As all the Albeeb management go off on holiday to spend taxpayers’ money we should spare a thought for all those vibrant diverse baby beeboids staying in Blighty to carry on the snowflake task of blaming so called cuts for this and that as well as suppressing incidents which al Beeb doesn’t want us to know about .
Weekend Open Thread 28 July 2018
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Impartial insights no doubt:
And now Sky News truly believe that their poll of under 1500 alone , warrants a second referendum. Who the hell do they think they are
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/theresa-may-dismisses-calls-for-second-brexit-referendum-in-wake-of-sky-data-poll-11454299?__twitter_impression=true
Where comments are open, their presumption to speak for the nation based on such numbers…. is not being received perhaps as well as they may have hoped.
That Sky link has no open comments
House of Commons DCMS Committee report on FakeNews
it is entirely predictable they would reach for Prof Lew an expert on “conspiracy theorists”, who just happens to be a big conspiracy theorist about people who have different opinions from him eg he speaks about ‘Climate deniers funded by big oil’
So ClipScep Blog are in a position to analyse his submissions
https://cliscep.com/2018/07/30/lewandowsky-parliament-and-the-gloucestershire-village-idiot
There are open comments of course
Time is coming when we`ll all have to get off Twitter etc, and find some friends.
Thankfully, we`ve got plenty. Might be a good idea to link up regionally, maybe by our BBC radio stations, as organised.
I`m Three Counties, got plenty pals with the same mind on Tyneside, The North West, Worcester and Gloucester as well.
They`re the new parishes-but as things stand, you`ll need to use your Wetherspoons and Service Stations to go off-grid and take the Left on.
First some important points that illustrate perfectly the problem with the Electoral Commission’s claim that Vote Leave colluded illegally with Beleave….
From AIQ to its staff:
‘I just wanted to touch base on Beleave and go through some stuff. First off…I cannot stress enough that this is to be treated as a totally new client. It has absolutely no association with VL and therefore cannot use any assets, audiences, etc. ….So please ensure that moving forward,there is absolutely no cross-over on this.’
The Electoral Commission notes Vote Leave was told by, er, the Electoral Commission, that donations to Beleave were legal….
4.32. We saw an internal Vote Leave email exchange on 14 June 2016 with the title “Donations to other campaigns”.
Mr Halsall was amongst the recipients, along with other senior Vote Leave figures. In this chain: At 15:02 a Vote Leave Board Member emailed to say the donation to BeLeave was “ok for me –on the understanding that there is no “coordinated plan or arrangement”, and based on the communications we received earlier from the Electoral Commission, which say that this is what we are allowed to do.”
At 15:07 Mr Halsall emailed: “Having read the advice from our Lawyer happy to agree to this donation. I assume we will ensure that BeLeave understand they have to register the donation as our Lawyer suggests.”
…and yet the Electoral Commission now claims the donations were illegal.
Here’s more official nonsense, this time from the DCMS report as it lays out the damning evidence of collusion between Cambridge Analytica and AIQ…here’s the section heading…
The links between Cambridge Analytica, SCL and AIQ
And here’s the damning evidence…..
123. AIQ’s first substantial work was for SCL, before it went on later to work for Vote Leave in the UK’s EU Referendum in 2016.
Yep…that’s it….AIQ did some work for SCL [of which CA is part] and then worked for Vote Leave….hang ’em! Oh, hang on didn’t the data firm that got Obama elected also then work for Trump? So now we know…those links between Trump and Obama…They are really in some sort of secret plot together!
Then there’s this complete lie about why Aaron Banks walked out of the DCMS inquiry……
‘Mr. Banks seemed to want to hide the extent of his contacts with Russia, while his spokesman Andy Wigmore’s statements have been unreliable—by his own admission—and cannot be taken at face value. Mr Wigmore is a self-confessed liar and, as a result, little significance can be attached to anything that he says. It is unclear whether Mr. Banks profited from business deals arising from meetings arranged by Russian officials.
Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore have misled the Committee on the number of meetings that took place with the Russian Embassy and walked out of the Committee’s evidence session to avoid scrutiny of the content of the discussions with the Russian Embassy.’
No he didn’t, he wasn’t hiding anything…he walked out because he had been there well over the time he was told he would have to attend and he had other things to do….
Damian Collins is an outright liar. And as for Andy Wigmore being labelled a ‘self-confessed liar’…no, that’s a huge exaggeration from Collins and Co and a deliberate use of emotive language to create the worst impression possible…Wigmore is in PR and said it was his job to spin things…which it is….hardly a ‘self-confessed liar’ as Collins puts it….all salesmen ‘spin’ their product to make it seem better than other rival ones but it would be harsh to denounce them as ‘self-confessed liars’ if they admitted that.
So that’s just some background stuff to give you an idea of what the Leave campaign is up against..a blatant desire to discredit them and thus to discredit the Brexit vote in an attempt to delegitimise it and make the case either to call it void or to force another referendum…no doubt with the likes of Collins and the EC policing what can and can’t be said in the campaigns.
Now we get into the nitty gritty of the Electoral Commission’s report and its judgement against Vote Leave and Beleave……as announced in the Guardian…
‘On Tuesday, Vote Leave was fined £61,000 after the Electoral Commission found significant evidence of coordination with BeLeave, another pro-Brexit group. The watchdog said it had found evidence BeLeave coordinated with Vote Leave and spent more than £675,000 with the digital data company Aggregate IQ. ‘
And in the words of the Electoral Commission itself:
‘The Commission is therefore satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Grimes incurred referendum spending in excess of £10,000 on behalf of a body that was not a permitted participant……He included payments of £675,315.18 that was not his spending. It was BeLeave’s spending. …. The fact that he may have been acting under a misapprehension is not a reasonable excuse for this.’
What lies at the heart of this is a misunderstanding as to whether it was Darren Grimes or Beleave that was the registered ‘permitted participant’ and as such allowed to spend up to £700,000 on campaigning.
Grimes registered as Beleave but mistakenly ticked the box registering as an individual, that is, himself, as the permitted participant. He no doubt did this because ‘Beleave’ was him in fact…a one man band started by him. The EC says it saw this, ignored it, and registered Grimes as the permitted participant and states that in any case Beleave did not qualify as a permitted participant at that time and they would have refused to register it anyway. It then says that Beleave did later qualify once Grimes had obtained the necessary paperwork for Beleave, but note, it wasn’t actually registered…however the EC now claim that Grimes was working on behalf of Beleave despite it not being registered, despite the EC not accepting it and despite the EC actually accepting Grimes as the permitted participant.
How can on the one hand the EC knowingly ignore ‘Beleave’ and refuse to accept it officially and then do an about turn when it suits to say Beleave was the official, if unregistered, campaign and thus Grimes overspent on its behalf [limited to £10,000 as a non-permitted participant] and thus Vote Leave is actually responsible for the rest of the spending by Grimes?
Pretty certain any half decent QC could tear the EC’s case apart.
This post examines the so-called evidence that the Electoral Commission says supposedly shows Vote Leave and Beleave had a ‘common plan’ and acted in concert, thus breaking the referendum rules on spending. The Electoral Commission’s report is full of inconsistencies, contradictions and highly subjective conclusions and interpretations of fact that I doubt would stand up to proper scrutiny in a court of law. The EC twice cleared them of any irregularities and only reopened the investigation when pressurised by Remainers who threatened them with court action. The EC then suddenly found Vote Leave and Beleave were acting under a common plan and were guilty of not reporting their expenses properly. The basis for that judgement was ‘new evidence’ that showed that another group, Veterans for Brexit, had also received money from Vote Leave at the same time as Beleave did…thus the EC declared there was a ‘a pattern of action’ that indicated a joint enterprise. However the EC then declared that it could see no such joint enterprise between VFB and VL…but did find Beleave guilty of this. Why? Because VFB had asked for their donation whilst Beleave had been approached by VL. Very tenuous, thin evidence of collusion, not in the slightest bit substantive and surely more subjective and more indicative of a desire to ‘nail’ Vote Leave for something this time around than a legal case. Darren Grimes from Beleave was twice cleared of not reporting his spending properly even though he had made a mistake when registering with the EC…this last investigation suddenly changed that and found him guilty…why? They claim he had no say in how the money was spent and that Beleave had no input into the campaign and that Vote Leave ran everything…both assertions proved untrue by the EC’s own contradictory report which ironically gives plenty of evidence that Grimes and Beleave were very hands-on whilst claiming they were not.
The biggest problem is that the law that such judgements are based upon is badly written, no-one knows what it means and it is open to interpretation ……What exactly is a ‘common plan’?….not clear from this law…..it seems that any donation from one official campaign to another would be ‘common plan’ and thus count as spending by the ‘lead organisation’…..pretty sure then that many Remain donations would fall under that ruling…
Common plan expenses
‘Under the European Union Referendum Act 2015 (”EUR A”) Schedule 1 paragraph 22, ”common plan expenses” are expenses that: are referendum expenses incurred by or on behalf of an individual or body during the referendum period, and those expenses are incurred in pursuance of a plan or other arrangement by which referendum expenses are to be incurred by or on behalf of that individual or body and one or more other individuals or bodies, and with a view to promoting or procuring a particular outcome in the referendum.
Under the same paragraph, if any of the individuals or bodies involved is a designated (‘lead’) organisation, then those referendum expenses are treated for the purpose of sections 117 and 118 and Schedule 14 PPERA as having been incurred by the designated organisation only.’
Here is the EC’s announcement of which two groups will be the official campaign groups for Leave and Remain….
“We received two high quality applications on the ‘Leave’ side, from ‘Vote Leave Ltd’ and ‘The Go Movement Ltd’. After careful consideration, the Commission decided that ‘Vote Leave Ltd’ better demonstrated that it has the structures in place to ensure the views of other campaigners are represented in the delivery of its campaign.
Note that last line….Vote Leave must ensure other [Leave] campaigners are represented in the delivery of its campaign. As Dominic Cummings from Vote Leave says this is contradictory…..as there must be no ‘common plan’ and yet Vote Leave must represent other groups’ views…..
‘The two official campaigns were, therefore, effectively obliged both to ‘coordinate’ others by the EC’s designation criteria, in one sense of the word, and we were also forbidden to ‘coordinate’ in the legal sense of the word, though nobody including the EC itself could define clearly what this meant and where the boundaries were (and they still can’t). ‘
Cummings also notes that the EC told him he could donate to Beleave….
‘The decision re a donation to BeLeave was taken by the Vote Leave Finance Committee (a subset of the Board) after we suddenly got the written confirmation from the EC that we could donate to BeLeave — another fact, supported by documents presented in the High Court.’
Here indeed is at least one of the EC’s advisory guidelines to Vote Leave….
‘If you are supplying material to other campaigners without having a co-ordinated plan or agreement then the material is likely to be a donation from you to the other campaigner. If the donation is over £500 it will reportable by the other campaigner. You would not need to report the cost of the material in your spending return unless you use the material yourself. ‘
Also from Cummings…
‘Suddenly in May, at the height of the disputes described in the paragraph above, the EC told us that we could make donations to other campaigns. The idea that campaigns could donate to each other AND such a donation would not have to count as part of our expenditure, AND would not be regarded a priori as ‘coordination’ was a surprise to me and others. So we sought clarification from the EC and got it. We then made donations to BeLeave and others. Having struggled to raise money since we started a year earlier, at this point (roughly a month before the vote) we had the opposite problem: money was suddenly flooding in as donors thought we might actually win (almost nobody thought it possible before). So we gave some of it to other independent campaigns as the EC said we could. Everything was properly recorded and declared.’
Not only that but the Divisional Court judged that the EC had misled people and that its advice to VL did in fact give the ‘clear implication’ that such donations, money or donations in kind such as help with websites or actual material such as posters and leaflets, were legal……Here is the court judgement….
‘The witness statement of Mr Matthew Elliott, referred to earlier, exhibited (amongst other documents) an email dated 20 May 2016 from Mr Kevin Molloy, Guidance Adviser, sent on behalf of the Commission to Vote Leave responding to some questions in relation to campaign expenditure. In response to a question about whether the cost of providing branded materials such as banners and flags to other leave campaigners would be treated as part of Vote Leave’s campaign expenditure, the answer given was as follows:
If you are supplying material to other campaigners without
having a co-ordinated plan or agreement then the material
is likely to be a donation from you to the other campaigner.
If the donation is over £500 it will be reportable by the other
campaigner. You would not need to report the costs of the
material in your spending return unless you use the material
itself.
42. At the hearing Ms Simor QC submitted that, although this advice was addressing the supply of materials, there can be no difference in principle between the supply of materials and the supply of services to another campaigner, and if one should treated as a donation and not as an expense incurred, then so must the other.
44. We agree with Ms Simor that the supply of services is analogous to the supply of materials. The advice given to Vote Leave in the email dated 20 May 2016 was thus consistent with the view which the Commission has taken at all relevant times and is maintaining in these proceedings. That being so, it seems to us that, in asserting that it had never given advice that Vote Leave could lawfully make the donation it did, the Commission was making a statement which, though literally true, was misleading.
It was true that the Commission had not given advice to Vote Leave that the specific payments to AIQ would not need to be reported as referendum expenses. But the Commission had given advice to Vote Leave which, when applied to the payments to AIQ, carried that clear implication (provided there was no common plan). ‘
Thus when Grimes received some help in creating the Beleave website this was legally a donation in kind…..though the EC takes this as evidence of collusion….despite V4B also getting the same help and the EC clearing them of collusion…
‘Mr Grimes got advice from Vote Leave on website content. He also got practical help with the content, including using Vote Leave staff and facilities to film videos and take photos.’
And yet the EC’s own advice to VL?…
‘If you are supplying material to other campaigners without
having a co-ordinated plan or agreement then the material
is likely to be a donation from you to the other campaign’
Bit of a catch-22….you can supply material to other campaigns as long as you aren’t co-ordinating..and yet supplying such material is taken as evidence of co-ordination.
The EC had previously damned the Guardian for making claims about a ‘common plan’ but had not come up with any evidence when asked to do so…
‘Claims also emerged in the media that Vote Leave and Mr Grimes had been working under a ‘common plan’. If true, these claims would mean that Vote Leave had failed to declare joint spending, and Mr Grimes had misreported the spending. We asked the journalist concerned for sight of the evidence to substantiate the claims, in order to assist us in looking at the claims. This evidence was not provided to the Commission.’
Here is the EC explaining the process that resulted in it reopening the investigation for the third time…
‘We carried out assessments into Vote Leave and Mr Grimes in February and March 2017. An assessment is a process of getting and examining evidence so the Commission can decide whether to open an investigation.
We only investigate if we have reasonable grounds to suspect an offence or contravention of PPERA has happened, and if it is in the public interest for us to act. In these assessments, we looked at whether to investigate allegations that Vote Leave had broken its spending limit for the EU Referendum, by channelling money to Aggregate IQ via BeLeave. Based on the evidence we saw at the time, we decided not to investigate.
2.6. Then, during September and October 2017, we found out that Veterans for Britain had told us the wrong details for its donation from Vote Leave. Rather than being given on 20 May 2016, that donation was given on 20 June 2016 and paid on 29 June 2016.
This coincided with the dates of the payments Mr Grimes reported as donations from Vote Leave.
2.7.Therefore, by late October 2017 we knew that Vote Leave had made payments to Aggregate IQ in the ten days before the referendum on 23 June 2016, apparently on behalf of two separate campaigners.
Given this new information suggested a pattern of action by Vote Leave, we decided to review our assessment decision not to investigate. ‘
Here is the EC recognising Darren Grimes as in receipt of non-cash donations from Vote Leave…thus he, not Vote Leave, is responsible for reporting them and that the money Vote Leave sent to AIQ directly was an indirect donation to Grimes…..
‘Dear Mr Grimes,
In respect of the donations received from Vote Leave; you were not in receipt of money, whether by cash, cheque or bank transfer. Rather, regardless of when and who made the agreement with AIQ, you did receive a service provided by AIQ and paid for by Vote Leave.
The Commission therefore considers the donations to have been non-cash donations of digital marketing and will be amending the registers accordingly.
We will contact you again should we have any further questions.
Yours sincerely,
Senior Investigator
Casework and Investigations Team
Party and Election Finance
The Electoral Commission’
Here you can see the EC declaring Beleave was significantly under the influence of Vote leave despite then providing evidence that it was not and that the same alleged ‘significant influence’ was apparent in Veterans For Britain’s campaign which the EC said was not a ‘common plan’ with Vote Leave…..
‘The Commission is therefore satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Grimes incurred referendum spending in excess of £10,000 on behalf of a body that was not a permitted participant……He included payments of £675,315.18 that was not his spending. It was BeLeave’s spending. …. The fact that he may have been acting under a misapprehension is not a reasonable excuse for this
In May 2016, when Vote Leave was engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to get funding for Mr Grimes’s BeLeave activity, Vote Leave drafted a constitution for BeLeave.
When the individuals who became the BeLeave Board agreed this constitution, they effectively created an unincorporated association that could have been registered as a referendum campaigner.
All of BeLeave’s funding came directly from Vote Leave, or was arranged by Vote Leave. Vote Leave had significant influence over how that money was spent by BeLeave, to the extent that Vote Leave made a commitment to a different BeLeave donor to about how his money would be used.
4.3. We are satisfied that spending by Mr Grimes (which only came to £21.51) on campaign activity prior to BeLeave being established was under the significant influence of Vote Leave. We are also satisfied that BeLeave’s creation, strategy, funding and activities throughout the time it existed as an unincorporated association in May and June 2016 were all under the significant influence of Vote Leave.
4.14. We have seen no evidence that BeLeave was at all involved in obtaining this donation or had any control over it or what it would be used for.’
Hang on….the EC then tells us that Darren Grimes directed where the money was to go…..
‘Mr Grimes said that he incurred this spending after he was offered donations by Vote Leave in June 2016. He asked Vote Leave to pay the donations direct to Aggregate IQ because he did not yet have a working bank account for BeLeave.’
And…in one sentence they manage to contradict themselves…
‘4.22. Mr Grimes said that he chose to spend the donations from Vote Leave and Mr Clake on Aggregate IQ. But Vote Leave officials channelled funds to Aggregate IQ in the name of BeLeave, without Mr Grimes being involved.’
The EC then gives a whole raft of evidence that shows Darren Grimes was directing affairs….
‘4.15. We also got copies of various internal emails from Vote Leave and emails with Mr Grimes about the donations from Vote Leave. A summary is below.
On 13 June 2016 Mr Grimes emailed Vote Leave’s Operations Director following a discussion they had about a donation. He thanked Vote Leave for considering a donation, and said: “We’d be very interested in working with data specialists like those at Aggregate IQ.” He went on to say that he wanted to work with Aggregate IQ.
Vote Leave’s Operations Director replied to Mr Grimes later on 13 June 2016 saying that she would need to speak to the Finance Committee and then would ask Mr Grimes to “confirm that you are happy to transfer the money to Aggregate IQ.”
On 14 June 2016 Vote Leave’s Operations Director emailed Mr Grimes to offer a donation of £400,000. Mr Grimes replied asking for the funds to be transferred to Aggregate IQ.
On 17 June 2016 Vote Leave’s Operations Director emailed Mr Grimes to offer “a further donation to BeLeave.” The next day Mr Grimes replied, asking for the funds to be “sent directly to AIQ”.
On 21 June 2016 Vote Leave’s Operations Director emailed Mr Grimes to ask if he could make use of a £181,000 donation. He replied shortly afterwards asking for £180,000 to go to AIQ and £1,000 to BeLeave to cover travel expenses.’
Starting to get a little embarrassing for the EC.
The EC then puts forward a claim that any support Vote Leave provided was evidence of a joint common plan….
‘4.9. Vote Leave gave infrastructure support and advice to Mr Grimes to build his BeLeave brand. For example, Vote Leave’s Head of Outreach directed a Vote Leave contractor to build the BeLeave website.
The contractor reported to the Head of Outreach on the completion of the work.
Mr Grimes got advice from Vote Leave on website content. He also got practical help with the content, including using Vote Leave staff and facilities to film videos and take photos. ‘
And yet the EC declared that Veterans for Britain were not colluding with Vote Leave despite having a very similar relationship with them as Beleave did…..you can see that V4B did in fact have not just a donation but extensive support and advice from VL and yet the EC dismisses all that whilst using exactly the same type of behaviour as evidence against Beleave…..
‘4.62. That donation was for services provided by Aggregate IQ. Aggregate IQ was providing services to Vote Leave at the same time. The evidence we have seen does not support the concern that the services were provided to Veterans for Britain as joint working with Vote Leave.
4.67. From these, we saw that Veterans for Britain had some interaction with the Vote Leave Outreach Team and may have got some help with building its infrastructure (mainly its website). But there is no evidence that it had extensive support or resources from Vote Leave.
We saw that in mid-June 2016 Veterans for Britain expected to receive a £50,000 donation. Given the lateness in the campaign, it decided to use the money on digital campaigning. It asked Vote Leave’s Head of Outreach for a recommended supplier. The Head of Outreach introduced Veterans for Britain to Aggregate IQ.
4.68. Following that introduction, no one from Vote Leave was involved in the exchanges we have seen between Veterans for Britain and Aggregate IQ.
4.69. This evidence is consistent with two legally separate campaigners who knew each other and had worked closely prior to the regulated referendum period starting. However, they did not appear to be collaborating on a campaign. While Vote Leave recommended Aggregate IQ as a supplier, Veterans for Britain built a direct relationship with them.’
As said how different the EC’s take on Beleave’s similar relationship with Vote Leave….
‘4.17. Before May 2016, when Mr Grimes was using the BeLeave name in campaign material, Vote Leave had a significant influence over his activities. This is clear from Vote Leave’s input of advice and resources to the BeLeave website. ‘
This is instantly contradicted by the immediately following statements…..the EC trying to spin trivial points into significant and damning facts….
‘4.18. Mr Grimes and Vote Leave told us that BeLeave commissioned its own material from Aggregate IQ. Evidence from June 2016 does show that Mr Grimes and others from BeLeave had significant input into the look and design of the BeLeave adverts produced by Aggregate IQ. However, Vote Leave messaging was still influential in their strategy and design. For example: On 15 June 2016 Mr Grimes told other BeLeave Board members and Aggregate IQ that BeLeave’s ads needed to be: “an effective way of pushing our more liberal and progressive message to an audience which is perhaps not as receptive to Vote Leave’s messaging.”
On 17 June 2016 Mr Grimes told other BeLeave Board members: “So as soon as we can go live. Advertising should be back on tomorrow and normal operating as of Sunday. I’d like to make sure we have loads of scheduled tweets and Facebook status. Post all of those blogs including Shahmirs, use favstar to check out and repost our best performing tweets. Copy and paste lines from Vote Leave’s briefing room in a BeLeave voice”
While BeLeave may have contributed its own design style and input, the services provided by Aggregate IQ to BeLeave used Vote Leave messaging, at the behest of BeLeave’s campaign director.’
It is clear Beleave were pushing a slightly different message, more progressive and liberal, to a younger demographic than Vote leave and were running their own campaign, commissioning their own material and deciding who was to run the adverts for them. The EC accuses them of using VL messaging…well, er, they were campaigning for the same thing..but as said Beleave used a different style and targeted a different audience.
The EC goes on to reinforce those points…..Beleave were running their own campaign and deciding what messaging they would use….despite the EC previously claiming Beleave played no part…after all ‘beleave’ didn’t officially exist…
BeLeave’s activities
4.19. BeLeave’s ability to procure services from Aggregate IQ only resulted from the actions of Vote Leave, in providing those donations and arranging a separate donor for BeLeave. While BeLeave may have contributed its own design style and input, the services provided by Aggregate IQ to BeLeave used Vote Leave messaging, at the behest of BeLeave’s campaign director.
4.21. Mr Grimes said that BeLeave was his initiative from the outset. The evidence shows that BeLeave as an unincorporated association was created when Vote Leave advised Mr Grimes on getting a constitution in place, and wrote that constitution for him. This happened because it was a necessary precursor to Vote Leave obtaining funding for the BeLeave campaign. Mr Grimes also said he ran his own campaign using his own facilities.’
Then we get onto the rather bizarre situation surrounding the registration of Grimes and Beleave…..It turns out Grimes hadn’t officially registered Beleave as the campaign organisation and the EC would only acknowledge him as registered…
‘4.47. On 15 March 2016 Mr Grimes applied to register a permitted participant for the EU Referendum. He put down the name of the campaigner as ‘BeLeave’, but ticked the box to say he was applying as an individual. We treated the application as for an individual and approved it.’
Here though they claim it was spending on behalf of Beleave by Grimes and therefore it is should really be seen as Vote Leave spending despite actually acknowledging Grimes as the registered party and when he came to finally register total spending he signed off as Darren Grimes/Beleave…the EC ignored the Beleave mention and accepted the spending as Grimes’…how can they now say he wasn’t an officially recognised campaigner?
‘4.56. After the referendum Mr Grimes delivered a spending return in his capacity as an individual campaigner. Although he put the name ‘Darren Grimes/BeLeave’ on it, it wasn’t a return for two campaigners; it was a return for him as an individually registered campaigner.
Joint spending by Vote Leave and BeLeave
1.14. The Commission is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that all Mr Grimes’ and BeLeave’s spending on referendum campaigning was incurred under a common plan with Vote Leave. This spending, including the £675,315.18 for services from Aggregate IQ reported by Mr Grimes, should have been treated as incurred by Vote Leave.
To comply with PPERA, Vote Leave should have made a declaration of the amounts of joint spending in its referendum spending return.
1.19. BeLeave was never registered with the Commission as a campaigner in the EU Referendum. Unregistered campaigners could only legally spend up to £10,000 on referendum campaigning. But Mr Grimes, acting on BeLeave’s behalf, incurred spending of over £675,000. All this spending took place after BeLeave met the criteria for registering as a campaigner.
1.21. The Commission is satisfied that Mr Grimes knew or ought reasonably to have known that BeLeave was not a permitted participant.
The Commission is therefore satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Grimes incurred referendum spending in excess of £10,000 on behalf of a body that was not a permitted participant, and that he knew or ought reasonably to have known he was doing this. Mr Grimes committed an offence under section 117(3) PPERA.
Mr Grimes’ spending return
1.22. After the referendum Mr Grimes delivered a spending return in his capacity as an individual campaigner. Although he put the name ‘Darren Grimes/BeLeave’ on it, it wasn’t a return for two campaigners; it was a return for him as an individual campaigner. He included payments of £675,315.18 that was not his spending. It was BeLeave’s spending. ‘
‘4.47. On 15 March 2016 Mr Grimes applied to register a permitted participant for the EU Referendum. He put down the name of the campaigner as ‘BeLeave’, but ticked the box to say he was applying as an individual. We treated the application as for an individual and approved it. At the time BeLeave was not eligible to register as a permitted participant. If we had treated Mr Grimes’ application as an attempt to register BeLeave, it would have been rejected. It only met the eligibility criteria in May 2016.
4.48. Mr Grimes knew that BeLeave was not a permitted participant. He knew that he was. He also knew or ought reasonably to have known that while he could incur referendum spending of up to £700,000, BeLeave, as an unregistered campaigner, was limited to spending of £10,000. Despite this BeLeave – with Mr Grimes acting on its behalf – incurred spending of £675,315.18.
4.49. As explained above, this spending was joint spending with Vote Leave.
The responsibility to comply with the registration and reporting requirements rested with him. The fact that he may have been acting under a misapprehension is not a reasonable excuse for this, particularly given the steps we took to publish guidance and a form to notify us for registration, and to request that he checked the details of the register entry. ‘
‘4.56. After the referendum Mr Grimes delivered a spending return in his capacity as an individual campaigner. Although he put the name ‘Darren Grimes/BeLeave’ on it, it wasn’t a return for two campaigners; it was a return for him as an individually registered campaigner.
He included payments of £675,315.18 that was not his spending, but BeLeave’s.
4.19. BeLeave’s ability to procure services from Aggregate IQ only resulted from the actions of Vote Leave, in providing those donations and arranging a separate donor for BeLeave. While BeLeave may have contributed its own design style and input, the services provided by Aggregate IQ to BeLeave used Vote Leave messaging, at the behest of BeLeave’s campaign director. ‘
‘4.24. The £675,315.18 reported by Mr Grimes as BeLeave spending with Aggregate IQ was incurred in pursuance of a common plan with Vote Leave.
4.25. As referendum spending by Mr Grimes and BeLeave was joint spending with Vote Leave, Vote Leave’s referendum spending was in fact £7,449,079. Its statutory spending limit was £7m. The Commission is therefore satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Vote Leave exceeded the spending limit for a designated lead campaigner of £7m. ‘