The article clarifies:
On 24 March, one week after we published Christopher Wylie’s explosive revelations about Cambridge Analytica – how the data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches – Sanni stepped into the limelight to tell another, connected part of the tale: how Vote Leave broke the law during the EU referendum by exceeding legal spending limits.
the Electoral Commission ruled last week, that organisation had “exceeded its legal spending limit” and “returned an inaccurate report”; there had also been found to be “significant evidence” of it working together with the youth-oriented Brexit campaign group BeLeave...The watchdog said it had imposed punitive fines on Vote Leave because it said the group had refused to cooperate fully with its investigation and had declined to be interviewed.
Now she has done much to uncover some dirty tricks, but this para is a bit disingenuous in linking D Trump's campaign to Vote Leave's. Just because the absurd braggarts of Cambridge Analytica worked with both, it doesn't mean the same methods were used by both. I must check this, but as far as I know, no-one has accused Vote Leave of illicitly using Facebook data, if, indeed there is an illict use of FB data in the first place, except among the non-technical bourgeoisie. Vote Leave seems to have broken electoral law (although there may be an appeal) by overspending. Without denying the (limited) force of the charge of breaking electoral law by overspending, reporting becomes ideological comment when the two issues are linked as 'another,connected part of the tale'. The tale is the Cadwalladr view that nasty right-wing conspirators are out to screw nice people via Trump and Brexit, or, as she puts it:.
There’s a revolving door between the TaxPayers’ Alliance, Brexit Central, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Leave Means Leave. For example, Elliott founded the Alliance, was chief executive of Vote Leave, and is the editor-in-chief of Brexit Central. Grimes has gone from Vote Leave to Brexit Central to the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Not only that, sceptics like me are thwarted. For one thing: “It’s absurd to think that didn’t have an impact,” says Sanni'. In the lead article ( below): 'An Opinium poll shows that 66% of the public believe Vote Leave’s behaviour in breaking electoral law is a “serious matter” – as opposed to 17% who do not. Some 40% think the behaviour affected the result of the referendum while 41% do not' No criticisms of THIS opinion poll of course.
The two whistleblowers were apparently treated quite differently, and Cadwalldr's account here gets close to grasping the dynamics of moral panics,while restoring her own unifying account:
It wasn’t like Christopher Wylie’s story [about Cambridge Analytica and its boasts about using FB data] , where everyone was united in kicking Facebook. It was trickier, because Brexit is trickier. Although it’s part of the same story: it was about tech giants, technology outpacing the law, and a Canadian company through which Vote Leave funnelled money and data, and which is intimately tied to Cambridge Analytica, as the Information Commissioner’s Office has now confirmed.
Blowing the whistle on Vote Leave was apparently different: 'Sanni had no idea any of this was illegal at the time: he was fresh out of university.' Having entered the grubby world of politics, however, he was open to attack.
Stephen Parkinson, the national organiser for Vote Leave, and now Theresa May’s top political adviser – issued a statement that Dominic Cummings, the campaign director for Vote Leave, published on his blog. The blog revealed that Parkinson had been in a personal relationship with Sanni and that Parkinson could understand “if the lines became blurred for him”...a press officer for 10 Downing Street sent him Parkinson’s statement as an official comment from Theresa May.
So where's the beef? '[Sanni] wasn’t out to his family and he said he couldn’t be. He had family in Pakistan, including his sister, where people are killed for being homosexual.' Not only that, he had been prematurely outed and this broke sexual etiquette: “What you don’t understand,” [Wylie] told me, “is that this only happens once. You only come out to your family once. To rob someone of that moment, it’s … such an assault.”
This could well stand on its own as a story about how badly whistleblowers are treated, or possibly about how the government of Pakistan still persecutes gays, but it has added legs because it is about Brexit (nearly what Cadwalladr says herself). Would there be such support for Sunni otherwise? The journalist has to supply inferences that are not supported in the judicial findings -- that all this made a difference to the referendum result, that overspending is serious enough an offence to declare the whole thing null and void. And in the Observer this week is a further leg -- it all shows contempt for Parliament and this is a serious challenge to democracy.
The lead article cites a number of MPs (mentioned as powerful heads of Parliamentary Committees but not as Remainers, curiously enough) demanding increased powers to call Cummings to appear before Parliament, with a link to the Cadwalladr material: 'Anger at Cummings’s refusal to come before MPs has intensified since Vote Leave was fined £61,000 and referred to the police after the Electoral Commission found last week that it had broken electoral law'.Sanni is quoted as some sort of authority on the UK constitution (but remains silent about the constitution in Pakistan): in the journalistia, victims of persecution always become persons of great insight '“This debate is no longer about Brexit. It is simply about the law and how democracy was perverted by the breaking of it. None of the directors of Vote Leave or the ministers on its board and committees have been held to account. There are people who oversaw this illegal activity still working in government, deciding the future of this country ".'
The editorial continues the hectoring, weaving elements together in the classic manner:
our political system has perhaps never felt less up to the gargantuan task of paving a way out of the Brexit-related stalemate the country finds itself in. Just months before the article 50 deadline, the government’s negotiating position remains utterly opaque [even after the Chequers statement that has caused such controversy] . And revelations of recent months – many first reported in the Observer – have shed light on how the conduct of the Brexit referendum campaign calls into question the robustness of our democratic norms.
Extraordinarily, although it’s unclear what they knew, it seems they [senior Leave ministers] will face absolutely no consequences for overseeing a campaign that broke the law. Meanwhile, the whistleblower Shahmir Sanni was outed to his family in a Number 10 press release with the effect of discrediting Sanni’s now-vindicated account. Stephen Parkinson, one of Theresa May’s senior advisers and the former national organiser for Vote Leave, who was responsible for this, also looks unlikely to face any consequences for his actions [like what? Is it illegal to out people?].
There are other signs that the political honour code is being eroded. Last week, it emerged that the government’s chief whip instructed MPs to break their pairing arrangements...Esther McVey was recently forced to apologise for breaking the ministerial code by misleading parliament after completely misrepresenting the National Audit Office’s damning verdict on her department’s implementation of universal credit. We should fear the consequences: the expenses scandal at Westminster shows the extent to which rotten cultures can seep into institutions containing mainly well-intentioned people once rule-breaking becomes normalised.
On new technology (always a source of panic):
And it risks moving us further away from the democracy of the public forum, towards a more fractured democracy in which swing voters are targeted on narrow issues, using false claims that are not subjected to the scrutiny of a public manifesto.
Honestly, where do you start with that para? 'Democracy of the public forum' yet! False claims 'beyond the scrutiny of the manifesto' -- in British politics? Never! 'A more fractured democracy' --don't the Liberal Party welcome that too?
Because it is about Brexit, the liberal press has to go all out. Hectoring the public like this must lead to partisan absurdity but it is worth it. Anything is worth it as long as we Remain, or, even sadder, as long as we continue to think we are right we should remain.
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