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In a pub near King’s Cross, three men in khaki jackets are huddled around a table plotting. They call themselves Led by Donkeys and in the past 10 weeks they have raised more than £60,000, been blocked on Twitter by MP Dominic Raab, followed by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke — and, crucially, made Brexit more bearable with their irreverent activism.

This trio, along with a fourth member who can’t get away from his job to join us, are responsible for the billboards that have gone up around the country, quoting the doublespeak politicians have used about Brexit. They followed Theresa May to Brussels and put her tweet reading “It’s in Britain’s national interest to remain in the European Union” on a billboard just as she arrived to negotiate her deal, and they have skewered the hypocrisy of Nigel Farage (they have plans for today’s March to Leave).

At the People’s Vote march they unfurled a banner printed with a tweet from David Davis saying: “If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy”. Aerial photos of it, taken from a helicopter they hired, were shared millions of times around the world.

“I can’t believe we were able to hire a helicopter,” says Richard, who has a shaved head, swears more than the others and took his one-year-old daughter to the march. “I looked up and recognised the BBC helicopter, then saw that next to it was the Led by Donkeys one. We’ve come a long way in 10 weeks, since we put up our first billboard on a 90-quid ladder wobbling in the wind.”

They ask to be referred to by just their first names because their original posters were put up without permission from billboard owners. All of them have jobs and young children, and have kept their activism secret from colleagues. “They just think I’m stressed because I’m working hard,” smiles Richard.

"The past three years have been a car crash and people have told us our humorous fightback has helped them"

He, Chris and Adam have an endearingly DIY air to them, like politically engaged versions of The Inbetweeners. They follow bold declarations of “Let’s do it” with “F**k, how do we do it?”, and an hour before the march they were in Finsbury Park panicking about whether their banner was too big and which way up it should go.

LBD was conceived in the pub. The friends, who met 23 years ago through volunteer work, were having a pre-Christmas pint at The Birdcage in Stoke Newington, talking about how badly politicians’ tweets had aged. “That was not the first Brexit moan-up we’d had,” says softly spoken Adam, 43. “Conversation moved on to what we could do to hold politicians to account. We started to play with the phrase “tweets you can’t delete”, and from there it was a hop to the billboard.” They didn’t take inspiration from the film Three Billboards — only Adam has seen it.

“Lots of ideas at the pub never happen, but right before the meaningful vote in January someone went ‘F**k it, let’s do it’ on our WhatsApp group,” says Richard. They did all the research they could into logistics, watching the only YouTube tutorial there is about how to put up a billboard and renaming their WhatsApp group “poster chat”. Chris, 39, came up with their name, referring to the phrase used to blame First World War generals for their handling of infantry: “Lions led by donkeys”.

On January 9, once they had put their children to bed, they met up by the A10 in Hackney to put up a tweet by David Cameron that said: “Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice — stability and strong government with me or chaos with Ed Miliband”.

“It was not a slick operation,” says Adam. “We wore high-vis, not because we are gilets jaunes but so we looked like we were meant to be there; we kept saying ‘own the space’. But it ended up being a circus act. The first sheet came down, a picture of Cameron wet with wallpaper paste was slapping on my face, traffic was stopping to see the spectacle. But after an hour it went up and cyclists stopped to give us the thumbs-up.”

They returned to the pub for last orders, preparing themselves for the deed not to have any impact. The next day they tweeted a picture of it. Within 24 hours they had 3,000 followers and requests flooding in from strangers for tweets to put up next.

“We stumbled on a formula that really works,” says Richard. Chris adds: “We have a news cycle where everything flies past at a million miles an hour. There’s something powerful about slapping a tweet on an old-school method of communication, a billboard, that makes people stop and consider in a way they don’t with Twitter.” Newspapers have been calling the featured politicians to ask them to respond. Most say “no comment”, although Jacob Rees-Mogg took objection because his quote was said in Parliament not on Twitter.

LBD tries hard not to be tribal or offer analysis, says Richard. “This is bigger than one side versus the other, this is about the politics we want in this country — do we want to let these people be able to run off after they’ve said what they have with a total lack of accountability, or do we think they should have their words thrown back at them? We don’t want to add to the divisions of the country. We all have people in our lives who voted Leave and we still love them — it was not an unreasonable position to take.” Indeed, one of the men who puts up their billboards voted Leave.

They aren’t just preaching to the converted — they have billboards in Leave areas too. Dover was a turning point. “It was so much quieter than London,” says Richard, who says he would be willing to be arrested for this cause as the others laugh nervously. “We couldn’t blend in like we did in Hackney, and it’s a Brexit town. We were doing the Liam Fox tweet on the side of a house and a light went on. We were lit up as if we were on stage at Glastonbury. Then a dog started barking. Adam told us to ‘own the space’.” A man approached and they thought the game was up but it turned out he was drunk and wanted a hug.

After Dover they decided to go legal and crowdfund. “There was a limit to how much we could do to make a point,” says Richard. “We were coming back to our partners and kids every night covered in wallpaper paste, so we set the crowdfunder at £10,000. We hit that after two hours and the next day we had £57,000. What do we do with that much money?” They are now the biggest crowdfunded political campaign in UK history.

Their last illegal poster was Boris Johnson’s tweet, “F**k business”, positioned outside the Jaguar Land Rover factor in Solihull. No billboard company would agree to print the swearword.

The money gave them a sense of responsibility. “Most of our donors gave £10 and there were lots of two or three quids,” says Adam. “When people without much money want to be part of it, that is touching. You want to make sure every penny is spent well.”

Their original urge to take action has been satisfied. “We started with modest ambitions, to do something cathartic for ourselves,” says Chris. “The past three years have been a car crash through the worst of British politics, and adding a humorous fightback to the mix has helped people. Rather than write yet another letter to an MP or send a tweet, this is something we can do which feels meaningful.

Their Facebook page has become a space for discussion. Richard tells me about the person whose father voted Leave but loves their work, and another who said their posters are keeping her and her husband sane while he is treated for cancer. “That made me cry,” he says.

Would they go into politics? They shake their heads. “Getting home in time to make dinner is the extent of my ambitions,” says Richard. None of them knows how they’d vote in a general election. “We don’t know what the parties stand for,” says Richard.

They would like a People’s Vote but “don’t say that lightly”, says Richard. Chris explains: “Our tweets have shown we were sold a thousand different Brexits and there isn’t even a majority in the Brexiteer camp.” Adam adds: “The battle to keep the Tory party together is being played out across the nation, and if Remain wins a second referendum it’ll take a long time to heal divisions.”

Social media is partly to blame, Richard thinks. “It’s split society. We get our own facts, retreat to our corners and argue them vehemently.” He does, however, acknowledge that LDB wouldn’t exist without Twitter.

Their partners have stopped them making mistakes, telling them when their jokes don’t work. Chris talks about Brexit with his eight-year-old daughter. “She has a visceral sense that it’s better to be part of a community.” Adam’s seven-year-old daughter “knows Daddy makes posters about donkeys”.

Brazilians want an LBD campaign about President Bolsonaro, while Richard is keen to take on Trump. It’s been a welcome distraction from the news. “There have been moments of obscene stress but I have laughed so much,” admits Richard. “People said they never thought they would laugh during Brexit, and it is serious, but it has been fun.”