The Set Verbatim = 1 load statement is working as expected by removing or retaining leading spaces in a field value. This is a good thing. Visualisations are displaying the same field value structure regardless of the spaces being removed or retained. The field value is displaying the same regardless of it having leading spaces or not.
Resolution:
In Qlik Sense, all leading and trailing blanks (ASCII 32) are stripped when they are displayed in a table or a filter pane. However, with verbatim = 1 set, they should be retained in the underlying data and this can be tested by exporting the table to Excel and checking there. There was a bug in June 2017 (and possibly earlier versions) where irrespective of the verbatim variable value, leading & trailing spaces were always stripped - this was fixed in February 2018. However, as stated above, irrespective of version and including the current one, tables & filter panes will not display leading & trailing spaces. If you would like to display blanks you will need to use non-breakable space (NBSP). For example chr(160) or chr(9).