The Tory Fake Brexit Candidates; Part One

Remember the Tory 2015 battle bus? It has been alleged that it was a get-around whereby, coming under national expenses, it could be inserted into a constituency campaign without incurring a local overspend. Well, although it looks as if they are going to get away with this, it won’t do anything to dispel the notion people have about the lowdown sneakiness that the Tories, the Government’s right-hand puppet, would resort to to win an election. The issue was covered at FBEL recently; please read here and pay attention to the idea of the Government/Tory overlap, and decide for yourself just who is really pulling the strings (it isn’t Theresa May).

In 2017, the Tories are pretty sure that they are going to win the General Election, but they still need to turn their criminal cunning to the task of making sure that a lot of Tory/Government apparatchiks get elected to law-making capacity on the back of a delusion that lots of British people are currently suffering from – that being the idea that Theresa May and her pack of jackals will properly respond to the will of the British people as expressed in the 2016 EU Referendum.

Any modicum of investigation that the reader might want to do on his or own behalf will only confirm that the Tories are intent on delivering a Fake Brexit. Indeed, while the author was researching this article, he noticed that some Tory candidates don’t even mention Brexit in their publicity. Their main selling point is strength of a majority versus a coalition government. They really are leaving it for people to assume that they will deliver Brexit. What they are doing is like not giving a straight answer in court, and it’s for not being caught later in a perjury – but it’s lying by omission, and the author suspects that a tactic of omitting Brexit in candidate literature has come down as an order from the same people who gave you the Tory battle bus.

And why wouldn’t it? After all, all prospective Tory candidate selection lists have been dictated to local associations by the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ). This is a change to the (supposedly) usual practice where the members at each constituency coal face do their own thing. There appears to have been relatively little Conservatroid (grassroots Tory membership) pushback to the “emergency rules” – which is not a surprise in the least to the author. What the new situation means is that the CCHQ can foist a placeman into a seat. Yes, the local association does, in most cases, get to choose a final candidate from a CCHQ-imposed list, but we all know how it would work in reality, don’t we? Pompous selection committee Chair gets phone call from CCHQ: “do what you can, eh, Medford, there’s a good chap?”; provincial heads get turned by Etonian schooling, spad to George or Dave career history – and Mrs Leadbeater insists; winks and nudges (and other things) between Roger and Gerald down at the lodge or at the tennis club – a favour owed by one legend-in-his-own lunchtime Fred Perry to another; et cetera, et cetera, and so on and so forth. Even for an astute child, which the author was at the time, how things worked in the hierarchy of Tory suburbia was pretty much spelled out in lots of seventies sitcoms, and nothing much has changed – not for lots of hereditary Tories, who really need to be rocked out of their time-warp-protective-bubble – and not only so far as joining the Liberal Democrats.

This article is hopefully going to be the first of a few looking at who is being selected by the Tories so that, if voters do choose to elect them, the author can say that they have been warned. What you’ll find again and again as we look at these people is that they come from the same political class. All but two in the lists below are in “strategic advice”, Public Relations & Public Affairs – much the same thing except one might just call the latter government propaganda, “communications”; and so they are experts at using psychology to exploit people. They “consult” or “advise”, so it’s safe to say that there is not a real wealth-creator to be found in the whole list. Most of the candidates that will feature in this article will have been special advisors to Ministers or connected to governmental departments; and with their ties to industry, they really do prove that corporate-government does not stem from the imagination of conspiracy theorists. It’s not difficult to understand that their own best interests would lie in the continuance of corporate-government (or fascism). Because they make careers of globalist “science” – the art of confidence trickery – we can tell the direction of these candidates from where we can see they are coming from. Some of them might believe that they want to represent their constituencies – even the ones who have been parachuted in (and the author will indicate where this has happened as far as he knows) – but their deployment and task is for to shore up Parliament against those it is meant to represent.

The first group of candidates are standing in constituencies where the Tories came behind Labour or the Lib Dems in 2015. In order to win this time, they will need to steal from that percentage of the electorate who voted UKIP last time. These candidates should serve as a warning to people who think that lending a UKIP vote for the sake of Brexit is a noble thing to do. The author’s advice is just don’t do it, in these cases or any other. Do not vote Tory under any circumstances.

In the following list the candidate’s name is followed by the constituency he or she has been selected to stand in, followed by some biographical information (which in most cases has been copied directly from the sources here, here, here and here).

James Wild; North Norfolk.

A former public affairs manager at T-Mobile, and account director at Hanover Communications (dealing in “reputation, communications and public affairs”). A one-time special adviser to Defence Secretary Michael Fallon

(Incidentally, it appears that Leave.eu’s dubious “Brexit Alliance” campaign has asked UKIP voters to back James Wild, and without really explaining Wild’s Brexit credentials – indicating that it is not to be trusted, and starts to resemble a sly way of creating a Tory majority. We’ll be looking at it in an upcoming article).

Mag Powell-Chandler; Birmingham Northfield.

One time special adviser of Business Secretary Greg Clarke; also worked as a special adviser in Downing Street under David Cameron

Anthony Calvert: Wakefield.

In public affairs; “Calvert Communications”

Clark Vasey: Workington.

Head of corporate affairs (Public Relations) for Fujitsu UK

Daniel Hamilton; Stockport.

FTI Consulting; previously worked as a senior lobbyist at Bell Pottinger (“political, government and public affairs consultancy services”).

Caroline Squire; Birmingham Edgbaston.

Previously in a political and regulatory team at the well-known City-based lobbying firm Finsbury (“provider of strategic communications in crisis, financial, public affairs, reputation building and digital”); was also a public affairs adviser at Sainsbury’s.

Joy Morrissey; Ealing Central and Acton.

Worked for MPs Will Quince and Angie Bray, and is with the Think Tank, Centre for Social Justice.

The next list is of candidates who have been selected to stand in seats that are extremely safe for the Tories.

Kemi Badenoch; Saffron Walden.

A parachutist who failed to get selected Hampstead and Kilburn. A current London Assembly member, and previously with the Spectator.

Alex Burghart; Brentwood and Ongar.

Parachutist. Mrs May’s social justice policy adviser.

Neil o’Brien; Harborough.

Parachutist. Advises the Prime Minister on the northern powerhouse and industrial strategy.

Bim Afolomi; Hitchen & Harpenden.

A parachutist on account of being a Northampton-based HSBC banker, old Etonian, and once worked for George Osborne

Vicky Ford; Chelmsford.

An MEP. On the record as voting Remain. Interestingly, Vicky Ford’s statement about why she voted Remain has been removed from the internet.

(Note, Stephen Parkinson, the Prime Minister’s political secretary, and Chris Brannigan, Number 10’s director of government relations who liaises with businesses – both men known to this site through “battle bus” fame – were also on short lists. Parkinson for Saffron Walden, and Brannigan for Aldershot. Obviously, Parkinson failed in his endeavour, but  FBEL will monitor any further attempts to beknight this character. No news can be found about Brannigan).

Finally, and perhaps as good as won, is the seat of City of Chester, where Labour hold a slender lead over the Tories. Standing in this is Will Gallagher who was a former special advisor of Transport Secretary Chris Grayling at the Ministry of Justice. Gallagher is originally from North Wales, but qualifies as being parachuted on the basis of being a onetime Ministry staffer.

To finish for the time being – and this could be a Richard Littlejohn “you couldn’t make it up” column footer – is the story of the selection of a candidate by Exeter Tory Association. At first there had been complaints about candidates being parachuted in. Eventually a James Taghdissian, who had been a candidate in 2015 for Cardiff West, was selected – at a meeting in the town’s Masonic Hall.

Apparently, Taghdissian also appears to work in Exeter (a lawyer), but this case reinforces an impression that the author has gained from the study that led to this article: CCHQ has probably always, from election to election – and in a far-ranging way – done its utmost to get a favourite from a cabal of the preferred parachuted in to a constituency to have them selected above local candidates who genuinely and rightly feel that they would be more suitable (and have had the support of local associations). Sometimes there might be a happy accident whereby the parachutist comes from the constituency, but he’s still imposed. The electorate, in its individual parts across the nation (and the author included), doesn’t notice the bigger picture of control, but it would indeed be naïve to think that the Establishment, whichever LibLabCon party it had had installed in office, would chance its retention of a grip on power to any randomness like local association candidate selections. Representation in Parliament, like so many other aspects of the freedom you are told you have, is only an illusion.