TruePublica

Since the Conservative party came to power in 2010, they have been mired in non-stop scandals including accusations of corruption and abuse of office, being funded by dark money donations and recent very serious accusations of accepting campaign cash from individuals closely associated with a hostile government to influence Brexit. There are scandals to come – one of them will be the big Brexit Cover-up

In 2011, Defence Secretary Liam Fox put national security behind his own personal interests and was quite rightly dismissed in disgrace for it. Cash-for-access came the following year. This was about the clandestine receipt of money for delivering meetings with senior office-holders. Then there was the Westminister sexual misconduct scandal. That involved people from both sides of the house but notable Tories included the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, Sec of State for Work and Pensions – Stephen Crabb, Mark Garnier, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, and Damian Green, First Secretary of State and Minister for the Cabinet Office to name a few. Then another cash-for-access scandal came along with American donors wanting to influence Brexit.

Earlier this year, Muslim leaders accused the Conservative Party of “trying to cover up” details of its decisions to suspend Tory members accused of Islamophobia. The Muslim Council of Britain made the furious allegation after the party took no action against a string of members following complaints. Tory chiefs ended up saying that an unspecified number of people who were identified as Conservative Party members and made offensive comments were suspended pending further investigation. And then it was covered up.

In the book – Brexit – A Corporate Coup D’Etat there were a number of scandals and political cover-ups surrounding the biggest political crisis Britain has faced since WW2.

Take for instance dark money donations in Northern Ireland being covered up with legislation. What this really meant was that donor details before 2017 remained a state secret. This is because the new law will only cover funding received on or after July 2017. All donations and loans received before the 2017 cut-off will be kept confidential. There was no reason to legislate for this. However, hundreds of thousands of pounds in dark money donations funnelled its way through the DUP – some of which ended up in another political donor scandal in Scotland and both were connected to influencing the outcome of Brexit.

Before that, there was the economic impact report regarding the effects of Brexit on the economy that was leaked and then covered up in January 2018. The government response was to update the Official Secrets Act that then criminalised certain types of leaks by whistleblowers. The implication is that a whistleblower could end up in prison for 14 years. The message from the government was clear – leaking inconvenient truths meant being treated as a hostile foreign state spy – the equivalent of an act of international espionage.

Then the government silenced industry bosses over Brexit. But that was also leaked: “The government has forced “many dozens” of non-disclosure agreements (NDA’s) into the consultation process with logistics companies which operate at Britain’s borders. The agreements mean that the firms cannot publicly comment on information shared with the government about the impact of different Brexit scenarios on the movement of goods coming in and out of the country.”

Tory MP John Redwood was the main architect of another Brexit cover-up, but that got leaked, then reported in The Telegraph and it sounded like a public state warning. Redwood ordered the corporate world in Britain to ‘toe-the-line’ or face the consequences of a post-Brexit Tory wrath that included being forcibly removed from their corporate positions if they failed to do so. Redwood is quoted as saying “companies who publicly back staying in EU will pay a ‘very dear economic and financial price”, with executives potentially losing their jobs.” Redwood went on to say: “This is absolutely crucial that these people get this. That it will be deeply disruptive to their businesses, and maybe even to their own tenure of their jobs if a chief executive with a handful of shares thinks he can put the voice of a multi-national corporation behind a highly intense political argument in one country in which they operate.”

VoxPolitical wrote: “How kind of John Redwood to give us all a glimpse of the kind of despotism Tories want to inflict on us all – by trying to inflict it on business bosses first.”

Redwood is also an ardent supporter of a highly influential ‘think tank’ that is certainly part of the Brexit propaganda machine – called the Legatum Institute. It turned out to be a fountainhead of false predictions, delusional thinking and empty promises. Its funding came from a shady Dubai-based private investment group backed by a New Zealander who, in the words of a Times article, allegedly made his money by “exploiting trading opportunities created by extreme political disruption”.

Operation Yellowhammer was another cover-up that went wrong. Yellowhammer was the codename used by the UK Treasury for cross-government civil contingency planning for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. It got leaked just after Boris Johnson became PM. What the public was not aware of was that this document had been leaked a year earlier, hidden behind a paywall and the right-wing press ignored its inconvenient truth.  “Britain would be hit with shortages of medicine, fuel and food within a fortnight if the UK tries to leave the European Union without a deal, according to a Doomsday Brexit scenario drawn up by senior civil servants for David Davis.”

Yes, the ‘Doomsday Scenario’ said the same thing as Yellowhammer and Brexit – A Corporate Coup D’Etat published its most salient contents including – confirmation that “the port of Dover will collapse if Britain crashes out of the EU, leading to critical shortages of supplies. This was the middle of three scenarios put forward by senior advisors.” In Yellowhammer, the same thing was said – but conveniently reclassified as the worst-case scenario and played down by the government. The Doomsday scenario story can be read