There are some very odd things about the leave campaigns tactics and spending which is now being uncovered by a journalist at The Observer, Carol Cadwalladr. She first wrote an article in February this year linking Nigel Farage and the Leave.EU campaign with an Amercan Billionaire, Robert Mercer (HERE). She followed this up with another more complete article in May (HERE) titled The great British Brexit robbery: How democracy was hijacked. It does not yet seem to have received wide publicity in other newspapers and to many it will look like a sore loser trying to reopen the debate and I'm sure there is an element of that. The Observer/Guardian were very pro-remain.
It seems there are several threads. Firstly, the use of big-data, psychological techniques and social media to target and manipulate particular groups of voters to tip the scales in favour of leaving the EU. This is frightening enough since it is entirely unregulated and is open to a lot of fake news, the kind of stuff that may have won the presidency for Donald Trump in November last year. Secondly, that some of the work was provided for free and is undeclared in the returns of Leave.EU's campaign spending.
Next, the law says that campaigns cannot work together unless they declare their spending jointly and there were two main campaigns Leave.EU and Vote Leave who were on the surface quite separate. Ms Cadwalladr alleges that they did work together since she has obtained a legal document that shows a link between AggregateIQ a Canadian data analytics firm hired by Vote Leave and Cambridge Analytica hired by Leave.EU. They both used the same intellectual property and both were owned by Robert Mercer. See this article (HERE)
Oddly, AggregateIQ, an apparently tiny obscure Canadian business received £3.9 million from Vote Leave, the official campaign. This was more than half the total £7 million spend they declared. This is also quite amazing. Vote Leave gave £100,000 to an organisation called Veterans for Britain which then spent it with AggregateIQ after the company contacted them to offer their services!
Now it is being alleged that the DUP (HERE), the Northern Ireland political party received £435,000 from an anonymous donor and spent much of it in pro-leave advertisements in London. They also spent money with AggregateIQ but couldn't remember where they got the name from. AggregateIQ did not apparently even have a website in 2015.
The Electoral Commission has looked at it and also The Crown Prosecution Service but it is not clear if they are continuing to investigate. Some legal experts have called for an enquiry but this does not seem likely at the moment. We live in hope.
