A SECRET two-day cross-party meeting chaired by Lord (Peter) Mandelson and attended by politicians who wish to rejoin the EU and at least one senior Nato official has been revealed.
Facts4eu reports: ‘Over Thursday and Friday (9th and 10th Feb 2023) a secret, residential meeting took place at one of England’s finest stately homes in Oxfordshire. The subject was how to move the UK closer to the EU and it was run by senior Rejoiners. The senior Government Minister Michael Gove stayed over and attended on both days.’
This is a list of known attendees at the Ditchley Hall meeting.
Key: (R) = Remain supporter, (L) = Leave supporter (?) = Unproven
(?) Michael Gove MP
(R) John Healey MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary for Defence
(L) Lord (Michael) Howard, former leader of the Conservative Party)
(L) Gisela Stuart, former Labour MP
(R) Sir David Lidington, former Conservative Minister of State for Europe and now chairman of the influential defence think tankRUSI (Royal United Services Institute)
(R) David Lammy MP, Labour spokesman on Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
(L) Lord (Norman) Lamont, former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer
(R) Angus Lapsley, Nato assistant secretary general
(R) Oliver Robbins, Theresa May’s former Brexit negotiator
(R) Sir Tom Scholar, former Treasury permanent secretary
(?) Sir Jonathan Symonds, chair of GlaxoSmithKline, and other ‘business leaders’
While Peter Mandelson and Michael Gove are the best-known political figures, two less familiar names are Sir David Lidington of RUSI and Angus Lapsley of Nato. Defence is their primary interest so it is fair to surmise that the Remainer attendees discussed UK Defence policy and the role it plays in facilitating their campaign to rejoin the EU. No wonder they wanted to keep their meeting out of the public gaze.
Sir David Lidington held various government posts as a minister and was Conservative MP for Aylesbury from 1992 to 2019, when he stood down ‘to spend more time with his family’. He was criticised by his local paper, the Bucks Herald, for claiming £115,891 in expenses (including a tube of toothpaste) in one year, almost twice his salary. He did repay the total of £1,300 for his dry cleaning, toothpaste, shower gel, body spray and vitamin supplements. He was also a board member of the Institute of Government. He is an example of an out-of-office vocal Remainer getting important appointments where they can advocate re-joining the EU.
Angus Lapsley is a former senior MoD mandarin and now a senior Nato director. His attendance at the meeting exposes the myth of the impartiality we should expect from former Civil Servants who are promoted to high global office.
In a previous piece I wrote in UKDefenceMatters.com: ‘Nato appointed in Sept 2022 Angus Lapsley as their Assistant Secretary General for Defence Policy and Planning. He now leads an International team responsible for Nato’s capability and force planning, posture, plans, and a range of defence policy questions, including nuclear issues. He was Ambassador to the European Union’s Political and Security Committee. As the MoD’s Director of Strategy, he said: “Defence is no longer a member state preserve in the EU”, a viewpoint the British people thought their vote in 2016 would have overridden. However the UK population is largely unaware that the Leaver ambition that a revitalised UK Sovereignty outside the EU would take back control of Defence policy had surreptitiously been excluded by Mrs May and her Remainer gang! He was the senior official who lost sensitive top secret documents at a bus stop in Kent. His pro-EU defence views clearly sit well with Nato who ignored both his attitude to the UK democratic intent and his serious failure to safeguard vital secrets.’
Is it acceptable that a senior serving Nato chief attend a private meeting to discuss UK relationships with the EU, especially where defence sensitive and possibly confidential information may be revealed? This raises concerns that a body like Nato, who have recently succumbed to the EU’s defence ambitions and have kowtowed at Davos to the globalist WEF set, should now interfere in UK domestic politics. Nato was set up by sovereign nation states to protect each member state, not to secretly plot against them. UK rejoiners may well plot to corral the UK into an EU defence dependency in the hope that ultimately it will cajole the UK into begging to rejoin, but when the millions who voted ‘to take back control’ understand their plot, expect a backlash.
Under the cover of unifying European defence the EU is relentlessly pursuing its ambition to make defence its competency. The UK remainers are fashioning a ‘big secret defence stick’ that ultimately they hope to wield to herd the UK back under the EU’s unelected governance and control. No wonder that at this planning stage the Tory Remainer grandees and Rejoiners wish to keep secret their plotting on defence and rejoining. They do not want transparency, let alone any public discussion, and certainly not a proper parliamentary debate on how the UK is reliquishing our sovereignty over defence little by little as the UK entangles itself in the complex EU defence structures.
The Rejoiners’ plot thickens with revelations reported by Save Britain (February 13) that ‘Rishi Sunak has privately requested plans for rebuilding the UK’s relations with the European Union from ministers and officials. According to Bloomberg, senior civil servants have been putting together proposals for how Britain can work more closely with EU member states across a range of policy areas, with the move being influenced in part by Russia’s war in Ukraine. The plans are thought to centre on defence, migration, and “economic statecraft,” which includes elements like trade, energy and international standards.’
The British people who wanted to take back control of all our affairs are not aware that defence is being surreptitiously excluded by the deals, plans and plots of the UK elite Remainers. There are serious ramifications for our democracy and a need for better parliamentary scrutiny and even a public inquiry. It will not happen while the current crop who inhabit the Commons and the Lords sit in power.
It is up to us to promote the defence debate the establishment Remainers don’t want us to have, and expose their tactics for orchestrating the UK rejoining the EU.
This article appeared in UK Defence Matters on February 14 and is republished by kind permission.
