Unelected peer Toby Young went to Washington to urge for trade deals to exert foreign influence

From campaigning for "Parliamentary Sovereignty" during Brexit to actively supporting foreign influence

In an interview with GB News the unelected Conservative Peer Toby Young explained how a few weeks ago he travelled to Washington to urge the Trump administration to use trade deals to force the UK Government's hand and to undermine the Online Safety Act that was introduced by the party that put him into the House of Lords.

It would be interesting to know how Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch feels about one of the peers she appointed apparently operating independently from her Shadow Cabinet on foreign policy.

Toby Young was part of the “Brexit Battalion Media Corps”, a self-titled group of journalists and commentators who actively campaigned for Brexit with a win at all costs mentality. Parliamentary sovereignty and the removal of unelected officials were the core benefits of Brexit advocated by this group. Now many among this group are the most vocal in their calls for Trump to actively intervene in the politics of the UK through sanctions and trade deals demands.

Now as an unelected peer Young is seeking to put additional barriers in the way of potentially important trade deals. Young has also sought to go over the top of the UK's Covid Inquiry by tableing an ammendment in the Lords that would hinder the government's ability to close schools in a future pandemic.

It should be noted Young has celebrated a collaboration with Elon Musk where the X owner has provided Young's Free Speech Union (FSU) funding to pursue legal action in the UK. Young has said he hopes this collaboration is the first of many with Musk.

The FSU was founded by Young with Christian Nationalist James Orr and a few others. Orr is a member of the Edmund Burke Foundation which founded the National Conservatism movement of conference with the support of Tech broligarch Peter Thiel, and Thiel provided support to the creation of the FSU. Young has been a speaker at previous NatCon's while Orr appears at every event. Orr has recently joined Nigel Farage's Reform Party, taking up a senior position in policy development, after meeting with his friend JD Vance for dinner in the UK over the summer.

Young also founded and runs the Daily Sceptic (formerly Lockdown Sceptics), which is a hub for conspiracy theorists, disinformation and pseudoscience. Young was a key lockdown opponent and was fully aligned with Jay Bhattacharya who leads the NIH in Trump's administration.

Young was also previously an associate editor for the now defunct Quillette which was funded by Peter Thiel.

Through the FSU Young has further imported US culture wars into the UK, to the point where almost every day there is a FSU case in the newspapers where important context is left out, and through the Daily Sceptic Young is also funnelling his followers into conspiracy culture.

When the Online Harms Act was passed Young celebrated how many of the original proposals had been watered down through the efforts of the FSU.

While claiming to be a defender of free speech, Young has mainly either ignored or justified the Trump administration's attacks on free speech. Considering how closely connected Young has become to the Musk/Thiel faction of MAGA its no suprise that the FSU's work is quoted by JD Vance and others in the administration as examples of the supposed end of free speech in the UK. The most well known example being the FSU's legal appeal on behalf of Lucy Connolly who was imprisoned after calling for migrant hotels to burned down with the occupants inside “for all I care”.

This is yet another example of the UK's radical right; steeped in disinformation and conspiracy culture, working directly with the Trump administration's foreign influence operation set out in the recent national strategy review.

Farage testified to Jim Jordan's committee in Congress, claiming the UK was becoming like North Korea, to a committee which is clamping down on research into disinformation.

Failed former Prime Minister Liz Truss has launched a podcast which appears focused on undermining UK democracy and its institutions, her recent guest was Curtis Yarvin, the far-right blogger tied to Thiel and Bannon who champions the Dark Enlightenment, an ideology which believes that democracy should die to be replaced by governance by oligarch overlords.

GB News has launched its Washington office which has fully integrated into the MAGA media world, providing sycophantic interviews to members of the Trump administration as they slap sanctions onto UK citizens involved in challenging disinformation.

It appears those who shout loudest about their patriotism in the UK are collaborating with an increasingly hostile foreign government.

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