The Sun’s Facebook Giveaway

As I noted yesterday, the spin is already being applied to the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook ruckus, with both the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, and his pal Mark Wallace at Conservative Home, desperately playing down the significance of the revelation on data breaches and dirty tricks. And as the Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun have shown, this is no mere coincidence.

Simple choice, Tone - do as you're told, or your P45

The old adage that if one wants to know what Rupert Murdoch really thinks, one should read a Sun editorial, should be borne in mind when reading today’s crude deflection attempt - to which Liam O’Hare has helpfully provided an explainer.

Here’s the Sun, pretending there is nothing to see here, honestly: “THE Facebook data scandal is being wildly exaggerated for political ends … Those most excited wouldn’t give a damn had it not supposedly helped Donald Trump into power. Some even farcically claim it turned the Brexit vote … They blamed ‘racism’, Boris’s bus, The Sun and other Brexit-backing papers. Now it was down to ‘data-harvesting’ … Will they ever accept that 52 per cent of voters simply disagreed with them?”

Quite apart from the dead giveaway - there is no direct evidence of Brexit vote abuse out there (yet) - that, together with the equally crude photo caption under the image of Combover Crybaby Donald Trump, “Lefties pedalling the conspiracy that Cambridge Analytica helped Trump get into power wouldn't have cared if he had lost for the same reason”, is there for one reason, and that’s to defend the Establishment.

O’Hare gives us some reasons why that might be. “SCL is headed up by Nigel Oakes, another old Etonian, who, according to @Powerbase has links to the British royals and was once rumoured to be an Mi5 spy … Mark Turnbull, who joined Alexander Nix at the secretly filmed meetings, heads up both SCL Elections as well as Cambridge Analytica Political Global. He was at Bell Pottinger for 18 years including leading the production of Pentagon funded fake al-Qaeda videos”. And there is more.

“The President of SCL is Sir Geoffrey Pattie. He is a former vice chairman of the Tory party, and served in Thatcher's cabinet, including as defence minister. Another of SCL's directors is the millionare and former British special forces officer in Borneo and Kenya, Roger Gabb. In 2006 he donated £500,000 to the Conservative party. Gabb was fined by the Electoral Commission for failing to declare his funding for adverts campaigning for a Leave vote in the Brexit referendum”. Plus there are more of those Tory Party links.

“[SCL’s] chairman is venture capitalist Julian Wheatland. He also happens to be chairman of Oxfordshire Conservatives Association. The organisation has also been funded by Jonathan Marland, a former Conservative Party Treasurer, a trade envoy under David Cameron, and a close friend of Tory election strategist Lynton Crosby. Meanwhile, property tycoon and Conservative party donor Vincent Tchenguiz was also the single largest SCL shareholder for a decade”. The Establishment is in this up to its neck.

Also, the Trump gang is in the firing line. And Cambridge Analytica head man Robert Mercer is a close friend of Murdoch. This “perfect storm” of vulnerability is why Sun editor Tony Gallagher has had his instructions, whatever his journalistic instincts might tell him. As Colonel Ross told Harry Palmer, “That’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it?”