Well, what half the Balkans knew, and most parapolitical researchers long suspected, appears now to have been confirmed.
In an interview with today's Telegraph (designed to encourage Blairite MPs to defect to the Liberal Democrats) the former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown is openly described as an ex "Secret agent for MI6".
Sadly the on-line version lacks this admission, but it explains a lot about the access Ashdown was able to gain to politicians in south eastern Europe. When they dealt with Ashdown, they knew they were dealing directly with MI6. Indeed Jasper Gerard's article states:
"He also admits to continuing to pass information to MI6 while leader of the Liberal Democrats, and that he secretly smuggled detonators into Sarajevo during the Balkans conflict".
And to think the Western media used to accuse the Serbs of paranoia!
This tells us a great deal about UK politics, and the fear that spooks engender.
Most democracies would consider it pretty dubious to have a spook as one of their leading politicians, especially as Ashdown was so keen to position himself as the kingmaker had the 1997 general election resulted in a hung Parliament. Instead the scale of Blair's landslide was so significant, Ashdown took his bat and ball home. Even then, the political elite broadly kept mum about Ashdown's lineage.
MI6 no doubt found someone else's tummy to tickle (George Robertson would be my guess from that era). All in all, further evidence that liberal democracies are not perhaps quite so liberal after all. Now - who will sit down and properly evaluate Britain's conduct in the former Yugoslavia in the light of these admissions..............
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