by Craig Oliver
Peter Mandelson is in his element now – he says the campaign did have a core message that it kept hitting, how can I say that it didn’t?
When he is finished I say that I could play a blame game, too – saying that the Labour party was useless and he and others completely failed to exert any influence on them. My point about the message was that every time Labour went out, they tried to say something different – Gordon Brown’s first intervention was stillborn, because his top line was about dealing with tax avoidance.
He keeps trying to interrupt me – and repeats a couple of his points. Not for the first time I tell him, ‘I don’t accept anything that you say on this. We discussed all of this endlessly – including meetings between you and the Chancellor – and each time we all concluded we had a strategy that we needed to stick to, because changing the campaign would be disastrous.’
What makes me angry about this is that he never said any of this during the campaign and did not do me the courtesy of saying it privately before he launched this attack. When I cool down, I realise he needs it to be someone’s fault – and he will calm. We all will.
The conversation opens up. Roland Rudd says he was booed every time he went round the country and mentioned the renegotiation. He also says they were ‘nasty bastards’ – coming up with slogans that were effective:
project fear
punishment budget
take back control
He believes we should have nailed them on the money sooner, and nailed them on their Turkey poster, which in its way was as bad as Farage’s. I don’t disagree, but when we forced it, no one would bite.
The most significant point he makes is that people told him, ‘The UK may be richer in the EU, but Britain is not richer.’
I feel real affection for Sir Brendan Barber as he speaks. He is a good man whose heart is in the right place. He believes that we were the victim of a narrative that has built up over years: ‘Don’t trust politicians.’ He, too, warns about the real feeling of alienation out there.
Brendan believes ‘Project Fear’ was overdone and the emergency budget backfired badly, saying, ‘The Chancellor and Alistair Darling were undoubtedly happy with it, but it came across as bullying and threats.’
He also says that the cross-party involvement of Labour was a disaster. ‘They made a clear strategic decision that they weren’t going to do much at a top level.’
There are then a series of interventions about how bad it was in the north and Wales, and how we never seemed to deal with that. Someone worries about the way the BBC dealt with it all. ‘I was told that all their online stuff is now written so that it can be read on a smartphone. That means you are often reading the rebuttal before you’ve heard the argument.’
The Green MP, Caroline Lucas, says, ‘We won on the facts, but we lost on the emotional appeal … There were too many people who felt they had nothing to risk or lose.’ She goes on, ‘And I’m sorry to say this, but we have an electoral system that focuses on a small number of swing voters in marginal seats – that means people are going to feel ignored for years.’ Her point is, it’s no wonder they bit back.
Richard Reed concludes, ‘We were too politically correct. We went quiet on their strengths. We should have talked relentlessly about “Project Lie”, because we fought a good fight with honour and they fought a bad fight with dishonour.’
Chapter 35
The Last One Standing
THE POWER HAS drained from No. 10. The energy that normally pulses through the building has gone – like a speaker that has been blasting music at full volume, which has suddenly had the plug pulled.
The 8.30 a.m. meetings are taken up with questions about a likely leaving date – and what will be expected of DC in the meantime. Also the election of a new Conservative leader – and therefore Prime Minister – the candidates announcing, then the whittling of them down through a number of votes to a final two, who will then campaign around the country.
At one meeting, Oliver Letwin says, ‘There are currently a lot of MPs having a conversation with themselves in the mirror – and the reflection is telling them it is their destiny to lead this great nation.’
The expectation is that this process will take until early September, though many want it finished sooner, arguing the country needs leadership.
The current PM does not mind – wanting to do whatever ensures a sensible process. We will watch from the sidelines of No. 10. Some find this process torturous – others declare that they will buy in some popcorn and remain glued to the news channels.
Boris is expected to be in the final two, though there are signs his campaign is in a mess. Most assume this is just another facet of the cavalier approach that has carried him so far. But then Sarah Vine writes a column suggesting that ‘we’ – herself and her husband, Michael Gove – are responsible for delivering Brexit for the 17 million people who voted for it. It seems a curious claim. Then an email from her is apparently sent by accident to someone, who then forwards it to a journalist.
It includes the lines, ‘One simple message: you MUST have SPECIFIC from Boris OTHERWISE you cannot guarantee your support. The details can be worked out later on, but without that you have no leverage.’
Conspiracy theorists do not think it was an accident that it has emerged.
On Thursday 30 June, a few of us gather for a morning meeting, chaired by George Osborne as the PM has an engagement. Gavin Williamson, the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the PM, now working to ensure Theresa May is elected, says there are rumours that Gove is going to dump Boris and stand himself as leader. Gavin knows every bit of gossip in Westminster – most of which is nonsense. No one can quite believe that between now and when nominations for the leadership close in a few hours’ time, there will be such a bloody and dramatic turn of events.
A few of the team, including Ameet and Graeme, gather in my office in No. 10 to watch Boris’s speech, where he is expected to announce he is a candidate. If something dramatic is going to happen, no journalists appear to have picked it up.
Boris is late. His chosen location is flat and uninspiring and so is his speech. We wonder if these are the words of a man who really wants to be PM. Towards the end, I sit up. He’s hinting a twist is coming. He tells his audience he has concluded he cannot be leader. There are gasps. It is clear that MPs who had come to support him, including Nadine Dorries, did not have a clue what was coming.
There’s an eruption in No. 10, too. Someone texts, ‘OMFG!’
I walk toward the PM’s office. He is on the way out of the building to an event. As ever in these situations, he is the calmest person. He assumes Gove is going to come out and stand. I tell him that if he does it will be disastrous for him. Surely Gove is capable of seeing that?
He isn’t – and does indeed announce he is standing. Depending how you look at it, it’s an act of extraordinary chutzpah, or reveals a basic failure to understand that people will be horrified by his behaviour. The man who told everyone he believed in Boris enough to be his campaign manager, now effectively saying it was a terrible misjudgement. And not only that – having told people countless times he did not have the skills to be PM, now asserting that he is the best person for the job.
So what went on? I’m told key MPs supporting Boris were gathered that morning to be asked to switch sides. Most did and that was communicated to Boris. A couple made clear they felt it would be dishonourable. As has been reported, that morning Gove spoke to Lynton Crosby, who had been helping Boris, telling him he was going to run, but did not speak direct to Boris, despite Lynton urging him to.
Other, well-placed sources have told me that Gove had made a series of demands that Boris found too much. He wanted to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, to run the Brexit negotiations, be Deputy Prime Minister, and – crucially – to have Dominic Cummings as a very senior figure inside Boris’s No. 10. In other words, Boris would be the front man for a Gove government.
As Boris prepared his spe
ech that morning, his world must have felt as if it was crumbling around him. But it still seems to me his decision to stand down immediately was extraordinary. He had the support of a healthy number of MPs; he could have called out Gove; and most importantly – there would have been no more ignominy in being knocked out of the next ballot than going now. He might have survived. My guess is that he would have found it all too humiliating.
We watch Gove announce that he is standing – and see him getting a rough ride. At one point, he is asked if Dominic Cummings will have a role at No. 10 if he is PM and without flinching, he says, ‘No.’ That feels an extraordinary response given the closeness of their relationship and that he had apparently been demanding of Boris that Cummings be at the centre of things.
When Gove is knocked out, we appear to be settling in for a summer battle between Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom. On paper Theresa should walk it. Andrea is inexperienced. The big thing in her favour, though, is that she is the darling of the Brexiteers and that should play well with the Tory grassroots.
Then Andrea makes a huge error. She appears to suggest she would be a better leader because she has children and Theresa May does not. The pressure on her is intense – and she cracks, announcing that she doesn’t think she wants to be the leader after all.
Theresa May will be Prime Minister. We must leave No. 10 – and soon.
A senior journalist tells me it is as if it had been pre-ordained. I see his point. Amid the murder and betrayal, one figure stayed very still at the centre of it all – Theresa May. Now she is the last one standing.
It would be tempting to think that she had foreseen how it would play out. Of course, it is more complicated than that – a lot of skill, a lot of luck.
The skill was in understanding that in a Parliamentary Conservative Party that was split down the middle, the most attractive candidate was always going to be the one that both Remainers and Leavers could stomach after all the bloodletting. Theresa May backed Remain, but she did it in a way that made clear that for her, it was a finely balanced decision.
Her few interventions during the campaign were always calibrated to suggest she was fifty-one per cent for Remain and forty-nine per cent for Leave. Moreover, despite being the minister responsible for immigration, her submarine tactics – disappearing from view for long periods – meant that she was never questioned about it too much.
The luck was that no one could have predicted that the Gove/Boris relationship would detonate with such spectacular results, or that Boris would drop out so quickly. Had it been a straight fight between May and Boris, who knows what the result would have been?
Of course, the key question for Theresa May is how Brexit will be settled. It’s surprising the number of people who think it may never happen. I cannot see the circumstances in which any politician could or should amass the political capital to go against the democratic will of the British people, or take on the sheer intensity of the campaign they would face.
For now, Theresa May tells everyone, ‘Brexit means Brexit.’ Of course, what Brexit means to dyed-in-the-wool Outers in the Parliamentary Conservative Party, large enough in number to overturn her tiny overall majority at will, and the others who want to have as much access to Europe as is possible, are worlds apart.
There will come a moment where the current Prime Minister is faced by the irresistible force of those who want complete control of immigration and an end to free movement, and the immoveable object of business and the vast majority of MPs that supported Remain, who demand as much access to the single market as possible.
Both cannot happen.
Compromise is inevitable. And that will lead to cries of betrayal.
‘And so …?’
ED LLEWELLYN, WHO was the Chief of Staff at No. 10, liked to tell an anecdote about when Lord Carrington was Foreign Secretary. He sat around a large table with the best the Foreign Office had to offer, considering a thorny problem.
Each person who spoke seemed to have an even more insightful and eloquent exposition of the problem than the last.
When they had finished, Lord Carrington asked a devastating, two-word question, ‘And so …?’
His point was that the highly intelligent aides could describe the problem, but were acting like the proverbial person who, when asked directions, said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t have started here!’ What was needed were ideas on what was to be done.
The Westminster village was crammed full of people who could spot that Europe had become an insurmountable issue – not just for the Conservative party, but increasingly for the country. David Cameron was the prime minister who knew he had to deal with it.
He was prepared to answer the ‘And so …?’ question with a renegotiation of the UK’s role in Europe followed by a referendum. Had he fudged the issue, the pressure would have mounted to such a degree that he would have been sacked by his party and replaced by someone who would deliver – or made to do it anyway.
Of course, he and the Stronger In campaign failed to convince the country that enough had been done to stay in. Most of the reasons given at the final board meeting I have described are important, but with the benefit of a few months’ hindsight, only a few issues seem decisive to me.
Some have said Boris choosing to be a key figure in Leave was what did for us. It was certainly a major blow. He was – as Andrew Feldman, the former Chairman of the Conservative Party, put it – ‘a rock star politician’ for whom the rules seemed different. He was able to shrug off the criticisms and humiliations that would have been fatal to others, and to energise Leave’s message in a way that enabled them to reach parts of the electorate that were beyond us.
He was important. But I now realise Michael Gove was crucial to their victory – mixing an intoxicating cocktail that was a blend of brilliance and poison.
He chaired a Leave campaign that succeeded in making their immigration argument about the economy and public services – and not just about the number of people coming to the UK. That was the force of the utterly dishonest claim that leaving the EU would save us £350 million a week that could be spent on the National Health Service. The Remain campaign was left noting how strongly it was cutting through, but never came up with a way to neutralise it, other than pointing out that all independent opinion agreed that the number was false and there would be less money to spend, not more, because the economy would shrink if we left the EU.
In a rational world that should have been enough to kill it. It wasn’t. Other politicians might have abandoned it – as well as claims that millions of Turks were coming to this country – realising experts saw them as dishonest. He didn’t. As Boris looked queasy, particularly on immigration, the campaign Gove chaired doubled down.
In the Tory leadership campaign that followed the referendum, many finally saw the personal ambition and willingness to deceive they had not spotted in Gove before.
It is clear that after the Christmas holidays his wife, Sarah Vine, had left David Cameron with the impression that he would not support the Leave campaign. When that turned out not to be the case, he then insisted he would not play a prominent role, only making the odd speech or publishing an article or two. Within days of saying that, he became the chairman of a campaign that was prepared to attack the people he called friends in ways that were as brutal as they were uncompromising.
He also appears to have played a decisive role in securing Boris, who at the time was reported as describing himself as veering all over the place like a wonky shopping trolley.
In pure political terms, Gove’s moves were audacious and brilliant. He was instrumental in providing the bullets for the campaign, and consequently the right-wing press, to fire. He was prepared to see Government policies he had championed, such as the National Living Wage and our stewardship of the NHS, trashed. However, as a supposed intellectual, his wholesale dismissal of experts and his description of economists as the equivalent of Nazi propagandists was shameful.
Of course, it is on
ly right that people stand up for the things they believe in – and Gove had a long track record of being a Eurosceptic. But this does not mean that treating relationships with people he had built up over years with such casual abandon was acceptable. They understandably felt he had betrayed the modern, compassionate Conservative values he claimed to stand for as a politician – embracing UKIP’s worldview because he thought it could win – while also betraying them.
The view that David Cameron had dealt with him shabbily, by moving him from Education Secretary to Chief Whip, is a red herring. In fact, the PM felt he was going out of his way to protect a friend, with a plan to promote him again, while other powerful voices were calling for Gove to be simply fired.
Michael Gove was on the record as telling people who asked him about his personal leadership ambitions that he did not have the range of skills or the temperament for the job. He may not have believed what he was saying at the time, as a ruse to get him through uncomfortable interviews, but many came to see the truth in what he said the moment he cut Boris Johnson off at the knees on the morning he was due to launch his leadership bid. Until that moment, Gove had been his campaign manager.
He went on to claim that, contrary to everything he had always said, he did now think he could and should be Prime Minister. Crucially, he failed to realise that in acting as a political suicide bomber, one of his first victims would be himself.
Gove is a tragic figure in the Shakespearean sense. In many ways he is a brilliant man, capable of vision, witty and charming, and with a verbal dexterity second to none. But his fatal flaw was to be driven by a vaulting ambition and a preparedness to mislead. He let others down in a way that ultimately crushed himself.
When he appeared on the Andrew Marr programme on the Sunday after he announced he was running for the leadership, the normally polite and generous Marr accused him of being ‘a political serial killer’, his victims being David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson. He then suggested he turn to camera and say something sinister in the style of Francis Urquhart/Frank Underwood, the lead, Machiavellian character in House of Cards. It felt devastating. I wonder how Gove will ever live it down. He is a deeply talented man who could do so much good for this country – but that will involve setting aside all the destructive game-playing.