INDEX	May 11, 2024
40 shades of Gray?
SOURCES	MI5's chief skill is deception (otherwise known as lying) but the problem with deception is that in a hall of mirrors no-one really knows what's going on. And sometimes the deceiver gets deceived. So just a few months ago it looked like MI5 had secured high profile assistance in the Labour leadership, ensuring it would sail on regardless no matter who was in Downing Street. Take the case of Sue Gray. She it was who was got in by the Government to write a whitewash about Partygate that, in the event, entirely failed to save the career of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Her qualifications for the Partygate job appeared to be her connections to the spooks. During the troubles she had taken time off to run a pub in Northern Ireland. These places were known as "listening posts". Having comprehensively failed in the whitewash Gray jumped ship to join the Labour Party, getting a job working for Keir Starmer. No doubt MI5 had expectations that she would look after their interests should Labour win the next election. But it does not seem to be working out that way. Some years ago (during the early stage of the lockdown) I pointed out that there was no need to waste billions on the NHS phone app designed to send an alert if the phone has been in proximity to someone who has tested positive for Covid. The spooks had long had the ability to do much of this. The UK Test and Trace had a price tag of £13.5 billion in the first year and was scheduled to notch up unimaginable costs of £37 billion over two years of operation. Towards the end of April 2020 the Israeli High Court banned Shin Bet, similar to MI5, from using its technology to track and trace Covid (see BBC report). But thanks to the new Omicron variety Shin Bet was soon back in the tracking business (see Times of Israel). So why didn't MI5 want to do something that would have been both a public service and good public relations? Good question. Perhaps because it would have revealed too much about what the spooks are up to and would have been too much like hard work (since its operations could be monitored for cost efficiency). With that in mind it is possible to imagine that Keir Starmer's plan to get the spooks to tackle illegal immigration and track down the masterminds behind it, would go down pretty badly at MI5 and GCHQ. Isn't this just the sort of thing the spooks were trying to avoid?
My blog 20220522 Sue Gray, the person got in to write a report on the breaking of lockdown regulations at 10 Downing Street, took time off to run a pub in Northern Ireland during the troubles. These were known as listening posts. Both MI5 and MI6 operated in Northern Ireland
My blog 20230528 Starmer's relationship with MI5 throws a new light on the recruitment of Sue Gray as chief of staff for the Labour Party.
My blog 20220131 The spooks come out in Grays: yup Charlotte Gray and the SOE
BBC May 10, 2024 Border Security Command including MI5 and with anti terror powers planned by Starmer.
INDEX Jonathan Brind			May 11, 2024