Fortunately, the finalised text was fine by Merkel. One by one, it was approved by all the other member states. Then the speeches started. How great the EU was … How it had shown the best of itself … What an amazing achievement this was for us all …
I had one eye on the clock, and I saw that the 10 o’clock news was just starting at home. I left the room to speak to the press as the leaders erupted into applause – a bit for me, a bit, perhaps, at the prospect of going home.
I stood at a press-conference lectern, two Union Jacks on either side of me, a European flag pushed into the corner, and switched on the arguments I would be making for the next four months. I announced that within the last hour I had negotiated a deal to give the UK ‘special status’ within the EU: we were ‘stronger, safer and better off’ in this reformed EU where we now had the ‘best of both worlds’. And for that reason I would be campaigning to Remain.
I really believed in what I was doing. For all the frustrations, contradictions and hostilities of the past two days, I had seen yet again how important it was to be at that table, fighting for Britain.
Objectively, the deal was a significant achievement. It reversed a key tenet of the Treaty of Rome; it was the first meaningful, permanent repatriation of powers by any leader; it redefined what constituted a European ‘worker’ in EU law; it established that ours was a national welfare system; it protected the pound, the City of London and our status inside the single market but outside the Euro; and it entrenched and expanded our special status. Ivan Rogers argues that this was the biggest feat of all. Not any particular reform, but the fact that our special status – which had evolved unofficially over years of opt-outs, from the euro to Schengen – was finally embedded, and heading for full enshrinement in the treaty.
We had got a deal passed unanimously by twenty-seven reluctant member states, and we had done it not at a time of reform, but from a standing start. We had proved that the EU could change, and that I was capable of effecting that change.
We had got things people said were impossible – even illegal (I joked at the time that I’d got more benefit cuts through the European Council than I’d got through our own House of Lords, which was holding up the welfare Bill at home).
I had got something in each of my baskets. I said I wanted a red card – I got a red card. I said I wanted us out of ever-closer union – I got us out of ever-closer union. I said I’d protect the pound – I’d protected the pound. And so on.
This broadly matched what many mainstream Conservative MPs had long called for. I look back over the initial ‘wish lists’, from the one drawn up by my private office and the policy unit team – Daniel Korski, Laurence Todd and John Casson – before the election, to that of the Fresh Start group of Eurosceptic MPs. The headline elements were all there. They were the things we put in the manifesto; the things I had run through on the yellow sofas with Merkel before the election; the things I outlined in a letter to Tusk in November 2015 as we formally began the renegotiation.
However, I admit that I made mistakes. Since leaving office I have thought about the renegotiation and its consequences over and over again. Reliving and rethinking the decisions, rerunning alternatives and what-might-have-beens. And, of course, I have spoken to people I worked with in the UK and the EU about what could have been done differently. Talking to me after the vote, Merkel was clear that there was nothing more the EU was willing to put on the table. She was particularly adamant that the EU would never have granted an emergency brake on migration numbers. I have also spent some time running back over what was agreed with President Juncker’s point man on the renegotiation, a Brit called Jonathan Faull.
The argument that there was the possibility of some much bigger deal, some grand renegotiation of the UK’s entire EU relationship that would leave us with some sort of semi-detached membership within the EU, was always a fiction. There were, for instance, Eurosceptic Conservative MPs who dreamed of staying as a member while being able to accept or reject individual pieces of European legislation at will. They would say that if we really threatened to leave, anything and everything would be possible.
Those who pushed for this scorched-earth renegotiation, of course, branded the final deal a failure. But on their terms it could only ever have been a failure, because the things they wanted could only ever have been achieved outside the EU. Some sort of ‘just visiting/overseas member’ status inside the EU simply didn’t and couldn’t exist.
Indeed, we are now discovering that a semi-detached membership outside the EU is also something of a chimera. Negotiators have been surprised to find the strength of the EU orthodoxy that you are either in the single market, with its four freedoms, but with no serious say over its rules – like Norway; or you are outside it, and treated as a third country.
My biggest mistake was that I had not been more frank from the beginning about all this, and thus about the realities we were going to face. I had allowed expectations about what could be achieved through a renegotiation to become too high. This was partly because I had set out asking for fundamental reform to the EU as a whole, believing that more general treaty change was coming down the track: ‘my vision for a new European Union, fit for the twenty-first century’ was how I described it at Bloomberg. Such a general renegotiation might have ended up with only modest measures anyway, but the climbdown from multilateral to unilateral reform sent out a signal that we were revising down our ambitions.
I should have done more – particularly once general treaty change was off the table – to focus people’s minds on what was really possible. The temptation in politics to answer people’s hopes by referring to some future set of talks and treaties is great, but it is a temptation I should have resisted.
In terms of the substance of what was available for negotiation, I should have held firm and avoided the capitulations on the specific welfare measures. They weren’t huge concessions, but they wrecked the simplicity of the offer. ‘No welfare for four years’ and ‘no sending child benefit home’ became ‘not much welfare’ and ‘not much child benefit’.
And, perhaps because expectations were in the wrong place, the whole process, instead of making people feel the EU had made some valuable concessions, merely underlined for many observers how obstinate it was, and the power it wielded over us. More than one MP later told me the EU’s behaviour during the renegotiation was what compelled them to campaign for leaving.
I also could have done a better job at tying the deal to what people wanted. It shouldn’t have been ‘I wanted a red card – I got a red card.’ It should have been ‘You wanted control of your laws – the red card gives you that. You wanted to reject a European superstate and a European army – ending ever-closer union guarantees that.’ In particular I think I could have been better at explaining the welfare cap – how it would work, and how it would be a success.
Another criticism is that while semi-detached membership wasn’t available, there was more we could have asked for and potentially achieved. I am less persuaded of this. Yes, in my renegotiation there was no end to the Working Time Directive, no repatriation of structural funds, no cap on the EU budget. I didn’t even attempt these. But it was important to my strategy to go for what I thought was negotiable and what I thought was most important. Other reforms could come at a later date – and again, I failed to explain that this was just the beginning. Besides, could I really imagine anyone switching from Leave to Remain because we’d repatriated structural funds? No.
As well as the mistakes I made in raising expectations, the two things I ponder most are the measures on welfare/immigration, and the timing of the vote.
As I have explained, there were good reasons for 2016 rather than 2017; but my haste was helpful to the twenty-seven, as they knew I was anxious for an agreement. Since the referendum defeat I have agonised over the question of whether I should have paused the discussions about the offer in February 20
16. I could have explained that Britain needed more, and that that would take more time. We could have restarted at the end of the year, and held the referendum in the middle of 2017, rather than 2016.
This links to the other question I return to: should I have prioritised, over everything else, an immigration cap, a limit on numbers? Given how the referendum played out, I think that is what could have made the biggest difference. Whatever the polls said about the problems with setting a number, a cap might have provided more of a feeling of control than the welfare deal, which was basically a deterrent. It would also have been more tangible and easier to understand.
What is unknowable is whether it was negotiable – and whether it would have worked politically. The officials who worked with me and Angela Merkel are clear: it was never going to be on offer. And, as with everything else, even if it had been, there would have been caveats. I suspect that such a brake would have been subject to EU approval, specifically by the Commission. It would have been time-limited. Leave campaigners would have been able to pick holes in the policy from the off, and undermine it completely.
What’s more, it soon became clear that we are living in a post-truth age. The government could promise a cap that was agreed with the EU and completely legal – but campaigners could still have rubbished it. They could say ‘It’s a ruse – the EU will simply block the cap.’ Or ‘Why trust the word of the government?’ Or even that none of the deal was set in stone anyway, and it could be disregarded. (In fact they did just that, as I’ll describe in the next chapter.)
I have to accept that the deal was a failure, because it failed its main test: to help convince the British electorate to remain in the EU.
But there is one thing I will maintain. This was not a bad deal. We had negotiated significant reform, and created scope for further reform. The subsequent negotiations to leave the EU have shown just how hard it is to negotiate successfully with twenty-seven states and the body of the EU.
And the things I secured are starting to look better and better. They won’t be available to us outside the EU. I think particularly of the welfare cap. Compare that with the deal offering a transitional period for the UK leaving the EU which would have gone on until 2021. Had Britain voted to remain, we would by then have had five years of a welfare cap. That could have saved billions of pounds, and helped restore a sense of fairness to our immigration system.
When I look back on 2016, it is not simply that we lost the referendum that disappoints me so deeply. It is that, because of that, we never got a chance to make this deal a reality. I really believe it could have created a place for us in the EU that we could live with for many years to come. Indeed, we could have thrived. Not only would it have been a springboard for further reform, we would have done something that no other EU country had dared. We would have secured important changes, refreshed our mandate for belonging to the organisation, and could have argued strongly for leading the EU in a new, more practical direction.
But back in February 2016 I wasn’t just worried about the deal and the process – I knew that the fight ahead was going to be incredibly tough.
46
Referendum
It was New Year’s Eve, and we were spending it at Chequers with several other families, including Michael Gove and Sarah Vine. Sarah and I were sitting by the fire in the Great Hall, chatting about the year ahead. I said I was worried about how the Conservative Party was going to sort itself into those who would back a vote to remain in the EU and those who would advocate leaving.
I turned specifically to what her husband intended to do. As a Times journalist Michael had been a strong Eurosceptic, and in the past he had argued that we shouldn’t fear life outside the EU. I knew this part of his political make-up ran deep. But I also remembered how in opposition he had been instrumental in persuading me that the Conservative Party had to get over its obsession with Europe. Above all, he was committed to our project of modern, compassionate conservatism. He had been by my side for years – but would he be on my side in the biggest battle yet? Sarah said that he would.
I thought she was right, but George was worried. So as 2016 began, we decided that he would work on Michael and I would work on another waverer: Boris Johnson.
Why, when I had the votes of forty-six million people to worry about, was I so concerned about the leanings of these two men?
The Leave side of the campaign was shaping up as a coalition of disgruntled right-wingers and disaffected spads. The presence of these two front-liners would legitimise the cause and help detoxify the Brexit brand. Boris was the most popular politician in the country. Michael was respected by MPs, well liked in the Conservative Party, and had good connections in the centre-right press. I knew how persuasive their popularity and intellectual heft could be. And the polls backed me up: one suggested that if Boris stayed on board then Remain would lead by 8 per cent, but if he went for Leave that lead fell to 1 per cent. Other polls showed the Remain lead would halve if Boris supported Leave.
After his first conversations with Michael, George said things weren’t going that well. So the next time we saw him was together, on the yellow sofas in the Downing Street flat. We talked about all the things we had done together, in opposition and in government. About the potential for even more radical change now that we had a majority. Michael was back in a job he loved, with a mission he cared about: reforming and improving Britain’s prisons. All that would be put at risk by a divisive campaign, and even more so if the country voted to leave.
George spoke starkly about how he thought the Leave campaign would play out. It might start by being about the technicalities of British sovereignty, but it would soon slip into nativist arguments about immigration. ‘The open, liberal Brexit you start off with will turn you into a sub-Farage,’ I said. We’d be throwing out of the window all we’d done – and done together, as a team – to make this a modern, compassionate Conservative Party. George made it clear: if Britain voted to leave the EU, everyone, including me, would be finished.
Michael seemed torn – and really pained by the fact. ‘My head is in a strange place,’ he said. ‘For once, I find it hard to articulate. But if I do decide to opt for Brexit, I’ll make one speech. That will be it. I’ll play no further part in the campaign.’
I found it hard to believe what was happening. Michael was a close confidant. Part of my inner team. Someone I often turned to for advice. Why hadn’t he told me before that this might happen? Of course I understood his strong Euroscepticism, but if he was undecided – and it sounded like a 50–50 call for him – wouldn’t his loyalty be the thing that brought him down on one side or the other? Not personal loyalty to me, but loyalty to the team, to the project, and to the future of our party and our country. But if he really was going to do this, back Brexit, then I believed him – really believed him – when he said he’d take a back seat.
The second big question mark hung over another former journalist.
I had a lot of time for Boris. I respected his talent. While I found some of his political antics infuriating, there was a reason for his appeal to the public. He was a good mayor of London. He was a great communicator. At his best he was ambitious for Britain, had big ideas and the energy to drive them through.
When I said I wanted him at the heart of my team, it wasn’t just a case of it being better to have him inside the tent than outside. It was primarily that his talent made the tent bigger. We had talked before about what would happen when he finished his second term as mayor. Running a big government department would be a chance to show his serious side, I had told him. It would be good for him. I thought it would be good for the government too.
He and I had had many conversations over the years about the European issue. Boris was famously Eurosceptic, since his days covering Brussels for the Telegraph. He had strongly supported campaigns for a referendum in the past, not least over the Lisbon Treaty. He had sometimes m
ade trouble for the leadership over the issue, particularly during his starring appearances at the party conference. But he had never argued to leave the EU.
We would talk on the phone and text regularly. Not just because he was a friend, but because he was the mayor of London, and I wanted him to be able to get hold of me whenever he wanted. News about issues in the capital would be mixed in with views about Europe – and frequent challenges to face him on the tennis court. So I fixed a date at the American ambassador’s court, where we would be able to play and talk privately. Boris’s style on the court is like the rest of his life: aggressive, wildly unorthodox (he often uses an ancient wooden racquet) and extremely competitive.
After our game we sat in the hut next to the court and talked about what would happen next. I started by saying how similar our political outlooks were. We were both One Nation Conservatives – his articulation of this theme at the party conference in October had been particularly powerful. The speeches made by George, Boris and me were virtually interchangeable, even though we hadn’t really talked about them to each other beforehand. We had had our disagreements and tensions, but fundamentally we were part of the same team.
I didn’t spend long talking about the results of my negotiation in Brussels. I knew that he thought they were disappointing. But I wanted him to accept that getting out of ever-closer union – something he had often spoken and written about – was real progress. This meant that we were improving on the status quo. He accepted that, but still believed that overall it was a missed opportunity.
My pitch was that he had never argued to leave. The logical position for him was to argue that our renegotiation didn’t go far enough, but that we should vote to stay, and fight for more change in the future. I explained that I had done what I could without there being more general treaty change – but that treaty change would eventually come, and the opportunity to go further would be there.
For the Record Page 82