Legal issues redux

A new article in the Graudnia explains the complexities of the recent court judgment about the illegality or othewise of VoteLeave's donation to BeLeave. It seems there is still agreement that VoteLeave broke the law, but a second level of judgment says that the Electoral Commission itself broke the law as well: 'the commission got the law wrong in taking the view donations could not count as spending.'

Because VoteLeave was up against its spending limits, it couldn’t spend in its own name. But the commission ruling opened the door for it to donate £620,000 to Grimes to pay for advertising services he purchased from AggregateIQ – the same data analytics and online advertising firm Vote Leave had been using for similar services – and to donate £100,000 to Veterans for Britain (which was also spent with AIQ).

So this 'opened the door' phrase means what exactly? We might never know because the legal eagle bringing the case, Jolyon Maugham QC,the director and founder of the Good Law Project (a clearly Remainer outfit), goes on to say that the Commission was also wrong in not giving the same (wrong) advice to Remain groups:

Stronger In was also up against its spending limits. But because it didn’t get the advice from the commission, it had to stop spending. And this morning the high court decided that advice given to Vote Leave by the commission was wrong [so it was really a good thing that StrongerIn did not get the advice?].

The article goes on to spell out nasty implications for VoteLeave: 

Vote Leave has broken the law in two different ways: once with “common plan spending” with Grimes – the matter already referred to the police, and where Vote Leave acted without commission sign-off – and once by following the commission’s unlawful and “extremely surprising” advice...the size of Vote Leave’s overspending has increased, [becasue they found another beneficiary of the surplus cash]

Further, A BBC investigation by Jim Fitzpatrick suggests that the Constitutional Research Council – which donated £435,000 to the DUP to spend on “Vote to Leave” ads in the Metro newspaper (which is not published in Northern Ireland) and on AIQ – also controlled how that donation was spent.

So the legal case seems to be deepening. I needed to be clear, but none of this will cut any ice politically, is my guess. People'sVote will use the material no doubt in advancing their case that the Referendum was flawed -- but they have been arguing that for a long time already. Politically, the 'flaws' covering the 'lies on the bus' would seem more likely to cut ideological wood --but we shall see. Meanwhile the Gruna hopes people will just note the headline:

Now the judges agree – the vote for Brexit was clearly tainted