Politics

People are raising money for a Brexit museum (yes, really)

Pro Brexit supporters celebrates as the United Kingdom exits the EU during the Brexit Day Celebration Party hosted by Leave Means Leave at Parliament Square on 31 January, 2020
Pro Brexit supporters celebrates as the United Kingdom exits the EU during the Brexit Day Celebration Party hosted by Leave Means Leave at Parliament Square on 31 January, 2020
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A museum dedicated to Brexit will begin fundraising, it has announced.

The Museum of Brexit has been granted charitable status and will now seek to raise the £650,000 needed for it to operate.

Organisers hope to raise £400,00 to buy a property and a further £250,000 to set up the museum and hire staff. (We hear Nigel Farage isn’t busy these days.) They say they are to do so through crowdfunding and approaching business figures who backed Brexit, and that they hope to situate the museum in the Midlands, a predominantly Leave-supporting region.

With the organisers of the museum yet to announce all the items that will be exhibited within its hallowed halls, eager Brexiteers will be left guessing about what Brexit artefacts will be immortalised. Perhaps a lock of Nigel Farage’s hair? Maybe a full English breakfast? The possibilities are, regrettably, endless.

The organisers have, however, announced that they are hoping to secure a pro-European flag jumper worn by Margaret Thatcher as well as the pen used to sign the 1957 Treaty of Rome.

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In a plea to supporters, their website added that they are looking for people to contribute “relevant photographs, pamphlets” and “symbolic items like placards, badges, posters, and campaign rosettes.”

It added the museum will “inform and educate people” and tell a “balanced” story about the Brexit referendum - though it is run entirely by Eurosceptics.

Alex Deane, a trustee of the museum who directed the Grassroots Out campaign in 2016 said: “There is a tremendous story behind this that deserves to be preserved.Unless we act fast, much of the material from the referendum will be lost. Gaps will then be filled with misperceptions, fake news and myth.

“Our objective is to plug that gap at the time when it is easiest – right now, while memories are fresh, attics are still filled with treasures and before items and stories get lost.”

Other trustees of the museum include Lee Rotheram and Thomas Borwick – both former Vote Leave staffers, Jim Reynolds, the honorary secretary of the Campaign for an Independent Britain, and Gawain Towler, a former director of communications for UKIP and the Brexit Party.

Unsurprisingly, the project has already been comprehensively mocked on Twitter by Remainers:

Just another day on normal island.

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