Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Did Vote Leave break the law and what should happen to the Cabinet Members who were involved in this organisation?
The rather toothless Electoral Commission has finally made a decision and fined Vote Leave £61,000 and reported them police after finding “significant evidence” of coordination with another campaign group, BeLeave. This is not some technical finding, this is an allegation of law-breaking which directly influenced the referendum result two years ago. The Guardian reports:
The watchdog said it had imposed punitive fines on Vote Leave because it said the group had refused to cooperate fully with its investigation and declined to be interviewed. Its former chief executive, Matthew Elliott, had previously alleged it was the Electoral Commission that had refused to cooperate. Vote Leave called the findings “wholly inaccurate”.
The commission’s long-awaited report said it had found evidence BeLeave spent more than £675,000 with the digital data company Aggregate IQ coordinated with Vote Leave, which should have been declared by the Brexit campaign group.
Vote Leave, which was the official designated campaign for Britain to leave the EU during the referendum, fronted by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, exceeded its legal spending limit of £7m by almost £500,000, the watchdog found.
Darren Grimes, the founder of BeLeave, and the Vote Leave official David Halsall have been reported to the police. Vote Leave has been fined £61,000 and Grimes £20,000.
The commission said it had shared its investigation files with the Metropolitan police to investigate whether any other offences had been committed outside the watchdog’s remit.
Obviously, we now need to wait for the police to complete their investigation but it is nevertheless worth reflecting that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were the heads of this campaign, whilst Dominic Raab, Liam Fox, Chris Grayling and Andrea Leadsom also sat on the Vote Leave campaign committee. It seems like half the cabinet is implicated in this investigation.
The watchdog said it had imposed punitive fines on Vote Leave because it said the group had refused to cooperate fully with its investigation and declined to be interviewed. Its former chief executive, Matthew Elliott, had previously alleged it was the Electoral Commission that had refused to cooperate. Vote Leave called the findings “wholly inaccurate”.
The commission’s long-awaited report said it had found evidence BeLeave spent more than £675,000 with the digital data company Aggregate IQ coordinated with Vote Leave, which should have been declared by the Brexit campaign group.
Vote Leave, which was the official designated campaign for Britain to leave the EU during the referendum, fronted by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, exceeded its legal spending limit of £7m by almost £500,000, the watchdog found.
Darren Grimes, the founder of BeLeave, and the Vote Leave official David Halsall have been reported to the police. Vote Leave has been fined £61,000 and Grimes £20,000.
The commission said it had shared its investigation files with the Metropolitan police to investigate whether any other offences had been committed outside the watchdog’s remit.
Obviously, we now need to wait for the police to complete their investigation but it is nevertheless worth reflecting that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were the heads of this campaign, whilst Dominic Raab, Liam Fox, Chris Grayling and Andrea Leadsom also sat on the Vote Leave campaign committee. It seems like half the cabinet is implicated in this investigation.
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2 rats have already abandoned ship and Gove is back pedalling. They and the right wing media will start looking for others to blame for our decline. Remain may have spent more but if this was legal, with no crime permitted THAT MUST BE POINTED OUT.The consequences of a bad Brexit should be stressed by the party. One example, the plan to stockpile drugs. Another barges for Northern Ireland power supplies,food stockpiling. Why cannot the party vigourously campaign FOR the EU and a positive future in it.The EU has just struck a deal with Japan we could have benefited from this WITHIN the EU. Now we have to wait till Brexit to negotiate a deal with them. I cannot see them jumping at a deal with us when they have now got a bigger market in the EU.
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