Questions about Brexit party funding and throwing milkshake at Farage

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/21/questions-about-brexit-party-funding-and-throwing-milkshake-at-farage

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At last! A big thank you to Gordon Brown for asking questions on the Brexit party’s funding (Brexit party funding must be scrutinised, Brown urges, 21 May). It was quite clear from Carole Cadwalladr’s excellent work on the funding of the Brexit campaign that there was unexplained financial backing, with the suspicion that it originated from Russia. As a result, even if we are allowed a public vote, I fear the Brexiters will win again.

If a foreign state invested in destabilising the EU through social media, it may do so subsequently, unless it is exposed and prevented.

I was concerned that there had not been sufficiently significant highlighting of the Brexit party’s funding before. To start from nothing and in a few weeks to have achieved such support, suggests huge expenditure on social media.

I fear that democracy died in the vote on Europe three years ago. It is no longer the will of the people, but the biggest bucks to spend on social-media brainwashing that will determine the outcome of elections. Nineteen Eighty-Four has arrived a little later than foretold.Scottie GregoryChristchurch, Dorset

• I am disturbed by the reporting of recent attacks on candidates campaigning in the Euro elections. Attacks on candidates supporting Brexit are a serious matter. The use of pictures of Nigel Farage covered in milkshake on the front page with a jokey headline “Shaken and stirred” (21 May), and to illustrate a letter on the campaign (but not about the attack), does not treat the issue seriously as what it is: an attack on democracy.

If they were happening to remain-supporting politicians I doubt that it would be reported in this way.

Actions like this are meant to demean the victim as it shows them vulnerable and out of control; printing pictures of the aftermath help to achieve that aim and do the attackers’ work for them. Not taking such events seriously risks all politicians being seen as fair game for such attacks and that would greatly inhibit political campaigning.Michael McGuffieWellington, Somerset

• So the man who threatened to “pick up a rifle” if he didn’t get the Brexit he wanted has a tantrum when doused in milkshake by a protester?Carol HedgesHarpenden, Hertfordshire

• It’s all too easy to titter at a soaked Brexit party leader, but has anyone considered the impact this craze is having on the sale of eggs?Willie Montgomery StackLairg, Sutherland

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