Brexit: Now What? Part IV

Status
Not open for further replies.
That might be your question. Other people are allowed different questions. How could Leave be guilty of spending too much when Remain spent more?
 
How come I got a speeding ticket when you were driving faster than me albeit on a different road?
 
ceptimus said:
That might be your question. Other people are allowed different questions. How could Leave be guilty of spending too much when Remain spent more?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that it's just a matter of the total amount spent by the Leave campaign but I guess we'll find out when the electoral commission makes its report. As I understand it, the issues relate to the way in which spending was allegedly channelled to an allegedly separate organisation to get around total spending limits on the Leave campaign.
 
ceptimus said:
That might be your question. Other people are allowed different questions.
Click to expand...
It's my question too.
How could Leave be guilty of spending too much when Remain spent more?
Click to expand...
How could I be "guilty" of stealing a thousand pounds from a bank, when another person "lawfully" withdrew two thousand pounds from their account?
 
ceptimus said:
That might be your question. Other people are allowed different questions. How could Leave be guilty of spending too much when Remain spent more?
Click to expand...

Because there were rules setup at the start that each of the lead campaigns for each side had a spending limit.

It has nothing to do with whether one "side" as a whole spent more or not, though I would like to see the figures for that rather than just an assertion.

(Actually, this is the Electoral Commission's report from earlier this year. Not sure why the Reported Donations value is significantly different from the actual value calculated for Leave given at the bottom of the page.)

In this specific case, it's the handing over of money to third parties (a student and a veterans association) who then handed it over to an agency that was already being funded by said Leave campaign. This looks, on the surface, like the main Leave organisation was directing this expenditure, and trying to hide it as donations to a third party. This is what the commission is investigating as these donations would then have to be included in their spending limits.
 
In further developments that literally no one, not even David Davis, could possibly have forseen, the EU is going to move two EU regulatory agencies out of the UK to keep them in the EU at a cost of arouond 1,000 highly paid jobs and significant leverage over EU policy on finance and pharmaceuticals.
 
Last edited:
Hubert Cumberdale said:
In further developments that literally no one, not even David Davis, could possibly have forseen, the EU is going to move two EU regulatory agencies out of the UK to keep them in the EU at a cost of arouond 1,000 highly paid jobs and significant leverage over EU policy on finance and pharmaceuticals.
Click to expand...

Well tbh there has long been talk of re-balancing the economy and what better way than decimating the financial services industry and constraining the pharmaceutical industry. As Garrison said upthread...

Garrison said:
Hardly worth worrying about, these losses will be obviously be offset by the exciting new opportunities about to open up for fruit pickers and hospital cleaners...
Click to expand...
 
jimbob said:
How come I got a speeding ticket when you were driving faster than me albeit on a different road?
Click to expand...
Bad analogy. Same road at the same time - it's the slower driver that's been issued with a ticket, and the police are saying that it was perfectly legal for the other driver to be travelling at the higher speed.
 
Last edited:
Craig B said:
It's my question too. How could I be "guilty" of stealing a thousand pounds from a bank, when another person "lawfully" withdrew two thousand pounds from their account?
Click to expand...
The question seems to be about how much the Leave campaign was allowed to spend, and whether that imposed limit was exceeded somehow. It's not about whether the money they did spend was stolen.

Do you think it's right that the two campaigns for a referendum should have two different spending limits imposed on them?
 
ceptimus said:
The question seems to be about how much the Leave campaign was allowed to spend, and whether that imposed limit was exceeded somehow. It's not about whether the money they did spend was stolen.
Click to expand...

Way to (deliberately ?) misconstrue :rolleyes:

Vote Leave Limited was allowed to spend £7m but it is alleged that they spent in excess of this by funnelling money through apparently (but not actually) independent third parties.

They allegedly broke the rules.

ceptimus said:
Do you think it's right that the two campaigns for a referendum should have two different spending limits imposed on them?
Click to expand...

The spending limits were quite clear:

Designated lead campaigners had a spending limit of £7 million each. Other registered campaigners had a spending limit of £700,000. Political parties that registered as campaigners had a spending limit based on the percentage of the vote they received at the last general election
Click to expand...

https://www.electoralcommission.org...-referendum-published-by-electoral-commission

http://www.electoralcommission.org..../0007/199357/Media-Handbook-EU-Referendum.pdf

The Leave campaign could have spent as much as they liked, they just needed more registered campaigners and needed to source the money for those campaigners independently.
 
Way to not answer my question.

You say the two different spending limits were "clear".

I asked if two different spending limits was right.

It all looks like sour grapes from the losing side. Even though they spent a lot more on their campaign, and were supported by extra government spending that wasn't counted, they still lost.
 
Last edited:
Just some ruminations about the referendum and ‘project fear’.

I pretty well ignored almost all the campaigning on the basis that 99% of what either side would be saying would be sheer hyperbole.

On the one hand you have Leave with their claims about Turkey imminently joining the EU and of course, £350mi a week to the NHS. Then you had Remain with their (apparently) ludicrous claims about flights being grounded, shortages of fuel, food, and medicine and medicine etc. all of which appeared to be hysterical exaggerations.

At least they appeared to be hysterical exaggerations, because even if we did leave, surely no government could be so incompetent as to mismanage Brexit to the extent that we’d crash out with no deal…..

For me, it wasn’t until the last couple of weeks that I actually looked into the matter half seriously and decided remaining was the only appropriate way to vote as the guaranteed downsides to leaving far outweighed the hypothetical benefits of leaving.

What I do find amazing is that the worst of the ‘project fear’ predictions are in fact coming to appear to be cast iron certainties due to the unbelievable incompetence of the May government. I still find it hard to credit, still think that there might be some 4-D chess game going on, but then reality intervenes and it becomes apparent that government cannot even win a game of 2-D noughts and crosses, let alone play some grand diplomatic/economic/legal strategy.

The only real question is if the government is really that incompetent that they will be go down in history as the people who lead the UK to ruination, or will some form of sanity eventually kick in?
 
ceptimus said:
Way to not answer my question.

You say the two different spending limits were "clear".

I asked if two different spending limits was right.
Click to expand...

No he didn't. He said the rules on spending were clear and the same for both. So there is no need to discuss whether the different spending limits were right - since there weren't any.
 
ceptimus said:
Way to not answer my question.

You say the two different spending limits were "clear".

I asked if two different spending limits was right.
Click to expand...

There were no different spending limits....

The two designated lead campaigners had a limit of £7m apiece, any difference in limit on political parties registered as campaigners due to the relative different sizes of their share of the vote in the previous election could have been offset by the Leave campaign by having a larger number of other registered campaigners who could have each spent £700k.

IOW, different spending limits, another Leaver lie ;)

ceptimus said:
It all looks like sour grapes from the losing side. Even though they spent a lot more on their campaign, and were supported by extra government spending that wasn't counted, they still lost.
Click to expand...

...or the implementation of electoral rules by the impartial body tasked with upholding them.
 
ceptimus said:
You say the two different spending limits were "clear".

I asked if two different spending limits was right.
Click to expand...

Are you deliberately misunderstanding what people are telling you about the rules laid down by the EC?

If you look at the link to the EC report I gave earlier you would see the relevant entries in one of the tables:

The In Campaign Ltd -> £6,767,584

Vote Leave Limited -> £6,789,892

As you can see, if the two third parties under scrutiny (totalling I believe some 750k) turn out to not be legit, then Vote Leave Limited will have overspent by about half a million.
 
I'm still curious about the discrepancy between donations and expenditure.

Remain declared £15,165,621 in donations, and apparently spent £16,152,899.
Leave declared £16,374,867 in donations, and spent £11,534,426.

What happened to that 5 million quid?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom