Matthew Elliot: don't worry about the pandemic, Brexit is the important thing

Matthew Elliot was the CEO of Vote Leave, the official campaign for Brexit in the referendum. He's now political adviser to Shore Capital, one of those mysterious (to me) 'asset management' groups. Looking back he was the perfect choice for those who wanted to leave the EU. He didn't care what methods were used and, like the campaign director, Dominic Cummings believed the end justified the means. I mention him now because he was on the Andrew Marr show yesterday.

Matt Elliot and the Russian connection

Matt Elliot, of The Taxpayer’s Alliance, Conservative Friends of Russia, and Vote Leave has been rewarded for inflicting huge damage on this country by being elevated to the House of Lords in Liz Truss’ resignation honours list. It’s hard to know what’s worse, Truss having an honours list at all after 44 disastrous days or a man like Elliot being included on it. Not only do we have a Commons stuffed with useless nonentities we are now recruiting people with a proven track record of working against the interests of Britain and the British people joining the Upper House. 

MATTHEW ELLIOT AND EU FLEXIBILITY

Matthew Elliot was Chief Executive of the Vote Leave campaign and one of the 'masterminds' of the looming disaster that is Brexit. Apart from complaining about the Electoral Commission levying fines of £61,000 against Vote Leave for breaking electoral law he has been remarkably low key - and who can blame him, the nation is being torn apart by his pet project. He has however, now written a piece (HERE) for CityAM, an on-line version of a free daily business paper for London.

SHIFTY LIARS

Matthew Elliot will not be well known to many people in this country. He was Chief Executive of the Vote Leave campaign and even before it started he produced a one thousand page tome (HERE) setting out the problems of the EU as he saw them and the possible options if Brexit was a success. Before the referendum he gave evidence before the Treasury Select Committee where Andrew Tyrie gave him a bit of a dressing down (HERE) for refusing on three or four occasions to appear before MPs, something he said no one had ever done before. Such was the arrogance of Mr Elliot.

Brexit: the saga continues

For the tenth anniversary of Brexit, the BBC has broadcast a two-part series with people at the centre of it all reminiscing about events leading up to and following the 2016 referendum. It's title is: Brexit: A Very British Civil War, and its described as: "The inside story of a vote that divided a nation. Unravelling the rivalries, betrayals and conflicts that tore apart the campaigns, told by those at the heart of Leave and Remain."  I confess I haven’t bothered to watch it all, but I have seen a few clips and social media comments. As far as I can see, nobody who was deeply - or even peripherally - involved is crowing about it and proclaiming that it has been a great success, something we should have done years before. 

EU laws on the UK statute book "virtually negligible"

One of the big drivers of the leave vote in 2016 was the suggestion that the EU was responsible for a huge percentage of UK law, much of it ‘forced’ on us by unelected bureaucrats and not properly scrutinised by MPs and peers in parliament. I seem to remember all kinds of figures being bandied about, up to 70-75%, although the House of Commons Library put it much lower at about 13%. I was puzzled at the time how it could have been so hard to determine what the actual number was but now, as the government struggles to rid the UK Statute book of anything with the words Europe or Union in it, we are seeing just how exaggerated the figures were.

UNEMPLOYMENT - ONE OF BREXIT'S MANY ACHILLES HEELS

I have said before that Brexit could not have come at a worse time - for Brexiteers. The up to date unemployment figures for September were published last week HERE. They show the rate down to 4.0% or 1.36 million. These are excellent figures. When the referendum was held the rate was 4.9% and most forecasters expected the numbers to rise, but they haven't. However, we are now reaching what used to be called full employment - the irreducible rock bottom level which really just includes the people who are between jobs. It's hard to see it going much lower. And this is the problem for Brexiteers isn't it?

WE MAY NOT NEED TO GO AFTER ALL

Matthew Elliot is often referred to as the EU referendum mastermind. He is the man who pulled the strings behind the scene. In late 2015 Mr Elliot, as CEO of "Business for Britain", a pro Brexit lobby group, published a thousand page document entitled Change or Go, which was the most detailed document produced by either side during the campaign. He has just been ordered by the Charity Commission to repay £50,000 that he raised for charity which was used to pay for it, although I imagine he will still believe it was money well spent.

WHAT VOTE LEAVE SAID - About our credit rating

The CEO of Vote Leave, Matthew Elliot, produced a huge 1000 page tome in 2015 while working for the pro-Brexit lobby group Change or Go. It was a considerable work with a lot of contributors and I tend to think of it as the Leave campaign's bible. Masochists among you can see it HERE. At the end (starting on page 944) there was a helpful Q & A section and now, two years on, with the vote in the bag and negotiations underway, we can look back on what was said and compare it with reality. There is quite a difference in many cases.

MORE POLLING

Professor John Curtice at NatCen said last week that polling seemed to show there has been little movement in attitudes or polling intention on Brexit. Reuters report it HERE. This was perhaps a factor in Farage calling for a second referendum. But the figures are revealing.

The tunnel at the end of the light

We are finally on the edge of the notional cliff. In fourteen hours we take an irreversible leap into the great unknown, technically out of the EU with no quick way back. It's a moment for sad reflection. Ahead of us is an eleven month 'transition' period in which to negotiate a free trade deal. I put transition in inverted commas because the details of the FTA won't be known until the very end in which case we'll be exiting with no 'transition' period at all. Is that reasonable? Probably not. Business and government will almost certainly need a further transition period to build infrastructure and design and test the systems needed. I don't think we will escape another year of transition at least. That's just my opinion of course and we'll see what happens.

Counting the cost of Brexit

Bloomberg carried a story the other day about the cost of Brexit so far. They calculated it at £130 billion, rising to £200 billion by the year end. This was done by looking at the G7 average growth and then comparing where we expected to be, had the referendum not taken place, to where we are now. The impact of slowing growth on a near £2 trillion economy is significant and the gap will grow wider as time goes on.  

VOTE LEAVE'S MISLEADING BIBLE

Matthew Elliot was the CEO of the Vote Leave campaign, the official one that received government funding. Before that he ran another pro Brexit group Business for Britain, where in 2015, he produced a very long, comprehensive and professional looking tome called Change or Go, amounting to more than a thousand pages setting out what was wrong with the EU and why we should leave. It also painted a bright if rather misleading picture of Britain's post Brexit future.

VOTE LEAVE OVERSPEND

Another whistleblower has come forward to say Vote Leave exceeded legal spending limits in the referendum campaign (HERE). He has apparently made a submission through a lawyer that BeLeave wasn't an independent campaigning group but was simply used by Vote Leave to spend more than they were allowed to. The whistleblower is a Mark Gettleson a communications consultant. He is the third whistle blower to go public.

VOTE LEAVE BROKE THE LAW

The BBC and The Guardian (HERE) are both reporting that the Electoral Commission will find the official Vote Leave campaign guilty of breaching electoral law. Oddly the news was actually broken by Matthew Elliot, the Vote Leave chairman, himself and before the EC has announced anything. Elliot is denying the campaign did anything wrong and they have submitted a 500 page rebuttal - he is always good at this stuff having produced a 1000 page tome in 2015 on his plans for Brexit.

WHAT VOTE LEAVE SAID - About tax after Brexit

The CEO of Vote Leave, Matthew Elliot, produced a huge 1000 page tome in 2015 while working for the pro-Brexit lobby group Change or Go. It was a considerable work with a lot of contributors and I tend to think of it as the Leave campaign's bible. Masochists among you can see it HERE. At the end (page 944) there was a helpful Q & A section and now, two years on, with the vote in the bag and negotiations underway, we can look back on what was said and compare it with reality. There is quite a difference in many cases.

55 TUFTON STREET

Mark Littlewood of the think tank The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)  is in a bit of trouble this morning (HERE) after apparently suggesting to a potential donor that they could offer access to ministers and produce "research" that might be "shaped" by the donor. The earlier post on this blog (HERE) about Open Europe was also about a think tank. These are highly influential organisations that beaver away in the background for years and swing opinion towards their agenda or that of whoever is paying them.

WHAT VOTE LEAVE SAID - About tuition fees

The CEO of Vote Leave, Matthew Elliot, produced a huge 1000 page tome in 2015 while working for the pro-Brexit lobby group Change or Go. It was a considerable work with a lot of contributors and I tend to think of it as the Leave campaign's bible. Masochists among you can see it HERE. At the end (page 944) there was a helpful Q & A section and now, two years on and with the vote in the bag and negotiations underway, we can look back on what was said and compare it with reality. There is quite a difference in many cases.

The wrong kind of pallets

Something caught my eye on Chris Grey's excellent blog yesterday about wooden pallets and compliance with ISPM15 (International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures) - which requires heat treatment to eradicate bark beetle and fungal infestations and stencil marking to show compliance. I have had a link on this blog since March 2019 to the Irish border blog where this was pointed out.  Apperently, the head of the Timber and Pallet Confederation has written to DEFRA warning that Britain won't have enough pallets to comply with the rule by the end of January.

The think tank puppeteers

Just how closely connected the right-wing think tanks and Economists for Brexit were to the government can be seen in an FT article about Liz Truss’ disastrous 44 days in No 10. The FT has interviewed several people who were at a meeting where the mini-budget first began to be fleshed out. The interviewees spoke on condition of anonymity. We know the names of all who were there, just not which of them spoke to the FT but you can guess because they’re all portraying themselves as not responsible or not wholly responsible.