The Brexit Club

by Owen Bennet

  Daniel Hannan, another key player in the Tate Plot, was also furious and, like Carswell, believed the poster was more about putting Farage in the public eye than winning the vote:

  I think that was ugly campaigning and I think it was objectionable from an ethical point of view but I also think it was idiotic from a tactical point of view. What swing voter is going to be sitting at home on the fence about this and is going to see that poster and think, ‘Oh, I had no idea there was a refugee crisis in Slovenia, I better vote Leave now’? Again, what was the real motive there? Was it about snatching the spotlight back or was it about actually trying to convince anyone?

  Vote Leave chairman Gisela Stuart simply thought, ‘Oh God!’ when she saw the poster, while Iain Duncan Smith thought it was not just ‘awful’ but incoherent.

  It was a bad poster, it tried to mirror the ‘Britain Isn’t Working’ poster but it just didn’t work. It would have been legitimate to say, ‘The European Union was at breaking point and here is the border of Macedonia’ [sic], but it was not legitimate to indicate that this was the UK, because that was not the case. You can’t have a false picture, as a number one rule. Second, it took it to a level that I thought was unhelpful because it made a lot of people very uneasy.

  The genesis of the poster came in March, when UKIP were worried Vote Leave was not going to do any campaigning on immigration. Eurosceptic millionaire Paul Sykes, who had funded the party’s advertising blitz in the run-up to the 2014 European election, was also keen to launch a poster series which ‘could be seen from the moon’ in the final weeks of the referendum campaign. Working with Chris Bruni-Lowe, the pair decided to test-run some ideas in May’s London mayoral election on the back of UKIP candidate Peter Whittle’s campaign. On 3 May, Farage unveiled a poster of a queue of people with the strapline ‘Open door immigration isn’t working – London’s population is growing by one million every decade’. The image was barely commented on at the time, but Bruni-Lowe thought the theme would work well for the EU referendum, and asked the Family advertising agency to come up with another queuebased poster.

  Bruni-Lowe said:

  The initial poster that I wanted was a passport picture with a load of people in the passport with: unknown image; where [are] they from: unknown; where [are] they going: unknown; ‘The EU has failed us all, let’s take back control’. Then we said why not use a queue, a legitimate queue of people basically trying to get in across the border. The problem we had was at that time no one was talking about immigration. We needed a hard-hitting campaign.

  When the poster came back from the advertising agency, ‘Nigel and I agreed it and said that’s fine,’ remembered Bruni-Lowe, ‘there’s no issue with that at all because we did something similar in the London election and our view was actually this is quite tame. It doesn’t really say anything.’

  Farage did not seem to be prepared for the initial outrage it would cause either. He said later:

  The plan was simple, the plan was to do six posters in seven days and this was the first of them. So we didn’t have any conventional billboards, we had digi-sites. This was the first of the posters and this was the only one of the posters which was about the EU, not Britain. This was about Merkel’s migrant madness, hence the strapline ‘the EU is failing us all’.

  A few days before the launch, Vote Leave’s Matthew Elliott spoke to Sykes over the phone and asked him what advertising he was planning with UKIP.

  Elliott said:

  He never told me what was going to be in the ads, he was always very, very cagey. The whole thing was me always saying, ‘Come on, share them with us, let us know what’s going to be in there.’ He always refused to send over any of the artwork or tell us what was going to be in them, other than to do his usual thing of saying it’s going to be an ad campaign which you can see from the moon.

  With the poster launched, Farage and Bruni-Lowe went for lunch to discuss the next stage in their plan to force immigration to the front and centre of the referendum. The duo had been told that David Cameron was planning to make a speech in which he would warn that a million migrants would rush to the UK immediately after a Brexit vote, before the country had actually quit the EU. It was decided that Farage would pre-empt Cameron’s speech by calling for the UK to close its borders to EU migrants as soon as Brexit was voted for.

  Bruni-Lowe believed the uneasiness that Leave campaigners such as Carswell and Hannan had over the poster – and the issue of immigration in general – was evidence that they did not understand why people wanted to get out of the European Union.

  ‘The problem with Carswell is he lives in a complete fantasy world,’ he said.

  In Clacton when we used to go during the by-election, people would say: ‘Douglas, immigration is the biggest issue, I hate all these people coming here.’ ‘No, you don’t understand, it’s not immigration, it’s health service stuff.’ Carswell, like Suzanne Evans, I think, wishes people voted for UKIP for a different reason. So they project ‘Ooh, they vote for them for libertarian reasons’ – no, they don’t – they vote for them because they don’t like immigrants in this country; that’s pretty much the basic reason. When someone says they want an Australian-points immigration system, they want zero immigration.

  While Farage was having fun in London, Boris Johnson was facing a tough time in Norfolk. The Vote Leave battle bus had taken the MP to Lowestoft, where he was due to visit a fish market, but the owners wouldn’t let him in. He settled for a fish merchant, and added to his ever-growing series of photo opportunities by filleting a fish for the cameras. The bus reached Norwich at just before 1 p.m., and even though rain was coming down it did not deter a heckler venturing out to shout, ‘You’re a racist!’ at the former London Mayor. The gloomy weather matched the way the day was panning out, and Johnson and his advisors were relieved to get back on the bus and tune in to the Euro 2016 clash between England and Wales.

  Johnson’s Vote Leave comrade Gisela Stuart was having a much easier morning. Instead of facing hecklers and dealing with the bad weather in Norfolk, Stuart was preparing for an anti-EU rally in Glasgow that night. As Johnson was settling down to watch the football, Stuart was on board a flight to Scotland from Stansted Airport.

  Back in London, staff at UKIP’s HQ were looking forward to the match. The atmosphere in the party office was ‘euphoric’, according to Farage, and everyone felt the Leave side had momentum heading into the final week of campaigning. Unable to get into a very packed Barley Mow pub on Horseferry Road, the team decided to watch the game in Bruni-Lowe’s flat in nearby Maunsel Street. Farage wasn’t actually with his UKIP team, as he was enjoying a glass of champagne in a restaurant, toasting the success of the previous few days.

  Someone not campaigning in the EU referendum that day was the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, Jo Cox. Although she was an avowed supporter of Remain, the 41-year-old was instead focusing on constituency matters on Thursday 16 June. Besides, her family had done their bit for the Remain cause the day before, as her husband, Brendan, and two young children had gatecrashed Farage’s flotilla on the Thames. However, instead of being on the millionaire’s boat with Bob Geldof, Brendan and his children had been zipping along in a motorised dinghy, waving an In flag. The family lived in a barge on the Thames, and so had a greater knowledge of that stretch of water than most involved in the flotilla.

  At just before 1 p.m. on the day after the flotilla, Jo parked her car outside the library in the Yorkshire town of Birstall, where she was due to hold a constituency surgery. As she walked across to the library’s entrance, she was attacked by a man armed with a knife and a gun. He stabbed her, shot her and then stabbed her again. Bernard Carter-Kenny, a 77-year-old retired rescue miner who was waiting for his wife outside the library, rushed to Jo’s aid, but he too was stabbed. Bernard survived. Jo did not.

  As the clock ticked down to the 2 p.m. kick-off time of the England v. Wales match, news of the attack started to appear on Twitter. At first, it was reported
as an attack – albeit a very serious one – but not a murder. The UKIP gang in Bruni-Lowe’s flat realised the seriousness of the incident and rushed back to the office, and Michael Heaver immediately contacted Farage.

  On the Vote Leave battle bus, not all televisions were showing the football, and as soon as the ones tuned into the news channels flashed up the breaking story, Johnson told journalists on the coach that his day’s campaigning was over.

  Upon landing at Glasgow Airport, Stuart received two phone calls. The first was from Vote Leave telling her news of the attack and that her event that evening had been cancelled. The second was from Labour Deputy Leader Tom Watson, saying that Jo had not just been injured; she had in fact been murdered.

  By the time West Yorkshire Police held a press conference at just after 5 p.m. informing the world that the MP had been killed, all EU referendum campaigning had been called off.

  Thomas Mair, a 52-year-old man from Birstall, was arrested on suspicion of Jo’s murder, and on Saturday 18 June he appeared in Westminster Magistrates’ Court. When asked to confirm his identity, Mair replied: ‘My name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain.’ His words were a disaster for the Leave campaign. As soon as Farage heard of the killing, he feared it would somehow be linked to the referendum. He remembered thinking:

  Who killed her? Is it an Islamic nutcase, is it somebody reportedly on our side? No one knew. Once I heard I thought: ‘God almighty,’ and then I suddenly thought: ‘Christ, I’ve just launched a poster ninety minutes ago with a big strong immigration message.’ I knew exactly what they’re going to do, I knew in an instant what they’re going to do, and my God, didn’t they.

  The juxtaposition of the Breaking Point poster with the murder of an MP by someone pronouncing ‘Freedom for Britain’ was stark, and Farage’s campaigning style was once again called into question. Writing for The Spectator’s website, commentator Alex Massie said:

  When you shout BREAKING POINT over and over again, you don’t get to be surprised when someone breaks. When you present politics as a matter of life and death, as a question of national survival, don’t be surprised if someone takes you at your word. You didn’t make them do it, no, but you didn’t do much to stop it either.

  Sometimes rhetoric has consequences. If you spend days, weeks, months, years telling people they are under threat, that their country has been stolen from them, that they have been betrayed and sold down the river, that their birthright has been pilfered, that their problem is they’re too slow to realise any of this is happening, that their problem is they’re not sufficiently mad as hell, then at some point, in some place, something or someone is going to snap. And then something terrible is going to happen.

  As campaigning gently resumed on Sunday 19 June, senior politicians on both sides of the referendum campaign attacked the Breaking Point poster. George Osborne told ITV’s Peston on Sunday the ‘disgusting and vile poster’ had ‘echoes of literature used in the 1930s’, while Michael Gove told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘When I saw that poster I shuddered. I thought it was the wrong thing to do.’

  In an attempt to distance the official Leave campaign from Farage’s tactics, Johnson announced at a rally in London on Sunday lunchtime that he supported an amnesty for illegal immigrants.

  Appearing alongside Gove and Kate Hoey, Johnson said: ‘I am the proud descendant of Turkish immigrants. I am in favour of an amnesty for illegal immigrants who have been here for more than twelve years unable to contribute to this economy, unable to pay taxes, unable to take proper part in society.’

  Despite all sides piling in against him, Farage repeatedly defended the image, telling Sky News that morning: ‘That poster reflects the truth of what’s going on.’

  When Farage was asked if he wished he hadn’t unveiled the poster, he replied: ‘I wish an innocent Member of Parliament hadn’t been gunned down on the street. That’s the point, and frankly had that not happened, I don’t think we would have had the kind of row that we’ve had over it.’

  Farage also claimed on LBC the following day that there was no row about the poster until Jo’s death – something which is contradicted by the timing of the comments by Nicola Sturgeon, Yvette Cooper and the Twitter user who juxtaposed it to a screenshot of a Nazi propaganda film.

  ‘When I think back to that Sunday and Monday,’ said Farage, ‘I’ve withstood plenty in politics over the years but that was the toughest I’ve ever faced. It was virtually as if I killed her. It was virtually as if I was responsible myself directly.’

  Parliament, which had been suspended while the referendum campaign was taking place, was recalled on Monday 20 June so MPs could pay tribute to their murdered colleague. With Jo’s husband Brendan and their two young children looking on, MPs who knew her best gave emotional speeches in praise of their departed friend. Labour MP Stephen Kinnock, who had shared an office with Jo, said:

  On Thursday, Jo was assassinated for what she was and what she stood for. I can only imagine what Jo would have thought if she’d seen the poster unveiled before her death. She’d have responded with outrage. Jo understood that rhetoric has consequences. When insecurity, fear and anger are used to light a fuse, the explosion is inevitable. It’s the politics of hatred and fear. We must now work to build a more respectful and unified country. Jo Cox, we love you, we salute you.

  Later that evening, Farage held his final ‘We want our country back’ rally in Gateshead, alongside Kate Hoey, John Mills and David Davis. The next morning, he caught the 5.40 a.m. train into London, and arrived at the UKIP office at 9 a.m.

  We all sat there, we all looked at each other after what I’d been through in the last forty-eight hours and where the whole thing had been, and we virtually simultaneously said the same thing: ‘At least they’re speaking about immigration.’ And it reminded me of something Bruni-Lowe had said last June. ‘If the weekend before the referendum we’re talking about the economy and defending 3 million jobs, we will lose.’

  Like Farage, Bruni-Lowe had no regrets about the Breaking Point poster:

  My view was, and it still is today: it’s the best poster we could have possibly run. All throughout the north, everywhere we went, people went: ‘Totally agree with that.’ It got insane national coverage. If it hadn’t have been for that, immigration would not have been on the agenda the final week.

  Whether the Breaking Point poster would have dominated the final weekend of the referendum if the tragic killing of Jo Cox hadn’t taken place is impossible to know, but what is certainly true is that, heading into the final week of campaigning, the discussion was over immigration, not the economy.

  Yet, despite that, or maybe because of it, the momentum was with Remain. Of the eleven opinion polls conducted from the day after the murder to the end of Wednesday 22 June, Remain were ahead in eight of them. Of the eleven polls carried out before the tragedy, Leave had been ahead in eight.

  Even the six-way Wembley Arena debate on Tuesday 21 June failed to noticeably reignite the Leave campaign. The Remain team of Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and TUC chief Frances O’Grady performed better than their three predecessors in the ITV debate, while Vote Leave’s unchanged trio of Boris Johnson, Gisela Stuart and Andrea Leadsom stuck to their script and trotted out the line ‘take back control’ as often as possible.

  Stuart later admitted she found it hard to get motivated for the debate preparation after Jo Cox’s murder: ‘I found it personally really, really hard to come back from the church service on the Monday and then gear yourself up mentally for the Wembley debate the next day.’ Preparations up to that point had involved the three Vote Leavers practising against stand-ins for the opposition: Michael Gove’s advisor Henry Newman, former Johnson aide Munira Mirza and ex-Labour staffer Andrew Hood played O’Grady, Davidson and Khan respectively.

  Stuart said that, coming off the back of the Jo Cox tributes:

  We got together and just talked and just said, ‘Look, this is,
this is really awful, this is an enormous tragedy. But, folks, pull yourself together.’ All of us found it very hard. I think that was one of the moments in the campaign where you really had to fall back to just your sheer stubbornness.

  Despite Johnson giving a rousing final speech in which he claimed, ‘If we Vote Leave and take back control, I believe that this Thursday can be our country’s Independence Day,’ the polling still showed Remain were on course for victory. However, just over a year earlier, the polls had spectacularly failed to predict a Conservative victory in the general election. As Thursday 23 June arrived, Leave campaigners were hoping there would be yet another upset.

  CHAPTER 31

  ‘I think the Remain side edged it – that’s my view.’

  Farage was downbeat. The polls had only just closed, and he was predicting defeat. The UKIP leader blamed the defeat on a 48-hour extension to the voter registration deadline earlier in June, which had been implemented by the government after the website for registering crashed. ‘They got a huge number of young people. That’s going to make a difference. The whole government campaign has been about registering young people and that’s made a big, big difference,’ Farage told the Huffington Post. He later said he ‘shouldn’t have answered the phone. I was relatively noncommittal but that got turned into a mega story.’ Indeed, it was soon being reported that Farage had conceded before the first vote had been counted.

  However, his pessimism certainly tied in with an on-the-day YouGov poll, which was published just after 10 p.m. That also predicted a win for Remain, by 52 per cent to 48 per cent. TV cameras at the official Stronger In party beamed live pictures of activists looking relieved. Disaster had been averted. By contrast, the atmosphere in Vote Leave’s HQ was described as ‘gloomy’ by one activist. ‘There was a boy who looked like he had been crying,’ they added. Dominic Cummings was inside his office, writing projections on a board of what share of the vote Leave needed to get in the differentregions in order to get a victory. Bernard Jenkin grabbed a quick word with Cummings, telling him that no matter what differences the pair had had, he really deserved to win the vote. Douglas Carswell was also at Vote Leave HQ, and was preparing to travel to the BBC’s studios in Elstree to take part in its referendum results coverage. Before he left, he asked Vote Leave’s national organiser Stephen Parkinson to give him some pointers. Parkinson told Carswell where the early results would most likely come in from and what the results would need to be in those seats for it to be a 50/50 split nationally. Carswell wrote the information down on a piece of paper, put it in his pocket and went off to Elstree.