How campaign group Led by Donkeys displayed politicians’ crass tweets about Brexit

The Background

Donkeys.

Hard-working animals with an excellent memory, and great ability to learn. They can even problem solve.

Which is why I feel a bit sorry for them being compared with some of our politicians.

What They Did

#Ledbydonkeys is a crowdfunded billboard campaign, in which the money that ordinary people donate buys giant outdoor media spaces, which display blown-up, ‘prophetic’ Brexit-related tweets that did not stand the test of time.

Some ingenious geopositioning has also been used for impact, for example, Dominic Raab’s famous quote “We are, and I hadn't quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and if you look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing” is displayed around Dover, to the surprise and delight of the many who live there.

The content of these tweets ranges from impossible promises to wishful thinking, from abject ignorance to outright lies, which our political leaders have made or said in the recent past about Brexit.

The only fact that is incontrovertibly true in these statements is their incompetence, slapped directly in people’s faces. Whichever side of the Brexit divide people are on, it is a funny, but sobering sight. The Brexit Unicorn does not exist. It’s also hard to read these tweets and reconcile them with the Nolan Principles that all politicians should adhere to:

Selflessness
Integrity
Objectivity
Accountability
Openness
Honesty
Leadership

After Parliament rejected Theresa May’s Brexit deal, French President Emmanuel Macron said: “It’s a referendum that has been manipulated. Manipulated from the outside by a lot of what we call ‘fake news’, where everything and anything was said and now they are being told ‘figure it out yourselves’ ...

“Good luck to the representatives of the nation who have to implement a thing which doesn’t exist and explain to the people: ‘You have voted on a thing, we lied to you.'”

The Review

What the #LedbyDonkeys campaign does is bring home to the most gullible of people that Brexit is a self-perpetuating imaginary creature fed on a diet of fake news.

Every single person sees something different in it. And yet, the truth has been there all along, if they had bothered to look more closely.

‘Brexit means Brexit’ is the best the PM could say, because – actually – there is nothing to say about it.

In Hindsight

Perhaps real donkeys should get a crack at Brexit, but in the meantime, the British people should have another say, now the penny has finally dropped and they have full awareness of the facts.

To make this point, I’ve not come across anything better than this crowdfunded campaign.

The words ‘will of the people’ seem appropriate, and I hope more and more people will donate to keep it going.