Now, for the past several days, a lot of dramatic focus on the attempted murder by nerve poison of the former Russian spy Skripal and his daughter. Trying to remember whether the somewhat similar poisoning twelve years ago of the former spy Litvinenko received quite the same non-stop coverage. We were in London at that time and certainly it was a major news story, made more dramatic by the fact that for days he was conscious and contributing clues to the murder mystery until inevitable death overtook him.
The cases are not precisely analogous, because Skripal was a double agent who betrayed his fellow Russian spies for cash and was convicted of treason and then given to the West as part of a later prisoner exchange. Litvinenko reacted against Russian corruption and sought asylum in the West. This does make him a somewhat more sympathetic character, but it also makes him a more likely Kremlin target. The convention has been that those who were part of prisoner exchanges are not targeted afterward by the governments that originally employed them, as this would make future spy swaps pointless - no one would participate. However either high level secret service personnel or those involved in illegal international activity such as money laundering might well have wanted revenge, wished to make a very public warning and had some access to highly restricted chemicals. In that case the perpetrators would be Russian but not Russia, I.e. the Kremlin.
Even this much analysis is too much for the BBC, which endlessly repeats the basic story of finding the two victims, the fact that an unspecified nerve poison is involved and threats of sanctions that must be taken against Russia if it is indeed found to be the culprit. More than once an hour, and always as the lead story, even in the absence of new information. Brexit has disappeared from the news entirely, at a point at which the UK is more or less paralysed by government infighting and the EU has frozen talks until there is an amended proposal to discuss. It has not become any less urgent, but is more than failing the 'if it bleeds it leads' test.
In fact, following the cui bono principle, one can't help observing (tasteless as it may be to joke about these things) that the chief immediate beneficiary of the Skripal poisoning is probably Theresa May, whose failings have been replaced in the media by a great deal of posturing about the UK's intent to identify those responsible for the poisoning and bring them to justice. The outrage at an attack on British soil is perfectly legitimate, but twenty years from now the story will be all but forgotten while the UK will have been majorly determined by whatever the Brexit negotiations create.
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