In five months, Britain’s Future has placed more than 2,600 ads at a cost of £344,981, according to these disclosures, spending tens of thousands of pounds more than the best-resourced Remain-supporting groups and nearly twice as much as the major political parties put together. Week after week while the Brexit negotiations have approached the nail-biting endgame, Britain’s Future has been micro-targeting voters across the country to convince them to lobby specific MPs to “deliver Brexit”.



Last week alone, Britain’s Future splurged more than £50,000 on Facebook. The next biggest spender that week, the pro-Remain Best tor Britain group, spent £15,457.

The extent of Britain’s Future’s social media campaign has raised questions about the group’s origins and the impact of this “dark money” on the most important and contentious political decision in recent UK history. Yet despite the outsize influence the campaign is now having on the Brexit debate, very little is known about how it started or who is funding it. It is not clear whether the money is coming from thousands of small donations or from a few wealthy donors who want a no-deal Brexit.

The only person named on Britain’s Future’s website, Facebook page, and Twitter account is Tim Dawson, the editor. Dawson is a 30-year-old freelance writer who lives in Manchester. He had a sitcom on BBC Three in the late 2000s and has written occasionally for the Daily Telegraph; he’s an active supporter of the Tories on social media but has little experience in frontline politics.

Unlike other campaign groups, Britain’s Future doesn’t appear to have a corporate structure behind it. It does not seem to have a board governing it. There’s no record of an associated company at Companies House. It doesn’t seem to be registered with the Electoral Commission or the Information Commissioner. There is no known physical address. It’s not clear whether it has any staff.



An investigation by BuzzFeed News, which included a detailed analysis of Britain’s Future’s website and Facebook activity, interviews, and access to messages between Dawson and some of his political contacts, has established that:

Britain’s Future has targeted voters in more than 240 constituencies and its ads have potentially been viewed more than 70 million times, giving the little-known group extraordinary reach at a crucial time in the nation’s political history.

Dawson is part of a network of right-wing Tory activists who are sympathetic to the hardline Brexiteers in the European Research Group (ERG), led by Jacob Rees-Mogg. “I love Mogg,” Dawson said in one message to friends. The network includes several Tory parliamentary candidates and the founder of the StandUp4Brexit campaign.

Dawson told fellow activists in one of these Twitter groups that he took over running Britain’s Future in early November, nine months after the website launched and nearly a year after its Facebook page started, raising questions about who originated the campaign and whether there’s someone above Dawson making decisions.

Based on Dawson’s background and career, it seems unlikely he has the political expertise, connections, or financial resources to orchestrate a campaign of this magnitude and sophistication without outside help.

Dawson told the BBC in November that he was funding ads through contributions from friends and fellow Brexiteers. Campaign strategists who have examined Britain’s Future’s Facebook campaign say it’s “implausible if not impossible” that Dawson could have raised that amount of money so quickly without major backers.

Facebook, which has been under intense pressure to stop campaigners funded by dark money using its platform to influence elections, said it was satisfied that Britain’s Future is operating within its rules. BuzzFeed News asked the social media giant what due diligence it had done on the source of the funding, but in response it said it would be for regulators to look into whether there are any concerns about the campaign, and provided a boilerplate comment praising itself for transparency.

Dawson didn’t respond to several attempts by BuzzFeed News to reach him, including to a detailed set of questions sent by email, although he did acknowledge to Tory contacts that he had been approached.

There’s no suggestion Britain’s Future has broken any rules. Under the UK’s electoral system, third parties who want to campaign during referendums and elections have to register with the Electoral Commission and provide details of their spending and donors. Those records are made public. But these rules don’t apply outside of official campaign periods. The Electoral Commission told BuzzFeed News there’s no requirement for Britain’s Future to disclose details about its donors or spending.

But although it’s not doing anything illegal, academics and transparency campaigners told BuzzFeed News they’re deeply concerned that a campaign group that has revealed so little about itself is spending so much money trying to influence the biggest political decision in a generation.