In this regard, members of government don't have to pull off anything, other than jump when told to, and run with a story, believe what they are told to believe, react how they are briefed to react, and qualify it all to cover their ***** with "highly likely".
Doesn't stand up for one second. In today's world members of the government can't even have an affair, or look at porn on their PC (Damien Green) without it being leaked and turned into a national story - to think they can just casually pull this sort of thing off, is tantamount to impossible, it doesn't stand up for a second and never has.
As for the question about possible motives, plenty have been offered in this thread (back in the day) already. Including that there are those in NATO countries who hate Russia with a passion, for not bending over and letting them do as they please, and seeking a multi-polar world, instead of accepting uni-polar NATO domination. Assad must go versus the will of the Syrian people must be respected. Russia annexed Crimea versus NATO organised a coup in Ukraine which not all of Ukraine accepted, including Crimea which historically was and felt Russian. So there are those who want to hurt Russia's reputation, transmit the image that their morals leave a lot to be desired, damage them financially with sanctions, raise doubts over whether Russia destroyed all its chemical weapon stockpiles when time is approaching for the US to finally do the same... and possibly bring all this crap up again during the World Cup, using two human guinea pigs that will provide even more information about Novichok and its effects on humans, to interested parties. Who to pick? How about two heroin addicts? When to do it? Well not on the first day of the World Cup, too damn obvious. Wait a bit, hopefully England will get knocked out. They surprisingly haven't been? Well, too bad. Must happen now. There was always going to be an Act II to this.
I might be inclined to agree that there are people in NATO countries who hate Russia with a passion, but merely "knocking off" a former spy, to me - doesn't really seem to achieve any objectives for anyone other than the Russian government, because it's sending a message - defy us and you will be killed. That
is the most likely explanation for all of this - it's Russia doing what it's well documented and known to do, strongman and scare tactics that act as a deterrence against anyone who might harm their interests, this sort of thing is business as usual for Russia. (Litvinenko, countless others in other countries, and ones we probably don't know about)
All of the other explanations are far too complicated, all the conspiracy theories and false flag theories require too many moving parts, too many people - in this day and age where the media has unprecedented levels of access into government corridors - with no serious repercussions for leaking, it's almost impossible to think that should things could take place in secret.
Put it this way; If you hated Russia so much, were in possession of Novichok and wanted to cause a false flag attack, with the intention of making Russia look very bad, causing serious implications and a major incident - why just attempt to kill a former spy and his daughter? It would make far more sense to poison 500 people to death randomly, that would do the job far more effectively than just killing a former spy.. That would wreck everything.
There are equally, if not more so, crazy things about the Skripal story, including both victims conveniently collapsing at the same time, after 4-5 hours of allegedly receiving the dose. Rain allegedly helping to minimize the dose so that they didn't die... but found in surprisingly non-degraded levels in Skripal samples and still enough to kill four months later in tiny amounts (we are told). Baby wipes will get rid of it. Nope, full decontamination required. Now baby wipe advice again. Now you have the government purchasing the Skripal and Bailey properties (but not Zizzi's or the pub) with tax-payer money, which might be a sneaky way of laundering payments made for silence/services rendered. No secret payments to offshore accounts. No secret testing on humans. All out in the open. All explainable. Because evil Russia.
All of this sounds like random people typing on Reddit, or in the comments section of a David Icke website.