IEA: crooked is as crooked does.

Interesting to watch the IEA squirming in the wake of the IEA tapes scandal today. They plead innocence saying all think tanks do it - but actually this is on another level. This could even be considered a corporate coup not dissimilar to the ones we once saw in central Africa.

The IEA is Lawson and his cronies. The IEA claims it does not have an editorial position on Brexit. That is a demonstrable lie. They have gone out of their way to keep the lid on the EEA option and control the debate. They have shown themselves adept at it.

But the IEA is just the front house to old Tory money. Lawson has a dozen MPs in his pocket. These are the same bunch of people behind BrexitCentral and they do it because there are business interests lobbying for no deal or hard Brexit. IEA is only too happy to oblige them.

They are pushing the UK toward ruinous fate and they don't care who gets hurt. They are simply doing the bidding of their backers. In this case foreign interests which is tantamount to treason in my book.

This is all done under the guise of free markets and free trade but this is crony capitalism at its worst with corporate interests setting the UK's international trade policy having its own place-men in the DIT and DExEU.

Not for nothing has Mrs May sidelined DExEU because that department is essentially occupied by the IEA and they have been trying to write the Brexit script from the beginning. Number Ten has had to ringfence and isolate DExEU.

It wouldn't be so bad if they were a legitimate lobbying firm but the IEA is masquerading as an educational charity while mounting a cash for access racket much of it centring on the shady Shanker Singham - the pretender who knows zip about trade.

This is not about shaping effective trade policy. This is the IEA's backers using their influence to tilt markets in their favour which is the antithesis of what the IEA notionally stands for. Its founders would be spinning in their graves.

Methinks Singham is at the centre of this having connections in Washington, thereby acting as a funnel for donations, which is why the toryboys blow smoke up his arse and thicko Tory ministers believe their spin about him.

What you will find though, is that any practitioner in the realm of international trade will tell you that the man's theories are total baloney and as an EU systems nerd I can tell you for nothing he knows dick about the EU and the single market.

If we had an effective standards watchdog in Whitehall they'd put an embargo on Singham and anyone connected with the IEA because we had an entire ministry, a crucial one, effectively under the control of private interests.

Now that crooked Steve Baker has resigned along with Johnson, it is doubtful they have the same access, but they still have the ear of Gove and agriculture is very much in their gunsights because they want to flood the UK market with US crap.

We will then see a bunch of glossy PDFs talking down the risks of hormone treated beef and chlorinated chicken, which is fair enough because its most histrionics, but they are not doing it as a matter of public education. This is very much a corporate agenda.

We'll get all the spiel about how consumers should be allowed to choose but they will skirt around the damage it will do to UK exports by way of worsening our EFSA risk profile - meaning more UK goods will be inspected on export to the EU.

These people don't actually give a toss about what it will do to UK exports or agriculture in general. If UK livestock then so does our arable feed production and then our countryside will turn derelict.

Any which way you look at it the IEA are a bunch of crooks. They've been plotting and scheming to push us into a disastrous no deal Brexit from the beginning - and this is why they keep shifting the goalposts. In days gone by this level of sleaze would bring down governments.