Dominic Cummings was the mastermind behind the Vote Leave campaign victory.
I have read this 58 page blog post, warts and all lessons from the campaign, 5 times. I learn something every time.
He shows how a small group of dedicated men and women took on the British establishment and beat them.
I view the Remain side, full of people I knew from my pro-European days, as well-meaning amateurs. This article vindicates this view.
When I read Cummings piece, I can see how we were beaten before we had even started.
Big lesson
More importantly, it shows that a professional and detached campaign director can win a campaign, if it is well resourced and does and says what needs to be done to win, rather than what the people behind the campaign want to say and do. It is about responding to what the people want to hear, rather than fringe issues that consume your own constituency.
Charlie Munger’s role
He puts success down to: “It comes from applying what Charlie Munger calls unrecognised simplicities of effective action that one can see implemented by successful people/organisations”.
It is interesting how Cummings was prepared to experiment. He adapted the message to the one that appealed to most people, rather than the message the Vote Leave thought important, and used cutting edge data to back the campaign.
Victory Not Inevitable
He debunks the idea the victory was inevitable. He shows that 600,000 people, less than less than 1% of the registered electorate, voting for Remain, would have changed the result.
His analysis is profoundly honest. He did not write this to make friends and the service of more than a few libel lawyers must have been spent on this.
He views the idea of a classic post facto “big event must be because by one big factor” story, so beloved of the SW1 set as appealing but a mistake. His view is that if Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, had stayed out, and Farage had led the Leave campaign, Remain would have won.
What did Leave do
He shows how the campaign office “implemented a 125 million leaflets, nearly a billion targeted digital adverts, 12,000 active volunteers, recruited in less than 10 months, and the use of not only traditional polling but a new type of experimental polling. Importantly they used a data science team.”
The really big idea
They ignored the pet issues of the eurosceptics and ignored many “big voices” ideas. He was right and they were wrong. He listened to what resonated to the people. He based that on data. This is not emotional gut feeling, this is based on speaking about what people want to hear.
Problems of the Leave Campaign
He is honest about the problems of the vote leave campaign, including:
- infighting over who appeared on broadcast and strategy
- the lack of resources
- the extreme difficulty of finding a governance system that would work
- four crucial posts held by the wrong people
- the fundamental structure of how the media works
- extreme difficulty of getting from people to say on TV what research showed was necessary to win
- the lack of anything resembling well-organised mass movement.
Eurosceptic Movement a farce, Remain worse
I enjoyed the statement that “ despite many years to prepare, the Eurosceptic community had built remarkably little to prepare for the battle. On the ground there were many small and ineffective and often more in little groups and essentially notion serious machinery. All this had to be built almost entirely from scratch in an environment in which many of those in charge of the small groups were sure we would lose, less interested in winning man they were in presume preserving our groups identity.” What is painfully clear is that the pro-European campaign was an even bigger shambles.
Remain had everything going for them – Farage is a liability
He lists the many advantages going for the Remain campaign, including money, media and interestingly in his view “Farage, Aaron Banks” and co. He notes millions, particularly middle-class, were put off by attacks on foreigners.
The Approximate Truth
He states his “view of the approximate truth is this. The closest approximation to the truth that we can get is the leave won because of a combination of:
one, three big, powerful forces with global impact:
1). the immigration crisis,
2)the financial crisis,
and 3) the euro crisis which created conditions in which the referendum would be competitive;
two, vote leave implemented some unrecognised simplicities – taken from Charlie mongers business thinking – in its operations that focused attention more effectively than the other side, simple and psychologically compelling story, thus taking advantage of those three big forces; and
three, Cameron’s operating model what constitutes effective political action and had bad judgement about key people (particularly his chief of staff and director of communications) therefore they made critical errors. Even if one and two had played at the same, I think that if that you have made one of a few critical decisions differently they would have likely won.”
Europe is not a winning brand
Drawing from deep sets of polling and data, he sees three things about the public mindset:
1. the immigration crisis
2. the 2008 financial crisis; which he describes as “essentially corporate looting”
3. The euro crisis. His view is “this is important because people joined Europe because it was seen as a success. Today, it is not.”
I think this model is important. The EU has not effectively responded to these concerns. It’s mechanisms and responses are glacial. Fudging is not a model for success and most people see it as a sign of failure – except perhaps by enough heads of state and too many Commissioners.
Their winning messages?
He outlines what worked for them. He notes “our story rested on five simple foundations that came from listening very hard reading you, thought, and said”.
1. Let’s take back control interestingly, this message came back from researching opinion.
2. The official bill of EU membership is three hundred million per week and lets spend our money on our priorities like the NHS
3. Vote leave today take back control of immigration. People don’t like the idea of foreign rapists being allowed to stay in the UK after their sentence.
4. the euro is a nightmare. – If we stay you will be paying the bills.
5. Anti-establishment.