> Angela Rayner and shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper have written to the newly appointed chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Kit Malthouse, to demand a full investigation into a matter they say exhibits a “shocking disregard for national security”. They warn that if Johnson is found to have breached national security, he must leave Downing Street immediately and “face the full consequences of the law” . . .
> Labour’s letter to Malthouse calls for a full investigation into the “extent of the security risks and the potential disclosure of sensitive information”.
> It also seeks disclosure of the assessment made by the intelligence agencies of the national security implications of the meeting “including whether Johnson took any papers from the Nato meeting [and] the possible compromising of his phone”.
The controversial meeting occurred during an April 2018 trip to Italy while Johnson was still Foreign Secretary. His notably disheveled appearance on return was reported over a year later. For example:
> Fellow passengers at San Francesco d’Assisi airport described the then foreign secretary as looking ‘like he slept in his clothes’
> An unkempt Boris Johnson flew back from a Russian billionaire’s party in such a ‘mess’ that he could barely walk in a straight line and looked like he was about to throw up, according to a fellow passenger
Johnson’s access to intelligence as foreign secretary was reportedly restricted as early as 2016 – an oddity for a ministerial post normally responsible for MI6.
> As for the FCO, shut out of the main EU and trade games, and with responsibility for MI6 being quietly shifted to the prime minister and National Security Council, Britain’s diplomats are in the slough of despond
Or openDemocracy from Jul 6th 2019:
> Shortly after Johnson was promoted to foreign secretary by Theresa May in July 2016, Sky’s political editor, Adam Boulton, also writing in the Sunday Times, said that responsibility for MI6 had been “quietly shifted [from Boris Johnson] to the prime minister and the National Security Council.”.
> However after Jeremy Hunt (now Johnson’s leadership rival) became Foreign Secretary, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office confirmed to openDemocracy that Hunt had “oversight” of both MI6 and GCHQ (part of the UK’s intelligence network responsible for signals intelligence and information).
> So had MI6 oversight, as Boulton claimed, been quietly removed from Boris? The FCO did not challenge the central claim made by Boulton that Downing Street had intervened and altered Boris’s security access. Their response to openDemocracy was simply : “The Foreign Secretary has oversight of SIS [MI6]” and that “no change was made to these arrangements in 2016.”
wonder if Boris holding so tightly to power has anything to do with what this could get into
Bit fucking late!
The frustrating thing about this is its really not new news, people were shouting this from the rooftops when it happened. I remember John Sweeneys YouTube video on it.
4 comments
> Angela Rayner and shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper have written to the newly appointed chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Kit Malthouse, to demand a full investigation into a matter they say exhibits a “shocking disregard for national security”. They warn that if Johnson is found to have breached national security, he must leave Downing Street immediately and “face the full consequences of the law” . . .
> Labour’s letter to Malthouse calls for a full investigation into the “extent of the security risks and the potential disclosure of sensitive information”.
> It also seeks disclosure of the assessment made by the intelligence agencies of the national security implications of the meeting “including whether Johnson took any papers from the Nato meeting [and] the possible compromising of his phone”.
The admission came during Wednesday’s Liaison committee session where Johnson was interrogated by Labour Dames Meg Hillier and Diana Johnson [- see video -](https://twitter.com/ChrisBurn_Post/status/1544697560962572289) and was further probed by a Yvette Cooper and others the following day with a [detailed sequence of Commons questions](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/vtqwp3/mp_asks_if_exkgb_agent_tried_to_arrange_private/if8xd6w/) to a poorly prepared Vicky Ford, who offered no substantial answers.
The controversial meeting occurred during an April 2018 trip to Italy while Johnson was still Foreign Secretary. His notably disheveled appearance on return was reported over a year later. For example:
> Fellow passengers at San Francesco d’Assisi airport described the then foreign secretary as looking ‘like he slept in his clothes’
— [Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/26/boris-johnson-security-evgeny-lebedev-perugia-party)
> An unkempt Boris Johnson flew back from a Russian billionaire’s party in such a ‘mess’ that he could barely walk in a straight line and looked like he was about to throw up, according to a fellow passenger
— [Mail](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7292639/Boris-Johnson-seen-barely-able-walk-partying-Russian-billionaires-villa.html)
Johnson’s access to intelligence as foreign secretary was reportedly restricted as early as 2016 – an oddity for a ministerial post normally responsible for MI6.
See, for example, Adam Boulton in the [Sunday Times, July 17 2016](https://archive.ph/2aGbw#selection-929.0-929.212):
> As for the FCO, shut out of the main EU and trade games, and with responsibility for MI6 being quietly shifted to the prime minister and National Security Council, Britain’s diplomats are in the slough of despond
Or openDemocracy from Jul 6th 2019:
> Shortly after Johnson was promoted to foreign secretary by Theresa May in July 2016, Sky’s political editor, Adam Boulton, also writing in the Sunday Times, said that responsibility for MI6 had been “quietly shifted [from Boris Johnson] to the prime minister and the National Security Council.”.
> However after Jeremy Hunt (now Johnson’s leadership rival) became Foreign Secretary, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office confirmed to openDemocracy that Hunt had “oversight” of both MI6 and GCHQ (part of the UK’s intelligence network responsible for signals intelligence and information).
> So had MI6 oversight, as Boulton claimed, been quietly removed from Boris? The FCO did not challenge the central claim made by Boulton that Downing Street had intervened and altered Boris’s security access. Their response to openDemocracy was simply : “The Foreign Secretary has oversight of SIS [MI6]” and that “no change was made to these arrangements in 2016.”
— [*Revealed: Boris, the Russian oligarch and the Page 3 model*](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/revealed-boris-russian-oligarch-and-page-3-model/), openDemocracy, 6/7/2019
wonder if Boris holding so tightly to power has anything to do with what this could get into
Bit fucking late!
The frustrating thing about this is its really not new news, people were shouting this from the rooftops when it happened. I remember John Sweeneys YouTube video on it.