After over a year in the public dominion, SUDDENLY the mainstream media have picked up the story on breeches by the Leave campaigns over election rules. This comes off the back of the Cambridge Analytic scandal with Facebook data having been stolen and their offices (finally) being raided.
This has now led to the involvement of solicitors Bindmans (who were involved with the Gina Miller case and are associated with prominent Remain Jolyon Maugam) and have released a 53 page document they say is evidence of collaboration between Vote Leave and BeLeave campaigns. They state effectively that there is no 'smoking gun' rather a 'drip drip drip' effect of cumulative information (as Sam Coates succinctly sums up).
What difference does this make?
Both the Electoral Commission and the ICO have very little power and in law there doesn't appear to technically be any recourse. This needs to be addressed now as an extreme priority.
The prospect of another referendum being run in such circumstances, is alarming. Without an inquiry into what went wrong, how could you prevent any of this from happening again? There would also be feelings of some kind of establishment stitch-up to reverse the referendum, which could have major implications for trust in democracy in its own right.
There seems to be no easy answer here. And Brexit increasingly looks to be the turkey that was feared, though not exactly in the way the deeply flawed remain campaign made out.
Noises from the disgruntled Vote Leave director Dominic Cummings read like almost a threat to go after the EHCR which is just as poorly understood as the EU. And there is every reason to believe that Lexiter types would also be supportive if that meant they could take property from private ownership and put into state ownership without having to properly compensate.
Worth noting is that Cummings originally deleted his twitter account when this first started to surface. A least one of the whistleblowers was and still is a committed Leaver. Cummings seems rattled, but Cummings was previously on record as saying he wanted to destroy our existing establishment. He's not rattled about the damage to democracy nor I suspect even leaving the EU; he's rattled at prospect of being 'caught'. Make of that what you will.
With that in mind, shouldn't we be the mildest bit cautious about the intentions of Chris Wylie when he says we should have another referendum? Should we be cynical, rather than just accepting this as being great news and getting excited about an opportunity to reverse Brexit? Worst still our failure to be able to trust anything, in itself, is a sign of just how weak our democracy has become.
Are the efforts to dig up a story which should have been dealt with twelve months ago, going to help? Could they cause more damage and further risk our now seemingly ever fragile democracy?
I don't know. Impossible to tell. As Westministenders has said from very early on, the referendum wasn't just about leaving the EU but also a turning of backs on the concepts and principles of democracy. Only now is this really beginning to show its true ugliness to the masses. Even now, few see the real dangers here. Many are so blinded by the hatred of their political 'enemies' they turn a blind eye to their own side's zealotry and dogma.
The danger from the far right was always much more clear to see, but the danger from the far left as it grows bolder is also starting to be alarming.
If you think this is merely about leaving the EU, you are wrong. Even if we do stay in the EU after everything, we may still lose what it is to be a real functioning democracy.
Unless we promote these principles and involve all in society and give them a stake in the future; either inside or outside the EU we will be in a whole world more trouble.
And if that wasn't bad enough. Russian spies and murders plus the appointment of warmonger Bolton at the Whitehouse.