I will never forget the night of 23rd June 2016, when 17.4 million people voted – in the biggest act of democracy in our nation’s history – to leave the European Union. Against all odds, and in the face of the fiercest of campaigns by the political establishment, Vote Leave secured our nation’s future.
But when the campaign’s leading lights had moved on to the next chapter of our political history, I had to endure years of unnecessary persecution by the Electoral Commission, watching it plainly overstepping its role as regulator and acting beyond the powers granted to it by Parliament.
My “crime” was choosing to participate as a volunteer in our democracy for something I passionately believed in – and still do. As a result of that decision, the Electoral Commission – a supposedly impartial state regulator – took up some of the best years of my life and the process it put me through was a punishment in itself.
So I decided to put the whole experience into a book, Last Man Standing: Memoirs from the front line of Brexit. My principal motivation is to ensure that our democracy is better served in future by more efficient, precise and impartial running of our institutions.
I got involved with the Brexit campaign because I believed then, as now, that the European project was doomed to fail. One example is that as the chairman of Silver Cross, I saw how regulations in Brussels served those businesses who could afford expensive lobbyists, and stymied competition for SMEs.
So I became the Vote Leave “Responsible Person”, meaning I was the person who was legally responsible for the campaign’s actions, ensuring that it spent its money in accordance with the rules.
Once the referendum was over, I had expected to slink towards retirement and reacquaint myself with my pitching wedge. It wasn’t to be. The Electoral Commission decided to investigate Vote Leave and me, as its responsible person, to ensure there were no false spending declarations made during the campaign. At first I didn’t have a problem with this. Of course it’s fair for an impartial body, tasked with enforcing electoral law, to reassure itself that the rules were followed.
What followed was anything but impartial. Here began an ever-changing nightmare and the perpetration of untrammelled power by the Electoral Commission. It felt as though the Electoral Commission was out to get me and wanted me to languish in jail.
This process lasted two years. We exchanged dozens of letters, it took up precious weeks of my life responding to their questions, and I was forced to incur hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of legal bills.
And after this two year torture, the then CEO of the Electoral Commission, Claire Bassett – with no notice to me or Vote Leave – went on BBC Radio 4 to announce proudly that I had been referred to the Metropolitan Police for criminal investigation.
Needless to say, the Metropolitan Police Service found no evidence of wrongdoing and closed the investigation. But it was still a full four years after the referendum before I could finally close this psychologically scarring chapter for good.
The Police severely criticised the Commission’s approach to the gathering and disclosure of evidence. If only Claire Bassett and her colleagues were as meticulous in investigating and gathering evidence as they were at securing slots on the Today programme.
The Metropolitan Police said: “The Electoral Commission’s approach to the gathering and disclosure of evidence does not appear to the Metropolitan Police Service to have complied with the letter or the spirit of the Criminal Procedure and Investigation Act 1996 and associated guidance.”
So the Electoral Commission, according to the Police, didn’t just break the law, it broke the spirit of the law. And as Dominic Cummings says in the foreword to my book, the Electoral Commission’s actions were not only “profoundly unfair” and “immoral” but it pursued an “unlawful persecution”.
But surely there’s no smoke without fire? Surely the Electoral Commission didn’t behave in a politically motivated fashion, or unlawfully, and it was only doing its best in difficult circumstances?
I’d usually be forgiving too. I’ve encountered so many people who do so much good in the service of this country. But not once did the Electoral Commission interview me or anyone at Vote Leave. You would have thought that if they had a genuine case, they would have wanted to put it to me.
We offered the Electoral Commission the chance to interview both me and other senior representatives of Vote Leave. Our offer was not taken up and then, when interviewers on the Today programme put to Claire Bassett that Vote Leave “weren’t given a chance to state their case”, she stated live on air that we had refused their requests for an interview. I can only describe that as a brazen falsehood.
Throughout this entire process the Electoral Commission seemed to think that the need to uncover wrongdoing outweighed the importance of getting to the truth: a truly remarkable motivation for a quango whose major role is to ensure fair play in our electoral process.
While writing this book, I’ve thought back to the sacrifices made by so many in World War One and World War Two, where my grandfather fought in the trenches and where my Uncle, Donald Halsall, made the ultimate sacrifice at the age of 20.
Donald’s sacrifice loomed large over my childhood. We all have these losses which may to some extent have gone unprocessed. As I came to write my book, I realised there must be some sort of connection between my story and Donald’s.
I was fighting because I believed in a cause. Of course, I believe in Brexit but more importantly I believe that the result of the most important vote in our history should be respected. We don’t have a democracy without respect for our system, and it’s our way of life which our ancestors were fighting for all those years ago.
The story of our nation has for a long while now been a story of the popular vote translated into government. I can remember many election results which I didn’t like the look of. I can also remember how we were huddled on the night of the EU referendum expecting to lose – which also meant accepting an adverse result.
If you believe in nationhood at all, then you have to accept that we share a narrative with those who have gone before, and that they have bestowed an obligation on us to create a country worthy of their sacrifice. And no country can survive without a respect for its institutions and its democratic processes.
When I volunteered to help the Vote Leave campaign I genuinely thought that the Electoral Commission was an independent body which sought to promote public confidence in the democratic process and ensure its integrity. Knowing what I now know, I cannot say in all honesty that I would volunteer again. In fact, I’d run a mile.
But that’s not good enough. We need volunteers in our democracy, and so the system must change and I hope the Electoral Commission, and government more widely, ensures that this sort of thing never happens again.
You can buy Last Man Standing, Alan Halsall’s book about the misery he was put through by the Electoral Commission, here.
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