Thread: Sykes to spend £10m on anti-EU campaign

From The Telegraph

Eurosceptic campaign is back

By Brendan Carlin
(Filed: 09/10/2006)

A £10 million campaign to bring the UK's relationship with Europe back to the centre stage of British politics will begin next week.

Led by Paul Sykes, the Eurosceptic Yorkshire multi-millionaire, it will aim to break the "conspiracy of silence" over the transfer of vital powers from Westminster to Brussels.

Launched next Monday with advertisements in The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers, a website and a call centre, the "Speak Out" campaign will seek to harness mass support for a referendum on repatriation of seven powers now transferred to Europe.

According to the campaign, powers surrendered to an "undemocratic and unaccountable" Brussels include the unfettered right to make laws, control Britain's borders and run an independent UK trade policy as well as to manage farming and fisheries policy.

"Our MPs have betrayed us. They have given away powers that were not theirs to give," say the advertisements. More than half our laws — some people say as much as 80 per cent — originate not in the debating chambers of our elected Parliament but behind closed doors in Brussels."

The campaign, which plans a mail-shot to every household in Britain, has ambitions to run until the general election.

Mr Sykes, 62, a former Conservative Party member, insisted that this was not about withdrawing from the EU. He said: "This is an outbreak of the truth. Every man, woman and child will get to know what our relationship with the EU is."

If this is not about withdrawal from the EU, what is it about?

And where does this leave attempts to bring some of his money into UKIP?

Best news on the eurosceptic front in a long time, though as reported it's hard to see what political outcome he is hoping to achieve.

Split the Tories? Revive UKIP? Both?

If his aim was to revive UKIP, wouldn't he have channeled the campaign through the party?

I think that on the whole this will benefit UKIP.

The great british public need educating about the EU and how it effects us all. If this campaing will go some way to addressing this it can only be good.

As peoples understanding is broadened, their perception of UKIP will improve and hopefully the issue will move up their priority list. Public opinion should start to move more in our direction because of this campaign.

When the public see leaving the EU as a credible option, so UKIP will be seen as more credible. Certainly the other parties have firmly staked out their position on the EU.

Richard North has now commented.

Paul Sykes, the "Eurosceptic Yorkshire multi-millionaire" is, we are told by a national newspaper, to lead a £10 million campaign to bring the UK's relationship with Europe back to the centre stage of British politics.

Its aim, is supposedly to break the "conspiracy of silence" over the transfer of vital powers from Westminster to Brussels and will begin next week with advertisements in daily newspapers, a website and a call centre. A mail-shot to every household in Britain is also planned.

Dubbed the "Speak Out" campaign, the declared aim is to "harness mass support for a referendum on repatriation of seven powers now transferred to Europe". Sykes, however, is insisting that this is not about withdrawing from the EU. He says: "This is an outbreak of the truth. Every man, woman and child will get to know what our relationship with the EU is."

We should be highly delighted at this development, but for the fact that we have seen it all before. Sykes has a habit of calling in people for discussions about how to develop Eurosceptic campaigns, ignoring their advice and then going ahead with what he first thought of – usually involving a mega-spend on ineffectual newspaper ads.

As for leading anything, Sykes is on his own. There is no mass campaign beyond the dining rooms of the ad agencies that he will be employing and his reach will last for as long as he stumps up cash which – from past experience – will not be for very long, before he loses interest.

We should not be too critical of the man though – it is his money. The pity is that he has, over term, wasted so much of it – and the time of the people he has consulted and then ignored.

It may bring the EU back to centre stage but it is a pointless exercise because it stops short of recommending withdrawal and without withdrawal the rest is irrelevant

Good on you, Matt. Offer to help - you have the verbal skills and practical sense,

Fantastic. Suggest that he uses the money to buy a major newspaper chain - having some media on "our" side would help.