by Craig Oliver
Most important of all, you will be on the defensive – keep turning it to the positive case: Britain can have the best of both worlds, all the benefits of jobs and investment, while keeping the pound and not having open borders.
I find the PM in the windowless canteen of Broadcasting House, spreading jam on a croissant. He looks remarkably confident. He agrees with me that Boris’s description of himself as ‘veering around like a shopping trolley’ is hardly a great look.
I’m slightly more worried about Farage, who is on before us, trying to hijack him – and demand that he debate him. We spend a moment thinking of an answer (this is about the future of the country – not personalities on TV).
We head through to make-up, where Nick Robinson is waiting to say hello. I’ve known Nick for many years. I was an editor both at ITV and the BBC when he was political editor. Our friendship has survived some robust exchanges of views in my former and current jobs. As he does the paper review at the opening of the programme, DC and I work up some lines we want to deliver, warning that people need to ‘beware the illusion of sovereignty’ outside the EU, and warning Boris not to ‘link arms with Nigel Farage and George Galloway and take a leap into the unknown.’
Nigel Farage walks off one side of the set, and DC comes on the other. I sit just off camera with Nick Robinson. After a slow start, DC is on top form – landing his lines and adding a couple more: rejecting the idea that he is part of an establishment stitch-up, pointing out Jeremy Corbyn and the Greens aren’t seen as being part of that network. The weakest moment is when he is pushed on phasing of the welfare brake to curb welfare (no surprise), but, as he puts it when he is talking privately with Andrew Marr and Nick at the end, ‘I’ve been PM for six years. I know the arguments and I totally believe them.’
I spend the next couple of hours on the phone before taking my three daughters, Maya, Iona and Honor, to lunch with my brother. It’s very sweet of him, but getting across London to Greenwich is a nightmare and the rumours about Boris coming out today are growing stronger. The calls keep coming.
Then, in an interview with the BBC, Iain Duncan Smith claims Britain is more at threat of a terrorist attack if it stays in the EU. That goes straight to the top of the BBC website. So much for a sensible debate. I spend most of the lunch standing outside the restaurant trying to get key figures who can rebut this to answer their phones. George and the PM are irritated nothing is happening. The Home Office doesn’t want to put anyone up.
I’m on the phone all the way back across London.
The frenzy over Boris being about to announce his intentions reaches fever pitch.
He comes out just before 5 p.m. with a typically chaotic press conference on the street outside his home and announces he will be supporting Leave. All the key journalists are waiting – and must have been warned something was up a while ago to give them the time to get there.
I get endless calls about when the PM knew. The answer is more complicated than people realise. Boris’s team say he informed DC on Saturday morning. That’s true, but they are missing out the subsequent wobble, which we didn’t disclose at the time. Speaking to one of Boris’s aides – with whom I have a good relationship – I get the distinct impression he is not even aware there was a wobble that was shared with DC.
I call the PM. He received a final text from Boris just nine minutes before he told the world. This makes it tricky for us in terms of letting people know what really happened. We agree I should say, ‘the final confirmation to the PM was made shortly before the announcement,’ though I won’t reveal the wobble. If pressed, I do reveal that final text came in the quarter of an hour before the press conference. Again, that doesn’t reveal there was a wobble, though some of the smarter journalists think something strange has gone on.
The Leave campaign say it is an extraordinarily brave act of leadership. Many in No. 10 are smarting, annoyed that there has been so much dithering over something so crucial. A few believe it’s little more than a straightforward political calculation to ensure Boris has the best chance of sitting in No. 10 in just a few months. Many refuse to believe that he is even an Outer, because much of his argument seems to be voting Leave need not mean leaving, but another opportunity to renegotiate better terms and have a second referendum.
Later on, DC calls me just as I flop on the sofa exhausted. Both of us reflect on this being a defining moment. He tells me that Boris’s final message was clear he doesn’t expect to win, believing Brexit will be ‘crushed.’ He says Boris is really a ‘confused Inner’, and their previous conversations confirmed that view to him, with discussions about tactics to get the best possible deal, and, ‘He actually said he thought we could leave and still have a seat on the European Council – still making decisions.’
The bottom line is, this is the new reality and we need to get used to it. It will be a proper fight now, with the papers billing it as a ‘Clash of the Titans’ – the two biggest Conservatives locked in mortal combat.
Chapter 9
I Have No Other Agenda
THE NEXT MORNING, Nick Herbert, who is running the Conservative In campaign, sits us down and runs through his latest numbers on Tory MPs likely to be In or Out:
116 for us + 59 likely (though by no means certain) = 175
30 won’t say or undecided
40 not yet publicly declared (almost certainly Leave)
85 declared Leave
Total = 125 Leave
He says we are ‘perilously close’ to a scenario of half the parliamentary party being Out. The fear is that Boris has simply added to the number of people feeling emboldened. Ministers like Penny Mordaunt, the Defence minister, have come out, contradicting her boss, Michael Fallon.
The conversation turns to the PM’s Commons statement. A draft has been done. It’s evident we need to put to bed the idea raised by Boris in his Telegraph column that this should be a vote for a second renegotiation and referendum. This will be seen as taking him on. DC agrees, but there is quite a bit of legalistic discussion about what to say.
I draft the following:
An idea has been forwarded that if the country votes to leave we could have a second renegotiation. I want to be clear that I believe that is wrong. Having a second renegotiation and referendum is not on the ballot paper. For a Prime Minister to ignore the express will of the British people who had voted to leave would not just be wrong. It would be undemocratic.
This is worked into the statement.
DC wants to say that he is recommending staying in – and he has no agenda in doing so, because he isn’t seeking re-election. Of course, he gets that he needs to win for reputational purposes, but he isn’t making a calculation about getting re-elected.
Obviously this will be interpreted as a sledgehammer to Boris’s face, and the hacks will see it as a gift from the gods, fights always make for great copy.
During a three-hour session in the Commons, DC says, ‘I am not standing for re-election, I have no other agenda than what is best for our country.’
He doesn’t name Boris, who sits arms folded, disgruntled, unable to fire back, but he doesn’t have to. When Boris does stand to ask a question, Keith Simpson, an MP who always cheers me up by acting like the naughty schoolboy at the back of the class, sits behind him and heckles, ‘Tuck your shirt in!’ Boris’s hand moves behind him as he begins to speak, clearly a little thrown. All he is able to hit back with is a pre-scripted question about ‘sovereignty’, which the PM is easily able to deal with.
A major chunk of my time at the moment is trying to get the machinery in place to fight the battle that is actually emerging – and not the one we thought it would be. There’s much to be pleased about.
Amid the noise over the PM’s dig at Boris in the Commons yesterday, our plan to knock on the head the second renegotiation idea is working. There was a danger that if the idea got off the ground, people could be persuaded there was no risk in voting Leave, because there’d be another vote. But now
Boris’s team is briefing he never meant it, despite it appearing in print.
Another big success is a letter from hundreds of businesses stating they want us to stay in the EU. It’s a big strategic goal to demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of businesses are on our side – and it is working.
Boris does do a clip late this morning, claiming the business letter is ‘scaremongering’ and these were the companies that said we should join the Euro (not true in the vast majority of cases).
The transcript of his clip comes through as I am in the car with DC, going to an event at the O2 HQ in Slough. We talk about if this really is going to be a Clash of the Titans-style contest, where each of them feels they need to always punch back. We agree that would be a massive distraction – though it may be unavoidable.
We also discuss plans for me to resign and go to the Remain campaign as their Director of Comms. I’ve had a chat about what it would mean with the Cabinet Secretary and his head of ethics, Sue Gray, who are as thoughtful as ever about how it could work within the rules. The PM is keen to know if I’ll be allowed to be around at No. 10. I tell him I get to keep my phone (which the campaign will have to reimburse the Government for) and come to meetings called by him. The issue is when I leave to do it.
A few points are crystallising:
It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the referendum is being seen as a career opportunity, not just for the ‘Big Beasts’, but for some lower-ranking MPs and backbenchers.
The sexiest story is the ‘blue-on-blue’ Clash of the Titans. That’s of no use to us, because it’s a turn-off for the left and centre-left, who must vote for us in numbers. We have to avoid throwing the media red meat in this area.
The Labour party is vital. We can’t win it without them. But will the voters turn out for a leader who seems barely competent and seems indifferent on the EU? Perhaps even more worrying, Corbyn was put there by people who think the system is failing them. Will they vote for the status quo option, led by a Conservative?
Stephen Gilbert agrees that if this is just about the Tories, we are screwed, so we need to do everything we can to stop Tory wars, saying, ‘We mustn’t put temptation in their way.’ What he means is the chance for a struggling Labour party to maximise our pain. He also thinks that there would be a serious possibility the Labour leadership could change its mind and suggest at best indifference, and at worst outright hostility, to the prospect of remaining.
I see what he means as I start to spend more and more time at Stronger In. Much of the team is made up mainly of Labour figures. They are smart, professional and welcoming. The trouble is, they are from the Blairite or Brownite wings of the party – and have literally no influence with the Leader’s team, one of whom doesn’t seem to recoil from being referred to as a neo-Stalinist. If there is any contact with the campaign, they give the impression that it has been done under sufferance and with no trust. Will Straw struggles to set up a meeting with Corbyn.
To make things worse, everyone keeps going on about how close the campaign HQ is to Westminster, but getting used to life on the District and Circle lines is a chore.
The offices are just across the road from Cannon Street station. There are about forty people packed into a long, thin room watching news channels on three monitors, mounted on the walls.
There’s a tiny meeting room, with two bikes parked in it and a long table that is too wide, surrounded by giant, leather swivel chairs. Every time someone new wants to join a meeting, everyone has to move down a seat, or the person who is late has to squeeze through an alarmingly narrow gap.
On Wednesday 24 February, I get a 6 a.m. shock. Listening to the headlines, I hear Michael Gove has claimed the European Court of Justice can overturn DC’s renegotiation.
He did an interview with Laura Kuenssberg last night, embargoed for the morning. We were not contacted and consequently there is no rebuttal. Sources at the BBC tell me it was deliberate not to ask our view on this claim.
I then go through a process of trying to shake a system that is literally sound asleep into action. Ed Llewellyn and I get on to the current and former Attorney Generals. We finally get to the conclusion: ‘It is not true to say that this deal is not legally binding. Britain’s new settlement in the EU has legal force and is an irreversible International Law Decision that requires the European Court of Justice to take it into account.’ We add some supporting material from the Cambridge professor of EU law and the actual agreement.
This is a big moment. We are slapping down a Government minister. And not just any Government minister. We are correcting the Lord Chancellor/Minister of Justice on a straightforward matter of legal fact.
Frustratingly, BBC news bulletins seem more interested in the fact that it has an exclusive interview with a leading Outer than they do with the fact the Minister of Justice has screwed up on a point of law.
It feels like it’s going to be a bad day when, at the end of my 8.15 media meeting, one of the people responsible for helping put together a letter from military leaders supporting Remain, which has been in this morning’s papers, comes in looking ashen-faced and says, ‘I’m afraid I’ve got a problem for you.’ He tells me that one of the signatories didn’t actually sign it. It’s Sir Michael Rose, who won’t fudge it and thinks – on balance – he is an Outer.
I feel slightly sick. It’s ‘Politics 101’ – get your facts straight. There’s an elaborate story about how Rose looked interested, but then the contact dried up, and it was assumed he was in. It’s a basic and terrible error.
I spend almost no time with the Prime Minister’s PMQs prep team – week after week it’s a damp squib, and this week is only notable for Corbyn having a go at the PM because his mum has admitted she’s worried about cuts and DC firing back, ‘I’ll tell you what she would say to Jeremy Corbyn, “Put on a decent suit, straighten your tie and sing the national anthem.”’
I make a point of watching the One O’Clock News. They are still leading off on the Gove line – even though it has been well and truly blasted. Why not lead on ‘Gove criticised …’ or at least, ‘A major row has broken out after claims …’ After the intro, I spot instantly that they are running yesterday’s package as it starts with the front page of the Times splashing on the business letter. To my amazement the piece keeps going for a full minute. It’s clear no one in the gallery is actually watching the programme go out.
The spat over the story runs all day. We now have a wall of lawyers saying in definitive terms that Gove is simply wrong on this. When I watch the 6 p.m. news, it’s claimed No. 10 is ‘rattled’ by Gove. I roll my eyes, exhausted by it. What hope do people have if they think his claims deserve any credence?
The consolation is the Leave campaign is doing no better. Boris continues to be wobbling like a wonky shopping trolley. The main line out of an interview he does with Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson in The Times is a U-turn on the second referendum point he made last week in his Telegraph column. He’s now saying, ‘Out means out,’ and he would like to negotiate a series of trade deals when we go. He also admits there would be an initial downturn, but claims it would be like the ‘Nike tick’, a little down before a lot of up.
We hit this hard, saying:
This is a major admission from Boris Johnson that there would be a downturn following Britain pulling out of Europe. He is playing fast and loose with people’s jobs, with no clue over what he actually wants for Britain. Last week he was Out to stay In, now he’s Out to be Out, admitting this would be a major blow to our economy.
The final Sunday in February’s newspapers read like one big diary column. Endless gossipy stories magnified and amplified to give the impression Tory Inners and Outers are screaming in each other’s faces.
The Mail on Sunday splashes on Philip Hammond declaring Bill Cash is ‘a shit’ for releasing a document that was meant to remain secret. The Sunday Times has dark warnings from Outers that DC will face a leadership challenge, come what may, if he c
ontinues to attack them – never mind the sense that one of the things they object to (Gove to be sacked) is a fiction based on an anonymous briefing.
There’s also some nonsense about the Out Cabinet ministers having a ‘999’ call – based on the British Lions all piling in if one of their players was punched.
Reading it all, I am struck by the absurdity and vanity, politics reduced to a food fight, with politicians and journalists seemingly unaware how ridiculous they look to a dismissive public.
I find myself driving in for an 8p.m. meeting with the PM, Chancellor and Ed, in the PM’s flat.
The idea is to have these meetings weekly, replicating what we did in the run-up to the election. As of next week, Liz, Kate, Ameet and Stephen Gilbert will join.
Samantha Cameron comes in with a bottle of San Pellegrino, a plastic jug of tap water and some glasses.
The PM wants to start with how we think we are doing. The story of the week is undoubtedly how Boris has put himself in the position where he could be PM by the end of the year. We’re also being contradicted on everything by Leave Cabinet ministers.
On the plus side, pressure from us forced Leave off the idea of a second referendum. Businesses, economists and experts of all descriptions are being wheeled out on a daily basis to support us, while they are on the back foot over what Out looks like, suggesting alternative trade deals from Australia to Vanuatu, all of which are plainly terrible.
We have crisp, clear messages, which we are repeating relentlessly.
MARCH
Chapter 10
The Price of Labour Will Go Up
IT IS THE first day of March and the Out newspapers are becoming more and more personal, more and more destructive. Here are a couple of lines from the Sun Op-Ed, headlined ‘Panicky PM’:
