Gina Miller, the woman behind the landmark article 50 legal case, has urged the government to forge a detailed plan for leaving the European Union, declaring that the abuse she endured after challenging against the government was “worth it”.

After her victory in the supreme court on Tuesday, she said that in cases of such magnitude there would be a detailed white paper on the government’s position, adding: “I hope that is the direction of travel”.

She said she decided to take the case after feeling “physically sickened” by the result of the referendum. Leaving the EU, she said, would change the fundamental rights of citizens and this couldn’t be done without a parliamentary vote. The supreme court agreed.

But her decision, as an ordinary citizen, to take on the government came at a high price.

Miller, the founder of a private investment firm, found herself at the centre of one of the most toxic media storms in decades as a result of being the most public of figures involved in the case.

She has spoken about the torrent of abuse she has suffered in the past but said she was shocked to find it continuing right up to the day of the verdict despite police intervention in at least eight cases in December and January.

“I’ve been told that ‘as a coloured woman’, I’m not even human, I’m a primate and only a piece of meat and I should be hunted down and killed,” she said in an interview with the Guardian.

“I’ve had somebody told me I needed to be ‘the new Jo Cox’. I’ve had people say there only three positions a woman of colour can have, that is a prostitute, a cleaner or having babies. People who have said, ‘I know how you’ve made your money: on your back.’ I even had some of those this morning on the way to the supreme court.”

Asked if it was all worth it, she replied: “Absolutely, although we don’t know yet. Hopefully we have preserved democracy and the constitution.”

She had to hire private security and review her entire lifestyle, reducing her trips to the office and use of public transport.

Immediately after the verdict, she was branded the “chief Brexit wrecker” by the Sun newspaper and last year endured a stream of abuse after the Daily Mail described high court judges who sided with her in her original case as “enemies of the people”.

She takes it all in her stride. “Society is broken and this case has highlighted that and it’s not too late for it be fixed,” she said.

Flanked by two personal security guards outside the supreme court, Miller said she hoped those in power would be “much quicker in condemning those who cross the lines of common decency and mutual respect” in future.



She said Brexit was “the most divisive issue of a generation”, but insisted that the case was “about the legal process, not politics”. She was spurred to pursue the case not because of any “grandiose” ideas.

“I wasn’t thinking about taking on the government, I was thinking ‘you can’t have something happening which is breaking the law’,” she said.

Her sense of injustice stems from childhood experiences of being bullied and left to fend for herself after her parents ran out of money for boarding school. Born into an influential family in Guyana, at the age of 10 she was sent to boarding school in Britain.

She recalls how her mother had given her a bottle of her favourite perfume Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps to take with her so she wouldn’t feel homesick, but the first weekend in school, girls emptied it out and filled it with water.

At 14, her parents’ financial circumstances had changed and she was forced to become a day pupil, living alone with her 16-year-old brother in a flat in Eastbourne, supplementing her allowance with a stint as a chambermaid.



Her values and principles are the same now, she says, as they were then, and “weirdly” she does not take the abuse personally.

Now successful and wealthy enough to fund a philanthropic foundation, she said she will use the platform she finds herself on to consolidate her work advocating for victims of domestic abuse and other injustices.

She also hoped her experience would help other women realise how the police can help hunt down internet trolls.

“The police have been fantastic,” she said. “What is amazing is that these people imagine that they can’t be tracked down and when they are they are so shocked and it stops.”

She believes the issue is not the internet nor the masks of fictional names and images that people hide behind; it is more fundamental than that and goes to the heart of what values society wants to live by.

“The idea that this abuse is the work of keyboard warriors is just not the case,” said Miller. “These people take the time to make posters with vile images, put them in envelopes and post them. They go to the trouble of finding my email address or office number. This is really pre-meditated stuff.

“It’s the message, it is the content that is what is important here. It’s that these messages can be allowed, it doesn’t matter whether it’s an email or a letter or an attack in a public place, it’s still abuse.”

Police have issued cease and desist notices to eight people warning that if they continued with their abuse, their behaviour could result in police action. On 5 December, a 55-year-old man from Swindon was arrested but, following consideration by the Crown Prosecution Service, the police told him no further action would be taken.

For Miller, who brought the case along with hairdresser Deir dos Santos, the court’s decision brought vindication. “No prime minister, no government can expect to be unanswerable or unchallenged,” she said. “Parliament alone is sovereign.”