Were PMS careless over Russia actions?
In evidence to the Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee report last week, GCHQ confirmed its belief that Russia is in fact a criminal state ready to do anything to damage the West. Additionally it has been known for some time (at least as far back as the Scottish referendum in 2014) that it has a very powerful cyber capability which it uses to undermine Western democracies at every possible turn. The propaganda or disinformation pushed out by Russian trolls does not even have to be remotely connected to the truth; it simply needs to spread doubt. As paragraph 29 of the report says: “When people start to say, ‘You don’t know what to believe’ or, ‘They’re all as bad as each other,’ the disinformers are winning.”
These sentiments are very often expressed when discussing politics and politicians and I think that this is unfair as most politicians are trying to do the best for their constituents and the country.
However, I also think that it is curious in the extreme that neither the Theresa May or the Boris Johnson government saw fit to mount an inquiry into outside interference in the EU referendum, or indeed the general elections that followed. Could it possibly be that they already knew what the outcome of such an inquiry would be? Or were they just careless about it? Given the Prime Minister’s famous inability to bother with the detail, perhaps the latter is more likely. Either way, they have failed in their fundamental duty to uphold the integrity of our democracy.
What could have led to such a situation?
In my view the First Past The Post electoral system has a lot to answer for. Both the Johnson and May governments were elected on a minority of the popular vote. The current administration has an 80-seat
majority on just 43 per cent of the vote. At its core lies a small but extreme faction of the Conservative party selected above all on their unswerving allegiance to Brexit. And the real Prime Minister is, of course, Mr Dominic Cummings. So to sum up, we have a minority of a minority, headed up by an unelected advisor who cannot even abide by his own administration’s rules. I don’t think many people voted for that.
Under Proportional Representation (PR) such grotesque distortions of democracy are much less likely to occur. Parties have to work together and as a result the checks and balances are so much tighter that it is quite difficult to get away with “forgetting” to examine breaches of democracy that happen to favour your interests.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that under PR, every vote counts – so it’s much fairer too.