Tycoons to launch £20million bid for Britain to quit EU

A major £20million campaign funded by some of the country's richest entrepreneurs and business people to persuade Britons to leave the European Union will launch in September.
An agency has been hired to prepare a major PR and advertising blitz to coincide with its launch on September 10. A former British army general is in talks about being the group's leader
The organisers of the campaign are already in talks with sports stars and celebrities to act as ambassadors.
Offices are being set up in London this month and staff are being hired to run the campaign, provisionally titled "No Thanks - We're Going Global".
An agency has been hired to prepare a major PR and advertising blitz to coincide with its launch on September 10. A former British army general is in talks about being the group's leader.
The group, led by Arron Banks, (above) an insurance millionaire and major donor to the UK Independence Party, is adamant that it will have nothing to do with the numerous political campaigns being set up.
There are already at least seven other anti-EU campaign groups, many of which are vying for recognition as the official No campaign because it will allow it to claim millions of pounds of public money.
The news comes as David Cameron, the Prime Minister, prepares to fly to Europe this week where he will set out his demands to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the EU for the first time.
Britain's renegotiation will be on the agenda for the first time at a meeting of European leaders on Thursday and Friday.
Number 10 aides said Mr Cameron will have briefed all other 27 EU leaders by then on the UK's demands. By Saturday night he had spoken to, or met in person, 20 of them.
One aide said: "What we want to get from the summit is the ability to move into the next phase of the negotiation, which will be technical talks on the substance."
The escalating EU migrant crisis has reached Calais where aid agencies warned on Saturday that thousands more are likely to set up make shift camp in the next few months.
The numbers in the French port town have already swelled from around 1,000 since April to 3,000 in June, with predictions up to 4,000 more will arrive in the coming months
EU foreign ministers are meeting on Monday to agree a European naval operation in the Mediterranean to combat people smuggling.
Britain is deploying HMS Enterprise, a multi-role survey vessel, to the region to take over from HMS Bulwark early next month. A British Merlin helicopter will also continue to assist with the operations.

Spies from GCHQ, the Government's listening post in Cheltenham, are also to be deployed for the first time to identify organised crime groups smuggling migrants to the Libyan coast, it can be disclosed.
Government sources said they would identify the routes and methods the smugglers use and seek ways to shut down their bank accounts.
So far £7million of the planned £20million has been pledged by half a dozen backers including Mr Banks and Richard Tice, a property entrepreneur and supporter of the Eurosceptic thinktank Global Britain.
As a sign of the new campaign's seriousness, until last week the campaign was in talks about hiring Crosby Textor Fullbrook, the company run by Conservative political strategist Lynton Crosby.
Those talks did not succeed and the group is now considering other strategists in the UK and America to help run the campaign.
Mr Banks, who famously donated £1million to the UK Independence Party before the election, said the campaign would deliberately have nothing to do with Eurosceptic Tory or Ukip politicians.
He told The Telegraph: "We represent a group of entrepreneurs, businessmen who are very different from the same people who go around the Westminster bubble.
"We see the need for a public campaign, rather than all the Eurosceptics just talking to eachother.
"This is too important for politicians to be taken the lead, it has got to be business, and the wider public.
"We have been talking to sports stars, leaders in fields of medicine and science, and military figures.
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader (above), will be kept at arms length from the campaign, Mr Banks said. "Nigel is a great communicator but I don't believe Ukip is the right vehicle to take this forward. It is not a political campaign.
"This is too important to leave to politicians. They can endorse it and support it but they will not be involved in the campaign.
"Nigel is not the right person to lead the campaign. He does not reach out to everybody."
Friends of Mr Tice said the "out" group had to "attract people from all walks of life" with different message for the young, old, working class and business audience. The campaign will focus on why leaving the EU would be better off for Britons.
One friend said: "The 'out' campaign has got to target all those different audiences - it has got to be very big and to raise a lot of money, and it has to do that in different ways.
"It is a massive campaign, it is a much bigger referendum campaign than frankly the country has ever seen, it is much bigger than 1975, it is much bigger than the NO to AV campaign, and we are not a country that is used to referendums, so we are probably not that experienced at it."
Mr Banks is understood already to have met some of the leaders of the other campaigns including Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of Business for Britain and Dominic Cummings, who is advising a cross-party committee of Eurosceptic MPs in Parliament.
Steve Baker MP, (above) leader of the 110 Tory MPs in the Conservatives for Britain group which wants Mr Cameron to achieve meaningful reform in Europe or campaign to leave, welcomed the new group.
He said: "In the event that we need to trigger a No campaign, I will be glad to work with all those people who are optimistic and acting in good faith in the interest of all the people in Europe."
Speculation is growing that Greece will be forced out of the Eurozone at the end of this month because it cannot meet its debt obligations.
Writing in The Telegraph, Liam Fox, the former Coalition defence secretary, warned Eurosceptic Britons to resist a "temptation to gloat over the Greek crisis".
He warned: "There remain a number of uncomfortable truths that the rest of the countries of Europe, whether in the Eurozone, the EU or neither, will have to confront."
If a bankrupt Greece left the Euro it could be forced to "suck in both Chinese and Russian money, becoming a strategic liability for the rest of Europe and the Nato Alliance more widely".
But if Greece stayed in the Euro, without making the necessary spending cuts, then other countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy in need of reform would also "join the queue".