Labour Leave
 |
|
| Founders | John Mills |
|---|---|
| Purpose | United Kingdom withdrawal from the European Union |
|
Region served
|
United Kingdom |
|
Key people
|
Kate Hoey MP Graham Stringer MP Kelvin Hopkins MP Roger Godsiff MP John Mills |
| Affiliations |
Vote Leave Labour Party (UK) (unofficial) |
| Website | labourleave |
Labour Leave is a campaign group unofficially within the British Labour Party, which has campaigned successfully for the United Kingdom to vote to leave the European Union (EU) in the 2016 EU referendum. The group is led by eurosceptic Labour MPs Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer, Kelvin Hopkins, and Roger Godsiff, and is chaired by the largest individual donor to the Labour Party, John Mills, former chair of the cross-party Vote Leave campaign, which the group supports.
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 17-strong governing board, only two members (Mills and Stringer) are members of Labour Leave. In response to this, the idea of a wholly independent campaign to Vote Leave and Leave.EU had been suggested, with MPs such as Hoey and Hopkins favouring the idea.
Adam Barnett on the left-wing political blog Left Foot Forward wrote that Labour Leave's "two biggest funders Conservative Party donors, and its third biggest funder the official Brexit campaign group Vote Leave". The Electoral Commission shows Labour Leave received £15,000 from the majority-Conservative Vote Leave in February. Labour Leave also received £50,000 from Jeremy Hosking, a donor to the Conservative Party who has given the Conservatives £569,100 as of June 2016. Hosking donated £100,000 to the Conservative Party in April 2015 and donated £50,000 in March 2016 (the same month he gave £50,000 to Labour Leave). Labour Leave took a further £150,000 in May from Richard Smith, believed to be the owner of 55 Tufton Street in Westminster (home of several right-wing groups). Labour Leave continue to raise money from crowdsourcing campaigns and from direct donations from their supporters and members.
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Wikipedia