Bent

by Rick Johansen

Brexiteers will know all about Arron Banks. He’s their idol. He’s the multimillionaire friend of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. He helped buy Brexit. He, like most Brexiteers, comes from the very hard right in British politics. And today he comes up with a tweet which takes him from the gutter into the sewer: “So bent @BenPBradshaw & @RhonddaBryant how much money did you take from Open Democracy and George Soros @carolecadwalla.”

In case you were wondering, Ben Bradshaw and Chris Bryant are Labour MPs who happen to be gay. To the vast majority of people, that someone happens to be gay is of zero interest and relevance. Banks uses the word “bent” purely to draw attention to the fact that the two men are gay. He obviously has a problem with this. I suggest he seeks urgent therapy. Or perhaps he has insecurities he hasn’t told us about?

I have far more issues with a man who is to all intents and purposes a fully paid up fascist. Whose best friend appears to be the frog-faced arsewipe Nigel Farage, the man directly responsible for the horrendous mess Britain is in with Brexit. And the story, the real story, behind what led to Brexit has yet to be fully revealed.

Is it, for example, a coincidence that Banks, whose wife is Russian, is a huge admirer of Vladimir Putin, as is his friend Nigel Farage, as is their mutual friend Donald Trump? Is it purely by coincidence that evidence is now emerging that Russia did not just interfere with the US presidential election, on Trump’s behalf, it may well have interfered with last year’s EU referendum? It is widely believed that sooner or later Trump’s presidency will unravel because of his involvement with Putin. Who will he take with him?

Last night, Theresa May made a major speech in which she made a fully frontal attack on Russia. Given May’s embarrassing grovelling to Trump earlier this year, desperate as she is for a post Brexit trade deal, something must have happened to put any such deal at risk. Except that she probably didn’t because Trump’s promises are just bluster. He’s a far right nationalist like…

Lashing out at gay people can only be for two reasons: one is that he is homophobic and two that he is trying to change the subject. Looking beyond the bullshit, officials and journalists from all around the world are going to investigate what’s really going on here and they will not stop until they work it out.

“Follow the money”, said Woodward and Bernstein’s mole, Deep Throat, as they uncovered the Watergate conspiracy. That’s where this will end, too.

Arron Banks is clearly not a particularly pleasant individual and we didn’t need to read his homophobic tweets to work that one out. But bad people eventually get found out and so will he. Trump and Brexit are two sides of the same coin. They stand for exactly the same thing. In due course, we should find out that they were caused by the same thing and by the same people who conspired with President Putin.

According to my dictionary, bent can also mean “morally crooked; corrupt.” Arron Banks used the word in a different context to two gay MPs. I think this one applies specifically to him.

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