The Guardian - 31.07.2019

Section:GDN 1N PaGe:2 Edition Date:190731 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 30/7/2019 21:04 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

• The Guardian Wednesday 31 July 2019

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News and Sport

Labour risks election

wipeout if it fails to see the

Johnson threat

Aditya Chakrabortty

Page 1

The Mark Field inquiry

is over - and it feels like men

closing ranks

Sian Norris

Page 4

Deportation row

Home Offi ce spends

£250,000 in three months

on cancelled fl ights

Page 5

Arwa Mahdawi

Why we should all be

unfollowing Donald

Trump on Twitter

Page 3

Golf

Georgia Hall on winning

the women’s British Open

and then losing the trophy

Page 36

Period drama

Are menstruation savvy

skincare products a boon

or a cynical sales ploy?

Page 6

Weather

Page 34

Cartoon

Journal, page 5

Cryptic crossword

Back of Journal

Quick crossword

Back of G

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SUPPORT

RECYCLING

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hy

Stephanie Kirchgaessner

Washington

Nick Hopkins

Two of the most senior intelligence

offi cials in the US and UK privately

shared concerns about “our strange

situation” as the FBI launched its

2016 investigation into whether Don-

ald Trump’s campaign was colluding

with Russia, the Guardian has learned.

Text messages between Andrew

McCabe , the deputy director of the

FBI at the time, and Jeremy Fleming ,

his then counterpart at MI5 , now the

head of GCHQ , also reveal their mutual

surprise at the result of the EU referen-

dum, which some US offi cials regarded

as a “wake -up call”, according to a per-

son familiar with the matter.

While Russia had previously been

viewed as a country that would seek

to interfere in western elections, the

Brexit vote was viewed by some within

the FBI as a sign that Russian activi-

ties had possibly been successful, the

person said.

and is relying on Conservative and

D emocratic Unionist party MPs to

back his Brexit strategy of taking the

UK out of the EU by 31 October – unless

he suspends parliament to achieve a

no-deal exit.

Ian Lavery, chair of the Labour party,

said it was a “staggering admission

from the prime minister’s right-hand

man”. “As Dominic Cummings says

himself, the Conservatives don’t care

about anything apart from looking

after their rich friends – whether that

means selling off our NHS to Ameri-

can corporations in pursuit of a Trump

trade deal, or giving tax cuts to big

businesses while cutting public ser-

vices. We need a general election and

a Labour government to protect our

health service from the likes of Boris

Johnson,” Lavery said.

At the Nudgestock event in 2017,

Cummings said Johnson and Michael

Gove, the co-leaders of the Vote Leave

campaign who are now running the

government, had recognised the

dangers of being seen to go back on

their pledge to give £350m a week to

the NHS. He said the two men real-

ised they needed to keep their promise

on the NHS “not only from the self-

preservation point of view but also

from the political smart point of view

• they understood the power of actu-
  ally delivering”.
  He said Johnson was 99.9% com-
  mitted to implementing the pledge
  of an extra £350m a week for the NHS
  after Brexit when it was discussed after
  the referendum result.
  Since becoming prime minister,
  Johnson has not repeated that prom-
  ise but there are reports that he has
  ordered cash for the NHS promised by
  Theresa May to be speeded up so that
  the frontline sees the benefi t. An extra

£4bn is due to be pumped into the NHS

over the course of this fi nancial year.

On the Vote Leave pledge to bring

back £350m a week for the NHS, Cum-

mings said: “Me, Michael and Boris

had talked about this in private before

the vote and actually on the day of vic-

tory in the Vote Leave offi ce, so when

Boris came in on Friday 24th and

punched the air and whatnot, he and

I walked into this little room, amid beer

cans and craziness, and I said to him:

‘The fi rst thing you do is say we are

going to meet this promise .’

“And he smashed his fi st down on

the table and said: ‘Absolutely no ques-

tion about it .’ And if Michael had not

taken out Boris, and Boris had run as

leader, I am 99.9% recurring – as sure

as I can be about anything – that Boris

would have said I will honour the

promises we made in that campaign.”

During a stump speech on the lead-

ership campaign trail, Johnson told

Conservative members that the NHS

absolutely need ed to be reformed, as

he fi red them up for a general election

by asking them to be ready to “wallop

Jeremy Corbyn”.

Asked by one party member what

he would do with the NHS, Johnson

told the crowd the health service was

a “crowning glory” but was “not get-

ting the kind of support and indeed the

kind of changes and management that

it needs”, suggesting he would aim to

undertake an overhaul of the health

service. He said Simon Stevens , the

NHS chief executive, had once helped

him get elected president of the Oxford

Union as a student, and together they

would “sort things out”.

Friends of Cummings said: “Dom

was clear that he thinks the British

public care most about leaving the EU

and want more money for the NHS.

And with this prime minister, that’s

exactly what public will get.”

Their exchanges off er new insights

into the start of the FBI’s Russia inves-

tigation, and how British intelligence

appears to have played a key role in

the early stages.

In one exchange in August 2016,

Fleming noted that members of the

FBI and MI5 had “met on our strange

situation”, a veiled reference to dis-

cussions about Russian activities,

according to the source.

The text messages between the two

men were infrequent and cryptic and

did not contain specifi c or sensitive

materials, but occurred with some reg-

ularity after the referendum in June

2016. A spokesperson for McCabe
      declined to comment.
      The exchanges underscore a sensi-
      tive issue in the US – namely the role
      foreign intelligence services played in
      the FBI’s decision to initiate an investi-
      gation into the Trump campaign.
      On 31 July 2016, the FBI opened a
      covert counterintelligence investi-
      gation code named Crossfi re Hurricane
      into the then presidential candidate ’s
      possible collusion with Russia.

The investigation was eventually

taken over by the special counsel Rob-

ert Mueller , who has said there were

“multiple, systematic eff orts to inter-

fere in our election” by Russia.

Mueller’s 448-page report did

not establish a criminal conspiracy

between the Trump campaign and

Russia, but it did identify incidents in

which Trump attempted to obstruct

justice in the investigation, and did

not clear the president of wrongdoing.

US and UK intelligence agencies

frequently share information, but the

exchanges between McCabe and Flem-

ing appear to refl ect a desire for a direct

line of communication given what was

seen as a developing problem on both

sides of the Atlantic.

When Boris Johnson, the UK for-

eign secretary at the time, was asked

in November 2017 whether Russia had

played any role in British elections, he

told MPs in a select committee that he

had not seen any evidence of such an

occurrence.

When asked in a follow -up if Russia

had sought to play a role, Johnson said:

“I don’t know about sought to play, but

as far as I know they played no role.”

Almost every senior FBI offi cial

involved in the initial Trump investi-

gation has since left the FBI , including

McCabe. In many cases, they were dis-

missed by Trump offi cials.

New light on UK’s early role

in Trump-Russia inquiry

Tory MPs mostly

don’t care about

NHS – Cummings

 Continued from page 1

 Dominic Cummings condemned

the Tories in 2017. He is now the new

prime minister’s senior adviser

PHOTOGRAPH: ALASTAIR GRANT/AP

‘As Cummings says

himself, the Tories

don’t care about

anything apart from

looking after their

rich friends’

Ian Lavery

Labour party chairman

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