Led By Donkeys offers to sell thebrexitparty.com to Nigel Farage for £1m

2019-11-22 09:18 Last Updated At：09:18

The fee, which will rise by £50,000 each day, will be gifted to an immigrant support charity.

BODY

An anti-Brexit campaign group has bought the website “thebrexitparty.com” and is offering to sell it to Nigel Farage for over a million pounds.

Led By Donkeys said the entire fee, which will increase by £50,000 each day, would be donated to the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants.

The move comes after Brexit Party lawyers contacted Led By Donkeys asking them to remove their logo from the site. The party said the campaign group is refusing to transfer the domain name, which is similar to their official site “thebrexitparty.org”.

The website features a rising total of the cost, along with an “election advent calendar” – which offers examples of the “lies, lunacy and hypocrisy” of the Conservatives and Brexit Party every day until December 12.

“When Farage and his millionaire backers set up the Brexit Party they didn’t have the foresight to buy up all of the websites with their own name – and we did,” Led By Donkeys co-founder Oliver Knowles told the PA news agency.

“With the advent calendar, we are telling the story of the Brexit Party and the Tory Party who are now election partners – and the threat they represent to the country.”

Asked why they chose the immigrant support charity, Mr Knowles said: “Nigel Farage peddles an ideology of hatred and division and it felt like this would be a good and just cause.”

Led By Donkeys bought the domain name earlier this year to challenge Mr Farage’s party during the European Parliament elections in May.

The anti-Brexit group ridiculed the recent approach from Brexit Party lawyers, saying the eight-page legal letter cites European Union law five times as justification of its claim.

In the 8-page legal letter we got from Farage’s lawyers he cites EU law *five* times. Who knew Nigel Farage was such a fan of European law? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/OJOQt0T5yu

— Led By Donkeys (@ByDonkeys) November 21, 2019

“Who knew Nigel Farage was such a fan of European law?” Led By Donkeys tweeted.

All versions of the Brexit Party logo have been removed from the current version of the website.

Behind the first door of the advent calendar features a video of Mr Farage saying “we’re going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare”.

“There will be a series of other pieces of information about their collaboration and highlighting the lunacy and hypocrisy of their Brexit position over the past few months,” said Mr Knowles.

“Some are describing it as the most important election in a generation and we’re inclined to agree.”

In a statement, the Brexit Party said: “The Brexit Party have issued a legal letter, via lawyers, Wedlake Bell to Led by Donkeys requesting they cease and desist from using the Brexit Party logo and Brexit Party materials on posters, document download site and via their website at thebrexitparty.com.

“They have offered to comply with these requests, but so far they are refusing to transfer the domain name.”

Led By Donkeys has made its name protesting against Brexit with various large-scale projects in public spaces, first going viral in early 2019 by sharing politicians’ past comments on billboards.

Chair of African charity Prince Harry co-founded says the royal orchestrated a bullying campaign

2025-03-31 04:00 Last Updated At：04:11

LONDON (AP) — The chairperson of an African charity co-founded by Prince Harry accused the royal on Sunday of orchestrating a bullying and harassment campaign to try to force her out as she pushed back following his abrupt resignation from the organization.

Sophie Chandauka, the Sentebale chair, took several shots at Harry on Sky News in which she described how the prince’s Netflix deal interfered with a scheduled fundraiser and how an incident with his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, became a source of friction.

The Duke of Sussex cited a breakdown in the relationship between board members and Chandauka when he resigned Tuesday as a patron of the charity he co-founded nearly 20 years ago in memory of his late mother, Princess Diana.

Harry and co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho said in a joint statement that they quit “with heavy hearts” as patrons in support of the trustees in their dispute with Chandauka.

“It is devastating that the relationship between the charity’s trustees and the chair of the board broke down beyond repair, creating an untenable situation,” the princes said. “In turn, she sued the charity to remain in this voluntary position, further underscoring the broken relationship.”

Chandauka said she reported Sentebale’s trustees to the Charity Commission in the U.K. and filed papers in a British court to prevent her removal.

She alleged there was misconduct at the charity without naming anyone or offering any details in a statement Tuesday. It said she had tried to blow the whistle on “abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny and misogynoir,” the latter word referring to a combination of racism and misogyny directed toward Black women.

Chandauka told Sky that Harry’s resignation had caught her blindsided and was “an example of harassment and bullying at scale.” She said he also had interfered with her whistleblower complaint.

“So it’s a cover-up, and the prince is involved," she said.

Chandauka said there was a significant drop in donors after Harry and Meghan left official royal duties in January 2020, and eventually settled in California.

The charity, whose name means “don’t forget me” in the Sesotho language of Lesotho and South Africa, was founded to help youths affected by AIDS in the small mountainous nation and in Botswana. But it is now moving to address youth health, wealth and climate resilience in southern Africa.

The biggest risk to the charity was the “toxicity of its lead patron’s brand," Chandauka told the Financial Times.

A person close to the charity's patrons and trustees and familiar with events countered Chandauka’s claims. The person, who requested anonymity because the allegations are under scrutiny by the Charity Commission, said Harry and Seeiso had sent a resignation letter to the chair on March 10 — two weeks before they went public with the news.

The person said the trustees and patrons were firm in their decision to leave and had collectively decided to resign with the expectation Chandauka would pull such a publicity stunt after their departure.

In the Sky interview, she said that a polo fundraiser scheduled in Miami last year almost fell apart when Harry asked to bring a camera crew along that was filming him for a Netflix series on the sport.

The cost of the venue skyrocketed when it became a commercial venture and they scrambled to find another host, which Harry arranged through his connections, she said.

Meghan's surprise appearance at the event led to an awkward moment during the trophy presentation after the match, Chandauka said.

In a video clip circulated on social media, Chandauka tried to pose next to the duke as he held the trophy in one hand and had his other wrapped around Meghan. But the duchess appeared to gesture that Chandauka move farther from Harry, forcing her to duck under the silver cup to get into the photo.

“The international press captured this, and there was a lot of talk about the duchess and the choreography on stage and whether she should have been there and her treatment of me," Chandauka said.

She said she rejected Harry's request that she issue a statement in support of Meghan, because "we cannot be an extension of the Sussexes.”