BORIS Johnson has been meeting with the alt-right operator who took Donald Trump to the White House.
The former foreign secretary met with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon just last week, according to reports.
A source who spent time with Bannon during his recent trip to the UK told Buzzfeed the two men had a get-together together. It’s unclear exactly what they were discussing, though the website’s source said: “I’m sure they weren’t discussing the cricket scores.”
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A former UK Government source said that the two men have known each other for some time and exchanged text messages as far back as when Johnson was in government and Bannon worked in the West Wing.
During his time in the UK – which coincided with Trump’s working trip – Bannon also reportedly met with Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Over the weekend, it was revealed Bannon was working with Farage’s former aide, Raheem Kassam, on a new organisation to “undermine, and ultimately paralyse” the EU. The group, known as The Movement, is already operating and hiring.
“The Movement will be our clearing house for the populist, nationalist movement in Europe,” Kassam told Reuters. “We’re focusing attention on assisting individuals or groups concerned with the matters of sovereignty, border control, jobs, amongst other things,”
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“We decided to headquarter out of Brussels because it is the heart of the European Union — the most pernicious force against nation-state democracy in the West today,” he addded.
Bannon described The Movement as a “populist project” with the ultimate aim of getting ethnic-nationalist out in May 2019 for the next European Parliament elections, where turnout is historically low.
SNP MEP Alyn Smith said: “If anyone had any respect for Boris Johnson surely this must finish it.
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“For him to be colluding with the deeply sinister Bannon tells us everything we need to know about him. Where these punters are often dismissed as bumbling oafs or harmless, even amusing ‘characters’, the fact is there is a deeply sinister attempt under way to attack our democracy.
“In the week a supposedly mainstream Tory MEP called for treason to include being pro-EU we all need to see them for what they are.”
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