‘They’ve turned Michael Gove into a vacillating fool’ – politicians on Brexit: The Uncivil War
Benedict Cumberbatch stars as leave campaigner Dominic Cummings in a contentious new TV film. What do the people who were at the centre of the drama really think of it?
Dominic Cummings, the campaign director for Vote Leave, doesn’t just feature in James Graham’s scintillating new film about Brexit – he takes over it. Brilliantly brought to life by Benedict Cumberbatch (despite his struggles with Cummings’ oddly inflected, vaguely north-east English accent), the Cummings we see on screen is impulsive, implacable and virtually impossible to read. What were his motivations for wrenching Britain out of Europe? Even Graham admits to being unsure still. Brexit: The Uncivil War depicts Cummings as a man loathed by the MPs on the Vote Leave board who try to get him fired, loathed even more by Arron Banks, Nigel Farage and the more nationalistic Leave.EU campaigners … and yet deeply attractive in all his disruptive glory.
But is this portrayal of the uncompromising strategist accurate? Some prominent remainers are sceptical. “He’s no Alan Turing,” one tells me. But Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Vote Leave campaign, is in no doubt the film captures Cummings’ energy, unwillingness to compromise and capacity for lateral thinking.