Russian incompetence is a gift to British PM

Sergei Skripal was sentenced by a Moscow court in 2006 to 13 years’ imprisonment for defecting to British intelligence. He was released in 2010, having served four years in a Russian prison, as part of a high-level spy exchange deal, a process of mutual trust that is recognised as being of useful significance to both sides. Skripal then settled in Salisbury, where he was regularly visited by his daughter.
Eight years later, we learn of a botched, amateurish and calamitously unsuccessful attack on his life that seems to have been relying on a strong element of luck to achieve its objective and succeeded only in severely injuring not only Skripal, but also his innocent daughter who was normally safely living in Russia, while apparently threatening the lives of a number of unsuspecting Salisbury locals.
Despite the fact that the Russian government’s problem with Skripal had long been resolved, we are now informed that the Russian government is “highly likely” to have committed this manifestly inept crime. It seems that in spite of their long experience in espionage and dirty tricks, they inadvertently used a chemical weapon that was easily identified as a decades-old Russian nerve agent, which seems to be taken as irrefutable evidence that they were responsible. That any specialist laboratory has the potential to reproduce such an agent is not seriously considered! The result is that the Russians are now in serious diplomatic trouble.
At the same time, the redoubtable UK prime minister, Theresa May, has seized the opportunity she had been praying for to use the situation to demonstrate her strong leadership, reinstate her failing reputation and reunite her party after her problems with Brexit. 
Tony Ash
Cha-am