FOR a long time I had doubts about the wisdom of First Minister Nicola Surgeon fronting a campaign for another EU referendum. But various national and international developments have caused me to reassess.
Firstly, I look to the encouraging backlash to the cheating tactics of the new alt-right in America. Donald Trump is in fact facing two serious investigations. Former FBI chief Robert Mueller is looking at Russian interference in the 2016 election, and federal New York prosecutors are investigating whether Trump broke the law in allegedly paying off adult film actress Stormy Daniels and thereby possibly misusing funds intended for the 2016 campaign. With the first investigation he could face impeachment and with the second he could face a criminal trial.
I admire this patient, thorough and forensic dissection of the behaviour of the most powerful man in the country, arguably the world. I fervently wish there was the same urgency and indeed bravery within the UK’s criminal investigators into the Leave campaign. Although the cheating of the alt-right in America is being mirrored here (and in many other countries), it is unfortunately not being investigated with anything approaching the rigour of the US.
So, my second point is that the national interest urgently dictates that pressure is brought to bear on our police to thoroughly investigate the illegalities of the Leave campaign. A politically inexperienced student, Darren Grimes, has been fined £20,000 by the Electoral Commission for receiving and spending a large amount of cash via his youth-orientated organisation BeLeave. Yet he had no way of knowing that his funding amounted to an overspend. If the fine was for inadequate cooperation with the Commission’s rather belated and almost reluctant look at the behaviour of the Leave campaign, then it seems harsh and it just looks like he is a convenient scapegoat for the real cheats.
Meanwhile, Gove, Johnson and the rest, who met and plotted daily to recklessly crash us out of the EU, are getting away with saying they weren’t involved closely with the campaign spending details. They fronted the campaign and they, not Darren Grimes, should be responsible. Police should be looking at this properly, as they should too with Russian involvement through Arron Banks and his like. If this had happened in the US, the people who undermined the interests of the nation would be facing the real prospect of arrest, imprisonment and ruin. Instead they smirk.
The third point, and possibly the most encouraging one, is the new, explicitly stated position of the EU that they would delay our leaving date (29/03/19) if there was to be another referendum on membership. This is a big opportunity for Remainers. The actions I have touched on above, if properly investigated and resulting in criminal convictions, would give completely rock-solid legal reason for declaring invalid both the result of the referendum of 2016 and the subsequent Section 30 notice of withdrawal from the EU.
It is a matter of international law that illegal overspend is justification for an election or referendum to be run again. In the light of all the above, the Remain campaign is crying out for a feisty new leader. Labour and Conservatives are too gutless to act, so step up the rest. The SNP should now lead the crucially important Remain campaign of SNP, LibDems and Greens and hopefully enough decent Labour and Tory MPs will come over to join the cause. There is absolutely nothing to lose by at least trying, as most parliamentarians favour remain.
Nicola Surgeon’s ultimate aim of achieving independence will not be harmed by a change in this direction, as independence will succeed all the more if we can defeat the narrow nationalisms of the alt-right and the rising neo-nazis. We don’t want any association with that in Scotland, none of it, never. A true democracy of the people is our ambition, not the polar opposite nation states favoured by the emergent new right.
David Crines
Hamilton
READ MORE: Police investigate Brexiteer campaign after watchdog found it broke spending laws
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