by Craig Oliver
Over the weekend, the big political news of the day is Matthew Parris slamming Boris in his column for The Times. It feels like a drive-by shooting – blasting his reputation in the face with a sawn-off shotgun at point-blank range.
It’s all in there – every difficult thing in his private life.
The next day the Mail on Sunday also does a hit on Boris in the form of a long piece from his former lover, Petronella Wyatt.
DC texts to say he thought it was quite sympathetic.
‘Up to a point,’ I reply. ‘It may be sprayed with perfume, but it’s really a pile of dung.’ She says he has no friends, he has depression that’s so bad he can hardly climb the stairs, his hate of conflict leads him to lie on a regular basis, and he has a ‘European’ approach to fidelity. Part of me feels for him and his family – none of this can be pleasant.
APRIL
Chapter 14
It’s Been a Difficult Few Days
ON APRIL FOOL’S Day, I try to take stock again. I believe the campaign is on course, but the ship is being buffeted all over the place. There’s also the sneaking suspicion that we may make it into port, only to find the harbour is mined and snipers are waiting to pick us off.
I set out the problems:
1. The realisation that the Conservatives running Vote Leave (chaired by Gove) intend to continue fighting dirty. Today the National Living Wage came into force (complete with a Treasury press notice hailing it as ‘the Chancellor’s National Living Wage’.) John Whittingdale and Chris Grayling were straight out of the traps, trashing it for acting as a magnet for EU migrants – despite the fact that they are Cabinet ministers who have fully signed up to the policy.
The news comes as we get a leak of a letter that Vote Leave are encouraging doctors and nurses to sign – it specifically attacks the PM and the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, for their handling of the NHS and claims it could be better funded if we left. It’s unacceptable and utterly inept at the same time, directly attacking the PM on the NHS, while pleading they ‘desperately need’ signatures.
I put the letter straight out there with a press notice highlighting their desperation, several quotes from leading health professionals, and pointing out how leading figures including Vote Leave’s Chief Executive, Matthew Elliott, have supported a range of policies that would seriously damage the NHS, including: Cuts to spending and ending the ring-fence; cuts to NHS staff pay; increasing prescription charges; allowing NHS Trusts to fail; increased NHS privatisation.
The cynicism of their approach is breathtaking – presenting themselves as champions of something they do not value.
I follow it up with a note to the PM saying there will be a lot of questions about what Gove’s role is in all of this, running the Vote Leave board – and, is challenging Government policy what we meant when we said we would free ministers from collective responsibility? Needless to say it will cause bad blood.
The PM was told by some of the Cabinet ministers who joined Leave that they would ‘police and call out bad behaviour’. Destroying the Government’s track record on the national living wage and the NHS is hardly doing that.
Amid all of this are constant briefings that Michael Gove should be DPM, coming in as a ‘unifying figure’. It seems obvious the people who are pushing that around.
2. A deeply divided Labour party, whose leadership is at best laid back at the prospect of staying in the EU. Reports are that Corbyn’s office is deeply split and there’s a nagging question facing them all: Why help Cameron? Those who are on our side are struggling. Alan Johnson, the well-liked former Home Secretary who is running Labour In, seems unable to get on air.
Part of my week is spent working up a plan to get more Labour voices out there. The Today programme isn’t interested in taking Johnson, though (despite allowing John Redwood and Dominic Raab to go on and make the case for Out last week). They take Cabinet ministers, who are often caught up in wider issues – and that counts as part of our quota for In. I call Jamie Angus, the editor of the Today programme, and explain to him that the campaign wants Labour voices to be heard – not just Conservative cabinet ministers. He says he plans to take Corbyn on Tuesday, but not Johnson on Monday. I sigh heavily, knowing Corbyn won’t be on message.
3. ‘Events’. We are working hard to get a message across, but ‘events’ keep happening … the resignation of a Cabinet minister … the threat to Port Talbot after Tata Steel bailed on it …
4. Debates within Stronger In over our message. This all starts with Andrew Cooper pointing out that there has been a 3.5% swing to Leave in the latest polls. He puts this down to Labour and Lib Dem voters thinking this is a Tory war, and not getting the signal they are supposed to be on board. He suggests that we start using the idea that we can have ‘the best of both worlds’ by staying in the EU – i.e. all the benefits of being able to trade freely in the single market, with the jobs, opportunities and security that brings, without being a member of the Euro, or the Schengen open borders agreement. He also feels we need to play a different tune, because the strong days on the economy are not moving the polls enough.
Ryan Coetzee feels that we should be almost exclusively on the economy: the single market is the best trade arrangement Britain can have, and is better than all the alternatives.
Andrew worries we are losing the importance of the idea of ‘having the best of both worlds.’ He also fears that we aren’t doing enough to explain to people that one of the keystones of the Leave argument, that the EU needs us more than we need them, is being destroyed.
And round it goes …
On Saturday 2 April, the PM arrives back from the nuclear summit and we hold a conference call that I have asked for.
We focus on Out ministers trashing Government policies, specifically the NHS and the National Living Wage.
DC says he accepts it is a big problem and thinks we need to do all we can to get the press to call out Gove. That would be fine, but he is currently doing no media, hiding, I suspect, from the question of whether he was the source of ‘Queen Backs Brexit’.
George puts his finger on the issue. The problem is the Conservative party is divided. Our bottom line is we want to try and keep this show on the road, minimising disputes. Theirs is – we are prepared to walk out at any time, causing even more chaos.
Some suggest doing more to shame them: getting senior figures out to say no Conservative should be associated with attacking major Government policies. DC thinks this just creates another Tory row story.
Later in the day, there has been some contact with Gove, who says he hadn’t seen the NHS letter attacking the PM and Jeremy Hunt, but agrees the attacks shouldn’t be personal, or on policy. I am sceptical.
Chris Grayling claims his remarks on the National Living Wage were ‘grossly oversold’. Just don’t say them then.
I have the strong feeling of being taken for a fool. To be clear: Michael Gove is the chair of an organisation that is trashing our key policies. He stood on a manifesto based on them – and voted for them. He is almost certainly behind the ‘Queen Backs Brexit’ story. Do we need any more evidence?
Late in the afternoon, Leave tweets an attack story on the NHS with a picture of Jeremy Hunt. Gove, who has claimed this should stop, now says the tweets are automated – so this one couldn’t have been stopped. Pull the other one. But even if that is the case, why were they happening in the first place?
Gove may be avoiding interviews, but he makes some impact by writing a book review on Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister at the height of the Euro crisis. He uses it as a way to forward the Leave case.
It’s over-written, declaring anyone who claims to be interested in the poor should cry ‘hot tears of rage’ over what is happening in the EU, suggesting it is a ‘gateway to despotism’.
I talk this through with friends at No. 10 – several of whom are shocked by his behaviour. One who has known Gove for years describes him as ‘out of control’ and willing to sacrific
e relationships to get what he wants. They see the constant briefing about how he should be Deputy Prime Minister and fear he is trying to engineer a post-referendum world where he is allowed to rule the roost.
Things feel like they are stepping up a gear in the week beginning 4 April.
Stronger In tell me on our 8.10 a.m. call that the leader of the Labour In campaign, Alan Johnson, pulled out of doing morning media, because he wasn’t being taken by Radio 4’s Today. ITV’s Good Morning Britain were prepared to send a satellite truck to his house, but he pulled out around 8 p.m. last night.
I’m told he said, ‘There’s no point in doing media for the sake of it.’
I have a quiet word with some of the Labour people at Stronger In. They totally understand that persuading the Good Morning Britain audience is vital – and so is getting big Labour figures out there to make the case.
Will Straw says he knows it is a problem and is just as concerned as me. My gut is there’s a grain of vanity in this. Politicians want to know their peer group sees or hears them, and none of them watch the ITV breakfast show.
The key meeting of the morning involves bringing together the key stakeholders around the leaflet setting out the Government position on the advantages of staying in the EU. I am handed a final version of a document that I and dozens of others have crawled over.
I set out a plan to brief the broadcast political editors on Wednesday, in order to get it on the evening and late news bulletins. The hope is to give it a good run before it is monstered by a number of papers. Any idea that this won’t drive the Leave campaign wild is dispelled by one page that says ‘EU membership brings economic security, peace and stability.’
I propose sending it to the papers at 5.45 p.m. on the same day.
I also want every penny of the spend on it out there and transparent from the off – I don’t want any suggestion that we are hiding anything.
I head over to Stronger In to meet Will Straw. I’m standing on the eastbound Tube station platform, when James Slack, the political editor of the Daily Mail, calls across the tracks to me. We chat about how he’s heading to HQ to do a shift writing the editorials. I’m struck by how we have such a good relationship, despite the vitriol of so much in the paper.
At Stronger In, Will Straw and I head into a booth off the main campaign room. I see others wondering if they are going to be invited, but we both avoid their gaze.
I show him the leaflet and warn him of the storm it’ll provoke. He seems pleased and impressed. We talk a bit more and he lets me see quite how tough it is dealing with the Labour party at the moment – they are lost in their own internal world and battles.
The BBC has joined forces with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to do an exposé of a Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, accused of aiding tax avoidance on an industrial scale. Millions of documents have been leaked, and lumped in with characters like Putin, and African and Middle Eastern despots, is the PM’s dad. Every time I look up at my TV screens, I see a still of him, or file footage of the PM going over to kiss him and his mother at a campaign event sometime before 2010.
The PM has been comforting his mother and says he knows little about his father’s business, as he is now dead and most of it happened decades ago. It’s clear we need to get more of a sense of what went on with the PM’s tax affairs. At lobby the Prime Minister’s official spokeswoman quotes a line that seemed to settle this the last time the issue was raised, saying the Cameron family’s tax affairs are a ‘private matter’. This time that phrase is seen as a red rag to a bull.
As the papers drop, I can see there is a real danger of this going out of control, with the Mail saying the PM has ‘questions to answer’ about his father’s business. It’s happening as we are trying to land perhaps the most controversial thing in the campaign, a £10 million taxpayer-funded leaflet explaining the Government position. We are stretched, to put it mildly.
The next morning it’s obvious to all of us the use of the phrase ‘private matter’ regarding the PM’s finances was a mistake.
DC is heading off for a campaign visit on Europe. As the morning meeting is drawing to a close, it is agreed that he should make a statement making his financial position clear then. It is all done in a hurry, but he will answer that he does not have any shares.
I watch him at the Cameron Direct event. Faisal Islam asks him a question about Blairmore, his father’s company, and he delivers a spiel about not owning shares. My heart sinks a little, as I see we are opening the door to more questions. We are leaving threads dangling, almost begging a bored media pack to pull on them. The hacks want to know – you say that about yourself, but what about Sam and the kids?
I should be focused on the leaflet, but instead I am running around trying to work out the situation regarding the PM’s family and shares. I start with Laurence Mann, the PM’s political secretary, and we spend an unhappy couple of hours in calls with DC, Sam and their accountant. I release the following statement:
A No. 10 spokesperson said: ‘To be clear, the Prime Minister, his wife and their children do not benefit from any offshore funds. The Prime Minister owns no shares. As has been previously reported, Mrs Cameron owns a small number of shares connected to her father’s land, which she declares on her tax return.’
Of course, the problem with all of this is we look like we are on the run. It’s also distracting us from the serious work of winning this referendum.
On Wednesday morning, there’s no doubt about it – we are on the run on the PM’s father’s offshore company Blairmore – and his connection to it. When we think we have sealed off the exits, another one opens.
I call DC to go through it all. He tells me that as part of a portfolio of shares his father operated for him, he did own Blairmore shares.
We go through the difficult questions about the past and if he thinks what his father did was wrong. We are back to the fact that the PM’s father set up this company thirty-four years ago. We don’t know enough about it to be categoric and we don’t want to appear to be misleading.
This is a pain, because it’s also the day when I’m supposed to be briefing the fact that the Government is spending £9.4 million on a leaflet explaining why it believes we should remain in the EU. It’s by no means nailed down. There’s now endless buggering around about the wording of the associated website. I’m literally chased down the corridor to another meeting by people who have a series of finicky, late questions, which they should have had the answers to days ago.
Meanwhile, I’ve asked Graeme to spell out the key questions on Blairmore:
Have you benefited from your father’s offshore activities in the past? Were your school fees/home, etc. paid for from the funds?
You’ve talked in the past about people who don’t pay the taxes they should as being immoral. Were your father’s actions immoral?
Do you think your father was wrong to have gone to such great lengths to avoid paying UK tax?
Does your mother still benefit from offshore trusts or funds?
Do you or your family have any connection to the Blairmore fund?
You inherited a significant amount of cash from your father in his will. Did that money come from his offshore activities?
You are hosting a corruption summit next month – aren’t these revelations a huge humiliation for you?
Next up is a meeting to brief Michael Fallon and Liz Truss about the leaflet. Both of them look genuinely surprised that we are doing it – though they conclude it’s a good leaflet and we need to be on the front foot about the Government not being neutral in this.
I have carved out half an hour to read the very detailed Q&A on the leaflet. I’d love to delay the whole thing, but with millions of these documents already printed, the story is certain to leak soon without us being able to shape it, if we don’t go ahead. I know a lot of it, but I need to be totally on it. The draft isn’t finished. There are seventeen minutes before I am due to brief th
e broadcast political editors.
The briefing goes well. But what should be the biggest thing we do this week is looking like an aside in my day. Graeme and I return to worrying about the PM’s shares.
We hold a conference call, hoping to get to the bottom of it all. DC sprays a lot of jargon at us. He’s been on the phone to accountants and he’s had it all explained. It’s all to do with a time when exchange controls were lifted and stockbrokers were allowed to buy ‘dollar denominated shares’.
In a machine-gun delivery he explains that Blairmore was registered with the Inland Revenue and above board. He decided to sell his shares in Blairmore in 2010, along with others … all totalling £155k. He says we should meet with his brother Alex and someone called Nick Peppiatt, who understand everything about this.
The concern is how it will look that the PM sold his shares in Blairmore in January 2010. Will it look like he was getting rid of something that could be conceived to be dodgy?
Half an hour later, Nick Peppiatt and Alex Cameron arrive in the PM’s office. Alex looks like an older, heavier version of his brother. Peppiatt a classic City man, wide-eyed and looking younger than his years, his thick curls cut short, and wearing a Hermès tie.
Alex takes the lead in explaining what has gone on:
When exchange controls were lifted over thirty years ago, people were suddenly able to buy dollar denominated shares without paying a premium.
There was a rush to take advantage of this new market – creating funds to buy, fund and sell global equities.
You could buy an off-the-shelf company in Panama to do this. You needed a lawyer to do this and the best one turned out to be the now infamous Mossack Fonseca.
The company was renamed Blairmore and the Bahamas was chosen to be its base. (I ask why not somewhere more reputable? And he says that these were the only kind of places where it could be done.)
Administrators were put in to run the company, including Bahamian directors.
