by Owen Bennet
Harman had her victory, Tory Eurosceptics had their purdah, and Cameron had changed the referendum question, lost the ability to call a snap election and would no longer be able to use the machinery of government to push for a Remain vote.
Conservatives for Britain had achieved everything it had set out to do.
CHAPTER 12
‘The people united will never be defeated! The people united will never be defeated!’ The chant kept on going, round and round, the volume occasionally dipping before being flung up again like a plastic bag in the wind.
Many of the people repeating the slogan were wearing bright-red T-shirts with the words ‘Jeremy Corbyn’ emblazoned on the front in white letters. They were facing the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster, making themselves heard as Labour Party MPs and members entered the building.
To the right of the centre’s entrance stood a group of young people wearing cloth flat caps in homage to the man who was about to be announced as Labour’s new leader. It was Saturday 12 September, and after a gruelling three months of speeches, rallies and hustings, the leadership contest was over.
Inside the building, waiting for the announcement, were John Mills and Brendan Chilton. Like the leadership contenders, the pair had had a busy summer. Mills had been working with Elliott on getting what would become Vote Leave ready to go as soon as the terms of the Prime Minister’s negotiation became clear. Chilton had also been liaising with Elliott, and while drawing up plans for how Labour for Britain would operate within the For Britain family, he met Dominic Cummings for the first time. Chilton recalls:
It was in a meeting in Matthew’s flat during the summer when we were coming up with the broad ideas for the campaign. It was a very comfortable meeting and we had some lunch and some light drinks and we were just discussing the general themes, what needed to be achieved by when, who was going to be responsible for what, all this kind of stuff. Dominic arrived a little bit late, I think he’d been at another meeting, and just sat at the end of the table and didn’t say anything. For a second I thought, who the hell are you? And we all chatted and got on and as I say I don’t recall him saying an awful lot at that meeting, just ‘Hi, I’m Dominic’ and that was it.
Despite Cummings’s apparent lack of enthusiasm, Chilton was in a positive mood with regards to the campaign. The Conservatives for Britain MPs had worked their magic in Parliament and won a slew of concessions, and it seemed as if the cross-party activity was bearing real fruit. But there was another reason Chilton was upbeat. The man about to be announced as Labour leader was a confirmed Eurosceptic, who had spent more than thirty years making the left-wing case for the UK to leave the European club. He hadn’t shied away from expressing his views during the campaign, either. At a leadership hustings in Warrington on 25 July, Corbyn was the only Labour leader to say he was prepared to vote Out in the referendum:
No, I wouldn’t rule it out… Because Cameron quite clearly follows an agenda which is about trading away workers’ rights, is about trading away environmental protection, is about trading away much of what is in the Social Chapter. The EU also knowingly, deliberately, maintains a number of tax havens and tax evasion posts around the Continent – Luxembourg, Monaco and a number of others – and has this strange relationship with Switzerland which allows a lot of European companies to outsource their profits to Switzerland, where tax rates are very low. I think we should be making demands: universal workers’ rights, universal environmental protection, end the race to the bottom on corporate taxation, end the race to the bottom in working wage protection. And I think we should be making those demands and negotiating on those demands rather than saying blanketly we’re going to support whatever Cameron comes out with in one, two years’ time, whenever he finally decides to hold this referendum.
Not since Bryan Gould stood against John Smith in 1992 had such a critic of the European Union been on the Labour leadership ballot.
In the conference centre, Mills and Chilton waited for confirmation that Corbyn had won the contest. He had been leading in all the opinion polls since the beginning of August, and the only question to be settled was just how big his victory would be.
The returning officer ran through the votes for each candidate to polite applause, but when he reached Corbyn’s total, cheers broke out before he could finish the whole number. He only got as far as ‘Two hundred and fifty-one thousand…’ before being drowned out. As Corbyn’s supporters inside the room chanted, ‘Jez, we did! Jez, we did!’ Chilton and Mills flashed big grins at each other. ‘For the first time in about thirty years we’ve got a Brexit leader of the Labour Party,’ Chilton said to Mills as the pair escaped the celebrations and left the centre. After turning right out of the doors and then right again, they arrived at the Westminster Arms pub, where they sat down and ordered two cups of tea to celebrate. ‘We were elated,’ said Chilton. ‘We thought it was marvellous.’
Chilton was hopeful there would now be a genuine discussion within the party as to what its EU position would be. Even if the party remained neutral – in order to balance the Eurosceptic views of its leader and a handful of backbenchers with the majority of Europhile members – it would be a tremendous achievement for the Leavers. During the leadership contest, Corbyn had even suggested a special Labour conference should take place once Cameron had completed his renegotiation in order to fully debate the party’s referendum position.
The elation lasted two days. On Monday 14 September, shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn took to the airwaves to declare Labour would still be calling for a Remain vote. ‘We will be campaigning, and are campaigning now, for Britain to remain part of the EU’, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, ‘under all circumstances.’
Benn added: ‘Jeremy has made it very clear we are going to stay to fight together for a better Europe.’
The night before, as Corbyn invited Benn to join his shadow Cabinet as shadow Foreign Secretary, the Leeds Central MP had set out the areas of difference he had with the new leader, including over the EU. According to a Labour source, Corbyn assured him that wouldn’t be a problem.
Hours after Benn’s comments on Radio 4, Kelvin Hopkins was attending a fringe meeting at the TUC’s annual conference in Brighton. Hopkins, who had nominated Corbyn for leader, addressed an anti-EU meeting in a hotel on the seafront, and would be rushing back to London as soon as the event finished. When told about Benn’s Radio 4 interview, Hopkins said, ‘I’m surprised at Hilary Benn’s comments. I just wonder if that’s been cleared with the new leader of the Labour Party, because obviously there’s going to be a battle between the Euro-enthusiasts and those who take a more sceptical position.’
He added:
Was his script approved? I don’t know if it was – or was he speaking for himself? I think there’s a lot of people even in the Parliamentary Labour Party who would be uncomfortable about that. They don’t want to take that kind of hard line. I will be asking when I get back to Parliament who allowed Hilary to go and say that.
After the meeting, he went further, saying Benn ‘has taken advantage of this situation’, and adding:
I’m going to write to him [Corbyn] and say I think the best position he can take is we’re not going to have a firm line, we’re going to leave it to individual unions, working members and MPs to take their own view – do a Harold Wilson, if you like. That’s the only position he can take because I think otherwise it’s going to be electorally very damaging.
Any notion that Benn had been speaking out of turn was well and truly dismissed two days later. On Wednesday 16 September, while the Labour for Britain group were holding their regular post-PMQs get-together, Corbyn was also having a meeting discussing the EU.
Hilary Benn, shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, shadow Business Secretary Angela Eagle and a number of advisors gathered together to solidify the party’s EU referendum position. Corbyn arrived last, buzzing after his first PMQs. One person in the room recalls the Labour leader was
acting in a ‘pretty arrogant’ manner, believing his tactic of reading out emails from the public had bamboozled the Prime Minister. Corbyn sat down, put his arm across the back of a chair and listened to the discussion. McDonnell was clear – the Prime Minister should not get a free hand in the negotiations. The main concern centred on the protections for workers provided by the EU, and McDonnell was fearful Cameron would be willing to trade some of these away in order to pander to Eurosceptics on the Tory right. Others in the room knew this wouldn’t happen. Not only had they had assurances through back-channels that this was not part of the negotiating strategy, from a purely political standpoint it made no sense. If Cameron wanted to win the referendum, weakening the rights of millions of workers was hardly the way to convince people to back his deal. It was then suggested by McDonnell that the party should take no position, but this too was dismissed – with Benn particularly vocal about the need for the Labour Party to campaign for Remain.
Corbyn seemed to take very little persuading, and it was agreed that a briefing note should be sent to MPs as soon as possible to put to bed any rumours that Labour would not be supporting Remain. Distributed on Friday 18 September, and headed up ‘From the Offices of Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Opposition and Hilary Benn, Shadow Foreign Secretary’, the note began:
Labour will be campaigning in the referendum for the UK to stay in the European Union. We will make the case that membership of the European Union helps Britain to create jobs, secure growth, encourage investment and enhances our security and influence in the world.
We will, of course, oppose any attempt by the Tory government to undermine workers’ rights. But Labour is clear that the answer to any damaging changes that David Cameron brings back from his renegotiation is not to leave the European Union but to pledge to reverse any changes by campaigning to stay in and get a Labour government elected in 2020.
Labour wants to see change in Europe and we will make the case through the EPLP, our relationships with sister social democratic parties and by engaging with other EU countries.
The note was unequivocal. The only small crumb of comfort for Labour’s Eurosceptic MPs was that they would not be whipped to vote for Remain – not that it would have made the slightest difference to how they cast their ballot anyway. Besides, it was a private vote, so the party would have no way of knowing which box was crossed when an MP got into the polling booth. Theoretically, Corbyn himself could stay true to his Eurosceptic beliefs and vote Leave and no one would ever know.
With the issue put to bed, the debate on the EU referendum at Labour’s annual conference later that month was a formality. Hilary Benn, Alan Johnson, Pat McFadden and MEP Glenis Willmott all took to the stage in Brighton on Monday 28 September to spell out why the UK should remain in the EU. The resolution to campaign to stay in the EU was passed without the smallest hint of dissent from conference delegates.
‘We did feel slightly disappointed in Jeremy, because it was as though he had gone back on a lifetime’s work. In every other school he had stayed on the Bennite wing of the party apart from this issue,’ said Chilton.
Labour-supporting Eurosceptics may have been feeling let down by Corbyn in the early days of his leadership, but by the time the campaign was in full swing, they would be positively delighted that the friend of the late Tony Benn was in charge of the party.
CHAPTER 13
Throughout the summer, UKIP set about finalising the details of Farage’s ‘Say No to the EU’ tour. Venues were booked in Kent, Belfast, Essex, Gateshead, Swansea, Chester, London, Leeds, Bolton, Redruth and Wolverhampton.
Although a complete technophobe himself, Farage wanted to harness the power of social media, and made sure the tour was broadcast on the internet – after all, it was through his European Parliament speeches being viewed on YouTube that he had picked up a swathe of supporters. ‘Let’s do it properly, let’s live stream, let’s do the stuff no one’s ever done in politics before, let’s ramp up social media, let’s go for it,’ he said.
Banks was also on manoeuvres, and completed the hiring of US referendum expert Gerry Gunster as an advisor. He had originally asked the company owned by David Cameron’s election guru Lynton Crosby to run his Out campaign – a service for which he was prepared to pay £2 million. Banks claimed Crosby Textor ‘thought about it for about five days’ before declining. As well as hiring from outside, Banks also moved people across from other businesses in his portfolio. Liz Bilney, who was chief executive at one of Banks’s insurance companies, was asked to do the same job at The Know. A call centre was created in Bristol, where up to sixty staff were employed to cold-call the most Eurosceptic areas of the country to establish a list of who to target with advertising, and also who they needed to get out to vote on referendum day itself.
Banks also kept up the psychological warfare on Elliott and Cummings. He offered Cummings £250,000 to quit Elliott’s organisation and be campaign director at The Know. Cummings declined, but Banks felt it ‘confused him for a bit’. The businessman then tried to make Elliott panic by reminding him just how much money he had at his disposal. Calling him from his Bristol country house, Banks told Elliott: ‘We’ve raised £10 million, we’ve got commitment for another £10 million, we don’t care what you do, we just want to run our campaign, but we think it would be better to merge the two together.’ Elliott declined the offer, but Banks felt the call ‘did seriously spook him’.
While Banks was enjoying playing with the minds of his campaign rivals, Tice was working on bringing the campaigns together. While on holiday in Tuscany on 9 August, and after a few measures of limoncello, he sat down at his laptop and spent two hours drafting an email formally proposing the campaigns should merge.
Addressed to ‘Matthew and Dominic’, the email began: ‘The Out campaign needs to be the biggest ever in order to tap into such a wide target audience, from so many different walks of life, with different messaging to capture different groups. There are many differences to what has been done before by you and others.’
After talking up the role technology would play in the referendum (‘Our Facebook page numbers are currently going through the roof,’ he wrote), Tice warned that the donors putting up the money for the Out campaign ‘want to be much more involved to ensure success’.
He went on: ‘We can and must destroy the opposition but this needs: 1) an awesome alliance of skills and 2) putting self-interest aside for the sake of the country.’
Tice then set out his blueprint: Elliott and Cummings would be responsible for ‘corporate and political activities/research’, while Andy Wigmore would be head of media and given the title ‘communications director of The Know.eu’. Liz Bilney – or ‘AN Other’ – would be CEO and there would be an ‘executive board of big donors (8–12) who would meet once or twice monthly in person / video con / conf call to approve progress’. Banks was suggested as chair of this board – possibly in conjunction with John Mills.
Tice signed off with: ‘Are you around week of 17th to meet and discuss? If we could agree in August it could be a reality in September.’
Reflecting on his proposal, Tice said: ‘Matthew and Dominic should do the politicians, the Westminster bubble, SW1 and we would run the ground campaign and social media. Quite straightforward, play to your strengths, bang.’
On Wednesday 19 August, Tice, Banks, Elliott and Cummings met to discuss the email at the Taj Hotel near St James’s Park. It may have been a different venue from their other meetings, but the result was the same: no merger. Tice was now reaching the same conclusion that Farage and Banks had already come to: as long as Cummings and Elliott were in charge of the rival Out campaign, there would be no joining of forces.
On 1 September, all the marketing, advertising and brand-building that had been taking place since May was turned on its head when the referendum question was changed. After pressure from the Electoral Commission and Eurosceptic MPs, Downing Street had agreed to alter the question from ‘Should the United Ki
ngdom remain a member of the European Union?’ – which would have given yes/no options – to ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’ – with remain/leave being the choices on the ballot paper. As a result of the change, The Know became Leave.EU on 23 September.
Farage kicked off his ‘Say No to the EU’ tour in the Winter Gardens at Margate on Monday 7 September. He was back at the same venue where four months earlier he – along with the rest of the country – had discovered he had failed to become an MP at the seventh attempt. ‘It would have been nice, of course, if I could have been stood here this evening speaking to you as an MP,’ Farage told the audience, ‘but that wasn’t to happen.’
It was a nice line, but it did not entirely reflect Farage’s real feelings about that election defeat. ‘I began to view it as a blessing,’ he said later. ‘Can you imagine if I hadn’t attended 70 per cent of votes in the House of Commons because I was travelling round the country? It would have been very difficult.’