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Nigel Farage ‘legs it’ after his driver crashed with Jag carrying 13-month-old toddler in Kent
The Brexit Party boss said he checked nobody was hurt before leaving
By Nick Parker
10th May 2019, 9:42 pm
Updated: 11th May 2019, 12:08 pm
NIGEL Farage legged it after his chauffeur-driven 4×4 crashed head-on with a Jag carrying a toddler, it was claimed last night.
Pub landlord Patrick Tranter says son George, 13 months, was badly shaken by the Kent smas
Pub landlord Patrick Tranter says son George, 13 months, was badly shaken by the Kent smash involving Nigel Farage’s chauffeur-driven 4X4
He said of Brexit Party boss Farage, 55: “He didn’t even bother to see if we were OK.”
The pint-loving politician has now been banned from Mr Tranter’s pub amid the claims he walked away from the smash.
Furious Patrick Tranter, who needed hospital treatment, told The Sun: “He lives two miles away and loves a pint, but he won’t get one from me. Man of the people, my arse. As far as I’m concerned he’s barred.”
Last night Mr Farage insisted he checked nobody was hurt and claimed Patrick was abusive. He said he had visited the George and Dragon in Westerham, Kent, in the past but added: “If I’m banned, then it’s not too terrible is it?”
Patrick, 38, had dropped off his wife at the station and was driving home when his vintage Jag collided head-on with Mr Farage’s chauffeur-driven Range Rover on Thursday morning.
Son George, 13 months, was in his seat in the back. He was also rushed to hospital.
SCREAMING TODDLER
Patrick said: “We crashed with an enormous bang. Farage could not possibly have failed to hear George screaming. I ran out to see if my little boy was OK.
“Farage stepped out of the Range Rover, collected his bag from the boot and walked off.
“He didn’t have the common decency to see if we were OK, and never even looked back.
“God knows where (he went) as it was a country lane. He just vanished. I turned around and asked one of his people, ‘Is that Farage?’ and she said yes.
“It would be pure speculation to guess how fast his car was going but it is his response which has really p***ed me off.
“His driver Dean Chapman confirmed it was him but I was dumbfounded by his behaviour. Who does he think he is?”
Patrick says his 1986 Jaguar Series 3 Sovereign was written off in the smash in Titsey at 9.30am.
Ex-Ukip leader Mr Farage, the driver and another passenger escaped injury because their motor had airbags.
He continued with campaigning for his Brexit Party ahead of the European elections.
Pint-loving politician Nigel Farage has been banned from Mr Tranter’s pub — just two miles from his home — amid claims he walked away from the smash
Damage to the front of the Range Rover that Nigel Farage was being driven in
Where the smash happened in Westerham, Kent
Later he clashed with Change UK’s Anna Soubry on BBC TV’s Question Time in Northampton.
Patrick did not vote in the 2016 EU referendum and said he would not dream of backing Mr Farage’s new party.
He added: “If he’d asked how I was he would have recognised me.
“I worked with his daughter Victoria at a wedding a year ago.
“The cars crashed with so much force that my car was pushed back into the bushes on the other side of the road.
“His driver was really courteous and waited by our car. He called the police and ambulance too.”
‘THE OTHER DRIVER WAS ABUSIVE’
Patrick and George — described as distressed by the ambulance service — were taken to Princess Royal University Hospital, Orpington. Patrick had neck and shoulder injuries and possible whiplash.
Mr Farage said last night: “The driver of the other car was abusive. He was swearing very loudly and after accidents people do all sorts of things. It was a pretty full-on smash and I understand why people can be a bit shocked.
“Once I had ascertained that everyone was OK I made discreet withdrawal from the situation.
“I didn’t think that me, with a rather a well-known face, going into that situation would have helped anything or anybody.
“Had anybody been hurt I would have stayed and waited for the ambulance.
“I just thought there was nothing to be added by me talking to him.
“I didn’t hear his child screaming so I walked up the road.”
Mr Farage said he had drunk at Patrick’s pub but wouldn’t be back.
Police are not investigating any offences relating to the accident.
A TORY Party backer, Crystal Palace and Flybe investor Jeremy Hoskins, has switched his allegiance and donated £200,000 to the Brexit Party.
Police at the scene of the smash near Westerham in Kent – but cops say they are not investigating any offences
Mr Farage said: ‘Once I had ascertained that everyone was OK I made discreet withdrawal from the situation’
To view the original article with pictures CLICK HERE
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it seems Farage’s inability to cope with details, racism and factual inexactitude follows him wherever he goes. As the article below shows!
In reality The BreXit Party is yet again a Farage Cult, with many of the same followers however in view of the lies and betrayal that have been emmanating from Parliament many people, like myself, will find that subsequent to Parliament’s betrayal of the electorate, its own promises and the manifestly self serving behaviour of the proven majority in the House of Commons – we are left with no choice, at the moment, but to hold our noses and inspite of Nigel Farage and some of his cult followers we shall vote for the BreXit Party, on matters pertaining to the EU.
Brexit Party figures who left over offensive posts are still directors
Former leader and former treasurer of Nigel Farage’s party were supposed to have cut ties
Catherine Blaiklock and Michael McGough. Composite: Getty/Alamy
Two senior members of Nigel Farage’s Brexit party who left their roles after the Guardian uncovered offensive social media messages they had sent are still directors of the organisation weeks after they had supposedly cut all ties, it has emerged.
Blaiklock, who also retweeted far-right messages, including one from a former British National party activist referring to “white genocide”, also resigned as company secretary of the party soon after the posts emerged, six weeks ago. But despite that change being made to the Companies House register, she remains listed as a director.
McGough is also still a director. He was removed as treasurer a month ago after posting what the party called “unacceptable statements”. A party statement at the time said he would no longer have any role in the organisation.
The only other two directors are Farage and the new treasurer, Phillip Basey, a former Ukip activist.
In some messages, McGough referred to Ed and David Miliband and Peter Mandelson as having “shallow UK roots” or being “devoid of UK roots” – seen as a common antisemitic trope about Jewish people.
One post from 2017 called David Miliband the “son of an east European communist now milking it from a charity in New York and devoid of UK roots”.
Another message said: “The Miliband dudes and Mandelson have the shortest of roots. Transient folk they have no loyalty to the UK.” One reply by another user tells McGough he is on “slightly dangerous ground”. McGough replies: “True, but there is a valid point to be made even if it seems offensive. It is not dissimilar to Lord Tebbit’s cricket test.”
A post about Mandelson reads: “I resent being called racist by an old queen with shallow UK roots.”
Blaiklock sent offensive tweets that she later deleted, including one saying: “Islam = submission – mostly to raping men it seems.”
She also retweeted seven messages from the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Farage left Ukip after its current leader, Gerard Batten, made Robinson an adviser.
Other tweets sent by Blaiklock included one that referred to Islam as “a non-democracy ideology that is incompatible with liberal democracy”. Another said of Islam that it was “perfectly rational to be phobic about people who want to kill you”.
Both Blaiklock and McGough were longtime former Ukip members, and moved to the Brexit party with Farage. Their departures marked a tricky launch for the party, which has since rebounded spectacularly, and is leading in the polls for the European elections.
The Brexit party was approached for comment but did not respond.
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Paul Nuttall, the former Ukip leader, is entitled to a €68,428 transition allowance. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA
The European parliament has recovered more than £200,000 from Ukip MEPs accused of misusing public funds through payments to party workers. But with three weeks to go until European elections, time is running out to recoup money from others alleged to have broken EU rules.
The parliament has suspended the pay of two staff attached to Ukip’s former leader Paul Nuttall and his fellow North West England MEP Louise Bours, the Guardian has learned. Neither MEP is standing for re-election on 23 May, which could make it harder for officials to recover money.
Since the Guardian revealed the parliament’s investigation into Ukip misspending in 2017, £202,667 has been recovered from two current MEPs and one former one.
Nigel Farage was docked half his MEP’s salary for 10 months in 2018, and he is judged to have repaid a £39,653 debt to the EU. European parliament financial controllers said Farage broke the rules by paying a Ukip party worker with EU funds meant to pay for staffing of his MEP office. Farage, who left Ukip in December and now leads the Brexit party, has always denied the charge.
Raymond Finch was docked £61,650 of his MEP’s salary over the employment of two assistants, including Farage’s estranged wife, Kirsten.
Roger Helmer, who stood down as an MEP in 2017 when allegations against him emerged, lost £101,364 of a transition allowance for former MEPs.
While Nuttall and Bours could lose their transitional allowances, it is not clear whether this would be enough to cover the alleged losses from the EU budget.
Elected in 2014, Bours would be entitled to a €40,949 (£35,025) after-tax transition payment, while Nuttall’s stint as an MEP since 2009 could entitle him to €68,428. The payments are based on the length of time served as an MEP, but are not meant to be claimed by ex-politicians with another job or pension.
Earlier calculations put repayment demands on then Ukip MEPs at around £500,000, but cases against two were later closed without any action.
All MEPs have strenuously rejected claims that the rules were broken. Their bloc in the European parliament, the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy, has previously described the investigation as “a vindicative campaign” against Eurosceptic MEPs.
Responding to the latest findings, an EFDD spokesman said the parliament had behaved “disgracefully” towards the former employees of Bours and Nuttall. “Both of them have been doing the jobs they have been contracted to do and one of the guys lost his house,” the spokesman said.
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As we all struggle to find solutions to Brexit, it is rather ironic – the extent of being bizarre – that so many should be turning to a man who bears much of the responsibility for the current mess.
The best chance of there ever being a smooth Brexit – however forlorn the hope might have been – rested not on the referendum campaign (or its immediate aftermath) but in the years leading up to it. Long before it got to a vote, the Eurosceptic movement needed to have agreed what we were, at the turn of the century, calling an “exit and survival plan”.
As the leader of the then only dedicated anti-EU party, Nigel Farage was perhaps the only man who could have fostered the development of a plan and united the disparate factions behind it. Instead, he blocked any progress in that direction and settled on a strategy based on building a base of MPs in Westminster, with himself at the head.
His idea was that the pressure exerted by Ukip MPs would create such stresses in the Parliamentary Conservative Party that it would split. The larger number, he believed, would join Ukip, building a majority that could form a government to take us out of the EU.
In this fantasy, there was no need for an exit plan. His new government would have the civil service, which would do as instructed and work up the detail. All Farage’s party had to do was win enough elections and the problem was solved.
Well, we all know how that worked out. Despite multiple attempts, Farage never got near winning a seat in the Commons, much less populating the green seats with his own. He didn’t even manage to keep control of his own party, allowing it to be seized from him, ending up in the hands of the dire Gerard Batten. Its record 24 MEPs dwindling to a mere four.
Now the resurgent demagogue has created a new party, over which he has almost total control, untroubled by such inconvenient things as a democracy. And yet, Lewis Goodhall, the political correspondent for Sky News, describes him as a man who “cannot be faulted for his appreciation of strategy”.
Despite that, the “electric” Mr Farage is a one-trick pony, capable of delivering only a single core speech. With its variations, it may be enough to impress the untutored but, after the third or fourth time of hearing, the underlying emptiness becomes all too apparent. And, as a man whose appreciation of strategy can’t be faulted, he opposed a referendum. His strategy, and everything else he touches beyond personal enrichment, has been an unremitting failure.
Currently, he favours a no-deal Brexit – another example of his strategic acumen (not). Presumably, he believes that his latest strategy of “winning” an unnecessary and irrelevant election is a way to exert pressure on Mrs May to achieve that end. Once again, we see the limits of his thinking, where his only game is to force the Conservatives into taking action, to uncertain effect.
If that was the whole extent of our options, we would be in far more serious trouble than we could possibly imagine. But if there is salvation to be had, it is more likely to lie in a careful study of our situation and in an evaluation of the broader options.
Bringing it down to its basics, the essence of our problem, I would aver, is that the Brexit process is beyond the capacity of our political system to implement, and it has neither the desire nor the incentive to seek enduring solutions. The logical response to that – or, at least, the first element – might be to break the process down into bite-sized chunks that the system can handle, or to hand the job over to bodies which are better equipped to perform the functions involved in the process.
Working along those lines, it seems reasonable to argue that, if the majority of MPs (and much of government) do not have the capacity to evaluate the merits of competing Brexit plans, or even work out whether any particular plan will satisfy stated objectives, it is pointless offering the collective any plans to study.
By avoiding this trap, we would be accepting that parliament is not a planning body and neither is it capable of evaluating plans. We would thus cease to expect it to do things for which it was not designed, and for which it is manifestly not capable. By the same token, asking for indicative votes seems an obvious waste of time.
In the past, we used to refer the evaluation of public policy to such bodies as Royal Commissions. Commissions, in particular, could examine topics for some years, gathering evidence and assessing various alternatives, before coming up with detailed recommendations to guide governments in the choices they made.
Yet, despite the importance of Brexit, and the hugely damaging consequences of getting it wrong, I do not recall seeing any formal inquiry of any great weight, that has assessed our options and made recommendations. To a very great extent, our government and public institutions – and the rest of us – are flying blind.
Such is the complexity of the Brexit process that, in an earlier piece, I suggested that, before we went any further with the EU, we needed a series of scoping meetings. These would enable us to decide what is possible to achieve from our negotiations on a future relationship.
Before we even get there, though, we need as a nation to decide where we want to go. That decision `must be informed by factual analysis and a clear understanding of what is actually possible, together with an appreciation of what our negotiating partners might accept.
Even now, that in itself might be too much to ask of a divided nation that has not fully come to terms with the prospect of leaving. As long as we have active campaigns aimed at reversing the referendum result, it seems hardly likely that we can get down to the task of discussing the best way to leave.
That, it would seem, is the heart of the problem. It isn’t just the establishment which isn’t up to the job. We have an unfocused nation which is not only too easily distracted from the task at hand – mainly because it hasn’t fully decided that this is a task it wants to undertake.
To resolve this, there are those who still hanker after another referendum. But it would be wrong to assert that we are, as a nation, any better informed about Brexit than we were during the last referendum campaign.
Where we can seriously entertain a discussion about the value of a customs union in facilitating frictionless trade, all we have is evidence of monumental ignorance. Those who want a re-run on the basis that we now know more about the issue clearly haven’t been following the debate for the past three years. If we are to be judged as incapable of reaching a knowledge-based decision in June 2016, we are no better equipped now.
On the other hand, a general election is no more suitable a platform for a national debate than is a referendum – and it would be an abuse of process. General elections are for choosing our governments, not for settling contentious issues. For that, supposedly, we have referendums – we are back full circle.
Therefore, I begin to warm to the idea of putting the Brexit process “on hold”, in order to refer it to an independent review body such as a Royal Commission. And since six months would hardly be enough time for it to conclude its work, we would also need to ask the EU for extra time.
One important limitation of this idea, though, relates to the composition of the inquiry body. The great and the good who would normally comprise the panel are, in the main, the very people who have made such a hash of the process so far. And if the panel took evidence from the same “prestigious” witnesses that have polluted select committees and the like, we would be no further forward, no matter how long it was given to perform its task.
On that basis, the idea of an independent inquiry begins to look considerably less attractive, which means that we might have to look elsewhere for our solutions. But, actually, we may not have to look too far. Breaking out of the box, we could be thinking not of one inquiry body but two. One would shadow the other, each with slightly different terms of reference and composition. If one explored the arguments, the other might deliberately set out to challenge received wisdom.
This was the stratagem recommended by Irving Janis in his book on groupthink, where the creation of competing (or complementary) bodies to examine the same issues reduced the danger of a single mindset emerging and remaining unchallenged. Such a multiple-group structure was, apparently, used by the Truman administration in developing the Marshall Plan, so it is hardly a new or untried idea.
To those who would cavil at the extra time this would take, we could offer the aphorism that, if you act in haste you will repent at leisure. There cannot be any rational objection to taking a few years to unravel a process which has taken the UK 47 years to develop.
As much to the point, almost exactly two years ago, I was writing of Alan S Milward and his book, The Rise and Fall of a National Strategy, 1945-63. The point which emerged from it was that governments in general find it difficult to change strategies quickly. Progressing from opposition to UK entanglement in European political integration to support for membership of the EEC took 18 years.
What we are now seeing, I then wrote, is the inevitable consequence of a forced change, for which the government is unprepared, where the speed of change is beyond its ability to accommodate.
I would sooner give the government time to adjust, rather than lose the chance of Brexit altogether, or risk ending up with a bodged outcome which takes decades to repair. If Brexit is to succeed, the process must be properly informed and the issues must be fully discussed and understood, not just by our legislators but also by the public at large.
Effectively, we need a different bus with a better message. And if that takes a couple more years, it is worth the wait.
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Oliver Norgrove, a former Nigel Farage admirer and Vote Leave staffer, explains how Brexit broke itself on the back of ‘grotesque simplifications’.
Like so many others, my intertwining with Brexit began with Nigel Farage. I remember watching him in person and on YouTube as an 18-year-old, just as my political journey was starting to take shape.
What aided Farage most was his ability to articulate simple solutions to incredibly complex problems.
Mr Farage was the first political figure to really inspire me. I was energised and sprung into action by him in a way that nobody else has since managed. I considered him – and still do to this day – to be an extraordinary orator, and somebody who could not only make the case for Leaving, but in the process relate to the people he was talking to. He appeared to me a cultural outlier in elite circles, even if his educational and professional background suggested otherwise.
What aided Farage most was his ability to articulate simple solutions to incredibly complex problems. He became so good at it that many of his answers turned quite organically into slogans. This had a major effect on people like me, because not only was he able to paint a patriotic and optimistic vision for Brexit, he provided activists with memorable and easily deployed arguments for use in general debate.
The Problem with Slogans
The fact that Mr Farage relied on short, sharp and simple responses made him appear intellectually infallible, even if what he said was suspect in terms of its content.
On some level, the boiled-down, simplification of the issues made me remarkably naive but absurdly over-confident in my approach to arguing for leaving the EU.
The arguments turned Brexit into a more easily digestible, every-day snapshot: ‘They need us more than we need them’ making an analogy to the German car industry analogy; ‘Even in the worst case scenario, we’d be better off than we are now’ with reference to a comparison of tariff schedules based on the ‘they sell us more than we sell them’ point.
On some level, the boiled-down, simplification of the issues made me remarkably naive but absurdly over-confident in my approach to arguing for leaving the EU.
Nigel Farage enjoys a pint in Shoreham, West Sussex during a walkabout ahead of the Brexit Party rally at Brighton City Airport.
But, as time and negotiations progressed, and as more of the technical details became apparent, I started to realise that so many Faragist predictions and pronouncements just weren’t materialising.
The more I learned, for instance, about the mechanics of trade and WTO law, the more I recognised the complete untruth in so much of what had been said.
GATT Article XXIV was not going to provide for a no deal transition. The economic forecasts, increased red tape burden and the response of many businesses to looming third country status prove that we wouldn’t be better off in the worst case scenario than we are now. Most UK trade was not conducted under solely WTO rules. And there was no such thing as a ‘world trade deal’.
The Jaws of Reality
Brexit has been nothing if not an immense learning curve.
Pretty uniquely in the Brexit debate, I have experienced a good flavour of three distinct divisions within the Leave movement: UKIP, Vote Leave and the assorted ‘Liberal Leave’ campaigns, all of which unite around protecting our membership of the single market. I believe that this has enriched my analytical perspective on many of the issues surrounding the UK’s EU withdrawal.
Farage’s grotesque simplifications… and the almost religious evasion of detail were never going to prepare us for our departure.
The outright lies and failure to deal adequately with policy details will go down in history as the Leave side’s most prominent sore. Leaving the European Union is a mammoth legal, technical and constitutional task which cannot be orchestrated according to the whims of the political sloganeering we saw in the 2016 referendum. The jaws of reality, it turns out, cannot be avoided indefinitely.
To some extent, I should have had greater foresight and viewed the withdrawal issues through a more critical lens. But then again, this could be said of almost anybody invested in Brexit. Farage’s grotesque simplifications, parroted by individuals uninterested in complexity, and the almost religious evasion of detail were never going to prepare us for our departure. It is here where history will truly judge him.
With last week’s launch of the new Brexit Party, Nigel Farage has set about re-packaging the core of Brexit support. He says he wants to bring back trust to the political climate, changing our politics ‘for good’. I say he should start with a small measure of self-reflection. He should start by fixing himself.
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Who is the real Nigel Farage… and why won’t he answer my questions?
Trump… Russian TV… key witnesses in Robert Mueller’s investigation. The jokey ‘bloke with a pint’ now has a network that spreads well beyond the UK. Our reporter has spent months on the trail of Mr Brexit…
The first time I call Nigel Farage live on air on his LBC radio show, I give my real name. It’s Sunday 10 June 2018, the day the Observer reports that Arron Banks, the main funder of Farage’s Leave.EU campaign, had not one (as he had claimed), but several meetings with the Russian ambassador in the run-up to the EU referendum.
“What do you want to say to Nigel?” the producer asks. “I want to talk about how the funder of his campaign has systematically lied about his relationship with the Russian government,” I say. “I can’t put you through,” the producer says, an edge of panic in her voice. “Come on,” I say. “You’re a journalist. You know these are important questions. “I’m standing in,” she says. “I’m not the usual producer.” She promises to speak to her editor and call me back.
No one calls me back.
Two days later, I try again. Banks and his business partner Andy Wigmore, the spokesman for the Leave.EU campaign, are on the show to “answer questions”. It’s an interview in the best traditions of a Stalinist show trial – the man asking them the questions is the man whose campaign they funded – but even so, they sound spooked. It’s the only occasion in my time of reporting on them that I’ve heard them so subdued and serious.
There’s never been an issue with me discussing Farage on other LBC shows such as James O’Brien’s, but, again, I can’t get through. Minutes later, a friend does, and passes me the phone. Actually, I say, just as Farage has built up a head of steam about the Trump-Russia “witch hunt”, it’s Carole Cadwalladr from the Guardian and Observer. “I don’t want to talk to Carole Cadwalladr of the Guardian!” Farage says. In the video of the moment, you can see him frantically motioning his producer with his eyes. The phone line is cut.
Quick Guide
The rightwing world of Nigel Farage
Nigel Farage is so regularly on our airwaves and quoted in the press, but he is rarely held to account. At this point I’ve been writing about him for almost two years, and I have no way of asking him questions. His PR man almost never responds to messages. Doesn’t respond to interview requests.
And then on 7 September this year we finally meet. He’s on tour with a one-man show entitled An Entertaining Evening With Nigel Farage, which has just landed – somewhat bizarrely – in Melbourne, Australia. Everything is a bit different here. The day before the event, I receive a notification of a change of venue (were ticket sales perhaps not what Farage might have hoped?). The event has been moved from a mid-sized arena to the conference room of a city centre hotel.
What’s more, to get in, I have to fight my way through what feels like a running street battle. In Melbourne, Farage isn’t known as the Ukip man off the radio and telly. “He’s Donald Trump’s fascist sidekick and we don’t want his type here,” claims one of the protesters. He’s holding a placard that depicts Farage as a pig.
Inside, it’s different. The audience – overwhelmingly male, surprisingly young – laps up his well-rehearsed bonhomie. And afterwards, for an extra A$200 on my ticket fee, I get to hang out backstage with a select crowd drinking bad white wine. And then, here he is.
Hello, Nigel, I say, and introduce myself. He blinks. But, he doesn’t flee for the exit. Not straight away. It’s been frustrating, I say, because I’ve just wanted to ask you some direct questions. Will you do a proper interview with me?
“Well, I don’t know!” he says, with a flash of the trademark Farage charm. “Maybe. It depends what mood I’m in. I don’t work for you. I don’t have to do it, do I?”
No, I say, but you’re a public figure. You’re funded by taxpayers. The European Union funds you. We pay taxes that pay for you.
“Well, who funds you?” he says. “The Observer funds me,” I say.
“George Soros, is it?”
I can’t quite believe that he’s said this, apparently in all seriousness. Banks has also accused me of being funded by Soros. And I’ve heard Farage using the phrase in the European parliament. It’s a reference to George Soros, the Hungarian-born investor and philanthropist, who after the fall of communism, funded democracy-building institutions and movements across eastern Europe. He became a hate figure to the Russian government, who launched a propaganda campaign portraying him as a meddling Jewish banker.
What “funded by Soros” really means is: “funded by Jews”. It signals antisemitism to an audience without saying it directly. But the only audience is me. I’m gobsmacked. Could he actually believe this stuff?
“George Soros doesn’t fund me!” I say. “How could George Soros fund me?”
“Well I don’t know!” Farage says. “You think the Russians fund me!”
And then his minder appears. I have moments to put my question, the question that kicked it all off. Why did you visit Julian Assange? I say in a hurry.
“LBC organised that,” he says. “You seem to be so stuck in your sad little world. They sent me. LBC wanted the interview. You can’t seem to get that into your mind. Why would my press officer, I mean my producer, come with me?”
And then he’s gone.
It’s the briefest of brief encounters and yet our exchange is so instructive. Because from the Kremlin, “Soros” as a political smear spread to the likes of Hungary’s demagogue-in-training, Viktor Orbán, and was picked up a year ago by Farage. When the Electoral Commission opened an investigation into the sources of Arron Banks’s funding a year ago, Farage made a speech in the European parliament in which he blamed this development on Soros. “This is where the real international political collusion is.” From Britain, it leapfrogged to the US, where it’s been deployed by Trump supporters about the “caravans” of immigrants heading for the US border with Mexico. Last week, it descended to the final circle of this hell: Facebook. The New York Times reported that after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook hired a right-leaning opposition research firm who used accusations of “Soros funding” to smear the company’s critics. In a way, the anti-Soros propaganda illuminates everything I’ve been trying to understand about Farage’s place in today’s world: that he represents a bridge between the authoritarian far right parties of central and eastern Europe that are aligned with Russia, and Trump’s America.
It all feels a long way from West Kent golf club and the undulating greens outside Farage’s childhood home. His autobiography describes his time at Dulwich college from 1975 to 1982 (he left the public school with few if any O-levels – accounts vary), and how a meeting at the golf club led to his first job as a commodities trader on the London Metal Exchange with a minor City firm. For years, this has been the image that Farage has cultivated. The tweed jackets. The pints. The Little Englander who lived modestly in a Kent suburban home and spoke to Britain’s G&T belt. Even in 2014, he said in an interview that he realised he must reach beyond his core base, which he describes as “very middle class, very below the M4, ex-military”.
This is no longer Farage’s world. He left that world far behind some time ago. But there’s a time lag in Britain in understanding this. In understanding Farage’s relationships with the European far right. And in understanding that he’s using the same playbook as the Kremlin, Steve Bannon (Donald Trump’s former chief strategist) and Robert Mercer, who for a long time funded Bannon’s pet projects, including alt-right news site Breitbart, and Cambridge Analytica.
Here in the UK, Farage is still cosy Mr Brexit. He’s been touring the country running “Leave Means Leave” rallies – I went to one in a retail park in Bolton – where talk of medicine running out and lorries backed up on the motorway was denounced as yet more “Project Fear”. He’s the man who holds fast to an ideologically pure Brexit vision untainted by the realpolitik of Theresa May’s compromises. The man who broadcasts live on LBC five times a week and pops up on the BBC.
Critically, in Britain, where political coverage follows the beat of Westminster’s drum, we have yet to really catch up with Farage’s uncomfortable new position: in overlapping circles radiating from US special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
Could this be why Farage is avoiding me? He has refused to answer my questions for more than 18 months, since I wrote a report for the Observer – headlined When Nigel Farage met Julian Assange – published on 23 April last year. It posed a series of questions to which there are still no clear answers. Questions that, it’s become increasingly clear, cover some of the same territory that Mueller is circling.
Visiting Trump Tower in New York in December 2016 shortly after Donald Trump was elected president of the US. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Farage was caught tripping down the steps of the Ecuadorean embassy by a reporter from BuzzFeed. “Nigel Farage just visited the Ecuadorean embassy in London,” the headline said. And the story said: “Asked by BuzzFeed News if he’d been visiting Julian Assange, the former Ukip leader said he could not remember what he had been doing in the building.”
The visit had come shortly after Farage had visited Donald Trump in Washington. BuzzFeed’s story involved three individuals, Trump, Assange and Farage, who were at the centre of the political storms that had changed the world in 2016 and raised a new set of questions.
Last week, 20 months after Farage’s meeting with Assange, LBC issued a statement about it: “It was an exploratory meeting to discuss the possibility of an interview for the station. This preliminary meeting amounted to nothing, which is why LBC has not previously commented on the context in which the meeting took place as this would not be customary. Whilst Nigel Farage attended the meeting, it was not set up at his instigation.”
It was the timings around the visit that raised questions. Farage left the embassy around noon. BuzzFeed’s story appeared at 1.31pm. At 2.28pm WikiLeaks made an announcement: it would host a live press conference with Assange about his latest leak, “Vault 7”, about mass CIA surveillance. This was during a week when things had started to look serious for Trump. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general, had been caught lying under oath about two meetings with the Russian ambassador and recused himself from the Russia inquiry. The “Vault 7” story , which landed US tech companies in the middle of CIA cyber-espionage, erupted on to the news cycle. It blew Russia off the front pages.
Later, in June 2017, the Guardian reported that Farage was a “person of interest” to the FBI. Last week Farage told the Sunday Times he had not spoken to Mueller’s team: “I’ve done nothing wrong, so why would I worry about it? I mean, it’s very funny, deranged.”
We don’t know if Farage is involved in the Russian intelligence operation that Mueller is so painstakingly unpicking. The investigation is in lockdown. But we know almost certainly that Assange is involved. An FBI indictment unsealed on 13 July said that at the heart of Russia’s operation to subvert the US presidential election is “Organization 1”, widely reported to be WikiLeaks.
It’s Mueller who’s identified this. It’s the FBI indictments that reveal that so many strands of the investigation run through London.
The third time I call Farage at LBC is 1 November 2018, the day Arron Banks is referred to the National Crime Agency because the Electoral Commission had decided it can’t be sure of the source of Banks’s multimillion-pound donation to Farage’s Leave.EU campaign. Or even that it came from Britain.
This time I’m “Claire from Ashford, Kent”. I’ve been thinking about Remembrance Sunday, I tell Farage. “It’s a real time to feel patriotic about our laws and sovereignty,” I say. “It certainly is,” says Farage. “It’s why I’m so concerned about these reports about not knowing where Arron Banks’s money comes from,” I say.
“I’m not discussing spending in the referendum here and now, Claire!” says Farage. The line goes dead.
Who is Nigel Farage? It’s no longer clear. When I Google “Nigel Farage” and “Soros”, I end up watching a video on the far-right conspiracy theory website InfoWars, in which Farage is being interviewed by its founder, Alex Jones. InfoWars Farage is very far from LBC Farage – even though the video is shot inside LBC’s studio, with the LBC logo behind him. This Farage talks about our shared “Judeo-Christian culture”. (Words not often heard, I can’t help thinking, in West Kent golf club.)
At a Trump rally in Mississippi in August 2016. Photograph: Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
“Farage has always followed the money,” a Ukip insider, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells me. “He knows which side his bread is buttered. When the US alt-right and evangelicals started supporting him, he became just like them.” And when I ask Greg Lance-Watkins, another key ex-Ukiper, how he’d describe his ideology he says: “Farage’s ideology is Farage.” In the 90s, Lance-Watkins used to advise Farage before his Question Time appearances. “He’s scared of the trick question. That’s why he won’t speak to you.
“He’s scared of you, because you confuse him. It’s like the old adage, don’t ask a question you don’t know the answer to. He doesn’t know what answer you’re looking for.”
But then neither do I.
It’s not until I sit through An Entertaining Evening With Nigel Farage in Melbourne that I realise he’s not just a seven-times failed UK parliamentary candidate, but a bona fide YouTube star. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without YouTube,” Farage tells his audience of young men. Men who, when I ask, what do you think of Nigel Farage, say: “He’s an absolute legend.” Or: “He’s the dog’s bollocks.”
How did you come across him, I ask, Alex, a programmer who lives locally? “On YouTube. I was watching a Jordan Peterson video. He was recommended to me.”
It’s an eye-opening moment. Jordan Peterson is the Canadian psychologist whose forthright views on women and why feminism is wrong have made him an alt-right YouTube breakout star. YouTube’s algorithm had connected him to Farage.
I watch the speeches. They have titles like “Who the Hell [sic] You Think You Are? Nigel Farage throws egg in Eurocrat faces.” And “Can’t Barrage the Farrage [sic].” They’ve been viewed millions upon millions of times.
Richard Corbett, the leader of the Labour party in the European parliament, explains how it works. “Farage turns up once a month and often what he talks about has absolutely nothing to do with what’s being discussed. You think, what’s going on? And then you realise it’s got nothing to do with the parliament. It’s just for his social media output. Sometimes he doesn’t even hang around for the answers. Two minutes later, he’s back on the Eurostar and gone.” (Statistics for voting and attendances show Farage is ranked 738th out of 751 MEPs for productivity.)
It’s these YouTube set-piece speeches, pumped via the site’s algorithm to the phones and laptops of an entirely new generation, that are Farage’s power base now. And, at the centre of this, is RT (formerly Russia Today), the Kremlin-controlled English-language broadcaster. RT made Farage a YouTube star.
Much of this story, like Arron Banks’s relationship with the Russian ambassador, is hidden and covert. But there’s also much that is out in the open, like Farage’s support of pro-Russian parties in the European parliament, and his association with RT.
Guillaume Chaslot, an ex-YouTuber who’s now an adviser for the Center for Humane Technology, explains RT’s all-conquering role in the YouTube ecosystem. “They’re the biggest information network on YouTube. They’ve 22 channels and they have an absolute masterful understanding of how the algorithm works. They make this incredibly effective clickbait content – disaster videos of the tsunami and so on, and they use it to suck in traffic. And when they have the eyeballs, they use their understanding of the algorithm to send people to political content that supports their foreign policy aims.”
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters
RT recognised Farage’s value way back in 2011. An ex-Ukip insider tells me how RT’s London correspondent “practically lived inside Ukip’s offices. They targeted Gerard Batten first [the current leader of Ukip] and then Farage. They loved it. RT would ask them on every week. They’d talk about anything.” Batten did not respond to the Observer’s questions about his relationship with RT.
Farage is “phenomenally useful for the Russian government,” Ben Nimmo, a leading researcher into Russian online propaganda, tells me. “The thing about RT is that they are completely open about what it is. The editor-in-chief has described it as ‘information warfare’. She has said it’s as much a part of Russia’s arsenal as its ministry of defence.”
All this is out in the open, but the Observer has been shown emails that reveal something new. The person who used to upload Farage’s videos to YouTube was an EU parliament staffer called Kevin Ellul Bonici. According to a Guardian report last year, sources inside the European parliament said Ellul Bonici – who did not respond to the allegations – was “a frequent visitor to the Russian embassy”, after which he would return with “a bootload of propaganda”, and was subject to an internal investigation. The new emails seen by the Observer show that Bonici was uploading content not just to the official Ukip channel but also uploading it “on a private channel” for “the many fringe websites”.
There is no evidence that Farage knew about Ellul Bonici’s alleged relationship with the Russian embassy. When asked about all of the issues in this article, a spokesman for Farage said: “Mr Farage has no desire to speak to you under any circumstances.” The Observer could not reach Ellul Bonici for comment.
The Observer has also learned new details about a meeting between Nigel Farage and Roger Stone. Stone is the extraordinary peroxide-blond 66-year-old dandy, a self-styled “dirty trickster” who’s played a key role in many political scandals since Watergate, and who is central to Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation. On 8 August 2016, Stone told a small crowd that he’d been in touch with Assange. There would be a WikiLeaks “October surprise”, he suggested, about “the Clinton foundation”. In later comments he correctly forecast both the source of the leak and the timing of it. It is this claim to have knowledge of WikiLeaks’ material – before WikiLeaks released it – that is believed to have piqued Mueller’s intense interest.
Mueller is looking at timings of all this. The timeline of who knew about WikiLeaks’ stash of emails from Democrat accounts, and when. Emails that we now know were hacked by the Russian government and that threw the presidential race into chaos just days before the US presidential election.
Stone and his associates have been questioned by Mueller many times. Some of those associates of Stone are Farage’s associates too: InfoWars journalist Jerome Corsi, Steve Bannon and the controversial academic Ted Malloch, once tipped by Farage to be Trump’s ambassador to the EU.
US political strategist and former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who had dinner with Farage in July 2016 at the Republican National Convention. Photograph: John Sciulli/Getty Images
Stone makes his own appearance in the timeline. One of the film-makers behind the brilliant 2017 documentary Get Me Roger Stone, Daniel DiMauro, spoke to me about a meeting that he witnessed between Stone, Alex Jones and Farage during the Republican National Convention, 18-21 July 2016.
“Stone had arranged to have dinner with Alex Jones and Nigel Farage,” he tells me. And they followed him with the camera crew. “But we got to the restaurant and Farage’s people were: ‘No, no, no! You can’t film. You can’t film.’ It was weird. Jones and Stone were totally open to it. But Farage was ‘No way’. He didn’t want any record of it. We didn’t know what to make of it.
Another member of the crew told me: “It was the first time that Alex Jones, Roger Stone and Nigel Farage met face to face. We’d had a wire on Roger everywhere we went but when we turned up to meet Farage and his guy, he [Farage’s aide] was absolutely adamant.
“What was so noticeable was how Alex Jones was so pumped up afterwards about the leaks that were coming. He was saying it openly on his show. And then days later, the DNC leaks dropped [on July 22] and blew apart the Democratic National Convention.”
Less than two weeks later, on August 4, 2016, Roger Stone would also go on Alex Jones’s radio show and trail a new release. There would be “proof” of a scandal involving “Clinton Foundation”, a new “devastating” leak. “I think Julian Assange has that proof,” he said.
In 2017, a spokesman for Farage told the American magazine Mother Jones: “Nigel met Roger Stone in a restaurant in Cleveland during the RNC purely by chance. They subsequently met each other in a hotel in Washington during Trump’s inauguration, again without planning and by chance.”
If you had to pick another extraordinary story about Nigel Farage’s associates, George Cottrell would have to feature. Aged just 22, he was appointed Farage’s aide and Ukip’s chief fundraiser during the Brexit campaign. The two were at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on 22 July, 2016 – the day after the Republican convention in Cleveland at which Farage met Jones and Stone.
Arron Banks – who was also there – describes what happened in his memoir, the Bad Boys of Brexit: “As they were alighting from the domestic flight, five FBI officers cuffed him [Cottrell]. They swooped the minute he set foot on the gangway and if Wiggy [Andy Wigmore] hadn’t been standing right behind him, nobody would have known what had happened. All the other passengers were held back. It was swift and discreet, and he was hauled off without explanation.”
Cottrell was subsequently charged with 21 offences, including money laundering, fraud, blackmail and extortion. He pleaded guilty to one of them and was released after eight months in jail. In an interview with the Telegraph, he explained how he’d learned about “the murky and complicated world of ‘shadow banking’” and had worked for “an offshore private bank” that was “under investigation by the US authorities as a foreign financial institution of primary money-laundering concern”. There is no suggestion in the charges that this was linked to Ukip. Cottrell did not respond to the Observer’s attempts to reach him.
Arron Banks with George Cottrell, the Farage aide arrested and jailed in the US. Photograph: Elliott Franks/i-Images
But the biggest questions are about why Farage’s team sent confidential legal documents about Cottrell’s arrest to the Russian embassy in London. In June, the Observer was shown confidential emails that revealed that Andy Wigmore emailed Cottrell’s legal documents including his federal indictment to his main contact at the embassy, the political secretary, Alexander Udod. (Udod was expelled from Britain in March this year after Sergei Skirpal’s poisoning.)
According to Banks’s emails, on 17 August 2016, Banks and Wigmore were inside the Russian embassy, visiting the ambassador Alexander Yakovenko. This was also the day that Bannon took over as Trump’s campaign manager. On 25 August, Farage, Banks and Wigmore travelled to a Trump rally in Mississippi where Farage joined Trump on stage. The crowd roared. Here was “Mr Brexit,” said Trump. The election, he said, would be “Brexit plus, plus, plus.”
The fourth time I call Nigel Farage’s LBC show is just a week ago. Late on Saturday night, the Observer published its latest revelations about Arron Banks and the Leave.EU campaign. An academic from Essex University, Emma Briant, had obtained emails from a Cambridge Analytica employee which revealed that Banks had sought Steve Bannon’s help in soliciting campaign donations from US funders. We have no idea if Banks went ahead and attempted to fundraise in the US. We know only that it would have been illegal for him if he had. Using foreign money in a British election campaign is against the law.
But we do know the US “alt-right” played a role. On the day that Theresa May triggered article 50, 29 March 2017, a journalist from Breitbart, the rightwing news website cofounded by Steve Bannon, caught Farage with a pint of beer, outside a pub, beaming. He lifts his glass to the camera. “Well done, Bannon. Well done, Breitbart. You helped with this hugely.”
In Britain, Farage is still the man with the pint. The Good Bloke. The kind of man you wouldn’t mind having a drink with. The plucky survivor of both testicular cancer and, on the day of the 2010 general election, a spectacular plane crash. And the press coverage of him – such as an interview with him in last week’s Sunday Times – still trades in Farage cliches. Partly because, as his former colleague Lance-Watkins tells me: “He is that man. He’s hail-fellow-well-met. He likes people and he has that natural bonhomie. He did so well on Question Time because it was a form that was perfectly made for him. But that’s just what’s going on, on the surface. It masks a profound insincerity.”
Farage meeting Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian ambassador, in 2013. Photograph: Russian Embassy
Farage sits at the intersection of the key forces in a new world order. An order that the old formats can’t cope with. What we need to ask is whether a man closely allied to people like Bannon and supportive of Viktor Orbán should be allowed to amplify his propaganda unchallenged on our broadcast media.
It’s the people who have studied the campaign most closely who are asking the most questions. Damian Collins, the Conservative MP leading parliament’s fake news and disinformation inquiry, has said that “the direct links between the political movements behind Brexit and Trump” urgently need investigating.
“We’ve got to recognise the bigger picture here,” he said recently. “This is being coordinated across national borders by very wealthy people in a way we haven’t really seen before.”
The committee has called repeatedly for a Mueller-style inquiry. The government continues to ignore it.
‘What’s your question for Nigel?” the LBC producer asks me when, last Sunday morning, I call in. This time I’m “Sarah from Weybridge”, a true-blue voter disgusted with Theresa May’s Brexit betrayal. “I’ll get you straight on,” says the producer. And he does.
Actually, I tell Farage, it’s Carole Cadwalladr from the Observer. “Oh go away,” he says. “Honestly, you are a ranting lunatic.”
It’s only later that I notice the date: 18 November. Exactly three years from when Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore launched Leave.EU’s campaign. From when they walked in the door of the Russian embassy and discussed gold and diamond deals. I’m not a ranting lunatic. I’m a journalist. Who’s been trying to ask questions for nearly two years.
Nigel Farage declined to answer any questions put to him about subjects raised in this article.
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
you may recall numerous of us who had been involved in opposition to Britain’s membership of the Franco German EU scam consistently were outspoken against Leave.EU, Arron Banks Ukip or Farage having any leading role in the campaign to Leave_the_EU.
We consistently spoke out that Banks, Farage & Ukip would in the long run do more harm than good to the campaign and clearly could not be trusted – time and again Nigel Farage had lied, cheated, bullied and swindled for his own gain, his sociopath personna was clear to see.
Banks’ only real claim to fame seemed to be that he laid claim to wealth and achievements and even that seemed to be leveraged! Leveraged largely on his own claims which exploited the gullible and the greedy.
It was clear from particularly Farage’s self serving antics and lies that their entire campaign was little to do with BreXit and that BreXit was nothing more than a vehicle for their egos, greep and self adulation and in Farage’s case his obsession with self gratification with numerous wives and mistresses he determined should be funded by the tax payers via the EU.
You will have noted Nigel Farage did absolutely nothing to oppose the imposition of a New EU Constitution on these United Kingdoms and stood by in aquescence as The EEC arbitrarily changed its name, further revealing its true intent, to The EU.
Many will have noted he opposed any individual in Ukip seeking actively to oppose the EU in a manner which might damage his income stream – even latching onto Declan Ganley in efforts to raise his income!
The one clear action to bring about democratisation of Britain’s position by legitimate and effective means Nigel Farage did all he could to oppose – he outright condemned Nikki Sinclaire’s efforts to Petition Parliament to hold a full House of Commons debate on an IN/OUT Referendum.
Farage went so far as not only engineer Sinclaire out of her position as a Ukip MEP and at the time one of Uki8p’s largest donors, he even colluded in the criminal activities of John Ison to collude with seemingly corrupt Police and a seemingly equally corrupt CPS to abuse the legal system to ‘frame’ Sinclaire & destroy her efforts to oppose Britain’s continued membership of the EU.
Fortunately it became clear Sinclaire had greater perspicacity and determination and she recruited a team which with her financial support obtained 225,000 validated signatures to her petition which when it was delivered the Government was legally bound to debate.
In an effort to stem the revolt in his PartyDavid Cameron, after his first major defeat/rebellion in Government, inflicted as a result of Nikki Sinclaire’s Petition and the resultant debate – He found himself in the position where he had to promise an Unconditional IN/OUT Referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in the Tory manifesto.
The situation was now irrevocably heading for a vote by the British electorate a vote which was won in the largest vote in British history, won by 52% of the vote for BreXit and 48% for Remain.
Clearly the bumps in the road will be many and we are faced with challenges in reversing 50+ years of political and economic folly but the establishment of democracy and liberty for any Country is inevitably a bumpy road with numerous setbacks.
Despite the sacrifice of millions of lives in Britain’s past to establish one of the best and fairest, tollerant and just democracies oever on this planet I would contend one of the greatest setbacks was in believing the lies and distortions of Edward Heath’s era in his deliberate lies to dupe the British electorate into believing that membership of the EU, then known as The Common Market was other than a loss of integrity, self determination, justice and democracy. Lies Heath admitted to deliberately making with the4 memorable admission in an interview by David Frost, where he stated he had ‘deliberately lied as he believed the British electorate would not have voted to ratify our membership, if they had known the truth’.
Truth, which may I point out, was made abundantly clear by that most errudite and informed of politicians Enoch Powell, in his speech in the House of Commons on 25-Feb-1970 CLICK HERE.
You will note neither Farage, Banks, Wigmore or any other notable member of Ukip played any part in obtaining our Referendum – and I reitterate many of us cautioned widely against Farage or Ukip and their oppo Banks having anything to do with fronting BreXit as it would prove an error.
Sadly how right we were!
Ministers call for probe into Brexit tycoon Arron Banks’ “undisclosed” meetings with Russian ambassador
Leave.EU founder has slammed allegations against him but ministers are backing call for an investigation into his “boozy lunches” with Alexander Yakovenko
Ministers have backed calls for a probe into lunches Arron Banks enjoyed with a Russian ambassador (Image: PA)
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Ministers have backed calls for a probe into a claim millionaire Brexit campaigner Arron Banks had “undisclosed” meetings with Russia’s ambassador to Britain.
Cabinet Office minister David Lidington said authorities should get any evidence.
Leave.EU founder Mr Banks dismissed the allegation as “garbage”.
He said he and ambassador Alexander Yakovenko merely had a “cup of tea”, and two “boozy lunches”.
Mr Banks added he disclosed details of his contacts with the Russians to US officials and got no Russian money or backing for the Brexit campaign.
Speaking at the G7 summit in Quebec, Theresa May said: “I am sure that if there are any allegations that need investigation the proper authorities will do that.”
Emails seen by The Sunday Times showed Mr Banks met Mr Yakovenko on three occasions – having previously only acknowledged one encounter in 2015 – and made a visit to Moscow in February 2016 in the midst of the referendum campaign.
Mr Banks and Mr Wigmore also had lunch with the ambassador in November 2016 – just three days after they and Nigel Farage had met Donald Trump in New York following his victory in the US presidential election, it reported.
Alexander Yakovenko met with Banks on more than one occasion (Image: PA)
They were said to have been introduced to Mr Yakovenko by Alexander Udod, one of 23 suspected Russian intelligence officers subsequently ejected from the UK after the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.
The ambassador was said to have proposed a business deal that would have involved them in the consolidation into one company of six Russian goldmines.
But Mr Wigmore told the paper: “We never offered any information to him (Mr Yakovenko) or any Russian any details of our (Brexit) campaign.”
Meanwhile Mr Banks, when asked if he ever received Russian cash or assistance for Brexit, laughed: “No, of course not.
Arron’s Leave.EU and Farage’s Brexit campaign worked hand-in-hand before the referendum (Image: PA)
“You know if I have, I’m still waiting for the cheque. This is just a complete absolute garbage – it is like the Salem witch hunt.
“They just keep on screaming, ‘Witch! Witch!’”
He added: “The big picture is that they are in the full Remain swing – they are trying to discredit everyone involved in Brexit and it just continues apace.”
He said given he also “briefed the State Department in Washington … if we are Russian spies we must be American spies too”.
Author Isabel Oakeshott, who ghostwrote a book with Mr Banks said he and Mr Wigmore “were shamelessly used by the Russians”.
She added: “Perhaps, the Englishmen did not mind. Banks and Wigmore genuinely sympathised – and continue to sympathise – with some of Putin’s political views.”
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
New @guardian story up on what’s happening in Britain…but this has big implications for Trump-Russia investigation too. This was @Nigel_Farage‘s campaign. Friend of Bannon. Ally of Trump. Whose funder we now learn had covert links to Russia..
This is the crux of it. Ambassador Yakovenko oversaw the presentation of a multi-billion $ gold deal. And we know that 12 days after referendum, the deal took place. Sound familiar? Same tactics as the Rosneft deal…with Carter Page played here by @Arron_banks
This story as as significant to Trump-Russia as it is to Brexit. And key figure is @Amb_Yakovenko – the Russian ambassador to London who’s named in Mueller indictment of George Papodopoulos. He’s the one who issued invites. He’s the one who oversaw the offer of a $$$ gold deal…
Dear America, you need to get to grips with story dominating UK press. Today, we reveal how Russian ambassador groomed the funders of Brexit campaign with offer of sweetheart deal. That’s the Brexit campaign led by Bannon friend & Trump ally @Nigel_Farage
“At first she accused The Observer of hacking her archive and stealing the email… but by late afternoon on Saturday she had entered into a discussion about cooperating with The Guardian/The Observer if they agreed to hold the story until Monday.”
I did. I would LOVE for MEPs to question @nigel_farage. Because he won’t answer mine. @Arron_banks visiting @RussianEmbassy is one small part of the story. The bigger play is Britain’s central role in the Trump-Russia nexus. And, how, slap bang, in the middle of it all..is Farage
Carole Cadwalladr added,
David Carroll
🦅Verified account@profcarroll
I’ll add that @carolecadwalla implored MEPs in @EUparliament to scrutinize one of their own now that MPs are “calling the cops” on the Bad Boys of Brexit as Nigel Farage’s LeaveEU campaign imbroglio intensifies. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jun/10/arron-banks-mps-call-for-police-investigate-russia-links …
Yoo-hoo, @Arron_banks! Have you had time to check your ‘diary and office computer’ yet? You’ve now had 53 hours to get back to us…
Carole Cadwalladr added,
Peter JukesVerified account@peterjukes
Replying to @Arron_banks@carolecadwalla
And while you’re here Arron, can you answer this about the ‘Gold Play’? You went to Russia to talk to the stake holding bank in Feb 16. The bank deal went ahead by July. Did you have a stake? Is it through a certain holding company in Cyprus?
…by which I mean, I could really have used some learned advice on how to handle a problem like @Arron_banks. Still, good news is that he lied to us & shown bad faith so @AnthonyJulius6 at @Mishcon_de_Reya is going to find it much harder to write those defamation letters now..
My god. They will have to teach this one at journalism schools in years to come. What a toxic, twisted mess. So, everything given to @thesundaytimes came directly from @Arron_banks?!? What. The. Actual. Fuck?
PLOT TWIST! I now hear that it was @Arron_banks who gave @sundaytimes the story!!! I emailed him at 11.58am on Friday carefully detailing all the allegations, per good journalistic practice. He claimed he hadn’t seen the email & needed more time. Meanwhile…
not ‘Times investigation’. Oakeshott went to S Times with her email stash when foundout (b/c invitations sent to key figures to respond to allegations – standard legal practice) that @carolecadwalla@peterjukes were due to report emails story in Observer (seen via another source)
Sarah Donaldson Retweeted Brexitshambles #FBPE #Unsafe
Great clips thread if you are interested in @CamAnalytica’s Alexander Nix appearance @CommonsCMS last week but haven’t time to watch the full three and a half hours…
Sarah Donaldson added,
Brexitshambles #FBPE #Unsafe@brexit_sham
VIDEO THREAD – This week former CEO of Cambridge Analytica paid his second visit to the DCMS committee for a marathon session during which all his nervous tics and tells were on display – a masterclass for any body…
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All of the above quote is a download from Carole Cadwalladr’s TWITTER Feed 0210hrs Monday 11-Jun-2018. I have altered the colour of comments regarding Nigel Farage to RED.
This I assure you is just the tip of the iceberg, which I have refrained from giving details of, nor have I shown where much of the money seems to have gone and apparent properties purchased for 2 main reasons:
Firstly I have waited for the media with its backup of lawyers to indemnify my publication of facts.
Secondly as I did not wish to fall fould of the laws pertaining to reportage of ongoing Court Cases as I felt there was a risk of prejudicing a Court case.
I understand Carole Cadwalladr has witheld publication of the eMails etc for many months on similar grounds, seemingly publishing the material as Isabel Oakeshott was publishing to seemingly seek to cover her apparent collusion with Banks, Farage & Wigmore and doubtless others in betrayal of Britain and the principles of democracy aided indirectly and possibly directly with the Russian authorities and intelligence services.
There is clearly a great deal more to come – however much of the time the Meeja is obsessed with gossip, Slebs and the simple story with peurile soap opera style pandering to the lowest public interest in a rush to the gutter.
Keep checking back for more revalations and archived material on my various sites see:
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
As Amber Rudd desperately tries to present a kinder, gentler public face after the Windrush scandal, Mandrake can reveal the home secretary has been accepting donations from a former UKIP supporter. The latest register of members’ interests shows she has been in receipt of £10,000 from Christopher Mills, once a generous donor to UKIP, where he served as business spokesman and a treasurer. He previously gifted £5,000 to Rudd via his company, Growth Financial Services.
Mills, who makes the Sunday Times Rich List with a fortune estimated at £317 million, was a Tory backer before becoming involved with Nigel Farage’s outfit. Perhaps Rudd would do well to ponder the advice she received from the great David Lammy in his excoriating attack on her in the Commons: “If you lay down with dogs, you get fleas.”
Nudes values
Mandrake believes that it is time Nigel Farage granted an interview to The New European. Alas, no amount of teasing on Twitter over the past week could tempt Farage to talk to a journalist who isn’t employed by one of his personal friends, such as Sir David Barclay – the co-owner of the Telegraph – or Rupert Murdoch, who owns The Sun.
So I texted the press contact that came up for Farage on his MEP website to see if we could at least discuss the idea. I received an unnerving reply that put me off my lunch. Before I tell you what it was, I must first explain the contact on his website is given as Annabelle Fuller. She was once Farage’s press officer and mistress, but has long since chosen to vacate both positions. Annabelle has explained to me that the number I had texted now belongs to a cheeky 15-year-old living in the Midlands. “I’ve repeatedly told Nigel to take that number and my email off his website,” she adds, wearily. Methinks the reply I received may well galvanise her former lover into action.
“Nigel can’t talk to you now,” the text read. Mandrake Locates Farage: “He is tied up on the bed in pink fluffy handcuffs.” …
It is also worthy of note as Tim Walker started his article for this pro EU ‘New EUropean’ comic with an article on Boris Johnson – do be minded of a Tweet of mine today:
Interesting when you appreciate olygarchs are not created in #Russia without the approval of their modern day #Tsars that it seems #Aleksander_Temerko, probably backed by #Putin & #FSB would seem to be a financial backer of #Boris_Johnson of OUR #FO!
In view of #Russia‘s apparent #FSB sponsored contributions in #Britain‘s electoral process is it not time we CEASED providing candidates & MPs with full unredacted #electoral_rolls as we currently do, thus providing security material to #Russian sponsored candidates!
Regards,
Greg_L-W.
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Posted by: Greg Lance-Watkins
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I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
Following his appointment to acting leadership of the motley convocation of saloon bar propper-uppers at UKIP, new Oberscheissenführer Adolf von Batten has inspected the party’s coffers, and found that, after all the Dark Money and diverted EU expenses had been cut off, the cupboard was bare. And with a six-figure legal bill following the involvement in MEP Jane Collins’ libel loss, desperate measures were in order.
I em not a racialist but, und zis is a big but …
So von Batten, an unrepentant Islamophobe who regards Islam as a “death cult” – a remark that got him suspended from Twitter – has decided to reach out to like minded people and effectively turn the Kippers into a sort of BNP Mark 2.
We can figure that out from Kipper Central’s announcement: “Thousands of veterans are set to join the tide of those who have already signed up to the party under Gerard Batten’s leadership following a unanimous vote at Monday’s meeting to officially support the Veterans Against Terrorism Group … The motion, which was proposed by Gerard Batten at a UKIP NEC meeting where the Veterans Against Terrorism leaders were present was passed unanimously”. Veterans Against Terrorism is another far-right group.
That was clear from the accompanying photo which shows the logo of the Football Lads’ Alliance, “lads” being code for current and former hooligans. That the FLA was also on board was let slip by a VAT spokesman telling “Brexit is being betrayed, UKIP must once again rise to the challenge and fight for the real people, the forgotten people of this great nation. We the working class people, veterans, football lads and all other patriots must mobilize en mass and join UKIP, together we are stronger!” Tomorrow belongs to them.
Arron Banks’ propaganda site Westmonster has also told “Interim UKIP Leader Gerard Batten has announced a recruitment drive aimed at securing new members, including from street protest group the Football Lads Alliance – who are hosting Anne Marie-Waters at their next event. The leadership of the FLA have endorsed UKIP, according to Batten”.
She might be welcomed back …
And while enthusing “The Football Lads Alliance have held some huge counter-extremism demos”, even the UKIP faithful concede “Though with anti-Islam Anne Marie Waters speaking at the FLA’s next event, there is likely to be some controversy over the move”.
… and two of this group might be joining her …
But with the FLA, UKIP should know the score. As Hope not Hate has pointed out, “Another splinter from the FLA is the Anti-Terror Alliance (ATA) … HOPE not hate exposed one of the leaders of ATA to be the convicted terrorist Frank Portinari, the British Commander of the banned terrorist organisation Ulster Defence Association (UDA)”.
… after all, look who’s already there
The direction of UKIP under the less than benign leadership of Adolf von Batten is clear: to fill the coffers, the Kippers will get into bed with any and every far-right group out there. It can only be a matter of time before Britain First and the White Pendragons are welcomed. After all, Bill “Viagra Golliwog” Etheridge, one of Batten’s pals, has already endorsed the latter group, which tried to stage a lynching of London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
UKIP is so desperate, it is now prepared to ditch the veneer of mainstream respectability and become an explicitly racist party. Like it effectively has been for years.
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
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Ukip-vs-EUkip 