How
David Cameron blew it
The
behind-the-scenes story of a failed campaign to keep Britain in the
European Union.
By TOM MCTAGUE ,
ALEX SPENCE and EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE 6/25/16, 6:30 PM CET
LONDON — Jeremy
Corbyn never budged. Not even Barack Obama could have convinced the
Labour leader to help David Cameron make the case against Brexit.
Less than a month
before the historic EU referendum, the team assembled by Cameron to
keep Britain in the European Union was worried about wavering Labour
voters and frustrated by the opposition leader’s lukewarm support.
Remain campaign operatives floated a plan to convince Corbyn to make
a public gesture of cross-party unity by appearing in public with the
prime minister. Polling showed this would be the “number one”
play to reach Labour voters.
Senior staff from
the campaign “begged” Corbyn to do a rally with the prime
minister, according to a senior source who was close to the Remain
campaign. Corbyn wanted nothing to do with the Tory leader, no matter
what was at stake. Gordon Brown, the Labour prime minister whom
Cameron vanquished in 2010, was sent to plead with Corbyn to change
his mind. Corbyn wouldn’t. Senior figures in the Remain camp, who
included Cameron’s trusted communications chief Craig Oliver and
Jim Messina, President Obama’s campaign guru, were furious.
Even at more basic
levels of campaigning, Labour were refusing to cooperate. The party
would not share its voter registration lists with Stronger In,
fearing the Tories would steal the information for the next general
election. “Our data is our data,” one senior Labour source said
when asked about the allegation.
In desperation, the
Remain strategists discussed reaching out to the White House to
intervene directly. Obama had met Corbyn during a trip to London in
April, when the American president argued forcefully for Remain. They
wondered: Maybe Obama could call the Labour leader and convince him
to campaign with Cameron?
Don’t bother,
Labour aides told them. Nobody was going to coax their boss into
sharing a public platform with Cameron. The idea was dropped before
it reached the White House.
“We can’t stand
there every week and wail away at you for prime minister’s
questions and then get on stage with you,” a senior Corbyn aide
said at one tense meeting three weeks before the vote, according to a
Remain source.
A campaign playbook
that worked so well in 2014 Scottish referendum and last year’s
general election failed Cameron in the EU vote.
By that point in the
campaign, Cameron’s team was starting to panic. Their
once-comfortable polling lead, at one time around 10 percentage
points, was falling. The tide seemed to turn. Remain had built its
case around a sober message centered on the economic risks of a
so-called Brexit from the EU. Suddenly in the final month of the
race, the message was drowned out by a rancorous argument over
migration.
The failed courtship
of Corbyn was one of a number of problems Cameron’s seasoned
political team faced, culminating in Thursday’s stunning referendum
defeat and the prime minister’s early retirement from public life.
More than two dozen
interviews conducted over a span of months with the leaders of the
Stronger In and Vote Leave campaigns, senior Downing Street officials
and sources in the Conservative and Labour parties paint a picture of
a Remain effort that misread the public mood and couldn’t overcome
numerous campaign setbacks.
Hardened by
close-run contests in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and
last year’s general election, the strategists running Stronger In
decided to follow the playbook that worked in those campaigns,
particularly the 2015 Conservative sweep, and focus mainly on
economic security.
It failed
spectacularly. The depth of public anger over the influx of workers
from other EU countries, and more broadly the rejection of political
and business elites, was more significant than they had anticipated.
The In campaign’s
warnings about the economic damage of an Out didn’t stick. A series
of elaborate set pieces, of which Obama’s visit was the most
extravagant, didn’t resonate with the British electorate.
Prominent defections
from the Cameron inner circle to the Leave side — chiefly Boris
Johnson and Michael Gove — turned Vote Leave from a ragtag group
into a motivated and effective opposition. The press, as expected,
was hostile and Euroskeptic. By the end Cameron appeared isolated, as
Tory MPs bickered among themselves — and Corbyn kept his distance.
BRUSSELS DEAL
‘FLOPPED’
Back in January
2013, the prime minister committed to an In-Out referendum on
Britain’s membership in the EU. He chose to make this pledge to try
to unite his Conservatives, see off a challenge from the rising
populist party UKIP and put Labour, unwilling to countenance a vote
on the EU, on the back foot.
When Cameron
triumphed in last year’s parliamentary election, becoming the first
Conservative leader in 23 years to win a majority in the House of
Commons, he was boxed in on Europe. He had promised voters to strike
a new deal with Brussels on the British terms of membership and hold
a vote before the end of 2017.
Cameron found a
chilly reception across the Channel to his demands. EU leaders such
as Germany’s Angela Merkel wanted to help him make the case to stay
in the EU. But they were also distracted by the unprecedentedly large
waves of migrants flooding into the Continent and the aftershocks of
the Greek debt crisis. The other 27 EU countries were reluctant to
create different rules for the U.K. In particular Merkel shot down
Cameron’s efforts to carve out a British exception to the EU’s
freedom of citizens to work and live anywhere in the bloc.
The prime minister
decided to compromise. His advisers were eager to get a deal with
Brussels and hold a referendum sooner than later. Delay would in
their view carry higher risks. Another year of negative stories about
the Continent “would absolutely destroy” his chances of winning a
vote, he was told by senior figures in the Remain effort.
As Brussels held its
ground, Cameron dropped his manifesto commitment for new EU workers
to wait four years before accessing benefits, as long as something
was done to cut immigration. In February Britain and the EU struck a
deal. Britain would get an “emergency brake,” allowing the U.K.
to withhold access to benefits for new migrants for a one-off period
of seven years.
“I don’t think
we ever thought this was going to be the golden chalice,” a Cameron
adviser said, referring to the Obama visit in April.
Cameron thought it
was a good deal under the circumstances, one of his advisers said.
But the British pressed panned it roundly (“Call that a deal,
Dave?” the Daily Mail raged on its front page) and the Out
campaigners accused him of a sellout.
“It flopped, but
it was sort of impossible to meet expectations,” the adviser close
to Number Ten said. “[Cameron] thought he got a good deal, but for
people who cared about the deal there was no deal that was ever going
to be good enough.”
Downing Street had
no choice but to sell it anyway. Hours after Cameron returned from
Brussels, the Remain campaign unleashed a media blitz that would set
the tone of the next four months.
‘PROJECT FEAR’
dropThe Stronger In
campaign was led by Oliver, the former BBC editor who ran Cameron’s
communications team, and Will Straw, a highly-regarded Labour policy
expert and son of Jack Straw, a former Labour foreign minister.
They set up in an
open-plan office space in London’s financial district, with room
for about 50 people. Joining Oliver and Straw were Ryan Coetzee and
James McGrory, a couple of battle-hardened former aides for the
Liberal Democrats, and a host of junior Labour special advisers.
It was an all-star
lineup of Westminster insiders. They worked long hours: Senior staff
started each day with a 6:15 a.m. conference call and ended it with
another at 10:20 p.m. to agree the talking points for the morning
news programs.
Craig Oliver,
Cameron’s communications director, modeled the Remain campaign on
the 2015 general election triumph. | James Glossop – WPA Pool
/Getty Images
Oliver had worked
closely with Lynton Crosby, the blunt-talking Australian campaign
guru, on the Conservatives 2015 general election. On the mantelpiece
of his spacious wood-panelled office in Downing Street sits a framed
picture of the front page of the Sun the day after that unexpectedly
strong victory, showing a smiling, waving Cameron next to the
headline, “BLUEDINI.” (Blue being the Tory color.)
With Crosby deciding
not to get involved in this campaign, Cameron turned to his driven,
cool-headed communications adviser to sell the case for staying. In
the final weeks of the campaign, Oliver spent four-fifths of his time
at Stronger In. At one point, according to a person familiar with his
thinking, he planned to resign and move over entirely to the
campaign, and be reemployed by the government later. He stayed with
Number Ten for part of his time so he could attend meetings there.
“He was
believable, he was passionate, he gave everyone who was watching it a
very clear message,” said a Leave official, referring to Boris
Johnson.
Crosby may have been
on the sidelines but the campaign followed his recipe: focus
relentlessly on a few no-nonsense messages that resonate with
people’s everyday experiences. In last year’s general election,
the Conservatives mercilessly played on doubts about then-Labour
leader Ed Miliband’s suitability as prime minister, concerns about
Labour’s record on the economy, and nervousness about the Scottish
National Party potentially taking power in a coalition with Miliband.
This time, Remain
would focus on the economy, underline the risks of leaving, and try
to win the argument early. They wanted to pin the Leave side to
fighting on immigration, where they thought it would come off as
negative, xenophobic, and divisive.
“What we wanted to
do early on was own the economy, own business, and own the fact that
you’ll be better off [by voting to stay],” a senior campaign
source said. “We wanted to own that very early. And I think that
was successful, because that sort of pegged them back to another kind
of campaign, which is essentially the [UKIP leader Nigel] Farage
campaign. Which is very, very focused on immigration, very, very
focused on isolating Britain from the world. Now, that is a powerful
argument and has its impact, but it’s not what I think the people
who were originally running Vote Leave wanted.”
By the time Cameron
fired the starting gun, the Remainers had honed their pitch to a
couple of simple messages: Britain would be “stronger, safer and
better off” in the EU, and leaving would be a “leap in the dark.”
Both tested well with focus groups.
Following Crosby’s
instructions that “you can never fatten a pig on market day,” the
campaign moved to make their case from the get-go, bombarding the TV
and radio airwaves, newspapers and social media. Cameron was front
and center. Often accused of complacency, or “chillaxing,” the
prime minister wasn’t going to lose this fight because he wasn’t
trying; Cameron “worked his arse off” to make the case, one
prominent Labour figure who worked closely with the Remain campaign
said.
Cameron even drafted
in Obama to help. The U.S. president’s warnings not to leave failed
to move the polls. His intervention in April encouraged more young
people to register to vote, but Obama’s blunt remark that Britain
would be “at the back of a queue” for a trade deal with America
if it left the union irritated many U.K. voters.
“I don’t think
we ever thought this was going to be the golden chalice,” one
senior source close to the Downing Street operation said, but
admitted the campaign operatives were disappointed that Obama didn’t
give them a bump.
ET TU, BORIS?
dropThen on February
21 came Boris Johnson’s “betrayal,” as Cameron’s closest
aides described it, of his old schoolmate from Oxford and Eton days.
The decision by the
former mayor of London, now the leading contender for Cameron’s
job, to put his weight behind the Leave campaign was among the most
significant moments in the campaign, one senior source close to
Number Ten said.
The most popular
politician in the U.K., a genuine celebrity, Johnson traveled
tirelessly around the country in a red bus, where his enthusiasm and
personality “single-handedly transformed what was an oddball group
of pretty unattractive people” into a mainstream force, a former
senior Conservative adviser said.
He was
“indispensable” to the Leave campaign, a Leave campaign source
said.
Johnson’s closing
speech in a BBC TV debate, two nights before Thursday’s vote, in
which he declared June 23 Britain’s “Independence Day,” was one
of Leave’s strongest moments in the campaign, the source said. “I
truly believe that that may have been one of the most significant
reasons why we went over the top last night,” the Leave source said
on Friday.
“He was
believable, he was passionate, he gave everyone who was watching it a
very clear message: Here’s why you should vote for us,” the Leave
insider said. “Then there was inspiration at the end. Those are all
the critical components to motivating a voter to go to the polls to
vote for you.”
In contrast, he
said, the politicians on the Remain side were “dark, they made it
personal, they didn’t make it about the people of Britain and I
think that hurt them tremendously.”
For Cameron,
Johnson’s entry into the race was a personal betrayal that cut
deeply.
“There is huge
frustration and a feeling of betrayal with Boris that feels very
personal for Cameron,” a source close to the prime minister said.
Until the day of the result, the pair, who used to text each other
regularly, had not spoken in months.
Cameron may have
seen it coming: “Boris will do whatever gets Boris the most
attention,” he told Downing Street aides before his rival’s
declaration. Cameron was “gleeful” when a newspaper article
Johnson wrote about President Obama, labeling him “part Kenyan,”
stirred controversy, according to the person close to the campaign.
Cameron lost another
political ally and close personal friend to the other side: Michael
Gove, the justice secretary. Gove was godfather to Cameron’s late
son Ivan; their wives were friends and their children play buddies.
“[Cameron] had
been led to believe Michael was onside,” one former Downing Street
aide said.
Instead, Gove had
joined the charge for Brexit two days before Johnson, after months of
agonizing between his loyalty to the prime minister and his fiercely
Euroskeptic convictions. He and Johnson made a strong combination.
MESSAGE FAILURE
dropIn a rancorous
battle of assertions and slogans, Cameron’s pitch of “stronger,
safer, and better off” proved to be less memorable than Vote
Leave’s “Take back control.”
Number 10 had
underestimated the depths of public anger about Cameron’s broken
promises on controlling the flow of people from the Continent. They
didn’t have a convincing argument to counter it.
They were “surprised
and impressed” by how well Vote Leave exploited the public’s
dissatisfaction with the large number of EU citizens who had come to
live and work in Britain, one senior source said.
“I can’t believe
people are really going to vote themselves poorer because they don’t
like the Poles living next door.”
The beginning of
“purdah,” the four-week period when civil servants and government
departments were barred from political campaigning, meant Remain lost
the home-field advantage of having government departments issuing
reports and communications supporting its case. A run of live
television events gave Vote Leave’s figureheads equal airtime in
front of millions of viewers.
Leave’s main
talking points, including assertions that Turkey was on the brink of
joining in the EU and that Britain “sends” £350 million a week
to Brussels, were hotly disputed, but gained traction with voters. At
the same time, only one in five of those surveyed in April believed
Remain’s assertion that British households would be on average
£4,300 worse off after leaving the union.
Leave began
aggressively pushing on migration. They got a huge boost in late May
when the Office for National Statistics revealed that net migration
in 2015 had hit 333,000, the second highest figure on record.
Cameron’s 2010 promise to reduce the figure to the “tens of
thousands” had come back to haunt him, at the worst possible
moment. Migration was now central to the debate, but it was winning
Leave support, not isolating them.
It wasn’t just the
focus on migration that led to the surge in support, a Leave campaign
source said. They sought to turn voters’ concerns about it into a
positive pitch: If you take back control from Brussels, you can end
free movement across borders and relieve the pressure on hospitals
and schools. The aim was to reassure voters it was OK to back Brexit.
Their politicians were well-drilled, and stuck to the script. In one
hour-long TV appearance Gove used the phrase “take back control”
23 times.
Remain failed to
“make the case that life for people in Britain was going to be
better remaining in the EU,” said a Leave campaign insider. “They
just made the case that leaving would be bad. There’s a big
difference between those two things.”
The Cameron-led
campaign spent too much time on the defensive, the Leave insider said
Friday. Its attempts to rebut the Brexiteers £350 million a week
complaint underlined in many voters’ minds that Britain’s
contribution to Brussels was sizeable. “The problem with that is
that if I’m a voter sitting at home watching that debate, I’m
still saying, ‘You know what, I don’t care if it’s £350
million or £170 million, there’s still a heck of a lot of money
going to the EU to pay for things that I don’t want to pay for.’”
Stronger In watched
in frustration as Leave rose in the polls. “They said they
wouldn’t, but their whole fucking campaign has been based on
immigration,” one staffer said.
They didn’t think
the bounce for Vote Leave would last. “I can’t believe people are
really going to vote themselves poorer because they don’t like the
Poles living next door,” one former Cameron adviser said at the
height of the Brexit surge.
Yet in the second
week of June, Leave was ahead in most published polls.
Number 10 were
beginning to sweat. One weekend at the height of the Brexit surge in
June, Downing Street staff gathered at a wedding. The mood was bleak.
“People who you
wouldn’t expect to be thinking like that were worried,” one
former aide said.
“There was a freak
out when the Leave campaign surged,” one source close to the
campaign added.
LABOUR BASE GOES FOR
LEAVE
dropGathered in
Stronger In’s campaign war room, some senior staff argued that they
needed to “switch the conversation” away from warnings over the
economy. Downing Street put its foot down: They’d been here before.
Ignore the polls and the pundits, they reassured their colleagues.
Our strategy is the right one. Momentum will swing back to the status
quo. Hold your nerve.
But they needed
Labour to step up. Internal polling found just weeks before June 23
one in five Labour voters did not know the party’s position in the
referendum. As party aides canvassed voters around the country, they
discovered a deep well of concern about immigration.
The base that
returned the prime minister to office just a year ago was never going
to be enough on its own. To avoid an exit, and save David Cameron’s
job and political legacy, Remain needed to reach beyond these voters
and sway older, white English voters, many of whom in the past voted
Labour. The campaign found that many of them were unwilling to rally
behind a prime minister they didn’t like, didn’t vote for, and
whose policies had left them worse off.
Other prominent
Labour politicians, including former prime ministers Tony Blair and
Gordon Brown, were willing to campaign with the Tories, but Corbyn
refused to help his rival. It was widely believed that, although he
agreed to publicly endorse a Remain vote that his heart wasn’t in
it.
An old school
socialist, the Labour leader had in the past attacked the EU as an
undemocratic, corporatist conspiracy that threatened workers’
rights. He never looked the part to save Cameron in a referendum the
Conservative leader brought on himself.
Corbyn believed that
Labour’s willingness to help Cameron save the union during the
Scottish independence campaign in 2014 had contributed to the party’s
electoral wipeout north of the border a year later at the general
election, according to a person familiar with their discussions.
The Labour leader
defiantly campaigned on his own — half-heartedly and ineffectively,
senior figures in the Remain campaign said. (On Thursday, Labour’s
traditional heartlands in northern England and Wales turned strongly
against the EU.)
A SHOCKING KILLING
dropThe only moment
in the campaign when Corbyn agreed to stand near the Prime Minister
was at a tribute to the Labour MP Jo Cox, the day after her
assassination on June 16. It was only then that Number 10
“accidentally” got the picture they needed of Cameron and Corbyn
together, a senior campaign source said.
Straw, the director
of Stronger In and a close friend of Cox, had been deeply affected by
the killing. On the day of the attack, he announced her murder to the
staff at the campaign’s headquarters in London’s financial
district. Those who were there said it was “a very emotional
moment for everyone.”
The killing stopped
the campaign in its tracks, when Brexit appeared to be gaining
momentum in the polls. Some believed Cox’s killing would change the
course of the entire referendum. Yet while shocking, the shooting
appears to have had little impact on the final result.
After a 48-hour
break in hostilities, campaigning resumed on Sunday. With only days
to go, polls suggested Remain was back in front, if only just. The
race seemed to be so close that campaign sources were prepared for
everything from a narrow loss to a surprisingly comfortable win.
Privately, insiders at Number Ten admitted they could lose.
At Remain’s base,
they were quietly confident. Labour voters would “come home” and
back the EU as the party’s leadership wanted, they said. On the
last morning of the campaign, Tony Blair visited the campaign
headquarters to give the staff a last-minute pep-talk. As the polls
opened, they said they believed they were heading for a victory that
would keep Britain in the union.
Within 24 hours,
Cameron would announce his resignation.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário