What do you think? — Agustino

That Russians now that best thing in this time of fake news is to turn everything upside down and accuse others, go on the attack. However baseless or weak the counteraccusations are doesn't matter, as you aren't playing for an audience who will double check things and remember anything later about the issue (when the actual investigations are made public).

So the UK could have used the Novichok in him, and blamed it on Russia. Why blame it on Russia? Brexit. May's absolute failure in the brexit negotiations is reducing her popularity and she needs something to distract the masses from the big issue, and an attack by Russia on it's home soil would do just the trick. — René Descartes

Very plausible. As you said, the Russians are evil but not stupid. They could have gotten rid of him when he was incarcerated in a Russian prison. Why not do it then and wait until now? It doesn't make sense.

Very plausible. As you said, the Russians are evil but not stupid. — CuddlyHedgehog

Except it's to the Russians interest to be suspected. It's always been their modus operandi. Read upon the Russian intelligences practices like Kompromat. They will blackmail you even if they do not have anything to gain, if you have nothing to offer right now, just so you and everyone else knows that they are willing to blackmail anyone and everyone for just about no reason.

So the UK could have used the Novichok in him, and blamed it on Russia. Why blame it on Russia? Brexit. May's absolute failure in the brexit negotiations is reducing her popularity and she needs something to distract the masses from the big issue, and an attack by Russia on it's home soil would do just the trick. — René Descartes

This is ridiculous.

Let's say the Russians did it. Let's say there's even some form of timeline established which points directly to Russian intelligence. What happens, from the point of view of the Russians. Not much. A few international slaps on the wrist, maybe a bit of monetary punishment, but countries which did not declare war over Ukraine are clearly not ever going to declare war over a burned ex spook. I mean, that's probably a spooks first lesson : your country is never going to go to war for you.

Now let's say the May government is behind it. Besides that it's almost so trope that it'd be obvious, and the synopsis of V for Vendetta. Let's say that they get caught. What happens to May and her co-conspirator? They spend the rest of their life in prison for treason. They will be so destroyed that it would make it impossible for anyone to present themselves under the same political banner.

This is pure conspiracy hogwash.

[Delete] @Baden

So why would the Russians bother doing this. — René Descartes

Because someone somewhere had a tooth to pick with Skripal, which, given he was a burned traitor of a spook, is not exactly hard to imagine.

It's still possible, many Western leaders have been involved in huge conspiracies, eg. Water Gate, or the Bay of pigs. — René Descartes

No. Honestly, just, no. Watergate or the Bay of pigs are not equivalent to a country's leader falseflagging a toxic attack in her own country, with one of the most difficult to control toxic substance.

So why would the Russians bother doing this. — René Descartes

1. It plays well at home.
2. It discourages dissidents abroad from telling tales.
3. It probes and exposes the impotence of the West and the weakness of the alliance and generally distracts and confuses.
4. It does what terrorism always does - make people afraid. And fear is a lever for manipulators.

I wouldn't say it cannot have been the Brits, the Trumpets, the antiTrumpets, the Israelis, friend of Cambridge Analytica, or some combination or sub-faction. But my analysis of motive leans towards it being in Russia's perceived interest more than anyone else's. May would probably quite like a small and winnable war about now to make her look 'strong and stable'; that's not going to happen with confronting Russia.

I refer again to Graham Greene. Yours is the question he addressed in The Human Factor. How can a British government end up killing spies on its own territory, with all the risks involved that you list? Answer: miscommunication, poor accountability, class prejudice, cock-up - usual British stuff, in other words. Brilliant. Of course that doesn't mean our lot did it. It just means that if Greene were still alive and had not already written the novel he would be inspired to do so.

Conspiracies and false flags happen, but one has to look from the broader perspective on these issue and notice that sooner or later history writing will get to the bottom. Or at least, there will be a lot historical studies reporting something is truly fishy.

The motive and the need for a false flag has to be self evident as there is the obvious danger of the whole thing can be exposed by whistleblowers or simply when something goes wrong. And that might topple the leaders making such daring move. And usually the false flag operations are quite ridiculous, like Germany staging an attack by Poland on it's border guards or that my country (Finland) decided to attack by artillery fire Stalin's Soviet Union in 1939.

Two modern false flag operations that come into mind is the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Apartment building bombings in Russia in September 1999. Both had the intent to get a country to start a military conflict, in the case of the Tonkin incident to get the US involved in the Vietnam war and the apartment bombings in order for an unknown prime minister of Russia to start a war again against the Chechens after a humiliation peace-agreement.(I mean think about it, if terrorists make a bombing attack, why would they choose some unknown neighbourhood apartment buildings in the middle of the day when people are at work?)

What is notable in these cases is the research done about them and how actually difficult false flag operations are. In the Russian case the FSB agents were caught by the police and the duma speaker erranously talked about a bombing that yet had not happened. And then we had the famous whistleblower Litvinenko, who was later famously killed by Russia. And false flag operations are typically done in order to start a war.

Hence here the idea that the British would create this false flag operation is dubious. Hence by Occam's razor the reason that unenlightened lists seem to be the likely scenario.