The face of British Toryism

It’s becoming easy to think that any explicit association with today’s Conservative Party may tar a man with an indelible blotch.

I’m not even talking about the increasingly socialist noises made by leading Tories, including Theresa May. This has been par for the Tory course for so long that any initial novelty appeal has long since worn off.

But at least there have always been individuals and groups within the party that would buck the Zeitgeist by supporting causes they regarded as morally right.

One such cause was Brexit. It was thanks to organisations like the Bruges Group (founded by Margaret Thatcher), and also to individuals like Lord Tebbit and John Redwood, that regaining British sovereignty has become possible.

Alas, the very groups – and individuals – that fought for the cause of our constitution are playing lickspittle to a foreign power presenting an existential threat not only to Britain’s constitution but indeed to her physical survival.

Enter Tory Councillor Robert Oulds, Bruges Group’s director. The Group has released a video showing Oulds interviewing Alexander Kofman, one of the chieftains of the bandit gang calling itself the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’.

“Is there a moral responsibility on the Donetsk People’s Republic,” asked Oulds, “to expand its borders to, in a sense, liberate territory from the rule of Kiev, liberate those people that do not want to be dictated to by the current junta in charge in Kiev?”

The question contains the answer. According to Putin’s gang, now ably supported by the Bruges Group, it’s the gang’s moral duty to expand its aggression against a sovereign people refusing to live in the same servitude under which it lost millions of people and every conceivable liberty.

To what extent Oulds et al are acting as free agents is open to debate. What’s beyond doubt is that Putin’s government is making good use of its KGB recruitment techniques.

In those olden days, the KGB bribed Western opinion formers to toe the Soviet line through Western media. The bribery wasn’t always a straightforward transfer of cash: the KGB was capable of subtler techniques of seduction. It knew that stroking people’s egos could be as effective as greasing their palms.

To that end, it would organise all-expenses-paid ‘fact-finding’ junkets for Western politicians and intellectuals. On one such, Henry Wallace, FDR’s VP, was favourably impressed by Siberian concentration camps, where millions had perished.

Hundreds of Westerners, all those Webbs, Steffenses, Shaws, Wellses, buried their conscience under the mountains of Caspian caviar. Shovelling it into his mouth at a Kremlin reception, G. B. Shaw expressed his bemusement at Western reports about the Soviet famine. That was 1931, when millions – at least five million in the Ukraine alone – were being didactically starved to death to make them see the benefits of collectivised agriculture.

In parallel, the KGB created hundreds of Soviet fronts, academic, political and civic. These were the syringes through which the syphilitic contagion of bolshevism was injected into the West’s bloodstream. Transparent Soviet fronts, like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, attracted hordes of Soviet agents of influence, witting or unwitting.

Those chaps, Jack Straw and Tony Blair spring to mind, were intuitively predisposed to flock towards left-wing causes. All the KGB had to do was channel their instincts into the proper conduit, which wasn’t hard.

Now FSB/KGB officers make up 85 per cent of Russia’s government – meaning they are Russia’s government. Much to their delight, they’ve discovered that the old techniques work well in a new setting – and with new targets.

Russia’s ideology has been changed from bolshevism to imperialism. Hence, even as the left of yesteryear could easily be seduced by progressivist verbiage because its ears were already attuned to it, today’s right tropistically reaches for the God, Putin and country banners flapping in the Russian wind.

Translating such instincts into action favouring the KGB state is just a matter of KGB tradecraft. So far Putin’s kleptofascists have set up 10 pressure groups in Britain, but that’s only those that are upfront about it.

Some others aren’t, and they may even be ‘played in the dark’, in the KGB jargon, meaning used unwittingly. But that doesn’t matter one way or the other.

What matters is that Ben Harris-Quinney, chairman of the Tory Bow Group, appears on Putin’s TV, saying things like “It is important to acknowledge the massive potential cost of sanctions [against Russia] to the West and explore other options.”

Western media, added Harris-Quinney, are promoting a “sleepwalk towards war or conflict with Russia.” It’s as if it were Western media rather than Putin’s kleptofascist state pouncing on neighbouring countries like a rabid dog.

But never mind small fry like Oulds or Harris-Quinney. No decent person would ever shake hands with anyone appearing on Russian TV and acting as Putin’s agent of influence. However, even Tory icons like Lord Tebbit and John Redwood are openly blaming the EU for Putin’s aggression against the Ukraine.

Not only do we allow the KGB to set up its propaganda outlets in Britain, but we also let our venerable institutions fall into its hands.

The other day, hacked Kremlin e-mails revealed that Alexander Lebedev, the Russian billionaire who, through his son, owns The Independent and Evening Standard, tried to orchestrate a press campaign to secure western approval for the theft of Crimea.

Lebedev, ladies and gentlemen, was – and is – a career KGB officer. (“There’s no such thing as ex-KGB. This is for life,” Putin once said). So Lebedev has a job to do, and he can no more be blamed for it than a dog can be blamed for chasing a cat around the block.

The blame lies with those who allow such people to buy our mainstream papers and turn them into mouthpieces of enemy propaganda. It also lies with people like Tebbit and Redwood, who are led so far astray by their justified hatred of the EU that they unwittingly expose us to a far greater danger.