Westmonster editor plans to fight Brexit 'culture war' by 'cutting the crap' out of media

Brexit backers and Donald Trump supporters now face a "culture war" after winning the White House election and EU referendum in 2016, Michael Heaver told on IBTimes UK on Wednesday (8 February).

The former Nigel Farage media aide launched anti-establishment website Westmonster with insurance tycoon and Leave.EU co-founder Arron Banks in January.

Heaver, 27, said the Drudge Report inspired publication aims to address the "chasm" between traditional media and "what is going on in the country".

"The way the world is going now there is so much information out there on so many different channels...and people aren't just looking at what's going on in their own countries, they are looking to Europe, they are looking to America and they are looking worldwide," he argued.

Heaver hopes to bring all of this information to the Westmonster audience in short, sharp and unashamedly partisan articles.

The young Eurosceptic wants to "cut the crap" out of media voters in the US and the UK are used to reading and take advantage of the "worldwide movement of people who believe in strong borders, believe in national sovereignty and have defied the polls".

"We are not the place people are going to go to read 700 or 800 words on a speech, that's not what we're about," Heaver added.

The Westmonster editor refused to disclose how much money Banks has put behind the project – "I "would never discuss amounts of money" – and failed to provide any traffic figures. The site is currently ranked 5,454 in the UK, according to Alexa.

Heaver said he has been "encouraged" by the audience figures his site has attracted over the past month, with plans for organic expansion in the future.

"We're not going to make the mainstream media mistake, which is go out, spend loads of money and basically bust the whole thing," he said. "We are likely to move into over the next few months and years is video content, podcasts and there may be an app down the road as well."

The site's articles have been shared on Leave.EU's and Nigel Farage's social media channels, which have hundreds of thousands of followers, but Westmonster has entered a tough media market.

The right-wing Guido Fawkes blog recorded a recording breaking year in 2016 thanks to the EU referendum and former Conservative MP Louise Mensch is attracting readers across the Atlantic with her new Heat Street site.

That is without mentioning the hyper-competitive traditional British press, including The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian.

So why, with that tough media market, did Heaver leave Farage's side after a year and a half? "It was a very, very exciting time," he said.

"But what we are seeing now is that it's not just about winning the Brexit referendum or in America's case Trump winning the election, there's actually a culture war going on here."

Heaver pointed to the anti-Trump protests in London and the "relativity small group of activists making a lot of more noise" about the Brexit vote.