The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[bickster]

1 hour ago, Straggler said:

Whistleblower questions Brexit result, says campaigners broke election law

It seemed inevitable with all the cross Atlantic links with all the main players in this story that something like this would come out.

Story has gone a bit further than that now.

Quote

Members of the official Brexit campaign during the EU referendum may have committed criminal offences relating to overspending and collusion, according to lawyers advising whistleblowers who worked inside the organisation.

Clare Montgomery and Helen Mountfield, barristers from Matrix chambers, concluded in a formal opinion that there was a “prima facie case” that Vote Leave submitted an inaccurate spending return and colluded with BeLeave, which was aimed at students.

They were reviewing a dossier of evidence supplied by solicitors Bindmans, which contained examples of alleged collusion showing that Vote Leave and BeLeave were not separate and therefore that the leave campaign spent over the £7m legal limit set by the Electoral Commission.

MPs will debate the allegations in the Commons on Tuesday, after the Lib Dems secured an emergency debate. The dossier has also been passed to the Electoral Commission, which is responsible for election law.

Tamsin Allen, from Bindmans, told a press conference “that there is a strong suspicion that the campaigns were very closely linked and co-ordinated, in which case it may be that Vote Leave spent huge sums unlawfully and its declaration of expenses is incorrect”.

Vote Leave formally declared it had spent £6.77m during the campaign in the summer of 2016, well below the £7m limit. That figure, however, excluded £625,000 donated by Vote Leave to BeLeave which was spent on the same digital marketing company, AggregateIQ, that Vote Leave used.

Vote Leave, whose leading members include Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, strongly denies any coordination with another campaign group during the referendum.

But Allen said there were grounds to suspect Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave’s campaign director, “of having conspired to break the law” because he was among those engaged in discussions with BeLeave about their organisation, activity and funding.

Emails compiled by Bindmans appear to show that Vote Leave assisted in the creation of BeLeave’s branding and that there was constant communication between to the two groups, who were based in the same office. They suggest that they used a single shared drive where campaign materials were shared.

Bindmans’ dossier was largely based on evidence supplied by Shahmir Sanni, a volunteer who worked at both Vote Leave and BeLeave, with supporting evidence from Christopher Wylie, a former employee of the political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica who worked on the Trump election campaign and who had worked for AggregateIQ.

A Facebook chat records Sanni discussing with the BeLeave founder, Darren Grimes, how they might set up independently in May 2016. “We could just say that you and I will be handling the money and using our social media data (alongside VL data) to decide where best to spend our money,” Sanni wrote.

Wylie said that an employee of AggregateIQ had told him the relationship between Vote Leave and BeLeave was “totally illegal” because “you are not allowed to coordinate between different campaigns and not declare it”. He said “I don’t feel confident in the result [of the referendum]” as a result.

The lawyers said there were also “grounds to investigate” Stephen Parkinson, Vote Leave’s national organiser, who now works as Theresa May’s special adviser and Cleo Watson, who was Vote Leave’s head of outreach and also now works at No 10. Parkinson and Watson have denied any wrongdoing.

Montgomery and Mountfield said in their opinion that there were “significant questions” about the role of a senior Vote Leave official who appeared to have removed references to themself and others in discussions with BeLeave after the referendum by appearing “to change permissions on a BeLeave shared drive in March 2017 while an EC [Electoral Commission] investigation into Vote Leave was under way”. This revoked permission for the official, Cummings and a third person from having access to BeLeave materials.

Separately, it emerged that AggregateIQ has worked in the United States developing software for Cambridge Analytica, which has been accused of benefiting from the harvesting of 50m Facebook profiles to use in political targeting. The little-known AggregateIQ helped develop software used by senator Ted Cruz in his failed presidential bid, Gizmodo reported, cited coding documents found online. Previously the only links noted were a licensing agreement and Wylie’s claim that he helped set up AggregateIQ.

Cummings wrote in a blogpost before the press conference that “a team will also be putting in formal complaints to the EC and ICO [Information Commissioner’s Office] about the illegal conduct of the remain campaign”. He has previously argued that Stronger In also took advantage of loopholes to reduce the expenditure against its £7m limit.

Vote Leave has repeatedly denied it coordinated its activities with BeLeave. Venner Shipley, Vote Leave’s lawyers, said: “We have never been instructed by, nor have we ever provided advice to BeLeave.”

The allegations have all been denied by Vote Leave and its former officials, who reject all accusations of wrongdoing.

The Electoral Commission has already assessed the issue twice and found in favour of Vote Leave on both occasions. But a judicial review launched by the Good Law Project in November led to the commission re-opening an investigation into the donation which is yet to report its findings.

Guardian

[Chindie]

And all will be ignored.

They literally covered up some funding coming via Northern Ireland.

[MickeyC_UTV]

 

[supermon]

Is anyone else hearing christopher wylie's hearing at DCMS select committee, literally saying that referendum was illegal, the leave campaing groups used agrregrate IQ to manipulate the votes.

Listen hear live:

https://www.pscp.tv/ABC/1jMJgqAqjRjKL

This is HUUGE!!!

[ml1dch]

7 minutes ago, supermon said:

Is anyone else hearing christopher wylie's hearing at DCMS select committee, literally saying that referendum was illegal, the leave campaing groups used agrregrate IQ to manipulate the votes.

Listen hear live:

https://www.pscp.tv/ABC/1jMJgqAqjRjKL

This is HUUGE!!!

Not really. Yes, it's an obvious scandal. But it's not something that is going to make a jot of difference to anything that's actually happening.

[bickster]

15 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

Not really. Yes, it's an obvious scandal. But it's not something that is going to make a jot of difference to anything that's actually happening.

I think it strengthens claims for a second referendum, not purely because of this but its another piece of evidence as to why there should be one.

[supermon]

18 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

Not really. Yes, it's an obvious scandal. But it's not something that is going to make a jot of difference to anything that's actually happening.

I dunno man, his evidence is pretty damning, can't simply go unanswered or without further scrutiny.  sadly i think any evidence to back all his statements will probably be destroyed before any meaningful enquiry begins.

it'll be interesting to see what the reaction is from politicians and the media after this.  

[Chindie]

The media will mostly ignore it and politicians will too.

The media because it's a 'boring' technical story that doesn't sell very well as a basic narrative. It'll fizzle in the mass media and vanish. 

Politicians will ignore it through a combination of not understanding it, not wanting to understand it, not wanting to undermine what they've 'won', realising they're all up to their ears in it, and so on. There'll be a small section pushing for it to be investigated and prosecuted, but they'll drown in the louder voices.

You can already see it happening.

[ml1dch]

28 minutes ago, bickster said:

I think it strengthens claims for a second referendum, not purely because of this but its another piece of evidence as to why there should be one.

The mechanism just isn't there for it to happen. Remember last time it took six months just for the wording of the question to be decided upon.

In the next twelve months any motion for this would need to go through three readings (in both houses), committee stage and report stage (in both houses) and consideration of amendments (how placid and agreeable about this do you think Rees-Mogg, Baker et al will be?), and finally it passes. Maybe.

Last time there was six months between this stage and the date of the referendum to sort out the administration and campaigning.

That needs to all be put into motion by two parties who are so against all this that people get fired for saying that this is a sensible course of action.

And that's before the unanswered question of whether we can even unilaterally scrap the whole thing comes back around.

For the same reason that our customs infrastructure won't be ready in time, that our new trading arrangements won't be ready in time and our new immigration system won't be ready in time - there's just too much "stuff" that is needed to make it happen and not enough time to do it in. Even if they really wanted to, which they demonstrably don't.

Edited March 27, 2018 by ml1dch

[Chindie]

A second referendum isn't happening.

Brexit is, and damn us all.

[HanoiVillan]

This is a constant difficulty in breaches in electoral law. Invalidating the result isn't actually an option, and what else is there? Especially for a referendum when the offending campaign has already achieved its entire aim. 

[snowychap]

9 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

This is a constant difficulty in breaches in electoral law. Invalidating the result isn't actually an option, and what else is there? Especially for a referendum when the offending campaign has already achieved its entire aim. 

Criminal sanctions and a disqualification from future electoral campaigning (including donations) for a period. Again it means that any offending campaign would have already achieved its aim but it might provide some actual sort of disincentive though it probably wouldn't as we'd just see a few pawns thrown under the bus each time.

Edited March 27, 2018 by snowychap

[OutByEaster?]

Mr Rees-Mogg says that Remainers are like those Japanese that didn't surrender until 30 years after world war two. I'm guessing he means that the remain side have failed to recognise that the 'war' for membership is over (which is true).

What he's failed to recognise is that in his analogy, if you follow the logic through, those who support Brexit are the other Japanese - meaning those that have recognised already that they've lost the war and surrendered immediately. In his analogy, it would appear the EU are the Allies and victors.

I wonder if anyone has had the heart to tell him.

 

 

[snowychap]

We should stop listening to and giving any credence to the words of the utter gobshite that is Jacob Rees-Mogg.

 

[OutByEaster?]

"We have to accept that the world has changed and that you can't live in the past" said Mr Rees-Moog before dismissing his manservant, doubting the candles and putting on his nightcap.

 

[snowychap]

Another person to view worryingly is Dominic Cummings.

Either Wylie is the charlatan-fantasist that Cummings claims and The Grauniad, C4, & others have been duped and there's nothing in it and we've just watched Walter Mitty giving evidence to the select committee or Cummings has utterly lost the plot.

In the meantime, Cummings is 'coming for the ECHR' and, apparently, they'll win that by more than 52-48.

[Chindie]

People voted for this. And our government insists on ploughing ahead with it.

Imbeciles.

[snowychap]

11 hours ago, Chindie said:

People voted for this. And our government insists on ploughing ahead with it.

Imbeciles.

I don't think this has been advanced in the most sensible way.

It has been put as an x versus y (i.e. the relative size of one area of the economy against another) when it in no way is (or should be) the debate actually about that.

Impacts ought to be viewed in their respective context rather than just their relative proportion of the entire national economy.

I'm not sure it's going to appeal to anyone who voted to leave the EU (mistakenly or not) on the basis that they were written off as a sideshow by telling them just how much of an irrelevance, in comparison to the **** people they hate, that they are.

It may help us confirm that the gobby advocates for all of this stuff wouldn't give their left testicle for 'the little people' but everyone who doesn't matter knows this.

Edited March 28, 2018 by snowychap
A late night issue with spelling testicle

[Xann]

 

[limpid]

2 hours ago, Xann said:

 

And people say that you should drink 8 glasses of water a day - but water is used in nuclear reactors.

What a load of nonsense. There are really issues with food safety, but "chemicals in the food" is just scaremongering.