On October 22nd, independent journalists Paul D. Thacker and Matt Taibbi published a bombshell investigation, exposing how the intelligence-adjacent Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) hatched a covert plot at the start of 2024 to “kill [Elon] Musk’s Twitter.” This highly politicised attack on ‘X’ is just one component of a wider British invasion of the US political sphere, designed to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, guarantee the election of Kamala Harris, and keep Washington embroiled in the Ukraine proxy war quagmire.

CCDH was founded by Morgan McSweeney, a British political svengali widely credited with masterminding Keir Starmer’s landslide July general election win, now closely advising Harris’ presidential campaign. The organisation, which targets both left and right dissident voices for censorship and deplatforming, was spun out of Labour Together, a “think tank” McSweeney led from 2017 - 2020. In this position, he drew up Machiavellian plans for Starmer’s seizure of power, and neutralising then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his party support base, much of which subsequently came to fruition.

CCDH was a key element of McSweeney’s anti-Corbyn crusade. Officially founded in early 2019, its first act was to launch Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN). Initially operating without any clarity on who or what was funding and running the endeavour, it promoted boycotts of independent English-language news outlets. Resultantly, major businesses were pressured into withdrawing their adverts from target websites, to starve them of revenue. The approach was devastatingly effective, shutting down several websites and forcing others, like The Canary, to downsize.

Fast forward to today, and McSweeney is leading a pack of veteran British political strategists Stateside who, in the words of Politico, are teaching Harris and her campaign “how to win.” Multiple mainstream reports indicate this unprecedented support is concerned with maintaining the “Grand Atlantic Alliance” between London and Washington, and ensuring Starmer isn’t left “alone” in backing Kiev. Given the Machiavellian histories of McSweeney and CCDH, it is beyond doubt these efforts are but the visible tip of something far larger, and more destructive.

‘Something Dreadful’

The central role of British spies in cooking up Russiagate, the farcical conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was somehow compromised and/or controlled by the Kremlin, which dominated much of his first term in office, is today well-established. Former MI6 officer Christopher Steele was tasked by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee with digging up dirt on the presidential candidate, and he delivered the notorious “Trump-Russia dossier”. Steele’s spook associates then worked overtime to publicise the bogus document, while burnishing his credibility.

Yet, there is an integral part of this puzzle that has never before been revealed. On October 16th, 2016, General Richard Barrons, until six months earlier head of Britain’s Joint Forces Command, gave an explosive private address at the offices of the Institute for Statecraft (IFS). This shadowy British state-funded organisation, staffed by NATO and MI6 journeymen, had for years been proselytising a deeply dangerous worldview. Namely, that the West was already at war with Russia, but its politicians, pundits, businesspeople and citizens just didn’t know.

In July 2014, five months after the Maidan coup in Kiev, an essay published on the IFS website advocated a variety of “anti-subversive measures” targeting Moscow. This included “economic boycott, breach of diplomatic relations,” as well as “propaganda and counter-propaganda, pressure on neutrals.” The objective was to produce “armed conflict of the old-fashioned sort” with Russia, which “Britain and the West could win.” IFS finally got its war in February 2022 - and Britain and the West are now losing, badly.

During his October 2016 IFS talk, Barrons made a number of incendiary comments, laying the proxy conflict’s foundations. He lamented how Britain “has vital interests in having the ability to engage globally, but that engagement will no longer be on our terms alone,” due to the rising power of China and Russia. The pair, he said, were challenging “our world system”  - “power of initiative and decision” was “ebbing away from the West” as a result, and “the US can no longer protect us”:

“We have led comfortable lives since the end of the Cold War. [Recent] wars have been away matches on our terms…the opposition had no peer capabilities and could pose no military threat to [Britain]...They have given us the impression that we can afford war at two percent GDP…We need £7 billion more just to bring our current force up to effectiveness…Government is living in denial. We need discussion and debate as to how Russia can be managed and deterred.” 

Barrons went on to boldly declare, “We need to deal with Russia by doing things that are serious.” Accordingly, he suggested that “if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a response,” it was necessary to manufacture such a catastrophe - or several - rather than waiting “for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action.” By that time, IFS had for several months been managing a spy-run, Foreign Office-bankrolled disinformation operation, Integrity Initiative, to create precisely those catastrophes.

‘US Resolve’  

Integrity Initiative was formally launched in June 2016, at approximately the same time Christopher Steele inked his deal with high-ranking Democratic operatives to torpedo Trump’s presidential ambitions. The Initiative immediately set about fraudulently transforming domestic political events, such as Brexit, into direct, deliberate attacks by the Kremlin on Western countries, for black propaganda purposes. In the process, citizens and governments across Europe and North America were “shocked into action”, and demanded something be done to counter Russia’s purported broadsides against their democracies.

Accordingly, IFS was instrumental to the Russiagate fiction. Andrew Wood, British ambassador to Russia 1995 - 2000, part of the Institute’s “expert team” and an “associate” of Steele’s Orbis Intelligence, passed the Trump-Russia dossier to John McCain at the end of 2016. The now deceased Senator forwarded the document to then-FBI Director James Comey, and it was subsequently circulated across the US intelligence community, reaching the desk of outgoing president Barack Obama in the first week of January 2017.

These developments provided now-defunct BuzzFeed News with a ‘public interest’ defence to justify publishing the by then well-known but hitherto not released Trump-Russia dossier. Cue years of frenzied mainstream speculation and theorising about the White House occupant’s potential clandestine ties to the Kremlin, which ultimately came to less than nothing. Despite reheated claims of Russian meddling in the forthcoming election in Trump’s favour emanating from Biden administration officials and the FBI, American voters evidently aren’t taking the bait this time round.

To say the least, Kamala Harris has greatly underwhelmed the US public. Polling numbers diminishing daily, her public events attract aggressive hecklers over her stance on the Gaza genocide, and incompetent primetime interviews with major networks have been deeply embarrassing for the candidate, despite deceptive editing to make Harris appear less vapid. Her incompetence and total unsuitability for high office was hardly a secret previously, having been writ unambiguously large during her failed 2019 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. 

Poor debate performances, a failure to engage voters, and a brazen tendency to vary her message and platform depending on the audience eviscerated Harris’ polling numbers and donor income, prompting the termination of her campaign in December that year, before the formal Democratic primaries even began. However, some foreign observers were bizarrely impressed by Harris. In March 2019, British-born Simon Bracey-Lane, a former staffer on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, appeared on podcast Impressions of America, to discuss then-leading Democratic presidential nominees. 

Bracey-Lane ebulliently endorsed Harris at some length, declaring that her personal, political and professional background and qualities put her head-and-shoulders above competitors, thus making her a shoo-in to win the primaries, if not the White House. He went on to discuss his experiences of working for political campaigns. Unmentioned at any point in the program, Bracey-Lane was working for the Institute for Statecraft during this time - and questions abound about precisely what he was up to in the US, while ostensibly making calls for Sanders.  

After all, Bracey-Lane’s internal “expert team” biography notes he conducted a “special study of Russian interference in the US electoral process” concurrent with his work on Sanders’ 2016 campaign. If nothing else, his 2019 comments strongly suggest Harris has a certain attraction for British intelligence, dating back years. Perhaps they view her vacuity as an asset. In the late 1940s, the British exploited President Harry S. Truman’s political inexperience to drag the US into the Greek Civil War, thus kickstarting the Cold War. 

IFS chief Chris Donnelly is covertly leading Britain’s contribution to the Ukraine proxy war, committed to a strategy of endless escalation and provocation. Leaked emails show he is committed to challenging the Biden administration’s reluctance to get overtly involved in the conflict “firmly and at once.”In December 2022, the BBC confirmed British operatives were intensely worried about Biden’s “innate caution”, and had “stiffened the US resolve at all levels”, via “pressure.” 

Given British fears that Trump’s election will mean the proxy war’s end, Harris represents London’s last chance to foment “armed conflict of the old-fashioned sort” with Russia, as long-desired by IFS. Given Trump’s campaign has pledged to investigate CCDH and other British meddling in Harris’ favour “from all angles” upon victory, the entire “special relationship” could be on the line. What British intelligence has in store for Trump if that comes to pass isn’t clear, but the consequences could be world-threatening.