Isabel Oakeshott - Oh What A Giveaway

Just occasionally, the Europhobic fringe lets something slip which they might have been best advised keeping quiet about. More often, the conspiratorial mindset can be seen hard at work, showing why QAnon has taken hold among the paranoid tendency in US politics. Yesterday’s bonus was to have both on offer from mercenary hack Isabel Oakeshott, who thinks it’s the Government, and not her, that’s trying to scare people over Covid-19.

Her opening shot was to pretend that it wasn’t happening, because no-one is being tested. The thought that pinch points in the testing system might not be where she is looking is not allowed to enter. So it was that she told her followers “Just driven past the huge coronavirus testing centre outside Oxford. Around two dozen very bored looking staff are just hanging around in the sunshine fiddling with their phones. Where are the ‘patients’?”

Tweet timed at 1354 hours, so she drove past at lunchtime. Moreover, how did she know what they were all doing if she was paying attention to the road ahead? Also, the information they needed to carry out those tests might just come to them via, er, their phones. But she was sure that this meant something. So she doubled down.

“What a farce. Replies to this tweet suggest it’s the same story up and down the county. Yet the government is considering another devastating lockdown and wants to fine people £10k for breaches? It’s a big F off from me”. A word in your shell-like, Ms O: if you spent half an hour at your local station and saw no trains depart for London, would that mean there weren’t any? Would that be true if the car park was empty?

But just to show how clued up on Covid-19 she wasn’t, later we were treated to “We are not ‘fighting’ coronavirus, as [Boris Johnson] vacuously claims, but running away and hiding from it. How about we support the elderly and vulnerable to shield, and everyone else keeps calm, takes sensible precautions and carries on??” Running away? You want Richard and his pal Nige to offer it outside for a bit of afters?

But then came the giveaway, hidden among all the conspiracist rubbish. “Is it just me or is this [BBC Panorama] really boring? Banks take money from dodgy people shock”. Who would be an ideal person to put her straight? Yes, here’s Carole Cadwalladr: “Extraordinary story on Panorama about how Brexit Party took £10 million from a donor - Christopher Harborne - who has a second secret identity & appeared in #FinCENFiles - transactions logged as ‘suspicious’ by banking staff … Nigel Farage declined to answer any questions”. Harborne appeared in the Panama Papers, too. And there was more.

Tom Scott noted that “It's no accident that both Boris Johnson's Tories & Farage's Brexit Party feature in Panorama's exposure of money-laundering. Brexit is a boon for money-laundering crooks. Farage's former close personal aide is a convicted money-launderer”. Ah yes - remember “Posh George” who was nicked at O’Hare Airport in 2016?

Good of Ms Oakeshott to remind everyone - while ostensibly otherwise engaged in pushing fringe Covid-19 testing scares - that the Brexit Party and its predecessors have been involved with some seriously dodgy characters. And to think that, had she kept schtum, those past episodes might never have been extracted from the memory hole.

The Brexit Party and money. They’d rather no-one discussed it. So I will, thanks.

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