Her appearance on the paper review sofa of The Andy Marr Show (tm) was the height of righteous denial: mercenary pundit Isabel Oakeshott shouted down the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr over the Cambridge Analytica revelations, demanding “One provable link” between the Leave campaign and CA. Ms Oakeshott claimed the Observer was “just chasing unicorns”. BBC host Andrew Neil dismissed the Observer story as “hearsay”.
She must have known the “One provable link” was going to come, and sooner rather than later: the Leave EU connection was, after all, claimed unequivocally in Arron Banks’ book The Bad Boys Of Brexit, and that book had been ghosted for Banks by, er, none other than Isabel Oakeshott (she is described as its “editor”).
And so it has come to pass: the links between Cambridge Analytica, its parent company SCL, and Aggregate IQ (the Canadian company whose lawyers protested that they had no connection with the other bits, honestly) have been remorselessly exposed over the succeeding weeks. And now has come the smoking gun that demonstrates conclusively that Ms Oakeshott has been seriously economical with the actualité.
As Ms Cadwalladr has now told, “the Observer has obtained an invoice that Cambridge Analytica issued on 14 December 2015 for £41,500 for work it undertook on behalf of Ukip. The invoice says the payment is for ‘analysis of Ukip membership and survey data and creative product development’, and it is issued on behalf of Cambridge Analytica LLC, the American entity, from its office in Alexandria, Virginia. This is the first documentary evidence that Cambridge Analytica did conduct analytics work on behalf of one of the Leave campaigns in the period before the referendum”. Hello provable link.
Then come the reverse ferrets. “Banks confirmed to the Observer that he was also sent the invoice at that time too. He said he subsequently made a donation for the amount to cover the invoice to Ukip. A spokesman for Ukip, speaking to the Guardian last month, denied any payment for the work was made but he confirmed Banks had in fact made the donation after ‘new information had come to light’”. After they got caught, more like.
Moreover, “Banks has long denied that Cambridge Analytica did any work for Leave.EU, as has Cambridge Analytica”. Well, well. There was more shifting of positions: “Ukip had told the Guardian previously that Cambridge Analytica ‘saw’ the data but a spokesman admitted the information - including telephone numbers, email addresses, ages, and other personal information among other things - was given to the company”.
And now we learn that “The Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating Leave.EU and its donor Arron Banks over possible breaches of the Data Protection Act … The ICO has issued ‘information notices’ against both Leave.EU - the referendum campaign headed by Nigel Farage - and its director, Banks”. That is on top of the legal opinion obtained by the DCMS Committee suggesting some of Vote Leave’s people may face prosecution.
Yet there was Isabel Oakeshott howling that there was really no connection between CA and the Leave campaign - with Andrew Neil in full support.
Ms Oakeshott’s credibility was not good before her outburst. Now it’s no longer there at all.
8 comments:
Oakeshott is just another dead-faced London tory propaganda gimp with the intellect of a moth.
Now why would the "impartial" BBC and the tory Marr (and others of that media ilk) give such a shouty charlatan so much air time?
She's appeared very suddenly......Funny that. Entirely coincidental of course.
£41,000 to analyse UKIP membership? I could have told Banks that 100% of UKIP members intended to voted Leave for half that.
I was wondering if, given Ms Oakeshott's position as a full time employee of the Right, if David Cameron stepped down or was pushed. Are there more stories from the source that gave us tales of porcine love?
Different nonny mouse
And despite the snitch oakshite being found to be a tom pepper once again, it'll STILL be invited on political panel shows, as some sort of 'authority'.
One malodourous twunt, that. REAL journalists should shun the grassing,lying, whining little shite.
Are we all having a nice Sunday, boys?
Anonymous @ 15:10.
I suspect a better day than the innocent Syrians blown to bits by the gun crazy USA and the poodle Brits and French.
Can someone with a VAT background to me explain why VAT was not charged on this invoice? This is consultancy work, so I would have thought VAT should have been applied at 20%. If UKIP were able to claim VAT back, then it should still be included on this invoice (and then they claim it back in their VAT return).
If this is right, then we have evidence that UKIP & others owe a huge debt to the VAT man.
@anon 16:29
The invoice is from Virginia USA not a UK company and there is a process for dealing with non-VAT invoices from outside.
However the Guardian article has Brittany Kaiser, a former Cambridge Analytica director, stating that the invoice was not paid.
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