As I watched some more analysis of the Reform scandal last night, I was interested to learn of the views of some experts on electoral law. A close reading of the legislation appears to indicate that the Reform party has a case to answer. Apparently, it is the case that planning or arranging to accept illegal donations is a serious criminal offence. Under UK electoral law—specifically Section 61 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA)—it is a crime for any person to knowingly participate in or further an arrangement to evade controls on political donations. As all of this was caught on video and handed to the police, it appears to be an ‘open and shut’ case of guilty. The Reform party will attempt to argue that no monies actually changed hands, that the talk caught on video was just loose ‘pub talk’ and that in any case, the whole video collection was the result of huge deception or hoax. I doubt that any of this will wash as lawyers should be able to convincingly argue that such operations are always clandestine and kept away from prying eyes an therefore it was in the public interest that a clandestine operation in the manner of a ‘sting’ is nearly always necessary to gather evidence. The police themselves will know this and must use similar techniques, on occasion, to gather relevant compromising evidence. In the meantime. we still a Parliamentary enquiry which will gather its own evidence on the donations received by Farage and this will report in the fulness of time. It must be said that this whole episode demonstrates how easy it is to hijack British democracy and although rules have been put in place to try to prevent foreign money influencing British political elections, there has been a reluctance to deploy the full force of the law. One wonders, for example, how many police officers employed by the Met are experts in electoral law or what resources the police themselves have to deploy such expert evidence. If you look at the Electoral Commission website, then the following explanation of their functions and powers is given. The purpose of an investigation is to establish whether or not the suspected offence has taken place, and if it has, who committed it. During an investigation, we gather evidence about potential offences from those we believe hold relevant information about what happened. When doing this, we actively look for evidence to prove or disprove our reasonable suspicion that an offence has occurred. Evidence-gathering can take many forms, from asking people to provide information voluntarily, through to interviewing witnesses or suspects or requiring evidence to be provided to us. For example, we have the power to issue a legal notice to any person or organisation that we believe to hold relevant documents or information. That notice sets out what the recipient must supply us with and the deadline for doing so. Failure to comply with the notice is a criminal offence, and so is knowingly or recklessly providing false information to us during an investigation. Also, if someone does not comply with our notice, we can apply for a disclosure order from a court to gain the relevant information. One must say, though, that on past form the Electoral Commission have been amazing supine in its approach but perhaps this case is a wake-up call for it to do the job for which it was instituted.
Whilst on the subject of electoral matters, I came across the following which astonished me. In the EU referendum, only those on the electoral registers of the United Kingdom and Gibraltar were entitled to vote, and not all of these, as citizens of other European Union member states (except Ireland, Malta and Cyprus) are barred from voting in referendums. Many British citizens entitled to be registered were not registered, typically young people on the move. British citizens resident in crown dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man) or in overseas territories (Bermuda and Anguilla, for example) weren’t entitled to register, nor were British citizens long resident in other parts of the European Union. The number of British residents and British citizens barred from voting in the referendum was at a conservative estimate close to four million. Now the actual referendum was won by a majority of about 1.27 million i.e. one third of those whose registration was deemed to be ineligible. When this was challenged in the High Court, the judgement was that those who had lived abroad for more than 15 years had ‘insufficiently close ties’ with the UK to be included on the electoral register. Until 2024 the eligibility to register as an overseas elector depended on how long ago someone left the UK. From 2000 to 2024, this was limited to 15 years. The Elections Act 2022 removed this 15-year limit. Since January 2024, any British citizen living overseas can register as an overseas elector as long as they meet one of the two conditions outlined in the section above. There are no official figures on the number of British citizens living overseas. The UN estimates that there were 4.8 million British citizens living overseas in 2024. When the Elections Bill was introduced in 2021, the accompanying impact assessment estimated that once the 15-year rule was abolished there could be around 3.2 to 3.4 million British citizens eligible to register as overseas voters. The implications of all of this that the result of the Referendum would have been to ‘Remain’ if only one half of those excluded had been allowed to register. Even when exit from the EU was finally achieved, it is quite probable that many of those elderly who had voted ‘Leave’ would have died and hence not be included in the electoral registers. David Cameron, of course, if he had the political foresight should have specified a trigger level of 60%. We are not very experienced in the running of referendums in the UK but if we had followed the example of the rest of the world, then a 60% trigger level should have been imposed. Many referendums use a 60% supermajority trigger level—often called a three-fifths requirement—specifically when they deal with major constitutional changes or tax increases. While a simple majority (50% + 1) is the global standard for standard elections, a 60% threshold is frequently used to ensure that a major, irreversible shift has stable, long-term consensus rather than winning on a temporary political whim. When the history books come to be written, the results of the EU referendum will almost certainly rank as one of the greatest mistakes in British social and political history. We are now living in a world, where the importance of global alliances cannot be over-emphasised particularly with Putin’s Russia bent on recreating Greater Russia and probing Europe for weaknesses at every point.