Podcast Corner: Lifting the lid on Sergei and the Westminster spy ring
The Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr and Peter Jukes of Byline Times host new podcast series Sergei & The Westminster Spy Ring (Project Citizen and the Citizens). Picture: Samir Hussein/Samir Hussein/Getty.
An “alleged secret spy ring operating at the very heart of the British political system” says the blurb for Sergei & The Westminster Spy Ring (Project Citizen and the Citizens), a new series hosted by the Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr and Peter Jukes of Byline Times, whose MO states: “No oligarchs, no government bungs, no adverts. Just journalism.”
We have become used to hearing about Russian interference in elections around the world; the US presidential election that saw Donald Trump elected for the first time and the UK’s Brexit vote both occurred in 2016 and allegedly saw meddling by Russia. A quick Google search reveals recent stories alleging similar interference in, variously, Moldova and Georgia, Croatia, and Romania.
But this mission creep is something that Cadwalladr has seen in other ways too. She tells a story, midway through the second episode of the series, about a whirlwind visit to Moscow to interview Pussy Riot after they seemed to appear out of nowhere over a dozen years ago, bursting into a church to stage a protest.
As Cadwalladr flies home to London, passing over the city during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, she mulls: “It’s always felt to me since that that dichotomy between what I saw, this repression in Moscow with this very macho, militaristic regime cracking down on young women, on freedom of expression, it just felt that in a way there's an element of that which has crept into our own politics. I'm talking about the fact that countries all over the world have now learnt from this authoritarian and populist playbook.”
This is the macro view of what Sergei & The Westminster Spy Ring is trying to do: Show us how Russia’s tentacles have crept into countries all over the world. But at its centre is a story concerning UK Conservative Party whistleblower Sergei Cristo, who has had an interesting life, including working undercover for the BBC investigation series Panorama (how useful for a spy story).
Back in 2011, as the Tories take charge at Number 10, the Russian-born British citizen is busy raising funds for the party and is a regular at the high-rolling toffs-only Carlton Club - he’s part of the establishment.
A series of meetings with Russian officials start making Cristo nervous and then perplexed as to why the new lobby group Conservative Friends of Russia hadn’t subsequently asked him, a Tory fundraiser, to its garden party.
It doesn’t help that the police don’t seem to take his increasing concerns seriously. As the tension escalates, hosts Cadwalladr and Jukes have to jump in regularly to give us context so we don’t get bogged down in the details.
It’s an intriguing spy story, one that, like Jon Ronson’s Things Fell Apart, seeks to show us how the world is where it is in 2025. Episode four was released on Tuesday, January 14, and concerns Nigel Farage and the Brexit campaign.
