Man Who Sued Boris Johnson Is Facing Financial Ruin, He Tells LBC

30 September 2019, 10:37

A legal campaigner who tried to prosecute Boris Johnson over his 'Brexit bus' claim is now in significant financial difficulty after losing the case.

Marcus Ball, who legally disputed Boris Johnson's claim that the UK pays £350m per week to the EU, had the case thrown out by the High Court in the summer.

He told LBC presenter Nick Ferrari that having lost the case, he's now facing financial ruin.

This, he said, is because the Prime Minister went forward with 'a cost's order'. Although that is "quite a normal thing to happen if you lose a particular stage", Ball told Ferrari how hard it is hitting him.

He said: "I'm somebody who earns less than minimum wage per hour. I've done so for three and a half years.

It's a huge amount of financial difficulty for myself."

Despite this, Ball said that he is still pursuing the prosecution case.

He told Nick: "I'm going to apply for permission to judicially review the High Court's ruling against us."

He added: "The tables could turn very quickly."

Ball said: "We want to prove that it's illegal for any politician to lie to the public about matters of great public importance."

He told Nick Ferrari that "it's immensely expensive" and that Boris Johnson "is a very capable and powerful man" but it was worth continuing to fight the case.

He said: "What's more important? My financial security as an individual person or the legal principle at stake?"

Ball mentioned that there was another false claim they are accusing Boris of having made - that the UK sends £20bn a year to the EU.

Nick Ferrari asked: "Do we move to a position where politicians and indeed their parties are made legally beholden on their manifestos?"

Ball explained: "There's a difference legally speaking between prosecuting between against claim regarding something that has happened in the past and prosecuting against an aspiration or a prediction.

A manifesto pledge - a promise - despite being misleading a lot of the time, it's very difficult to prosecute somebody for that because they can argue that we made this prediction and as it turned out in the future the situation change so it isn't technically a lie."