the number of spies/diplomats/chauffeurs/cleaning ladies increased again without too much fuss. Now that we are in the 21st century version of a Cold War, tit-for-tat has returned in full glory. Again, it's all pointless, almost childish. Countries playing boo to each other. But will it come round full circle with everyone ending up friends again? No, I think not. While Putin or anyone like him rules Russia, we're never going to be friends again. Ever. Biological warfare in any form if state-directed requires a lasting punishment until guilt is acknowledged or the accused perpetrators are handed over. Putin is never going to admit to anything, and Sergey Lavrov, the lugubrious foreign minister, just says what his master tells him to say. That means the tit-for-tats are going to go on and on until there's no one left to expel. Hey, that sounds a good idea! No Russian plutocrats buying up every pile of bricks in London. No spies trying to blackmail UK defence company executives into giving away secrets. That would be great news for MI5. They could then concentrate on watching suspected terrorists and no longer have to drive around the country following Russian spies disguised as English gentlemen. Less fun for the MI5 watchers but the more surveillance teams can focus on Isis fans the better for us all. Bye bye Ruskies, no more Fortnum and Mason Christmas hampers, no more drinkies at Brown's Hotel or White's, no more lunches at the Gay Hussar, no more skulduggery in Hyde Park, back to Moscow the lot of you. Some hope!

The Great Novichok Mystery

The police are now convinced that the main "delivery" of the military nerve agent Novichok that destroyed the lives of Sergei Skripal and his daughter occurred on the handle of the front door of their house in Salisbury. But there are so many unanswered questions if that's true. If the deadly nerve agent was literally smeared onto the handle, how the hell was it done? Was the perpetrator wearing special gloves, where are the gloves now, did it involve an attacker wearing any other kind of protection, is there someone in this country even now dying of nerve agent sickness that no one knows about because it's too risky for him/her to go to hospital? Did it happen in the early hours of the morning, when everyone was asleep, and no one noticed a man/woman dressed in a chemical suit approaching the front door of the Skripal home? If the attacker was only wearing gloves, could he or she have inhaled the fumes from the Novichok? In other words, when the perpetrator set off from, let's say, Moscow, with his nerve agent kit, what were his instructions? How did he/she get the stuff on board a plane, was it in a diplomatic bag or was it stuffed into a suitcase in the hold? If so, has the plane been checked for Novichok traces, and his/her fellow passengers and the crew and the baggage handlers the other end and Customs etc etc. It's endless. The police appear to be obsessed with locating where the bulk of the nerve agent ended up - ie the front door - and are now going to interview everyone in the area!! But surely they have done that already. Why aren't they working backwards to see where and how it could have come into the country? That's assuming the Russians don't keep a permanent supply in a safe in the embassy in London. Heathrow should be the number one area for checking - all Moscow flights from a certain date. Someone brought the stuff into the UK. There is no other explanation. When Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned with Polonium-120, it was put into a teapot and the ex-FSB officer drank it when it was poured into a cup in the Millenium Hotel in Grosvenor Square. But that investigation, although long and complex, was relatively easy for the police because they had two suspects from the beginning. They could trace their movements and at the same time trace evidence of Polonium-120 all over the place. One of the suspects poured the remainder of the killer agent down the sink in his hotel bathroom. This time there are no suspects. All the police know is that the biggest concentration of Novichok has been found on the front door of the Skripal home. But there is no video of a man/woman approaching the door with thick gloves on. Until they discover how the nerve agent was brought into the country, the police are going to get nowhere in finding the culprit or culprits.

What are Kim and Xi really up to?

Now we know for sure that it was Kim and Xi having nice little chats together in Beijing, the big question is: what exactly is Kim Jong-un up to, and also what exactly are Kim and Xi Zinping up to together? What is their scheme? What do they want at the end of the summit with Trump? One thing it won't be is a denuclearised North Korea and the status quo in South Korea. If Kim is going to give up being a nuclear power - he NEVER will - he will want a huge amount as a quid pro quo, something along these lines: NO nukes in South Korea, NO US nuke umbrella for South Korea, NO US defence pact to defend South Korea from North Korea, a promise from Washington in writing NEVER to attack North Korea, and if there is to be any denuclearising on North Korea's part it will be phased over a period of, say, 25 years. I think Kim will be so insistent that he gets what he wants that if Trump starts the summit chat by saying North Korea must get rid of all of its nuclear weapons immediately before anything else is even considered, the summit will be over in a matter of hours. It will be followed by a joint statement from Pyongyang and Beijing condemning Washington for demanding unacceptable terms. It will be important for Trump and his advisers, especially John Bolton who will be itching to get his hands on Kim's nukes, to realise that North Korea now has a huge nuclear weapons industry. There are masses of buildings, underground and above ground, is Kim going to bash them all down for the benefit of the world community? Oh no!! Kim has achieved what he wanted. He is a nuclear mafioso. He has completed the onerous task begun by his grandfaher and father and now wants to play a star role on the world stage. He has plenty of cards in his hand and he believes he can basically tell Trump what to do. Now this is fantasy of course, even with Xi Zinping with his appalling oily smile behind him. He is the nuclear kid on the block whereas Trump, God help us, is the Big Cheese nuclear godfather with enough of the stuff to annihilate North Korea, Russia and China all in one go. Moustacheod Bolton will want to get this message across to the Rocket Man on Day One. But Kim is by no means empty-handed, and with his handful of nukes - 20-30 - and an impressive array of long-range ballistic missiles, and his friendly nuclear neighbour, he could put Trump on the spot. Trump will have to give something in return, but if he gives too much in all the excitement, the whole of America's security strategy in Asia could go topsy-turvy. No wonder President-for-ever Xi looks pleased with himself.

Brief encounter Beijing-style

It's wonderful that in this day and age when everyone knows everything because it's on Facebook or Yahoo or Fox News, a short fattish bloke with an instantly recognisable haircut can climb unseen onto a long armoured train, travel a pretty long distance and end up in Beijing and then step down onto a platform and get whisked away in a black limousine and nobody knows for sure who it was, whether it was HIM or what he was doing exactly. I'm talking about Kim Jong-un of course. Some newspapers claim to know for sure that it was the North Korean leader who was on the train. Did they perhaps talk to the train driver or the Chinese stationmaster at Beijing? I doubt it. They wouldn't talk on pain of some dreadful death. It's all supposition. But surely, it must have been Kim because why else the fancy train and the mystery. It's a great tradition for North Korean leaders to travel to Beijing by train. It's part of the North Korea folk lore. Ergo, or Yinci as they say in Chinese, it was Kim training off to the Chinese capital to have a chat with the new All-Powerful- Leader-For-Ever Xi Zinping. Presumably to get his orders from the Mighty Xi for the upcoming summit with John Bolton, sorry, Donald Trump. I was not a fly on the wall or zai qiang shang fei, as they like to say in Mandarin, but I'm pretty sure the Omniscient Xi will have had one piece of advice for the Rocket Man. "Play hard ball". Or "Da yingqiu!" So Mr Trump/Bolton/Pompeo, in May you will face a man who has been on a long train journey who knows he has Xi's back. Advice to Trump and co: "Da yinqiu!" Just like it takes two to tango - haven't a clue what the Chinese for that is - it also takes two to play hard ball when it comes to nuclear summitry.

Will Russia get the message?

Unfortunately, with six more years in power ahead of him I doubt Vladimir Putin will have missed any sleep over the mass expulsion of Russian "diplomats" from the US, UK and Europe. It sounds a big, big punishment for Moscow for the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter. But actually when you look at the numbers it isn't that harsh at all. The US is the exception with 60 Russian diplomats expelled. Well done Trump and Mike Pompeo. That is proper support for an ally. But Europe's support is absolutely minimal. In words they back UK totally. They all agreed it was "most likely" Russia was behind the poisoning. Actually let's call it biological warfare because dozens of people were affected apart from the two Russians. But in terms of kicking Russians out, the impact from members of the EU is so limited it will hardly be noticed. Two here, three there, one there and none at all from Greece, Portugal and Austria. Pretty pathetic really. Putin won't be bothered by the EU, but he will be seriously irritated by Washington. Sixty diplomats!! That's bold from Trump. But will Putin be so shocked that he backs down and agrees there is a small chance Rusia was behind the outrageous attack in Salisbury? No, of course not, because if he does, then he will lay himself open to international condemnation and calls for much tougher punishment. So it looks like we will get a series of tedious and pointless tit-for-tat expulsions, sanctions and other measures until the only sanction left will be to break off diplomatic relations. That still might have to happen, but no one really wants that because Russia and Putin are part of this world and we need to talk to them. All will depend on the next step taken by Putin.

Anyone but Russia is to blame

Moscow has now fed into the stratosphere every possible alternative for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the lovely city of Salisbury. First of all, of course, they are not to blame. They had nothing to do with it, neither Russia nor Russians. Never mind that the nerve agent Novichok is/was only ever made in a Russian laboratory. Among the myriad of stories coming out of Moscow about who was to blame their favourite one seems to be that the Porton Down chemical defence establishment just down the road from Salisbury had had Novichok leaking out in one way or another. So under this scenario, a little bit of Novichok seeped out and hunted down the former Russian double agent and his daughter and somehow crept into their soup or coffee or front door. We had the chief executive of Porton Down telling the world on the BBC that there was no possibility any nerve agent could have leaked out because he ran a very tight ship. Sorry, but that begs a number of questions. Does Porton Down have stocks of Novichok to make sure there's an antidote in case of a Russian biological warfare attack? If not, then why not say so? And even if they do - but don't want to tell us - why did the chief executive not say in the interview, "this is all a load of rubbish because even if there had been a leak of any type of nerve agent which there wasn't and never could be, how come only Skripal and daughter and those anywhere near him got poisoned." So, Moscow central, this alternative answer to the Novichok poisoning is totally not credible. The nerve agent was used to target a particular individual - a man who had worked against his country and sold secrets to British intelligence. In the words of any lawyer worth his salt, there is motivation, there is access, there is capability, there is previous. Prima facie, Moscow is the culprit. Not Porton Down. All the other alternatives put about by Russia are also interesting but fiction. Who else in the whole wide world would want a Russian double agent dead as a warning to other putative Russian double agents or defectors? Belgium? I'm joking. Now Moscow is being accused by America's top commander in Afghanistan of colluding with the Taliban by arming them to fight the American-led coalition. That word "collusion" gets around doesn't it? General John Nicholson, the military chief, says he has evidence of collusion. Russia says this is a fairytale, claiming the only effort being put in by Moscow in Afghanistan is aimed at forging a peace settlement. Like in Syria perhaps!!? I blame Trump. Ever since he spouted the words "fake news", Russia and in particular his "friend" Vladimir Putin, have used the same words to dismiss every accusation made against them.