We're backing GO

The EU referendum is a once in a lifetime opportunity to free ourselves from the undemocratic, unproductive, corrupt EU and to ensure that we have the best possible chance of getting the right result for the country we need the myriad leave campaigns to work together.

We are therefore backing the Grassroots Out leave campaign in its bid to be given official designation by the Electoral Commission and urging all leave campaigners to join GO and work together to secure the result we all want.

It is increasingly apparent that Vote Leave is the group of choice for politicians whilst Leave.EU is presenting a more tabloid campaign designed to appeal to the man on the street. There's nothing wrong with tailoring those campaigns to a particular audience but they need to work together rather than pulling in opposite directions or playing games of one upmanship.

So we are calling on Vote Leave and Leave.EU to put their differences aside and work together constructively under the GO umbrella alongside the the likes of Business for Britain, Better Off Out and the Freedom Association who have already joined forces under the GO banner.

Leave.EU ask British Polling Council to investigate CBI/YouGov poll [UPDATED]

has asked the British Polling Council to investigate a YouGov poll commissioned by the EU-funded CBI in 2013 over claims that it was deliberately biased and contravened the BPC's guidelines.

It is alleged that YouGov only polled big business, excluding the small businesses that make up the vast majority of companies in the UK. It is also alleged that YouGov allowed the CBI to choose which businesses it wanted polling, allowing them to ensure that the results were favourable to their long-held pro-EU agenda. The poll - unsurprisingly in light of these allegations - found that 8 out of 10 businesses want to stay in the EU.

Guido has a copy of an email that Nick Moon from the British Polling Council accidentally sent to Dominic Cummings from the Leave.EU campaign. I'm going to stick my neck out and predict that the BPC is going to find that while YouGov made some errors, the survey result was sound. Scouts honour.

From: Moon, Nick (GfK)
Date: Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 2:50 PM
Subject: RE: Complaint to the British Polling Council
To: Dominic Cummings, John Curtice
Cc: Simon Atkinson

Bugger – at first glance the odious Cummings might be onto something.

Survey looks pretty dodgy but luckily we don’t need to rule on that. But my initial thought is that YouGov did not give as much info as they should have

nick

Theresa May wants to lead the EU out campaign

Theresa May has refused to rule herself out of heading up the official campaign to leave the EU despite toeing the Conservative Party "renegotiation" line.

Nigel Farage said he would be "absolutely delighted" if Theresa May was to lead the campaign but this surely has more to do with it tearing the Conservative Party apart and undermining David Cameron's leadership than her suitability or otherwise to lead the campaign.

Putting a Tory minister in charge of the campaign to leave the EU would be a disaster. Labour supporters would never trust a Tory and neither would a great many UKIPpers. Theresa May disagrees with David Cameron's stance of staying the EU at all costs and she also disagrees with Nigel Farage's stance of leaving the EU at all costs. Like all senior Tories, she is a reformist who would accept some superficial concessions to maintain the status quo.

The official campaign to leave the EU needs to be headed up by someone with a record of success in the private sector, someone the Guardian and Huffington Post don't hate and someone known for their business acumen and philanthropy rather than their political views. Most importantly, it has to be someone who is absolutely committed to the cause and not someone who will turn the campaign to leave the EU into a campaign to reform it.

That rules out a lot of people - Nigel Farage included - but this is the only chance we're going to get and we need someone who can unite eurosceptics from across the political spectrum and be trusted not to sabotage the campaign.