The EconomistJuly 25th 2020 Britain 372 Committee that the government realised
the risk to Britain. Yet the government,
held back by fear of a revolt in the Conser-
vative Party, failed to order an inquiry.
Complacency and greed, as well as po-
litical self-interest, are to blame. Ministers
have “badly underestimated” the Russian
threat and adopted a “laissez faire policy
approach” says the committee, pointing to
an appetite for Russian cash as one expla-
nation. Whatever the reasons, Britain’s po-
litical institutions have been left vulner-
able. Spies are hobbled by the legal
framework in which they operate. Britain’s
national-security laws, unlike America’s,
do not make it illegal to be a foreign agent.
“There are things that compellingly we
must investigate...where there isn’t actual-
ly an obvious criminal offence,” Sir Andrew
Parker, mi5’s chief when the committee
was gathering evidence, told the isc.
Anti-money laundering rules are
tougher for businesses than for political
parties, which the Electoral Commission
says increases the risk of foreign funding.
The current fine of £20,000 for breaches
risks becoming “a cost of doing business”.
Several members of the House of Lords
have business dealings with Russian com-
panies, but the current code of conduct
does not oblige them to declare income in
the way mps must. Since 2018 the National
Crime Agency has had the power to seize
money and property from foreign politi-
cians and officials suspected of looting
their countries’ coffers, but its head told
the committee that its budget for lawyers
cannot match the oligarchs’.
Then there is the committee itself. In
Britain as in America, lawmakers’ inquisi-
torial powers are part of the country’s pro-
tections against foreign subversion. But
the iscis weak. The security services can
refuse to give evidence on live operations,
which the committee said had frustrated
the inquiry. At their request, the Russia re-
port has been liberally redacted. The report
was published after Mr Johnson tried and
failed to engineer the appointment as chair
of an ally so unpopular that the commit-
tee’s members revolted and elected a less
pliant candidate. Sometimes Russian ef-
forts to sow distrust in Britain’s political
institutions seem unnecessary.
Although the way it has come out is em-
barrassing to the government, the report
provides support for the new, more hawk-
ish line that it is taking on Russia. In its re-
sponse, the government said that Russia
was a top national-security priority; most
of the foreign officials on the blacklist that
Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, an-
nounced on July 5th were Russians. This
new approach will give the Kremlin even
more reason to interfere in Britain than it
has had in the past. The government had
better put some work into bolstering the
country’s defences. 7
“I
n case theprime minister has not no-
ticed, the Labour Party is under new
management,” Sir Keir Starmer, the party’s
leader, declared in the House of Commons.
Showing that a party has changed is a tricky
but essential task of opposition politics. It
requires jettisoning stances that are prom-
inent and unpopular with voters, but with-
out declaring war on the party’s most loyal
supporters. That Jeremy Corbyn, the previ-
ous leader, became best known for tolerat-
ing anti-semitism in the party ranks and
for defending Vladimir Putin is to the La-
bour Party’s discredit, but it has made Sir
Keir’s task of differentiating his regime
from the previous one unusually easy. In a
few hours before lunchtime on July 22nd,
he demonstrated the vigour with which he
is pursuing this end.
Just after ten o’clock, lawyers conveyed
an apology from the Labour Party to John
Ware, a bbcjournalist, and seven former
staff members, who will also receive “sub-
stantial” damages. A year ago, Mr Ware had
presented a documentary entitled “Is La-
bour Anti-Semitic?” in which the staffers
claimed that Mr Corbyn’s team had med-
dled in the complaints process. Rather
than show contrition, the Corbynites shot
back that Mr Ware was a dishonest journal-
ist and claimed the whistleblowers were
anti-Corbyn plotters, which the party now
accepts was untrue and defamatory. Sir
Keir says he will implement in full the find-
ings of the Equality and Human Rights
Commission, an anti-racism watchdog,
whose report into the Labour Party will be
published later this year, and says he is de-
termined to win back the trust of Jewish
voters. Mr Corbyn seems less bothered
about their views, and said the settlement
was “disappointing”. As a result, Mr Ware is
now suing him too.
Shortly after the lawyers had done their
bit, at Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir
charged that the government was slow to
respond to the threat of subversion posed
by Russia, and condemned its attempted
assassination of Sergei Skripal, a turncoat
spy. He announced Labour would support
new national-security legislation. None of
this would be striking for an aspiring prime
minister, except for the fact that Mr Cor-
byn’s office had refused to blame the Krem-
lin for the attack and said the allegation
Russia had used a nerve weapon was remi-
niscent of the false claims during the war
against Iraq that the country was hidingweapons of mass destruction. Mr Corbyn
was a regular guest on Russia Today, a state
propaganda channel. Sir Keir called for its
broadcasting licence to be reviewed.
Sir Keir won members’ support by pro-
mising to clean up Labour’s image while re-
taining Mr Corbyn’s platform of nationalis-
ing utilities and ending austerity. He has
not broken that compact. But nor has he
fleshed out Labour’s economic agenda, be-
yond saying that the coronavirus crisis de-
mands radicalism. His campaign promise
to “put human rights at the heart of foreign
policy” sounded like an adoption of Corby-
nista hostility towards Western milita-
rism, but has translated into kicking Russia
and China. The speed and ruthlessness
with which he has cleared out Mr Corbyn’s
allies and their grubbier beliefs has sur-
prised those who thought he’d put “vanilla
unity” above the pursuit of power. Some
Labour mps miss Mr Corbyn. Mr Johnson
misses him more.^7Jeremy Corbyn’s legacy is dumped at
surprising speedLabour’s new managementMan overboard!
1I
n 1945 asociologist, J. G. Ferraby, tried to
explain why women were having so few
babies. He mulled various possibilities,
such as cramped housing, women’s fear of
childbirth and the cost of educating chil-
dren. In the end, though, Ferraby blamed
the baby bust on a lack of “zest” and confi-
dence in the future. “It is possible”, he
wrote, “that the majority of people in Eng-
land—and perhaps all over the Western
world—are now just drifting.”
They didn’t drift for long. As soon as the
war was over, a two-decade-long babyEngland and Wales join the
low-fertility clubDemographyTurning Japanese