Two Ukrainian nationals were convicted at the Old Bailey on Monday of conspiring to carry out arson attacks on property connected to the Prime Minister. The attacks were orchestrated by a Russian-speaking Telegram user called “El Money.” They set fire to a car previously owned by Starmer and, days later, torched two homes including one being rented by his sister-in-law – who was inside with her family when it was set alight.
The following day, Conservative deputy chairman Matt Vickers went on Talk TV and laughed about it.
He was laughing about a Russian-linked arson attack on a sitting Prime Minister’s home. He was doing so on the same day as tributes were being paid to Jo Cox on the anniversary of her murder.
The exchange on Talk, between Vickers and presenter Jeremy Kyle, began with Vickers acknowledging – briefly – the serious concerns around Russian interference in the UK. He then pivoted. “The idea that there’s some secret Russian effort to destabilise the country via the prime minister… I mean, you’d leave him in office! Let him destroy the country! Don’t distract him, because he’s doing a pretty canny job of blowing himself up.”
Kyle laughed. Then he went further.
The interview moved to territory that Vickers subsequently described as just being “polite to the host.” Kyle asked about a false Russian-backed conspiracy theory around the attacks – a smear that had circulated on Kremlin-linked social media. “Were they rent boys?” he asked. “His front door was firebombed wasn’t it? Why are you laughing? It wasn’t his back door, it was his front door.”
Vickers, according to multiple reports, struggled to stop laughing.
This is the Conservative Party deputy chairman. He was promoting, or failing to challenge, a Russian-spread smear about an attack that a jury had just found was orchestrated by a Russian-speaking handler who offered cryptocurrency payments, advised the perpetrator to “throw away the clothes” and told Lavrynovych “you attacked the home of a very high-ranking person in Britain.”
That evidence came from a case that is, in its full details, genuinely alarming. Roman Lavrynovych, 22, was recruited online by the Telegram contact to first put up far-right posters and then graduate to arson. His handler, operating as “El Money,” has been identified by a BBC Panorama investigation as 23-year-old Evgeny Lyukshin, a Russian diplomat and son of a senior official who has been schooled in information warfare by spies and propagandists. The Telegram contact offered Russian citizenship in return for further attacks and glorified Vladimir Putin in messages to the recruits.
Lavrynovych was convicted of the arson attacks but acquitted of the most serious charge – endangering life – which requires proof of intent rather than recklessness. He was not some ideological actor. He was a young man recruited online and promised money he never received, carrying out attacks whose political purpose he may not have fully understood.
None of which is a punchline.
Lammy waited until Vickers stood up at Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions, where he was asking about unemployment rates, and responded with everything the moment required.
“I must say to this Tory deputy chairman: yesterday he was on television laughing and joking about the arson attack on the prime minister’s home. Laughing about a firebomb targeting the prime minister and his family. Not only that, he joined with promoting conspiracies about the attack and laughed along to demeaning, homophobic remarks. He should be ashamed of himself. My advice to him is to grow up, apologise, and do considerably better.”
Vickers shook his head from the opposition benches.
Anna Turley, the Labour party chair, was sharper still. “It is frankly sickening that anyone would seek to laugh and joke about an appalling attack on a fellow politician’s family home. To do so on the same day as we stood in unity to mark the anniversary of our dear friend and much missed colleague Jo Cox, is beyond the pale.”
Jo Cox was murdered on 16 June 2016 by a man shouting “Britain first.” The tenth anniversary of her death was marked across Parliament the previous day.
Turley called for Kemi Badenoch to sack Vickers, noting that Badenoch herself had condemned the attacks just two days earlier. “If she fails to act now, her words clearly will have meant nothing.”
The Conservative Party’s official response to the story was, in its own way, an additional story. A spokesperson said: “If you’ve got an issue with the content of the programme, I suggest taking that up with Jeremy Kyle.”
The spokesperson added that Vickers’ laughing was him being “purely polite to the host of a radio programme” and that “the content of his words isn’t actually saying anything wrong.”
The content included laughing along to homophobic innuendo about a firebombing of the Prime Minister’s home on the anniversary of Jo Cox’s murder, one day after a jury convicted the man who carried it out at the behest of what appears to have been a Russian intelligence contact.
Grow up. Apologise. Do considerably better. Lammy’s three instructions remain available…
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