‘They are making a pig’s ear of Brexit’

“We are in a politically unique position of being hated on both sides,” says Pete North, the editor of Leave HQ.

From his bedroom in Filton, the writer heads up the website that was formed to campaign for an independent UK out of the European Union.

The June 2016 referendum, of course, delivered the desired result. But as someone keen to distance himself from the prominent Brexiteers in Westminster, North is far from happy at the direction things are going.

“They are making a pig’s ear of it. That’s why we are still in operation,” says the former computer programmer and acid techno DJ, who now dedicates all his time to writing for Leave HQ.

“The hard leavers, now they have won, say that we can leave without consequences, but if we can then all we were saying about regulation prior to the referendum is lies.

“If they get their way then Britain is finished as a serious trading nation. Freedom of movement is about rights for countries, but also it’s a trade deal.

“So here we are. Far too many broken promises, with the £350m for the NHS on the side of the bus, and they are just making a pig’s ear out of it.”

North has ventured out from his Filton base to speak to Bristol24/7 over a coffee in the city centre, but admits he has no love of the outside world. Indeed, one of the perks of his job is that he doesn’t even have to get out of bed to do it.

He is passionate about his politics and angry that the “London elite” hijacked the Brexit campaign when he and fellow bloggers who make up the Leave HQ team had worked on carefully planning a strategy they believe would have achieved the best results for Britain.

“As soon as Cameron got elected, that was it,” he says on the launch of Leave HQ.

“We knew we were going to get a referendum and we had been waiting for a very long time, so decided to throw everything we could at it.

“We were the ones that said we need to have a plan because, if we win, then we are in a position to make demands of the political establishment.”

The group approached Thornbury-based multi-millionaire Arron Banks with their plan, but said he wasn’t interested in collaborating.

Arron Banks was a prominent backer of the leave campaign

Banks, an extremely prominent voice in the leave campaign and its biggest backer, is now being investigated by the Electoral Commission for possible rule-breaking.

North says he has no time for Banks’ right wing rhetoric. So why go to him in the first place?

“The racist rhetoric that came out of Brexit is disgusting, it’s awful,” he says. “We started talking to them because they were putting out quite a lot of nice professional literature to prove they could run a sensible campaign early on.

“But it soon became apparent that some of the stuff they were putting out was needlessly controversial.

“I currently keep my politics to myself because it’s a tarnished brand because of the disgusting way the campaign ran.”

North is highly critical of the direction the Tory Government is now taking with Brexit and says that for him it was always about regaining political sovereignty but maintaining trade links in a world that is increasingly globalised.

People turned out for pro-EU rallies in the run up to the referendum and the majority in the city voted to remain

North claims that Leave HQ have a soft alliance with pro-remain campaign groups, who are also now turning their attention to fighting for the best ‘divorce deal’ for Britain.

“It was always a case of Brexit could go very badly wrong,” he says, explaining why he is still convinced the country is better off out of the EU.

“But that’s simply a symptom of the dysfunction we have in the UK. If the Brexit process demonstrates anything, it’s that giving power away is much easier than taking it back.”

Hated on both sides of the political spectrum he may be, but it’s hardly likely to bother North, who is content to continue arguing his case from his bedroom in Filton.

Read more: Full Bristol Brexit results: what we learned