Exposé: Who and/or what is backing ‘Renew Britain’?

 We have a fresh new UK political Party in our midst, which is targeted at ‘You and all the people of the United Kingdom – across regions, generations, professions, sectors, ethnicities. You might work in business or the public service, from any religion or ethnic minority, you might live at the top of a city tower block or a farm in the country, you might have a traditional education or relevant life experience or you could be just starting your career or beginning retirement. You could be a single working mother, trying to get by, or a young couple trying to afford a home and start a family’. The Slog investigates.

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Do you like being patronised? Do you think Nick Clegg deserves a knighthood? Do you think Britain’s future lies with the introduction of spooks, NATO goons and former policemen into politics? Do you follow France en marche? Do you find yourself envying the brainpower of gnats?  Then Renew Britain is the Party for you.

Yes, Renew Britain is the new kid on the block – arrows all a-quiver and ready to be fired in the cause of, um, a vision and some fresh core ideas.

Fresh core idea No 1: reverse Brexit.

Blimey and Wowser. That one is straight out of Left field. I need to lie down and take it all in. This must be what they mean by Couture Schlock. Sorry, culture shock.

Fresh core idea No 2: Radical Centrism.

Yeh, mon Dieu. Je bet que Emmanuel Macron n’est pas pensé de ça one – aucun doute. Original ou quoi?

Some clues from the website. ‘About Renew Britain’ tells you nothing about where the money comes from; but it does tell you that there is a Gang of Three at the top of it:

James Torrance. He is either a dead Scottish professor or James Torrance Head of Strategy at Renew Britain. “We intend to be tough on Brexit and tough on the causes of Brexit,” he told the media earlier this week. He didn’t say that edukashun was Britain’s Princess of Hearts, but I was fully expecting him to.

James Clarke. Who he? Well, he’s leg two of the renewal stool who proclaimed at the launch that “Some of the anti-Brexit pressure groups and movements are very, very much focused on asking people to pressure their local MP to have a second thought on Brexit. What we are is almost the more military arm of that movement, whereas we are actually standing candidates in seats to threaten those MPs that are not changing their minds, or are not standing up for the views of their constituents.” So he’s like a sort of Sinn Fein candidate with the threat of military violence if things don’t go their way at the at the ballot box, with inappropriate use of ‘whereas’.

Sandra Khadhouri. Now here we know quite a bit more. Ms Khadhouri’s last job was working for NATO in Georgia which, as we know, is not a NATO member, as such. She says that Brexit has made Britain a post-conflict country in crisis. Sandra runs a  consultancy advising post-conflict countries in crisis.

And let’s not forget Renew Britain’s founder, Chris Coghlan. Chris is either a well-known US utility baseball fielder, or the bloke who used to work as an anti-terrorist policeman cooperating with EU and NATO counterparts.

It seems unlikely to me that these folks came up with something so original, so fresh and so centrist paramilitary not really revolutionary and anti-Brexit as Renew Britain.

Somehow, I smell the distinctive odour* of Tony Blair, Lord Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, Nick Clegg, Guy Verhofstadt and George Soros in the background to all of this.

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*French Sloggers may pronounce this word “ordure” if they so wish.