by Owen Bennet
Johnson may have set his own reform targets high, but he was interested in renegotiation, not just going along with the pretence of a deal before opting for Out, as many other Eurosceptics were doing.
In what was his second ‘maiden’ speech in the Commons on 1 June (he had previously been an MP from 2001 to 2008), Johnson made it clear how he expected Cameron to behave:
I congratulate the Prime Minister on the élan and success with which he has begun his pan-European schmooze-athon in the chancelleries of Europe. I believe his efforts will be crowned with success, but I would remind him of something that I think all of us would want to remind him, our negotiators, the Foreign Secretary and everybody else: if you are going to go into a difficult international negotiation, you have to be prepared to walk away if you do not get the result you want.
If we do not get a deal that is in the interests of this country or of Europe, we should be prepared to strike out and forge an alternative future that could be just as glorious and just as prosperous, with a free-trading arrangement.
A week later, and the issue of whether ministers would be allowed to break from collective responsibility when the referendum arrived – as Harold Wilson had allowed in 1975 – spilled into the media. In a rare misstep in his media relations, Cameron tied himself up in knots over the issue while at a G7 summit in Schloss Elmau in Germany. It was the day after Steve Baker announced Conservatives for Britain in the press, and rumours were that some Cabinet ministers had signed up to the mailing list. (Whittingdale was indeed on the list, and had been assured his membership wouldn’t be made public, although, as he put it, ‘I wouldn’t have been that concerned if that had been known, as anybody who looked at my track record wouldn’t have exactly been shocked that I was a member.’)
Cameron was asked by the press if he had ‘absolutely closed his mind to allowing ministers a free vote’.
He replied: ‘I’ve been very clear. If you want to be part of the government, you have to take the view that we are engaged in an exercise of renegotiation, to have a referendum and that will lead to a successful outcome.’
When asked if that meant anyone in government who opposed the position would have to resign, the Prime Minister said: ‘Everyone in government has signed up to the programme set out in the Conservative manifesto.’ He added:
If I can get a position where Britain would be better off in a reformed Europe then obviously that is not something the government is neutral about. It’s not a sort of ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ approach. If I can secure what I want to secure, I will have secured what I think is the right outcome for Britain.
I am carrying out a renegotiation in the national interest to get a result that I believe will be in the national interest. I’m confident I can get that.
The next day, Cameron woke up to newspaper front pages he was not expecting. The Telegraph splashed on ‘Cabinet told: Vote for Europe or resign’; The Guardian led with ‘PM: I will sack ministers who call for EU exit’; while the Daily Mail had ‘PM: Back me or I will sack you’ emblazoned across its front page.
The Prime Minister had not meant to be anywhere near as definitive as he had been. Well aware that such a position could trigger Cabinet resignations, he quickly rowed back. At a post-summit press conference, Cameron claimed his comments had been ‘misinterpreted’.
He said:
I was clearly referring to the process of renegotiation. But the point is this. I have always said what I want is an outcome for Britain that keeps us in a reformed EU. But I have also said we don’t know the outcome of these negotiations, which is why I have always said I rule nothing out.
The Prime Minister then turned on the journalists in the room: ‘If you’re not certain about something I said yesterday, then ask and we’ll happily make it clear,’ he said. The hacks were not happy with being accused of misrepresenting Cameron. ‘Extraordinary suggestion from PM that no-one in gov realised there was “misinterpretation” issue until he woke up & saw newspaper coverage,’ tweeted the Press Association’s James Tapsfield. ‘Many of the Cameron government’s problems occur when journalists write down what he says and put it in their newspapers…’ was the Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman’s take on the matter.
The slip-up, or ‘misrepresentation’, was a public example of what was going on behind closed doors in Downing Street. Cameron was undecided about suspending collective responsibility for the referendum, but Chancellor George Osborne was counselling against the move. According to Iain Duncan Smith:
What he was thinking was if he didn’t let them campaign, that would have locked Michael Gove in because he wouldn’t have resigned, that was his thinking. I think Cameron veered at the beginning to the idea that you should run it as collective responsibility but it became clear to him as the year went on that this was going to be almost impossible.
The battle over whether Cabinet ministers could campaign for Out would continue for the rest of the year and, by the time it was over, Cameron would be lining up against both friends and rivals.
CHAPTER 7
Discussing the future of the country underneath a painting of Charles I certainly focuses the mind. There can be few more stark reminders of what happens when the London establishment loses touch with the people than a picture of the last English king to be beheaded.
That was precisely the reason Owen Paterson had the portrait hanging on his office wall. For Paterson, the EU referendum would be a 21st-century re-run of that civil war, which ended with the monarch’s death in Whitehall – although of course not even the most ardent Eurosceptic wanted to see David Cameron’s head in a basket.
It was beneath the gaze of Charles I that the plotters of 2015 would meet each Wednesday afternoon after Prime Minister’s Questions. Sitting at the long table in Paterson’s office, representatives from the Conservatives, Labour, UKIP, the Greens and the DUP would update each other on their activities and plot their next moves.
One of the key points of the group was that it should not be Tory-dominated, meaning just three Conservatives took part: Bernard Jenkin, who would chair the meeting; Steve Baker, responsible for relaying the latest Conservatives for Britain activities; and Paterson himself.
With so many Tory Eurosceptics wanting to play a key role, and so few places available on the steering committee, some Conservative MPs’ noses were put out of joint. Douglas Carswell, UKIP’s representative on the group, said: ‘I think there was tension in the Conservative Party where perhaps in order to make sure it wasn’t a Conservative-dominated thing there had to be a limited number of Conservatives there, and I think perhaps that probably caused a bit of tension.’
John Baron, the Tory MP for Basildon and Billericay whose 2013 amendment to the Queen’s Speech ‘expressed regret’ at the lack of a referendum pledge, welcomed the structure – even though he wasn’t at the ‘top table’:
It allowed that certain individuals could focus on certain key issues without competing for top slot, in the nicest possible way. I think that worked very well. It addressed a key concern that on the Eurosceptic side of things there had sometimes – sometimes – been a jockeying for position which muffled the message. It allowed … the campaign to focus on the issues we thought important, whether it was focusing on the rear-guard action on things like purdah, financing, the wording of the referendum.
On the Labour side, the Eurosceptic stalwart MPs Kate Hoey, Kelvin Hopkins and Graham Stringer were regular attendees, as were Labour donor John Mills and, later, Brendan Chilton – the man who would help administer the Labour Leave group. In an ironic twist, Paterson’s office was directly underneath Alan Johnson’s – the man running the Labour In campaign.
‘It was always quite amusing because we’d go up in the lift and we’d very regularly bump into Alan Johnson and the Labour Remain committee. It was quite funny because we’d all sort of stand either side of the lift and say, “Good afternoon,”’ remembered Chilton.
Matthew Elliott an
d Dominic Cummings would also drop in to keep an eye on progress, and also to provide updates of their own.
According to the pragmatic Elliott:
The idea behind that group was basically twofold: a) the referendum legislation was going through, so let’s make sure it’s as fair a referendum as possible, and b) let’s start thinking about the sort of campaign we need. You know, a bit like an exploratory committee for a potential race – you’re not committing yourself to running, but you’re sort of finding out. Testing the water. So that was the idea behind that.
Despite bringing together groups of politicians who would normally waste no time in tearing strips off each other, it was ‘all very collegiate and inclusive’, remembered Carswell.
‘Oh, we got on fine together. Initially, I mean – this has always been the case with the EU as an issue,’ said Mills.
After a month of meeting, the group – now known as the Exploratory Committee (ExCom) – revealed itself with a mission statement, signed by the seven Tory, Labour and UKIP MPs, on Thursday 18 June 2015. The statement was much more aggressive than the article by Baker announcing Conservatives for Britain. Whereas the Wycombe MP had showered Cameron with praise before setting out his hope for reforms, the ExCom statement was blunt:
There is little if any indication that the government is even asking for significant reform or fundamental change. In particular, there is no sign of any proposals either to end the supremacy of EU law over UK law on ever wider matters, or to resolve the question of what should be the relationship between the Eurozone and non-Eurozone states.
The statement went on:
There are therefore many issues that need urgent attention, including –
Legal issues arising from the Referendum Bill (e.g. rules for ‘purdah’, the impartiality of EU and government institutions and broadcasters, funding limits, designation of IN and OUT campaigns, etc.).
How an OUT campaign might best be formed and run to inform the public about the issues.
We are therefore forming a cross-party group to consider these questions. This is not the ‘OUT’ campaign, but we are seeking urgently to provide resources for crucial thinking and to promote cooperation amongst those who might contribute to an OUT campaign.
The day after the announcement, Cummings took to his blog to dampen down reports that he was running the committee, despite the fact that he had been involved in its creation.
Contrary to some media reports, I am not ‘running’ anything. Contra The Times, I am not ‘overseeing’ ExCom. (ExCom is a set of meetings, it is not an organisation, and I do not chair it.) I go to their meetings, listen, and give advice. I am talking to people about whether they would be interested in leaving their job to work for a NO campaign and how they think it should work. It is extremely hard to create political organisations that can take decisions fast and effectively so getting the foundations right is vital. Also, building a national network of small businesses to make the case for NO in their community, so essential to winning a referendum, will take time so people need to start now.
I will not be ‘running the NO campaign’. I am helping people get something started because I want to see the arguments put to the public in as sensible a way as possible. Soon I will return to my studies.
With Cf B and now ExCom in the public domain, some Conservative MPs began to worry. Were Baker, Jenkin and Paterson really supporting the Prime Minister? Or was this actually all a front for a No campaign? Many MPs had signed up to Cf B because they genuinely did want to show support to Cameron, and were going to make their decision on whether to back staying in the EU based on the deal he returned with.
Jenkin remembers:
We had a lot of conversations with colleagues who said: ‘Well, why are you starting the No campaign now? Surely you’ve got to wait?’ We explained to them that if we waited until the final deal was completed, then tried to start the No campaign, there wouldn’t be much of a campaign because there wouldn’t be enough time.
A week after ExCom was announced, it became a lot clearer what David Cameron would be asking for in his renegotiation. On Thursday 25 June, the Prime Minister travelled to Brussels for a two-day summit with other EU leaders. Top of the agenda was the growing migration crisis in the Mediterranean and, as was becoming tradition, the parlous state of the Greek economy. That evening, Cameron was given five minutes by European Council President Donald Tusk to make a brief statement to other leaders setting out his hopes for reform of the UK’s relationship with the EU. However, a more detailed account of his thinking found its way into The Guardian, which printed a leaked copy of a diplomatic note recounting a meeting between Cameron and other EU leaders.
According to the note, Cameron told his European counterparts his ‘firm aim’ was ‘to keep the UK in the EU’. There were four key areas of reform: exempting the UK from ‘ever closer union’ and introducing a red and yellow card system for blocking EU proposals; cutting red tape on the EU service sector; ensuring those countries outside the single currency would not be bound by new rules introduced in the single market; and introducing restrictions on EU citizens claiming benefits. Crucially, it appeared the notion of an ‘emergency brake’ on migrants’ access to benefits was dropped. The brake was one of Cameron’s flagship proposals, and would have allowed the UK to suspend in-work benefits to EU migrants if immigration was deemed to be at a level that was affecting public services.
The note also revealed Cameron’s tactic to win the referendum, which was likely to be held in 2016: ‘He believes that people will ultimately vote for the status quo if the alternatives can be made to appear risky.’ This line was deliberately reminiscent of the campaign used by those calling for the Scots to reject independence from the UK in the 2014 referendum – a style dubbed ‘Project Fear’.
With the demands out in the open, there was pressure from CfB and BfB to declare they were for Out immediately. Elliott resisted:
A lot of Tory MPs wouldn’t have been able to join because they still needed the cover of it being ‘Change or Go’, and to be fair a lot of them wanted to see the change the PM wanted. But obviously we needed a critical mass to be able to get the changes to the legislation and get the momentum going.
One person not being shy about getting the No campaign going was Cummings, who on 7 July posted an open invitation for recruits to join the organisation he was helping to create.
After a quote from Bismarck (‘Better to be a hammer than an anvil … If revolution there is to be, better to undertake it than undergo it’), the blog kicked off with a line that could have come straight out of the mouth of Nigel Farage. ‘Some Tory MPs have said “we must wait for the prime minister to return from his renegotiation before we talk about a NO campaign, we cannot prejudge it, party unity demands…” No, no, no.’
After warning Conservative MPs to ‘focus on the interests of Britain, Europe, and the wider world – not party interests, including “party unity”’, Cummings listed all the vacancies he was hoping to fill: researchers, programmers, web designers, experts in advertising and marketing, and spokespeople (‘fancy yourself a cross between Bill Clinton and Milla Jovovich, get in touch’).
Along with the long list of the kinds of people Cummings did want, there was one group who need not email in: ‘We are not yet in a position to deal with grassroots volunteers but we should be by September.’
Recognising his own reputation as a man who is not always easy to deal with, Cummings offered this reassurance: ‘Finally, you don’t have to worry about working for me because I am NOT “running the NO campaign” whatever you read. I don’t have the brains, skills, or personality. I am helping establish some foundations and a core team and helping people focus on essentials.’
He added: ‘Once things are moving, I will be returning to my studies, helping in minor ways only.’
It was not just unemployed Clinton/Jovovich crossbreeds who were attracted by Cummings’s blog. Following the EU summit in Brussels, Boris Johns
on had found himself disheartened by Cameron’s ambitions – but also sympathetic with the Prime Minister for having to negotiate with such a rigid entity. He came across a post written by Cummings on 23 June, in which he brainstormed a radical strategy for getting the UK a better deal with the EU: a double referendum.
Referring to staying in the EU as Yes and leaving the EU as No, Cummings wrote:
One can see why NO might argue for a second vote. It enables NO to make a NO vote seem much less risky. ‘If you vote YES, you won’t get another vote for another 40 years – if ever. You should vote NO to Cameron’s rubbish deal. If you vote NO, you will force a new government to negotiate a new deal and give you a new vote. A NO vote is much safer than a YES vote.’
He added:
This approach might allow NO to avoid its biggest problem – the idea that a NO vote is a vote to leave in one jump and is therefore a leap in the dark. It would allow NO to portray YES as the truly risky option. This approach would enable NO to build a coalition between a) those who think we should just leave (about a third) and b) those who dislike the EU but are worried about leaving (about a third) and who may be persuaded that ‘Cameron’s deal is bad and we should try to get a better one but the only way to force this is to vote NO’.
After reading the post, Johnson confided in friends that this plan of action could be the only way to get serious reform. A friend of the Mayor told the Sunday Times: ‘I don’t think in his heart Boris wants us to walk away. But he’s interested in us saying no because [the renegotiation] won’t be what we want. That would mean a second vote. He thinks the only way to deal with these people is to play hardball.’