Allegations continue that the Brexit debacle may have been the result of unfair manipulations, as I noted in the beginning post of this thread, allegedly by the Russians. Charlie Stross on Antipope has a round-up of some follow-on information:
Then, last week, something happened. Or several somethings. (From the outside it’s hard to be sure.)
One of those somethings was the retirement of Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre and his replacement by Mail on Sunday editor Georgie Greig, a pro-European journalist. Newspaper owner Lord Rothermere remains the same, but an unattributed source described Greig’s appointment as part of a process of “detoxifying the Daily Mail”.
Next, the Murdoch press began an extraordinary about-face on Brexit. For about a year now Carol Cadwalladr of The Guardian has been digging into Cambridge Analytica, the Leave.EU campaign, and possible links to Russian state agencies and oligarchs. These links were known to some pro-leave journalists as much as two years ago, but they’re only now coming to public view. Aaron Banks is one of the main bankers of the Brexit campaign and appears to have very cordial relations with the Russian government, not to mention half a dozen Russian gold mines; he’s been called to testify before a House of Commons committee tomorrow and last week was refusing to attend. This week he appears to be on the back foot, with The Times going after him Revealed: Brexit backer Arron Banks’s golden Kremlin connection. Indeed, The Observer reports that Arron Banks ‘met Russian embassy officials multiple times before Brexit vote’. The newspaper goes on to say, “Towards the end of last year, Banks issued a statement saying his contacts with “the Russians” consisted of “one boozy lunch” at the Russian embassy. Documents seen by the Observer, suggest a different version of events.” (Note that Banks has a net worth in the ~£100M range: you don’t print anything about him in an English newspaper without getting a legal opinion first.) Oh, and the Fair Vote Project is going after him in court in the US, following allegations that two companies owned by Banks may have illegally exported information on British voters to the USA (in violation of UK data protection rules) for purposes of data mining (Banks had negotiated with Cambridge Analytica prior to this move).
Stipulating certain events and allegations are proven factual, then we’ve been inadvertent witnesses to the return stroke from Russia – no great surprise there. It was quite subtle, taking advantage of the Internet and advanced social technologies, along with very old fashioned human weaknesses to sucker a society into a vote it probably wouldn’t have taken after a rational analysis, but only mildly modify.
One wonders how Kremlin-initiated comparisons of the strategic threat of the UK compare to just three years ago.
