The untold story of Brexit

It is often said of history that there are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.

Reading Matthew Elliott’s The Untold Story of Brexit: Ten Years On – Reflections on a Life of Campaigning (Biteback), I was struck by just how distant the referendum already feels. Having played a very small part in the campaign as producer of Brexit: The Movie, I was reminded that the years since 2016 have been so eventful that they have compressed decades of political change into a single ten-year span.

Perhaps that’s why Elliott’s book feels more far more of a history of Brexit than the memoirs and accounts which were published in the immediate aftermath of the vote. Or at least, it mostly feels like a history. For as the three titles indicate, the book does not seem to quite know what it wants to be — a true, untold history of the Brexit campaign, or a memoir. As a result, while always fascinating, it’s a rather uneven read, and might well have benefited from being two books. 

One of those books is a tremendous, detailed history of the Brexit movement, campaign, vote, and the aftermath, including Continuity Remain’s efforts to frustrate the result. It is full of vibrant characters — the politicians, campaigners and financiers who fought the 2016 Referendum — and recounts many fascinating conversations, debates and even shouted arguments between them. The other is a touching memoir of childhood, marriage, divorce, fatherhood, grief, and an autism diagnosis at 43. I suspect the political history will be of greatest interest to most readers, which is a shame, because Elliott writes very well about the small pains and joys of life.

With the evident knowledge of a man who was at the heart of it all, he makes it clear how important David Cameron’s 2014 Bloomberg speech, and the extent to which the movement was by the PM’s refusal “to moderate his language” promising at the 2014 Tory Party conference that “I will go to Brussels, I will not take no for an answer and – when if comes to free movement — I will get what Britain needs”. 

We learn that many, including Elliiott and most of what would become Vote Leave, expected the Tories to lose the 2015 General Election. He explains how his Change or Go publication was intended to lay the groundwork for departure after a 2020 Tory election victory. Instead Cameron’s surprise win accelerated everything. Still, despite the urgency, Elliott refused to partner with “one-issue maniacs”, and tried to position his movement as “impartial”, “rational”, “sensible” people who wanted the promised negotiation with the EU to succeed. 

Of course, much of the book is taken up with the sometimes vicious rivalry between Vote Leave and the Arron Banks & Nigel Farage-led campaign, Leave.EU. It’s easy to forget now, but during late 2015 and early 2016 the Leave movement was primarily focused not on winning the referendum itself, but on winning designation as the lead campaign group. Vote Leave triumphed, to much anger from Banks but, according to Elliott, a far more pragmatic attitude from Farage. 

Meanwhile, as Cameron conducted his disastrous renegotiation with the EU, laying the foundations for Leave’s victory, Elliott worked to recruit heavyweight politicians, particularly from the Tory Party. He is generally very kind about them — perhaps to a fault. For example, Elliott describes Priti Patel as “an invaluable asset…young, dynamic and a top-notch communicator”. My experience when she was interviewed for Brexit: The Movie was of a politician only capable of speaking in soundbites and utterly unable to respond to even the softest of questions in a human manner. 

This excessive kindness is evident later in the book, when Elliott is discussing Britain ten years on from Brexit. Addressing migration, he relays Boris’s explanation that “inflation was already starting to tick up, because we had this massive labour problem”, reassures us that “Boris understood the adverse impact this spike in migration had on the country”. No other mention is made of the Boriswave, nor the 2019-2024 Tory government’s betrayal of both Brexit and its manifesto commitments. In Marina Wheeler’s recent book A More Perfect Union, she makes the point that journalists broadly supportive of the EU project are the ones invites to give talks and join panels. Incentives are incentives, whichever side of the Channel you’re on.

Why, in the end, did Leave win? Elliott believes that without “any one of those elements — Cameron’s disappointing deal, the recruitment of Cabinet ministers and a huge chunk of other MPs, the star power of Michael [Gove] and Boris — we would not and could not have won the referendum”. He also identifies Cameron’s unwillingness to aggressively attack the Tories leading Vote Leave as a failure of his campaign. 

It all feels a very long time ago now. Half a dozen PMs, a pandemic, and for many of us marriages and children ago. The EU too is very different now. As Elliott writes, many of the rows which “felt vastly important at the time” now seem entirely inconsequential. What does matter is that in 2016 Britain made a choice, and now, a decade later ‘we are moving on from a generation of politicians who began their careers…when they didn’t need to take responsibility for their actions or for their decision-making – they could blame the EU’. Had that not happened, had we not voted to Leave on that stormy day in June 2016, then we would not now be having the serious debates about migration, asylum, and our membership of international treaties such as ECHR and the Refugee Convention. Brexit has given Britain a chance to remake itself. 

The Untold Story of Brexit is a story of how that choice was made, alongside the skeleton of a fascinating autobiography. I hope Elliott returns to memoir at greater length. He has the talent, and the life for it.