by Owen Bennet
Little did either of them realise that Cummings’s lack of elegance would bring their Out campaign to the verge of collapse at a crucial moment.
CHAPTER 3
On the morning of 8 May, Richard Tice was panicking. David Cameron had won the election and the re-elected Prime Minister was already being fêted by friends and former naysayers alike. With this much adoration, Cameron would win the referendum at a canter, Tice feared.
While the Tories’ victory had been confirmed in the early hours, the result of the South Thanet vote had still not been announced when the sun came up. A nervous Tice fired off a quick email to a friend he had made in the run-up to the election: ‘Arron, hope all well. How is it looking for Nigel? Either way should talk re referendum as likely to be sooner rather than later,’ he wrote.
Just under forty-five minutes later, Banks replied: ‘Doubtful for Nigel – would love to catch up. I would say there is zero chance of a fair referendum.’
Farage did not win, of course, and UKIP returned just one MP. To Tice, this was a disaster. Farage and a cohort of Ukippers in the Commons would fight tooth and nail to ensure Cameron carried out a fair referendum. Without them in Parliament, the chance of an establishment stitch-up was likely. The fifty-year-old property developer was frustrated. Not just with the result of the general election, but with himself for not trusting his instincts months earlier. And he was also frustrated with Matthew Elliott.
Seven months earlier, in October 2014, Tice and Elliott sat down for dinner in the Osteria dell’Angolo restaurant in Marsham Street, Westminster. It was the first time the pair had met, and Tice, as a signatory to Business for Britain, wanted some clarification on the organisation’s plans for the referendum. He was left disappointed.
‘I wanted to understand when Business for Britain was going to make the case to leave, to which the answer was it wasn’t, because that wasn’t its job,’ recalled Tice.
Then I said: ‘When are you going to make the move across?’, to which the answer was, ‘I need to wait until he’s [Cameron] come back, we’ve got to go through the journey, basically, when he comes back from the summit.’ That didn’t work for me, I felt that was too late. If he was going to run a No campaign – if – you couldn’t wait that long. I went away quite troubled. I just felt there was a mismatch. I was expecting him to say that he would back Leave much earlier, and move across to being involved in a No campaign.
Although disheartened, Tice tried to salvage something positive from the meeting.
What Elliott did say was he’s a campaigner, he’s not a policy thinker, and he didn’t have a credible answer to ‘What does it look like after Brexit?’ We went away and at [anti-EU think tank] Global Britain we produced a paper that was released in March 2015 in which we which analysed the various options: Norway, Switzerland, Canada and WTO [World Trade Organization] plus.
While working on this paper, Tice set up another meeting with Elliott to press home his view that the Out campaign needed to start work as soon as Cameron arrived back in Downing Street after the general election.
Over lunch on 16 February 2015, again at Osteria dell’Angolo, Tice quizzed Elliott over why Business for Britain was not calling for the UK to leave the EU, why it was still backing reform, and why it wouldn’t declare for Out now. Elliott again explained the position was ‘Change or Go’ and the Prime Minister needed to be allowed to go through the renegotiation process. Tice was again frustrated, and this time laid out his campaign blueprint:
My idea was the day after the general election I wanted to issue a press release saying the Leave campaign, or then, as it was going to be, the No campaign, was forming; that it had pledges already of X million pounds; that it was carrying out a search for a chief executive; it was under way – bang. I put this idea to Matthew in February 2015, three months before the election, saying this is what we’ve got to do. And he said: ‘No, far too early, wrong strategy.’ He’s supposed to be the serious campaigner and there was only so much time I could focus on it at the time so I didn’t realise he was saying that because he wasn’t ready.
Looking back, Tice is convinced Elliott poured cold water on his idea out of personal ambition. ‘It was pure vested interest,’ he said.
He didn’t like that idea because he didn’t want there to be a search for a chief executive. He wasn’t ready to move from Business for Britain then, and Business for Britain wasn’t ready to switch to Out, and therefore he didn’t want anyone else going round basically setting up a Leave campaign.
Whatever the reason, it was clear Tice was getting nowhere with Elliott. But his new friend Arron Banks was a man he could do business with.
A mutual friend had introduced Banks to Tice and the pair had immediately hit it off. Whereas Banks was a recent convert to Eurosceptic campaigning, Tice had been involved in various anti-EU groups since the late 1990s – including Business for Sterling, the campaign which employed Dominic Cummings from 1999 to 2002. Tice had the experience and contacts, Banks had the money and showmanship.
Almost twenty-four hours after the country discovered Farage had not been victorious in South Thanet, Tice penned another email to Banks:
The Tories are going to use their majority to push for an early referendum in my view and they will think the Out campaign is weakened now.
We need to prove them wrong quickly. My idea is to accumulate some pledges from people over next two weeks to get us over £1m pledged / raised and let press know that the Out campaign is forming, raising money and identifying possible campaign CEO and leaders. I am good for £100k.
I am convinced we can win referendum.
Banks was keen, but was mulling over getting more involved with UKIP. On 15 May – four days after Farage’s unresignation – he met with the UKIP leader in the party’s headquarters in Mayfair to discuss how to move forward.
‘Banks said: “Nigel, you’re my hero. Politicians are a joke, we need to give you something that will give you a voice,”’ remembered Farage’s advisor Chris Bruni-Lowe.
With the plan to help give Farage a prominent role in the referendum agreed, Banks began working with Tice on building a fledgling Out campaign. Working on the assumption the question on the ballot paper would be a replica of the 1975 vote – ‘Do you think the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community (the Common Market)?’ – an advertising agency was hired to begin coming up with campaign slogans.
Tice recalled:
The original slogan was ‘When you’re in the know, you’ll vote No – Be in the Know’. Very clever because it was created by a very bright agency, a couple of young ladies who didn’t vote in the general election because they didn’t know, they knew even less about the EU referendum, so we thought it was really clever.
With the advertising agency working on the brand, Banks and Tice started hitting up business contacts to drum up support. They both felt that having non-political voices at the top of the campaign would ensure their message got through to a public generally turned off by Westminster figures. But wherever they turned, Banks and Tice time and again found themselves hearing the same words: ‘In private, I back you; in public, I won’t.’
Tice admits he was ‘overly optimistic’ to think he and Banks would be able to secure such a range of well-known figures. ‘It’s quite hard for non-politicians to put their heads above the parapet. People like Arron and I are quite unusual,’ he said.
Banks tapped up Farage for a contact list of people who over the years had shown sympathy for leaving the EU, but was equally as frustrated as his business partner:
Nigel gave a huge list of people he’d been cultivating for years. At the very beginning, it became clear that UKIP were not as friendless as people thought. There are a hell of a lot of people that have a lot of secret sympathy with them who weren’t about to put their head above the parapet. We used to have dinners with all sorts of weird people – earls, dukes and industrialists and all sorts of people. This idea that Nigel is a lone voice w
as slightly silly. There are a hell of a lot of people who liked him and supported him and wished him well but weren’t prepared to put their heads above the parapet.
Despite trying to use Farage’s contacts to drum up support, both Tice and Banks publicly sought to play down any notion that the campaign would be built purely around the UKIP leader.
Tice said:
He’s a well-known politician but we had a very clear view that we wanted a much broader debate from lots of different people. If you want to talk about borders and controls, bring in a highly experienced borders and controls guy. You want to talk about military and defence, bring in a general.
A month later, in an interview with the Telegraph, Banks rammed home the point:
Nigel is a great communicator but I don’t believe UKIP is the right vehicle to take this forward. It is not a political campaign. This is too important to leave to politicians. They can endorse it and support it but they will not be involved in the campaign.
Nigel is not the right person to lead the campaign. He does not reach out to everybody.
The notion that UKIP’s highest-profile donor would launch an EU referendum campaign and not let Farage play a key role in it did not hold much water in Westminster. Many journalists had seen first-hand how close Banks and the UKIP leader had grown during the general election campaign, and there had been no hint of a falling out between the pair.
But, as of that moment – regardless of whether The Know was a thinly veiled front for UKIP – they were the only ones who were publicly prepared to take the battle to Cameron.
CHAPTER 4
It wasn’t the highest-profile speech Nigel Farage had ever given, and it certainly wasn’t the largest audience he had ever faced, but his address to the party faithful in Eastbourne on 6 June 2015 had suddenly become one of the most important.
It had been twenty-six days since he had ‘unresigned’ as UKIP leader – an act that provoked a civil war as senior party figures questioned not just his judgement but that of those advising him.
Carswell was one of the angriest. After the phone call ahead of Farage’s unresignation, Carswell believed the UKIP leader would hold true to his word and step down.
Later that day, he had a meeting with two UKIP officials over how to spend the so-called Short money – the public cash available to political parties who have seats in Westminster. Parties get £16,956.86 for every seat won at the most recent election, plus £33.86 for every 200 votes gained across the country. UKIP were entitled to £650,000, but Carswell, who had long campaigned for reducing the cost of politics, did not think that a party with just one MP could justify taking all the cash. A heated row broke out between UKIP’s only MP and those at the top of the party over who controlled the fund, how much they would claim and what it would be spent on.
The problem was, UKIP really needed the money. After the election, the party was forced to leave its Mayfair headquarters as, while the office space was provided free of charge by its treasurer Andrew Reid, the business rents alone meant it was too expensive to stay. UKIP press officers were forced to work from the nearest Caffè Nero, their own homes, or just ‘somewhere round here with Wi-Fi’, said one party source. The plan was to use some of the public money to fund an office move, but Carswell was refusing to sanction the cash being handed over to those at the top of the party.
The source added:
We were in real financial trouble, we’d lost our offices. That’s why there was the trouble with Douglas, who had been put on the spot and it wasn’t his fault, but he didn’t have the wit or the flexibility. Carswell knew there was financial trouble and it put him in a very strong position. So he played badly, they played badly, it fell apart. Up until that point it was alright.
The day after that fractious meeting over the Short money, Farage decided he needed to speak to his only MP face to face to try to resolve the issue, but, despite getting together, no agreement was reached. On Thursday 14 May, MEP Patrick O’Flynn – the former political editor of the Daily Express who was now the party’s economic spokesman – claimed Farage’s senior advisors had turned him into a ‘snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive’ man.
In an interview with The Times, O’Flynn said UKIP was now ‘open to the charge that this looks like an absolutist monarchy or a personality cult’. In a subsequent interview with Sky News later that day, he denied he was taking part in any sort of ‘coup’ against Farage, whom he labelled his ‘political hero’, but added: ‘A couple of people in his inner circle – for want of a better term – they are wrong ’uns.’
O’Flynn didn’t mention them by name, but it was clear who he was talking about: Farage’s chief of staff Raheem Kassam and party secretary Matthew Richardson. Both were seen as the architects of the ‘shock and awe’ style of campaigning that had led to Farage using HIV sufferers as examples of benefit tourism in a televised leaders debate ahead of the general election. The pair were also blamed for cutting Farage off from many others in his party, encouraging his drinking and, ultimately, responsible for his defeat in Thanet South.
Kassam was due to leave his job as Farage’s chief of staff after the election anyway, but the attack from O’Flynn ensured he left with a bang instead of a whimper. Speaking on Sky News from New York, where he had travelled for a post-election holiday, Kassam gave it to O’Flynn with both barrels:
You cannot go to a newspaper and air internal party grievances as an elected representative of the party. It’s wholly unprofessional and I think Patrick should absolutely consider his position. I have no problem with him as a bloke, he’s a nice chap, he has some good ideas, but unfortunately, over the past twenty-four hours, he has shown himself to be utterly unprofessional and undeserving of holding that title and holding a spokesman role for the UK Independence Party.
Arron Banks also weighed in, accusing O’Flynn of working with Carswell in a bid to freeze Farage out of the EU referendum campaign. ‘It’s all related to Carswell. They want to be the voice of the “No” campaign in the referendum,’ he said, adding: ‘People like Hannan and Carswell are paper Eurosceptic tigers. Nigel is a big beast in the jungle.’
Later the same day, Farage faced an uncomfortable appearance on the BBC’s Question Time. The first question was simple: ‘Is there a place in today’s politics for snarling, thin-skinned and aggressive leaders?’ Farage batted the question away, putting O’Flynn’s comments down to someone ‘letting off steam’ after an intense general election campaign. On the Short money issue, he offered an olive branch to Carswell: ‘I’m going to recommend that we don’t accept any of it. Given we’ve had an argument over this, I don’t want UKIP to look like other parties, grubbing around after public money.’
Peace offerings were not offered to Patrick O’Flynn or UKIP deputy chairman Suzanne Evans. On Tuesday 19 May, Farage accepted O’Flynn’s resignation as the party’s economic spokesman. The same day, Evans’s contract as the party’s policy chief was not renewed. The two people who had sat alongside Farage when UKIP unveiled their general election manifesto in April were now gone. Farage was the undisputed king of UKIP again.
His control over the party may have been restored, but the row over Short money, coupled with the telephone call on the morning of Farage’s ‘unresignation’, meant the relationship between Carswell and Farage was hitting new low after new low. It fell even further on Saturday 16 May, when the UKIP leader read an article in his copy of that day’s Times newspaper headlined ‘Farage needs to take a break from UKIP’.
‘There’s an article in The Times under the byline of Douglas Carswell and a sentence in there I’ve never forgotten,’ Farage said.
There are two things he says. The first thing he says is: ‘We must not challenge the Prime Minister. We must allow Dave to go and do his stuff.’ What?! And there is the phrase I shall never forget, where Mr Carswell says: ‘We must not make immigration synonymous with EU membership.’ I thought: ‘Fucking hell. I spent ten years trying to do that!’ I’ve spe
nt ten years when Jo Public thought the EU was over there and immigration is over here and I’ve always known if you put the two together… and here he is saying we must not do this in this campaign.
The article further fuelled Farage’s suspicions that Carswell was working under orders from Daniel Hannan – indeed, he believed Hannan had written the piece. From where Farage was looking, conspirators inside and outside his party were plotting to stop him from taking an active role in the referendum.
‘I knew within a fortnight of the general election exactly what was happening, exactly what they were trying to do. I sussed it out that morning. It was wrong, it got even worse thereafter,’ said Farage.
Knowing a rival Out campaign would be formed which would have no room for him, it didn’t take much for Farage to work out who would be running it: Matthew Elliott. So Farage arranged to meet him.
Six days later, on Friday 22 May, Farage and Elliott shook hands in the tea room of Claridge’s, the five-star hotel in London’s Mayfair. Farage was not expecting to learn anything he didn’t already know from Elliott, but he wanted his suspicions confirmed. To the former metals trader, Elliott was just another posh boy in the image of Hannan – another member of the Westminster establishment who did not understand life outside SW1. ‘They are creatures of the political class,’ said Farage.
Elliott, for his part, was no big fan of Farage either. The two first shared a platform in June 2013, when they were booked to appear on a cruise organised by the Midlands Industrial Council (MIC), a group of wealthy businesspeople, which has poured money into Eurosceptic pressure groups and the Conservative Party. Aboard the luxury Queen Elizabeth cruise liner, Farage and Elliott took part in a debate on the future of the EU and the UK’s place within it. It was there that Elliott experienced Farage’s take-no-prisoners style of debating first-hand.