Victoria Woodcock was the

operations director The role of operations director generally encompasses the oversight of operational aspects of company strategy with responsibilities to ensure operation information is supplied to the chief executive and the board of directors as well as external ...

for the Vote Leave campaign for the 2016 referendum vote for the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

to leave the

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 des ...

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 ...

and Paul Goodman claim Woodcock was a key person to the success of the Vote Leave campaign for

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 or ...

Biography

Early life

Woodcock was born in 1987. She began her post-school studies at the

University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

in 2005 and achieved a BSc degree in sociology and social policy in 2008. She went on to complete an MSc in social statistics in 2010.

Government

Woodcock's early career was as a civil servant in the Department of Education, where she worked on a variety of policies including schools, academies and the spending review. She became private secretary to the secretary of state and then took a role as strategic analyst. From 2014 she worked for a while as adviser to the Government

Chief Whip The Chief Whip is a political leader whose task is to enforce the whipping system, which aims to ensure that legislators who are members of a political party attend and vote on legislation as the party leadership prescribes. United Kingdom ...

. From 2015 she advised the head of strategic events, delivering and coordinating the 2015 VE Day 70th anniversary celebrations.

Vote Leave

Woodcock was both the company secretary and operations director for the Vote Leave campaign. Dominic Cummings has credited Woodcock with being the most indispensable person in the campaign. Woodcock was responsible for managing the creation of the Voter Intention Collection System (VICS), a bespoke canvassing software system used to model and target the campaign. She has been described as pivotal to the running of Vote Leave, and noted for not seeking the limelight. In March 2017, with the

Electoral Commission An election commission is a body charged with overseeing the implementation of electioneering process of any country. The formal names of election commissions vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and may be styled an electoral commission, a c ...

opening an investigation into particular donations relating to Vote Leave, an account by the name ''Victoria Woodcock'' deleted computer files useful to the investigation from the shared drive. Woodcock stated in June 2018 that the account was an administrative one that she had used to set up the drive and that she had handed over access to Vote Leave on 17 March 2017 at a point in time prior to the deletions taking place and did not have access to the drive at that time. Paul Goodman, blogging in Conservative Home, also claims Woodcock was responsible at the last minute for identifying that Vote Leave's application to run the leave campaign had not been drafted against the assessed criteria, and without a rewrite against that criteria Vote Leave would have lost out against BeLeave with, in Goodman's opinion, the consequence that

Britain Stronger in Europe Britain Stronger in Europe (formally The In Campaign Limited) was an advocacy group which campaigned in favour of the United Kingdom's continued membership of the European Union in the 2016 British referendum. It was launched at the Old Truma ...

would have prevailed to keep the United Kingdom in the European Union. In the 2019 drama '' Brexit: The Uncivil War'', which depicted the activity of the Vote Leave campaign, Woodcock was played by

Kate O'Flynn Kate O'Flynn is a British actress. She is known for her performance in Royal National Theatre, National Theatre's production of ''Port'' for which she received a Critics' Circle Theatre Award in 2013, as well as starring roles in plays ''A Taste ...

Subsequent career

Woodcock moved on to become programme director at the software company

Sage Sage or SAGE may refer to: Plants * ''Salvia officinalis'', common sage, a small evergreen subshrub used as a culinary herb ** Lamiaceae, a family of flowering plants commonly known as the mint or deadnettle or sage family ** ''Salvia'', a large ...

References

* * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Woodcock, Victoria Brexit Alumni of the University of Southampton Living people 1987 births