by Craig Oliver
New York • London
© 2016 by Craig Oliver
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ISBN 978-1-68144-109-2
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About the Author
Before entering 10 Downing Street as Director of Politics and Communications, Craig Oliver was an award-winning journalist. His roles included editing the BBC’s News at Six and Ten, Controller of the World Service and Executive Editor of ITV’s flagship news programmes. He has three daughters and lives in London.
You could unleash demons of which ye know not.
David Cameron on being asked to sum up the argument against a referendum
Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it.
The Fool, King Lear, Act II, Scene IV
So what was it about? People’s emotions matter even when they don’t seem wholly rational … There is, among a section of the population, a kind of hysteria, a contagious mourning of the kind that I remember in 1997 after the death of the Princess of Wales. It is not about the EU, of course …
Boris Johnson, writing ten days after the referendum
For my daughters, Maya, Iona and Honor.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
About the Author
Epigraph
Dedication
Preface: Referendum Night
Introduction
JANUARY
1. We Are All Just Prisoners Here
2. Famous Last Words
3. Remind Me Whose Idea This Was?
4. She Could Be PM in Six Months
FEBRUARY
5. Who Do EU Think You Are Kidding?
6. What It’s Like to be Ed Miliband
7. The Domino Theory
8. Clash of the Titans
9. I Have No Other Agenda
MARCH
10. The Price of Labour Will Go Up
11. An Honest Man
12. Well, This Is a Mess
13. The One Word He Didn’t Use
APRIL
14. It’s Been a Difficult Few Days
15. We’ve Just Got to Win This Thing
16. Who’s Up for a Threesome?
17. To the Back of the Queue
18. We’ll Get Back to You
MAY
19. World War Three
20. Welcome to the Labour Party
21. We Can’t Be Complacent
22. A Sticking Plaster on a Gaping Wound
23. Attempted Coup
JUNE
24. I Know Waffle When I Hear It
25. You’re Killing Us
26. This Is Giving Me a Heart Attack
27. We Need a Fluke to Win This Now
28. Nigel, You’re No Fisherman’s Friend
29. A Voice of Compassion
30. This Truly Is a Leap in the Dark
31. It’s Supposed to be About Europe
32. Referendum Day
AFTER
33. Like Jokers at an Auction
34. What Went Wrong?
35. The Last One Standing
Epilogue: ‘And so …?’
Acknowledgements
Picture Acknowledgements
Picture Section
Preface
Referendum Night
23 June 2016
IT IS 7 p.m. on the day of the EU referendum.
The Prime Minister’s Press Secretary, Graeme Wilson, and I are trying to get from the Remain HQ back to No. 10 Downing Street.
The gates are half open at the entrance to Mansion House Tube station. We wander down to the barriers, but are told torrential rain has caused heavy flooding – and there won’t be any trains for some time.
Back outside the station, I order an Uber cab. The world has turned monochrome, with swollen, grey clouds blotting out the sky. The air is heavy and it seems to take forever for the app to confirm a car is coming.
Both of us feel bruised by a brutal campaign. I have felt confident of victory all day, but am beginning to feel uneasy. Graeme has always been more cautious – telling me he’ll believe it when he sees it.
A car arrives just as fat raindrops are beginning to fall again. We edge our way back to No. 10 through gridlocked traffic. Graeme points to some tweets showing thousands of people stuck at railway stations because of the flooding struggling to get home. How many of them won’t be able to vote?
As we reach the Embankment, I get a call from Chris Grayling, the Leader of the House of Commons, who, despite being pro-Brexit, has made a point of keeping lines open during the campaign.
He tells me very clearly he believes Leave has lost – and says he will have a key role in bringing the Conservative party back together again. He warns me that Iain Duncan Smith will be the first Leave supporter on the BBC at 10 p.m. and could criticise David Cameron and the way he ran the campaign. I text the Prime Minister to let him know. He calls back almost immediately, but there isn’t much more to say.
It takes over an hour to crawl back to No. 10 – a journey that should take a quarter of that time.
When I arrive, Caroline Preston, the head of broadcasting, informs me that Theresa May, who has spent the campaign adopting a ‘submarine strategy’ of avoiding media where possible, is now keen to do the high-profile 8.10 a.m. slot on Radio 4’s Today. We’ve already told the programme the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, is doing it, but her team is trying to set it up behind our back. I am clear we should not shift.
I walk upstairs to discover the staterooms are taken up with a variety of people from across No. 10.
I’m wearing a blue, ‘I’m In …’ T-shirt. I’ve been wondering if it should have the words ‘… it up to my neck’ on the back.
The doors sectioning off the Pillared Room, Terracotta Room and White Room have been opened up – and the wide No. 10 family has come together. Civil servants, special advisers and politicians mingle. A long table has been set up, laden with moussaka and lasagne. Wine and elderflower cordial are served.
I chat with a few people. The mood is good.
Jim Messina, who ran Obama’s successful second campaign and is trying to do the same for Hillary Clinton, comes over for a chat. Always an interesting mix of the cool and the geeky, he’s looking confident – telling me his model says it’ll be around be 52–48 for Remain. Close, but I’ll take that. His prediction has extra force, because he was one of the few who called the general election right.
The Conservative party chairman, Andrew Feldman, comes over and says a lot of hedge funds have been running models, too – they are also confident of a Remain victory. That’s reflected in the markets, with the pound buoyant.
As we chat, the PM comes over. He’s looking relaxed in a casual, navy-blue shirt that isn’t tucked in. Another poll comes through. It’s 52–48 (on a sample size of 5,000) to us.
Samantha Cameron has some friends over. They want to know if I can get their children some Remain T-shirts.
There isn’t a single indicator that suggests we should be worried.
I get a call from Faisal Islam, Sky’s political editor. He’s planning on breaking a story at 10 p.m. that Farage has already conceded defeat. I go into the dark street outside No. 10, with a phalanx of cameras behind silver crush barriers, and have a talk with him. He shows me the embargoed quote.
As we approach the closing of polls at 10 p.m., a couple of dozen of us, including the PM, gather around a TV in the Pillared Room. What looks like a dodgy cop drama lumbers its way to a conclusion before the results show comes on BBC1.
The Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, Gavin Williamson, is showing everyone a letter coordinated by the MP Robert Simms. It’s signed by eighty-four pro-Brexit MPs, and argues David Cameron should stay on whatever the circumstances.
The point is to show that those eager to get rid of the PM can’t get the required fifty signatures. To me it simply shows there are dozens who wouldn’t sign it.
The BBC programme struggles – hampered by the fact there is no exit poll. After an hour of torture, I change into a suit and round up the press team to go to the Stronger In party.
We get in a cab that takes us a very long way round to the Festival Hall. The events team are glad to see us – standing outside the room, filling plastic bowls with some kind of stodgy rice dish. They warn it’s a bit thin inside.
I walk in, avoiding the TV presenters Kay Burley and Julie Etchingham, and have a series of conversations with the great and the good of the campaign, all of whom think we’ve done enough.
This campaign has made for strange bedfellows and I’m happy to see Sir Brendan Barber, the straightforward and thoroughly decent former head of the TUC. I tell him the PM has been quoting him when he’s been accused of Project Fear: ‘If you see someone running towards a cliff, you’re going to shout – and say some pretty rough things.’
The results are due to start coming in and I walk back to No. 10 across the pedestrian bridge linking the Festival Hall to the Embankment.
I decide to watch on my own in my office. I wrestle with a camp bed that’s been put in there so I can get some sleep, knowing I will never use it.
One of the earliest results is Sunderland – and it isn’t good. It was always expected to vote Leave, but 61 per cent to 39 per cent is worse than anyone was predicting
Sterling plummets.
I feel a wave of sickness wash through me.
I walk through to see Adam and Chewy, two of the brightest special advisers to the PM, who have been seconded to the campaign. There’s nothing to say and we just pull excruciated faces.
A few more results trickle in. Newcastle is bad – but others offer hope the North East may be an outlier.
I text Ryan Coetzee, the campaign’s Director of Strategy, ‘What do you think?’ He’s with a team comparing each result to a model that imagines the outcome is precisely fifty–fifty in every area of the country. If one side gets higher than needed for that result, it’s good for them. If they get less, it’s bad.
Ryan replies: ‘We’re just very slightly behind the curve. By a point, basically … but we need more data from the south. It’s looking too close to call. In fact, it’s very fucking close.’
It’s going to be a long night.
I doze for a few minutes and wake up to see a few results tumbling in. The lead is switching back and forth. I feel calm, but I’m urging us to safety with every result. Big London numbers come in, pulling us back – but then there are a series of smaller, bad results.
The BBC has designated the colour blue for Leave and yellow for Remain.
A pattern begins to emerge as results flash on the bottom of the screen: Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue.
Then we are pulled back by a massive Remain result.
Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Yellow. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Yellow.
I resist calling Ryan for as long as I can. When I do, he tells me, ‘We are just on course for a win – but it’s going to be tiny.’
‘How tiny?’
‘The model is currently predicting we will win by thirty-two thousand votes, but obviously that could change.’
Christ …
I walk back through to see Adam and Chewy. Both say they are starting to feel pessimistic.
We desperately need more very big results in London and northern metropolitan cities. It’s hard to see how that will happen.
David Cameron texts me: ‘How worried should we be?’
I want to be able to tell him it will all be OK, but there’s nothing I can think of. I reply that it’s desperately close – and we just have to see.
The results start piling in at 3 a.m. The BBC screen says that it is precisely fifty–fifty.
The sensation is one of having been sure of my path, stepping into quicksand, and then being slowly but surely pulled under. I look around for something or someone to help pull me out. But there’s nothing and no one.
The analysis is coming through from all sources that turnout in our areas just isn’t good enough.
I call Stephen Gilbert, the Conservative party’s former campaign chief, who has played a key role at Stronger In. I try to make it easy for him: ‘It’s not looking good is it?’
‘I can’t see us doing it now – no. The numbers we need in the cities are just too high.’
‘Have you told the PM?’
‘Not yet … no. I’m waiting until it’s certain.’
Lucy Thomas calls me from the Stronger In party, close to tears as she tells me, ‘ITV is going to call it for Leave.’
It’s approaching 4 a.m. I walk through to see Adam and Chewy again. Graeme Wilson is now in the SpAds (Special Advisers) room. He slaps me on the back and says he is going to bed: ‘It’s over.’
I borrow his coat. I need some fresh air.
David Cameron is standing outside his private office. He looks tired. Resigned in every sense.
The Cabinet Office minister, Matt Hancock, and the Prime Minister’s long-serving aide Liz Sugg are nearby. He waves us inside and slumps into the armchair he’s used to chair thousands of meetings over the past six years.
He says he’s been turning over in his mind if he should be less specific about when he goes – but doesn’t think it will work. I say, ‘I may be wrong, but I can’t see how you can stay.’ I sit on a wooden chair. Liz sits on another next to me, Matt Hancock on the sofa.
David Cameron says, ‘The trouble with all options other than going immediately is they collapse like a concertina. And the truth is, I wouldn’t believe in it.’
Liz Sugg asks if – given that he told people he would stay on – resigning now will be seen as a betrayal of trust. Both David Cameron and I are touched by this – everyone knew it was a question he had to answer that way, but no one will really be shocked at the change. The simple fact is that he couldn’t be responsible for delivering Brexit when he doesn’t believe in it.
The PM says, ‘It would be miserable. Every moment I was here, I’d be being prepared for the slaughterhouse – just waiting for the tap on the shoulder.’
The conversation goes round in circles – and he finds more ways to try and explain his decision, ‘I’d be saying, “Come and punch me as hard as you like.” And then I’d have to go.’ He starts to move to the door. I give Liz and Matt a hug. Then I walk out into the corridor where he is pausing a moment. I can’t think of anything other to do than slap him on the back. He says, ‘Don’t worry …’
I stop and watch him disappear down the corridor, with Liz Sugg beside him. It is obvious to me that this is over.
I walk out onto Whitehall. The street is deserted. My mind feels calm – but as I approach the memorial opposite the entrance to the Ministry of Defence, my body seems to go into spasm. I suddenly retch harder than I have done in my life. Nothing comes up. I retch again – s
o hard, it feels as if I’ll turn inside out. Dots of light dance before my eyes. And then it is over. I spit. Tears are streaming down my face – not from sadness, but from the sheer physical exertion.
I clear my head and walk on.
Crossing the pedestrian bridge, I look out towards St Paul’s and the City beyond. It has never seemed so beautiful as in this half-light.
I lean forward on the rail and take a deep breath, my thoughts already turning to what went wrong and why?
Introduction
THE DEBATE OVER whether David Cameron should have called a referendum on membership of the European Union will rage down the years.
Those who say he could have avoided it are, I believe, denying what was political reality. The issue of whether we should remain in or leave the EU had been a slow train coming for years. It just happened to arrive in the station on David Cameron’s watch.
A range of factors made it impossible for a Conservative prime minister to avoid. Scores of Tory MPs were rebelling on any and every issue that could possibly be linked to Europe; the right-wing press were full-throated in their demands; UKIP had become a significant force in British politics (eventually winning the 2014 European election); and over half the population indicated they wanted a say – with anyone under sixty never having been able to vote on the issue.
Those who declare we elect MPs to decide on such momentous things – and therefore shouldn’t have had a referendum – forget that it was a central promise in the Conservative party’s 2015 election manifesto. Had David Cameron not promised it then, the Conservative party, and consequently the country, would have become almost ungovernable. A great boulder would have been placed in the road, impossible to get round and stopping much else being done. Eventually his position would have become untenable.
In short, if he had not offered a referendum, it’s likely someone else would have come along who was prepared to do it – and he would have been deposed.
In attempting to remove that boulder, David Cameron was well aware that he was risking his job and the fight would be bitter and divisive.
I sat with him in the back of his Jaguar on the way to a speech in 2015. Those journeys were always a tight squeeze, with the car’s heavy armour plating and his red box placed between us minimising the space. He ran through the reasons for holding the referendum. I asked him if he could see the case against and he said instantly, ‘You could unleash demons of which ye know not.’ I thought it might be a quote from the Bible or Shakespeare, but when I looked it up, I couldn’t find it.
