In one of Boris Johnson’s final addresses to the House of Commons as Prime Minister, he accused Keir Starmer last month of working in secret with “the deep state” to pull the UK back into the EU.
The conspiracy that shadowy actors are secretly controlling the government has long flourished in the murkier corners of the internet. But the theory burst into the mainstream of Western politics when former US president Donald Trump began to espouse it at his rallies, claiming that “unelected deep state operatives who defy the voters to push their own secret agenda are truly a threat to democracy itself”.
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