“Follow the money” may be a journalistic cliché, but it’s still good advice.

That’s exactly what Peter Geoghegan does here, following the money that has poured into British politics for years and, specifically, around the Brexit referendum. Where that money leads is not encouraging - barely legal (and in some cases actually illegal) funding of campaigns, rules that are open for abuse by foreign agents trying to influence British politics and regulators either powerless or uninterested in stopping it all.

But the most worrying, and most interesting, aspect is where exactly the money is coming from. The argument here is a network of hard-right, ultra-free market bodies funded by a range of interests - including foreign ones - has embedded itself at the heart of Westminster politics and achieved new prominence thanks to the Brexit vote. Partly, this was because they were willing to tell the government what it wanted to hear (eg. that the Irish border wouldn’t be a problem), but also because they’d spent years laying the groundwork, influencing ministers and journalists while pretending to be non-partisan. (Incidentally, it’s discouraging that so many senior ministers seem to be so weak-willed that they’re easily persuaded by this stuff and don’t seem to have asked even basic questions about it).

Inevitably, though, it comes down to money. Not the money that is invested in British politics but the money that those shadowy investors can make by pushing deregulation. Few of these people backed Brexit because of ideals about sovereignty - their track record suggests it’s all about letting them do whatever it is they want, whether that’s exploiting workers or cutting costs by lowering safety standards, and the voters were just along for the ride.