Vote Leave hopes Gove ally can win his support
A BITTERLY divided antiEU group is standing by its embattled director in an effort to persuade Michael Gove to become its figurehead, insiders have told The Daily Telegraph.
Vote Leave has been left in turmoil after being abandoned by senior Conservative and Labour MPs following a series of clashes.
Dominic Cummings, the campaign director and a former aide to Mr Gove, has been accused by the organisation’s chairman of generating ill-feeling, sending disparaging text messages and showing insensitivity to fellow supporters.
A Vote Leave insider said that Mr Cummings was being kept on to lure the Justice Secretary across to the campaign later this month when David Cameron has completed his renegotiation. Mr Gove is said to be “torn” between his Eurosceptic instincts and his loyalty to the Prime Minister.
The deepening schism in the group is likely to be significant, as it needs crossparty support to be officially designated as the “out” campaign by the Electoral Commission next month.
It is competing for the role with Leave.EU, a group founded by the Ukip donor Arron Banks, who yesterday accused Mr Cummings and Matthew Elliott, another senior figure in Vote Leave, of being the “two of the nastiest individuals I have ever had the misfortune to meet”.
He said he had instructed lawyers over “false and de-
famatory briefings”. A Vote Leave spokesman declined to comment on the allegations about Mr Cummings and Mr Elliott: “We wish Arron Banks well.”
The disarray comes despite the campaign to leave the EU being handed its biggest poll lead yet. A YouGov survey found that 45 per cent of people will vote to leave the EU compared with 36 per cent who want to remain, while 19 per cent do not know or would not vote.
Kate Hoey and Kelvin Hopkins, two Labour MPs, quit Vote Leave in protest at the in-fighting. Last night there were conflicting reports that Labour Leave, a group of Labour MPs and senior figures, had split from Vote Leave. Ms Hoey, the cochairman of Labour Leave, and Brendan Chilton, its general secretary, issued a statement saying Labour Leave had left Vote Leave and would not endorse it.
However, this was denied by John Mills, a Labour donor and founder of the group, who said: “Labour Leave is an independent campaign but corporately it supports Vote Leave.”
Last week it emerged that Mr Mills had raised concerns about Mr Cummings. In a leaked email, he wrote: “Dominic – what on earth are you doing, generating more and more ill-feeling like this entirely unnecessarily?” A Vote Leave spokesman said he did not “recognise” claims that Mr Cummings created ill-feeling. Claims that he was being kept on to convince Mr Gove to join Vote Leave were dismissed as “speculation”.