At Veterans for Britain, we hope to see an end to this disgraceful campaign, begun by remainers, pushed by politicians and picked up by the Electoral Commission, to discredit the people involved in the Leave vote.
It is still unclear why the Electoral Commission’s investigation against Veterans for Britain and others kept going round in a loop when all the details were set out from the start.
The Veterans for Britain referendum campaign and its responsible person David Banks were cleared of allegations of ‘coordinated campaigning’ which have their origins in the remain campaign.
We hope that the Electoral Commission considers putting as much effort into pursuing the far more serious allegations made against the remain side for which evidence was submitted to MPs. The fact that the Electoral Commission shows no sign of doing this raises questions about its original justification for pursuing allegations against Leave groups. These allegations have been disproved in the case of Veterans for Britain and are still rejected as false by other groups concerned.
The timing of the Electoral Commission’s announcement also adds to the overall onslaught against the democratic choice and long-held belief of the British people that we should not be ruled by the EU organisation in Brussels.
The people behind the leave vote are those who had the public spirit and belief in their country in order to take on embedded vested interests and fight the ideology of a supranational EU.
It appears the Electoral Commission is actually admitting to gearing up its conclusions against other campaigns purely on the basis that those campaign groups objected to Electoral Commission conduct during the investigation.
Yet we believe the objections made by those campaigns are valid as we at Veterans for Britain also had deep concerns about the way in which the Electoral Commission ran its investigation campaign.
After an 11-month investigation, the Electoral Commission found a data processing error which brought no advantage to Veterans for Britain’s referendum campaign and was even corrected during the reporting period itself in 2016.
They admit that the error, which was made on the large spreadsheets they ask campaigners to submit, was made inadvertently. Yet they have still imposed a fine against Veterans for Britain’s responsible person who was an unpaid volunteer.
This type of fine does not appear justifiable and does not encourage engagement in democracy.
Veterans for Britain was a national campaign of ex-forces personnel and those who believe in the UK’s armed forces and UK autonomy.
Veterans for Britain is still campaigning to prevent a defence policy giveaway which is now in the Prime Minister’s Chequers Plan.
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