Conspiracies abound as Thomas Skinner threatens to sue BBC over Strickly dance contest

Is it a coincidence he had dinner with JD Vance in the summer?

I didn’t know who Thomas Skinner was until this summer. Apparently he’s a former contestant in the UK version of The Apprentice, and has been in this year’s series of BBC's Strictly Come Dancing, one of the UK's most watched celebrity contestant shows.

Skinner failed to make it into the show's final, and appears to be a little bit annoyed with the result.

It's now a conspiracy. This right wing citizen journalist provides a TeamSkinner summary of complaints against the BBC.

However the Daily Mirror questioned the case of conspiracy.

US connections

Skinner first came onto my radar in the summer when he was named as one those who JD Vance met while holidaying in the UK. A reminder of Vance’s meetings over the summer.

Skinner doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the crowd Vance met with, and attending a dinner with James Orr and Danny Kruger seemed odd at the time.

Since then Christian Nationalist Kruger has defected from the Conservatives to Farage's Reform, and Orr has joined Reform to take up a senior position in policy development.

The dinner was likely arranged by Orr, who befriended the vice-president when Vance converted to Catholicism. While not a household name Orr has had an influential role in driving the radical right agenda in the UK with a Christian Nationalist motive.

James Orr

James Orr is a founding member of the Free Speech Union, which due to Orr's involvement gained the support of tech billionaire Peter Thiel in its creation. Orr is on the board of the Edmund Burke Foundation which organises the National Conservatism Conference which has explicit Christian Nationalist overtones and is also closely linked to Peter Thiel.

Orr is a close friend of JD Vance and also used to be an advisor to Danny Kruger during Boris Johnson’s time as Prime Minister.

From the Byline Times By Iain Overton

Today, Orr sits as the UK chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation; chairman of the advisory board of the pro-Reform think tank(s) Resolute 1850 / Centre for a Better Britain; on the advisory board of the Prosperity Institute (aka the Brexit-backing Dubai-based group Legatum); and on the board of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (it sets out to “re-lay the foundations of our civilisation”). He also managed to find time to organise the Now and England event in June, which had shadow minister Robert Jenrick and one-time Reform MP Rupert Lowe on the ticket.

He’s a man so busy that his list of publications includes a claimed 2022 book, Being and Eternity (Bloomsbury) that, three years on, seems yet to have gone to print. It might take some time.

But judging by what he has published and said, Orr’s views are clearly absolute. He opposes abortion at every stage of pregnancy, including in cases of rape. He thinks the US Capitol riot of January 2021 was exaggerated by the “global left”. He believes diversity weakens nations. He finds Britain’s armed forces compromised by inclusive recruitment adverts. He admires American gun laws.

He also sees secularism as hollowing out “the human world of meaning, significance (and) transcendence”. And Orr seeks certainty against this godless world. He’s a man, in his own words, who stands “committed to the objective existence of the lawful regularities that order the world”.

The dinner will have occurred around the time Skinner's place on Strickly would have been confirmed.

Its unlikely Skinner went on the show with the intention of accusing the BBC of a conspiracy when he lost, more likely he was just hoping to use his appearance as a spring board to gain greater public recognition, but its not a suprised that someone who seems to be in the process of tying themselves to the radical right, ends up portraying themselves as a victim when things don’t go their way.

What next for Skinner, double or quits? Will it be a tour of right wing channels and podcasts blaming the BBC? Is being a Reform candidate in his future?

Further Reading