What the commentators said

Call me a “Remoaner” if you like, but no one can deny there’s a “noxious stink emanating from the 2016 referendum campaign”, said Matthew d’ancona in The Guardian. It’s now clear that both Leave.eu and the official Vote Leave campaign engaged in “breaches of the law” and “astonishing levels of disinformation”. True, the evidence of wrongdoing is often of a technical nature: much of the controversy turns on whether Banks’s cash came legitimately from his British-based insurance businesses or illegitimately from a holding company in the Isle of Man. But it’s still quite strong enough to demand a suspension of the Brexit process. The key lesson here is how much damage social media can inflict when in the wrong hands, said Hugo Rifkind in The Times, and in particular when in the hands of a smug xenophobe with a mastery – thanks to his insurance business – of digital marketing. The hope was that mass digital communication would democratise the political process and empower grass-roots campaigners. The Banks case shows how it offers the same opportunity to wealthy, “feckless vandals”.

Let’s keep this in proportion, said Dominic Lawson in the Daily Mail. Banks may be a “chancer” who likes to keep his money offshore. But few Leave voters would agree to the referendum being rerun even if it were established that some pro-leave campaign funds came from a bank account in the Isle of Man. The Electoral Commission is concerned, because the Isle of Man is deemed a non-british territory. American banks such as Goldman Sachs funded the Remain campaign, but “they did so via UK accounts, so that was all right”. What I find really chilling, said Brendan O’neill on Spiked, is the way leading Remainers like Lord Adonis and Green MP Caroline Lucas have accused the BBC of operating against the public interest by allowing Banks to be interviewed on air by Andrew Marr. It’s for news organisations to decide who is an appropriate interviewee, not politically-minded busybodies seeking to silence anyone with whom they disagree. Such people “are a menace to democracy”.