The official Vote Leave campaign, led by Boris Johnson during the 2016 EU referendum, has dropped its appeal against a £61,000 fine for breaking the law on electoral spending.

The group were fined in July 2018, after the electoral watchdog concluded that by donating hundreds of thousands of pounds to a pro-Brexit youth group, BeLeave, that they broke legal spending limits.

Vote Leave had initially appealed against this after claiming that their donation had been signed off by the commission but on Friday they released a statement declaring that they had dropped the appeal.

The statement which was released through the Daily Mirrorsaid:

For almost three years, Vote Leave has successfully fought back against numerous allegations and conspiracy theories, spending almost £1m in the process.

Since July 2018, we have been preparing our appeal against the Electoral Commission’s unwarranted and unsubstantiated finding and fines.

Sadly, we now find ourselves in a position that we do not have the financial resources to carry forward this appeal, even though we are confident that we would have prevailed on the facts in court.

We have therefore regretfully decided to discontinue our appeal.

With Vote Leave retracting their appeal, many people have very quick to share this information and ask what this means for Brexit now?

This Boris Johnson tweet from March 2018 is also coming back to haunt him.

Gisela Stuart, the Labour MP and Chair for Vote Leave, tried to defend the campaign on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning by admitting that they destroyed all their data which didn't exactly make people empathise with her.

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