Remain-supporting Commons speaker John Bercow had the Electoral Commission set aside hundreds of thousands of pounds to fight the EU’s May 2019 elections all the way back in May 2018, when it was still the official policy that Britain would be leaving the bloc on March 29th.
The story, broken by The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph last year, takes on new relevance as Prime Minister Theresa May announces she is seeking another Brexit delay, which will necessitate Britain’s participation in elections to the European Parliament — despite telling Parliament, “I think people would ask what on earth we were doing if, having voted nearly three years ago to leave the European Union, they were then asked to elect Members to the European Parliament” as recently as March 25th.
The reports in May 2018, fully a year before the European Parliament elections are supposed to take place, said that Speaker Bercow’s committee on the Electoral Commission quango had authorised a budget of £829,000 to pay for its “activities relating to a European Parliamentary election in 2019”.
“What do they know that is worth more than £800,000?” The Sunday Times asked at the time, reporting fears of “a plot to derail Brexit”.
“Tell us why, why, why has the Electoral Commission been given nearly a million pounds to prepare for… the European elections?” demanded Brexit campaign leader Nigel Farage on his LBC programme.
“It raises the question – are they planning for us not leaving the European Union? Are they ignoring what Theresa May has said and deliberately still believing that we won’t have left the EU?” asked Iain Duncan Smith, the Brexiteer and former Tory leader.
“It is complete madness to earmark money to spend on an election that the Prime Minister has already said we will not fight unless you are working to make sure the UK stays in the EU,” he added.
Mrs May had her constitution minister, Chloe Smith, write a letter to the Electoral Commission, saying that “The Government has been clear that there will be no European elections next year, as we are leaving the European Union… I am sure you will agree that it is important that there is clear advice to election administrators and local authorities and clarity for voters that UK will indeed be leaving the European Union on 29 March 2019, before the next European Parliament election.”
She added: “It is the Government’s position that it would not be prudent for money to be spent preparing for elections that the Government is clear will not take place.”
However, the elections will indeed now be taking place in late May, now that the Prime Minister has gone back on her word — unless the European Council takes the unexpected step of ejecting Britain from the EU on its own initiative.
Quite apart from the money already spent on the shadow preparations for May’s elections, British taxpayers are set to foot a significant bill to complete them — over £100 million, according to a 2018 estimate of how much the country would have been saving by not taking part in the vote.
Perhaps even more concerningly, Breitbart London reported in 2018 that as well as making preparations for EU elections that weren’t legally meant to happen in Britain, the country’s Civil Service was also “wargaming” a second EU membership referendum.
Given claims in Westminster that the Prime Minister is preparing to offer a second referendum to Labour opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn as the price for supporting for her so-called Brexit “deal” through Parliament, these preparations by Britain’s deep state may soon be called into use.
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