Labour Leave


Labour Leave is a Eurosceptic campaign group in the United Kingdom. The group is unofficially affiliated with the Labour Party and campaigned for the UK to vote to withdraw from the European Union in the 2016 EU Referendum. The group was led by eurosceptic Labour MPs: Graham Stringer, Kelvin Hopkins, and Roger Godsiff. Kate Hoey was another co chair in the group, until she reportedly resigned in February 2016. Labour MP Gisela Stuart did not participate in the group, instead chairing the official leave campaign, Vote Leave.
In July 2018, John Mills resigned as chairman of Labour Leave. In January 2019, the supporters page of the website listed only Brendan Chilton and MPs, Kate Hoey and Frank Field. Chilton is also the general secretary and the only director of Labour Leave Limited. As of 2020, the group is still active.

Position within Vote Leave

The organisation's position within the Vote Leave campaign has been seen as precarious, a source close to the campaign told the Morning Star, due to a perceived domination of the Vote Leave campaign by Conservative and UKIP officials. Of Vote Leave's seventeen strong governing board, only two members are members of Labour Leave.
In response to this, the idea of a campaign wholly independent of both Vote Leave and Leave.EU had been suggested by Hoey and Hopkins, among others.

Funding for the group

Adam Barnett on the left-wing political blog Left Foot Forward wrote that Labour Leave's two biggest funders were Conservative Party donors, and its third biggest funder was the official Brexit campaign group Vote Leave, a mostly Conservative organisation.
The Electoral Commission shows Labour Leave received £15,000 from Vote Leave in February. It also received £50,000 from Conservative donor Jeremy Hosking, who had given the Conservatives almost £570,000 by June 2016.
Hosking donated £100,000 to the Conservative Party in April 2015, and donated £50,000 in March 2016. Labour Leave took a further £150,000 in May from Richard Smith, believed to be the owner of 55 Tufton Street in Westminster.
Barnett attributed this collaboration between opposing political organisations to a desire by the Conservatives to split the Labour EU Referendum vote, as it was alleged that Labour members were unsure of their party's position on Brexit.
Labour Leave continue to raise money from crowd sourcing campaigns and from direct donations from their supporters and members. In March 2019, Labour Leave was fined £9,000 by the Electoral Commission for an inaccurate campaign spending return and inaccurate donation reports at the 2016 EU Referendum.