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Oct 28, 2021 33 tweets 28 min read Read on X
A number of politicians, including the CRG and senior backbenchers like @SirGrahamBrady, have been working with anti-vax group HART.

One member of the House of Lords even joined the group, and offered them media training to help them get their message across! ImageImageImageImage
At the beginning, HART's strategy (set by founder Narice Bernard and political fixer Bernie de Haldevang) was to work as a "scientific partner" to the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee and Covid Recovery Group, providing them with evidence to use to sway government policy. ImageImageImageImage
Andrew Rosindell (Con, Romford) provided an early opening in mid January, before HART officially launched.

Bernie claimed to be "quite pally" with Rosindell, who was "completely on side".

He then uses Rosindell as a gateway to Liam Fox and the CRG's Mark Harper and Steve Baker. ImageImageImage
Narice and Bernie send Rosindell a letter to pass on to CRG chair Harper and his deputy Baker, telling them HART could support their efforts to "encourage the government to review its Covid measures", by providing "evidence-based second opinions" to "examine policy decisions". ImageImageImageImage
Rosindell obligingly forwards the email to his colleagues, describing Bernie de Haldevang as a "good friend".

He describes HART as "independent experts" and suggests they "might be useful in providing scientific weight to the CRG".

They're actually a bunch of cranks. Image
The CRG lap it up. A week later, Jemma Moran describes a "really good chat with Ed Barker", who's "keen to set up a call with Joel to look at the data with Steve Baker".

That's Joel Smalley, purveyor of dodgy graphs, who claims vaccines cause surges in deaths all over the world! Image
The CRG discuss HART "creating a media story" they can back, and also advise HART to start writing weekly bulletins and sending them to all MPs. Which they do.

The first few bulletins are mostly drafted by secret HART member Michael Yeadon, even AFTER he's exposed as a racist! ImageImageImageImage
Meanwhile HART's Ellen Townsend and Anthony Brookes had joined Gupta, Heneghan and Dingwall at a meeting with Graham Brady, Andrew Bridgen and other MPs.

Ellen provides attendees with "bullet points for MPs to take away" based on HART material, without revealing their source. ImageImageImageImage
HART had by this point already met @SirGrahamBrady, chairman of the Conservative backbenchers' 1922 Committee, with a video call on January 21st.

And so, by the end of January, Narice claims HART are "engaged with all the government's biggest critics at the highest level". ImageImageImageImage
HART member Jonathan Engler stays in regular contact with Sir Graham Brady (his local MP) by phone and text

Brady is often mentioned in leaked HART chat logs. Members see him as "ideologically aligned to our thinking", a way to reach other MPs, or even the Prime Minister! ImageImageImageImage
This proves useful in March, when HART releases a booklet including Joel Smalley's suggestion that the surge in deaths last winter was caused by vaccination!

Brady is quick out of the gates to defend HART against the backlash, describing it as "a pleasure". ImageImageImageImage
Jonathan Engler reports that Graham Brady "doesn't seem at all put out" by the furore over HART's suggestion that covid vaccines may have killed thousands of Brits over the winter.

After a phone call, Engler assures HART that Brady "remains totally with us". ImageImage
It's perhaps no surprise Brady was happy to back HART even after they openly attacked the vaccine programme.

After all, he was recently caught meeting a bunch of conspiracy nuts who want to put government Ministers on trial for crimes against humanity!

The Brady connection also comes in handy when William Wragg and Christopher Chope ask questions in Parliament about post-vaccination deaths.

The MPs are asking about vaccine effectiveness, not adverse reactions, but HART think they can "point them in the right direction". 🙄 ImageImageImageImage
Members suggest that Engler talks to Brady, who promptly offers to forward HART's questions to Wragg and Chope.

HART think if they innocently ask for data to prove the vaccines are safe, it will prove they aren't.

The email is drafted by anti-vax homeopath Anna Rayner. ImageImageImageImage
A few months later Christopher Chope sponsors the "Vaccine Damage Bill", and is now making rather wild claims in Parliament about the extent of vaccine related deaths.

Is this just coincidence, or did HART's letter to Chope via Sir Graham Brady hit its mark? 🤔 ImageImageImageImage
HART also take advantage of the access their friends at UsForThem already had with MPs.

Ros Jones, a member of both groups, gave UsForThem founder Molly Kingsley HART's "lockdown harms" doc to use in a meeting with Iain Duncan Smith, working with HART members to hone it for UfT. ImageImageImageImage
Elsewhere Ros Jones gets UsForThem to "point their MP contacts in our direction", although both groups are keen to "keep any links below the radar" after UfT attracted negative attention from the Guardian and @BylineTimes.

She says Esther McVey and Brady are "signed up" to UfT. ImageImageImage
Friendly journalists also help HART connect with politicians.

Having setup a meeting with MPs back in January, Lucy Johnston of the Sunday Express later passes HART's infamous March bulletin to Lord Sumption, who gives it a positive write up .. in the Telegraph. ImageImageImageImage
But while HART member Paul Yowell follows up with Lord Sumption, behind closed doors other members aren't as keen on him.

They suggest Sumption is selfish, irritable, "pig ignorant", and says things just to "maintain his aura of superior intellectual judgment". 😳 ImageImageImageImage
When Lord Sumption seems to rollover on vaccine passports, members suggest he's just doing it so he can go to his holiday home in France, that he's been "got to", or even that he "has had the vaccine and is not himself anymore"! ImageImageImageImage
But it's another Lord's involvement with HART that raises concerns.

Lord Moonie actually joined HART!

He changes accounts in May, so his early posts are sadly lost, but he can be seen tagged by other members as <@U01MCCPPM5M>.

Easily identifiable from his intro on February 12: ImageImageImageImage
From replies to Lord Moonie's lost messages, it's pretty clear he offered HART media training!

So a group of cranks, conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers seemingly got advice from a member of the House of Lords on better ways to present their covid sceptic message to the world. ImageImageImage
Unsurprisingly HART also have links to the Brexit Party / Reform UK.

Derek Winton and Greig Mair, who both stood for Reform UK, were invited into HART by Christine Padgham of Inform Scotland.

Edmund Fordham, HART's resident ivermectin pusher, is a former Brexit Party candidate. ImageImageImageImage
Edmund Fordham is still working with Reform UK leader @TiceRichard, although he thinks he's making a "political mistake" by backing the NHS and Astra-Zeneca.

Meanwhile Ros Jones says Tice joined an "excellent meeting on ivermectin" with her, Fordham and Tess Lawrie of BIRD. ImageImageImageImage
Jonathan Engler has also been in touch with Tice, and says he asked him if he could put them in contact with Tim Martin. To talk about distributing HART anti-vax leaflets in Wetherspoons pubs!

Thankfully there's no evidence that this idea went any further. ImageImageImage
On the other end of the political spectrum, HART founder Narice Bernard went on to run the Liberal Spring campaign, an attempt to take over the Liberal Democrats and turn them into an anti-lockdown party.

It failed.

Narice involved his friend Michael Yeadon in the campaign too. ImageImageImageImage
Further out on the fringe, HART's Mark Boullé stood for covid quack party Freedom Alliance in Oxford, with Ros Jones offering to help his campaign.

Ros also knows two people from UsForThem who stood for the party, while Gary Sidley asked members to help a candidate in Edinburgh. ImageImageImageImage
UPDATE: Another politician targeted by HART was Tory peer Lord Attlee, grandson of Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee.

Michael Yeadon had "cultivated" him in 2020, and says Attlee even tabled questions about PCR testing in the House of Lords under Yeadon’s "guidance"! 😬 Image
These seem to be the questions, from November 30th to December 14th 2020. Just as the Alpha variant was taking hold.

By the time his last question was tabled, covid cases were surging. The vast majority weren't false positives. Thousands of people died.

questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questi… ImageImageImageImage
Yeadon told HART founder Narice Bernard in January 2021 that Lord Attlee "should be considered a potential ally in Parliament".

But a month later, Yeadon admitted that Attlee "no longer replies to me" and suggested someone else should contact him.

So what went wrong? Image
Well, apparently Lord Attlee had belatedly realised the surge in covid deaths in the winter of 2020-21 showed Yeadon’s "false positive pseudo-epidemic" narrative was wrong.

Yeadon, still clinging to this belief even at the covid peak in January 2021, calls it an "odd comment"! Image

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More from @_johnbye

Aug 30
Aseem Malhotra has been confirmed as a speaker at next weekend's Reform UK conference. The increasingly anti-vaccine cardio crank is already Chief Health Advisor to Farage's anti-WHO "Action on World Health" campaign, and now seems to be angling for a job with Reform too. 🧵 Image
This intersection of far right politics and anti-vaccine health contrarians in the UK is no surprise, after Reform's 2024 manifesto pandered to conspiracy theorists, many of whom helped out on their campaign or even stood as candidates for the party.

Reform's links to anti-vaxxers in the UK go back years. Richard Tice was in contact with ivermectin pusher Tess Lawrie and pandemic denier Jonathan Engler in 2021 and several Reform / Brexit Party veterans were involved in the covid conspiracy movement.

Read 4 tweets
Aug 28
Advance UK recently announced its committee, which includes anti-vax data mangler Norman Fenton, racist conspiracy theorist Jim Ferguson, climate change denier Paul Burgess, and conspiracy theory website editor Kathy Gyngell. 🧵 Image
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Paul Burgess was environment spokesman for the far right For Britain Movement (a UKIP splinter group which, like Reform splinter group Advance UK, was backed by Tommy Robinson). He's also appeared on GB News as a "climate commentator".

Kathy Gyngell is the editor of Conservative Woman, a right wing website which during the pandemic went from attacking gay and trans rights and other culture wars nonsense to spreading anti-vaccine propaganda, covid conspiracy theories and AIDS denialism.

Read 5 tweets
Aug 20
The co-founder of "Operation Raise the Colours" (the recent spate of people putting English flags on lamp posts) is an old friend of Tommy Robinson who says he's been "16 years by his side", and had breakfast with Robinson after his release from jail earlier this year. 🧵 Image
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Tommy Robinson's mate Andy Saxon and his "Operation Raise the Colours" have also had support from UKIP leader / Turning Point UK COO Nick Tenconi (recently seen giving what looked like a Nazi salute), far right Britain First Party and its co-leader / ex BNP member Paul Golding. Image
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Before his "Operation Raise the Colours" gained momentum recently, Saxon posted support for Britain First and its "remigration" campaign to remove immigrants from the UK, as well as offensive and sometimes threatening Islamophobic content.

This is who's supplying those flags. Image
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Read 9 tweets
Jun 23
🧵 Kate Shemirani's daughter sadly died last year, after refusing chemotherapy for her cancer, in favour of the kind of extreme quackery promoted by her mum.

Refusing to take responsibility, Kate accused the NHS of homicide and subjecting her daughter to medical experimentation.
Kate Shemirani and her ex-husband issued a statement after their daughter's death, wildly claiming that it was part of "a systemic pattern of state-sponsored medical homicide and institutional cover-up" by the NHS, and suggesting that she was part of an "unregulated drug trial". Image
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Inevitably, Kate Shemirani and her allies are using the tragedy to raise money, claiming "they have taken her daughter". Their target is up to £100,000 to challenge the outcome of an inquest that hasn't even happened yet. So far they've only raised £2,455 from gullible followers. Image
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Read 8 tweets
May 26
Dilbert creator Scott Adams has sadly got prostate cancer. After going down a rabbit hole during the pandemic though, he turned to Canadian quack William Makis who (as always) recommended ivermectin and fenbendazole. Which did not work. Now they're in an unseemly row over it. 🧵 Image
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Ivermectin pusher William Makis responded to Scott Adams' post by claiming he didn't follow his "protocol" (which Adams denies), his cancer was "probably" caused by covid vaccines, and that he "didn't discount the possibility" that Adams was part of a plot to discredit him. 😬 Image
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Unsurprisingly Scott Adams is giving short shrift to Makis and other quacks and their followers, who are trying to blame his cancer on covid vaccines or encourage him to try anti-parasitics, vitamins, fasting, diets and other dodgy "cures" for his cancer. Image
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Read 4 tweets
Feb 17
This week sees the second "ARC Forum" in London, a right wing talking shop with overtones of Islamophobia, transphobia and climate change denial, funded by Paul Marshall and Legatum, who are also behind GB News.

Unsurprisingly there are a lot of familiar faces there... 🧵 Image
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Alan Miller from anti-lockdown turned anti-everything group Together is on a panel.

He was interviewed at ARC Forum by right wing channel Newsmax Australia, and was apparently "shocked to learn" that, according to them, Australia has no free speech and supports trans people. 🤷‍♂️ Image
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Toby Young founded Daily Sceptic, which like Together started out as anti-lockdown but then branched out into culture war outrage farming and omni-contrarianism.

It's still edited by a member of anti-vax misinformation group HART, who laundered their work through the site. Image
Read 8 tweets

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