Sunday, November 04, 2018
Claims that Arron Banks mislead Parliament
I have just watched the Andrew Marr interview with Arron Banks and was very unimpressed with the whole process. The problem with this format of course is that there is a huge amount of material to cover in a very limited amount of time, nobody has all the paperwork in front of them, and so it is very difficult to challenge any assertion by the interviewee.
As a political interview this event was passable, but as a forensic dissection of the fog that surrounds the financing of the Leave campaign it was completely inadequate, (not least because all the parties were not there, including the Electoral Commission) and as was feared, the format enabled Banks to charm his way through it.
The BBC is not qualified to investigate the sort of complex allegations that have been made against Arron Banks and Leave.EU and it was a mistake to stage this interview in the manner that they did.
Blustering about the source of the finance on the part of Andrew Marr added nothing to our sum of knowledge about this matter, whilst the latest allegations covered by the Sunday Times and the Independent, that Parliament had been mislead received only a cursory examination.
The Independent says that leaked documents from former employees at Eldon Insurance and Rock Services to The Observer and the website Open Democracy appear to show that some workers from the two companies had a part to play in the Leave.EU campaign from their offices. Any such work in the months before the election should be declared under electoral law and Mr Banks has repeatedly denied any such work taking place.
When appearing before parliament’s inquiry into fake news in June, Mr Banks specifically said that Eldon Insurance and Leave.EU were completely differently companies with different staff and there was no link. He has also repeatedly denied any improper links between any of his businesses and the Leave.EU campaign.
On the BBC just now, Banks repeated the explanation to Marr that the two operations were separate and that everything had been properly reported to the Electoral Commission. Of course it does not help that the Electoral Commission itself is not fit for purpose and has not been so since it was established. Nevertheless, this did need to be challenged more robustly, something Andrew Marr failed to do.
Perhaps the National Crime Agency will do a better job in getting to the bottom of all these allegations, and maybe the BBC will now leave them to get on with it, instead of interfering in the process as it did this morning.
As a political interview this event was passable, but as a forensic dissection of the fog that surrounds the financing of the Leave campaign it was completely inadequate, (not least because all the parties were not there, including the Electoral Commission) and as was feared, the format enabled Banks to charm his way through it.
The BBC is not qualified to investigate the sort of complex allegations that have been made against Arron Banks and Leave.EU and it was a mistake to stage this interview in the manner that they did.
Blustering about the source of the finance on the part of Andrew Marr added nothing to our sum of knowledge about this matter, whilst the latest allegations covered by the Sunday Times and the Independent, that Parliament had been mislead received only a cursory examination.
The Independent says that leaked documents from former employees at Eldon Insurance and Rock Services to The Observer and the website Open Democracy appear to show that some workers from the two companies had a part to play in the Leave.EU campaign from their offices. Any such work in the months before the election should be declared under electoral law and Mr Banks has repeatedly denied any such work taking place.
When appearing before parliament’s inquiry into fake news in June, Mr Banks specifically said that Eldon Insurance and Leave.EU were completely differently companies with different staff and there was no link. He has also repeatedly denied any improper links between any of his businesses and the Leave.EU campaign.
On the BBC just now, Banks repeated the explanation to Marr that the two operations were separate and that everything had been properly reported to the Electoral Commission. Of course it does not help that the Electoral Commission itself is not fit for purpose and has not been so since it was established. Nevertheless, this did need to be challenged more robustly, something Andrew Marr failed to do.
Perhaps the National Crime Agency will do a better job in getting to the bottom of all these allegations, and maybe the BBC will now leave them to get on with it, instead of interfering in the process as it did this morning.
