Led By Donkeys is a British political campaign group established in December 2018 as an anti-Brexit group, but which has also criticised other actions of the Conservative government. After the 2024 election of a Labour government, it defined itself as an "accountability project" and stated that the Labour government was also fair game.
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 hoardings containing past X posts 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 operation, in which Led By Donkeys posters were plastered over existing adverts. It was then expanded into a crowdfunded campaign that purchased advertising space on hundreds of billboards across the UK. Later the group staged real-life stunts, including projecting messages on iconic places including the Houses of Parliament and the White Cliffs of Dover, 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. The campaign group won the award for Best Social Media Campaign in the 2019 Social Purpose Awards, and won gold in the National Social Impact category in the 2020 Outdoor Media Awards.
The group's name comes from the phrase "lions led by donkeys", referring to British soldiers in the First World War, who were led to their deaths by leaders deemed incompetent and indifferent.
Background
In the Conservative Party's manifesto for the general election in May 2015, the party promised a referendum on the UK's European Union 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 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 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". 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, 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, July 2016). Two years later, by Christmas 2018, with prime minister Theresa May's Brexit deal stuck in parliament, none of these claims had materialised, according to The Guardian.
Rose designed the posters. Sadri came up with the name "Lions led by donkeys", a common phrase referring to soldiers in the First World War 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 account, and asked journalist Marina Hyde 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'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 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 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, NBC News and NPR, 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 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'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 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.