‘Vote Leave’ fined, referred to police

‘Referendum legitimate’

LONDON, July 17, (Agencies): Britain’s official Brexit campaign, Vote Leave, has been fined for breaking spending rules in the 2016 EU membership referendum, the Electoral Commission announced Tuesday, adding that it had referred the case to the police.

The Electoral Commission regulator said the winning side in the referendum had worked together with a smaller pro-Brexit group called BeLeave and had made a donation to the youth organisation to get around its own campaign finance limits.

“We found substantial evidence that the two groups worked to a common plan, did not declare their joint working and did not adhere to the legal spending limits,” said Bob Posner, the commission’s director of political finance and regulation.

“These are serious breaches of the laws put in place by parliament to ensure fairness and transparency at elections and referendums,” Posner said.

A Vote Leave spokesman accused the Electoral Commission of being “motivated by a political agenda rather than uncovering the facts”.

The spokesman said there were “a number of false accusations and incorrect assertions that are wholly inaccurate and do not stand up to scrutiny”.

In the referendum, the official pro- and antiBrexit campaign groups, designated by the Electoral Commission, had spending limits of £7 million ($9.3 million, 7.9 million euros).

The commission’s report found that the Vote Leave campaign made a donation of more than £675,000 to BeLeave, and because they worked together had thereby exceeded the £7 million spending limit by almost £500,000.

May

Fashion

The report said BeLeave, which was founded by fashion student Darren Grimes, spent more than £675,000 with AggregateIQ, a Canadian digital political advertising company, under a “common plan” with Vote Leave.

Shahmir Sanni, who worked with Vote Leave, alleged the money was used to pay AggregateIQ for targeted messaging services on Facebook and other social media.

AggregateIQ was mentioned in the scandal over Cambridge Analytica, a now defunct British company accused of misusing data obtained from Facebook to micro-target political ads.

Meanwhile, Britain’s vote on its EU membership was a legitimate democratic exercise, a spokesman for Prime Minister said on Tuesday after the officially designated Brexit campaign group was referred to the police over breaching spending rules.

Vote Leave, which campaigned for Brexit, was fined 61,000 pounds ($81,000) on Tuesday for breaching spending rules in the 2016 referendum and referred to the police by the Electoral Commission.

“We are very clear that this was a legitimate democratic exercise in which the public delivered its opinion and that that is what we’re going to be delivering on,” the spokesman told reporters.

In related news, British Prime Minister May was facing a battle over trade in parliament on Tuesday, with pro-EU lawmakers hoping to influence her plans to leave the European Union a day after she bowed to demands from Brexit campaigners.

May’s vulnerability in parliament, where she lost her Conservative Party’s majority in an illjudged election last year, was laid bare on Monday, when her decision to accept the demands of pro-Brexit lawmakers stirred a rebellion among those who want to keep the closest possible ties in the EU.

Majority

On two of Monday’s votes her majority was cut to three, suggesting that the leader will struggle to get Brexit legislation through a deeply divided parliament, which could possibly threaten the approval of any Brexit deal with the EU.

May has vowed to stick to her plan to negotiate the closest possible trade ties with the EU, saying her strategy is the only one that can meet the government’s aims for Brexit, the biggest shift in Britain’s foreign and trade policy for decades.

But it has pleased very few, deepening those divisions in her Conservative Party that have so far hampered progress in talks with the EU, and triggering a bitter war of words between its Brexit-supporting and pro-EU factions.

“We can’t please everybody. We have to have a compromise position that enables the country to get an agreement with the European Union,” trade minister Liam Fox told BBC radio.

“It’s up now to the EU 27 to determine what sort of relationship they have with us.”

Tuesday’s vote will be on the trade bill, which is focused on converting trade deals between the EU and third countries into bilateral deals with Britain. It is a technical bill and was not originally intended to define new trade policy.

Pro-EU lawmakers have tabled a change to the wording of the bill to try to force the government to pursue a customs union with the EU if ministers fail to agree an agreement which establishes “a frictionless free trade area for goods”.

Parliament will also vote on a government attempt to bring forward its summer break to Thursday from next week, which the government says is logical because there is very little parliamentary business in the remaining days.

Critics say the move is a bid by a government panicked by the various rebellions in the Conservative Party.