The real victim of Brexit? It's me, says Vote Leave founder

Matthew Elliott, the oddball Tory peer who founded the Vote Leave campaign, has finally recognised the damage done by Brexit. Suffering most, he suggested to the Telegraph, was none other than poor old Matthew Elliott.

Speaking to promote his new book chronicling his side of the campaign, he said that while friends initially treated his beliefs as “slightly eccentric”, this all changed after the Brexit vote. “Afterwards, once you’ve won and people feel so let down, that was more difficult,” he said. “There were occasions when we were basically invited along to little dinner parties to be pilloried by everybody else, and to be figures of fun. All sorts of weird, weird things happened. But it was a very difficult few years.”

Elliott also revealed that Vote Leave had secretly dialled into a conference call addressed by the leader of the rival campaign, Will Straw, just days before the referendum, but that this underhand tactic was fine as “I’m sure they were doing the same things to us.” Some may call into question his judgement after reading Elliott’s reply to the question of whether Brexit has been a success: “Yes, 100 per cent.”

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Meanwhile, Elliott reveals that he and Dominic Cummings, his campaign director, compared themselves to Dwight Eisenhower and George S. Patton, the “colourful” US general respectively. “Although he [Cummings] is a brilliant man and capable of being funny and lively company, he is also fundamentally incapable of admitting he is wrong and of putting up with people he thinks aren’t as smart as he is – and sometimes those who are smarter,” writes Elliott of his former colleague.

He adds of Cummings, branded a “career psycho” by David Cameron: “He’s a combative person. What sort of person did we need for that campaign? We needed somebody who was willing to take on the establishment in a very hard-hitting way and almost with a singular-minded purpose – not being worried about having other clients they might be upsetting or other relationships with senior politicians they might be upsetting, but that single-minded focus to basically destroy them [the leaders of the Remain campaign], which is what he brilliantly went out and did with Vote Leave and the campaign team.”

And are the pair still in touch? “Not to any significant extent,” sniffs the peer.

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Elsewhere in the book, Elliott reveals the speech Boris Johnson would have made had the Leave side lost the referendum. Johnson had written a draft of a concession speech which said: “It is we politicians who have entrusted you with this immensely difficult decision – when normally you hire us to take such decisions.

“And as a democrat, I speak on behalf of Vote Leave in saying that we respect your decision. But I also want to pay tribute to the millions and millions who have campaigned with us for months and months on behalf of Vote Leave. It has been an astonishing campaign.”

This, however, was torn up and rewritten by Cummings, who appeared to think it too polite. His version would have seen Johnson say: “The prime minister has won the vote. He has not won the argument. This referendum is not the end of this issue. It is the end of the beginning.” A charmer to the very end…