Tyranny Targets PM Starmer
Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and who has a criminal record spanning twenty years, was leading the protests called Unite the Kingdom in London on May 16. Nationalistic and anti-immigrant, Robinson/Yaxley-Lennon, with ties to Russia1, repeated the narratives given to him by the Russians2. This is no real surprise given that Musk and other tech billionaires are working with the Russians to reorder the world into something resembling 1984.
There is a domestic aspect and an international aspect to these efforts. Yaxley-Lennon pushes hatred and division in the name of saving a “declining civilization” while promoting a distorted nationalism (it is fair to say that all nationalism is a distortion). This in turn weakens the UK because it sunders domestic peace and unity.
Yaxley-Lennon and his forces are a reaction against claims of a foreign invasion by immigrants and tap into fear, hate, anger and more dark emotions as they get support from Russia and the likes of Elon Musk. In the reaction, things like solidarity, human rights, and the centrality of the person are jettisoned as politics acquires the meaning given it by former Nazi and fascist apologist, Carl Schmitt, and so becomes us versus them. When that happens in domestic societies, the international order is affected as domestic order, or disorder, plays out in relations between countries. For the UK, that means keeping out of the European Union and wrecking the trans-Atlantic alliance namely NATO. The world that would develop would be one known as multipolar or power blocks that served or were controlled by the dominant power in the respective areas. In other words, the world would be returned to the early 1900s right before the Great War. This is devolution.
In achieving their goals, the Russians and the plutocrats encountered an obstacle, and an opportunity — Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the results of local elections.
Local Elections
The Russians, working with certain transnational elites, are patient and play the long game. Their goal is to bring tyranny to domestic societies and a warring, fragmented, poorer world. These goals are not accomplished overnight, and a certain number of intermediate goals have to be met before realizing the ultimate objective. So, it is important to de-legitimate the existing order and that means destroying trust and confidence in democratic institutions while distracting and destabilizing to stoke hate, fear, anger, and us versus them. They do this by influence campaigns that weaken social cohesion and that in turn is done by exploiting divisions and amplifying things like distrust, cynicism and conflict.3 Certain events present themselves as opportunities to speed the process, and one of those events was the recent elections in the UK and the Unite the Kingdom rally.
On May 7, the UK held local elections for councils and councilors. As I understand it, there are about 18,000 councillors and around 369 councils. Not all of them were up for election. About 4900 councillor seats were considered by the voters and about 72 councils in this go around. PM Starmer’s party suffered heavy losses, the Reform Party gained the most, and the other parties also gained. Reform gained 1452 ending up at 1454, Labour lost about 1400 ending up at 1068, Liberal Democrats ended with 844 while the Conservatives were at 801, Greens at 587, and Independents 213.As far as councils go, Reform gained 23 to end up with 35, Labour kept 116. Labour remains the largest party in the House of Commons with 404 out of 650 and the second largest in the House of Lords with 215 out of 749. The Conservatives hold 60 counsels, 116 seats in the House of Commons and 232 seats in the House of Lords. Reform lags way behind with only 8 seats in the House of Commons and zero in the House of Lords. 4 Additionally, Labour kept its plurality with 4629 councillors total with Reform in a distant fourth with about 2354.5
There were howls for PM Starmer to resign, and he was called a globalist and a tyrant. The BBC and the London Standard, which is run by Yvgeny Lebedev a Russian by descent who also partly owns the Independent, ramped up the pressure on PM Starmer to resign. Other voices, quite predictably, were those of Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation who crooned “the people have woken up to the corruption and ineptitude of the political class” and Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian official responsible for the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a Russian sovereign wealth fund, and who is regularly feted by the Trump regime. Many claimed Starmer’s resignation was imminent but Starmer confided to several that he would not leave on his own. Then the Members of Parliament jumped in and voiced that they lost confidence in PM Starmer, and the country got ready for the Unite the Kingdom rally of May 16. Starmer went on the offensive denouncing the march as an attack on British society and he banned foreign agitators. Social media lit up with clams that the rally would lead to Starmer’s resignation. But Starmer did not resign.. Even when the rumors came Saturday night that he had privately stated he would resign, there was no formal announcement or statement. One former minister, Wes Streeting Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, declared his intention to run for PM. Starmer remained mum. The outpouring of support was phenomenal.
There was a reason for this grassroots support. PM Starmer, since being elected in May 2024 in a landslide, has been very successful. Immigration was down 78% by June, 2025 from two years earlier, pornography had been banned for those under 18, defense spending increased, the British economy came in as the fastest growing economy in the EU and G7 with .6% growth in the First Quarter 2026, free childcare was passed giving families up to 30 hours per week for 38 weeks, limits placed on rent increases, wages were up, new and more clean energy. The Economist reported that affordability had improved with reduced energy costs, reduced transportation costs, lower housing costs, health care improving, crime decreasing.6 On top of all of this, Brexit was increasingly viewed as a mistake, about 55 % of the public wanted to rejoin the EU with up to 80% among the young Britons, and PM Starmer was moving the UK back into the EU.7
Farage, Brexit, Reform
Nigel Farage is one of the key figures who brought about Brexit, a major objective of the Russians and the transnational business interests desiring tyranny. A national populist and member of Reform, he is clearly the tyrants’ favored for the job of Prime Minister. If he ever makes it into 10 Downing Street, he would keep the UK out of the EU, wreck the trans-Atlantic alliance, and do all he could to destroy British society. He is known as someone who does not support Ukraine, and the reason for that is not hard to imagine. Farage was close to Nathan Gill, a Reform Party leader, convicted of taking Russian bribes.8
Farage and Reform are themselves beholden to a crypto billionaire by the name of Christopher Harborne who also is known as Chakrit Sakunkrit as he spends much of his time in Thailand. Harborne provided about two thirds of Reform’s funding between 2019 and 2026, or about 22 million British pounds sterling. He also gave Farage five million GBP earlier in the year and previously paid Boris Johnson one million quid in 2022.9
During the course of his donations to Brexit or Reform, Harborne was found to have links to the Panama Papers, a trove of documents showing the secretive movements of funds by the world’s rich and famous.10 Many of the Panama Papers concerned Vladimir Putin as Jake Bernstein explained in Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papwers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite. Being a supporter of Brexit as well as populist nationalism, Harborne is a fellow traveler with Putin and the Russians. That in turn makes it more likely that Harborne also has financial interests with the Russians.
So in Farage we see the convergence of the efforts and interests of the tech oligarchs with the Russians in bringing tyranny to the peoples of the world by using national populism. The current events in the UK highlighted this situation and confirmed the reality.
On The Russian Penetration of British Society
The late Dr. Peter J. S. Duncan of the University College London was an expert in Slavonic and East European Studies. He authored a paper in October, 2019 that set forth the Russian penetration of Britain, and he submitted it to the UK Parliament11. Due to its relevance and importance, much of that paper is produced below. Dr. Duncan wrote:
“Executive summary
- Since the early 2000s the Kremlin has sought to create new networks to promote its interests and penetrate political parties
- These activities increased substantially after the Ukraine crisis, when Western states introduced sanctions
- Russian and Ukrainian money is being laundered through London and the authorities have been ineffective in stopping this…..
“… The USSR and then, since 1991, the Russian Federation have always sought to create constituencies in other countries to lobby for their political, strategic and economic interests and to promote a positive image of Russia. With the fall of the Soviet Union, these initiatives became less active in the 1990s. In the mid-2000s they were reborn with the growing assertiveness of Russia under President Vladimir Putin, powered by higher oil and gas prices and motivated by increased tensions with Western countries, especially the USA and UK…..
“In 2007 the Russian presidential administration set up, with the support of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, the international organization Russkii mir, ‘Russian World’. This was in order to appeal to a broad audience of people around the world interested in Russian language and culture. In 2008 the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs created Rossotrudnichestvo to encourage links between Russian émigrés and the Russian embassies of the countries they resided in. These two organizations, Russkii mir and Rossotrudnichestvo, perform similar functions to those of the friendship societies (such as the Anglo-Soviet Friendship Society) co-ordinated by Moscow during the Cold War. At the same time the Kremlin made legislative changes to make the work of Western-funded NGOs inside Russia more difficult, and acted to reduce the reach of the British Council by closing its offices outside Moscow….
“Additionally, the number of intelligence agents active in Western countries has increased significantly. These are mainly from the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) and the GU (formerly GRU, the intelligence service of the Ministry of Defence). Additionally, in Britain, there is some activity by the FSB (Federal Security Service), primarily among Russian émigrés. The FSB and the SVR are the main successor organizations of the KGB. Russian intelligence services and their agents have since the 1990s become entangled irretrievably with organized crime.
“The Russian intelligence services were mainly concerned with economic and military intelligence, but more recently sought to promote interference in British politics. Working through Sergey Nalobin, a first secretary in the political section of the Russian embassy in London, they sought to penetrate the Conservative and Labour parties. Using a PR firm, they established the ‘Conservative Friends of Russia’. The aim was to attract not only politicians but also companies and businesspeople with interests in dealing with Russia and wealthy Russians: banks and financial services, property companies and estate agents, and perhaps public schools. This was initially successful in achieving high-level support within the party. Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP, the former Defence Secretary and Foreign Secretary, became the honorary president. They overreached themselves when they launched a campaign against Chris Bryant MP, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Russia. Mr Bryant was famous for his defence of human rights in Russia, including LGBT rights. The SVR clearly wanted someone more sympathetic to the Kremlin. The publication by the Conservative Friends of Russia of an old picture from the Internet of Mr Bryant in his pants led to a scandal and the resignation in November 2012 of Sir Malcolm and other leading Conservative figures from the organization.[1] It was dissolved and then re-formed as the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, and continues to function under that name. The ‘Labour Friends of Russia’ on the other hand, never gained traction….
“Russian interference in the politics of NATO and EU members increased dramatically after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and covert military intervention in Eastern Ukraine. Sanctions imposed by the EU, the United States, Canada and others, coming on top of the fall in the oil price in 2014 hit the Russian economy hard. Average living standards in Russia have fallen in every one of the last five years. Additionally, the targeted sanctions pioneered by America against people close to Putin or implicated in key decisions have hit hard. The ‘Crimea effect’ which boosted Putin’s popularity inside Russia to high levels has now dissipated. Since this re-election to the presidency in March 2018, an election in which the Kremlin decided who his opponents would be, dissatisfaction has grown….
“8. The aims of the interference in Western politics are to end the sanctions and to reduce the level of criticism coming from the West of Russia’s domestic and foreign policies. This criticism can weaken Russia’s international position and encourage human rights activists and Putin’s other opponents inside Russia. The strategic aim is to weaken Western collective institutions, especially NATO and the EU.
“9. Long before the Brexit referendum, Moscow had given succour to the then principal advocate of Britain leaving the EU, UKIP. Nigel Farage, then the UKIP leader, appeared regularly on the Russian propaganda TV channel RT. UKIP’s agitation played a major role in the referendum being called in the first place. The departure of Britain from the EU would not only weaken the EU but also remove from it one of the principal backers of sanctions against Russia. Prior to the referendum, the Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Yakovenko offered Arron Banks cheap access to shares in a Russian mining company at a time when he was playing a prominent role in the Leave EU campaign. While the National Crime Agency found no proof of Mr Banks’ companies giving money illegally to the Leave campaign, it remains the case that the source of a substantial donation has not been identified and the suspicion remains that the money has its origins in Russia. Since the referendum, within the office of the Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn MP, there has been strong resistance to the idea of the Labour Party returning to a ‘Remain’ position. Two of the key figures in this, Seamus Milne and Andrew Murray, were associated in the 1980s with the publication Straight Left, an organ of the Stalinist wing of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Given the politics of the Communist Party at that time, it would have been natural that they might have had contact, however unknowingly, with the KGB.
“10. In the United States, the Mueller report did not prove collusion between the 2016 Trump presidential election campaign and the Kremlin. Nevertheless, much evidence was found of Russian interference to swing the election in favour of Trump. Actions by Moscow aimed at weakening the EU by strengthening the Far Right are well known, and more have probably still to come to light. Russia lent Marie Le Pen’s Front National nine million euros via the Prague-based First Czech Russian Bank. (This bank has since gone bankrupt.) In Germany, Russia helped Alternative für Deutschland by circulating a false story of a girl having been raped by Muslim refugees. The German Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations has acted as a lobby inside the country for a long time in favour of economic links with Russia. In Italy, an allegation has been made of support from Russia for Matteo Salvini’s Liga…..”
Earlier this year, with a paper presented to Parliament dated March 25, 2026 and known as the Rycroft Review,12 the tactics of the enemies were made clear. They sought to cause loss of trust in the democratic system, the coarsening of political debate, normalization of public expression of deeply unpleasant attitudes, and the exploitation of all of these expressed sentiments. The report stated:
“1.This country faces a persistent problem of foreign interests seeking to exert influence on, and to interfere in, our politics. Too much of this is malign and seeks to sow distrust and exacerbate divisions in UK society, with the ultimate aim of undermining confidence in our democracy.
“2. This review is timely. A combination of heightened geo-political tensions and new technology-enabled routes of access to the British public has created the incentive and the means for hostile states and other actors to increase their efforts to interfere in UK politics…
“8. Foreign financial influence and interference comes in two broad domains: attempts to directly infiltrate our politics by gaining direct leverage over political parties and political process; and attempts to create division and distrust among the wider public through activity on social media and other vectors. …….
“20. In an uncertain geo-political context, hostile states and non-state actors have a clear incentive to attempt to undermine UK democracy and thereby weaken the UK’s capacity to assert its interests. The UK has been central to the coalition supporting Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion. The UK remains conspicuous through its commitment to liberal, democratic values which are antithetical to the positioning of autocratic states across the world….”
Conclusion
The combined efforts of the Russians and the global plutocrats are targeting PM Starmer, and with him the UK. Whether they succeed or not remains to be seen as of the preparation of this paper. Increasingly, the world is becoming aware of Russian meddling in the political affairs of our allies who are also Russia’s enemies, and we are all becoming aware of the Russian tactics and the identity of their allies.
1 See, Sarah Hurst, “`Rape of Britain’: Russia Rolls Out the Red Carpet for `Tommy Robinso’,”23 February 2020, Byline Times.
2 See, Kirill Dmitriev, post on X 16 May 2026 12:53 a.m.; see various posts on X by Elon Musk
3 See, “Russian Information Operations” posting with reference to EUvsDisinfo, EEAS-FIMI Overview, NATO Stratcom COE, Russian Disinfo in CEE, Rand “Firehose of Falsehood.”
4 Michael D. Shear,“Starmer’s Party Suffers Stark Losses in UK Local Election,” May 9, 2026, New York Times.
5 Open Council Data UK
6 Data from a variety of sources: TLDR news, Migration Observatory, BBC, gov.UK.
7 See, Statista, YouGov
8 Peter Jukes, “Thick as Thieves: Nathan Gill and Nigel Farage’s Putin Problem,” October 4 2025, Byline Times; (Ben Quinn, Rowena Mason, Kran Stacey, “Nigel Farage Urged to Root Out Reform Links to Russia After Jailing of Nathan Gill: Party’s Former Leader in Wales Admitted to Taking Payments to Make Statements in Favour of Russia” 21 November 2025, The Guardian.
9 Anna Isaac, “The key questions for Nigel Farage over 5m pound gift from crypto billionaire,” May 13, 2026, The Guardian; George Monbiot, “Political Donations Are Poison to Our Democracy – But There’;s An Easy Antidote to That,” April 30, 2026, The Guardian.
10 Oliver Wright, “Businessman with Panama Papers Links Gives 3 Million Pounds to Brexist Party,” November 26, 2019, The Times.
11 The paper may be found at www.committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/105608/html/.
12 See “Foreign Financial Influence and Interference: UK Politics” found at hansard.parliament.uk.