Pro-EU campaigners have condemned the Daily Mail’s attack on them as “nasty politics from a die-hard Brexiteer fringe”.
Best For Britain found itself the subject of a second front-page attack on Friday when the tabloid splashed on billionaire George Soros giving them hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The front page tells Soros, a financier and philanthropist, to “butt out” of Brexit, saying: “You can keep your tainted money.”
The Mail calls it “outrageous” that Soros was “shovelling cash to the inaptly named Best for Britain”, adding: “For the patriotic people of Britain who have our country’s interests at heart, there can be no going back.”
Eloise Todd, Best for Britain’s chief executive, said: “This is just nasty politics from a die-hard Brexiteer fringe who still think the Tories need to be the nasty party.
“Over the last couple of days they seem to have debased themselves with dirty dog-whistle politics.
“Brexiters telling campaign groups and civil society organisations that they shouldn’t campaign is scandalous.
“These intimidation tactics put people off public debate and stop people speaking out, but Brexiters should know one simple thing - they will not silence us. It is our democratic right to fight Brexit, and we invite all those that want to do the same to join us.”
Writing on HuffPost, Todd added the Mail splash has “has pride of place on our wall”.
She adds: “The Mail in its usual style comes at me, our funders and our organisation all guns blazing...
“We won’t be intimidated by the likes of you and your band of ideological friends who are trying to subvert the very meaning of democracy.”
It comes a day after The Telegraph splashed on Soros giving Best for Britain £400,000, in an article that saw the paper accused of using anti-Semitic tropes against the Jewish philanthropist.
Soros, one of the world’s richest men who made a billion dollars betting against sterling on Black Wednesday in 1992, previously said it was possible that the UK would apply to rejoin the European Union soon after Brexit.
The Telegraph article accused the Hungarian-born financier of engaging in a “secret plot to thwart Brexit” by backing Best for Britain, which campaigns for a second referendum on the terms of the Brexit deal that includes an option to abandon Brexit altogether.
Lord Malloch-Brown, Best for Britain’s chairman and a former minister, said the group had “never hidden our agenda”.
He added: “We have been campaigning hard to win a meaningful vote on Brexit, which we did, and to keep all options on the table, including staying in the European Union.”
In response to The Telegraph, Best for Britain launched a crowdfunder which had raised £20,000 by Friday morning.
It was co-founded before last year’s general election by Gina Miller, who took the Government to court and forced them to give parliament a vote on beginning Brexit.
She has since quit the group. She told Buzzfeed the group had become too focussed on “bringing down the Tories” and moved away from its original aim.
In response, Best for Britain said: “Gina is a fantastic campaigner for transparency.
“We share those values and we report all regulated campaign expenditure as and when required by electoral law.”