Undermining democracy and diplomacy

We used to be told, “Don’t point your finger at someone, because you’ll be pointing three at yourself.” How ironic then that in a month when as a nation we’ve been pointing the finger fiercely at Russia, over their alleged involvement in the Salisbury poisoning, it should transpire that the most massive dirty political tricks originated in the UK and the USA. 

Channel 4’s newshounds have revealed that the British political consultancy firm, Cambridge Analytica, far from being an academic research outfit as its name suggests, became in fact a mercenary dirty tricks operation which specialised in covert manipulation and sold its services to political big guns. And their source of information? It’s none other than your chatty friend and mine, the multi-billion Facebook, based in the United States. So this narrative of a malign Russia conspiring to undermine western democracy loses some credibility. It turns out that much of the undermining is home-grown.

It’s surprising that other major news outlets such as the BBC have not been more interested in the story, seemingly confining themselves to the suspension of CA’s Chief Executive, Alexander Nix, Old Etonian, and the Prime Minister’s answers about the firm’s links to the Tory Party. The Guardian has run it as a main story. I suppose it’s not so surprising that newssheets owned by millionaires don’t major on the story. (The BBC has today given it more attention.)

Photos from Huffington Post; 2 experts in diplomacy

On Wednesday afternoon, another Old Etonian, our Foreign Secretary, once again demonstrated his mastery of diplomacy when asked about the similarities between Hitler’s 1936 Olympic Games and the forthcoming Football World Cup in Russia. “Yes,” said Boris Johnson, political boss of the Diplomatic Service, “I think the comparison with 1936 is certainly right.” Aside from a hint of sour grapes for the UK’s ignominious elimination from the choice of host nation and the overwhelming support received by Russia, this comment surpassed Mr Johnson’s norm of buffoonish wit. He fires from the hip in a manner reminiscent of Mr Trump and for, one suspects, similarly populist purposes.

A couple of years ago I read Anna Reid’s Leningrad: the Tragedy of a City under Siege, 1941-44, which recounted the horrific suffering of that blockade in which 750,000 died. I’m now reading Nobel Prize Winner, Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War. Both books rely on first-hand accounts, the latter almost entirely of women who were involved on or just behind the front lines of the Soviet army, as soldiers and pilots, radio operators, doctors and nurses. 

Their memories are vivid and painful, and are as intensely moving account of the “pity of war” as any I have read or viewed on screen. Both books serve as a powerful reminder that just in the Second World War the country which paid the highest price for defeating Hitler and Nazi ambitions was the Soviet Union with 25 million people killed. (By comparison, UK war deaths were 450,900: World War 2 statistics) We seem to forget that in European wars since Napoleon we have been allied with Russia (or the Soviet Union) and their part in those wars has been extraordinarily costly. Twice invaded from Western Europe by small men with imperialistic ambitions and powerful military forces one can understand their fear of history being repeated – and one can understand their finding a comparison with Hitler’s Germany “offensive and unacceptable”. I’m inclined to agree with the view that it is "unworthy of the foreign minister of any country". 

A Foreign Secretary should, I reckon, have less braggadocio and more circumspection. Sadly, in its desperation to appear decisive and strong, our government has seized upon the affair of the poisoning of our spy, Sergei Skripal, and becomes more and more demagogic and less and less statesmanlike. It’s a pity - a sad example of our proud history of the subtle art of diplomacy.

PS There's a fascinating set of unanswered questions about the Salisbury affair here:/30-questions-that-journalists-should-be-asking-about-the-skripal-case/