Dominic Cummings: If Leave had lost Brexit vote, I’d have queried result as invalid
Boris Johnson aide wrote to data watchdog in 2017 complaining electoral system was ‘wide open to abuse’
Boris Johnson aide wrote to data watchdog in 2017 complaining electoral system was ‘wide open to abuse’
Boris Johnson’s adviser Dominic Cummings would have challenged the EU referendum result as “invalid” had Vote Leave lost the Brexit campaign.
According to documents seen by the Observer, the prime minister’s chief aide told the UK’s data watchdog that he would have contested the result because UK elections are “wide open to abuse.”
In an email sent in 2017 to the information commissioner’s office, Cummings, the former head of the Vote Leave campaign and architect of Johnson’s stunning election victory, said: “If we had lost by a small margin I would have sought to challenge the result as invalid.”
The UK voted to leave the EU by the slim majority of 52% to 48% in the 2016 referendum, with many Brexiters subsequently attacking the losers as “Remoaners” who refused to respect democracy. On Friday, Cummings openly criticised “educated Remainer campaigner types”
for failing to understand the country and “driving everyone mad”.
The correspondence was sent by Cummings on 16 July 2017 to Steve Wood, deputy information commissioner, along with several officials from Vote Leave, whose high-
The correspondence was sent by Cummings on 16 July 2017 to Steve Wood, deputy information commissioner, along with several officials from Vote Leave, whose high-
profile supporters included Johnson and cabinet minister Michael Gove It was sent in response to queries from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) which at the time was investigating concerns over the use of “data analytics”
in political campaigns. The watchdog subsequently unearthed a “disturbing disregard for voters’ personal privacy” and castigated data firms, social media and political parties.
The emails suggest that the reason Cummings would have challenged the result of the EU referendum and other polls if he had been defeated was because “the entire regulatory structure around national elections including data is really bad” and “wide open to abuse”. He cited
allegations that individuals who claimed to have voted illegally in the 2016 EU referendum were seemingly ignored by the elections watchdog.
