The Legatum Institute turns up again in the press, this time oddly enough in The Mail on Sunday (HERE). This think tank has a lot to answer for on Brexit. The article tries to link Legatum with the Russians and there does appear to be a connection. But quite apart from where they get their money from, they admit they're "advising" government. Apparently civil servants believe that Gove and Johnson are using the think tank as a sort of parallel Whitehall.
One of Legatum"s staff is said to have helped write the secret letter that Gove and Johnson sent to Mrs May a few weeks ago (HERE). They have been pushing for the sort of hard Brexit that many fear we are going to get. Their answer to the insoluble Irish border problem was to patrol it with airships (HERE) which I think just shows the extent of the fantasy thinking being injected into the government. Matthew Elliot, formerly CEO of Vote Leave and the man behind the thousand page Brexit tome Change or Go (HERE) in 2015, now works for Legatum. It's a strange world isn't it?
We ordinary people are never aware of the way government really works or the influence that wealthy and powerful men (it's usually men) have on government, even ours.
A few days ago Ken Clarke spoke about the Murdoch empire, how they switched support to the Conservatives before the 2010 election (HERE) and the way Rebekah Brooks then tried to influence government policy. Rupert Murdoch is on record as saying he's never asked any prime minister for anything but I think we all know that's not how it works anyway. Prime ministers are never in doubt what Murdoch wants, it's on the front pages of his newspapers. The same thing applies to Paul Dacre at the Daily Mail (he is not the editor of the Mail on Sunday, Dacre has to take a rest from hate once a week) who was attended by Theresa May herself when he celebrated 25 years as editor the other week.
These men push Brexit because they can't influence (or to use a better word, corrupt) Brussels in the way they can in Downing Street, where they are constant visitors. One wonders who we are really governed by. Is it the people we elect or these shadowy men behind the throne?
