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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Read the article earlier. Of course Shriver is right, but she neglects to give us a suggestion about how we counter this menace, unless she just thinks that each mania will blow itself out, and eventually the behaviour of the maniacs will soften and come back to reality..?
That’s obviously her idea of it.
No, she seems to be suggesting that one mania follows rapidly on the heels of another.
Stuff like this has happened in the past: for example Tulip Mania in the 17th century when men ruined themselves to buy overpriced bulbs; and the South Sea Bubble in the 18thC when so many piled on the dodgy investment. Common sense, prudence and rational thinking were all ditched.
But those manias were largely about making money and one didn’t follow the other with such rapidity. There was no mass communication.
Beatlemania came along with mass media and TV.
In the last few decades, the internet has spread IDEAS (memes) across continents in a matter of hours and most humans are conditioned to be groupthinkers, copying each other’s behaviour.
Although I appreciate Shriver’s broad arguments, I can’t agree with her sweeping statement that ‘EVERYONE’ thinks, talks of, believes in and promotes the latest mania.
As someone who has rejected climate change, transgenderism, covidia, BLM, and me-tooism, I hope there are many, many more of us who are sceptical on a daily basis and eschew the herd mentality.
But manias today are like buses – there’ll be another one along in a minute.
The global boiling crescendo is the same people who brought us COVID — The Virus Strike Back! continuing to use their newly learnt rethoric and other tricks, especially the substitution of facts with ever more hysterical lying, for their other hobby horse. Deadly heatwave season, with weather forecast maps all in RED!!!, has apparently already been started in Germany despite real temperatures remaining in the lower 20s, coming hot after a string of Hottest ever! months, starting with (I kid you not) unusually warm snow in winter.
“all white people are genetically racist”…..Why would that then exclude black racism towards white people?
These manias as she calls them often come at a time when something else big is happening in the world and is handy to keep the plebs looking the other way.
I’ve found some mania. Not that anybody can escape maniacs and mentalists these days so it’s not exactly a challenge. Look what these entitled, narcissistic little scrotes have just done today. They’re not even bothering to hide their identities. What do you think happened to them as a result of their actions? No doubt the parents will fit the bill and say ”well done!”
”BREAKING: We Painted @UKLabour HQ Red
Labour has blood on their hands. They are complicit in the murder of Palestinians, and millions of people around the world, as they continue to drive genocide.”
https://twitter.com/Wayward_sestra/status/1777380981432861020
Climate Catastrophism has been around a while now – since the ’70s at least. It has had various episodes, such as The Coming Ice Age, The Ozone Hole, Global Warming, Climate Disruption, etc.
I think Climate Alarmism is more of a money-driven scam by an elite rather than a mania of the masses. The Blob has found it a useful way of extracting extra tax from the populace and is keeping it going. It will lbe up to the populace to stamp it out, and there are signs (not least on the Daily Sceptic) that this is starting to happen.
I wonder if the next trend will be identifying as a different colour and ethnicity. We might all go Michael Jackson in order to get the jobs and sports scholarships allocated for those people.
Trans men are simply oddball gays or
paedos using it as cover and protection. Trans women are likewise. Gay people are often very narcissistic so being trans plays to this internal desire to be adulated
There’s a third option: They get paid for playacting something in public.
And the Putin threat mania? Once he is finished in Ukraine, he will first take Europe and then the rest of the world. Everyone to arms!
The herd is easily stampeded. It has always been this way. Just look at the toilet roll mania at the beginning of the covid scam or I can go back 60 years to bread strikes. I can also talk to the power of advertising. People of my age will remember The Golden Wonder peanut advert with the strap line “their jungle fresh”. People were coming into our shop asking for “Jungle Fresh” not simply peanuts.
But now with global connections and social media, nearly all the world goes mad together.
2016 also brought in the crazy clowns craze. Also going back a few centuries was the dancing craze.
I hope you are not referring to Brexit. The only crazy clowns between 2013, when the Referendum was announced, and 2016 when LEAVE won, were the Remainiacs. Idiots who predicted, like Chicken Licken, that the sky would fall down if we left the EU.
Crucial point: All of these manias conform to the agenda of the fashionable ruling elite. The institutions in power have every incentive to promote, support, and reward those who advance the progress of each of these trends.