by Owen Bennet
Elliott recalled:
I remember speaking after Nigel, and I basically gave the BfB [Business for Britain] pitch of ‘Change or Go’, making it very clear the sort of changes I wanted – it wasn’t just a twiddle round the edges, it was fundamental changes. He really laid into me in quite a vicious way on the platform, it was slightly a grandstanding way.
As a fellow Eurosceptic, the lobbyist expected to be wooed by Farage, not barracked, and said:
I was precisely the sort of person you should be trying to win over, or, if you disagree, you disagree politely. From that point he probably got the idea that what BfB was about was a bit of a takeover plot by Tory Eurosceptics to take away his rightful platform as head of the Brexit campaign.
Over coffee, Farage pressed Elliott on what his plans were now the Conservatives had won the election, and when BfB would commit to an Out vote. If Elliott, Hannan and all the other posh boys wanted to run the show, why didn’t they just get on with it?
‘I was always quite open with him,’ remembered Elliott. ‘I wouldn’t be cagey with him, so I would say: “Look, we haven’t got a rationale to change to leave yet because the government hasn’t resolved the negotiation.”’
Farage knew that was the case, but he wanted to hear it for himself. It gave him all the ammunition he needed to seize the initiative and begin his own campaign.
On 6 June, Farage took to the stage at UKIP’s south-east conference in Eastbourne. Pacing around the Congress Theatre stage, he wasted no time in attacking those who did not want either him or his party to play a leading role in the campaign.
We’re being told by a predominantly rather snobby bunch of Tories that UKIP should back off [audience boos], we should leave it to the real experts [more boos, cries of ‘Rubbish!’], we should leave it to the kind of people who, even when they did rebel against the Maastricht Treaty, at the end of the day did not have the courage to face up to John Major and vote against him in that confidence vote.
We are being told to stand aside for these guys. There’s not a cat’s chance in hell that I’m going to do that, or we’re going to do that.
Having been briefed on the Bruges Group meeting from earlier in the week by Michael Heaver, Farage turned his attention to John Redwood.
We even have people like John Redwood, now I’m told he’s very clever – I don’t know. We have John Redwood, last Monday debating at the Bruges Group with Tim Aker, saying that we must not give the Prime Minister a shopping list, that we must not give him a series of demands, we must pat David on the back, we must encourage him with his renegotiation.
Now, that strategy is flawed, folks, because unless we challenge this renegotiation, we’re allowing him, we’re allowing Cameron to set the terms of the agenda and set the terms of the debate.
So, frankly, what I’m seeing from many of these so-called Tory Eurosceptics is they are people I suspect – I know some of them will be principled and I know some of them will stand with us when this referendum comes – but my suspicion is quite a lot of them will be prepared to put their own careers before the interest of the independence of this country and I don’t trust very many of them.
He concluded by talking up what UKIP could bring to the campaign:
I am not for one moment suggesting that UKIP should be and has to be the only single and dominant voice in the No campaign. I’m not saying that, I’m looking forward to seeing a big umbrella group of businessmen, celebrities, whoever they may be who form the official No campaign, and we will form a significant part under their leadership of that campaign. But the reality is we are the only Eurosceptic organisation in Britain that has got 50,000 members, 300 branches and thousands of activists who are ready.
Farage’s speech, unsurprisingly, went down well with the UKIP faithful watching on, and he got the customary standing ovation.
Yet, while the sound of applause was still echoing around the theatre, the ‘so-called Tory Eurosceptics’ were about to reveal themselves to their friends, enemies and rivals alike.
CHAPTER 5
It is usually London’s restaurants that play host to informal summits of MPs as they plot and scheme. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown famously reached agreement over which of them would stand for the Labour leadership in 1994 while dining at the Granita restaurant in Islington. The Gay Hussar in Soho is adorned with caricatures of its famous political customers, while Shepherd’s in Marsham Street is one of the favoured places for a ‘good bit of grub’ by Nigel Farage.
On 17 May 2015, it was not a restaurant but the kitchen of Tory MP Bernard Jenkin that played host to one of the most important meetings of the referendum campaign. Jenkin was one of Parliament’s best-known Eurosceptics, and could even lay claim to that most revered of titles – a Maastricht rebel. Although he had technically abstained on a 1993 Labour amendment to the Bill which led to the government’s defeat, Prime Minister John Major’s thin majority meant not voting was a serious act of rebellion – a courageous move for a 33-year-old who had only been elected to Parliament the year before.
Seated at Jenkin’s kitchen table were Steve Baker, Dominic Cummings, Matthew Elliott and Owen Paterson, the Tory MP for North Shropshire. All five agreed that David Cameron was not going to achieve any substantial change to the terms of the UK’s EU membership – it would be a ‘patsy renegotiation’, said Jenkin. They knew Cameron would want to get talks with his European neighbours started immediately, but they had differing views as to when the referendum would actually be called. Jenkin was fearful it would be a quick process, with a snap vote called in early 2016. Paterson, who had observed Cameron at close quarters, having served four years in his Cabinet, believed the Prime Minister might wait until the latter half of 2017:
I was pretty sure he would go for autumn 2017, when the UK had the presidency of the European Union and he would do great events at places like Holyrood and Greenwich. He could present himself as a hugely important person UK-wise and a hugely important person EU-wise. It was quite a good message. I thought that was what he would probably do.
The first order of business was to decide how to move forward in Parliament. The government would need to put legislation through the Commons setting out the terms of the referendum and how the campaign would be conducted. If this Bill wasn’t scrutinised properly, Cameron could fix it so the full weight of the British government was pumping out pro-EU propaganda right up to polling day. The Eurosceptic Tory response to this would need to be coordinated. Baker’s Conservatives for Britain organisation was the perfect vehicle. He would bring together as many Tory MPs as possible on a mailing list, where he could keep fellow Eurosceptics up to date with information and plans. The group would go public at the beginning of June, under the auspice of wishing Cameron well at the European summit in Brussels later that month. The group adopted the same position as Business for Britain – Change or Go – but Jenkin, Baker and Paterson did not believe Cameron would achieve a deal that would convince them to stay.
Paterson took on responsibility for sussing out the Eurosceptic position of the new intake of Tory MPs. There were seventy-four new faces on the Tory side of the green benches, and if Conservatives for Britain could get to them early, especially with the line that they were supporting the Prime Minister in his renegotiation, it would provide the movement with a sizeable parliamentary army.
Some of the 2015 intake needed no convincing. Tom Pursglove, at twenty-six years old the youngest Tory MP, was a staunch Eurosceptic. Prior to being elected Corby MP, he had run an EU referendum of his own in Northamptonshire in 2014, along with MPs Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone (81 per cent voted Yes to leave, out of 14,431 votes).
Craig Mackinlay, who had destroyed Farage’s dream of finally winning a seat in the Commons in South Thanet, was also a confirmed Outer. Prior to joining the Tories in 2005, he had been a member of UKIP, even briefly acting as leader in 1997, so his anti-EU credentials were firmly established.
Others, such as new Braintree MP James Cle
verly, were instinctive Outers but wanted to be seen to give Cameron a chance to succeed with his renegotiation. Cleverly realised it would be easier to convince the public to back leaving the EU if they felt all had been done to reform it, and it wanted to show support for ‘The Boss’, as he called Cameron.
Cummings, meanwhile, was tasked with helping Matthew Elliott establish the campaign. At this stage, Cummings was clear that he would help set up the campaign, but did not want to lead it and would bow out once it was up and running. Cummings was also asked to propose a structure for the various groups to operate within. The Labour Eurosceptic movement – which would get slightly smaller in the coming months – was already mobilising, and the Democratic Unionist Party, now the joint fourth largest party in the Commons, would also have a role to play.
There was of course the issue of UKIP. Having Farage involved in the group in an official capacity was completely out of the question. ‘At the front of our mind was always the fact that Farage himself could not even win Thanet; if he couldn’t win Thanet then UKIP couldn’t win the referendum. If it was a UKIP-fronted campaign, it would fail,’ said Jenkin. But the five men also knew that if this campaign was to work, it would need to be able to work with some of the more Westminster-friendly members of Farage’s party.
Elliott would continue in his role as chief executive of Business for Britain, sticking to the line of ‘Change or Go’, but would begin to prepare the ground for a move to become an Out campaign.
With dinner eaten, wine drunk and the roles dished out, the group left Jenkin’s house to set in motion the beginnings of the Out campaign.
The five reconvened for breakfast at Sapori’s, an Italian café on Horseferry Road in Westminster, three days later. Over cappuccinos and croissants, they exchanged progress updates. Cummings had been busy, and had turned around his paper setting out how to organise the campaign in a matter of days. One of the key proposals was to establish a cross-party exploratory committee to coordinate Eurosceptic activity across the divide. It was agreed the meetings would take place every Wednesday afternoon in Paterson’s office after Prime Minister’s Questions, chaired by Bernard Jenkin, and Labour, UKIP and even Green peer Jenny Jones would be invited to attend. Jenkin would be the group’s chairman.
Cummings also put forward another key aspect of the plan: he would not run the campaign. Paterson remembers: ‘It was also intended that, according to the original Cummings paper, Dom Cummings would stand down; it was never intended that he would run the campaign. He always made it clear he would set it up, then he would fade away.’
Paterson, too, had been busy, and had arranged the first of his receptions for new Tory MPs to take place on the evening of Wednesday 27 May – the same day as the first Conservative-only Queen’s Speech since 1996. About fifty MPs turned up and, while drinking wine and eating nibbles, were gently probed for their EU views.
Baker’s charm offensive of the parliamentary party was also gaining ground and, after sounding out key figures such as John Redwood, he set out the aims of Cf B in a document marked ‘Confidential’. The group was for those Tories who ‘consider the UK’s present relationship with the EU to be untenable’ and ‘support the Party’s policy of renegotiation and referendum’. As well as exploring ‘what objectives the negotiations must achieve’, the group would also ‘discuss how to prepare for a possible “out” campaign, to be activated if it is apparent that negotiations will not achieve the objectives’.
According to the document, meetings would be held ten times a year, alternating between the European Parliament and Westminster. Baker noted that ‘speakers are anticipated from the spectrum of politics, business, diplomacy and trade economics’.
There was also a list of ‘key issues’, ranging from asking Parliamentary Questions about the ‘EU aspects of the work of every department’ to ‘selection of messengers and media’.
The group’s ‘immediate priorities’ were simple: ‘establishing membership; implementing our programme; establishing a briefing operation’.
Within days, MPs were signed up to the group’s mailing list, including Cabinet ministers – who were assured that their names would be kept out of the public domain.
Early meetings of Cf B were held in Baker’s office every Tuesday at 4 p.m. and, as the group grew in size, the weekly get-togethers were moved to one of the committee rooms in Parliament.
The first kite from the group was flown by David Campbell Bannerman on Sunday 31 May with an article in the Sunday Telegraph. Headlined ‘Cameron’s EU reform must not be a “sham”’, it set out three red lines for the PM’s renegotiation: immigration controls, full parliamentary democracy and a drastic cut in the UK’s contribution to the EU budget (he used the gross and net figures in the article). The MEP was well aware he was setting ‘expectations impossibly high’.
‘We had the ability to set the agenda and say, look, unless you get X, Y and Z back you’ve failed in your renegotiation, so we set the bar very high,’ said Campbell Bannerman.
Throughout the following week, Baker worked on signing up more and more Tories to Cf B, and by the following Saturday it had secured the backing of fifty MPs.
As Nigel Farage was lapping up the applause in Eastbourne for attacking the ‘so-called Tory Eurosceptics’, Baker was putting the finishing touches to an article for the next day’s Sunday Telegraph in which he would publicly reveal the sleeper cell he had created in the Conservative Party.
Under the headline ‘Conservatives will stand up for Britain if the EU lets us down’, Baker set out the group’s aims:
Conservatives for Britain has been formed among Tory parliamentarians to discuss the criteria by which to judge the government’s EU renegotiation. We are willing to consider how to prepare for an ‘out’ campaign if, lamentably, the European Union establishment will not allow the UK a new relationship of trade and cooperation.
There was praise for Cameron in the article, describing the PM as ‘spectacularly successful in Europe’ and adding that ‘no other Prime Minister has secured a cut in the European Union budget’, but it was clear this group was preparing for Out.
‘Unless senior EU officials awake to the possibility that one of the EU’s largest members is serious about a fundamental change in our relationship, our recommendation to British voters seems likely to be exit,’ wrote Baker.
One thing the article did not mention was how Cf B would seek to influence the government on the terms of the referendum. It wouldn’t be long before Cameron found out.
CHAPTER 6
It is always polite for politicians to say they are ‘astonished’ when invited by the Prime Minister to join the Cabinet, but in John Whittingdale’s case, it was true.
It had been ten years since the Maldon MP had been part of the Conservative Party’s top team, serving as shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary under Michael Howard’s leadership from 2004 to 2005. He then spent a decade as the chairman of the Culture Select Committee, and on Monday 11 May 2015 was fully expecting to carry on serving David Cameron from the back benches.
Yet on that morning he received a surprising phone call from Downing Street, offering not just a position in the government but a seat at the Cabinet table. With Sajid Javid becoming Business Secretary, there was a vacancy at the top of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and Whittingdale was asked to fill it. ‘I was thrilled about it, particularly this job, which is a job I had always wanted to do,’ he said.
There was just one matter that the Maastricht rebel needed to raise with the Prime Minister, though: that of the EU referendum.
He recounted:
I said: ‘There is just one thing we need to clarify. I am not in Better Off Out but you’ll know my voting record and my speeches and everything I’ve ever said and, unless there is a fundamental change, I think it will be very hard for me to campaign to stay in the European Union.’ The Prime Minister said words to the effect of: ‘I know that, I understand that, give me a chance and
see what I can deliver.’ I said: ‘Of course, if you can deliver then I will be the first on board.’
It wasn’t just new government ministers who were pressing the Prime Minister over Europe. At one of the first Cabinet meetings after the election, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith quizzed David Cameron over whether he would allow ministers to campaign with their conscience when it came to a referendum. ‘I don’t want to talk about that, I hope it won’t ever arise. I hope I come back with a deal which everybody can support and therefore it’s not an issue,’ the Prime Minister replied, according to one Cabinet minister.
Pressure on Cameron was also coming from outside the Cabinet – particularly from the new Tory MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Boris Johnson. In August 2014, Johnson had set out his own expectations of the renegotiation in a speech at Bloomberg’s London headquarters – the same venue in which Cameron had promised a referendum nineteen months earlier. Based on a report by Dr Gerard Lyons, the then London Mayor’s Chief Economic Advisor in City Hall, Johnson set out what he believed Cameron should be trying to secure from Brussels – and it was a long list: migration controls, cuts in the Common Agriculture Policy, a system to allow national parliaments to veto EU legislation and directives, ending the supremacy of the European Court of Justice over Home and Justice affairs, and even potentially opting out of the Social Chapter, which guaranteed employment rights for workers.
He said:
I think we can get there, but if we can’t, then we have nothing to be afraid of in going for an alternative future, a Britain open not just to the rest of Europe but to the world, where we have historic ties and markets with vast potential for all the goods and services that originate in London – and will continue to do so under any circumstances.