Clip of Nigel Farage swigging pint and thanking Steve Bannon for Brexit goes missing from Breitbart Footage of Nigel Farage swigging a pint and thanking Steve Bannon and Breitbart for the Brexit result was deleted from […]

Footage of Nigel Farage swigging a pint and thanking Steve Bannon and Breitbart for the Brexit result was deleted from a Breitbart YouTube channel, following the data scandal surrounding Cambridge Analytica.

“Well done Bannon, well done Breitbart,” the ex-UKIP leader announces in the short clip. “You helped with this. Hugely.”

‘Well done Bannon, well done Breitbart’

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However, Breitbart London editor Raheem Kassam told i that the original video was uploaded to an unofficial Breitbart London channel, and that its deletion coincided with the disappearance of a number of videos embedded on the site.

He said a former staffer may have set up and then deleted the unofficial YouTube channel they were using to embed videos into the website.

The video was filmed on 29 March 2017 to celebrate Article 50 being triggered and subsequently uploaded onto a YouTube channel named Breitbart London. This video was then embedded into an article quoting Farage in its headline: “Nigel Farage on Article 50: ‘Well Done Bannon; Well done Breitbart – you’ve helped with this hugely“.

“Brexit campaign leader Nigel Farage paid ‘a personal tribute and thank you’ to former Breitbart boss Stephen K Bannon for the role he played in securing victory for the Leave campaign in the European Union (EU) referendum” reads the opening line.

‘This video is unavailable’

The YouTube video, which was embedded within the article, was unavailable. Although it is unclear when the video was removed, internet archive website Wayback indicates the video still existed until at least December 2017.

Mr Kassam replaced the video with a back-up version after this story appeared.

Cambridge Analytica scandal

Farage’s nod to Steve Bannon certainly hasn’t aged well in the context of the recent storm around Cambridge Analytica’s influence over the EU referendum.

It was revealed that data from 50 million Facebook profiles were looked at against the electoral register, and then used to build an algorithm which analyses people’s personality traits in relation to their voting behaviour.

This data could then be used to find potential swing voters and create messages tailored to influence them politically.

The firm’s vice president at the time was Steve Bannon, who was also head of the right-wing website Breitbart and was running Donald Trump’s campaign to become US President.

Links between Cambridge Analytica and the Brexit result have been simmering in the media since whistleblower Christopher Wylie leaked details of the firm’s controversial profiling techniques in March to The Observer.

This article was updated at 4.30pm on 6 April after clarification from Breitbart London’s Raheem Kassam.