CWAChead

"Who is bankrolling Nigel Farage's party?" asks Bridget Phillipson. "Labour will protect our democracy from foreign influence." Right. Same question back. Who is bankrolling Labour, and the machine around it? Gary Lubner. South African. Former Autoglass chief. Millions. Lord Alli. Buys the clothes, lends the flat. George Soros. Money into Best for Britain and Fair Vote, routed through a London outpost, which is how a foreign fortune gets round a ban on foreign donations. Pierre Omidyar. French-Iranian, eBay founder, funding the campaign groups. Bill Gates. In for the photo call. Swedish philanthropists. Bloomberg. And Verbatim, which made the Channel 4 sting she is riding, is itself funded from abroad. So the watchdog on foreign money is on foreign money. And those are off the top of my head. No research. Give me an afternoon and the list fills a page. So the party promising to protect democracy from foreign influence is up to its neck in it, legally, through the same door, and has proposed no cap that would inconvenience a single person in the room. They held a drinks party for them in Downing Street. The question is not who is bankrolling Farage. It is why Labour thinks the answer changes depending on whose name is on the cheque. "Protect our democracy from foreign influence." They would not know where to start.