The dark arts vol 94

It seems that the egregious O Robbins, main civil servant Brexit negotiator and major actor in the Kit-Kat plot ( see below), was overheard in a bar predicting an extension to the Article 50 deadline.The Grudnia has:

Olly Robbins, was overheard in a Brussels bar saying MPs would be given a last-minute choice between her deal and a lengthy delay to Britain’s departure from the EU...

The link leads to earlier coverage:

Robbins said the government had “got to make them believe that the week beginning end of March ... extension is possible, but if they don’t vote for the deal then the extension is a long one.”..“The issue is whether Brussels is clear on the terms of extension,” Robbins was overheard saying. “In the end they will probably just give us an extension.”..On the backstop, Robbins appeared to confirm that the government’s initial plan was for the backstop, which effectively keeps the UK in a customs union, to form a temporary “bridge” to the long-term trading relationship...“The big clash all along is the ‘safety net’,” Robbins said. “We agreed a bridge but it came out as a ‘safety net’.” [Quite revealing. How duplicitous! ]

The Government denies all:

"Mr Robbins is likely to be appalled by this story [of the leak not the substance?] Officials advise. Ministers decide. What matters ultimately is the policy of the prime minister and the cabinet.”...But another senior Brexiter said “the trouble with Mr Robbins is that he is a draughts player in a chess world”...Robbins’ revealing remarks are likely to embolden those ministers who are increasingly anxious about the threat of a no-deal Brexit....

Back to more conventional fears of dark artery on Facebook with this by G Monbiot:

Dark money is pushing for a no-deal Brexit. Who is behind it? 

Almost everywhere trust in governments, parliaments and elections is collapsing. Shared civic life is replaced by closed social circles that receive entirely different, often false, information. The widespread sense that politics has become so corrupted that it can no longer respond to ordinary people’s needs has provoked a demagogic backlash that in some countries begins to slide into fascism..In Britain, for example, we now know that the EU referendum was won with the help of widespread cheating. We still don’t know the origins of much of the money spent by the leave campaigns. For example, we have no idea who provided the £435,000 channelled through Scotland, into Northern Ireland, through the coffers of the Democratic Unionist party and back into Scotland and England, to pay for pro-Brexit ads. Nor do we know the original source of the £8m that Arron Banks delivered to the Leave.EU campaign. We do know that both of the main leave campaigns have been fined for illegal activities, and that the conduct of the referendum has damaged many people’s faith in the political system...Since mid-January an organisation called Britain’s Future has spent £125,000 on Facebook ads demanding a hard or no-deal Brexit. ...So who or what is Britain’s Future? Sorry, I have no idea. As openDemocracy points out, it has no published address and releases no information about who founded it, who controls it and who has been paying for these advertisements. The only person publicly associated with it is a journalist called Tim Dawson, who edits its website. Dawson has not yet replied to the questions I have sent him. It is, in other words, highly opaque

 It's not just the Brexiteers though,although the headline would never let you guess:

The anti-Brexit campaigns are not much better. People’s Vote and Best for Britain have also been spending heavily on Facebook ads, though not as much in recent weeks as Britain’s Future....At least we know who is involved in these remain campaigns and where they are based, but both refuse to reveal their full sources of funding. People’s Vote says “the majority of our funding comes from small donors”. It also receives larger donations but says “it’s a matter for the donors if they want to go public”. Best for Britain says that some of its funders want to remain anonymous, and “we understand that”. 

Something Must Be Done. Monbiot comes to radical conclusions, not signalled at all in the headline (luckily, they are fantasy in the current circumstances so we can all nod wisely and move on):

Our politicians have instead left it to Facebook to do the right thing.... mostly, I think, it’s because, like other governments, it has become institutionally incapable of responding to our emergencies. It won’t rescue democracy because it can’t. The system in which it is embedded seems destined to escalate rather than dampen disasters. Ecologically, economically and politically, capitalism is failing as catastrophically as communism failed....As the famous saying goes: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Our urgent task is to turn this the other way round.

 And we do this by staying in the EU?