Why the BBC is Killing the Dark Money Story

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By Jason Michael

BRITAIN’S STATE BROADCASTER, the BBC, has swung into full propaganda mode by meeting the Brexit “dark money” story – quite literally the biggest political story in the world – with an impregnable wall of silence and near comic attempts at misdirection. In Scotland we have gotten used to the aggressive unionist agenda of the BBC and its unwillingness to put anything before the Scottish public that might put the union or the Westminster government in a negative light. When the dark money story was missing from the BBC Scotland newsfeed yesterday we could be forgiven for thinking that this monumental omission was part of this ongoing anti-Scottish independence programme, but no – the story was completely absent from the BBC in every part of the United Kingdom. We can only conclude that the BBC is involved.

Thanks to the outstanding work of Carole Cadwalladr at The Observer, a handful of other journalists on both sides of the Atlantic, and the FBI’s Mueller investigation a terrifying picture is emerging of Russian interference in European, British, and US politics. Richard Cook, a member of the ultra-secretive Constitutional Research Council in Scotland – a conservative lobby group of sorts – and a former vice-chair of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, travelled to Ukraine posing as a businessman. By way of bogus companies and fictitious contracts he received a substantial amount of money from middlemen linked to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin.

It looks likely that this money was used in the UK and in the US to assist the Leave campaign in the EU referendum and Donald Trump’s presidential election. There is even evidence suggesting large amounts of this Moscow war chest were used in similar ways in France, Germany, Italy, and other EU member states’ elections. If this can be proven, and Russia is found to have been engaged in a new kind of subversive warfare against the US and the EU, then we are looking down the barrel of the biggest political scandal in living memory. There is currently no story anywhere on Earth as big as the Brexit dark money story, so why is it being ignored by the BBC?

In fairness, the story was covered on BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight programme, but this version of the scandal was limited to the involvement of the province’s Democratic Unionist Party and its links to the CRC in Scotland and Richard Cook. Yet, in spite of the fact many more people are involved across the whole of the British political establishment, nothing was said in this report of the involvement of senior Conservatives David Cameron and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the PR company Aggregate IQ that appears to be a proxy for Cambridge Analytica, and the obvious and illegal common political purpose of people like Steve Bannon, Arron Banks, Nigel Farage, and Alexander Yakovenko – the Russian Ambassador to the UK. In fact, the only coverage the BBC has given this story has served only to further muddy the waters.

It’s not possible to answer why the BBC is stonewalling this story here. We lack the resources of The Observer, The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, but this can’t stop us commenting on what is known in relation to this story and the BBC. Not only is the BBC notoriously aligned to the Conservative Party in England, there is a well-documented revolving door between the state broadcaster and the Tory Party – with senior members of the party being appointed to political positions in the institution and key figures within the BBC being recruited for press positions and as “spin doctors” by the Conservative government.

The BBC is – and has been for decades – the media office of the British Conservative political establishment. Given that this dark money story deeply implicates many former and current figures in that establishment, it stands to reason the BBC will produce as much fog as it possibly can to cover the involvement of the government and people connected to the government. What we are again looking at is an example of one hand washing the other.

Theresa May’s government is holding on to power by the skin of its teeth, and with so many on the government benches around her reeking of vodka she – and her press people – know this story can’t be allowed to break. Even without proof the evidence is damning, and more than powerful enough to send her approval ratings south – something she cannot afford. Why else, we have to ask, were ten DUP seats worth a jaw dropping £1.5 billion inducement? Everyone involved in the scam has to be kept sweet, and, with the Irish border question promising to be the real test of Brexit, the DUP – probably the least reliable link in the chain – has to be kept happy.

If the details – any of the details – of the Brexit dark money story are proven, the outlook for the British government is dire – if not terminal. It will prove beyond doubt what an increasing number have come to suspect; that Brexit was never about returning sovereignty to the UK, but that senior members of the Conservative Party – including members of the government – have collaborated with a foreign power – Russia – to destabilise the United States and the European Union and assisted in a project of recalibrating the international geopolitical balance of power in Russia’s favour.

The ramifications of such a finding are terrifying. It means that our own elected leaders have used the mechanisms of our own media and democracy against us, ultimately subverting our own interests to serve the purposes of a Kremlin which clearly has a few axes to grind. There is no other term for this than treason, and the figure of judgement is pointing squarely at those in the White House and the British government. In light of this it makes perfect sense – and acts almost as an admission of guilt – that Donald Trump’s media friends and the BBC here in the UK are doing everything they can to kill the story and otherwise misdirect the public. As the story develops it will be interesting to see what moves Mr Trump makes with regard to the Mueller investigation.

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