Led By Donkeys is a British
political campaign
A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making progress within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, by which representatives are chosen or referend ...
group, established in December 2018 as an anti-
Brexit
Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC ...
group, but which has also criticised other actions of the
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
government. Since the group's creation its four founders have been calling out what they call "thermonuclear hypocrisy" and used satire targeted at pro-Brexit politicians. Led By Donkeys' main campaign consists of
billboards
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
containing past
tweets by pro-Brexit politicians, or quotes presented as tweets. These tweets state the politicians' previous political positions, which according to the group have not stood the test of time.
The campaign was initially run as a
guerilla
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run t ...
operation, in which Led By Donkeys posters were plastered over existing adverts. It was then expanded into a
crowdfunded
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...
campaign that legitimately purchased advertising space on hundreds of billboards across the UK. Later the group staged real-life stunts, including projecting messages on iconic places such as the
Houses of Parliament
The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north ban ...
and the
White Cliffs of Dover
The White Cliffs of Dover is the region of English coastline facing the Strait of Dover and France. The cliff face, which reaches a height of , owes its striking appearance to its composition of chalk accented by streaks of black flint, depos ...
, carving giant messages on beaches and fields, and directing crowds to unfurl huge flags at pro-European Union marches. Videos of these messages were subsequently viewed millions of times on
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
. The campaign group won industry awards in 2019 and 2020.
The name Led By Donkeys comes from the phrase "
Lions led by donkeys
"Lions led by donkeys" is a phrase popularly used to describe the British infantry of the First World War and to blame the generals who led them. The contention is that the brave soldiers (lions) were sent to their deaths by incompetent and indiff ...
", referring to the belief that British soldiers in the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
were led to their deaths by incompetent and indifferent leaders.
Background
In the
Conservative Party
The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right.
Political parties called The Conservative P ...
's manifesto for the
general election in May 2015, the party promised a referendum on the UK's
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
membership by the end of 2017. In the
2016 referendum voters voted by 52% to 48% to leave the European Union.
By December 2018 the UK had not yet left.
Beginning
In December 2018, four friends were discussing their frustrations with the ongoing
Brexit
Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC ...
situation in 'The Birdcage', a pub in
Stoke Newington. All four men had a connection with environmental campaign group
Greenpeace; Oliver Knowles and Ben Stewart were employees, and James Sadri and Will Rose had previously been involved with the group.
In the referendum, they had all voted to remain in the EU.
During this period, the group discovered
an old tweet by former
prime minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...
David Cameron. This tweet, dating from before the
2015 election, read "Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice - stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with
Ed Miliband
Edward Samuel "Ed" Miliband (born 24 December 1969) is a British politician serving as Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero since 2021. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Doncaster North since 2005. Miliban ...
".
They agreed it would be a shame if Cameron deleted it, as in their view it summed up the "failure of Britain's political leadership".
They were also frustrated by the failure, in their opinion, of British media to hold leaders of the Brexit campaign to account.
They decided to preserve the tweet by printing it out and pasting it up. Each of them chose a statement from a pro-Brexit politician to go up on billboards as well as "tweets you can't delete", looking for the "most offensive lies, lunacy and hypocrisy" in their view.
They settled on the following four old claims: "The day after we vote to leave we hold all the cards and can choose the path we want" (
Michael Gove, April 2016);
"The Free Trade Agreement that we will do with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history" (
Liam Fox
Liam Fox (born 22 September 1961) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for International Trade from 2016 to 2019 and Secretary of State for Defence from 2010 to 2011. A member of the Conservative Party, Fox has served as t ...
, July 2017);
"There will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside" (
David Davis, October 2016);
"Getting out of the EU can be quick and easy – the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation" (
John Redwood
Sir John Alan Redwood (born 15 June 1951) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wokingham in Berkshire since 1987. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Secretary of State for Wales in the Major governm ...
, July 2016).
Two years later, by Christmas 2018, with prime minister
Theresa May
Theresa Mary May, Lady May (; née Brasier; born 1 October 1956) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2016 to 2019. She previously served in David Cameron's cabi ...
's Brexit deal stuck in parliament, none of these claims had materialised, according to ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''.
Rose designed the posters. Sadri came up with the name "
Lions led by donkeys
"Lions led by donkeys" is a phrase popularly used to describe the British infantry of the First World War and to blame the generals who led them. The contention is that the brave soldiers (lions) were sent to their deaths by incompetent and indiff ...
", a common phrase referring to soldiers in the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
who were led to their deaths by incompetent and indifferent leaders.
They thought it well described the relationship between the British people and their Brexit leaders. Rose shortened it to #LedByDonkeys. They had the five tweets printed at billboard size. The activists bought a ladder, high-visibility jackets to look legitimate, a bucket, a roller and wallpaper paste. On the night of 8 January 2019 they illegally plastered the David Cameron tweet over a finance advert on a billboard on the A10 in Stoke Newington.
[ They posted a photo of the billboard to their new ]Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
account, and asked journalist Marina Hyde
Marina Hyde (born Marina Elizabeth Catherine Dudley-Williams; 13 May 1974) is an English journalist. She joined ''The Guardian'' newspaper in 2000 and, as one of the newspaper's columnists, writes three articles each week on current affairs, cele ...
of ''The Guardian'' to retweet it; this soon resulted in hashtag #LedByDonkeys trending on Twitter. Within a day, their billboard poster had been plastered over with blue paper.[
]
Growth
In the time between their day jobs and their family life, at night the group illegally pasted the other four original tweets on billboards around London. The group stated that one of their aims was to spark a discussion amongst Leave voters about the promises of the leading Brexiteers. They therefore chose Dover, a pro-Brexit constituency, as their next location. They selected four additional historical Brexiteer statements, partially from suggestions made by their social media followers, among which was Dominic Raab
Dominic Rennie Raab (; born 25 February 1974) is a British politician who has served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Secretary of State for Justice, and Lord Chancellor since October 2022, having previously served from 2021 to ...
's 2018 statement "I hadn't quite understood the full extent of this but ... we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing".[ On 16 January 2019 the group tweeted photos of the four Dover billboards, along with the message "A busy night on the Brexit frontline. We've covered Dover in the historic quotes of the people responsible for this chaos. Britain is a nation #LedByDonkeys." The group later stated that this was the moment when they went viral. The next day all four posters were removed by the billboard company.][
Social media followers asked for billboards all over the country.][ The activists deplored the tribalism triggered by Brexit and agreed that going national was needed. Their followers suggested that they set up a ]crowdfunder
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by cro ...
to raise money to legitimately put billboards up in places far outside London. Initially the group resisted this, considering the fact that their acts were illegal to be an important part of the activism of the project. They also feared they would have to give up their anonymity to get crowdfunding, thus risking fines and convictions. But when people from crowdfunder.co.uk contacted them, they learned that they could stay anonymous, and video footage of the Dover billboards being removed within a day made the group change their mind. They set up a fundraising target of £10,000. It was reached within three hours.[ By November 2019 the group had raised £500,000 and had become the biggest crowdfunded political campaign in UK history.]
The group has described itself in various ways: "a Brexit accountability project",[ calling out "thermonuclear hypocrisy",] and "political street theatre". They did not have a grand plan with big ambitions. Initially, they simply considered it cathartic to do something themselves, namely, hold the Brexiteers to account, which they thought nobody else was doing but should. They said they held them to account by putting the old tweets back into the public space and give people the opportunity to re-read them in "the reality about what's unfolding".[ They brought the Greenpeace "ethos of the mindbomb of campaigning", where one single picture can shift people's perceptions, to their Led By Donkeys work.][ Humour plays a key part as well.] According to one of the activists, "making fun of politicians has the ability to break through" the partisan atmosphere a bit. They not only made fun of Brexiteers. They also ridiculed Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (; born 26 May 1949) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. On the political left of the Labour Party, Corbyn describes himself as a socialist ...
for his ambivalent stance on Brexit with an empty billboard.
It was not known who were behind Led By Donkeys for several months. Nobody at Greenpeace knew that two of their staff were among the founders.[ Although the activists did give interviews, including with international press such as ]Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera ( ar, الجزيرة, translit-std=DIN, translit=al-jazīrah, , "The Island") is a state-owned Arabic-language international radio and TV broadcaster of Qatar. It is based in Doha and operated by the media conglomerate Al Jazeera ...
, NBC News
NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...
and NPR
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
, these did not reveal their names; some used fake first names instead. When political website '' Guido Fawkes'' claimed on social media that Led By Donkeys was breaching election laws by overspending, the activists realised that it would not be long before their names would be revealed. To pre-empt this, they arranged an interview with ''The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...
'' in order to make their identities public themselves.[ Six months later they published a book describing their unexpected adventure, entitled ''Led By Donkeys: How four friends with a ladder took on Brexit''.
]
Campaigns
Main campaign
The main campaign of holding Brexiteers to account has been ongoing.[ Their stated strategy is to research the archives of public statements by
pro-Brexit politicians and publicly display those that appear to be at odds with the reality of the day.][ By November 2019 over 300 billboards in predominantly pro-Brexit areas have carried Led By Donkeys messages, and are estimated to have reached 30 million people.][
The design of statements as tweets on billboards was tweaked in late January 2019. One of the billboards featured ]Jacob Rees-Mogg
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (born 24 May 1969) is a British politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Somerset since 2010. Now a backbencher, he served as Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council f ...
's 2011 statement in the House of Commons that it might make sense to have two referendums. Led By Donkeys had rendered it in its standard tweet format. Rees-Mogg then called the billboard dishonest, not only because he had been talking about different circumstances, but also because he was not yet on Twitter in 2011. From then on Led By Donkeys added a footnote to billboards featuring statements other than tweets. In the case of Rees-Mogg they added "He didn't tweet it, he actually said it! In the House of Commons. What changed?" Once they collaborated with satirical artist Coldwar Steve on a more elaborate billboard shown at pop festival Glastonbury 2019.
As time passed, the activists chose other media besides billboards. They have used ad vans,[ industrial projectors,][ designs on beaches,][ fields,][ and very large crowd flags.][ The first crowd flag was unfolded on ]Parliament Square
Parliament Square is a square at the northwest end of the Palace of Westminster in the City of Westminster in central London. Laid out in the 19th century, it features a large open green area in the centre with trees to its west, and it contai ...
by thousands of anti-Brexit protesters at the conclusion of the '' Put It to the People'' march on 23 March 2019. Led By Donkeys hired a helicopter to film the unfolding from the air. The banner showed a 2012 quote from David Davis: "If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy". CBS News called it the defining moment of the day.[
When the EU was considering giving the UK an extension to the original Brexit deadline of 29 March 2019, Led By Donkeys used a giant projector to display a video on the ]White Cliffs of Dover
The White Cliffs of Dover is the region of English coastline facing the Strait of Dover and France. The cliff face, which reaches a height of , owes its striking appearance to its composition of chalk accented by streaks of black flint, depos ...
. Their goal was to ask the EU leaders for much more time, so that there could be a second referendum. The video displayed an SOS in blue, with the O made up of yellow stars, to mimic the EU flag. EU leader Guy Verhofstadt tweeted back the next day that it was "quite something to see the White Cliffs of Dover turn blue". Other projections included a video projected onto the Houses of Parliament
The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north ban ...
, asking if Boris Johnson is a criminal, after the Supreme Court ruled he unlawfully suspended parliament; onto Buckingham Palace saying "Your majesty, your new prime minister is a liar"; and projections onto Edinburgh Castle; Cardiff Castle; the Titanic Museum in Belfast; and in Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
.[ In September 2019 Michael Gove was in charge of preparing the UK for a ]no-deal Brexit
A no-deal Brexit (also called clean break BrexitBBC. (2019)''Brexit: Jargon-busting guide to the key terms'' (BBC) Retrieved 29 March 2019.) was the potential withdrawal of the UK from the European Union (EU) without a withdrawa ...
. In March of that year, Gove had written in a '' Daily Mail'' article that there is no mandate for a no-deal Brexit: "We didn't vote to leave without a deal". To point out this contradiction, Led By Donkeys carved a large portrait of Gove and this quote in the sandy beach of Redcar. Coinciding with the '' Let Us Be Heard'' march on 19 October 2019, Led By Donkeys ploughed a message in 40 meter (130 foot) high letters in a field in Wiltshire
Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...
, saying "Britain now wants to remain". This conclusion was based on a YouGov
YouGov is a British international Internet-based market research and data analytics firm, headquartered in the UK, with operations in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. In 2007, it acquired US company Polimetrix, and sinc ...
analysis of 300 polls.
March to Leave
In March 2019, it was announced that Brexit Party
Reform UK is a right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded with support from Nigel Farage in November 2018 as the Brexit Party, advocating hard Euroscepticism and a no-deal Brexit, and was briefly a significant ...
leader Nigel Farage
Nigel Paul Farage (; born 3 April 1964) is a British broadcaster and former politician who was Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009 and 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Brexit Party (renamed Reform UK in 2021) from 2 ...
was to organise a two-week pro-Brexit march from Sunderland to London titled March to Leave. Led By Donkeys set up a dedicated crowdfundraiser entitled "Let's take the truth to Farage's Brexit march".[ They deliberately did not target the marchers, just their leader.][ The collective hired two advans to accompany the pro-Brexit march, displaying past statements and videoclips of Farage.] A YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
videoclip of Farage not being happy with the ad van displaying his 2016 declaration "If Brexit is a disaster I'll go and live abroad" had been watched 2 million times within weeks.[
]
European Parliament election
In April 2019, the Brexit Party set up an official website at ''thebrexitparty.org'', but did not register ''thebrexitparty.com''; Led By Donkeys registered a parody website at that address. The Brexit Party did not publish a manifesto prior to the EU elections in May. Led By Donkeys decided to write it for them by putting their past statements and tweets on billboards across the UK, and keep a repository on the parody website.[ The Led By Donkeys efforts failed to achieve their goal. The Brexit Party won the most seats in the election. Later in 2019, after having received a threatening legal letter from the Brexit Party to cease and desist, citing EU law, the group offered them the web address for over a million pounds.]
Trump's state visit
US President Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
has made pro-Brexit statements and praised Farage and Johnson. Prior to Trump's state visit to London in June 2019, Led By Donkeys designed a campaign to diminish the two leading Brexiteers through association with the president, who was considered unpopular in the UK. Led By Donkeys projected onto Big Ben a 2015 video of Johnson saying that Trump would be unfit for the presidency. Before they could get arrested, they moved to the Tower of London
The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is sep ...
to project a comparison of Trump's UK approval rating of 21% and former president Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
's of 72%. Finally they projected a red USS John S. McCain hat onto the dome of Madame Tussauds, trolling Trump based on news reports that in Japan his aides had orchestrated events to avoid Trump seeing the ship's crew displaying the name of his adversary. The group cancelled plans to project Trump's Access Hollywood tape onto Buckingham Palace during his state dinner with the Queen at the eleventh hour. On their social media account the group posted videos of their stunts. Johnson's Big Ben video was viewed two million times; the three videos together amassed 12 million views on Twitter. Johnson cancelled a previously arranged meeting with Trump.
Get ready for Brexit
Following the government's multimillion-pound '' Get ready for Brexit'' advertising campaign in August 2019, with a no-deal Brexit a possibility as the October 31 deadline approached, Led By Donkeys crowdfunded money for a spoof campaign. The group felt the government was overlooking the negative effects of a no-deal Brexit and the ad campaign was poorly designed. They put up billboards in the style of the official campaign but featuring conclusions from the governments own analysis, for example "Get ready for 'possible increased risk of serious organised crime. They subsequently ran a competition for members of the public to see who could best satirise the government's ad campaign. The five winning entries were displayed on billboards across the country. A crowd flag with the message "Get ready for a People's Vote" in the visual design of the government's own campaign was unfolded on Parliament Square during the ''Let Us Be Heard'' march in October 2019.
General Election
Leading up to the general election on 12 December 2019 Led By Donkeys continued their main anti-Brexit campaign. In addition to using billboards, ad vans, and projections, they staged various real-world acts, filmed them and spread them on social media. In the final week before the election they crowdfunded over £250,000 within 24 hours to run anti-Johnson ads on Facebook, making them one of the largest spenders on political ads. Three ads were each viewed more than one million times. The group organised the carving of a giant message on a Devon beach, with six doctors and nurses writing "You can't trust Boris Johnson with our NHS
The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...
".
GPS technology was used to draw the outlines of the letters and Johnson. The NHS staff filled them in. A similar technique was used when teachers wrote a giant anti-Johnson message in a field in the Peak District
The Peak District is an upland area in England at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire, it extends into Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire. It includes the Dark Peak, where moorla ...
. The Led By Donkeys efforts did not achieve their goal. The pro-Brexit parties won the majority of seats, although the parties that campaigned for at least a second referendum received the majority of votes.
Brexit Day
The UK left the EU on 31 January 2020. Led By Donkeys projected a video message to the EU onto the White Cliffs of Dover. It featured Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
veterans expressing sadness about leaving the EU, and hope that one day Britain would be together with Europe again. The video of the projection was seen a million times on Brexit Day. Guy Verhofstadt, Brexit coordinator for the European Parliament, responded with "We'll look after your star". The group projected onto Big Ben a compilation of controversial clips of Johnson and Farage, punctuated by fake Big Ben bongs.
Coronavirus
In April 2020, Led By Donkeys projected footage of NHS workers on to the Palace of Westminster. By then 55 NHS staff had died from COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...
, and prime minister Johnson had just been taken out of intensive care following his own fight with the disease. In the video NHS workers asked Johnson to address the shortages in personal protective equipment
Personal protective equipment (PPE) is protective clothing, helmets, goggles, or other garments or equipment designed to protect the wearer's body from injury or infection. The hazards addressed by protective equipment include physical, e ...
in the NHS. In May 2020, the group drove an ad van in front of the house of Johnson's senior advisor Dominic Cummings
Dominic Mckenzie Cummings (born 25 November 1971) is a British political strategist who served as Chief Adviser to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson from 24 July 2019 until Cummings resigned on 13 November 2020.
From 2007 to 2014, he was a ...
, as the press was gathered there during the controversy concerning his apparent breaking of lockdown rules. Johnson's "Stay at Home" message was played on the van's videoscreen. The activists ran a billboard campaign parodying the government's public health messaging, changing the official "Stay alert, control the virus, save lives" into "Stay alert, government incompetence costs lives". In July the group beamed a 10-minute video onto Barnard Castle
Barnard Castle (, ) is a market town on the north bank of the River Tees, in County Durham, Northern England. The town is named after and built around a medieval castle ruin. The town's Bowes Museum's has an 18th-century Silver Swan automato ...
showing a timeline of the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identifie ...
. On social media this was viewed over 2 million times.
When the US passed 200,000 COVID-19 deaths a timeline of the number of deaths was projected onto Trump's Turnberry golf course in Scotland, alongside the number of times the president had played golf since the start of the pandemic. The audio is of Trump from before being elected president in 2016, saying he would never play golf if he were president.
In November 2020 Led By Donkeys worked with the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice
Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice (also known as Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK) is a pressure group of over 4,000 relatives of people who have died during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. The group created the Natio ...
group to project a message from bereaved families onto the Houses of Parliament. The video urged prime minister Johnson to keep his promise to speak to the families who lost loved-ones during the pandemic. They later worked with the bereaved families on the National Covid Memorial Wall
The National Covid Memorial Wall in London is a public mural painted by volunteers to commemorate victims of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. Started in March 2021 and stretching more than along the South Bank of the River Thames, o ...
, with over 150,000 hearts painted on a wall in Westminster
Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster.
The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, B ...
. Dressed as construction workers and looking official, they had already painted the wall and drawn a thousand hearts by the time authorities realised what was happening. When in June 2021 coronavirus restrictions were not lifted, the group published a timeline video in which they argued that the government reacted slow to the new Delta variant
The Delta variant (B.1.617.2) was a variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It was first detected in India in late 2020. The Delta variant was named on 31 May 2021 and had spread to over 179 countries by 22 November 2021. The ...
because of post-Brexit political manoeuvring.
In August 2021 the group worked with the Good Law Project
The Good Law Project is a United Kingdom-based political non-profit company. Founded by Jolyon Maugham, the Good Law Project states that its mission is to achieve change through the law.
History
The Good Law Project was founded in January 2017 as ...
to produce a video asking questions about the government's procurement conduct during the pandemic, amplifying the accusations of corruption and lack of transparency. They beamed the video up onto the walls of Westminster Parliament.[
Following MP ]Dawn Butler
Dawn Petula Butler (born 3 November 1969) is a British Labour Party politician who has been a Member of Parliament (MP) for Brent Central since 2015.
Butler was elected as the MP for Brent South at the 2005 general election. She served in ...
's ejection from the Commons in July 2021 for stating that prime minister Johnson lied to parliament over and over again, the group collaborated with the Communication Workers Union and projected a video onto the Houses of Parliament of Johnson making claims which they said were lies.
Partygate
When the Metropolitan Police declined to investigate whether any rule-breaking parties were held at 10 Downing Street during the 2020 Christmas period lockdown, Led By Donkeys drove a video screen to the Scotland Yard offices. A '' Line of Duty'' parody video was played urging the police to change their mind and start an investigation. A few weeks later a second ''Line of Duty'' parody with Johnson being questioned by officers was viewed over 5 million times on social media, and shown on morning television shows. A third spoof, viewed 1.5 million times within 24 hours, involved Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick
Dame Cressida Rose Dick (born 16 October 1960) is a British retired senior police officer who served as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis from 2017 to 2022. She is both the first female and first openly homosexual officer to lead the M ...
being asked by lead investigator Ted Hastings "Who exactly does the Metropolitan Police work for, ma’am?" After the Met had concluded its investigation, and fined over 100 people for breaking the rules, including Johnson, Led By Donkeys projected a six minute video onto the Houses of Parliament, showing a timeline of parties and rules. ''The Independent'' called it "spectacular". They subsequently created a website called followtherules.co.uk showing the 100 times Johnson urged the British public to follow the Covid-19 rules.
Miscellaneous
In December 2020 the group made its dossier on Johnson's statements regarding Brexit available on a website called johnsondossier.com. It contains transcripts of speeches, interviews and newspaper columns Johnson wrote since February 2016. The group's aim is to allow the public, journalists, and others to hold Johnson to account.
In July 2021 Led By Donkeys put up billboards displaying the UK brands that advertised on the new TV show ''Farage'', broadcast on GB News
GB News is a British free-to-air television and radio news channel. The channel is available on Freeview, Freesat, Sky, YouView, Virgin Media and via the internet. Since 4 January 2022, an audio simulcast of the station is available on DAB+ ...
, saying "These companies pay for Nigel Farage to attack RNLI lifeboat crews on his TV show." The following week one of the companies, supermarket chain Sainsbury's
J Sainsbury plc, trading as Sainsbury's, is the second largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom, with a 14.6% share of UK supermarket sales.
Founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane, London, the company ...
, announced it had ended their advertising on GB News.
Following the UK Government's indecision to include London-based Russian oligarch
Russian oligarchs ( Russian: олигархи, romanized: ''oligarkhi'') are business oligarchs of the former Soviet republics who rapidly accumulated wealth in the 1990s via the Russian privatisation that followed the dissolution of the Sovi ...
Roman Abramovich
Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich (, ; he, רומן ארקדיביץ' אברמוביץ'; born 24 October 1966) is a Russian oligarch and politician. He is the former owner of Chelsea, a Premier League football club in London, England, and is the ...
in their sanctions package for Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Led By Donkeys placed a blue plaque on the gate of his house. In a viral video it shows the plaque reads: “Billionaire Putin crony Roman Abramovich 1966~ lives here. It’s worth £150m but the government won’t seize it.” The following week the activists put out another Line of Duty spoof video, showing prime minister Johnson being interviewed about the Conservative Party's links to Russian oligarchs.
During the 2022 summer holidays delays at the port of Dover, Led By Donkeys played a video on a truck in the miles long queue, showing quotes from the past by various Brexiteers about there being no danger of delays at Dover. The video was popular on social media.
After the downturn in the financial markets following the announced economic plans by Prime Minister Liz Truss
Mary Elizabeth Truss (born 26 July 1975) is a British politician who briefly served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from September to October 2022. On her fiftieth day in office, she stepped down ...
in September 2022, Led By Donkeys placed an oversized blue plaque at 55 Tufton Street
55 Tufton Street is a four-storey Georgian-era townhouse on historic Tufton Street, in Westminster, London, owned by businessman Richard Smith. Since the 2010s the building has hosted a network of libertarian lobby groups and think tanks rela ...
, reading "The UK was crashed here". In their video on social media they argued that the thinktanks located here were behind the failed policies.
On 23 February 2023, Led By Donkeys spilled approximately 340 litres of blue and yellow paint on separate directions of the road outside the Russian Embassy in London, re-creating the Ukrainian flag
The flag of Ukraine ( uk, Прапор України, Prapor Ukrainy) consists of equally sized horizontal bands of blue and yellow.
The blue and yellow bicolour first appeared during the 1848 Spring of Nations in Lemberg, then part of the ...
in protest against the Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Impact
By early 2020, the Led By Donkeys messages had been seen hundreds of millions of times on social media and attracted mainstream media exposure.[ However, they had failed to help achieve their goal of getting a second referendum on what Brexit should look like.][ The group's spokesman Stewart said he did not think their efforts had been in vain, despite the UK having left the EU on 31 January 2020: "we didn't set out to try and stop Brexit. We were trying to fill a vacuum left by a broken media ecosystem. The media weren’t holding power to account and we managed to really piss off people like David Davis and others, so we were holding power to account in their place, and that's really what we intended to do". Despite Stewart considering their efforts not being in vain in that they brought evidence of political hypocrisy to a mass audience, he did identify what he sees as a worrying phenomenon: "On both sides of the Atlantic, the concept of shame and political leaders paying a price for lying and dissembling is in retreat."][
Led By Donkeys vowed to continue their work after Brexit Day.] Stewart said "there’s much still to fight for ... Our future relationship with Europe has not yet been defined." "We’re not shutting up shop just yet”.[
]
Critical reception
Columnist Dawn Foster
Dawn Hayley Foster (12 September 1986 – 9 July 2021) was an Irish-British journalist, broadcaster, and author writing predominantly on social affairs, politics, economics and women's rights. Foster held staff writer positions at ''Inside Housi ...
of ''The Guardian'' did not believe the billboards have changed anybody's opinion. Specifically regarding the Brexit Party manifesto billboards, she believed them to be counterproductive and actually helped spread the beliefs. One billboard, featuring Ann Widdecombe
Ann Noreen Widdecombe (born 4 October 1947) is a British politician, author and television personality. She was Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidstone and The Weald, and the former Maidstone constituency, from 1987 to 2010 and Member of the ...
's quote "homosexual acts are wrongful" with the headline "Target gay people", was meant to warn voters of her homophobic beliefs. Foster called it fundamentally flawed, saying that to most it would seem like an anti-gay campaign, and that the group had overlooked the fact that most people would not see it as a warning.[ Led By Donkeys pulled the billboard within 24 hours after a social media backlash, acknowledged their mistake, and apologised for any unintentional pain caused to the gay community.
In January 2019 Led By Donkeys illegally put up a quote by Boris Johnson near the ]Jaguar Land Rover
Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC is the holding company of Jaguar Land Rover Limited (also known as JLR), and is a British multinational automobile manufacturer which produces luxury vehicles and sport utility vehicles. Jaguar Land Rover is a ...
factory in Solihull
Solihull (, or ) is a market town and the administrative centre of the wider Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in West Midlands County, England. The town had a population of 126,577 at the 2021 Census. Solihull is situated on the River Blyth ...
, a place affected by recent job losses. The quote in question was a response Johnson gave in 2018 to business concerns about a hard Brexit
In the wake of the referendum held in the United Kingdom on 23 June 2016, many new pieces of Brexit-related jargon entered popular use.Al Jazeera. (2018)''Brexit jargon: From backstop to no deal, 17 key terms explained'' (Al Jazeera) Retrieved 2 ...
: he responded with a simple "Fuck business". The ''Birmingham Mail
The ''Birmingham Mail'' (branded the ''Black Country Mail'' in the Black Country) is a tabloid newspaper based in Birmingham, England but distributed around Birmingham, the Black Country, and Solihull and parts of Warwickshire, Worcestershire a ...
'' reported the following day that the local community had reacted with fury as the billboard was near a school. However, one local interviewed said "In an ideal world the billboard wouldn't be there, but in an ideal world our foreign secretary wouldn't be the type of person who thinks 'f***k business' is an acceptable response to people losing their jobs."
Writing in the marketing industry magazine ''Campaign
Campaign or The Campaign may refer to:
Types of campaigns
* Campaign, in agriculture, the period during which sugar beets are harvested and processed
*Advertising campaign, a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme
* Bl ...
'', Angus Macadam thought the creative content was "quite brilliant in its meditative simplicity" and added "these messages hinge on and are driven by the one thing we currently miss most in politics: inarguable truth". In the same magazine Eliza Williams called the group's campaign "witty" and "subversive". Advertising expert Ian Henderson said brands should draw inspiration from Led By Donkeys if they want their out-of-home advertising to leave a digital footprint. Journalist Raymond Snoddy
Matthew Raymond Snoddy OBE, born , commonly known as Raymond Snoddy, is a British news media journalist, television presenter, author and media commentator. From its inception in 2004, until January 2013, he was the original and sole presente ...
, a former BBC News 24
BBC News (also known as the BBC News Channel) is a British free-to-air public broadcast television news channel for BBC News. It was launched as BBC News 24 on 9 November 1997 at 5:30 pm as part of the BBC's foray into digital domestic telev ...
presenter, wrote that the activists have exposed the UK media's failures to hold the government to account: "By concentrating on the here and now, the ever breaking news, the media has been swept along without pausing enough to think enough about the enormity of what has happened and how we've got there. ... The only certainty is that Led By Donkeys can be relied upon to rise to the occasion on both Boris Johnson and Brexit."
Journalist Ian Burrell wrote in February 2022, after the Line of Duty parody videos appeared on the morning TV shows, that the group's wide reach stems from their creative ideas. He praised the "slick production" of the videos, including the commissioning of authors and journalists such as former BBC Newsnight
''Newsnight'' (or ''BBC Newsnight'') is BBC Two's news and current affairs programme, providing in-depth investigation and analysis of the stories behind the day's headlines. The programme is broadcast on weekdays at 22:30. and is also availab ...
presenter Gavin Esler
Gavin William James Esler (born 27 February 1953) is a Scottish journalist, television presenter and author. He was a main presenter on BBC Two's flagship political analysis programme, ''Newsnight'', from January 2003 until January 2014, and pr ...
, to collaborate on projects.[
Led By Donkeys won the award for Best Social Media Campaign in the 2019 Social Purpose Awards organised by marketing website ''The Drum''.][ They were awarded gold in the National Social Impact category of the 2020 Outdoor Media Awards, which is run by Clear Channel UK in partnership with ''Campaign''.]
Notes
Footnotes
References
Sources
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{{2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum
2018 establishments in the United Kingdom
2019 in British politics
Brexit–related advocacy groups in the United Kingdom
Pro-Europeanism in the United Kingdom
Media depictions of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom