Julian Lewis getting the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee is becoming all the more interesting, not just bloody hilarious in that he beat Chris "failing" Grayling to the position. Although denied by tory apologists yesterday evening, it has now become apparent that Downing Street was trying to parachute Grayling into the chair as Lewis confirmed he received a text from the Tory whips asking for his support the appointment. Up to that point, according to Lewis, he wasn't interested in the post, but changed his mind immediately afterwards so put himself forwad. As he points out, the 2013 Justice and Security Act explictly takes the power away from Downing Street to choose the ISC chair - but we know what Cummings thinks about rules and seeked to ignore and circumvent them. Downing Street are so furious with him that they've kicked him out of the Parliamentary party.
The rumour-mill has it that they wanted to impose their own person in the chair to further delay the release of the report into Russian meddling into Brexit: I don't know why, because Boris explicitly said back in November that there was absolutely no evidence of Russian meddling in Brexit. That has now failed so, in an attempt to deflect any blame from the report, Dominic Raab has just announced there was evidence of Russian meddling, but they were trying to help Labour in the last election. I'm sure the timing is just coincidence.
I mean, come on. If the Russians were trying to help Commie Corbyn into Downing Street, why would the Tories try to suppress this? And then announce it hours after the ISC said they'd publish the Russia report before the Summer recess? Boris' dead cat technique, anyone?
