The Brexit Scandal | Corruption In The UK | Documentary | British Political System

January 2021 Dover Customs controls on the border between the UK and the EU for the first time in 28 years although a last-minute trade deal has avoided total chaos this is a harp brexit much harder than the brexit that was promised to the British people back in 2016. [Music] during the referendum they all said no no no no it's not a hard brexit what we want [Music] brexit will comic damage to both sides even the government in London expects a major slump in the British economy how did it come to this coming more more and more clear heartbrexit was a well-planned coup to our brexit that was about let's get back control of our borders Take Back Control of our fishing they kind of got hijacks but who did want a hard brexit and who stands to profit from it there's a clear ideological driving force here which is around a desire for a very low tax low regulation economy now the problem is is that it's not what a lot of people who voted for brexit want this film tells the story of how a small group from the heart of the British establishment hijacked the brexit course to pursue their own radical agenda we start our journey in Glasgow the investigative journalist Peter gagan has spent years looking into how money influences British politics with a particular focus on brexit what we saw on the brexit referendum on its aftermath is that abuses of electoral law small amounts of targeted money Anonymous donations can really really change the political landscape in really really radical ways and how exactly does that work so Britain is really like America when it comes to politics and money but it's a big difference in America it costs millions and millions and millions of dollars to influence politics in Britain of course only a fraction of that a few thousand pounds here a few tens of thousand pounds here have a far bigger impact than I think many people be able to imagine back in 2016 the leading figures of The brexit Campaign Boris Johnson and Nigel farage won the referendum with big promises for ordinary people if we vote leave on June the 23rd we can take back control of 300 more money for the NHS less immigration save this industry but despite the populist slogans investigative research has since shown that the leave campaigns were financed by over 18.3 million pounds from Rich donors [Music] the UK has voted to leave the European Union the result of the referendum was tight 52 voted for a break with the EU the sun has risen on an independent United Kingdom and just look at it even the weather's improved but for many of the rich supporters of brexit the vote was not the end of their campaign but the beginning they began a bitter fight to shape Britain's exit from the EU according to their own agenda they needed working-class votes they needed people who were angry at the system to win a referendum but to construct their vision of post-brexit Britain they didn't need that anymore shortly after the referendum optimism Reigns the new prime minister Theresa May is confident that her government can deliver on the will of the people brexit means brexit and we're going to make a success of it for a long time this slogan remains empty of meaning but soon it's time to give brexit a more concrete definition that I think is the important step forward I'm pleased we're able to do the minister from Maize cabinet has agreed to reveal to us what happened behind closed doors David gork was a member of the government that was tasked with developing a detailed plan for brexit I served as one of the 20 or so cabinet ministers that was around the table when we were making decisions as to how we tried to deliver brexit in the best way possible there were two incompatible objectives one was to try to maintain good access to European markets and then on the other hand you had this desire to take control of our laws completely unimpeded by the European Union 2018 May quarter cabinet to her Countryside residence Checkers for decisive talks it will be the site of the first showdown of a brutal inner party battle I remember a sort of swelteringly hot day we all arrived there in the morning for maize then foreign minister Boris Johnson it will be the last cabinet meeting before he turns against his party leader this was clearly going to be the big meeting there was a lot of media build up there was a lot of talk will there be rails will there be splits at the meeting Theresa May presents her cabinet with a compromise solution [Music] the checkers plan would put an end to unlimited immigration from the EU delivering on the most popular promise of the brexit campaign but she also wants to retain a close trade relationship with Europe which would mean Britain having to stick to many EU rules a so-called soft brexit well in detailed discussions today the cabinet has agreed our Collective position on the future of our negotiations with the EU and I look forward to it being received positively the eu's brexit coordinator is relieved two years after the referendum there's finally a concrete proposal on the table the main message was we from the British side want a reasonable agreement not only on trade but also on other in other fields cooperation and other fields there was a very constructive atmosphere in the beginning of these negotiations and certainly on the Theresa May but May's plan triggers a huge Rebellion within her own party for Tory hardliners having to stick to EU regulations would be a betrayal of the brexit referendum in short we are going to be rules takers we are going to be a de facto colony order a smooth and orderly exit is what business wants and I'm sure what citizens want up and down this country the hardliners accuse me of surrendering to the EU the House of Commons has never ever surrendered to anybody and it won't start now within the conservative party you you already had this group called The European research group The ERG that was made up of those who were staunch brexiteers they were in many respects a party within a party they were in no moves to compromise as far as they were concerned leaving the European Union meant we set our own laws without exception and so as things progressed in terms of the negotiations with the European Union they just said we don't support this deal the leader of the ERD is Steve Baker a radical neoliberal with closed highs to the arms industry who has supported amongst other things the deregulation of carcinogenic asbestos a brexit which requires a high degree of permanent alignment to the European Union will not go through this House of Commons it will fail another key ERG figure is Jacob Breeze mock a wealthy Aristocrat and investment banker [Music] but why are these men pushing for a hard brexit at any cost The Economist Francis Coppola has investigated why this issue was so important to the rebels she has looked into the backgrounds and connections behind this group the European research group as it was known although it wasn't very European and it didn't do any research it was essentially a group of very pro-brexit and very right-wing Tories who are ideologically wedded to the idea of Britain as this sort of free market what they call Buccaneer in Britain that would go around the world striking trade deals with everybody in home and being this kind of Singapore Thames place that would be great for businesses that term Singapore on Thames what does that mean I think Singapore on Thames yeah it's this idea I think that we can be this like kind of eu's offshore tax Haven this island off the coast of the EU that could kind of undercut them in terms of tax and Regulation and be kind of in a way rather like the way in which Singapore and Hong Kong work in the Far East this was Center for deregulated Finance in particular this radicalization of a number of brexiteers was completely against the position they defended during the referendum because during the referendum it was no don't be afraid of a brexit it will never be a hard brexit so the idea of a hard brexit came afterwards and then there was the radical wing of the curatory party became always more radical the best known face of the radicals is Boris Johnson at the Conservative Party Conference he makes no secret of his intention to try and take May's job what will we hear from you today all too soon this is the moment to Chuck checkers but apart from his personal Ambitions whose interests is he pursuing with his brexit agenda we've never seen anybody who's raised as much money in British Politics As far as Johnson he's had record donations even just as a backbench MP so it wasn't a surprise to see Boris Johnson talking about deregulation to find Boris Johnson taking up the kind of positions that all these people wanted to see it makes me utterly Furious that a UK government could even contemplate such an arrangement research reveals that Johnson receivers large donations from businessmen who want a relaxation of laws after heart brexit one of his most important donors is the British construction equipment manufacturer JCB this great company would have to accept whatever Whimsical specifications Brussels comes up with does that seem like a good deal to you I didn't think so jcb's owner Lord Bamford is a billionaire and a member of the British House of Lawns my lords I'm a businessman and British businesses are certainly up to the task of making Britain a global leader in the free trade he hopes for a Better Business environment after brexit meanwhile his shares in JCB sit in a tax Haven in the Caribbean when asked JCB replies that the company and Lord Bamford have never made a secret of their political donations how does a referendum one unpopular promises turn into a campaign advocating a radical economic agenda Guardian political journalist Sonia soda has followed the rise of the hard brexit faction it's a very clear ideological driving force here and that is that if you look historically in the UK the EU has been a force for sort of driving up welfare standards and workplace standards in the UK now if you're on the right you look at that and you just think God this is Dreadful like we don't want workers to have these rights we don't want these standards to make food safe um we're interested in profit the political leaders of brexit are not people of the people men and women of the people they've been to these incredibly Elite universities and I don't think that they are arguing for brexit out of a concern for um a lot of the people who voted for brexit let's say I think the concept of brexit that was about let's get back control of our borders Take Back Control of our fishing Take Back Control of our manufacturing be our state be our people which was kind of the original concept of brexit in many many people's minds I kind of got hijacked by people who said yeah but actually the route to Prosperity is to remove all regulation cut taxes and let's get out there and trade with everybody in the EU is stopping us doing that and it kind of Got Hijacked order when Theresa May puts her brexit plan to a vote in Parliament it's firmly rejected the eyes to the right 202 the nose to the left 432. so the nose have it the nose have it but what's driving so many toy MPS to an unprecedented Rebellion against their party leader conservative MPS particularly pro-eu conservative MP started reporting that their constituents were getting in touch with them saying we want a hard brexit and in the British system MPS are very reactive to their constituents because that's how you get into office you need the people in your local constituency to vote for you so if they're sending you messages that's going to make a lot of swiveling MPS think but actually what looked and was supposed to be a Grassroots anger at the failure to leave the European Union was a really astral turf it was fake Grassroots lots and lots of adverts started appearing on Facebook targeted particularly uh constituents of pro-eu conservative MPS to send them messages to say like support a hard brexit flooding Facebook and then in turn flooding MPS inboxes with this these were adverts that were paid for by rich rich donors specifically to try and push the hard brexit agenda you influence debate you put out adverts that will shift parliamentarians views try and put pressure on them and you do it in ways that it's anonymously funded so the only thing that you're seeing is these messages investigations reveal that a million pounds worth of these AdWords are managed by a company called CTF partners CTF Partners is a london-based Lobby firm that worked on Boris Johnson's earlier campaigns for mayor of London the company also runs Facebook campaigns for the Saudi government and for fossil fuel companies what is their role in the brexit campaign CTF Partners did not respond to a request for comment but the better for hard brexit rages not just inside Parliament on the streets of Britain it seems Ordinary People are now rising up against Maize compromise deal and our parliament are traitors [Applause] at leave means leave marches and rallies across the country May's deal is condemned as a betrayal of the true will of the people but was this really an uprising of the people leave means leave is not a Grassroots movement but in reality a Lobby firm with huge budgets for Flash epr and Loud rallies the company is based at a building in Westminster the former headquarters of the vode leave campaign registered under the name Richard Tice Tice the millionaire property investor was in the background of the brexit campaign in 2016. and just look at it even the weather's improved he is one of the rich businessmen who have huge Ambitions for Britain's EU exit that's why he's battling for a hard brexit are we all enjoying the Sun know the Sun Shines on the righteous Richard Tice was one of those people that joined the brexit referendum was marginal in some respects but after the referendum actually twice became more and more a kind of central figure and he set up this um leaves means leave movement they knew how to play the media you know a lot of online campaigning very hard line messaging and kind of pushing this message you can't trust the politicians you cannot trust the conservatives to deliver brexit for you it was very populous there was this idea that there was this terrible Elite running Britain who were trying to thwart brexit and um that that the masses should be very very angry about it surprisingly Richard Tice agreed immediately to meet us in the office at his investment fund we want to know what's driving him when eventually there was what was called the checkers Summit we then realized that we were being betrayed we were still going to be subservient slaves to the bureaucrats in Brussels that's how revolutions begin what's your vision for brexit then so having a low tax low regulation high growth economy just in my industry alone I mean which is real estate and construction we've got all sorts of very time consuming very expensive EU rules on procurement you know this is the sort of stuff that I want to change in the way this country is run and governed [Music] Richard ice brings his old friend Nigel farage out of retirement to become the face of leave means leave the former Bond Trader is able to turn the boring details of the brexit process into populist slogans of national pride is about who we are as a nation it's about our children and grandchildren growing up being proud to be British we will get our independence back we will get our pride and self-respect but we are going to win [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it was a sort of political Rock concert and we had color we had big backdrops we had balloons we had lights it was great and people could see that that something was happening but the establishment Elite political class in Westminster they didn't really wake up and smell the coffee and realized just quite what we were mobilizing the public were becoming increasingly polarized there was a growing sense by those who were most enthusiastic about leaving the European Union that this was all a plot if you like that they had been betrayed that that Metropolitan liberal elite were ignoring them that they weren't getting their way and it was a very acrimonious time not just in politics but I think in the country as a whole it was it was pretty poisonous I've been in Brussels watching a British prime minister reducing our nation to the state of humiliation if they think they can walk all over us we're going to March back and tell them no you can't we will not give in when people voted in 2016 they mean though well it was mostly about immigration in the NHS it wasn't about deregulation no I don't I don't accept that at all let's be very clear what was on the ballot paper was leave and you know many of us who were promotingly particularly the business Community we knew you know the opportunities that were presented of course different people who voted to leave you know voted for for different reasons but the key theme of it was taking back control do you think you'll get richer because of brexit um brexit's not about me I haven't thought of it in those terms but um I do believe brexit does present opportunities and if if those opportunities lead to higher growth then everybody literally everybody will be better off because of brexit and you know that includes all of us we know that people don't want more deregulations we've seen it time and again from surveys they don't want less social spending they want the opposition they want higher taxes and Wealthy a lot of people in general want higher taxes they want to see more regulation they want a social net but the way in which the brexit referendums aftermath has played out Bears so little kind of resemblance to the popular anger that pushed in the first place order [Music] under Rising pressure May brings her deal before Parliament for a second time the nose to the left 391. and fails again so the nose habit the nose habit there wasn't a majority for a hard brexit and there wasn't a majority for a soft brexit there was a blocking majority against every option and we were essentially stuck argued that this did this didn't need to be so complicated Britain should simply leave the EU and stand proudly alone as a sovereign independent country with no negative consequences the promise was Britain should be a sovereign country like it was in the days of Empires this idea of Take Back Control now the whole issue with that is that that notion of national sovereignty doesn't really exist anymore in a 21st century world so in a world that's more globalized where there is far far more trade you know the world is becoming more interconnected but that has never been acknowledged the problem with being integrated into something like the EU for for over 40 years is that all your your business processes your supply chains the way you do things all sorts of things are are deeply integrated with that so unpicking that is is a bit like kind of I'm trying to unscramble an omelette but soon the complicated reality becomes clear gifah hofstadt warns that there is an inevitable trade-off between Britain's freedom to change its own rules and continued access to EU trade if you want to trade deal with the European Union like in every trade deal we will as as Europeans defend our interest look we agree to have no quotas no tariffs when we are talking about trade but you have to accept a Level Playing Field it's a word that that we use every day in in these negotiations but loving playing field means that there is a Fair competition between us and Them stay-date climate change social rules and so on which is industry like also the European industry has an interest in having a good trade relationship most experts predict huge damage for the British economy if Britain loses direct access to EU markets but the supporters of hard brexit find one man who is prepared to say the opposite in our research we stumble over little known trade expert called Shankar Singham if you look at this problem for long enough I think all the technical experts ultimately come to the same conclusion you know Shanker said I've got a plan and that was really important because you had economists and trade people lining up around the street after Britain left the European Union tell them it was a bad idea Here Comes this guy who'd been to Oxford who worked in America he's telling you it's a good idea and he became the kind of the trade Guru for the brexiteers well it's been interesting watching The Rise and Rise of Shankar singam because you know he's actually not that knowledgeable on trade there are people out there who know much more about trade than he does but they weren't elevated in the same way and I can only conclude that it's because the guys who really knew about trade weren't saying the right things they were saying well actually there aren't any Simple Solutions I think what Shankar was doing was saying well if we just do this we can have a simple solution shanka Singham soon becomes known as the brexiteer's brain he writes a 150 page report in which he claims that the repeal of EU workplace environmental and agricultural regulations will prove a major boost to the British economy the ultra-conservative members of the European research group including Jacob Breeze mock celebrate singham's so-called plan A Plus as an alternative to May's Checkers deal this is about how you have a fantastic brexit so it's a really exciting a good paper but who is Singham and who is financing his work singam works for an organization with the innocuous name The Institute of economic affairs the iea is a neoliberal think tank which supports amongst other ideas the privatization of the NHS as well as defending the deregulation of the tobacco industry and tax Havens the think tank also supports a hard brexit the think tank world is really influential in making the idea of a hard brexit making that seem like something that was really achieved was on a good thing bringing what were really Fringe issues in British politics deregulation things like that are making the mainstream we want to know whose interests are really being pushed by these think tanks we find a former Insider who's prepared to tell us shamia Sunny was employed at a think tank that works closely with the iea he was enraged by what he experienced firsthand and decided to speak out on how these free market think tanks really work it's an enormous network of right-wing Lobby groups that are Lobby groups not think tanks I know the last organization that I worked for a donor would come in and be like hey I really want to you know I need help with whatever my salmon Farms or whatever and that Lobby group will create a report around that sort of incentive from the donor and then those reports are then taken by these think tanks to politicians and presented as legitimate um policy suggestions going this is good for you people really want this the public really desire this and it's good for the country when most of the time it's purely because they've this is the incentive of their donors if you're a corporation if you think about it you know what do you do you've got 50 000 pounds do you give it to a lobbyist that's registered won't get you very far might get you one meeting it'll be registered people will know about it or do you give it to a think tank to write a report the report will get into the media your issues will get all the way out there and your name won't be anywhere near it in summer 2018 a journalist from Greenpeace went undercover in The Institute of economic Affairs to find out how think tanks offer their corporate funders influence in the brexit process the journalist poses as an investor in U.S agriculture who is hoping for a relaxation of British food standards post-brexit in order that his hormone treated beef can be sold on the UK Market he is invited to a meeting by the head of the iea mark littlewood to explore what collaboration might look like delighted very very good thanks littlewood offers the journalists the chance to fund a report that will help influence its British agricultural policy post-brexit if we fully funded this would you be able to I mean you know would there be some ability to kind of make sure that they're covering the areas of specific interests oh sure absolutely um I don't mind our donors affecting us on salience so although we won't go as far as is then saying we need you to reach this conclusion sure not necessarily the conclusion but to make sure that that content fine yeah and that it's prominent and that would not be a work yeah we can do that there is no way this report is going to say the most important thing we need to do is to keep American beef out of our Market in order exactly the opposite okay fine do you institutes becoming Affairs has always run on private money they will not say where their money comes from but we know it's private money occasionally we'll get a little bit of an insight into just where some of that money might come from so in the past they've got money from BPS from the oil industry from the gambling industry from people involved with the offshore financial industry so really corporate interests who have very specific agendas and Britain there's such a huge crisis of transparency because all of these organizations don't reveal their donors and the public are not aware of who is funding the policies that government officials are enacting or bringing forward if you want access to government put some money into these right-wing think tanks and then watch the entire country burn confronted with these statements the iea tells us we do not act in the interests of our donors except to the extent that they are interested in free trade and free markets the iea makes independent editorial decisions and then seeks funding it is certainly not controversial that the iea's principles are aligned with the interests of our donors Boris Johnson has publicly praised iea reports on several occasions I've just seen this stuff that's been done for the Ia I think that's been talked about this morning looking at it I think it's a very good piece of work it allows us properly to Take Back Control of our of our laws which you can't do under Checkers under Checkers you lose control of your laws your laws are made in Brussels and they're imposed on the UK I mean we've never had anything like that in a thousand years so this is a very exciting Way Forward but there is a very different major obstacle to a hard break with the EU one that threatens to confront Britain with its recent bloody past until 20 years ago a brutal Civil War raged in Northern Ireland between those who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom and those who wanted to join the Republic of Ireland on Good Friday in 1998 a peace agreement was signed it promised open borders without controls between North and South that makes part of the peace in in Northern Ireland the fact that there is no longer a border so for us it was very important that is Good Friday agreement that the peace in Northern Ireland is secured and to safeguard also this economic space because that's one economic space today Ireland and and Northern Ireland but a hard brexit would threaten the promise of no border if the UK deviates from EU routes border controls on trade would be necessary a hard brexit Advocates need a solution that will work even if there is a complete break with the EU another job for Shankar Singham the man who seems to succeed in finding solutions to Impossible problems he is dispatched to Northern Ireland [Music] was paid for by a Prosperity UK a private company run by a millionaire hedge fund boss at the airport Singham is met by Stephen Kelly chairman of the Northern Ireland Confederation of Industry Kelly tells us how this meeting with Singham went first he shows him the invisible border between Northern Ireland part of the UK and the Republic of Ireland so the road we're on now and there's dozens of informal Crossings through Farmland through laneways there's even a Crossing within someone's house already we've crossed the border once and we've just crossed it again so the house is on the right hand side were in the Republic but now this business on the right hand side is in Northern Ireland here we go again just as the road changes color here that's the Border one more time and this business is now in southern Ireland but it has a gate out into Northern Ireland and we're crossing the border once again just now Kelly shows his visitor from London this abandoned costumes facility the only remaining visible sign of the border that used to exist here singham's Mission could Goods be controlled without the need for physical checkpoints like this their trip was largely about is there technology that could be put in play how do how do we continue to have that frictionless trade that we have at the moment from blockchain to satellites and drones and stuff being embedded in the road linked to barcodes and a whole raft of wild and wacky suggestions all ends up in one place which is nothing nothing will work so I brought them into this very spot and I set them the challenge that whatever work they were doing on whatever alternative Arrangements it needed to meet this test needed to meet the fact that that person in that house 100 yards away and that person in the house another 100 yards away need to have their lives transacted in exactly the same way after brexit as they do before I don't think Shanker or others really understood it so the concern is if a border is reintroduced that partition on this island of Ireland becomes physical and manifest once again this is a memorial to 13 people who were shot dead by the British army in Derry on the 31st of January 1972 in an event which has been known internationally as Bloody Sunday but it's also the place where peace was born as well this is the thing that's so frustrating to people here is the people far removed from here think that this is just about lines in the road spreadsheets around Trading widgets and food but it's not this is our our daily life we want to live in peace and because brexit doesn't have the consent of people here that really runs the risk of actually reigniting the troubles that we had back 25 years ago just one week after his visit to Northern Ireland Singham presents his privately funded report in London this plan ignores the concerns of his Northern Ireland host and includes proposals for Border controls Singham did not respond to our request for comment in the past however he has emphasized that he does not find it unusual for a think tank to become actively involved in politics singham's report has a huge influence on the stunts of the conservative hardliners especially the European research group the ERG weren't really engaging with some of these practical problems they weren't recognizing what some of the risks were they were just dismissing what were real problems and you're failing to recognize that there would be consequences if we didn't properly address the issue of the Irish Border the Rebels win Theresa May's deal is rejected for a third and final time [Music] the eyes to the right 286 the nose to the left 344. so the nose have it the nose habit this result means that the UK's exit from the EU will be further delayed creating the Absurd situation that the UK will have to participate in the EU election even though it wants to leave the EU this gives the hardliners the perfect chance for a final attack on Maize government I think for a long time in that strange interregnum and that strange period where there was all these battles going on in the Commons people were wondering what Nigel farage would do next [Music] and we knew that the mood of the country was rapidly coming our way big time so it's all about timing and politics is all about timing and Nigel said the time is nearly right Richard ties and Nigel farage found the brexit party to participate in the EU election the party Styles itself as a radical alternative to the conservatives it has only one political goal the hardest possible brexit but our research shows that the brexit party which claims to represent the people on the street is anything but a People's Party the party is in fact The Limited company run by farage and tice this is not the way in political parties are normally run normally if you become a member of a political party it's one Member One vote and you get to have a say in the party with the brexit party and the language they use is really interesting too they didn't talk about members they talked about supporters so what would happen was you go on to your PayPal you give the brexit party as much money as you wanted and you become a registered supporter but that didn't give you any more say in the wrexa party than I have or anybody else and the digital democracy that they were promising and this is the words that fries was using kind of a new form of democracy once you looked at it in any kind of debt it was really really Hollow so they had like a nap but the app didn't really engage people at all it was kind of let them make comments the brexit party isn't really a political party it's a things were moving so quickly you just didn't have time to set up uh you know the political party in the traditional sense of the word so you know Nigel knew the right thing to do set it up as a company there's no reason you know you're allowed to do that under the rules that's what we did so we both LED from the front Nigel the campaigner you know the recognized voice I wasn't really known then as an individual as a person you know people say Richard who um but I was the organizer and what I've got is an ability to make rapid fire decisions and so yeah we just um we just mobilized and it was just constantly decision after the decision just like that you know because we were running basically a committee of two it was very easy although there are many small supporter contributions to the brexit party our research shows that they are dwarfed by inflows from wealthy donors so people like Jeremy Hoskins who's a hedge fund guy who used to fund the leave campaign to referendum had fund the conservative party he donated to the brexit party quite a lot of money a man called Christopher harborne who'd previously given some money to conservatives he donated well over 10 million pounds to the brexit party it's a huge sums of money for a political party thank you [Music] with theoretical message ties and farage are robbing the conservatives of donors and voters Nigel farage is an outsider to the sister he sort of portrays himself as this you know figure who speaks truth to power who keeps you know British prime ministers honest and the role that he has always played is to put pressure on conservative leaders to scare them that he's going to take votes away from them and that they need to give him what he wants the brexit party only a month old challenges the 180 year old conservative party in the EU election campaign you know it's funny isn't it it worked the brexit party wins almost 32 of the vote oh all the establishment both here in the UK and over there were aghast utterly aghast because the penny then dropped the brexit party limited enters the EU parliament in Brussels their goal to disrupt the sessions as a final insult to the hated Institution foreign I'm a real estate guy I'm not an experienced politician and suddenly all of a sudden we were the biggest single political party in the whole of the European Parliament and my goodness we made a noise it is globalism against populism and you may loathe populism but I'll tell you a funny thing it's becoming very popular I know you're gonna miss us but we're gonna wave you goodbye and we'll look forward in the future to working with you as sovereign if you disobey the rules you get cut off could we please remove the flags but the brexit party is not concerned with the EU parliament in Brussels it is trying to exert influence in London and it's succeeding large numbers of conservative voters went to support the brexit party and I think there was a sense of panic within the conservative party reaching up to members of the cabinets that unless the conservative party if you like closed off this issue unless it dealt with the threat of Nigel farage the conservative party was doomed we're essentially like Special Forces we launched and we came out of Base and we basically accomplished the mission we were being betrayed by the elitist class and we stopped it we stopped the great betrayal the follow-on effects was that the day after the European elections Theresa May knew that she was taste and she announced that she was going to step down never forget that compromise is not a dirty word life depends on compromise tourism maze time as prime minister is over and with it the idea of a soft brexit compromise there was a belief that there was only one person who would be able to stop Nigel farage from essentially overtaking the conservative party and that was Boris Johnson foreign people were so sick after three years of this kind of gridlock undermaid it just wanted it done get brexit done was a very powerful slogan in a way what they were doing was giving power to the Simplicity it had been about Take Back Control we will cut the ties to this evil empire and sail off into the sunset it was that kind of imagery many moderate conservatives have to accept that their party has changed significantly in the brexit process and so to a large extent because of fear of Nigel farage the conservative party moved to become much more like Nigel farage by being a more populous party so I made it clear that I would resign from government because I didn't want to play any part in that when the new prime minister Boris Johnson presents his cabinet it is full of hardliners who are uncompromisingly for a hard brexit [Music] the eventual victory of Boris Johnson his election is conservative leader in prime minister was really the ultimate victory for the Monument of British Politics the kind of people who bankrolled the brexit referendum the kind of people who'd funded pro-brexit campaigns after brexit the kind of people who give money to anonymously funded think tanks for all of them Boris Johnson was the epiphany of what they wanted they believe he's malleable so they believe they can push him well good morning everybody and uh it is wonderful to see this new team assembled here thank you all very much our research reveals that Johnston again attracts record donations for his candidacy for party leader he wins back to the conservatives some of the brexit party's most generous Financial supporters once again he receives money from Anthony Bamford the owner of JCB and CTF Partners The Firm that has supported him in previous campaigns largely unnoticed by the public more than a dozen former employees of The Institute of economic Affairs and other hard brexit think tanks are brought into the government as advisors statement the prime minister [Applause] time to get brexit done and let's take this country forward [Applause] on January the 31st 2020 Britain formally leaves the EU without Nigel as we all know there would have been no referendum and without Nigel there would have been no brexit we become a democratic self-governing independent and I hope proud Nation [Applause] oh three two one [Applause] [Music] we did it [Music] during an 11 months transition phase in which Britain stays closely aligned with the EU Johnson's government negotiates the concrete details of a trade deal in the midst of the covet crisis an agreement is reached literally at the last minute the deal brings relief in Brussels even though it's an uneasy compromise heartbrexit has become reality on December the 30th 2020 Boris Johnson signs the agreement and I know the question you will be asking yourselves is is have I read it the answer is yes it's an excellent deal for this country thank you all very much thank you I do think it's a huge mistake for the country I think others are going to pay a very significant price for that those who are going to lose their jobs as a consequence of it I think the UK is a less attractive place for inward investment and I think there are many ordinary British people probably ordinary British people who voted to leave in 2016 and voted conservative in 2019. who will sadly pay a price for this nominate political debate for the next 10 years it's just the way it is at the end of the day there's still this very big question mark what is it going to achieve apart from a lot of economic pain for the UK and a lot of hardship and poverty how will the UK use its New Freedom just one week after the final exit hardliners have already called for the abolition of environmental data protection and labor laws the battle over brexit will continue only the coming years will show how much this coup by the country's Rich Elite will change Great Britain I think too often we don't appreciate we don't understand how abuse of the electoral system abusive political system and the role of lobbying unchecked in politics can change and shift and kind of warp political landscape thank you [Music] foreign foreign [Music]

Channel: Moconomy

Views: 159,363

Keywords: The Brexit Scandal, Power Profit and Populism: The Battle for Hard Brexit, Hard Brexit, corruption, corruption in the uk, corruption in britain, dark money, british elite, documentary, documentaries, best documentary, youtube documentary, full documentaries, free documentaries, investigation, investigative documentary, influence by rich elites, influence on government, british government, brexit, brexit corruption, britain, great britain, british politics, politics in the uk

Id: 1ldfpUW0cEk

Length: 52min 22sec (3142 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 07 2023