Breitbart Clegg Russia Hypocrisy

The discovery that Nigel “Thirsty” Farage has been a regular guest on Russian state-controlled broadcaster Russia Today (RT) has been given due prominence by the deeply subversive Guardian, which notes that “The Ukip leader's Euroscepticism makes him a shoo-in at the Russian state broadcaster that is often called Putin's mouthpiece”. He’s been on 17 times since December 2010.

Pretentious? Who, moi?

Farage’s Europhobic ranting has included telling the RT audience “Europe is governed not by elected democracies but instead ‘by the worst people we have seen in Europe since 1945’”. RT’s promotional literature claims “He has been known far longer to the RT audience than most of the British electorate”. So his well-known praise for Vladimir Putin should come as no surprise.

It is before this backdrop that the batshit collective otherwise known as Breitbart London has set out to smear Farage’s opponent in this evening’s televised debate. “Nick Clegg was once a partner in the Brussels lobbying firm which counsels Russian president Vladimir Putin ... The firm, GPlus Europe, also acts in Brussels for Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled energy giant” readers are told.

There was, as Captain Blackadder might have observed, only one thing wrong with this: it was bollocks. Clegg, as the Breitbart piece concedes at the end, left the firm the year before its association with the Russians. It’s an amateurish and desperate smear, and most appropriately has been cobbled together by an equally desperate has-been: step forward Mary-Ellen Synon.

Ms Synon, whose services have become surplus to requirements at the Daily Mail, is famous (or, as the late Russell Harty might have put it, “nay, infamous”) for her affair with former deputy Governor of the Bank of England Rupert Pennant-Rea. Following the revelation that the two had sex on the floor of the Governor’s dressing room, she was nicknamed “The Bonk Of England” by the tabloids.

Moreover, Ms Synon is also infamous for the unpleasantness of her attacks, as well as her admiration of Ayn Rand and championing of Sarah Palin. So she cannot lay claim to serious consideration. And it gets worse for Breitbart London, as Managing Editor Raheem “Call Me Ray” Kassam (he’d have difficulty managing an act of alcoholic derangement in an EU wine lake) advertises his recent TV appearances.

“Ray” has been on the telly discussing allegedly wasteful spending by the British Embassy in Washington DC. The broadcaster? None other than RT! So the rabble who are trying to smear Nick Clegg with a Russian connection that does not exist have their own, er, Russian connection, which is all too real, and all too current. What a bunch of grade A steaming hypocrites.

Breitbart London is clearly an arena of monumental desperation. No surprise there.