The government’s humiliating defeat on purdah is the first major victory for Eurosceptics in the battle on how the EU referendum is fought. Bernard Jenkin, one of the lead Tory rebels, appeared on the Today programme to explain why his gang took on the government last night:
‘They initially wanted to abolish the purdah rules altogether, which would mean going to back to the kind of referendum that Wales had in 1997 which was so roundly criticised by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, where the government was spending money and ministers were being deployed by the civil service to conduct the campaign. In the general election and local election, there is a very strong tradition that that should not happen.’
Jenkin said his concerns were not about long policy papers but the government machine spinning on behalf of the ‘In’ campaign during the final 28 days of the referendum — something he described as ‘absolutely outrageous and that would not be on’.
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