Following the reported 'leak' from the National Security Council regarding Chinese technology company Huawei, the government has announced the establishment of a 'Leak Enquiry'. Ha, Bloody Ha !!
Anyone who is old enough may well remember the utterly brilliant series 'Yes Minister', one episode of which revolved around just such a matter. A 'leak' of supposedly secret government information was initially received with horror and threats of terrible retribution, but then everything was calmed down by the suggestion that there should be a Leak Enquiry. The logic to this was that such enquiries never actually discovered anything but they did enable the problem to be kicked into the long grass and ultimately forgotten. It was also mentioned that leaks nearly always came from Number 10, so there was very little desire to discover their source anyway.
Some 35 years on, little has changed and life seems to be imitating art. Uproar has been succeeded by the setting up of the inevitable enquiry and the problem will be quietly forgotten; after all, how long will this investigation take ? How thorough will it, or can it, be ? What real benefit can there be in discovering and naming the supposed offender ?
It occurs to me that the main beneficiary of all this noise is the Prime Minister, for whom this is another story to overshadow Brexit for a day or 2. Attendance at a media funeral, missing PMQs, now a right furore about leaked information; with local elections next week, is this all designed simply to keep Brexit out of the headlines ? Can it be that our government and opposition, who are colluding, are really that cynical ?
You bet they are !
No comments:
Post a Comment