To my enormous surprise I discover that His Majesty's Government’s version of the Skripal poisoning case is a wild fiction

Nobody believes the official spokesman... but everybody trusts an unidentified source. Ron Nesen, Gerald Ford's press spokesman

Nothing is more annoying than being accused of peddling conspiracy theories, as I was today, because I have always been very dismissive of them, to a fault. 

I even thought the theory that the Covid virus came from a Chinese lab was not true. 

For a moment I thought the papers might be right in blaming Russia for destroying the North Stream pipeline. 

That's how much of a deferential working class Tory I was.

I did not, of course, believe for one second the conspiracy theory about Trump being a Russian asset - that was a conspiracy theory that the people who rule us wanted us to believe. 

Nor did I believe the Black Lives Matter conspiracy theory. Ditto.

That said, it is wrong that conspiracy theories ipso facto have become thought crimes. 

Conspiracy theories annoy me but I take comfort from remembering that the more people believe in them the more people are not believing the official spokesman. 

It would be worrying if everyone believed the official spokesman, wouldn't it?

And of course the reason it does not make sense to disapprove of all conspiracy theories is that conspiracies do happen.

For one thing, everything the secret services do is a conspiracy and if you don't believe that secret services play a large role in politics you really have not been paying attention.

Neither veteran Moscow correspondent John Helmer nor former British Ambassador to Tashkent Craig Murray are people whose judgment I trust.

When Murray said the two Russians in Salisbury whom Bellingcat identified as Russian agents were homosexual lovers I just laughed and dismissed him.

He was wrong about that, of course. 

They were Russian spies and were involved somehow with the Skripal case.

But the official story is utterly untrue. 

A man I know who does believe in conspiracy theories about many things sent me this and it convinced me.

People like John Helmer and Craig Murray who said the received MI6 version of the Skripal poisoning case is bunk were undoubtedly right. It's beyond argument. 

Craig Murray is right about that and he is not in this instance a conspiracy theorist because he has no theory about what really happened.

Before you shake your head please read this link or, if you have half an hour this talk.