The rich who want Britain out of the EU
A new anti-EU campaign, provisionally called ‘No Thanks – We’re Going Global’, is being funded by rich business people to persuade Britain to leave the European Union.
The campaign, scheduled to be launched in September, is being funded with £20 million provided by some of the country’s richest entrepreneurs, according to The Telegraph. The group is being led by Arron Banks, an insurance millionaire and major donor to the UK Independence Party.
This new group now means there are now at least eight anti-EU campaign groups, many of which are competing against each other to become the official ‘No’ campaign. That, reports today’s Telegraph, is because the official ‘no’ campaign will receive millions of pounds of public money.
Mr Banks told The Telegraph: “We represent a group of entrepreneurs, businessmen who are very different from the same people who go around the Westminster bubble. e see the need for a public campaign, rather than all the Eurosceptics just talking to each other.
“This is too important for politicians to be taken the lead, it has got to be business, and the wider public. We have been talking to sports stars, leaders in fields of medicine and science, and military figures.”
The new campaign is to concentrate on explaining why leaving the EU would be better for Britons.
Meantime, The Independent has reported today that UKIP is in serious financial difficulties after it ‘lost control’ of its finances’ during the general election campaign.
According to the newspaper, the party may be forced to leave its central London headquarters in Mayfair as a result of a half-a-million pounds funding gap. The party is in a ‘desperate bid’ to avoid missing a legal deadline by the Electoral Commission to settle its election expenses.
A senior UKIP source told The Independent that the anti-EU party had overspent ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds’ during the election campaign and that the party was now hoping for a major donor to come forward and rescue them.
If the party cannot settle its election expenses by 6 July it will be an offence under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendum Act 2000.
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Other articles by Jon Danzig:
- Eurosceptic plan to stop Brits retiring to Spain
- What Nigel Farage told British expats in Spain
- UKIP’s Hall of Shame
