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London /Â AFP
Brexit campaigners accused the government of trying to rig the EU referendum and threatened legal action on Thursday as former London mayor Boris Johnson squared up for the campaign’s first TV debate.
British MPs prepared to approve emergency legislation to extend voter registration—a move that has infuriated the “Leave” camp because many late requests have been from broadly pro-EU younger voters.
Arron Banks, co-chairman of the Leave.EU campaign, said it was “a clear attempt to rig the referendum or, at a bare minimum, to load the dice”. “It’s a desperate attempt by the establishment to register as many likely Remain voters as possible.
“We are therefore considering all available legal options with our legal team,” he said. The outrage was sparked by a glitch with the government’s main registration website just ahead of a previous deadline of midnight on Tuesday, playing into a heated debate ahead of a knife-edge vote.
The deadline is now being extended until midnight.
Education minister and “Remain” supporter Nicky Morgan, said the “Leave” camp was “turning into a bunch of conspiracy theorists”.
Around 132,000 of the 525,000 people who did successfully register on Tuesday were aged under 25, compared to around 13,000 from the 65-to-74 age group.
N Ireland warning –
The “Remain” camp got another boost when Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston announced she was switching sides from the “Leave” camp, telling the BBC late Wednesday she was “uncomfortable” about the credibility of their claims about the cost of EU membership.
Former Conservative prime minister John Major and his erstwhile political rival in the 1990s Tony Blair—were also set to put party politics to one side later Thursday for a pro-EU rally in Northern Ireland.
They were expected to warn that “Brexit” could “jeopardise the unity” of the UK, lead to another referendum of Scotland’s future and threaten Northern Ireland’s hard-won truce. “Although today Northern Ireland is more stable and more prosperous than ever, that stability is poised on carefully constructed foundations,” Blair was to say.