If this is impartial, then so’s Mr Juncker!

SQUIRMING with delight, the Remainer BBC was alone among broadcasters in leading yesterday’s bulletins on a leaked report by the Electoral Commission, provisionally finding Vote Leave guilty of overspending on its referendum campaign.

The implication was clear: the Corporation wanted to spread the impression that the Brexit camp won by cheating – so adding fuel to Remoaners’ calls for a second vote. Yet so much is dubious about the commission’s report that it’s hard to know where to begin. For one thing, it’s a draft, drawn up without apparently taking any evidence from Vote Leave, despite the campaign’s repeated requests for a hearing.

Then there’s the question of the quango’s supposed impartiality. How does this square with chairman Sir John Holmes’s expression of regret over Brexit and his attack on the ‘panoply of Eurosceptic nonsense’ from Leave supporters?

Or take commissioner Professor David Howarth’s snide assertion that the proBrexit majority could be reversed ‘by the process of Leave voters dying’. Or his colleague Bridget Prentice’s view that Tony Blair was ‘spot on’ in wanting a second referendum. Or Lord Horam’s belief that there is ‘great logic’ in another vote.

If this lot are impartial about the EU, then so is Jean-Claude Juncker!

Another puzzle is why the commission has dug up these charges again – at the instigation of a Eurofanatical serial litigant – after clearing Vote Leave of wrongdoing.

As for the suggestion that the campaign spent more than Remainers, have the BBC and commission forgotten the £9.3million of taxpayers’ money spent by George Osborne on a leaflet sent to every household, spreading blatant (and utterly groundless) propaganda for Project Fear?

Do they not recall how David Cameron mobilised the entire Civil Service and quangocracy – at heaven knows what cost – to bombard voters with scare stories?

Even if the commission’s findings prove true – a very big If – the £625,000 in dispute is dwarfed by the eight-figure sum spent in vain by Remain.

But then what does the BBC care about balance, when there’s dirt to be flung at the pro-Brexit majority who pay its licence fee?