Further allegations of leave campaign cheating the EU referendum result
Britain is due to the European Union in just a years time. But, new allegations have now been made by whistleblower and former Cambridge Analytica employee that the brexit vote may have been manipulated by the leave campaign.
In a recent interview, he accused pro brexit groups like BeLeave of using Aggregate IQ (AIQ) to target voters on social media using psychological profiling. AIQ were subcontracted by Cambridge Analytica, who are a political data firm, and have also recently been accused of targeting voters during the 2016 presidential election in the US.
The former employee, Christopher Wylie, said: “I think it is completely reasonable to say that there could have been a different outcome of the referendum had there not been, in my view, cheating. If this country is on the path of an irreversible decision, we really should be confident that the basis of that decision came from a free and fair vote – and what this evidence does is it calls into question whether it was free and fair.”
In addition to this, the leave campaign have been accused of further wrongdoing during the referendum campaign. Allegedly, they purposely broke the electoral laws on the spending cap, which is set at £7 million.
The campaign group are thought to have received donations from BeLeave, which were then spent on AIQ services for targeting British voters. There are further allegations that Stephen Parkinson, who is Theresa May’s political secretary and a supporter of brexit, knew about the overspending during the campaign as well as the groups links with BeLeave and AIQ.
Officials from the Vote Leave campaign group have denied all the allegations. They also pointed out that the British electoral commission found no evidence of overspending during their investigations. AIQ and Cambridge Analytica have also denied any knowledge of the allegations. “Beyond an early-stage sales pitch to Vote Leave, Cambridge Analytica had no interaction with that group or any of their vendors,” they said.
