FazzNoth Posted February 23, 2022 Posted February 23, 2022 Latest updates: Labour leader questions prime minister about level of sanctions after Russia sent troops into Ukraine. Salmond should be expelled from privy council over RT links, say Scottish Lib Dems Alex Salmond is facing fresh cross-party pressure to cancel his chat show on the Kremlin-funded channel RT after Alex Cole-Hamilton, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, called for the former first minister to be expelled from the privy council. Like George Galloway, another Scottish ex-MP for both Labour and Respect, Salmond anchors a weekly show on RT which is produced by Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, also a former Scottish National party MP. It routinely features Salmond’s allies, including Angus MacNeil, the SNP MP for the Western Isles. Salmond became a member of the privy council in 2007. It is an honour mostly granted to senior parliamentarians, who can be allowed access to secret intelligence material on privy council terms. Cole-Hamilton has written to Mark Spencer MP, lord president of the Privy Council, and to the Lord Privy Seal Baroness Evans of Bowes Park, asking for him to expelled from it. RT had portrayed Russia’s incursion into Ukraine as “a liberation”, he said. He said: I believe Mr Salmond’s close and financial association with an agent of a hostile state should therefore render him unfit to offer further advice to Her Majesty the Queen from his role as a privy councillor. His decision to continue hosting the show came under heavy attack from Nicola Sturgeon, Salmond’s successor as SNP leader and first minister, earlier on Wednesday. (See 2.14pm.) Other senior figures in the SNP quickly lined up alongside her, applauding the decision by the UK government to ask the broadcasting regulator Ofcom to review RT’s broadcasting licence. Salmond’s party Alba said earlier this week it “condemns the violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” by Russia’s recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk but it said Nato’s influence needed to be curbed, to protect “Russia’s own security interests.” Labour complains about government's refusal to give details of further arms being supplied to Ukraine Labour has written to complain about the lack of transparency following Boris Johnson’s statement at prime minister’s questions that the UK would be providing “lethal aid” to Ukraine as part of “a further package of military support”. Shortly after Downing Street said “no further details” could be provided, citing “operational security reasons,” prompting Labour’s shadow defence spokesman to complain that MPs and the public were being kept in the dark at what could be a significant commitment. John Healey, writing to defence secretary Ben Wallace, said, while the opposition supported the principle of supplying arms to Ukraine to help defend itself, it was “also right that MPs continue to be properly updated”. Overnight the Sun reported that the UK was preparing to send a Sky Sabre radar system to be deployed in Poland along its 240km border with Ukraine. Mounted on trucks it is also capable of firing small missiles to hit rockets or planes. Defence sources added two units Sky Sabre units from the Royal Artillery would be heading to Poland imminently, travelling on land and by boat to reach the border within days. Labour said that previously, on 17 January, Wallace had come to the Commons to say that the UK had supplied anti-tank weapons to Ukraine. Then on 10 February Wallace had set out the further supply of body armour, helmets and combat boots, in a written statement. But on this occasion it appeared no formal detail was forthcoming. Healey urged Wallace, in the light of the prime minister’s declaration, “to provide details to parliament as soon as possible”. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/keir-starmer-urges-boris-johnson-to-end-e2-80-98era-of-oligarch-impunity-e2-80-99-e2-80-93-uk-politics-live/ar-AAUcfnJ?ocid=BingNewsSearch
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