Oakeshott gave evidence + statement to Sunday Times in Nov 2017.
This is letter from editor Martin Ivens. He’s left but @ShippersUnbound is still there. Does he know what happened? Can new editor @EmmaTuckerST find out?
Did Oakeshott change mind? Did govt ministers intervene?
Theresa May got it. She tried to warn us. Listen to this speech again. She said it all here.
She called Putin’s invasion of Crimea what it was. She calls out ‘election meddling’. And its attacks on our information space.
Her cabinet colleagues - Johnson & Williamson - didn’t.
Johnson was asked about Russian interference by @RhonddaBryant just 2 weeks earlier. ‘Not a sausage,’ he replied.
This is not true. Theresa May isn’t just calling out Putin in that speech. She’s calling out her own foreign minister.
Johnson’s failure to take action against Russian £ even now is a national security risk & we need to know what happened in Nov 2017 when FBI revealed London investigation, when Theresa May warned us, when Sun Times spiked explosive scoop.
Where was NCA? Where was MI5/6?
Britain’s national security apparatus was paralysed by a failure of leadership. The Russia Report told us that explicitly. And our political leadership was paralysed by Brexit.
I think @theresa_may got it. And I suspect she has answers.
The evidence suggests Johnson directly involved in covering up Russian interference. New docs I published yesterday reveal Williamson’s involvement.
This is photo of Johnson in Congress with Mifsud who head of FBI called ‘a Russian agent of influence’
Will Sunday Times tell us why it spiked its story? I hope so. It had explosive story about Brexit funder as 'Russian agent of influence' 3 days after Theresa May's speech on Russia dominated the front pages.
We know Johnson had already tried to bury the story once. Did he again?
Why did Arron Banks state on oath that Wigmore gave emails to Sunday Times in June 2018? When ST editor confirms he has them in Nov 2017?
Nov 14, 2017: Theresa May dominates front pages with speech saying Russia has attacked our elections.
Nov 17, 2017: Sunday Times indemnifies Oakeshott over explosive story of Brexit funder as "Russian agent of influence"
Nov 19, 2017: This is Sunday Times front page.
To be clear, I am not trying to lay blame with Sunday Times or even Oakeshott. I don't know what happened. There were other forces at work here at highest levels of govt.
But I do think @ShippersUnbound & others can help expose what happened here. And hope they will.
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Today, the Observer ‘transfers’ to Tortoise Media, a process that involved neither journalists nor readers.
This is 100+ journalists being ‘banged out’ of the Guardian offices, an old Fleet Street custom that’s usually a jolly occasion. This felt more like a medieval damnation.
Journalism is a team sport. And that’s it. The entire @ObsNewReview editorial team is gone! Female-led, female dominated, the entire commissioning team, art director, production staff & photo editor.
My journalistic home for 20 years…totally destroyed.
See the embedded thread. I don’t even think the Guardian management & board have any idea of what they’ve lost.
NEW: My piece for the Observer on how I was so deep into my investigation into Cambridge Analytica that I failed to realise that Hannah - my ex's daughter - was facing a human version of it: a stalker who was harvesting her data and weaponising it against her. 1/ theguardian.com/world/2025/mar…
I write about how I finally realised the scale of what was happening to Hannah, how comprehensively the police had failed her & how another woman, from the same class as her at the same school had also had a stalker, Alice Ruggles. Her stalker had murdered her. 2/
Hannah had 9 different characters harassing her, including 'Premium Escorts' purporting to sell her services & folders of evidence. I was overwhelmed by my own trials but I landed on the idea of emailing Georgia Catt, the brilliant producer of a podcast series I'd loved, The Missing Cryptoqueen
3/
Last week, the new owners of the Observer wrote to tell me they would *not* be issuing me with a new contract.
So...I want to say publicly that it was an absolute privilege to speak on behalf of my Observer colleagues during our strike. I don't regret doing so. And I learned so much from it.
1/
It means my 20 years at the Guardian & Observer is drawing to a close 😢. For most of that time, it's been the journalistic job of my dreams. I worked with the best editors, photographers & designers & got to do stories that wouldn't have been possible anywhere else. I know how lucky I've been.
2/
And I'm lucky too, in a way, that this is happening as the world convulses. My beat has been trying to understand the information revolution, it's the crisis beneath the crisis...& now I'm throwing myself into its swirling eddies just as the wave hits the shore.
This is what should be on every front page right now. What's happening in the US right now is an illegal power grab by a private citizen.
IT'S A COUP.
It's a digital coup. It's Musk who's leading it. The consequences are terrifying. And it's coming for us next. 1/
Please read this. I'm far from alone in saying it. The great
@TimothyDSnyder, @RBReich, @ruthbenghiat have all been shouting it.
There's superb reporting happening into every aspect of what's happening. But there's no framing. It's all facts, no story. broligarchy.substack.com/p/it-is-a-coup
This is a digital coup. A data coup. What Musk's cyber troops - mercenaries - have done is take control of the federal government's operating systems. They've downloaded or scraped vast quantities of data. It's a hack on an unprecedented scale. 3/
Britain: we have to understand wtf we’ve done. We’ve allowed one of Trump’s closest allies have access to our entire NHS data systems. This is the CEO of Palantir telling shareholders that ‘when it’s necessary to scare enemies & on occasion kill them’
There is much more I want to say on this but if you’re in the US right now, you need to understand that Silicon Valley is your creepy ex boyfriend. Who’s now conspiring with Donald Trump. They have your data & it can & will be weaponized against you.
Understand: the first use case of all technology is always against woman. A predator(s) used technology to surveille, harass & intimidate Hannah. And this is now what’s coming for journalists, activists, civil servants, lawyers & many more in the USA now.
The technology we use in every day life is powered by what @shoshanazuboff christened ‘surveillance capitalism’. But now we are heading into‘surveillance authoritarianism’. We are already in a coercively controlling relationship with these platforms