Unleashing Demons

by Craig Oliver

  Obama’s intervention feels as big as it can get – and rather than ignoring it or changing the subject, Leave are raging against it.

  My gut is that all it does is accentuate the fact that our eminently reasonable friend is being straight with us.

  DC is to play golf with the President. All week some at No. 10 have been warning it will come over as an elitist disaster. All week I’ve been saying, ‘It’s fine.’ This morning DC is obviously regretting the prospect, as Obama plays a lot and he plays just a few times a year. ‘I kind of wish I was spending the afternoon doing anything but this.’

  In the afternoon, news comes through of the golf match. When it’s done, DC texts me so we can give some colour to the Sundays: ‘I got my par on the first hole. Obama and I played with an expert staffer of his each. Very even match, but he is much better than me! I only lost one ball, which for me playing eighteen holes is a record. Great game. DC.’

  Everyone is asking – will the President’s visit come to be seen as the moment that turned it all?

  Chapter 18

  We’ll Get Back to You

  THERESA MAY APPEARS on Marr this morning. I have a call to run her through her potential questions with Adam Atashzai at 8 a.m.

  The interview is a simple exercise in defence – with Marr attempting to batter her on immigration and Theresa frustrating him. The Remain cause is not forwarded.

  We have agreed with her team that they will be briefing out part of her speech. It’s standard to run these things through No. 10 so that there are no surprises. Come 4.15 p.m. we have seen nothing.

  I make some calls to ensure they send it. They say they are sorry, but it has been hectic post-Marr. When I read it, alarm bells begin to ring.

  It starts well:

  She will put forward a positive case for shaping and leading the EU from within, citing security, trade and the economy as reasons to remain.

  But there are phrases in there that will be catnip to a lobby suspecting she isn’t fully signed up.

  The Home Secretary will call for a more mature debate, which acknowledges the complex challenges that lie ahead.

  Acknowledging it is a balanced judgement, the Home Secretary will say that she does not want to: ‘Insult people’s intelligence by claiming that everything about the EU is perfect, that membership of the EU is wholly good, or that the sky will fall in if we vote to leave.’

  My concern is that there are well-chosen phrases in there, which will make the story that the Home Secretary is chiding the Remain campaign for its approach and it’s a fine decision between staying and leaving. In other words, in a world where the media is already speculating about her position, this drags everyone towards a discord story, rather than a positive statement in favour of remaining. That isn’t helpful.

  I call the PM, who is mowing the lawn at his constituency home. He sees the point.

  After a lot of negotiation and very late for Sunday deadlines, it’s agreed a version calling for ‘a more mature debate’, but without the ‘sky falling in’ line, goes out.

  The next morning we discover the whole of her speech has been briefed to The Times, so that it can’t be changed. The headlines are uncomfortable for the campaign – and feel like they’ve halted the momentum we built up with Obama.

  Will Straw texts me: ‘Are we sure May’s not an agent for the other side!? Bump back to earth after last week.’

  All of us are clear that we need to get back onto the economy. The OECD will be coming out to say there will be a five per cent drop in GDP if we leave; they will also point out that as an inevitable consequence of that shrinkage, immigration will go down. This will be leapt on by the Leave campaign. We also have the IMF to come, saying there will be a recession when we leave.

  There’s more than enough happening elsewhere. The build-up to the doctors’ strike is the central concern. There’s also the prospect of a rebellion over the policy of ensuring that every school becomes an academy.

  The most difficult meeting is when we talk through the day we get the National Insurance Numbers (Ninos) for migrants – revealing there are far more EU migrants in this country than previously realised. I keep waiting to hear a good answer, something I can use to explain it, but there doesn’t seem to be one: there really do seem to be three times as many people here (albeit most on short visits) than we thought. Technically they are not migrants, but trying to explain that in this environment is going to be like shouting into a hurricane.

  By Tuesday 26 April, there’s no doubt Leave is going to put the pressure on public services, caused by immigration, at the centre of their campaign.

  It’s a smart play – softening the accusation that there is something straightforwardly unpleasant about their anti-immigration stance and linking lower immigration to a better economy.

  Our response is to point out that experts believe public services will be hit hard if we crash the economy by leaving, and you are far more likely to be treated by an immigrant in the NHS than find yourself in the queue behind one.

  On a practical level, we need the unions to throw their weight behind the referendum, marshalling their call centres and army of volunteers in the name of the cause. To help this process, there’s a plan to get the former head of the TUC, Brendan Barber, to do a joint Op-Ed and visit with us, signalling we are all in the same boat.

  I walk over to Stronger In for the board meeting. The long, modern white table at North House fills up. Stuart Rose is in the chair. He asks Will Straw to take us through an analysis of where we have got to.

  This meeting is scheduled for two hours – and I have a feeling I’m not going to hear anything I haven’t before.

  When Will is finished, Roland Rudd chips in. He asks if it was sensible to let Theresa May do her speech on Monday. Stuart Rose looks to me to respond: ‘This is a complex, multi-dimensional campaign. Would I say she was completely on message? No. But then I would also point to the fact that we are trying to win over the “Hearts versus Heads” group and a cold dispassionate analysis is something we know works for them.’

  I go on to point out the positive editorials in the Telegraph on this. I am almost managing to persuade myself.

  Ryan wades in behind me. He says there is a case for appearing cold and rational about the reality of immigration. No one really accepts our points.

  Late in the day, I go to a meeting in George’s House of Commons office with Peter Mandelson, Stephen Gilbert, Will Straw, Liz and Ameet.

  Peter Mandelson comes in clutching a bottle of water in one hand and his smartphone, with white headphones dragging along the floor, in the other.

  George sits on a green sofa, Peter in a green armchair. The rest of the group are on chairs dragged over from the office table.

  Peter takes the lead in the meeting, firing questions. His approach is to put each area under scrutiny, sometimes with unfair assertions, and make us fight back.

  Towards the end he asks, ‘Why do you all insist on bringing a spoon to a knife fight?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘It’s clear that Boris and Gove need to be taken out by big Tory hitters.’

  We begin by taking him through it gently. George points out that we all agreed that we didn’t want to turn this into a Tory psychodrama. Peter persists. I decide to be a bit tougher; what does he want us to do? Surely he can see that Boris has had a torrid time of it, literally accused of being a racist. What would we say to Gove that wouldn’t simply elevate the soap opera? No – the best thing we can do is to keep reminding people this is cross-party and minimise all that crap. He seems to accept this.

  I show Will Straw out and walk to the Tube with him. I ask him how he’s getting on with his new baby. It sounds like it’s as busy a time at home as it is at work with a toddler and a new baby. I tell him I think he is doing remarkably well – diplomatically picking his way through all of this, while trying to be a decent father.

  I arrive home to receive a call from Tom Newton Dunn at the Sun
. He says they are going to splash on the fact that a core group of aides and ministers are using a WhatsApp group, with the express aim of getting round the Freedom of Information act.

  I had earlier taken a call from Harry Cole and ended up saying, ‘I’m not going to comment on this. It’s nonsense.’

  I awake to it being the splash and a curious one at that. Social media is going crazy, because yesterday the Hillsborough verdicts came through, prompting blanket media coverage – except on the front page of the Sun, which is seen as insensitive, given their history on the story.

  I’m bemused. The headline is: ‘CAM’S GROUP TEXT SCANDAL’, next to a picture of him on his BlackBerry, which we don’t think can use WhatsApp. It goes on, ‘Aides use WhatsApp to keep EU plot secret’, before going on to quote Matthew Elliott, from the Leave campaign, ‘Not only are David Cameron’s taxpayer-funded spin doctors running the In campaign, they have now been caught trying to hide their secrets from the public.’

  All of this is justified by some guff about none of this appearing in official records or for Freedom of Information requests. A leading Leave campaigner is quoted, ‘Attempts to avoid the Freedom of Information Act in what is supposed to be a legitimate activity will lead to scandal and embarrassment. This will reinforce the public’s view that Remain is prepared to cheat to win the referendum.’

  Those of us in the group, which is actually used to make sure we are all up to speed on fast-moving stories when we are out of the office, and late at night to take the piss out of each other, are contemptuous. Does anyone involved in the story really understand what it is or why it is used? Laura Trott, who is the special adviser running the grid of stories coming up, puts her finger on it by saying, ‘Basically, they are accusing us of texting each other.’

  My point is that we also have conference calls – is the telephone also a nefarious attempt to get round Freedom of Information and the twenty-year rule? What about conversations when we run into each other in the corridor?

  The next day, the BBC is leading in on the fact that Leave have put out eight economists in favour of Brexit. It seems to me to be the worst example so far of them mistaking balance for being impartial. Kamal Ahmad does not point out that they are wildly out of synch with mainstream opinion among economists, giving people another misleading impression of the weight of debate.

  Leave have put up Priti Patel to do interviews on the morning programmes. On the Today programme she asserts that we’ll be able to strip back regulations and take away huge burdens if we vote out. It’s pointed out to her that the main ways of saving money would be getting rid of regulations that people actually appreciate (e.g. the working time directive, which says you must have a break after six hours). She struggles, unable to name any regulation she would get rid of, other than on packaging. In the end she is reduced to saying we’d have an audit when we leave and then decide. She claims Remain is all about big business and big Government abusing their power and ignoring small business and the little people.

  I arrive at my desk fired up. We need to combat this message and get some people saying with moral authority, ‘How dare they claim to speak for working people?’

  I’ve invited John Witherow, the editor of The Times, to see the PM. We say that in a newspaper environment where so many are campaigning against, The Times – a business paper with a rational economic view – feels almost indifferent. He says his readers want to see both sides of the debate. Fine, but it feels to us that they are cutting Leave a lot of slack, in an environment where others are cutting us none.

  DC underlines the point by saying that, losing the economic argument, Leave has gone all UKIP, ‘Pull up the drawbridge and pretend it’ll be the land of milk and honey.’

  ‘Shrewd though,’ says Witherow.

  I jump in the car with DC to go to King’s Cross. I want to lodge some ideas in his head before he spends time with Sir Brendan Barber. As the police motorbikes help us thread our way through traffic, I point out Barber is quite softly spoken and we need to make sure he has his say – making clear he is a passionate advocate for working people.

  Brendan is waiting with Stronger In’s Amy Richards. We walk to the train together and DC and he sit opposite each other. They discuss the importance of getting the unions fired up. He says, ‘When they get their boots on, the unions are very effective campaigners.’

  Brendan is completely open and we appreciate that he is taking a risk with his own reputation, working with a Conservative prime minister. They chat away for the rest of the journey and share the PM’s car to a Costa Coffee in Peterborough, where we sit outside. Several people come up to DC and ask for selfies, including a guy who says he’s called Nigel Lawson.

  When the time is right, we move on to Caterpillar. It feels like this idea has been long in the preparation. I see two giant posters in the car park, each covered with a black sheet. Liz has shown me a video of them struggling to get the sheet off, but promises me it will be okay. DC and Brendan walk up and watch as they are unveiled, one filled with ‘Experts who believe we would be stronger in Europe’ and the other headed ‘Experts who believe Britain should leave Europe’, which is empty save for a magnifying glass revealing the words, ‘We’ll get back to you.’

  When the picture is revealed DC and Brendan walk to the journalists and deliver their words. Brendan is great – saying this is about what is best for workers.

  The new best friends go to the board room for discussions with Caterpillar’s board, before a walk around the factory, where they will ‘bump into’ Laura Kuenssberg and do an interview.

  She starts with Barber, who really delivers, before getting a bee in her bonnet about, ‘You said you would be prepared to leave the EU – now you say there’ll be doom if we do? Can you see why people don’t trust you?’ It’s a legitimate challenge, but the PM is able to pivot to the fact that our economy would be under threat.

  We then move to an enormous Cameron Direct – a format where the PM takes questions from people, usually at a business. This time there are 1,500 staff members in the audience. I have persuaded them that it should be the PM on his own. The line that we are setting aside party differences in the national interest is a good one, but a slip under sustained questioning will be blown out of proportion.

  The head of Caterpillar UK introduces the event – he could not be clearer to his staff; the company believes it would be better if we remained in the EU.

  DC runs through his now familiar arguments. The key moment for me is when a reasonable man talks about pressure in his child’s classroom – with teachers having to give a lot of attention to pupils who do not speak English as a first language. It’s a real issue in his life and not one that is easy to bat away.

  When I get back to London, the Labour party is caught up in an anti-semitism row, partly initiated by the PM in the Commons yesterday, and now catalysed by some crazy comments by Ken Livingstone about Hitler and Zionism.

  George’s instinct is to keep hitting Labour hard. My view is they are already doing more than enough to cause themselves trouble on this and we need to understand that looking like we are adding to their woes is hardly going to encourage the leadership to work with us in the referendum.

  Others, who are closer to the MPs, warn that they are already suspicious of the cross-party campaign and we need to demonstrate we understand who the real enemy is.

  We stop to watch the 6 p.m. news, which would normally be a dream for us: ten minutes of an utter shambles for Labour. It starts with footage of an irate John Mann chasing Ken Livingstone up the Millbank stairs shouting that he is a disgraceful apologist for Hitler, before Corbyn is cornered in a ‘crisis – what crisis?’ moment. It is obvious to me he is still in denial about the scale of his problems. I wonder if this could be the moment when Labour goes for him, destabilising him to the point where his position is untenable. That would blot out the sun on the referendum for us for a long time. In the latest lesson about strange bedfellows, it is clear mo
re than ever how much we need a strong Labour party getting their people out to vote, not a civil war.

  The good news is the Kuenssberg piece on the PM and Brendan is great. Our pictures and the strength of our message punch through. The Leave event is a mess, a group of tired-looking economists in a hot, half-empty room.

  The next morning, George feels the Radio 4 bulletin has been too negative and asks me to call to make some points.

  I ring the BBC Hotline, set up so that the campaigns can supposedly complain and get a quick response.

  It rings for some time before someone finally answers, sounding utterly bemused. He says, ‘I should have forwarded this number to someone else. I don’t know what to do. I’m putting the bulletins out. So there’s not much I can do.’

  So much for the ‘Hotline’. I call someone else to talk them through it …

  John Major is on the 8.10 slot. We have asked him to do the essay making the case for Remain. It’s powerful stuff, though the interview off the back is a bit scruffy. There’s a section when he says, ‘If people want complete sovereignty, they can go to North Korea.’ I know what he means – the consequence of having complete power over your affairs, while not cooperating with others, is dreadful, but it sounds like another extreme statement in a binary battle.

  The PM has a call with Tony Hall, the Director General of the BBC, to discuss how its new unitary board will work. DC manages to get across my point that the BBC Business and Economics unit is giving a misleading impression on the balance of the debate. He says he will look at it.

  I call DC to talk about it afterwards. He tells me he watched Question Time last night and it confirmed what we have all been thinking: this is now a binary argument, a straight fight between the economy and immigration. We have closed down the economic argument – pinning them back onto immigration.

  It feels like a strategic victory, but in another way it’s concerning. As DC puts it, ‘It’s an argument to which we don’t have a strong enough answer – other than: wrecking our economy is no way to deal with it.’ He wants us to think through our response. What are the consequences of being more forward leaning? Should we be harder line?