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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“If this were a normal drug, it would be taken off the market.”
Exactly this. And here is the reason why it never will be;
“Because the mRNA vaccines fall under the PREP Act definition of “emergency countermeasures,” their production is not subjected to the same testing and quality control regulations as licensed pharmaceutical products. Their production and deployment resemble that of military products during World War II.
The legal framework for this bonanza was established by the PREP Act (Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness) of 2005. This authorized the Secretary of Health and Human Services to deploy a wide array of “Emergency Countermeasures” in the event of an infectious disease outbreak. When invoked by the HHS Secretary, the PREP Act provides immunity for the “manufacture, testing, development, distribution, administration, and use of covered countermeasures.” On February 4, 2020, HHS Secretary Alex Azar declared COVID-19 an emergency and invoked the PREP Act.”
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/of-central-bankers-and-hhs-secretaries
Quality commentary such as this is worth a DS sub. by any measure.
Thanks Mogs.
Only a bit of fun Mogs. I know it’s over the top but the sentiment is genuine.
The hilarious dichotomy between Reps and Dems reg. its efficiency is a strong indication that we are basically just dispensing and dealing with a (toxic) placebo.
Worth noting that Republicans and Independents track reasonably well, it’s the Democrats that are the clear outliers.
Exactly. And one of the main reasons they will never take these death shots off the market is because now the floodgates have opened for other traditional vaccines to be changed over to an mRNA platform, as they can manufacture and get them to market way quicker, therefore proving to be more lucrative to Big Pharma. So if they removed the Covid jabs due to the major safety issues then this would be an admission that all future mRNA products are also unsafe. Sort of puts the kibosh on the whole thing really, especially the depopulation plan, which appears to be going swimmingly doesn’t it?
The mRNA system, now authorised is effectively a licence to kill.
007!
Government agencies are all-in on the mRNA clot shots, they wont change.
What is interesting is that here we have a major polling company openly admitting that they cannot publish the results of their own poll in full because they will face censorship. This is astonishing. The land of the free? Not so much.
“A 7% major side effect rate is unprecedented. We know from the V-safe data that this effectively means that the side-effect was so bad, they had to seek medical attention. If any drug had that kind of safety profile, it would be immediately pulled from the market. Would you take any drug with that kind of side-effect profile? Of course not. It’s off the charts! However, because we are told it is a safe and effective vaccine, people do what they are told despite the lack of safety. That’s how science works.” (My emphasis)
Note that the schools that did not properly teach logic and independent, critical thinking are also culpable in this shambles that has resulted in so many deaths and injuries. If they had, it would have been much harder for the corrupt drugs companies and their collaborators to pull this off.
Shocking, not shocked.
Many of use including myself, predicted this disaster. That is why we are unstabbinated.
41% minor and major injury. 150K dead in the US, I am guessing 50 K dead from the stabs in the UK.
Against what? 0.03% IFR….the same as the flu, average age of death 84. Not so with the stabbed dead and injured. Average age is in the 50s.
And yet Tards still want to play Rona. Diapers, more Quacksines, more LDs.
A friend’s husband (2 x AZ, 1 x Pfizer) had a major heart attack 3 weeks after the Pfizer booster and has now had another 5 months later 48 hours after having the ‘flu jab.
My friend says his brother is an NHS Consultant in A & E and they are seeing a lot of heart attack and myocarditis patients. So the NHS knows there is a serious problem ….. and they know why.
She has – finally – said they will not be having any more jabs.
“That’s how science works” is a bit pejorative, at least to those who actually have a proper understanding of the term. Something like “That’s how political abuse of science works”, or just “that’s how politics works” might be more accurate.
That said, there is no doubt that most products that had such bad results in reality would be withdrawn from the market, along with a serious risk of prosecution for many of those concerned.
This is poor science. The effectiveness and safety of vaccines can only be determined by Randomised Control Trials before they are approved. The trials were obviously inadequate and proved nothing. This is the message that needs to be repeated and those responsible need to he jailed. Because of the lockdowns and failure of health services it is difficult to determine what is causing the claimed increase in deaths and other issues. A survey of 1000 people is not reliable.
Agreed but surely it gives you a big red flag. Also when I did a Multiple Regression Analysis (MRA) course admittedly many moons ago we were told anything over 30 is a large sample.
Wow, just lovely. If the jab commercials were honest: “May cause fever, chills, blood clot, stroke, heart attack, sudden death….and runny nose”