During the run up to the 2019 General Election, Prime Minister Boris Johnson personally blocked the publication of a cross-party report ('the Report') by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) on Russian meddling in UK politics .

According to the committee’s chairman, former MP and former Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, Boris Johnson’s justifications for his refusal to allow the Report to be published were “bogus”. Several opposition politicians have also accused the government of a cover-up, saying the Report could raise awkward questions about the validity of the Brexit referendum in 2016 and expose the alleged Russian connections of some people in the Conservative party.

Completed in March 2019, the report was submitted to Downing Street for approval on 17 October 2019 after a lengthy period of clearance with the security services. According to Mr Dominic Grieve, it was usual practice for Downing Street to approve ISC publications within 10 days; Boris Johnson could have easily approved publication before the election. He didn't—despite a number of various attempts (inc. other petitions, etc.) to force him.

Speaking at the the third meeting of the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and Fake News on 7 Nov 2019, Lord David Puttnam (Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee for Democracy and Digital Technology) also stated categorically that the reason Boris Johnson might have an interest in suppressing the report was that the Report begged real questions about the legitimacy of the 2016 referendum!

On 13 December 2019, having been returned to power with an increased majority, Prime Minister Johnson declared “Brexit is now the unarguable decision of the British people”, despite the fact that Brexit supporting parties received only 46% of all the votes!

The current deadline for the UK's withdrawal from the European Union is 31 January 2020. But what if the whole Brexit saga is the result of an illegitimate Referendum?

We know that there is already evidence in the public domain—in the form of another parliamentary report, published by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee of Parliament, in February 2019—that Russia had directly tried to intervene in the 2016 EU Referendum. Making matters worse, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and Dominic Cummings have all failed to answer questions and provide evidence re: their knowledge of events and offences committed during that  Referendum. And we also have these chilling words of Dominic Cummings—as placed on the record by former MP Ian Lucas—from a written correspondence with the Electoral Commission: 'the entire regulatory structure around national elections including data is really bad’ and ‘the rules could be exploited by an internal or foreign force to swing close elections.' (Note also that all this time the Conservatives have refused to strengthen the law / the rules.)

It is impossible not to conclude from all of the above (and more) that the people of the United Kingdom must now learn what is in the Russia Report.

Prime Minister Johnson,
We hereby request that you commit to enabling the publication of the above ISC Russia Report before 24 January 2020!