The Brexit film was fun, but don’t mistake fiction for history
I expect, as a piece of history that the vast majority of viewers will have lived through and probably voted in, that Brexit: The Uncivil War was highly entertaining to most people who caught it on Monday night, irrespective of which way they had voted in the EU referendum.
There was some impressive acting and clever dramatisation, but that’s all it was: a drama. It was not an objective fact-based documentary – and it admitted as such right from the get-go.
Already there are claims being made based upon what it portrayed to suggest that one side was more Machiavellian, shady, or even downright evil than the other.
First, let me say, from my partial view as head of press at Leave.EU and having been involved closely in three referendums before it, that making any political claims based upon what was portrayed in a fictional context is utterly pointless.
Let us remember that the EU referendum was the largest democratic vote in British history, and that with such a close result – with Leave polling 17.4m against Remain’s 16.1m – there were so many variables contributing towards the end result that there was unlikely to be any single thing that swung the vote one way or another.
That includes giving credit and criticism to either of the two main campaigns. Indeed, I would argue that in the end Vote Leave won despite all its campaigning, not because of it – and I know I am not alone in holding that view.
Benedict Cumberbatch stole the show, as he so often does, making the Vote Leave campaign strategist Dominic Cummings far more likeable than most people I’ve known who worked with him might say.
That’s not to take away from Cummings’ gift in seeing through all the crap surrounding the EU debate and distilling it down to the “take back control” message.
Nevertheless, most of the surrounding characters in the Vote Leave team remained undeveloped in the film, becoming cartoon-like foils to the detriment of the story.
Such a thin panorama allowed for a faster narrative in what was a relatively long campaign, but it left behind all the raging arguments that saw countless able figures departing Vote Leave unable to work under rigid constraints and indecision.
Most notably absent was the role of Labour Leave, which left the Vote Leave umbrella at a fairly early stage of the campaign, while the portrayal of John Mills – a highly successful businessman and Labour’s largest private donor – as an out-of-touch dinosaur was hugely unfair.
And where was the Remain campaign? Was it really all down to Craig Oliver on loan from Downing Street, as played by Rory Kinnear?
Of course not, but one could be forgiven for thinking that the whole period was about Tory wars, with the roles of Tony Blair, Nick Clegg, Paddy Ashdown – not to forget the contributions of President Obama, Richard Branson, and other big names in business and politics – played down to the point of irrelevance.
Arguably, such individuals made a significant contribution, although I suggest that it may have encouraged more people to vote Leave than Remain.
And on the double standards, while much was made about the use by Cummings of Aggregate IQ to conceive and direct social media advertising – which was apparently okay for Obama but became sinister when deployed in the UK – there was no attention given to the obscene use of £9m of taxpayers’ money to produce and deliver to every home in the land a government brochure arguing for Remain. That could have provided balance.
Another point quickly glossed over by James Graham’s screenplay was that the Remain campaign had no contest in winning official designation from the Electoral Commission. From the beginning it could focus on winning on its own terms – yet it still failed miserably.
By contrast, Cummings and his Vote Leave team had to first defeat Arron Banks and Leave.EU, then Grassroots Out, after Banks decided to withdraw and back the new group as a means to establish a broader campaign.
Ironically all this infighting meant that there were a flurry of media stories being promoted by the totality of the competing Leave campaigns before designation was granted, and after that point the losers did not withdraw but instead focused on the ground war that Vote Leave put less faith in.
Two hours for such a complex kaleidoscope was always going to disappoint if viewers were looking for the truth of what really happened. And for people with a close involvement, it probably only confirmed existing prejudices that justify their views on Brexit today, whatever those may be.
That’s why Brexit: The Uncivil War should not be mistaken for a history lesson. Let’s take it as an entertaining political knock-about – and leave it at that.