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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 populist trying to build a right-wing nationalist global ‘movement’, Stephen Bannon is often invited on British TV or newspaper events as a controversial but important voice.
However, Bannon’s role as vice president and co-founder of the now defunct Cambridge Analytica is rarely scrutinised, although it was that company’s role in Trump’s election which is a key focus of Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe into Russian influence operations.
Having taken over the Breitbart websites in 2012 with the backing of billionaire hedge fund owner Robert Mercer, Bannon turned his attention to the UK a year later.
In late 2013, just as he was recruiting Raheem Kassam, Milo Yiannopoulos and James Delingpole to a new site Breitbart London, Bannon was setting up Cambridge Analytica with the SCL Group, a
Bannon likes to describe his polemical right-wing publishing ventures as his ‘weapons’ and there is mounting evidence Cambridge Analytica’s microtargeting and psychometrics were weaponised in alliance with his news site.
Cambridge Analytica was an exclusive reseller of Breitbart data, and the principle of ‘information operations’ – as revealed by former head of research Chris Wylie – was not to bombard targets with ads or obvious propaganda, but change the reality around potential voters with misinformation and ‘fake news’.
Since it was closed down last year, Cambridge Analytica has pleaded guilty to data crimes and remains the subject of the biggest investigation ever by the UK’s Information Commissioner after it was revealed that it used hacked data from more than 70 million Facebook users.
Before it became the main electioneering arm of Trump’s presidential campaign, Cambridge Analytica claimed it played a crucial role in Brexit. Its Canadian offshoot, AIQ, was the main beneficiary of the spending by the official Vote Leave campaign. Boris Johnson was the most high profile member of Vote Leave.
Cambridge Analytica executive Brittany Kaiser was present at the launch of Nigel Farage’s alternative Leave.EU campaign and, after the Brexit vote and Trump’s victory, both the company and campaign boasted of working together, and that Brexit was a ‘petri dish’ for Trump.
Bannon’s role in all this cannot be ignored. It was central. This was acknowledged by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage on the Breitbart website after the Brexit vote, as he raised a pint of beer and said.
Though Farage’s Leave.EU backer Arron Banks subsequently denied ever having worked with Cambridge Analytica, an invoice obtained via Byline by the Observer last year revealed services worth over £40,000 performed by the electioneering company for UKIP.
But, the redacted address for the payment was not Cambridge Analytica’s London base, but… Steve Bannon’s LA-based company Glittering Steel.
Cambridge Analytica and Putin’s Hybrid Warfare
While Bannon’s role in Brexit has been largely concealed, Johnson will not be able to avoid the likely progress of Robert Mueller’s investigation in the company’s possible collusion with Putin’s intelligence services.
There are at least seven threads which link Bannon’s information operations to Russian cyberwarfare during the Trump election
- The ICO has evidence that Russian servers accessed Cambridge Analytica’s extensive targeting data
- Cybersecurity expert Chris Vickery has found many more Russian links in Cambridge Analytica data.
- Cambridge Analytica worked on electioneering data with the Putin controlled petroleum company Lukoil.
- The Cambridge academic who accessed the psychometric data went on to work at St Petersburg University, studying the ‘dark triads’ of internet trolling.
- Cambridge Analytica’s CEO offered to help Julian Assange distribute the Democ