Former British Foreign Secretary and ex-London Mayor, Boris Johnson (BoJo), has a reputation for being a clown. In many ways, he is Britain’s Donald Trump: a member of the establishment who acts like and believes that he is not a member of the establishment; a racist who inflates his ego by putting down others; a “free market” fanatic; and an amusing buffoon. Like Trump, BoJo’s personal life has raised eyebrows in intelligence circles, who fear that he may be a blackmail risk. Factions of the US and British intelligence services have conspired against Trump (not because they’re good people who care about Trump’s human rights record, but) because they fear Trump’s alleged sympathies with their enemy, Russia.
So, is there a plot to stop BoJo from becoming Britain’s next PM? If so, and assuming it works, it will be bad news for the Left in Britain because a BoJo-led government will be so divisive and ridiculous that it will boost the Left’s chances of success. This is especially important in a rabidly anti-Left, agenda-setting media environment. Stopping BoJo from becoming PM could also be MI6’s indirect way of stopping Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn from becoming PM.
BoJo promotes lowering whiskey tariffs—in a Sikh temple.
TROUBLE WITH THE TORIES
In Britain, the ruling Tory party is in trouble. The party stumbled along with Theresa May as Prime Minister, despite her string of policy and public relations disasters, simply because public opinion polls showed that May’s possible replacements (excluding BoJo) were even more despised by the general public than May herself. But because British law does not require a general election (i.e., a Tory electoral wipeout) until 2022, the Tory strategy was to simply hold tight and even protect May from internal, factional efforts to bring her down. Record levels of unpopularity, parliamentary defeats, and electoral failures were less problematic for the Tories than replacing May with someone who would lose a general election to the rival Labour party’s Jeremy Corbyn.
But three events changed the dynamic: 1) May’s mishandling of the European Parliamentary elections appears to have been a step too far for the Tory elite (represented by the 1922 Committee). But this version of events doesn’t make sense because the chair of the 1922 Committee told May to set her resignation date prior to the European elections. 2) It is possible that the US intelligence services leaned on Britain’s intelligence services, after it was discovered that May would be awarding contracts to China’s telecoms giant Huawei, and in doing so seriously jeopardise Britain’s role in the Five Eyes spying alliance with the US (and Australia, Canada, and New Zealand). 3) The Brexit Party stole members, voters and prospective voters from the Tory party, forcing them further to the right to win back votes.
During May’s repeated failures to convince and bribe her Members of Parliament to vote for her Brexit “deal,” members of the UK Independence Party infiltrated the Tory grassroots in order to bump the party further to the hard-Brexit right. In addition, traditional Tory members, with nothing better to do in their lives, turned Brexit into a religion. A recent survey suggested that grassroots Tory members (who, for years, have complained about the lack of democracy within their party) would rather see the breakup of both their party and the Union (i.e., the secession of the Remain-voting Scotland and Northern Ireland from the UK) than Remain in the EU. The survey says that the only thing they’d despise more than Remaining in the EU is a Jeremy Corbyn government. Fearing a grassroots insurgency from within the party and a massive haemorrhage to the Brexit Party, enough Tory Members of Parliament are reluctantly tolerating the entry of BoJo into the race to succeed May.
BoJo starts reciting Kipling’s colonial poem, “The Road to Mandalay”—in the Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar.
THE TROUBLES WITH BORIS
For the Tories, the choice is between electoral obliteration or accepting BoJo’s bômolocracy. But enough Tories have said that they will defect to other parties or quit the party altogether, rather than serve in a BoJo-led government. So, what’s so bad with BoJo and why does MI6 care about the internal workings of the Tory party?
May’s resignation as leader of the Tory party (but crucially not as PM, yet,) forced the Tories to do what they had long dreaded: call a leadership contest. The final two contenders are whittled down by the Tory MPs in a series of ballots. Because there doesn’t need to be a general election until 2022, the winner and thus Prime Minister is chosen by the party’s 160,000 grassroots members; such is British “democracy.”
It was inevitable that BoJo would run and be highly successful. But why would Britain’s external intelligence agency, MI6, fear a PM BoJo? After all, pater Stanley Johnson was a failed(?) MI6 recruit. MI6’s likely anti-BoJo reasons are as follows: 1) BoJo outed the journalist Dominic Lawson as an MI6 asset “for a laugh.” Later, he confirmed and then denied that the imprisoned British-Iranian, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, was training journalists in Iran; a move that lengthened her prison sentence (jeopardises assets and officers). 2) He revealed that the Ministry of Defence’s Porton Down biochemical laboratory is in possession of Novichok, the nerve agent developed by the Soviets, and that they had identified Russia as the culprit (reveals sensitive national secrets). 3) He took an 18 minute-long prank call from a comedian pretending to be the president of Armenia (easily duped). 4) He requires minders to keep in check his temper, incompetence and poor capacity for factual recall (high-maintenance, high-risk). 5) He has a colourful personal life (risk of blackmail by enemy states). 6) His erratic and unpredictable behaviour alienates allies (requires damage-limitation).
The latter charge is also levelled against Donald Trump by the “liberal” (read: right-wing) mainstream, corporate media, who are (quite rightly) offended by Trump’s illiberalism (read: far-rightism).
BoJo takes an 18-minute-long prank call on a diplomatic line.
THE HAND OF MI6?
There is no proof that MI6 is working to undermine Boris Johnson. However, there are some interesting pieces of circumstantial evidence. David Kogan, an author and former Labour Party advisor, told the Brookings Institution:
“I have an award from the [Foreign and Commonwealth Office, FCO]. I was a non-executive director of a subcommittee of the FCO for 10 years, and I know a substantial number of diplomats. Let me tell you the biggest cheer I have heard from those diplomats in the last 10 years, and that was the day Boris Johnson resigned as Foreign Secretary. It isn’t just Jeremy Corbyn about whom the foreign policy and security policy establishment has an opinion. They certainly have an opinion about Boris Johnson.”
One Tory vying with BoJo for May’s job was Rory Stewart. It is likely that Stewart is an MI6 agent; so much so, that the newspaper for which BoJo writes, The Telegraph, published an article speculating on Stewart’s background. Stewart’s father (like BoJo’s) served in MI6. Stewart himself served in the military (Black Watch in Iraq), as a diplomat in Afghanistan, and has had a number of jobs in or related to the Foreign Office. Stewart was introduced to the British public innocuously during the repeated, failed efforts by May to get her deal through Parliament, when as Prisoners Minister, he frequently appeared on television to promote May’s deal. With little support from grassroots Tory members, Stewart sold himself to the wider public during the Tory leadership bid (which he lost) as the sensible moderate; all the while uttering nonsense like “believe in the bin” and the “great, prancing elephant in the room.” Was Stewart a failed stalking horse for MI6?
Smearing political opponents is a classic tactic of the “security” services. It is mostly used against the Left, but it is possible that agents of influence are working through the media to undermine BoJo. On Friday 21 June, it was alleged that BoJo and his partner engaged in such a row that neighbours not only heard the fighting, they recorded the altercation, called the police, and gave (or sold) the recording to the media (proving that the neighbours had a political agenda). A private matter between BoJo, his partner, and the police became a weapon to attack him. Why? It seems like useless information, given that everyone already knows that BoJo is a “nasty piece of work,” to quote journalist, Eddie Mair. Tory MEP, David Campbell Bannerman, noted the curious lack of security around BoJo at the time of the row: “ex-Foreign Secretary personnel [i.e., BoJo, usually] have Special Branch protection” (Clive Bull Show, LBC).
Evidence suggests that the Scottish independence referendum 2014 was rigged to favour Scotland remaining in the UK. But now, with the Scottish population fearful of leaving the European Union (EU), there is a renewed interest in Scottish secession from the UK in order that Scotland joins the EU as an independent state, post-Brexit. A recent survey suggests that were BoJo to become PM, the minority of Scots who want to secede from the UK would become a majority. Like the independence referendum, this interests MI6 whose raison d’être is to maintain and expand the “national interest.” Losing Scotland, from the perspective of the MI6 establishment, would harm the “national interest.” Ex-MI6 chief, Sir Richard Dearlove, has already said that May’s Brexit deal is a risk to “national security.” The current chief, Alex Younger, says he’ll remain in his position until Brexit is resolved—if it ever gets resolved.
One of Britain’s leading newspapers, the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times, ran the headline “Boris ‘is a security risk’.” Quoting unnamed sources, the article says that he is vulnerable to blackmail, that colleagues will try to block the queen from officiating BoJo’s premiership, and that a vote of no confidence in the government will be triggered immediately. It didn’t help that a) Donald Trump publicly backs Boris for PM and that b) Trump’s far-right Svengali, Steve Bannon, appears to have played a hand in BoJo’s rise by helping him write his speeches. It is all very reminiscent of Trump’s ascension to the Office of the President: an already-wealthy, rambunctious, sociopathic alpha-male repulsing both his own politicians and the general public, but electrifying a small but significant number of disaffected, grassroots party members and voters just enough to bring him to power.
BoJo boasts of British exports to Russia—Kettle crisps.
CONCLUSION
As noted, this kind of behaviour, if MI6 or related are behind any of it, is usually directed at the Left. It is unusual and immensely hopeful that the British establishment is imploding under the weight of its own greed and stupidity; and to the point that it has to contain its own members. The collapse of the wretched Tories, led by BoJo as PM, could usher in a Jeremy Corbyn-led government by default and see the beginning of a new era in which Britain rises to the socioeconomic level of most Western European states instead of being, as it is now, a poor imitation of the Failed States of America. But MI6 and related are prepared for Corbyn, too, and are already attacking him in part through the so-called Integrity Initiative. But first, we’ll have to wait and see if BoJo makes it to No. 10 Clowning Street.
Dr. T.J. Coles is a columnist with Axis of Logic and the author of several books, including Human Wrongs (iff Books).
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