Letter: Campaign cash cap

Campaign cash cap

Sir: Your report on party and referendum campaign funding ("Neill curbs hit Blair's euro hopes", 14 October) is naive if it suggests that this standards committee decision on capping campaign funding will affect the pro-euro and anti-euro campaigns.

Anyone who believes campaigns will be run only in the six weeks up to the referendum has not analysed referendums across the EU. Successful campaigns actually start a very long time before the actual vote. For the UK's euro campaigns it will be a long haul with a great deal of money spent.

The pro-euro campaign, whose activists will be European Movement led, has yet to declare its war chest, but the anti-European multi-millionaire Paul Sykes has pledged pounds 20m to his anti-euro "Democracy Movement".

No doubt the vast majority of this will be spent on xenophobic, anti- German, propaganda, just like that of the Referendum Party, and Lord Neill's recommendations will not make a blind bit of difference.

ROBERT COPPINGER

West Midlands Regional Organiser

European Movement

Birmingham