A letter has gone out to clients of chairman’s public relations firm questioning his PR skills

People’s Vote staff are writing to clients of the public relations company run by its chairman, Roland Rudd, to ask if they are comfortable with his involvement in an extraordinary row that has brought the campaign group to a grinding halt.

The angry staff members, who are refusing to work under a new chief executive summarily appointed by Rudd, ask whether he has “demonstrated good PR skills” in a vicious conflict that has coincided with the start of the general election campaign.

Finsbury, the leading public relations firm run by the multi-millionaire, specialises in advising FTSE 100 companies and the letter is part of an attempt by the estranged People’s Vote staff to “hit him in the wallet” in the escalating dispute.

Last weekend Rudd fired the People’s Vote’s chief executive, James McGrory, a former adviser to Nick Clegg, and its director of communications, Tom Baldwin, who used to work with Ed Miliband, prompting a mass walkout by colleagues.

People’s Vote has a database of 500,000 emails and 600,000 Facebook contacts and insiders said that it has accumulated a six-figure war chest to be used during the election campaign to continue to call for a second referendum.

Insiders complain that the campaign plan has been totally disrupted by the row, to the delight of some Conservatives. One said they had met a former Tory cabinet minister in a Westminster pub this week who said, “congratulate Roland Rudd for me”.

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The campaign had planned this week to deliver a mass signature letter to Downing Street and the European parliament, and unveil a tactical voting website advising voters which candidate to support to achieve a second referendum.

Rudd’s supporters, however, say that he wants to professionalise the campaign organisation and accuse McGrory and Baldwin of leading “a cult-like walk out.” Some of the estranged staff have begun to return, they said.

Some politicians and public figures associated with People’s Vote, which had been behind a string of successful mass rallies in London and around the country, have expressed their dismay as the row has unfolded.

Earlier this week, Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s spin doctor and an ally of Baldwin’s, said: “While the staff have been busy fighting for a People’s Vote … Rudd has been engaged close to full time in boardroom politics, a board which with few exceptions has done little for the campaign.”

A dossier on Rudd compiled by rebel staff says that he earned £5.9m from Finsbury, as the highest paid director in its company accounts, lives in a £20m Kensington townhouse and has a Georgian mansion in Somerset. It even references using publicly available data an application for planning permission to install a spiral staircase to a wine cellar in his London home.

Behind the row is a dispute over the long-term future direction of the campaign, prompting some Labour supporting staff in the group to accuse Rudd of wanting to push the group closer to the Liberal Democrats.

They say that Rudd wants to abandon campaigning for a second referendum and instead turn People’s Vote into a pro-remain organisation campaigning for a return to the EU post-Brexit, while they believe the second referendum idea could come back on to the agenda if Labour wins the election or the result is indecisive.

But allies of Rudd say that he has no political ambitions and accused Labour figures of wrongly suggesting he wants to push the organisation towards the Lib Dems. “Rudd met with key campaign MPs, such as Caroline Lucas, Dominic Grieve and Sam Gyimah this week and they were happy,” a source close to Rudd said.

Lucas, however, said that she was very unhappy with Rudd’s manoeuvre and several other MPs who had supported the organisation have raised concerns. Gyimah added subsequently that he was “listening” to the debate but was otherwise uninvolved.

The coup was able to take place because Rudd had quietly taken control of Open Britain, the largest of the constituent organisations in the People’s Vote umbrella, using another company called Baybridge – before moving to fire its two leading employees.

They were replaced by Patrick Heneghan, a former head of campaigns for the Labour party, who has been running the organisation with a handful of staff, most of whom are understood to be new recruits.

The bulk of the 60 staff in the People’s Vote organisation were employed by Open Britain and hence Baybridge, but they have refused to return to work. “Rudd has used the tactics of city boardrooms to take control of the campaign, which means we have to respond in kind,” the staffer added.

Staffers are also preparing to send a second letter to the board members of WPP, the advertising and marketing giant that owns Finsbury, asking them whether they feel comfortable with Rudd engaging “in a matter of of great political controversy”, in the hope of further ratcheting up the pressure.