by Craig Oliver
I stay back at Stronger In to watch Andrew Neil interview Hilary Benn. It’s the most tedious programme I have seen in a long while. At one stage, Will Straw and James McGrory start talking about pet guinea pigs they had as children.
I’m getting into bed and spot an email from DC: ‘The more I think about it the more I think we shd call them out over their lies today over bailouts and budgets.’
He says watching the BBC News at Ten he spotted four lies the BBC didn’t knock down:
We are liable for Eurozone bailouts.
Our rebate is at risk.
The overall budget can be increased without our say-so.
We have given up a veto of future treaties.
He says they are all straightforwardly untrue and we should call a press conference calling them out. I reply that I think it is a good idea, but we need to do it quickly and cleanly.
Come the morning call, others are nervous. Will it look panicked?
I just bulldoze through the idea with the PM. Our news story into the morning is yet more independent world experts, all of whom are warning us of the dangers of leaving – and on the other side, we have people who are basing their campaign on lies. The comparison needs to be made urgently. No one is going to do it for us.
We’re asking a lot of Liz Sugg. She’s patently wondering where the hell she’s going to get a venue at short notice. I tell her it needs to be done by 11 a.m., in plenty of time to hit the lunchtime news bulletins. She says she’ll try.
I listen to the BBC 8 a.m. news. Despite the fact that we have the head of the World Trade Organization, the chief executive of Hitachi, and the chair of the US Federal Reserve coming out in support of our case today, there isn’t a dicky bird about any of them. Instead there’s a load of Leave stories. I am annoyed and send a series of texts. They come back with the usual stuff that it is marked ‘somewhere on the BBC’.
I’ve had enough of this and fire back: ‘Not on your 8 a.m. Not on your website. WTO, Yellen, Hitachi, former and Current Biz Sec and head of CBI … not anywhere I can see. You’re killing us.’
A senior figure responds by calling me to try to explain where there have been bits and pieces of economic news. I am calm and tell him it’s just not good enough. By any measure, their biggest morning outlets are the website and the 8 a.m. bulletins – and there was nothing on them. I tell him the PM is doing a press conference highlighting experts versus lies, and I had to persuade him not to have a section calling out the BBC. We don’t expect them to be cheerleading for us – we just want proper balance in the final stages of the campaign. I don’t think it’s a deliberate bias, just a combination of the slapdash and the blasé.
Fired up, we draft a punchy statement: ‘Today, on the Remain side, we see three significant, trustworthy and totally independent experts give their view.’ We quote the chair of the US Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, saying, ‘a UK vote to exit the European Union could have significant economic repercussions’; then Hitachi saying leaving will put jobs at risk and that those who want us to leave ‘have no answer to how the UK could negotiate cost-fee access to this huge market with a position outside it’; then we quote Roberto Azevêdo, the head of the World Trade Organization, saying it could take ‘decades’ to disentangle Britain’s trading relations with the EU and negotiate replacement deals with the rest of the world – and leaving Europe is ‘a high-risk bet’.
These warnings aren’t just newsworthy, though they have gone largely ignored this morning – they are vital to understanding what our future would look like outside the EU.
The PM dictates the most powerful side of the statement:
That is who you have on one side of this debate. And what have we heard from those who want us to leave? Complacency and nonchalance. A casual wave of the hand. They say people ‘have had enough of experts’. On the value of our currency, they say ‘the pound will go where it will’. And because they don’t have any credible experts on their side, what are they reduced to? Telling complete untruths to the British people.
He then goes on to explain them, before concluding:
So listen to the experts. Don’t stand on the sidelines. This matters for you. There are no second chances or re-runs. So register to vote. And vote to remain on 23rd June.
We get in the car without motorcycle outriders, because it is an overtly political event and he is speaking as the effective leader of the Remain campaign and not Head of Government. Traffic is bad. The police get word that there are some protestors in chicken suits at the front of the building. We are struggling and the protection officer in the passenger seat flicks on the lights and puts on the siren. We shoot up a side street, sending tourists who are out in the sunshine scattering to the pavements. We have to do a U-turn on the Strand and then take another side street. Liz is waiting for us. There are no chickens to be seen as we race inside.
We are taken to the top of the building, which is next to the Savoy, and through a large series of rooms with stunning, panoramic views of Westminster and the House of Commons to the west and the City to the east, with the river snaking between.
I go up to the actual roof, where the hacks are enjoying the sunshine and the broadcast engineers are trying to get a line of sight to broadcast back to base. All of them are a little excited about why they’ve been called here. We tell DC the coast is clear and he delivers the above words. It’s a stunning backdrop, and it feels to me that if anyone heard the case he’s making – demolishing Leave’s claims with asides about ‘we’ve had enough of experts’ – they would surely vote Remain.
But are they listening?
That afternoon the Stronger In board meeting isn’t in my diary. Stephen Gilbert calls me half an hour before to make sure my presentation is fine. What presentation? I take a deep breath and walk over.
I arrive last and sit at the end of the table – with the projector set up to show some slides shining in my eyes, so that I feel like a captured soldier who is about to be interrogated. Stuart Rose chairs the meeting and goes round the table asking people what their concerns are.
Almost everyone says, ‘Diversity of voices,’ with the Green party MP Caroline Lucas being particularly pointed about the amount she is seeing of the PM. We could be truthful and say – the problem is, we clear days for you guys and all that happens is you come up with some wet statements about how great it would be if young people voted; we’re also dealing with a Leader of the Opposition whose speeches on Europe border on the incoherent; so forgive us for having to impose some order on this. Of course, we say nothing of the kind.
Most interesting of all is how most of the people around this table feel that this has gone way beyond a battle between two campaigns about whether we remain in or leave the EU. For most people, it feels like a battle for the soul of the country. Many express the view, in different ways, that we are the sensible campaign, Leave the extreme. Some talk about Remain being open to the world, Leave closed.
As I depart, I wonder how much of this is reflected in the country. Are we really two tribes at war – each unable to see the other’s point of view? Much of this has become a conversation between the deaf.
Senior figures in the Labour party have been receiving dispatches from MPs in areas outside the big cities. The news is not good – all are despondent.
A coordinator in Yorkshire says she has been picking up a switch to Leave in the last few days in Leeds. She’s been working in Headingley, a student and middle-class area where we expect to do well, and people say they were planning to vote Remain, but now are thinking Leave.
Another says she met young digital workers in Manchester, who said the only EU referendum material they were aware of being shared on Facebook was about Turkey joining and £350 million more a week to spend on the NHS. They thought both these things were facts.
Many of them report back that people agree leaving won’t make much difference to the level of immigration, because they assume it’s another false promise from politician
s they don’t trust. But that also means they don’t believe people saying the economy will be hit.
A note from a senior Labour MP spells it out:
Our economic message is ebbing and sounding tired. Lack of trust in any of the institutions speaking out (from PM to IMF to big companies) means the message is being discounted.
Turkey threat is working to make immigration a live issue for swing voters as well as a GOTV [get out the vote] motivator for Leave voters. It is establishing the risk of Remaining.
£350m for the NHS is really working.
The anti-establishment message is working.
She concludes: ‘Does Remain have any game changer held back in the locker? If so, worth getting it out.’
The answer to that final question is: No.
Chapter 26
This Is Giving Me a Heart Attack
DC AND I drive to the studios at the Olympic park for the ITV special programme – the first half of which will involve Nigel Farage being questioned by the audience, the second the PM.
On the way, I call Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative head of the Health Select Committee and a former GP. She’s made a name for herself as an independently minded MP, and surprised me when she came out for Leave. She’s been in touch saying she’s ready to change her mind. She tells me her postal vote sat unopened in the kitchen for several days and as her pen hovered above Leave, she realised she would be worried if the vote went that way.
She’s troubled by the nonsense the Leave campaign is spreading about pouring money into the NHS, and speaks touchingly about her father, who worked as a diver in the military after the Second World War. When he was recently rushed into hospital and was about to have an operation, he told her he was worried she was making a mistake and that leaving would betray everything his generation had done to ensure there was peace in Europe. It’s a touching story – hitting a strong emotional note. I promise to contact her early tomorrow.
We arrive to see Farage’s purple and yellow, open-topped, double-decker bus, which he was driven here in – and I’m reminded of Russell Brand’s line that he is a ‘pound shop Enoch Powell’. He’s standing in the corridor inside. DC shakes his hand and says, ‘Hello, Nigel.’ There is a little bit of harrumphing and chuckling, but no words.
I am struck by the people he has around him, all of whom look like bouncers in a club that’s trying to look respectable – razor-sharp, oiled hair, extreme partings, and shiny suits. There’s no need for caricature here.
We are taken into the tiniest of dressing rooms, which has a wet room sectioned off inside it that is bigger than the rest of the available space. DC perches on a strange white stool, decides it’s too precarious and then moves to a swivel chair.
I show the PM a Twitter meme that is being bounced around – a picture of Farage looking stupid, with the words ‘racist bellend’ as the caption. He laughs out loud.
When Farage is on stage, he comes across as tetchy – arguing with the audience when they bring up the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury has criticised him. He appears thin-skinned and strangely subdued, his usual theatrics muted, only breaking the pattern at one moment to brandish his passport.
As Farage approaches the end, DC looks at me and asks, ‘Remind me, why do we do these things?’ I just smile. All of us are hating every minute of this.
Farage gets a bit of a rough ride on the economy and DC says, ‘I’m going to get this on immigration.’
It’s soon time for DC to go. ‘Good luck!’ I shout and he says, ‘Thank you,’ and walks away. These are the loneliest of moments for him, completely on his own – and I feel a pang knowing there’s nothing more I can do.
Liz appears with a bottle of white wine and pours us all a transparent plastic cup full.
DC is expert at these encounters. He doesn’t get riled, determined to be reasonable – even when they are rude to him about when he should go as PM.
The key moment is when a man called Harry Boparai talks to him about his town becoming a ‘no go’ area and how he has to have his children three to a bedroom. The point is – immigration is crushing me. It may or may not be true, but it’s almost impossible to deal with other than sympathetically.
There’s another key moment when DC talks about Nigel Farage’s ‘Little England’.
The programme ends. Verdict: unscathed. Though a nagging voice tells me we need to score some goals. On Twitter the hacks are lamenting how boring it was.
I get the BBC news up on my iPad. It’s starting as we jump in the car. We watch it – a surprisingly full edit. DC clearly feels he came out OK and I tell him, ‘I’d give the night marginally to you, but the truth is, it was pretty boring.’
DC decides he wants a pint. I want my bed. He meets Gavin Williamson in the House of Commons. We get dropped in the cool, night air of the courtyard, and I watch him as he marches inside. It’s just over a fortnight until the vote. Not long until we know our fate.
On Wednesday 9 June, I head to Stronger In. Having thought about it overnight, I decide we need to get Sarah Wollaston out there quickly. If we leave it to Friday, she’ll get swallowed in the coverage of the second ITV debate.
I ask her if she would be able to write 800 words for The Times and do a short interview with Laura Kuenssberg from the BBC. She ponders her diary and says she will move some things around.
I then call Francis Elliott at The Times, and Laura. I say to Francis that I am worried they will not recognise this for the gold dust it is – the first defection of the campaign. He reassures me it’s a strong story that will be covered well. He says The Times has been the most supportive of the papers and I joke, ‘That’s a bit like boasting about being the world’s tallest midget.’ He talks to his editorial team and the message comes back that they like it – and it has a good chance of being the splash.
Laura Kuenssberg likes it, too.
Mid-morning I go into a meeting at Stronger In with Saatchi about the poster campaign. We all agree that we are right to use an image of Boris sitting on the same branch of a tree as Farage, who is in the process of gleefully sawing it off.
They are also pushing a black-and-white image of a hand grenade on a stark white background. There are words next to the pin that say, ‘Don’t pull out’. My visceral reaction is that it is too much, though I say nothing as I am prepared to hear why they think it works. One says discomfort isn’t a bad thing, it shows that the image has landed and that you are engaging with it on an emotional level. I think it’s debatable if that engagement is: ‘This is bullshit, they’re spinning me,’ or, ‘I don’t like it, but maybe I really should worry?’
Ryan tells them the key questions we face are:
Do people vote for or against their anxieties? (He clearly thinks ‘for’.)
Will this be the first time in a century that the people of this country have voted against their economic interests?
The final poster they show is of a tiny UK in a wide sea, conspicuously cut off from other land masses. I like it, because it highlights the fantasy they are selling, hoping the country can slip anchor and drift off into the mid-Atlantic, pretending that our destiny is not affected by the reality of our geography, regardless of whether we are in or out of the EU.
I go through the next couple of days with the team. We look at what Labour is planning. David Chaplin, who has long been disillusioned by the struggle to engage with the leader’s office, says they want their main news line to be a call to have a million conversations with people. I try not to be dismissive when I hear this stuff, but say, ‘So they’re going to have a quarter of the number of conversations they had in the election, when they failed to get elected.’
This strategy was widely lampooned after the general election – do they really think it has merit this time? It is obvious David is at his wits’ end with them – unsure if they are a hopeless operation, failing badly to understand what it needs to do to cut through, or one that wishes us ill. Perhaps it’s both.
&nbs
p; After a PMQs session where DC is once again untroubled by Corbyn, I walk over to North House for what amounts to the strangest couple of hours I have spent in politics.
We are gathering people from the Conservatives, Labour, and the SNP to plan for the ITV debate. This is the clearest example yet of people who would normally be tearing each other’s heads off working together. At first, it is a few people from the campaign, Alastair Campbell, and Kevin Pringle from the SNP.
It takes an eternity for Amber Rudd and then Angela Eagle to arrive. Both have small entourages. Angela is noticeably concerned about entering into an environment where she is surrounded by sworn enemies. We do our best to set her at ease, but we haven’t got much time to establish a trusting relationship.
They all settle in and eat the sandwiches David Sainsbury’s staff have kindly laid on for us. As they do, I read an email from Andrew Cooper, which knocks me back a bit …
From: Andrew Cooper
Date: Wednesday 8 June 2016
Subject: Daily Tracking
Voting intention (adjusted): Remain 51.3%, Leave 48.7%.
Our lead on what is riskier ‘for you personally’ is at 10%, lowest in the campaign so far. Lead on stronger/weaker in the EU has dropped from 20% to 13% over the last week.
The last two days have shown the highest lead for Leave so far (13% today) in perception that small businesses are on their side, and the lowest lead for Remain as being backed by NHS professionals.
In perceptions of the two campaigns there are some worrying movements:
On ‘winning the argument’, we have slipped from a 13% lead for Remain in mid-May to a 1% lead for Leave today.
In the last two days, Leave has also moved into a 1% lead on ‘explaining their arguments clearly’.
