Did the Brits spy on Trump?

Despite their denials in March last year, is it possible that the Brits spied on Trump during the presidential election campaign of 2016? This has all been dredged up again after extracts from an upcoming book by an American writer alleged that Tony Blair warned Trump that British intelligence may have been secretly listening to conversations he was having while sitting in Trump Tower. In the book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, author Michael Wolff tries to put a new twist on it by naming Blair as the source for the speculation. It's all a load of rubbish is my view. I appreciate that to get a book published about Trump it's difficult to separate fact from fiction, but I can just see the publishers saying to Wolff, "look, let's hype up the spying story, it'll make good headlines." Well it did. Never mind that Blair has dismissed the account as fabricated, and that British intelligence is probably thinking, "I thought we had officially denied this story, did they not believe us?" When this story first broke in March last year, initially in a claim by a so-called analyst on Fox News, and then repeated by Sean Spicer, Trump's first press secretary, GCHQ, the British Government's secret communications centre - equivalent to America's National Security Agency (NSA) - said it was "ridiculous". This was unusual because GCHQ does not normally confirm or deny anything. So clearly, the top GCHQ chiefs thought it was necessary to put out an official denial to get the story squashed for good. Now you might think, they would deny it wouldn't they, especially if they DID spy on Trump? But British intelligence is a funny old thing. Although spies do lie for a living, the Brits are a pretty honourable bunch. There is absolutely no way that the British Foreign Secretary, political boss of both MI6 and GCHQ, and the person required to authorise all secret operations that might have embarrassing political consequences, would give permission to the signals intelligence agency in Cheltenham to spy on Trump Tower. It would be an outrageous thing to do, and what would be the purpose? No one at that stage thought Trump had a hope in hell of becoming president. So what would have been gained by listening in to Trump? According to the new book, Trump also thought he had no chance of winning the presidency and didn't want it anyway. That has also got to be rubbish. Of course he wanted it, and his ego was big enough for him to imagine that he could and would beat Hillary Clinton. So spying on Trump Tower would have been a waste of resources and terribly risky if discovered. So I do not believe there was any spying by the Brits on Trump. No no no. That part of the book is total rumour-based and I expect GCHQ are pissed off about it. Despite all the denials there are no doubt conspiracy-type people around who do believe the spying allegation. Maybe Trump secretly does, he's paranoid enough. But, using a nice phrase not often heard these days, it's balderdash.