The British Vote Leave campaign was fined for excessive illegal referendum

LONDON – The British campaign for Brexit overtook the law because of excessive spending and was referred to the police, the authorities said Tuesday, calling for a new referendum on the issue.

Vote Leave violated the spending rules in the June 2016 vote and was fined $ 80,843, the Electoral Commission declared.

Britain voted 51.9% to leave the EU against 48.1% who voted to stay in the trade bloc, paving the way for the biggest change in the country's trade and foreign policy for decades.

Two years after this result, Britain remains irredeemably divided over its future relations with the EU should look like, or even if Brexit should go ahead.

Political maneuvers on the issue plunged the conservative government into power of Prime Minister Theresa May in a series of crises. He narrowly avoided a defeat in the House of Commons Monday night by only three votes

May's attempt to unite warring ministers behind a post-Brexit plan, negotiated earlier this month at his Checkers retreat collapsed a few days after the terms proved unpleasant for legislators and conservatives. His government was shaken by several resignations.

Brexit supporters say the result of the 2016 referendum should be respected. The official divorce mechanism has already been triggered and Britain must leave the EU However, the growing uncertainty about the impact of Brexit on trade and customs agreements has prompted some lawmakers across the political spectrum to require that the process be subject to a second vote or even that it be completely abandoned.

Justine Greening, one of May's former ministers, said the Checkers Agreement was "a fudge I can not support."

"The only solution is to make the final Brexit decision. politicians dead-end, far behind the scenes She wrote in The Times newspaper Tuesday.

This feeling was magnified by the revelations of illegal over-spending by the Vote Leave campaign.

"Brexit was not only sold on deliberate lies and false promises, but also by violating the electoral law," said Conservative Sarah Wollaston

the Labor MP Chuka Umunna said : "We know that the right to vote has lied on a gargantuan scale – we now know that they have cheated too and it is official. "He supported a so-called popular vote on the final terms of Brexit."

With only 255 days before Britain leaves the EU, Britain has not yet begun substantive negotiations with Brussels on the maintenance of existing partnerships such as a common customs zone or a harmonized consumer regulation

Analysts warned that political quarrels increased the odds of a "disordered" or "no agreement" Brexit in which Britain has abandoned the EU without any substitute commercial or customs exchanges, according to John Wraith, head of UK rate strategy at UBS, "The risks incurred by all parties always imply an orderly outflow as the most likely outcome, but the outlook for this result has faded in recent weeks, while the outlook for the most sinister has increased. significantly. "

Tuesday's announcement by the electoral regulators follows the fear that Russian groups are using social media to influence Brexit's outcome of 2016.

Facebook said that it found only "a minimal amount" of disinformation linked to the UK when he first investigated in 2017, but in January the tech giant said he would re-examine the issue