11 anti-EU campaign groups struck off for breaking referendum rules

Fresh from the £50,000 fine for breaking data protection rules, there’s more trouble in the anti-EU camps with news that the Electoral Commission has struck off a range of campaign bodies:

The Electoral Commission has struck off 11 pro-Brexit campaign groups from their official register of EU Referendum campaigners after a Telegraph analysis raised concerns about how the Grassroots Out Movement intended to spend millions in campaign donations.

In a statement, the Commission said that the 11 Grassroots Out or “GO” groups had been removed from the official register of campaign groups after “they were found not to meet the registration requirements” following a review.

The move came a week after The Telegraph had reported misgivings among ‘Remain’ campaigners that the multiple ‘GO’ groups might be used to circumvent spending caps imposed on non-official campaigners. [Daily Telegraph]

The issue here is that there are spending restrictions for the European referendum which control how much different organisations spend. So one way of trying to break those rules is to create a set of dummy front organisations, each with their own spending limit. Hence there are standards which such organisations must meet to demonstrate that they are genuine groups rather than spending limit dodging fronts.

It’s those rules which 11 Eurosceptic groups have fallen foul of.

Their case wasn’t helped by all eleven sharing the same address, the address moreover which is also the registered business address used by Arron Banks, the Ukip donor and co-founder of Leave.EU.

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