Gina Miller, the campaigner behind the successful supreme court Brexit challenge, has raised £300,000 in crowdfunding to directly support up to 100 pro-Europe candidates in her tactical voting election initiative.

Miller confirmed she would not be standing for election but said the money would be given directly to candidates believed to have a chance of defeating politicians supporting Theresa May’s hard Brexit strategy.



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At the launch of her Best for Britain tactical voting campaign, she said she was overwhelmed by the support it had received so far. She said donations from 10,000 people reflected a grassroots appetite for a meaningful opposition to the Conservative government.

Miller and Eloise Todd, the chief executive of Best for Britain, said they were still working on which candidates to support, but confirmed they were looking at all parties including Conservatives.

The funds would be allocated to local candidates who would be chosen using data and polling that took account of the referendum result in the constituency, the 2015 election result and how people felt about tactical voting.

“This is the most important election for a generation. It’s crucial that people feel inspired to register and vote,” said Miller.

“It is especially important for young people to vote as they will be living with the consequences of the decisions taken in the next parliament for their entire lives.”

She said she would “tour marginal seats to make sure the next government has no mandate to destroy our rights and our relationship with Europe. We need to prevent MPs and the people being forced into an extreme Brexit that is not in Britain’s best interests.”

Todd said it was “not about ideology” or party politics, it was about holding the government to account and a strong parliamentary democracy at a critical time in history.

She said: “It’s not about being ‘in’ or ‘out’ [of Europe]. It’s not about that binary choice. It’s that the next government needs to connect with the people and do what’s best for the country. It’s not about forcing candidates to commit now to a deal that a) doesn’t exist yet b) negotiations haven’t even started and c) we don’t even know who the chief players are going to be in the negotiations.”

What does the election mean for Brexit and what does Brexit mean for the election? It is unlikely that the result will affect Brexit, with both Tories and Labour saying they will enact the referendum result, though if Labour wins we might be more likely to see a “soft Brexit” as opposed to a hard one. A number of MPs campaigned differently from the way their constituency voted, for example the Labour MP for Vauxhall, Kate Hoey, who backed Brexit, while only 22% of her constituents voted to leave. While nationally Labour campaigned for remain, many traditionally Labour constituencies voted to leave. How this plays out in the general election remains to be seen.

Miller said she was motivated to launch the campaign to stop a dictatorial government that had gone to the polls declaring it wanted to crush the saboteurs in the opposition parties.

She denied she was a divisive figure whose intervention could backfire and lead to a hard Brexit, adding she was not standing “because you can exercise your civic duty by standing up for what you believe in” without going as far as becoming a member of parliament.

“We shall work tirelessly to support candidates who want what’s Best for Britain and believe in principles over politics,” she said.

Miller and Todd, who previously worked for Bono’s anti-poverty One campaign argue that the public did not vote for a hard Brexit in the referendum but that Theresa May was not presenting a choice to the public other than than to swing behind her vision in the election.

“The idea that parliament should simply rubberstamp a binary deal and ignore the other options … would be reduce democracy to a footnote,” said Miller.



The initiative was launched two days after Open Britain unveiled its campaign to unseat prominent Brexit-supporting MPs such as Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa Villiers and Kate Hoey.

Open Britain, the successor to the pro-EU referendum campaign, has compiled an “attack list” of 20 seats, held mostly by Conservative MPs, where constituents voted to stay in the EU but their representatives are Brexit supporters.

Best for Britain refused to be drawn on which constituencies they were focusing on but said they were working with Strategic Voting Canada “one of the most successful tactical voting campaigners” in the world.

The initiative is likely to be a boost for Liberal Democrats hoping to regain seats from the Conservatives and pro-remain Labour candidates who face big electoral challenges in party heartlands that voted leave.



Miller revealed that she was still getting abuse but said the choice was either to “embrace it” and do something with her high profile or “walk away”.

Asked what would happen in a constituency if a Liberal Democrat candidate was up against a principled Labour candidate who had voted for article 50 but had campaigned for amendments, Todd said it would “depend on the polling and the data we get back”.

“There are up to 100 marginals. How many we deep dive into, that we would like to make recommendations in, depends on the final research we get back,” she added.

“People are worried about the future direction of this country, they believe in parliamentary democracy and they believe, as do we, that only tactical voting in this election can ensure that parliament plays their full part in the future of this country.”

In an oblique reference to Labour’s support for article 50, she said it was important to support candidates who would stand up to a future government.

In her appeal on her crowdfunding web page, Miller said the goal was to stop people being “forced into an extreme Brexit”.







