The Traditional Britain Group regards itself as the most upmarket outfit on the British far right, purveyor of prejudice to the finest families of the gentry and aristocracy. But two of its favourite professors have raised eyebrows among some of TBG’s more fastidious snobs.
Professor John Laughland is at least a genuine academic. His earlier work (though obsessively Eurosceptic) was well regarded by many mainstream conservatives but detested by Europhiles. The pro-Remain former Labour minister Denis MacShane described him as “one of the intellectual architects of Brexit”. For several years until 2008 Laughland was research director of a leading pro-Brexit think-tank, the European Foundation, founded by the former MP Bill Cash and once funded by Sir James Goldsmith.
During the 2000s Laughland also had a stint lecturing at the Sorbonne. But he is now associated with several far less reputable institutions, and on his way to the 2022 TBG conference suffered the indignity of being searched and interrogated by UK border security, who examined his phone and other devices, taking copies of his files.
Both Laughland and his TBG hosts seemed to think that this treatment was due to Laughland’s associations with pro-Moscow lobbies. Two judges stated during his attempts to obtain judicial review that it was quite legitimate for the authorities to examine such associations, without there being any suggestion that Laughland himself was a threat to national security.
One senior judge, Lord Menzies wrote: “The reason which has been advanced for the retention of this material is not that Mr Laughland has been engaged in interference activity directed by, or otherwise linked to, the Russian state. It is that he may be linked to individuals who may have been so engaged. Nobody has accused Mr Laughland of anything, far less found him guilty of anything. His reputation is not tarnished by the decision to retain the copied material and this decision should not be taken as a conclusion that he poses a risk to national security.”
An appeal court judge, Sir Brian Leveson, later added: “It is no part of the argument that Mr Laughland has been engaged in interference activity directed by, or otherwise linked to, the Russian state. It is that the material seized might reasonably reveal links to persons who might so be involved. There is absolutely no finding express or implied that Mr Laughland himself poses a risk or threat to national security.”
Should Prof. Laughland really be surprised that the UK authorities are concerned by his associations?
For a decade until 2018, Laughland was Director of Studies for a pro-Moscow think tank in Paris, the ludicrously misnamed Institute of Democracy and Cooperation. This was admitted to be funded by the Russian state and headed by one of Putin’s leading propagandists Nataliya Narotchnitskaya, who has longstanding ties to the Russian intelligence services.
In recent years Ms Narotchnitskaya has relocated to Russia and the Paris institute seems to have closed down.
Laughland went on to work for the European parliamentary office of Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, an MEP for Marine Le Pen’s fascist party then known as Front National.
Schaffhauser was the main intermediary between Le Pen and Alexander Babakov, a front man for Putin, who arranged substantial loans for the FN from Russian banks. Babakov is now subjected to sanctions in several countries and was indicted on fraud and conspiracy charges in the US in 2022. Anti-corruption investigators found that he owned several luxury properties in France, as well as a Knightsbridge flat.
With Le Pen trying to dissociate herself and her party from the Kremlin, Laughland went in search of yet another paid political perch, and found one with a tiny pro-Putin party in the Netherlands, Thierry Baudet’s Forum for Democracy (FvD). Laughland is now director of its grandly titled international arm, Forum for Democracy International.
FvD’s pro-Putin stance has contributed to its losing activists and votes at an alarming rate. Within weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two of the party’s three senators quit. In this year’s European elections, FvD lost all its seats after the party’s vote collapsed to 2.5%. Yet it still seems to have sufficient gold reserves to pay Laughland.
The professor fits in well with Russia’s cheerleaders at TBG, whose late president Lord Sudeley was married to a former KGB officer, Tatyana Dudina, daughter of Col. Boris Ivanovich Dudin, former KGB rezident in Norway.
Coincidentally there is another Professor at TBG also called John, but in this instance the title Professor might be taken with a pinch of salt.
John Kersey is a trained pianist, though hardly the internationally acclaimed pianist that he claims to be on his website. Exaggerations about his musical career are just the start. Kersey lists a whole series of qualifications and titles, almost all of which seem to have been purchased online or are figments of his imagination.
Kersey’s first “doctorate” was purchased from “Saint Regis University” in 2003. This is a notorious “diploma mill” which was closed down in late 2004. It began as a “branch campus” of another fictitious entity in Russia, the International University of Fundamental Studies, but was run as a profit-making con by an American couple called Randock, with co-conspirators in the infamously corrupt African nation of Liberia.
Eight Americans involved in this scam were indicted after raids on premises in the states of Idaho and Washington. Eventually the Randocks served three years in jail for fraud.
Kersey went on to create Marquess Educational Consultants and ever grander outfits such as the “European-American University”, later renamed “Western Orthodox University” as the “Professor” began seeking to profit from his supposed status as adopted son and heir of a Belarussian monarchist pretender, Prince Kermit William Poling de Polanie-Patrikios of West Virginia.
His racist friends at TBG might be shocked to discover that Kersey has played the race card in attempting to justify a whole series of curious “academic” institutions. These grant degrees on the basis of students handing over cheques, rather than handing in dissertations or sitting exams in anything like the usual fashion.
One such shameless essay in Kersey’s self-justifying chutzpah was titled “Does the value of your degree depend on the colour of your skin?”
Kersey’s website includes several photos of the “Professor” in fancy dress, officiating in such roles as “Prince Abbot of San Luigi”.
Yet another grandly titled institute is actually registered with Companies House as “Oxcel – the Oxford Centre for Leadership Ltd”, incorporated in 2018 with Kersey and his partner “Dr Kathleen Kersey de Polanie-Patrikios” as directors.
In February this year, “Dr Kathleen” ceased to be either a director or a shareholder in this company, but she remains a co-director and co-owner with her husband of other enterprises such as Justice for Dads Ltd. The Kerseys also created yet another company called West Mercia Law in 2021, but this remained dormant until being dissolved in May this year (though “Dr Kathleen” continued to describe herself as a “legal consultant”).
Quite a number of her associates over the years have been in need of “legal consultation”, for Searchlight readers know her better under more humble names such as Kate Dermody and Kate Watmough (below left). Before moving in with Kersey, Kate was the partner of one of Britain’s most violent nazis, Kev Watmough (below, right), who founded and ran the ‘Redwatch’ website which for years operated in tandem with the terror gang Combat 18.
Kev and Kate were among the leaders of the British Peoples Party (BPP), and Mrs Watmough was widely blamed for plotting against two of its co-founders, the serial party-splitter and alcoholic Eddy Morrison, and the skirt-chasing ex-Mosleyite John Wood.
An active nazi for more than forty years in numerous parties (usually in tandem with Morrison), Watmough has been reduced to tagging along with his ex-wife and their new partner after Kate moved on to a more lucratic ménage not long after the birth of their son.
It’s not clear how Watmough explains to his old nazi chums that his new family is funded partly on the proceeds of selling degrees to Africans.
Perhaps he sees it all as part of a subtle game to discredit genuine African universities? Or perhaps he has changed his principles as easily as he once changed parties?