The Cambridge Analytica Files was a story of two whistleblowers. A week after Christopher Wylie’s revelations in March 2018, Shahmir Sanni, a former volunteer for the official Brexit Leave campaign, was the second act. This was a single, multi-stranded story – about the abuse of technology involving two connected companies - Cambridge Analytica in the UK and AggregateIQ in Canada – which played a major part in Trump’s election and Brexit. But it was a single story with two very different reactions and outcomes.
Sanni told the Observer that Vote Leave deliberately broke the law by purporting to donate £625,000 to a youth group, BeLeave, but instead funnelled it directly to its data and ad-targeting firm AggregateIQ (which had links to Cambridge Analytica).
This was confirmed in an Electoral Commission report in July, and the evidence passed to the police. But at the time, Sanni’s claims were largely ignored. Instead, he became a target of the rightwing media, aided and abetted by the Downing Street press office, which issued an official statement saying that Sanni was the spurned lover of the prime minister’s aide Stephen Parkinson (who had been a key figure at Vote Leave) and had fabricated the entire story.
Wylie lays much of the blame for the story’s reception on the BBC: “I think the BBC profoundly failed,” he says. “They initially refused to cover it, and when they did, they talked to the people who had committed the unlawful act, not the people who submitted the evidence.”
Sanni has been vindicated twice over: after the Electoral Commission report, he sued the TaxPayers’ Alliance – where he was working at the time of the revelations – for sacking him and was liable for substantial damages when the thinktank conceded all claims, including that it had unlawfully vilified Sanni in the media.
The whole experience has had a profound effect on Sanni’s mental health. “I was depressed,” he says. “But it took me a very long time to realise that it was more than that: I had actually been traumatised by what happened. I’d wake up crying and not know why. It was only when I started having panic attacks that I sought help.”
And while, on the surface, Wylie’s experience has been more positive, his revelations have had a global impact, it’s not been without its own repercussions. “People deal with trauma in different ways,” he tells me. “My mental wellbeing was hugely impacted. The whole thing was traumatic. And it’s a type of trauma that people are either very unaware of or unforgiving of.”
Wylie suggests racism played a part in Sanni’s experience: “I’m not sure it would have happened if he’d looked like me”. Sanni says he finds it painful when he turns on the television and sees people from the TaxPayers’ Alliance and Vote Leave on TV and says he’s considered moving to America. “I really think Trump’s America is preferable to Brexit Britain for a Muslim, gay man.”
What’s clear is that nothing could have prepared either of them for the reality of what it means to be a whistleblower. “I’ve had people say, ‘Oh you’ve made whistleblowing cool,’” says Wylie. “But it’s really not. It’s a good thing to do. And it’s the right thing to do. But it’s arduous and difficult, particularly if you are going up against something that’s really powerful and political. And I was very lucky to have a lot of support around me.”
Knowing everything he knows now, I ask Sanni would he do it again? He hesitates. “I would. I just have a very strong sense of right and wrong. The only thing I’m really proud of is my sense of justice. And I know, aged 60, I will look back to what I did aged 24 and know that I tried my best to protect millions of people.”
