Sunday, August 18, 2024
Funded by a secretive elite
The paper says that Reform Deputy Leader Richard Tice, who has frequently railed against ‘globalists’ and “elites”, accepted a long weekend in Germany paid for by Le Cercle - an allegedly CIA-funded secret society which supported Apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s and whose membership has allegedly included heads of state, intelligence operatives, industry chiefs and envoys from the Vatican..
They say that it has existed since the 1950s but has no public presence and has never revealed its founders - however former Tory minister Alan Clark claimed in his diaries that Le Cercle was "funded by the CIA":
Mr Tice’s trip to meet Le Cercle was revealed came in freshly published Commons documents detailing new MPs income and gifts in the last year.
The Register of Members Interests also revealed ex-PM Rishi Sunak accepted more than £47,000 worth of helicopter travel from Tory donors in the last year, as he made an increasingly desperate bid to cling on to power. The frontrunner to succeed him, Robert Jenrick, accepted two donations worth £50,000 from a personal training firm, Spott Fitness, which has lost money for the last two years running.
And rival candidate Kemi Badenoch declared £10,000 worth of “advice and training” gifted to her by Shaya Raymond, a strategy guru who specialises in reputation and crisis management.
The register also revealed Reform leader Nigel Farage pocketed £1.2 million in payments from GB News last year - as well as tens of thousands in payments from social media firms.
Mr Tice returned from Germany on May 12, a week before Rishi Sunak called the general election.
He was leader of Reform when the election was called, but gave way to Nigel Farage’s return a few weeks into the campaign.
The invitation-only group was founded to aid reconciliation between France and Germany after World War II, but its focus shifted to opposing communism in the 1960s, and to supporting Apartheid in South Africa in the 70s and 80s.
More recently, former Tory MPs Rory Stewart and Nadhim Zahawi were chairs of the group - while sitting on Parliament’s foreign affairs committee at the same time. Neither declared their chairmanship to Parliament.
A string of senior Tories has previously declared attending meetings of Le Cercle in recent years - including former Isle of Wight MP Bob Seely, former Deputy PM David Lidington and former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
And William Hague attended a meeting in Morocco in 2002 - in the time between his leadership of the Conservative Party and being made Foreign Secretary.
In a diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks in 2015, then-Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Abdulaziz bin Abdullah said the group was “largely European and American” and its members include “Members of Parliament, diplomats, members of the intelligence community, commentators and businessmen from over twenty-five countries.”
Alan Duncan, the former Foreign Minister, wrote in his diaries that he attended a meeting of the group in June 2016. He said it was a “long-standing, slightly crazy security conference which I’ve been going to for years.”
A 1999 article in the Independent claimed regular attendees included Bill Casey and William Colby - both of whom were heads of the CIA. Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon allegedly attended meetings.
And late MI6 officers Anthony Cavendish and Nicholas Elliot were also alleged to have been members.
The next time any of these MPs rail against the deep state, treat them with exteme scepticism.
