Matthew Elliott is a UK political strategist and lobbyist who has functioned as the chief executive of several organisations and has been engaged in various referendum campaigns, including Vote Leave. In 2012, he was also a founding member of Conservative Friends of Russia.
Elliott was mooted to be on the cusp of entering Sajid Javid’s crew as an adviser after he was made chancellor in 2019 and was a well-known member of Conservative Friends of Russia. This group has been blamed for uncritically defending Putin. A group trip to Moscow drew controversy in 2012 when it appeared that the Russian diplomat liaising with Conservative Friends of Russia was the son of a top-ranking Kremlin spy. Sergey Nalobin once jokingly explained himself on Twitter as a
“brutal agent of the Putin dictatorship”.
Matthew Elliott also has links to Russia. Carole Cadwalladr reported in The Observer that Elliott was a member of Conservative Friends of Russia:
“In 2012 — or possibly earlier — Matthew Elliott was targeted by a man the Home Office now believes was a Russian spy. Sergey Nalobin was the first secretary in the Russian embassy’s political section in London when Elliott met him.”
Elliott did attend a Conservative Friends of Russia reception in 2012 and a 10-day journey to the country, but said he had no other involvement.
“At the time I was dating a girl who was interested in Russian art and we went along to an event at the embassy, which we’d been invited to by Malcolm Rifkind, of all people, who was president, so very kosher, and I think John Whittingdale was the main speaker, so it all seems very sort of normal. We went along to this reception and then we were invited to go on this trip which I went on – stupid error in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have gone on it – but, anyway, I did. I followed one reception and I went on this trip.”
Nalobin was also a man who, in August 2015, had his approval to stay in Britain suddenly revoked. The Home Office declined to renew the visas of four Russian diplomats, normally a rubber-stamping exercise, Nalobin among them. The timing was not a coincidence: a week earlier, the inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko figured he was
“probably murdered on the personal orders of Putin”.
Therefore Russia was making endeavours to affect and corrupt British politics, in line with its common practice of election interference in the US, France, Germany and other NATO members.
