Don’t Menshn Cambridge Analytica

While the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr, assisted by whistleblowers Chris Wylie and Shahmir Sanni and Byline Media’s Peter Jukes, continue to bring the Brexit vote scandal to a wider audience, there is, in a suitably upmarket corner of Manhattan, someone working feverishly to project her own highly creative spin on the affair. To no surprise at all, this presence is (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch.

COOEEE! It's me Me MEEEE!!

Ms Mensch has decided that Wylie has done something unlawful, and so is about to be banged up somewhere Stateside. Oh, and Russia is in there too. When you really lose that grip on reality, anything is possible. Or, in her case, perhaps not.

She was watching Wylie’s appearance before the DCMS Committee. “Don’t overlook the fact that Wylie colluded with both AIQ and Cambridge Analytica and simply wants to avoid US prison - he’s trying to save his own skin by grandstanding … Chris Wylie is describing crimes to @CommonsCMS that he himself was part and parcel of. Russia Today is live-streaming his testimony and is promoting him. Let’s hope Mueller is not as easily gulled. In fact, I know he won’t be”. What’s Bob Mueller got to do with this? Seriously?

But the logic leaps had already taken over. “Damian Collins is now asking the really important questions - excellent, my mood lifting. It was Russia behind #CambridgeAnalytica”. Wait, what? Ah, but this opens the door to even more wacko conspiracy rubbish. You think I jest? “Chris Wylie just confessed that the FSB logged everything Alex Spectre Kogan did. @DamianCollins asks the tough questions with impressive results - #CambridgeAnalytica is Russian intelligence”.

Spectre? Is there someone out there with a white cat and a bodyguard with a venom-tipped shoe? Who knows? And, indeed, who cares? In any case, by now she was off and running. “I’m delighted to see Wylie is lying that #CambridgeAnalytica was not colluding with the FSB and dodging @DamianCollins questions about Yandex trackers. Confirms for me @chrisinsilico is a Russian asset. Of course Kogan colluded with Russia! He laughably says otherwise!” Now Wylie is a Russian asset! And a pig just flew past the window!

And he’s going to be put on trial. “Russia and #CambridgeAnalytica are the same. Wylie pretends not to know of Yandex trackers and he defends Nix and Spectre Kogan because collusion with Russia is what he will be tried on”. Can you smell burning?

Then comes a new feature: another Twitter account. Ms Mensch is running two of them, the second in her maiden name of Louise Bagshawe. Does this mean anything? Is a new mood being introduced here? Whatever. “Lol now Wylie is defending #CambridgeAnalytica on Ivans for IndyRef! Couldn’t make it up” By “Ivans” she means more Russians. So the dastardly Ruskies were in there on the Scottish referendum too. Allegedly.

That much was bad enough, but then came Ms Cadwalladr’s assertion that she had some of the emails a year ago, but could not publish them. Ms Mensch demanded to know why - as well as getting it laughably wrong. “Why couldn’t you publish them a year ago? Because Wylie wouldn’t allow it?” Chris Wylie is clearly all-powerful!

Well, Ms Mensch has convinced herself that he is, even if she isn’t convincing anyone else. “We need to know if ‘Whistleblower Wylie’ stopped the Guardian from publishing these emails then. Who prevented them reporting this crucial info on Thiel for an entire year?” The answer is no. As in Stating The Bleeding Obvious.

But she was now going to tell us about Peter Thiel: “Time was I was asked not to tweet about or report on @PeterThiel, by sources linked to the intelligence community, in order that he not flee the United States. That time has passed :)”. Yeah, right. Taken her into their confidence, those security services. In her dreams.

Louise Mensch’s fantasy world of Bond villains, tradecraft, Russians everywhere, and the US security agencies banging up those she dislikes in the nearest slammer, bears no relation to the real world. But at least it keeps her occupied.