21/06/2015
Big news for the Sunday is the identity of the (hitherto) mysterious backer of the "no" campaign headlined by the
Express last week. From the front page of the
Sunday Telegraph we learn that the man is Arron Banks, multi-millionaire insurance underwriter - one-time donor to the Conservatives and latterly to Ukip.
What we had from last week was a pledge of millions of pounds to support the international campaign, from which politicians (including Ukip) had been banned. One millionaire donor â presumed to be Banks â had offered to underwrite the entire cost of the £7 million launch, which was to take place in the second week of September.
Now we see from the
Telegraph headline that the ante has been upped to £20 million, in the expectation that the group is going to be the official "no" campaign.
The group have already engaged an advertising agency and were actively seeking to recruit Lynton Crosby from America, although talks broke down last week. They are now looking to the UK for someone to co-ordinate the campaign, and there is talk of a senior retired military figure being appointed as the leader.
The emergence of this group has come as a surprise to the caucus based on Matthew Elliott's
Business for Britain. This had ambitions of leading the official "no" campaign â although the "for Britain" grouping is now being seen as one component of a larger alliance, details of which have yet to emerge.
The Banks grouping has the support of Global Britain's Richard Tice, former Chief Executive of the multi-national real estate group, CLS Holdings PLC, and lead author of the group's
position paper on leaving the EU.
It would thus appear that we are looking at conceptual as well as physical competition as the Global Britain nostrum lacks credibility and, if followed, would be a gift to the "yes" campaign, promising as it does chaos and economic ruin in the event that the UK did withdraw from the EU.
Arron and his team will also have to confront the Electoral Commission if it is to gain the official "no" status, which will be taking applications once the Referendum Bill becomes law. The successful campaigner will have to have satisfied statutory criteria and the new pretender might have difficulty with this. It will all depend on how well the competition organises itself and who can attract the support of membership organisations.
Meanwhile, David Cameron is
flying a kite on the possibility of "rebranding" Britain's membership of the EU. He aims to recast it as "associate membership", to demonstrate the UK will have a new relationship with Brussels.
This possibility was raised by the Spinelli Group and the
Bertelsman Stiftung in October 2013 as its offering for a major revision to the Lisbon Treat, setting out the details in a document entitled "A Fundamental Law of the European Union".
However, this idea had already been rejected by the UK in the 1960s, for very much the same reasons as are currently employed against adopting the Norway option. In 1968, we saw
Hugh Fraser, Bill Cash's predecessor in Parliament, note that there was no enthusiasm for the idea because "Britain would have no say in the policy decisions of the Council of Ministers".
Nevertheless, the idea now has the backing of
Open Europe funder, Lord (Rodney) Leach, laughingly called "a Eurosceptic Tory donor". He has been working with Ed Llewellyn, Mr Cameron's chief of staff, and Tory sources say he is seeking to persuade other donors not to defect to the "no" campaign.
What could happen is that the "colleagues" could agree to formalise an associate status in a new treaty, to follow on after our referendum. Then Mr Cameron would be asking us to support the "yes" campaign on the basis of a promise, which would be endorsed in a "treaty lock" referendum following the new treaty.
All of this, understandably, diverts attention from the news of the appointment of
Alan Johnson as the leader of the Labour "yes" campaign. Seen as one of Labour's most persuasive communicators, we are told that Johnson is regarded as the just right man to carry a Labour pro-EU message which would not leave a permanent rupture with the thousands of Ukip supporters that Labour needs to win back ahead of the 2020 election.
The real leader of the "yes" campaign, though, is David Cameron, while the nature of the "no" campaign lies in the balance. With Mr Cameron seeking to "rebadge" Britain's role in the EU to something like "market membership", "trading membership" or "executive membership", it is even more important now that we get our act together and put together a coherent group.
Ostensibly, the offer from the Prime Minister will be far better than anything Global Britain has to offer, and certainly very much safer. By contrast, the terms obtainable via
Flexcit would be a significant improvement â although we would have to leave the EU in order to benefit from our proposed relationship.
With these developments, therefore, the tide is subtly shifting in our favour, requiring a robust response to Mr Banks and his millionaire chums. The idea of him and his chums employing ranks of slebs to make a flawed case, treating the campaign as their own personal plaything, is not something which appeals.
Given a choice of that, or Mr Cameron's option - which has been described as "a nice package with a new badge" - the "no" campaign that we have in the making will easily have the better of the argument. All we have to do is make it happen.
