Cambridge Analytica whistleblower claims 'cheating' by Vote Leave could have influenced Brexit vote
The use of targeted ads using data mined illegally from people’s Facebook profiles could have influenced the outcome of the EU referendum, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower has told MPs.
Christopher Wylie told the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee that it was “completely reasonable” to say that there may have been a different outcome after the Brexit vote had there not been “cheating”.
Mr Wylie told the committee that AggregateIQ (AIQ) – the Canadian firm employed by Vote Leave to provide targeted marketing during the referendum – was set up by SCL Group, a strategic communications company linked to Cambridge Analytica (CA).
Asked if the use of AIQ could have influenced the Brexit vote, Mr Wylie said: “Dominic Cummings himself says that this is what won Brexit for them. He says they could not have won without AIQ and it speaks volumes to the fact that they spend 40% of their budget on AIQ.”
He added: “I think it’s completely reasonable to say that there could have been a different outcome in the referendum had their not been, in my view, cheating.”
Mr Wylie told the committee he “absolutely” believed that AIQ had drawn on Cambridge Analytica databases in the referendum campaign, telling the committee: “You can’t have targeting software that doesn’t access the database.
“Cambridge Analytica would have a database and AIQ would access that database, otherwise the software wouldn’t work.”
He claimed he had met Vote Leave’s campaign director, Dominic Cummings, in November 2015, at a point when it was clear that the eurosceptic group had no database of its own.
He said: “Very shortly after that meeting, they then engage AIQ,” adding that his speculation was that the company was chosen because it would have “looked odd” if both Vote Leave and the separate Leave.eu Brexit campaign were both working with CA.
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Vote Leave had got “the next best thing” to Cambridge Analytica by hiring “a company that can do virtually everything that CA can do but with a different billing name”, he said.
Asked about the links between various Leave campaigns in the run-up to the EU referendum, Mr Wylie said: “I am absolutely convinced that there was a common plan and common purpose with Vote Leave, BeLeave, the DUP, and Veterans for Britain.
“All of these companies somehow, for some reason, all decided to use AIQ.”
He added: “For me it makes me so angry because a lot of people supported Leave because they believe in the application of British law and British sovereignty and to irrevocably alter the constitutional settlement of this country on the basis of fraud is a mutilation of the constitutional settlement of this country.”
Mr Cummings responded to Mr Wylie’s evidence with a post on his blog dismissing the whistleblower as a “fantasist-charlatan”.
He wrote: “The EC/ICO (Electoral Commission/Information Commissioner’s Office) inquiries will look at the facts, the completely different stories that the whistleblowers tell each time they appear (their credibility is such that I bet their lawyers won’t let them appear as witnesses), the evidence, and the law.
“By the time the inquiries are over, the Observer will look really silly for making a hero out of a fantasist-charlatan, we’ll already have left the EU, and Zoolander will need a new look.”