In the chaos of Brexit, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has revealed his alliance with Breitbart editor and Cambridge Analytica founder Steve Bannon. But, the FBI is coming and Johnson is playing with fire…
During the parliamentary debate on the day of the ‘meaningful vote’ over Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal, Boris Johnson warned that failure to withdraw from the EU would lead people to conclude “there is a plot by the deep state to frustrate Brexit”.
‘Deep State’ is not a natural political reference for politicians in the UK, but it was clearly not a casual one for the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. He had used almost the same words the day before during an LBC interview about the backlash if a full Brexit wasn’t delivered:
This invocation of the ‘deep state’ conspiracy is telling. The phrase is an American import often used to defend US President Donald Trump against mounting evidence of Russian collusion, the subject of a
Though it has already led to dozens of indictments and the jailing of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, to Trump defenders, the Mueller investigation is the most obvious example of a ‘deep state’ conspiracy led by the liberal elite. The line is regularly deployed by ‘Alt Right’ channels like Alex Jones’ Infowars and was even repeated by President Trump himself who railed against the “Deep State Justice Department”.
But, how did this Trumpian phrase make its way across the Atlantic into the rhetoric of the would-be Tory leader and successor to Theresa May?
Bannon’s Problems with the Deep State
There’s little doubt Boris Johnson was inspired in his deep state rhetoric by Steve Bannon, the campaign manager of Donald Trump who succeeded the now imprisoned Paul Manafort.
The depth of Johnson’s friendship with Bannon has been underestimated. They reportedly first met when Bannon was in the White House in early 2017 and have been in contact ever since.
Though Bannon has been close to Nigel Farage for many years – and more recently has praised far-right activist Stephen Yaxley Lennon (AKA ‘Tommy Robinson’) – this summer he said that Johnson “would be a great prime minister” and should challenge Theresa May.
So, it’s Bannon who would have inspired Johnson to deploy the conspiracy theory. Though he prefers calling it the ‘administrative state’, Bannon’s Breitbart websites pushed it constantly when he was in charge. The Brexit version was deployed only a few days before Johnson’s parliamentary intervention by Breitbart London regular James Delingpole.
But, so what? What if Johnson borrows from the populist playbook of Trump’s campaign strategist?
The problem for Boris Johnson is that Steve Bannon is a key subject of the FBI investigation into interference by another more hostile deep state – that of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. And the former Foreign Secretary knows all about it.
Bannon and Cambridge Analytica
As a famous populi