Speaking on the tenth anniversary of the EU referendum, Nick Thomas-Symonds, Minister for the Constitution and European Union Relations, said the vote had created “a vacuum in British politics.” The result, he said, catalysed “ten years of unprecedented uncertainty.” Artists were quick to address that unprecedented uncertainty. Less than a year after the vote, a mural appeared on the side of a building in Dover, the port town long seen as Britain’s gateway to the continent. It depicted a workman atop a ladder chipping away at one of the 12 gold stars on the EU flag. Banksy claimed it soon afterwards, and it set the pattern for a body of work that would return to Brexit at the most charged moments of the decade that followed.
The Dover Brexit Mural (2016)
The choice of site for this mural did much of the work, as is so typical of Banksy’s murals. Dover is the UK’s closest port to mainland Europe and one of its busiest entry points for freight and people. The mural covered most of the gable end of the Castle Amusements Building on York Street, in full view of traffic heading to and from the ferry terminal. The town had also voted clearly to leave, with around 62% of the district backing Leave in 2016. The mural captured Britain dismantling the EU flag on a wall facing the Channel, and so Banksy put the argument where its consequences would be felt first.
In typical Banksy fashion, the image was simple to read. It reduced a complex political and legal process to a simple and literal act, and the cracking spreading across the blue field of the flag from the point of impact suggested the damage wouldn’t stop at one star being removed. The mural appeared overnight on 6-7 May 2017, one month before the general election and on the same weekend as the final round of the French presidential election.
What Happened to The Banksy Brexit Mural?
In August 2019, scaffolding went up around the building and the mural was painted over in white. It wasn't clear at the time who had ordered the work, or why. However, in September 2019, Banksy posted an image of a change to the mural he’d intended to make: a crumpled version of the flag, planned for the day of Brexit. His caption read: “Oh. I had planned that on the day of Brexit I was going to change the piece in Dover to this. But it seems they’ve painted over it. Never mind. I guess a big white flag says it just as well.”
Dover District Council acquired the site as part of its regeneration scheme, which included demolishing the building on which Banksy had created the mural. The council had estimated at the time that preserving the mural in place would cost between £2-4 million. The building came down in November of 2023, and while the council confirmed that the figure on the ladder and the star he was working on had been saved, the wider blue background couldn’t be recovered.
So, the mural mutated from its original state, to a white flag of surrender, to eventually a heap of rubble where only the figure enacting the demolition was preserved. The episode remains one the clearest examples of how his street pieces keep serendipitously developing after they’re made.
Banksy’s Unfulfilled 2017 General Election Print
A month after the Dover mural appeared, Banksy attempted to intervene more directly in British politics. Ahead of the June 2017 general election, Banksy had bold plans to offer a free print to voters in six constituencies around Bristol who could show they’d voted against the Conservative candidate. The print depicted a version of Girl with Balloon with the red heart replaced with a Union Jack balloon. Despite these plans, the Electoral Commission warned that such an offer could breach electoral law, not least because it encouraged voters to photograph their ballot papers, and so Banksy withdrew it within a day.
None of these prints were ever distributed, but the Union Jack balloon image still circulates online and is still presented as a genuine Banksy edition. Any work said to come from the project should be treated with considerable caution, and you can read more about properly authenticating Banksy prints in our Guide to Pest Control.
Vote to Love (2018)
The following year, Banksy took Brexit to the Royal Academy. His Vote to Love was painted onto a UKIP placard from the referendum campaign. Banksy changed its ‘Vote to Leave’ to read ‘Vote to Love’ and added the red heart-shaped balloon from Girl with Balloon, patched up with plasters. He submitted the work to the 2018 Summer Exhibition under the pseudonym ‘Bryan S Gaakman,’ a witty anagram of ‘Banksy anagram,’ and it was rejected. That was until coordinator of the exhibition Grayson Perry - another prolific British artist who’s had a lot to say about Brexit - included the work under Banksy’s name.
Of all his Brexit works, Vote to Love is the most closely tied to the referendum campaign itself. It went to auction in February 2020, less than two weeks after the UK formally left the EU, with an estimate of £400,000-600,000. After competitive telephone bidding, it sold to a US collector for around £1.2 million with fees.
Devolved Parliament (2009, Reworked 2019)
By early 2019, with Parliament repeatedly failing to agree a withdrawal deal, Banksy turned to Westminster itself. Devolved Parliament shows the House of Commons chamber filled with chimpanzees. It was first shown in 2009, well before the referendum, under the title Question Time at Banksy versus Bristol Museum. In March 2019 it went back on display at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, reworked and retitled. As the Sotheby's catalogue notes, the showing was timed to the date on which the UK was originally due to leave the EU. Around the same time, Banksy posted an image of the painting with the comment: “Laugh now, but one day no-one will be in charge.” A decade after it was painted, in a year of parliamentary deadlock, it read as direct commentary on how Westminster was handling Brexit.
The painting was offered at Sotheby's London in October 2019 with an estimate of £1.5-2 million and sold for £9.9 million including fees, at the time a record for Banksy at auction. Banksy responded on Instagram in his characteristically dry fashion: “Record price for a Banksy painting set at auction tonight. Shame I didn't still own it.” The record has since been overtaken, most notably by Love is in the Bin.
Keep Ou T (2019)
Banksy returned to the Summer Exhibition in June 2019 with Keep Ou T, a work built on a customs arrivals gate salvaged from Heathrow Airport that still carries its original ‘Arrivals from the EU’ signage. Banksy painted ‘KEEP OU’ across the closed shutter and added one of his stencilled rats at the base. The rat holds the missing ‘T’ and is using it to work at the padlock that's keeping the gate firmly shut.
Where the Dover mural showed the European project being taken apart, Keep Ou T turns to the border itself. The gate is a real piece of UK entry infrastructure. The rat, a figure Banksy has long used for outsiders and for those who find a way through regardless, undermines the instruction painted above it. Shown a year after Vote to Love and a few months after Devolved Parliament returned to Bristol, it made 2019 Banksy's most concentrated year of work on Brexit.
Keep Ou T at Auction During Frieze Week 2026
Seven years after it was first shown, Keep Ou T is coming to market. It will be offered in Phillips London's Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 15th October, during Frieze Week, with a published estimate of £1.2-1.8 million. It will be on public view at Phillips from 8th October until the sale.
This is the first time the work has been offered publicly, and it will be the first of Banksy's Brexit works to reach auction since Vote to Love in February 2020. Unique, installation-scale originals come to market far less often than his editions, so the result will add a rare public reference point for this part of his output. The timing is also apt. The work returns in this 10th anniversary year of the vote it responded to, and moves from a public institution into the market.
Over the decade that followed the vote, Banksy's Brexit works have taken on lives of their own. Ten years on, with the government itself describing the period as one of "unprecedented uncertainty", Banksy’s works document clearly how that uncertainty looked at the time. As Keep Ou T comes to auction this October, it brings the last of them back into public view.
