Salisbury Hospital.

The Conservative government’s behaviour over the Salisbury poisoning is increasingly like that of a child who has been caught lying.

Last week, Yulia Skripal made a statement that laid no blame on the Russian government (despite) UK government insistence that the Putin administration was to blame, and that suggested she had been told a nerve agent had been used on her after she awoke from a coma.

Now, after those of us who take an interest in these matters raised doubts about the statement, it seems staff from the hospital where the Skripals were treated have been drafted in to bolster the failing narrative.

It would have been more believable if the doctor involved had been Stephen Davies – the consultant who told us that no nerve agent had been involved, almost three weeks after the Skripals were admitted.

Instead, Dr Stephen Jukes has been telling the press that the diagnosis swiftly changed from a suspected opioid overdose to nerve agent poisoning.

Dr Duncan Murray, head of intensive care, is also quoted as having been shocked while discussing the case with the nurse in charge.

I note, though, that nobody in the latest interviews actually states that they diagnosed what happened to the Skripals as nerve agent poisoning. Who told them that was what it was, then?

We have been told that the poison involved was of such purity it could only have been created in a Russian laboratory – yet instead of killing its victims within minutes, they have lived to tell the tale.

We have been told that the poison was applied to the doorknob of Sergei Skripal’s Salisbury home – but nobody has yet explained why both he and his daughter would have touched that doorknob, as they would have to have done, in order for both to have been affected.

When did Det Sgt Nick Bailey touch that doorknob? He found the Skripals in the street.

What about the police officers who went in and out of the Skripal property – using that doorknob all the while (it was not suggested that this was the location of the poison until weeks after the poisoning)? Why did they suffer no ill effects?

Once again, we have been fed an unconvincing line that raises more questions that it answers.

If the Tories want us to believe their fairy story about a Russian assassination attempt, they’ll have to do much better. Why not just provide the facts instead?

A hospital consultant who treated the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, for exposure to the military nerve agent novichok did not initially think the two would survive, he has revealed.

Dr Stephen Jukes, an intensive care consultant, told BBC2’s Newsnight in an interview to be broadcast on Tuesday: “When we first were aware this was a nerve agent, we were expecting them not to survive. We would try all our therapies. We would ensure the best clinical care. But all the evidence was there that they would not survive.”

On admission, the medical team suspected both were experiencing an opioid overdose, but that diagnosis quickly changed to a nerve agent poisoning.

Source: We didn’t expect Skripals to survive, says Salisbury poisoning doctor | UK news | The Guardian

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