It is not Jeremy Corbyn but your editorial that is dispiriting (15 March). Last month, the PM and defence secretary called on Corbyn to release his nonexistent Stasi file. With your recent campaign against fake news, surely a hint of scepticism when it comes to security matters is perfectly in order. There is a prescribed and, by multilateral organisations’ standard, speedy verification process for chemical weapon attacks in the chemical weapons convention. Why not use it and thereby strengthen your hand against any perpetrators? Or would that let the truth get in the way of a good story?
Nick Matthews
Rugby, Warwickshire
• Jeremy Corbyn’s response to Mrs May was totally inadequate. Novichok agents were never standardised and weaponised for military deployment by the Russians. Any stocks probably exist in only one research institute which is one of the most, perhaps even the most, secure place in Russia. The idea that “rogue” elements got hold of the material is a complete fantasy. This action was done by the Russian state on the direct instructions of Putin. There is absolutely no other remotely credible explanation.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) reference is not correct (Report, 15 March). This is attempted murder using a poison which would have a role as a chemical weapon in warfare but the attack in Salisbury is not a use of chemicals in war. The OPCW reference is a complete red herring created by the Russians for which Corbyn has fallen hook, line and sinker. As for sharing samples with the Russians, that is akin to sharing the evidence of a murder with the murderer. Corbyn’s question about the analysis is also confused. The identification of the agent as a novichok agent means that it is adequately characterised. Since the country that invented and developed these agents is Russia, its source is Russia and since an ex-Russian agent is the target, to claim there is any ambiguity is ludicrous.
John Cookson
Bournemouth, Dorset
• I have been a fierce critic of Jeremy Corbyn over his Brexit stance, but I was shocked to see him shouted down by both political parties when he suggested it would have been better if Britain had waited for definitive evidence that Russia is guilty of the poisoning before rushing in with punishments. This view was expressed very well by the infinitely more knowledgable than I – Dr Tara McCormack at the University of Leicester, spoke of a worrying rush to judgment. Surely we are showing our own standards to be false and setting a bad example to the world in disregarding the belief in evidence of guilt before action, which underlies our justice system. This is not about appeasing Putin but keeping the moral high ground, and Theresa May would surely have lost nothing by letting the Russians have the requested sample and attempting to have a stronger case, then putting in her tough measures.
Angela Neustatter
London
• I don’t remember Theresa May “standing up to” her own MP Rory Stewart last October when he advocated summary executions of British people abroad (in Syria). Personally I’m against either UK or Russian – or any – governments doing this kind of thing, and I think real strength of leadership on a global stage involves consistency in opposing all breaches of international law, regardless of source.
Archie Lauchlan
Hastings, East Sussex
• While we are on the subject of state-sponsored attempted murder, what precisely are those 48 fighter jets being sold to Saudi Arabia – in Theresa May’s squalid deal just the other day – intended to be used for (Report, 10 March)? Sightseeing with aerial views? Only asking.
David Rosenberg
London
• It is truly mind-boggling that when Tory MPs cry “shame” at mention of their party’s £820,000 donations from Russian oligarchs and their associates, they mean it is shameful to mention it (Corbyn under fire from own MPs over response to PM’s Russia statement, 15 March). It is deplorable that the BBC and other media should also seize, not on the scandal of the Tory party receiving money from a corrupt plutocracy accused of mounting an attack on UK soil, but on Corbyn’s “misjudgment” in daring to mention it – and in daring to join President Macron in asking for fuller evidence. British democracy and news media are profoundly impoverished if a political scandal that is in plain sight can so readily hide behind irrational and jingoistic groupthink.
Peter McKenna
Liverpool
• If we were discussing the darker pages of British history – slavery, colonial wars and massacres and so forth – any attempt by me to drag in Shakespeare, the Romantic poets and Constable would be regarded as risibly irrelevant. Yet as soon as the subject of Russian (and previously Soviet) misdeeds comes up, one can guarantee that there will be someone like your correspondent (Letters, 14 March) who reaches for the glories of Russian classical culture and the heroism displayed in the last war (after Stalin’s ally, Hitler, invaded in 1941 that is). Pushkin and the Bolshoi really do not have much to do with nerve gas and radioactive polonium.
Peter Roland
Bognor Regis, West Sussex
• In the light of the lack of actual evidence that the Russian state was responsible for the chemical attack, is it just coincidence that £48m is being spent on a new facility at Porton Down (Report, 15 March). The public has been softened up to accept this expenditure, while austerity still bites at our lives, by the ratcheting up of anti-Russian rhetoric. Only President Macron seems concerned with the lack of hard evidence that Putin’s state committed this crime.
Jane Ghosh
Bristol
• Well, personally I’m just glad that we have all these nuclear weapons that deter Russia from attacking our towns and cities.
Bryn Jones
Bath
• Russian state involvement is certainly a possibility, but as yet it is not an established fact. Russophobia lies deep within the Tory DNA, and on that subject Theresa May’s party will believe whatever they wish to believe and not be bothered by such trivial matters as evidence, much as Tony Blair believed in Saddam Hussein’s non-existent WMD. The very short time limit on the government’s ultimatum to Russia, which it knew beforehand would be rejected, suggests it was provocative and deliberately designed to engineer a crisis in Anglo-Russian relations. The motive perhaps is to divert public attention away from the Brexit mess which the Tories have plunged the country into. One dead-end after another.
James Robertson
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
