by Owen Bennet
With the kite flown, Johnson expanded on the idea in an interview with The Times on 11 July. He described himself as ‘very interested’ in the second referendum plan and added that he would be prepared to vote Out: ‘No one goes into a negotiation without being willing to leave. I love our friends and partners in Brussels, I understand quite deeply the way they do things, they are not remotely interested in you unless you tell them no.’
Johnson’s mind was spinning over how he would campaign in the referendum, and it would not stop for a long while.
CHAPTER 8
Most people don’t spend their 77th birthday contemplating fundamental reform to the way the country is run – but John Mills is not like ‘most people’. The son of a colonel – also believed to be a spy who, according to family legend, foiled a revolutionary attempt in Cuba by Fidel Castro – Mills studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University.
It was while at university that his entrepreneurial spirit came to the fore. The young Mills began selling cleaning products door-to-door before hiring a plane to fly fellow students to Canada for summer work. ‘Nowadays everyone flies all over the place. In 1958 it was a bit more of an adventure,’ he told the Telegraph in 2013.
He quit a graduate course at Unilever to form his own business, initially selling, then manufacturing, household products. It went bust in 1984, but Mills started all over again with John Mills Limited (JML) in 1986 and this time used in-store video demonstrations to market his products to customers. It was a success, and almost thirty years on JML had an annual turnover of £100 million, sold 15 million products a year and even ran a TV shopping channel.
But it was not his innovative marketing of mops, pans and ironing board covers that had made Mills a big player in Westminster. In 2013, he donated shares worth £1.6 million to Labour – the party he had represented as a councillor in Camden from 1971 to 2006 – which led to journalists taking more of interest in the businessman. At a time when Labour was overtly pro-European, his anti-EU stance marked him out from his comrades.
Despite being of an age when most people are content with observing politics instead of actively taking part, Mills was determined to play a role in the referendum. For him, this would be a chance to exorcise the demons of 1975, when as a younger man he had been a vigorous campaigner for the UK to vote No in the country’s first referendum on European membership. Recalling the campaign forty years later for a BBC radio series, he said: ‘The disparity in resources between the No and Yes was enormous – something like ten to one, and I don’t think that was a very fair way for this referendum to be fought.’
Bearing the scars of that fight, Mills vowed that, should a vote ever arise again, he and other Eurosceptics would be fully prepared.
Just twenty-three days after David Cameron’s Bloomberg speech, Mills registered ‘Labour for Britain’ with Companies House. A month later, the businessman registered another company, ‘Labour for a Referendum’ – a group that backed David Cameron’s commitment to hold an in/out vote on the UK’s EU membership. It attracted the support of about thirty MPs, but the majority of them endorsed the campaign on democratic grounds, not because they wished to leave the EU.
Mills said:
My personal position has never been violently against the EU, I just always thought that Britain never really got the right deal out of the EU. And, you know, if Cameron came back with what he said he would get at Bloomberg and elsewhere I might well have had a different view.
The man tasked with being Labour for a Referendum’s campaign director was Brendan Chilton, a borough councillor in Ashford, Kent, who would go on to contest the parliamentary seat of the same name in the 2015 general election. Having previously worked for Mills, and being of a similar Eurosceptic mindset, he was the businessman’s obvious choice to run the campaign.
Mills didn’t see the Eurosceptic battle purely through the prism of the Labour movement. He was first and foremost a pragmatist, and as well as setting up Labour for a Referendum in 2013, he also joined with Matthew Elliott to become co-chairman of Business for Britain.
Leading into the 2015 election, Mills was facing the situation that a Conservative victory – something that from a domestic perspective he was opposed to – would be the catalyst for the referendum he had waited forty years to see. On 8 May 2015, Mills’s 77th birthday and the day after the general election, his brain was already whirring with how to move forward. As a Eurosceptic Labour Party member, there were several problems ahead. First, would the party now, finally, back the referendum, or would it continue its policy of opposing a vote? If the party did oppose the vote, could it club together enough Europhile Tories to block the legislation going through Parliament? Alternatively, if the party now decided to back a referendum, would it put forward a negotiating stance of its own for when David Cameron went to Brussels to seek reform? Or would it just support the government’s proposals? All of this was being considered in the immediate aftermath of Ed Miliband’s resignation, even before the candidates for the new leader had made themselves known.
Chilton and Mills immediately began pondering what to do next, and realised they needed to get their act together quickly. Chilton recalled:
Once it became clear it was Tory government we needed to make sure straight away there was a Labour presence in the Leave outlet, because UKIP voters were going to vote to leave, 60 per cent of the Tories were going to vote to leave, so the swing vote was the Labour vote. The people who can deliver the Labour vote are Labour people.
Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings took no persuading. They both realised it was crucial to have voices from across the political spectrum in the campaign in order to appeal to as wide a range of people as possible. But, more importantly, they also knew that when it came to designating an official Out campaign, the Electoral Commission would take into account the breadth of support each group could command. Cummings had already envisaged Labour MPs being part of the exploratory group he had come up with in his initial briefing paper.
Unlike the Tories, who were having to manage numerous egos and decide which of the party’s many Eurosceptics would sit at the top table, there was an element of self-selection with Labour. By the beginning of June, the handful of Labour Eurosceptic MPs in Parliament who could be relied on to do any heavy lifting had been filtered down to just three: Kate Hoey, Kelvin Hopkins and Graham Stringer. Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn, who had voted against European membership in 1975, against the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 and against the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, was busy trying to secure enough nominations to get onto the ballot for Labour’s leadership election. John McDonnell, another Eurosceptic in the Tony Benn tradition of viewing the EU as a business club, was running Corbyn’s leadership campaign. Even Gisela Stuart, the Labour MP who, after being asked to help create the European Constitution in the early noughties, was so dismayed by the process that she became a vehement Eurosceptic, did not want to be involved. ‘I’ve been spending the last ten years trying to give up Europe,’ she said.
After getting wind that the overwhelmingly pro-EU Labour Party was organising its own In campaign – to be headed up by former Home Secretary Alan Johnson – Mills and Chilton knew they needed to hit back in kind. ‘Otherwise you’d get all this “You’re with the Tories” and all this,’ said Chilton. ‘We’d look like a front group.’
The Labour Eurosceptics initially organised themselves as ‘Labour for Britain’ – adopting the name of the company which had remained dormant since 2013 – fitting in with the Business for Britain and Conservatives for Britain brand. ‘Labour for Britain … were semi-autonomous, we were working with everyone but we wanted to keep a distinct identity,’ said Chilton.
The group announced itself on 17 June with a joint statement from Hoey, Hopkins and Stringer: ‘We believe that the debate about our country’s future in the EU has been dormant within the Labour Party for too long. We need to have a full dialogue within our membership and with our natural supp
orters.’
In an interview with the New Statesman, the County Antrim-born Hoey did display some reservations over the group’s name. ‘I don’t like the word “Britain” because that excludes Northern Ireland,’ she said. ‘I like “UK”. But if you look at “Labour FUK” it doesn’t exactly do very well, so we have to stick with “Britain”.’
The Labour Eurosceptic group may have been small in number but, when the referendum finally arrived, it would have something the official Labour In group lacked – passion right at the very top.
CHAPTER 9
‘We do not want the government to suffer defeat … it is almost certain the government will be defeated … Please take action now.’
These lines were part of a 235-word email sent out by Steve Baker to members of Conservatives for Britain on Wednesday 10 June 2015 ahead of a vote on the EU Referendum Bill.
But far from asking colleagues to support the government, the email was instructing Tory MPs to put pressure on the top brass to change key aspects of the Bill – aspects which, if they went unchecked, could cause serious damage to the Out side’s chances of victory.
The previous day, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond – who a year before had claimed the Conservatives were ‘lighting a fire’ under the EU with their referendum pledge – had taken to the Despatch Box in the Commons to set out details of the Bill.
The referendum question would be ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?’; the rules governing who can vote in a general election would apply – eighteen-year-olds and over, UK citizens only – but the franchise would also be extended to Gibraltar. Additionally, the Bill would suspend Section 125 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 – the piece of legislation which stops the government from campaigning in favour of one side or the other twenty-eight days ahead of a vote. With this period – known as purdah – lifted, David Cameron would have the full machinery of government at his fingertips right up to election day. Treasury reports on the financial impact of leaving the EU, Home Office reports on how it would make the UK less safe, Business Department reports on how Britain would be a less attractive country for companies to invest in – these could all be pumped out right up until voters went to the ballot box.
With the eyes of Tory Eurosceptics bearing down on him from the green leather benches, Hammond set out the government’s reasons for this change to the law:
If left unaltered, section 125 would stop the government ‘publishing’ material that deals with ‘any issue raised by’ the referendum question. In the context of this referendum, that is unworkable and inappropriate. It is unworkable because the restriction is so broad that preventing publication in relation to any issue raised by the referendum could prevent ministers from conducting the ordinary day-to-day business of the UK’s dealings with the European Union, and inappropriate because the referendum will take place as a result of a clear manifesto commitment and a mandate won at the general election.
Tory MP Peter Bone was the first out of the traps to grill the Foreign Secretary on this change: ‘Is that not what a lot of people are concerned about – that the government will use the apparatus of state to push a case, rather than letting the two sides have equal and fair access?’
Hammond, who knew full well that these questions would be coming, tried to offer assurances:
Clearly, it will be for the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’ campaigns to lead the debate in the weeks preceding the poll. The campaigns will be designated by the Electoral Commission, and will receive a number of benefits, including a public grant and eligibility to make a referendum broadcast and to send a free mailshot to voters. I can assure the House that the government have no intention of undermining those campaigns, and they do not propose to spend large sums of public money during the purdah period.
He added: ‘The government will exercise proper restraint to ensure a balanced debate during the campaign.’
Hammond’s assurances were failing to persuade many in the Chamber. Douglas Carswell called for purdah to be re-established so that the referendum would be ‘considered free and fair’, while Kate Hoey stated that ‘any common-sense view would be that it cannot be right to change the purdah restrictions’.
Even former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who revealed he would almost certainly be backing a ‘Yes’ vote, said there must be a ‘level playing field’ and any change to purdah ‘could convey an impression that the government will come in and try to load the dice’.
Owen Paterson’s speech was the most damning. After pointing out that under the purdah rules ‘we have fought a number of general election campaigns during which cars continued to be made, cows continued to be milked and the world did not stop’, he said:
What really worries me is that this extraordinary, incredibly important event in our history could be seen as illegitimate, and that whatever system of government for this country emerges after the referendum might not be seen as valid. I appeal to the Foreign Secretary to go back, talk to the Prime Minister and remove this arbitrary suspension of the process of purdah that has been thrashed out over twenty years.
After six hours of debate, MPs voted to move the Bill along to the next stage of the process – and two days of debate were set aside in the Commons the following week.
The next day, Baker sent his email round to Cf B members – now numbering more than 100 – setting out tactics to get the government to perform a U-turn over purdah: ‘Irrespective of your voting intentions, please ask your whip to take steps. This may mean the government accepting the amendments or pledging to introduce amendments at report stage.’
The government was starting to get worried. With a working majority of just twelve, it would only take a handful of Eurosceptics to get behind an amendment bringing back purdah to ensure defeat. That calculation, of course, depended on the Labour Party – who were now backing the referendum – voting with the rebels. Veteran Eurosceptic Bill Cash tabled an amendment to the Bill which would not only have blocked the suspension of purdah but would also have forced a sixteen-week referendum campaign – four times the length stipulated in the Referendum Act. By putting forward such an extension, it was hoped the government would compromise and meet the rebels halfway by agreeing to the standard four-week time period. But ministers would not budge.
Inside No. 10, Cameron was speculating on the outcome. Would it really be the case that five weeks into the first Tory-only government since 1997 there would be a defeat over Europe – the very issue that had so dogged John Major’s premiership? At meetings of the Cabinet’s European sub-committee, chaired by Cameron himself, debates were held over whether a defeat was imminent. Oliver Letwin, one of the PM’s most trusted lieutenants, was grilled on how Labour would act as the PM and his team war-gamed different scenarios. One of the members of the sub-committee, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, was baffled by the government’s actions. His view was that the government was ‘picking a fight’ it was set to lose, and would eventually be forced into a climb-down. ‘The Prime Minister was quite insistent throughout that they couldn’t govern unless they did this. He was very insistent,’ said Duncan Smith.
With no movement on purdah and a vote in Parliament looming, it was agreed to make a small compromise on the date of the referendum: it would not be held on 5 May 2016, the same day as local elections, the London mayoral contest and votes in Scotland and Wales. This was seen to benefit Brexit campaigners, as London and Scotland in particular were seen to be pro-EU strongholds, and timing the referendum to coincide with votes on the same day as the referendum could have led to an increased turnout for the In camp.
Europe Minister David Lidington was tasked with negotiating with the rebels, and in the week running up to the vote he held meetings with Baker to try to find a way to avert an embarrassing defeat for the government. Hammond himself even held a meeting with Baker, Paterson and Jenkin to try to reassure them that the government would not abuse its position if
purdah was abolished, but he could not persuade the Tory MPs to call off their rebellion.
With no deal done, Lidington decided to bypass the rebel leaders and write to all Tory MPs setting out why they did not need to back the Cash amendment. On the morning of the vote he fired off an email:
Working out a system that will reassure colleagues and voters that the referendum is a fair fight, yet will preserve the government’s ability to act in the national interest is not straightforward. It is important that it is legally clear and robust.
Therefore, we will work with colleagues over the next few months to understand their specific areas of concern and bring forward at report stage in the Autumn government amendments that command the widest possible support within the House and put beyond any doubt that the campaign will be conducted throughout in a manner that all sides will see as fair.
The first order of parliamentary business on 10 June was Treasury Questions, and almost as soon as Chancellor George Osborne got to his feet, he was grilled over purdah.
Discussing a Bank of England report into the likely impact of Brexit, Conservative MP for North Wiltshire James Gray asked: ‘Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer not agree that it is vital that such documents, which may well affect the outcome of the referendum, are not published in the so-called purdah period of six to eight weeks before the referendum?’
Osborne rehashed the Downing Street line that without suspending purdah the government would be unworkable, before adding:
We will come forward with reassurances that enable the proper business of government to continue and allow the government to make the case for the outcome that is achieved and the vote that we recommend, but that ensure that there is not an unfair referendum and that the government do not, for example, engage in mass communication with the electorate.