Endless digging into referendum spending is a threat to our democracy

As one who voted Remain and led the “Stronger In” campaign in my Chelsea and Fulham constituency, I have been concerned at the continued attempts to refight the referendum and put the Leave campaigns in the dock. It is now more than two years since the referendum, and we should all unite around getting the best deal for Britain. Despite all the controversies around the funding and the information provided during the referendum, I believe the campaign was well-debated, and democratic participation in it was high. I have little doubt that a similar result would be repeated today. Nothing much was said in that campaign which wasn’t within the confines of a normal referendum or electoral campaign.

The £350million NHS claim may have infuriated some, but it’s not much different from when a Labour politician says that “the Tories are planning to privatise the NHS”. The electorate is more sensible than to take literally every word campaigners say.

And money didn’t do it. The Remain campaign spent £19million, not even counting the Government’s £9million leaflet that went out a few days before the start of the campaign; the Leave campaign spent £13.5million.

If money alone had done it, Remain would have cantered away with the result. My understanding is that both campaigns found themselves with extra money towards the end: the Remain campaign was in that position earlier than the Leave campaign and seems to have set up several campaigning groups, just a few weeks before the referendum, to accept donations, before it reached its £7million limit.

Vote Leave reached its spending limit much later, so didn’t have time to persuade donors to contribute to different campaigns: instead they, with the permission of the Electoral Commission, donated to other campaigns. So why the big fuss about Vote Leave now?

I’ve looked at the findings of the Electoral Commission. Looking at the allegations against Vote Leave now, once they are stripped of a great deal of assertion and repetitive allegation, they seem to boil down to the fact that the commission believes it had “undue influence” over another campaign, BeLeave, that Vote Leave gave money to. It is well known that all of the Remain campaigns met daily to agree the overall “lines to take”.

In contrast, I have seen evidence submitted by Vote Leave to the commission, in which the two campaigns, Vote Leave and BeLeave, were compared and contrasted, and there is a clear difference between advertisements used.

The commission alleges that BeLeave saying it would take lines from Vote Leave’s public website, and “put them in a BeLeave voice”, constitutes a breach of the law. This allegation seems thin and dubious.

It’s difficult to see how the Electoral Commission challenges add up to much. Matthew Elliott, the CEO of Vote Leave, has strongly rebutted the commission’s claims. He has tweeted out letters to and from the commission that clearly rebut some of them, such as that Vote Leave never agreed to meet with it. Worst of all, in my view, are the referrals to the police. Recent cases have shown what a devastating effect publicity regarding a referral to the police, before any wrongdoing has been proved, can have for those involved.

I can see the fact that three selfstyled “whistleblowers”, aided by a panoply of lawyers, making outlandish claims about Vote Leave, obligated the Electoral Commission to investigate.

But why did they only interview these three individuals, and refuse to interview the people they were accusing? Why, given that there had been a number of articles questioning the veracity of their account, did the Electoral Commission show itself so eager to believe the claims – so much so that it uncritically reported the claims as fact, rather than allegations?

I’ve had a lot to do with running elections, looking at the conduct of elections, dealing with the Electoral Commission. Electoral law is usually quite clear: after a year, the thing is done and dead, the election has happened, the government is in power. What does this ongoing controversy mean, should we ever have any other referendum on any other issue?

Will public-minded citizens be prepared to set forth and run one side or another of any new referendum, particularly the side that is not aligned with the establishment? Who would want to give up years of their life being investigated by regulators, being sued by private individuals enraged with the result? These are serious questions in our precious democracy.

Enough is enough. It’s time to move on. The referendum has happened: the result is in and won’t be changed; let’s now move to dealing successfully with the result.

‘Who would want to give up years of their life being sued by private individuals enraged with the result?’