A new review has put Brexit back in the frame with a sharply observed verdict on Brexit: A Very British Civil War, a two-part documentary that revisits the road from the 2015 general election to the referendum itself. It is a period piece built from the voices of the people who drove it, and it lands now as a fresh reminder of how much of modern British politics was decided in those two years.
That is one reason people are likely to search for it today. The film, directed by Max Stern and the veteran documentarian Norma Percy, gathers Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, George Osborne, Jeremy Corbyn, Gordon Brown and Michael Gove into a single account of the Brexit years. Ten years on from the referendum, that line-up makes the documentary feel less like a programme and more like an archive of a political break that still defines the conversation.
Osborne is among the most revealing contributors. He says Johnson's position had “nothing to do with the EU” and calls it “Game of Thrones,” while Johnson, stifling a smile, denies the characterisation and insists, “Everybody says I did this in order to be PM. I would have become prime minister anyway.” Farage, for his part, says Vote Leave bosses “didn’t really want to win,” which gives the film a bracing edge because it lets the people at the centre of the campaign undercut their own mythology.
That mix is what makes the documentary difficult to resist, even though the subject is sobering. It is a talking head-heavy account of a national rupture, but it is also unusually funny, with Farage compared in the review to Voldemort, a messiah and a vaudeville act, and his increasingly camp drawl described as never having been more panto. The result is a film about a political crisis that keeps slipping into satire without losing sight of what was at stake.
One notable absence stands out. Dominic Cummings is conspicuously missing, and the review does not explain why. Peter Mandelson does appear, with a disclaimer that his interview was recorded before the full extent of his links with Jeffrey Epstein emerged, a reminder that even a retrospective built from first-hand voices still has gaps and caveats. In a film about a decade that has become a kind of national memory project, the missing voices matter almost as much as the ones on screen.
The documentary does not need a sequel to make its point. Its value is in the timing: a decade after the referendum period began, it shows how quickly the campaign became history and how stubbornly its personalities still shape the present. For viewers trying to understand why Brexit still feels unfinished, this looks like one of the clearest records available.
