Is it a coincidence that the Sergei Skripal poisoning scandal happened at just at the right time to save the Tory government and its leader from the popular iresparked by their handling of the Brexit negotiations?
Maybe it is a coincidence, but May's rushed, jingoistic, vicious and aggressive reaction was certainly a calculated move, most likely designed to make the British public and the British press forget about Brexit and the Telford pedophile scandal.
Now, the focus of media attention and political debates is the "Russian threat." In order to achieve this magnificent political success, the British prime minister had to publicly lie and omit some crucial pieces of information from her dispatches to the populace and maybe even her own party.
May said in Parliament that there are only two plausible explanations for the poisoning case from earlier this month:
"Either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country. Or, conceivably, the Russian government could have lost control of a military-grade nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others."
That's blatantly false — unless the British government is willing to punish Moscow for the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The "Novichok" chemical agent was developed and tested in Nukus, Uzbekistan.
According to a New York Times article, the site was decontaminated in 1999 by US specialists, but nobody knows who had access to the facility and what could have been smuggled from the facility between 1991 and 1999 period.
The "Maybots" now peddling anti-Russian propaganda on Twitter and Facebook often use another false claim, arguing that only the Russian government has the know-how to produce the Novichok nerve-gas.
One of the developers of Novichok is a Soviet defector who has been living in the US for years. He had the necessary knowledge to replicate the substance. The argument that only the Russian government has the required technical facilities needed for Novichok production is also false. Craig Murray, a former British diplomat, quotes one of the Novichok creators, Vil S. Mirzayanov, thus: "One should be mindful that the chemical components or precursors of A-232 or its binary version Novichok-5 are ordinary organophosphates that can be made at commercial chemical companies that manufacture such products as fertilizers and pesticides."
The whole point of the Novichok program was to develop a poison that can be created from easily available components. The British government knows that, but doesn't want to let the truth get in the way of a good story about "the evil Russians."
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The whole scandal recalls the period right before the Iraq War. Politicians, government officials and the intelligence community lied to the British public about the proofs of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Those lies and omissions of critical information were needed in order to convince the public that a war against Iraq was the only moral and rational solution.
May is basically using Tony Blair's political playbook, the one that successfully got Britain into the Iraq War. The big difference between Blair and May is that May is doing her best to get the UK into a military confrontation with a nuclear power. One can only hope that a new "Chilcot Inquiry" commences before and not after the Tory Russophobes push Britain past the point of no return.
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Russians are offended by the accusations coming from 10 Downing Street mainly because they imply that Russians are not only evil, but also incredibly stupid.
In May's world, Russian intelligence services are stupid enough to commit a political murder on foreign soil right before the Russian presidential elections and are stupid enough to target a low-level defector with a chemical agent known to be created by the Soviets.
That's just impossible. The only thing missing in this "perfectly Russian crime" is a balalaika left near the body and a KGB calling card with Vladimir Putin's name on it. If something looks like a false flag operation, walks like a false flag operation and quacks like a false flag operation, it probably is a false flag operation.
READ MORE: Russia Opens Criminal Cases Over Yulia Skripal's Poisoning, Glushkov's Murder
Given that the British authorities refuse to follow Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons procedures and provide a sample of the poison, Moscow has valid reasons for both criticism and distrust. Ancient Romans used to begin criminal investigations with the question "qui prodest?" "Who benefits from the crime?"
It is obvious that Putin stands to gain nothing from the Skripal poisoning. May, however, has a good chance of saving her political career by using the Skripal poisoning as a tool to quash dissent and force the people of Britain to rally behind her, despite all her flaws and the numerous negative consequences of her leadership.
It is highly likely that she wants to be remembered as "the prime minister who saved Britain from the evil Russians" and not "the prime minister who paid 62 billion euro to leave the EU." Hopefully, her attempts at fooling the British people will fail before she drags the UK into a never-ending conflict with no winners.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.