Senior Brexiteer rejected as Tory voice at Electoral Commission
A PROMINENT Brexiteer who senior Tories hoped would “shake-up” the elections watchdog has been turned down for a role overseeing the body, The Sunday Telegraph understands.
Karl McCartney, a former MP who has been highly critical of the Electoral Commission, was rejected by a panel that included Sir John Holmes, the current chairman, who said he “regret [ted] the result of the referendum”.
Mr McCartney’s rejection will disappoint Leave supporters who believed his nomination by Theresa May as the Conservatives’ representative on the commission’s board could help tackle its alleged “imbalance”.
It comes after this newspaper disclosed in April that four members of the 10-strong board made public statements criticising the pro-Brexit campaign or backing calls for the result to be overturned, despite strict impartiality rules.
They included Sir John, who complained about “the panoply of Eurosceptic nonsense about the EU” heard during the campaign.
Sir John was part of a four-member panel that interviewed Mr McCartney and Lord Gilbert, the Tories’ former director of campaigning, after both men were put forward. Lord Gilbert, who campaigned for Remain, is now expected to be declared the preferred candidate following Mr McCartney’s rejection last month.
A friend of Mr McCartney said: “When Karl went for the interview, he quickly realised that the chairman and like-minded board members would do anything not to have him join them and inject some independent thinking ... which is a crying shame.”
The panel was chaired by Dame Denise Platt, a former senior civil servant, and included Jessica Morden, a Labour MP, and Andrea Jenkyns, a Tory MP.
The disclosure comes after a High Court judgment stated that the Electoral Commission had misinterpreted election rules in advice it gave to Vote Leave, the official pro-Brexit campaign.
After the judgment was issued on Friday, Matthew Elliott, Vote Leave’s former chief executive, suggested the commission should drop fines it levied at the group after it followed its advice.
The commission has faced repeated accusations of bias as it has undertaken multiple investigations into Vote Leave while ruling there were not “reasonable grounds” for an inquiry into allegations about the Remain campaign’s spending.
The watchdog has said that decisions about investigations are taken by its executive, rather than commissioners, “with complete impartiality”.
Sadiq Khan has made a rallying cry for a second referendum. Writing in The Observer, he said: “It’s time to take this crucial issue out of the hands of the politicians and return it to the people so that they can take back control.”
It is now clear that the Electoral Commission, the quango in charge of monitoring the EU referendum, failed in its most elementary purpose. It told the official Leave campaign that a certain type of donation would be perfectly permissible. Yet it subsequently denied giving this advice and fined both Vote Leave and an individual activist. Last week, the High Court ruled that the Commission had provided advice that was inaccurate. Given that Vote Leave, understandably, believed it was operating according to the rules, why have the fines not been rescinded?
How could the public still have confidence in the Commission given this charade? It gets worse: this newspaper has documented anti-Brexit statements made by members of its board – and we can now report that a lone pro-Brexit Tory nominee to the Commission, Karl McCartney, has been rejected in favour of yet another Remainer.
The spending rules should also be tightened. They were abused during the referendum – by the Remain side. In addition to the spending limit permitted to the official Remain campaign, the Government separately splashed out £9.3million on a leaflet sent to every home making the case for staying in the EU. Add to that every statement or report made by a government body and the cards were stacked against Leave. Last year, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee concluded that the leaflet had been “inappropriate” and that the use of government machinery “increased public distrust”.
That’s a key point: establishment bias and incompetence undermines faith in democracy and weakens faith in the electoral system. A new electoral body is needed to restore trust.