Anyone still enjoying the embarrassing spectacle of the Conservative leadership contest in the UK?
I will assume not any more than anyone was enjoying the embarrassing spectacle of the Conservative government in general these last few years.
It appears that, after a fun-filled few years, the partially obscured king-makers behind Boris have turned their backs on him, considering him no longer fit for purpose.
Leaked emails were reported on in May by the Grayzone, which claimed to have verified their authenticity via the metadata. These were found to expose the billionaire Brexit elites: and their push to install Boris Johnson into office as Prime Minister.
The same plotters, the report suggests, have more recently given up on Boris – who, one assumes had simply lost too much credibility and too much public good will – and were seeking a new puppet in 10 Downing Street instead.
I won’t reproduce too much from the Grayzone article here, as anyone interested can go read it for themselves and see all the details, names and dates.
But the basic takeaway is that the same groups of shady, dubious people that were most pushing for the Leave campaign in the first place were also plotting to maneuver Boris into office as PM and to see Theresa May ousted.
None of this is particularly revelatory, but what’s interesting is the extent to which these people are willing and able to violate laws, engage in ethically and morally questionable tactics, infiltrate both the civil service and the media, and manipulate not only the most gullible sections of the general public, but both manipulate and violate Parliament (and democracy).
Some of the types of figures identified by the emails are precisely the archetypal ‘Deep State’ actors you would imagine: people entrenched in the intelligence community, the military establishment, the aristocracy and the billionaire class.
You know, the types of people who couldn’t care less about things like cost-of-living crises, extortionate energy/fuel bills, disability rights, food banks, etc, or anything that causes problems for the plebs.
This cabal appears to have involved, among others, Ex-MI6 chief Richard Dearlove (a figure central to the deceptions and false intelligence that drove the UK’s involvement in the illegal Iraq War), and the overall picture includes moles and infiltrators in the civil service, fake journalists writing propaganda pieces under pseudonyms, as well as SAS connections, ex-CIA veterans, and more.
The alleged ‘plot’ to make Boris PM was driven initially by the desire of secretive billionaires, intelligence officials and the military establishment, to push for a Hard Brexit and a hard rift between the UK and Europe.
Theresa May, a Remainer initially, was seen as too conciliatory towards European partners: although it’s worth remembering that current Tory leadership frontrunner Liz Truss was also a Remainer (before she changed her mind) and, in fact, *Boris himself had written both Pro-Remain and Pro-Leave theses* just days before the Referendum (and only came down on the side of Leave when it seemed like his best option for political advancement).
Which clearly demonstrates how much of all of this is just performance and theatrics meant for public consumption.
But getting back to the point, as the Grayzone exposé explains: ‘The emails demonstrate that a group of operatives linked to the intelligence services and wealthy, reclusive pro-Brexit financiers spied on campaign groups, infiltrated the civil service, and targeted high-profile Remainers with reputational destruction… Among their key objectives was to strengthen the security relationship between London and Washington, thus supplanting EU authority with more substantial US oversight…‘
This is also interesting in relation to Cambridge Analytica and how much British establishment and intelligence figures were invested in helping push Donald Trump in to power in the US: a political earthquake that was timed to coincide precisely with Britain’s decision to leave the EU.
This is suggestive of the desire being a very right-wing UK/US movement away from the center and Europe: and designed to happen in tandem.
As a side-note, this push to reinforce the UK/US relationship at the expense of Europe was something pointed at by several commentators back in 2016 as being a driver of Brexit: there was also strong indication that consolidating the relationship with Israel was also part of the equation.
Israeli outlets at the time were open about considering Brexit a good thing: particularly as most of the Conservative figures benefiting politically from the EU departure were staunch Zionists: approval was particularly with Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, all of whom had declared themselves firmly anti-BDS (Mrs May was also openly pro ‘Operation Protective Edge’ – the military bombardment of Gaza in 2014).
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Trump, Bannon, Kushner and co were card-carrying Zionists: and openly so. All of them pushing for illegal settlement building, annexation of Jerusalem and condemnation of various European governments that had been voting in the UN against illegal Israeli activity.
Rishi Sunak has also announced his support for Jerusalem as the “undisputed capital of Israel”: a position more in line with Trump and the Republicans than with most European governments.
Anyway, none of this is much of a surprise.
I’m actually going to confess here: I actually liked Boris Johnson for a long time. This is pre-Referendum Boris I’m talking about: the Boris who was kind of funny, used to quote things like Cicero, was fascinated by history, and was basically a liberal Conservative in outlook.
But, as with a lot of political stories in history, it was when he became blinded by his personal ambition and ego (with eyes set firmly on being Prime Minister and living out a longstanding Churchill fantasy) that his lesser nature became obvious: that he was a politician without any real convictions or loyalties, who would position himself with whatever camp happened to be most conducive to his personal desires.
I’ve written here before that – irrespective of whether Brexit is good or bad for the UK – Brexit was clearly what the British establishment and the ‘Old Elites’ were pushing for: and a Hard Brexit in particular.
Boris Johnson, who had positioned himself (on the throw of a dice – again, he was just as ready to campaign for Remain) as a charismatic figurehead for the Leave campaign, was the natural character that these people and interests would want in office.
He also had the benefit of being the closest thing we could find to a Trump-like figure to mirror what was going on in the United States (although Boris is far more intelligent and far more likeable than the Orange-Faced Demagogue who tried to bring America into a Civil War just so he could stay in the White House).
However, the same puppet-masters behind Boris’s installation as PM had apparently run out of patience with him and were ready for a new Prime Minister.
As the Grayzone article says, ‘major Johnson donors had shifted their backing to Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. Evidently, having failed to deliver precisely what the cabal wanted, the Prime Minister has become expendable, and must himself be supplanted…’
Which is why, even in the midst of a spiralling cost-of-living crisis that is going to create hardship for the majority of the British people, the country is not really being governed at all by its elected officials: who are instead back to playing their self-serving political games and popularity contests.
Again, the people vying for power or high office (and, more importantly, those puppet-masters and secretive interests behind them) are only interested in their own narrow agendas and financial gains: whether hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of ordinary, hard-up citizens are plunged into further misery, hardship or ruin, is a mere afterthought – and, at best, collateral damage.
Of course, it’s all a repeating cycle anyway. Boris’s ‘downfall’ was triggered by two senior Cabinet ministers resigning – thus triggering a no-confidence scenario and a leadership contest. Boris knows this game: after all, Theresa May’s ousting was triggered by the exact same scenario of two senior Cabinet ministers resigning – and one of them was Boris Johnson himself.
And so the cycle goes on.
And behind it all, as ever, are the same shady cabals of establishment figures, military and intelligence officials, and wealthy backers: the perpetual guardians of the British Empire.