Just watched the movie Brexit. I know, for those of you in the UK who lived through it, the movie was redundant at best. But as an outsider, I did learn a few things. The leave campaign did a much better job of distilling their messaging into three powerful sound bites: take back control, divert money from the EU to the NHS, and course, stop all 70M Turks from invading. With AggregateIQ, they also did a much more sophisticated job of encouraging both sympathetic and undecided voters to act.
I thought the most poignant momemnt of the movie was when it dawned on Craig Oliver that while his remain campaign was only a few months old (and floundering), the leave campaign had actually been ongoing for 20+ years.
It is hard not to be struck by the similarities between leave voters and Trump supporters - people who have been living in hard times for a very long time, and who are willing to try anything (regardless of the facts and no matter how illogical) in order to change the status quo. Were these people lied to about the NHS and the Turks? Yes, of course. But what does a desperate person want more than anything else? I’m afraid Cummings nailed it: to believe they are taking back some small semblance of control over their lives.