The development of Brexit from a fringe movement into a dominant political project coincided chronologically not only with a long period of patient and sustained campaigning and lobbying, and with a lucky sequence of favourable shifts of circumstance and forces, but also with the internal development of one key external force, the politics and ideology of the Putin regime.

The UK’s Electoral Commission has published the results of a near nine-month-long investigation into Brexit referendum spending and has found that the official Vote Leave campaign broke the law by breaching election campaign spending limits.

Shahmir Sanni co-founded BeLeave, an offshoot of the Vote Leave campaign, during the EU Referendum. He turned whistleblower last year when he exposed its law-breaking. Here he reveals how two of the contenders to replace Theresa May cannot absolve themselves of responsibility.