We'll see if this proceeds to a criminal investigation. My guess is it won't.
It's amazing it got this far. Leak inquiries almost never discover a culprit (by design) and it's unheard of for a minister to actually get sacked for leaking.
It's amazing it got this far. Leak inquiries almost never discover a culprit (by design) and it's unheard of for a minister to actually get sacked for leaking.
Latest: "Theresa May considers the matter closed."
So there we are. No police investigation into a rather serious matter of national security. Meanwhile Williamson himself is absolutely insistent he's innocent and that the internal investigation was ineffective - which means that if he is innocent, someone else was responsible.
And if he's telling the truth, that person remains unnamed, and in a ministerial position.
I think you would be surprised how many people in the UK would support that. I have run into a fair amount of very old-school monarchists who fully believe that Liz should seize power in a coup. They also tend to think that we should retake the British Empire and I find myself having to politely explain that these days the rest of the world is slightly better armed than when we first had a go.
But this is different, this is a leak of an actual state secrets. This is much more secret because its expressly illegal. (the official secrets act makes many things vaguely illegal, but leaking things marked "secret" or similar is an actual offence.)
Not only is it illegal, its also leaking other country's intelligence, which is a massive nono