Friday 12 July 2019

RUSSIAN MONEY AND A COMING CRISIS

Trump, Brexit and the rise of the populist right in Europe in the last few years is probably not a coincidence and although it may never be proved, there are many people who think Russia is responsible for all of it. We know they interfered in the 2016 presidential election, even if Trump didn't realise what was happening. It's always struck me as very strange that the orange baboon in The White House has hit out at every one of America's allies but never a hint of criticism of Putin.

The Russians also tried to interfere in the French presidential election in 2017 by releasing emails hacked from Macron's campaign in a similar move to the one used to help Trump. There was evidence of interference in the recent European elections by Russia and other far right groups.

We also know Russian money from a dodgy bank funded Marine Le Pen's National Front in France to the tune of about £8 million.

Now BuzzFeed has obtained a recording of a conversation from October 2018 in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow between representatives of Matteo Salvini's La Lega party, an anti-immigrant right wing party, now part of the ruling coalition in Italy, and Russians looking at ways of channeling money to him worth up to $65 million.  Salvini is the deputy prime minister in Italy and under investigation by the authorities there.

In the recording, Salvini is referred to as the 'European Trump'.

So there is absolutely no doubt that Putin tries to involve himself in democratic elections all over the place to sow division and unrest.

Now, the interesting thing is that Putin has achieved one of the most fundamental aims of his foreign policy, to split up the EU, through Brexit but without apparently having spent any money at all. Or so we are expected to believe.  Was he just lucky? Or did he spend money that we don't yet know about?

In cases we do know of, Le Pen and Salvini, the money is apparently routed through semi legitimate sources to give it a veneer of legality or make it hard to trace. It is not paid directly.  We know that Aaron Banks, Farage's main source of funding both before and after the referendum had a number of meetings with the Russian ambassador and was offered investment opportunities by the Russians.  Banks has always denied these claims, but if they were true, they would fit with a pattern.

Note, the National Crime Agency has now been investigating the source of the £8 million Banks gave or loaned Leave.EU since the beginning of November last year but have still not reported. How long does it take to prove money is yours?

I am not claiming Banks has done anything wrong but given the background, the methods and the result, it would be a very big surprise to me if Russia did not interfere in some way in the 2016 referendum.  The Italian investigation may reveal links and help to explain if, how and why they did it.

Incidentally, this report from last December on the Le Pen money says Russia didn't think the plan had been particularly successful and were "thought now to be experimenting with spreading its influence by using smaller amounts of untraceable cash".  Note Farage's Brexit Party is largely funded through small, untraceable donations below £500 made via PayPal.  Just a thought.

On more immediate matters, it seems to me we are heading into very dangerous waters later this year. The Huffington Post report that MPs and the speaker are plotting a sit-in if Johnson tries to prorogue parliament, with talk of the Chancellor Phillip Hammond, after he's sacked in the next couple of weeks, leading Tory rebels from the back benches. The speaker John Bercow and the Sergeant at arms control parliamentary security and could resist the PM's instructions.  One can quite easily see The Queen being embroiled in the crisis.

You can see how things are building up with Nigel Farage calling for a sort of Stalinesque purge of government with "every civil servant, every ambassador, even the head of the army or head of the navy" being replaced if they are remainers.  We will all be in re-education camps soon for not being sufficiently bien pensant .

This is two days after Phillip Johnson, a journalist on The Telegraph asked if the civil service can 'survive' Brexit? Stewart Jackson, the MP for Peterborough and former aide to David Davis, says Brexit can't succeed without 'reigning in the chaotic Foreign Office'.

Not only is the United Kingdom at risk of breaking up, the British state itself is in danger of being swept away. Sir Ivan Rogers once said the Brexit revolution is starting to eat it's children but it is also consuming it's parents as well.

We are seemingly headed towards the biggest constitutional crisis for centuries.

Simon Fraser, the former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, tweeted about the present impasse on Sunday. You can read the entire thread if you click on the first tweet below.

However the important one for me is the second in the thread:

Again, he does not believe no deal is the most likely and can only happen if either the EU force us out, which I certainly don't expect them to do, although they will probably exact quite a price for giving us another extension, or if parliament screws up badly.

What he does not say is that Johnson simply won't do it. This I think is the truth. He is a weak man and will not want the responsibility. Brexiteers may think he's the only one who can do it but they will be sadly disappointed.

He doesn't even believe in Brexit anyway.
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