Private Eye on the People behind Darren Grimes’ Reasoned UK

The week before last, Zelo Street published a piece about the launch of Reasoned UK, a right-wing propaganda outfit headed by a former member of Guido Fawkes, Darren Grimes. This fortnight’s issue of Private Eye, for 5th to 18th June 2020, also covers the launch. And it comes to much the same conclusions Zelo Street has. Far from being an original, grassroots organisation, this is just another piece of astroturf. While Grimes claims its YouTube channel is going to post original content, Private Eye shows that it has strong links to a number of similar American Conservative organisations and their British subsidiaries. The Eye’s article, on page 16, runs

Grimes Spree

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to BeLeave!

No sooner had Inspector Knacker announced the end of his investigation into Darren Grimes and Vote Leave last month, than the irrepressible ex-BeLeaver Grimes quit his day job at the Institute of Economic Affairs and launched a new “online grassroots organisation and video channel”, Reasoned UK. It aims to “challenge the pervasive left-wing bias in online content” by putting up a “mix of entertaining and informative content to help viewers reach their own informed opinions”.

Although Grimes boasts of its “NEW ORIGINAL CONTENT”, the Reasoned YouTube channel has in fact been rebranded from an earlier one called, er, Reason. Among those starring in Reason videos were Guido Fawkes hack Tom Harwood, recently seen defending Dominic Cummings round-the-clock on all TV channels; Chloe Westley, then of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, now a special advisor in No. 10; and Steven Edginton, former head of Digital at the Brexit Party, now at the Sun.

It’s unclear who was behind Reason, but the small print of Reasoned’s privacy policy reveals that Grimes’s “online grassroots organisation” is run by a Borehamwood-based company called Media and Activism. This turns out to be the same company behind conservative “youth” group Turning Point UK, in which Grimes, Harwood, Westley and Eginton have all been involved. The sole director, Oliver Anisfeld, is the son of the smoked-salmon tycoon and former Brexit Party MEP Lance Forman.

Not so much grassroots as Astroturf, perhaps. Bit Reasoned isn’t all that NEW, is its content at least ORIGINAL? Not exactly. Just as TPUK is a pale imitation of Turning Point USA, so the snazzy video in which Grimes makes his call to arms is mostly a word-for-word repeat of one produced by Prager University (PragerU) – which, confusingly, isn’t a university but an American outfit that makes right-wing videos and works closely with TPUSA.

The original from which Darren takes his script features American libertarian and TPUSA supporter Dave Rubin talking about the “Bravery Deficit”, the suggestion that conservatives are afraid to stand up for what they believe. Lo and behold, the Reasoned website also features a page headed “Bravery Deficit” – and a 45-minute video promoting Rubin’s new book.

Zelo Street’s article doesn’t go into quite so much detail, but it did quote a Tweet from ‘Loki’, who claimed that Reasoned UK was the youth wing of the IEA. Which prompted Zelo Street to ask whether Grimes really had left the organisation or not. As for the scintillating opinion-formers that are to appear on the channel, so far their Twitter feed has included mad islamophobe Melanie Phillips, and the noxious Brendan O’Neil of Spiked. Just the kind of people to galvanise Conservative British youth!

Grimes himself has something of a chip on his shoulder. He believes that he is snubbed and sidelined by the mainstream media because he is not university educated. There’s nothing wrong with not having been to uni. A university education doesn’t necessarily mean that someone is more intelligent or better morally, as shown by the all the Oxbridge and Eton-educated fools, thieves and mass murderers in Bozo’s government. What is more significant is that Grimes at best gets his facts wrong, and at wrong lies shamelessly and frequently. So he’s a typical Tory then.

He also looks very young in the picture Zelo Street has of him in its articles. He looks little older than Harry Potter! He doesn’t look old enough to vote, let alone be telling everyone else how to.

The fact that Reasoned UK is just a warmed-up, rebranded version of Reasoned doesn’t bode well for its future. Let’s hope that it’s no long before this worthless, mendacious organisation bites the dust.

 

 

More from Private Eye on BoJob’s Connections to the Hedge Funds

I’ve found a few more little snippets from Private Eye about how Boris is being funded by hedge funds, the financial speculators looking forward to a no deal Brexit, as they’ll clean up when the country and its businesses go bust. In their issue for 14th-27th June 2019, the Eye ran an article, ‘Backing Boris’, about how Boris’  campaign to be selected leader of the Tory party was being funded by Jon Wood, another hedge fund manager. The article, on page 7 of the magazine, ran

The launch video for Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign was full of soft “Cameroon” social messages, fretting that “too many people feel left behind” and excluded from “opportunity and success”. Odd, then, that his largest financial backer seems keener for the government to look out for the big guy.

Hedge-fund manager Jon Wood gave Johnson £25,000 in May, according to the latest register of MPs’ interests. (He had already given the former foreign secretary a £50,000 donation for “office and staffing costs” in October). His hedge fund, SRM Global, was a major investor in Northern Rock, the bank that collapsed in the financial crisis and was nationalised by the Labour government in 2008. Shareholders like Wood’s firm got nothing: the government judged it had made a bad bet.

Wood’s company argued, however, that it had a human right to compensation for its bad investment, and took the government to the high court and then to the European court of human rights. In 2012, the latter rejected the laughable claim brought by SRM Global and other investors, calling it “manifestly ill-founded and therefore inadmissible”.

The court said the government was quite right to take over the bank but not to compensate the big investors. There was “no duty owed by the State to the shareholders to protect their investments in Northern Rock”. That Johnson’s biggest backer is a man with experience of “manifestly ill-founded claims” is perhaps, er, no surprise.

The edition for the 26th July – 8th August carried another such story on page 7, ‘Fine By Them’, reporting how Johnson was being funded by a private equity boss, who had been an officer in the Vote Leave campaign. The article ran

Why should breaching electoral law stand in the way of becoming key backer to the favourite in the prime ministerial race?

Boris Johnson certainly saw no problem as he accepted £100,000 for his leadership bid, declared last week, from private equity boss Jon Moynihan. The hard Brexit-favouring businessman also happens to have been finance director of the official Vote Leave 2016 referendum campaign. That’s the same Vote Leave that was fined £61,000 by the Electoral Commission for breaching campaign spending limits by channelling large sums to young Darren Grimes’ BeLeave youth group (Eyes passim).

The 25-year-old “BeLeaver”, meanwhile, was jubilant last week after he successfully challenged his £20,000 fine from the commission, incurred for acting as a funnel for the over-spend. The judge, who upheld Grimes’ appeal said that even if the wee scamp had committed an offence, it wouldn’t have justified fining him £20,000, the maximum allowed.

While Darren basks in congratulations from Vote Leave pals, less attention has been paid to the main Vote Leave appeal against its £61,0000 fine. This appeal has been quietly dropped, with Vote Leave admitting defeat and covering the Electoral Commission’s legal costs, footing a £200,000 bill.

The Electoral Commission itself now looks embattled on all sides, with both Leavers and Remainers furious over its handling of the 2016 referendum, and with all major parties irate at past fines for election spending irregularities. Defenders of the agency argue that if it’s annoying everyone, it must be doing something right.

Our boorish, anti-democratic joke of a prime minister is being funded by financial speculators, who are determined to have Brexit, and have not been above breaking the law to make sure they get it. And they stand to make millions from the misery it will cause if their puppet, Johnson, does manage to deliver it.

Get them out of politics – get him out of No. 10!