The electoral commission is too weak, but that's not why it's under fire

Two days ago, the UK Electoral Commission announced that it would not be investigating complaints against various campaigns for the EU referendum. Priti Patel MP had alleged that three videos should have counted against the allowed budget of the main Remain campaign. The commission's report says there is no evidence or "insufficient grounds" for agreeing with her, but has decided to investigate possible undeclared joint spending by a smaller Remain campaign - Wake Up And Vote - and the video company. Watch this space.

The commission also decided against an investigation into a large sum of money donated to the DUP in Northern Ireland, much of which was spent on advertising for Leave in a newspaper which does not circulate in Northern Ireland. The allegations of dark goings on sprang from a BBC investigation in March 2018 but had been covered many times by others. Again, "The Commission has concluded it does not have grounds to open an investigation into the allegations made by BBC Northern Ireland Spotlight" but it complains, not for the first time, that it "continues to be prohibited by legislation from disclosing any information concerning donations to Northern Ireland recipients made prior to 1 July 2017" despite a government undertaking that these would be published from 2014 on. This one might come up again.

It's more than two years since the vote and these questions are still coming up. The commission has investigated and published findings ranging from fines of £1250 on Britain Stronger in Europe and £18,000 on the Liberal Democrats, to the recent report on investigations into Vote Leave, BeLeave and Veterans for Britain. This involved fines of £20,000 on Vote Leave, VL's "responsible person" David Halsall and BeLeave's Darren Grimes. The latter two individuals were also referred to the police because their contraventions of electoral law, which attracted the fines, might also amount to criminal offences.

Comment around the release of the report included demands that the law should be amended to raise the maximum fine available to the commission from £20,000. As the commission had said in an earlier publication, "We are worried that a maximum fine of £20,000 risks becoming a cost of doing business for some campaigners", which was a common complaint when the Conservative party was fined £70,000 for several offences during the 2015 general election. Another concern is that campaigns are not require to provide sufficiently detailed reports on spending, and can take an unreasonable amount of time to do it.

When the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee put out its interim report on "Disinformation and ‘fake news’", which also included significant criticisms of the activities of some Leave campaigners, these two reports were grouped with an earlier one from the UK Information Commissioner, and seen by some as a concerted attack on the very idea of Brexit by the "Remain establishment".

Sensible points being made by @halfon4harlowMP on @BBCWestminHour - one sided attacks on Leave campaign by @ElectoralCommUK and @CommsCMS looks like Remain establishment attempting to undermine the referendum result.

— Lucy Allan MP (@lucyallan) July 29, 2018

Various MPs had already promoted crowdfunding projects for Darren Grimes, the first of which was originally designed to to pay his £20,000 fine then (when that was judged likely to be illegal) the approach changed to raising money for his legal expenses. Questions were asked about the appropriateness of MPs casting doubt on the probity of a statutory body which is, after all, answerable to Parliament.

Many doubters circulated a meme, identifying the collection of the great and the good which makes up the commission itself. Nobody had anything to say about the electoral commission's many staff who actually do the work, and decide who has broken the law.

Many also complained that the pro-Remain booklet, which was circulated by the government at the beginning of the campaign, should have been counted into the reckoning of overspending. The commission rightly pointed out that it had no power to do so, since it was produced (at a cost of £9.3 million) outside the regulated campaign period. David Cameron gamed the system, and the commission's critics fail to mention that the commission criticised the move at the time: "The elections watchdog has criticised No 10 over its £9.3 million leaflet and advertising campaign to persuade voters to stay in the European Union.".

Despite several requests, none of the complainers I've communicated with can offer evidence that the commission has broken the law or its own rules. The meme above, the complaint that the Remain campaigns spent more money, especially when you take Cameron's booklet into account, and a general feeling of being under attack are all that's offered.

It just might be possible that the Remain campaigns were generally boring and obeyed the rules, and that the various Leave campaigns, as documented in these reports, weren't and didn't.