Five million unanswered questions

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Labour’s decision to report the alleged hacking of Farage’s phone to the police is a gimmick, of course. Given the reluctance / inability (delete as applicable) of the boys in blue to investigate a whole host of crimes, diverting resources to a crime which the ‘victim’ himself has not seen fit to report is an unlikely prospect. But if the objective is to keep the story about Farage’s receipt of a £5 million gift running for a day or two longer, it is at least an effective gimmick. It’s reasonable to suppose that the attempt by Farage to turn the story into one about an illegal action performed against him was itself an attempt to divert attention from the £5 million, a generous gift which he continues to maintain is an entirely personal matter between friends.

But the ‘hacking’ story raises more questions as well. Farage is claiming that the ‘hacking’ was the result of a spear-phishing exercise. Assuming that to be true, then it wasn’t really what most of us would call ‘hacking’ at all: it means that he was conned into giving the attackers access to his phone and/or data. Still a crime, of course, just not quite the one which is being alleged. We’ve not been told what the messages were which induced him to part with the access codes to his data, but the possibility that revealing them might just be embarrassing could be one explanation for his coyness in involving the appropriate authorities. We also don’t know who the cyber-security experts were who have concluded that it was a “hostile state actor” behind the plot but, again, those experts seem not to have been the ones employed by the British state precisely to counter such actions against politicians and others.

It’s easy to see why, tactically, Farage might want to blame Russia. Given the suggestions that he and his party are too friendly by far towards Putin, putting some distance between him and the Kremlin looks like a reasonable plan. But hold on a moment – let’s look at this from the other side. Why exactly would Russia want to bring down Farage (and it’s reasonable to suppose that to be the aim of the leak of information)? Looked at from the Kremlin, the best chance of getting a more Russia-friendly government in the UK at the next General Election is through getting Reform Ltd elected, and all the conventional wisdom suggests that is more likely under Farage than under any alternative leader. That must surely be as obvious to Putin as it is to me, so why sabotage the campaign?

There are still far too many unanswered questions about that mysterious £5 million and the events surrounding it.