Brexit: The Uncivil War by James Graham was never going to be anything other than hugely controversial. This is a drama that all sides were likely to love and hate in equal measure. Channel 4 has brought the inside story of the referendum campaign to a national audience. But it is only one version of that story, a version that leans heavily on the viewpoint of Dominic Cummings, an ex-special adviser to Michael Gove who was the chief strategist for Vote Leave. It omits, for example, evidence the Observer uncovered during a two-year investigation, which includes illegal overspending – a finding that has now been confirmed by the Electoral Commission, which has referred the campaign to the Met police. Graham and I discussed the issues in person and over email.

Carole Cadwalladr: James, you’ve created a compelling work of fiction that brilliantly dramatises the toxic forces that Brexit unleashed and the way Facebook was used in complete darkness to channel these arguments on to people’s feeds. But there’s so much I found problematic. To begin at the end, the very last scene shows Dominic Cummings giving evidence at a public hearing. Why did you make that up? It hasn’t happened.

James Graham: No, it hasn’t.

Cummings has refused to appear before parliament to answer exactly those questions, whereas you show him giving a full account of his actions.



You’re right, this is serious. The creative motivation for it came because of that exact reason – a real-life person hasn’t been held to account in that way. That’s why we set those scenes four years in the future. The fictional scenes with Cummings are based on his blog and other public pronouncements. Although he didn’t come to parliament, that doesn’t mean he’s been silent.

Where does it say that it’s set in the future?



I think it says it in the very first scene. Then, at the end, the character says: “It’s now been four years since that campaign in 2016.”



I completely missed that, and I was watching it really attentively. So this part of the film is actually wish fulfilment? It’s a fairytale?

It’s an imagined future. In all the press we’re doing, we make clear that this is a fictionalised scene set in the near future. One of my arguments for why drama has a place in this debate is the fact that such testimony hasn’t been acquired and that he hasn’t yet answered those questions. The benefit of the drama then is that we can use research to satisfy that desire, and let an audience prosecute him.

James Graham, left, and Carol Cadwalladr of the Guardian. Composite: Linda Nylind for the Guardian/PA

It’s the job of the Met to prosecute him or not. And one could argue that the cynical reason for showing this film now is that if charges are brought, it couldn’t be shown then because it might influence a jury.

Unfortunately, there’s no way of a broadcaster predicting these things. I imagine you think I’m being incredibly sentimental and romantic about drama when I promote its benefits. But when do you think the right time to be doing it is?



There are things the drama does brilliantly. The scene with the focus group illustrated the toxicity of this debate with a use of imagination and dialogue that did not mess with the historical record. Whereas that last scene messes with the historical record. It’s not just that it didn’t happen, it is laundering Cummings’ reputation. He is portrayed as a misunderstood man who ran a controversial but legal campaign and is happy to answer questions about what he did. But he isn’t. He’s obfuscated his role and what the campaign did and the illegal methods employed.

We are using drama as a public space in a courtroom to drag into it the questions and the answers that are vital for an audience to explore. I don’t agree it’s fucking with the historical record. If it is a creative failing of mine not to make that clear, I will take that on board. It’s certainly not our intention to mislead, and I’m happy for you to set the record straight. It’s why we’re here.

I was asked to be a consultant on this film a year ago, but I told the production company it was too soon because there were major revelations still to come. I can see that the effort that’s gone into adding tweaks to the film, but the overspending scandal revealed by Shahmir Sanni did not make the film even though it played a huge part in how they won. It’s been whitewashed from history.

I thought the most responsible thing to do was to acknowledge this had come out – we show those characters from BeLeave with the characters of Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan questioning their funding – and then reference it at the end.

‘We’re using drama as a public space in a courtroom’ … Benedict Cumberbatch as Dominic Cummings and Kyle Soller as Zack Massingham in Brexit: The Uncivil War. Photograph: Nick Wall/Channel 4

Where there are disputed areas, we’ve tried to handle that more sensitively and spend more time in the areas that interest me as a writer. I saw this not as a tick list of everything that happened but as a character study of those who made the decisions.



Part of the problem, I think, is that you’ve written the part of Cummings so well and Benedict Cumberbatch plays him so wonderfully. But he also brings baggage to the role. Cummings is a sort of Sherlock character, a maverick polymath who brilliantly solves the problems nobody else can. This portrayal makes out that he won through his genius, not by employing criminal methods. And because the writing and performance are great, this is what will stick in people’s minds.

But what has been interesting about the response so far is how mixed it is to the presentation of Cummings. Some accuse me of demonising him, others of lionising him. Some say he’s presented as a charlatan, some say a genius. And it’s not an accident that these often fall along leave/remain lines.



But that question is immaterial right now. The much more important question is whether we are leaving Europe on the back of an illegal and corrupted vote – and that has been completely glossed over.

The challenge as a creative team is how to invite different audience members, who voted differently, into a space that doesn’t immediately yell at them: “You’re wrong and we’re right. And you’re not welcome here.”

Talk me through your dramatic portrayal of Arron Banks, Robert Mercer and co.

For me, when it came to Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Banks, Farage, there was latitude to apply a more heightened presentation using the classic British weapon of caricature as a way of bringing people down from their pedestal. So that was a driving motivator. What did you think about them?



Banks is not like that in real life. And I found the scene with Mercer completely preposterous. I’m sorry.



That’s all right.

For an entire year, our stories about Cambridge Analytica were treated by swaths of the press as fantasy conspiracy stories, and it’s still a problem in terms of getting a serious investigation into these allegations. And the James Bond villain-like presentation of Mercer plays into that and will only add to that difficulty.

‘To many people some of these ideas are unknowable’ … Lee Boardman as Arron Banks and Paul Ryan as Nigel Farage in Brexit: The Uncivil War. Photograph: Nick Wall/Channel 4

In terms of putting people in rooms, or conflating meetings, or having events merge into one thing, that didn’t literally happen. To a lot of audience members, some of these people and these ideas are very unknowable and inaccessible and remote, and it’s how you can use your weapons as a dramatist to bring them closer to people. It’s how you give voice and visual representation to the essence of the truth and the essence of the story …



But the essence of that was not the truth. And this is Cummings’ version of history. You take him at his word that he was the genius who took Britain out of the EU. And by presenting Farage and Banks as buffoons, you dismiss the impact of their campaign and what they were doing with technology and the possibly illegal £8m donation that’s now under investigation and the whole question of their relationship with the Russian government.

I disagree he’s a buffoon. In fact, Steve Bannon criticised me for giving the Banks characters some of his best lines. I don’t disagree with you that the Leave.EU side of things is hugely important. The truth must out and justice be done, and once it comes out fully I hope someone dramatises that story. I’d happily work with you on it. And this is fiction. An audience knows that. It’s a drama.



You fictionalise from facts. That’s what you do, isn’t it? But the facts are still in dispute. We are in an existential struggle to establish the truth, and this feels like another threat to that.

I hear you and acknowledge the struggle you’ve had to fight, but I don’t think a dramatic representation exists in opposition to the journalistic work. I think it contributes. Everything contributes to – I hate this phrase – a national conversation. There are critical unanswered questions about the impact that data targeting has on our politics and behaviour. I don’t want the film to suggest we can all be manipulated – most of us know our own minds. But we’re in the wild west phase of this technology, completely unregulated and we need to understand the impact that it is having.