This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The insurance tycoon Arron Banks and his spokesman Andy Wigmore, of the pro-Brexit Leave.EU campaign, spent three hours in front of the select committee investigating fake news on Tuesday, answering questions about their involvement in the 2016 EU referendum campaign.

Here are five things we learned.

1. Banks and Wigmore happily admitted lying to journalists during the EU referendum to gain publicity for their cause

“We certainly weren’t above leading journalists up the country path, making fun of them; same with politicians,” Banks told MPs. “We were running a campaign deliberately aimed at making fun of people.”

Wigmore, a former Belizean diplomat who served as spokesperson for Leave.EU during the referendum, was happy to admit he regularly overstated his group’s campaigning prowess in order to get attention.



“There was probably a bit of boastfulness,” he told MPs. “I’m an agent provocateur. I would be guilty of being provocative, of slight exaggeration in the message quite often. I’m guilty of doing that.”

Banks said later that parliament was the largest creator of fake news in the country and insisted politicians also attempt to portray events in a slanted manner. He told the Labour MP Chris Matheson that “straight after this hearing you’ll be at lunch with some Guardian journalist quaffing a glass of Chablis and spinning this how you want”.



2. Banks and Wigmore insisted they did not use Cambridge Analytica’s services during Leave.EU’s campaign

Leave.EU has always said it had only limited dealing with collapsed data business Cambridge Analytica for the use of targeted online campaigning, with Banks insisting that this was only preparatory work.

“When we said we’d hired Cambridge Analytica, maybe a better choice of words could have been ‘deployed’ there,” said Banks. “Did we hire them? Clearly not, because we didn’t pay them or sign a contract.”

Banks and Wigmore instead felt that Cambridge Analytica’s Alexander Nix had overstated his role because he was a salesman trying to sell a product and reporting on the company relied on the testimony of “fantasist” Brittany Kaiser and the whistleblower Chris Wylie.

Banks said in any case their social media campaigning was much more about being provocative about topics such as immigration, rather than paying for adverts. “Our skill was creating bushfires and then putting the fan on and making the fan blow. If you criticise us for anything, it’s that we picked subjects and topics that we knew would fly.”



Arron Banks walks out as MPs' questions on Brexit and Russia run late – live Read more

3. They insist their initial discussions with the Russian embassy were about funding for the banana industry in Central America, rather than Brexit

The pair have come under scrutiny following the leak of emails over the weekend to the Observer that detail meetings with the Russian ambassador to the UK and discussion of an investment in Russian mines.

Wigmore said his initial contact with Russian officials was with an embassy official he met at Ukip’s annual conference at Doncaster racecourse in 2015. In a bizarre and rambling anecdote, he claimed that his initial discussions were about distressed farms owned by a drug kingpin rather than Brexit.

“I am a diplomat for a small country called Belize and we have a couple of issues in relation to bananas and sugars,” he said. “I was trying to find investors to look at perhaps buying a banana farm which had got into trouble. Belize couldn’t sell its bananas to places like the US and the UK. It needed someone to buy them.”



Wigmore also said he instigated the conversations that led to the pair having lunch with the Russian ambassador, not the other way around, and praised the meal cooked by the ambassador’s wife.

“We thought it would be quite a nice thing to go have a chat with them. [Banks’] wife is Russian, she’s never engaged with much of the Russian diaspora, and we thought it would be nice to go and have a chat with him.”

Asked whether Leave.EU received funding from Russia, Wigmore said “Nyet”, and later said he often used to tease journalists by telling them that Banks was in Moscow.

The pair, who met Donald Trump shortly after his election as US president, said they had briefed the US embassy on everything they knew, finishing the session by handing MPs a series of emails with American officials in a brown envelope marked “Top Secret”.

4. Banks insisted his companies’ finances are all above board

Banks approached most of the questions in a jovial manner but repeatedly shut down questioning about the complex structure of Banks’ insurance companies, blaming bad reporting of their accounts.

The businessman, who has several companies registered in Gibraltar, insisted that all his political funding comes from his personal, domestic funds.

He dismissed claims that one of his businesses was technically insolvent. “I have not been trading insolvently for three years, because the regulator would not allow that to happen.”

“I know that you’re all remainers. You’ve got a vested interest in trying to discredit Brexit campaigning.”

5. Banks and Wigmore’s defence rests on them being bumbling fools who bragged about their own importance

“I like to think I’m an evil genius with a white cap that controls the whole of western democracy but clearly that’s nonsense,” said Banks at one point.

The double-act repeatedly attacked the MPs’ line of questioning, laughed at their comments and adopted a world-weary tone, before occasionally going on the attack.

“Are you the MP that got drunk in the House of Commons and harassed a woman and got drunk on a karaoke evening?” Banks asked at one point. “One of the committee is! I don’t know which one.”

At one point, the businessman claimed that a major misunderstanding about his company sending data to be processed in Mississippi was a result of Wigmore incompetently briefing a story to the media.

“I would say that Andy is head of communications and PR and he didn’t know what he was talking about,” said Banks.

“Basically,” agreed Wigmore, enthusiastically.

“That’s not the first time that’s happened,” added Banks.



“No,” agreed Wigmore.

After three hours, Banks walked out, ignoring three final questions from MPs, saying he was late for lunch.