All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class. Tim Shipman
Читать онлайн книгу.
Matthew.’
Oxley had twigged that some of the MPs thought he could replace Stephenson. He said to Jenkin, ‘I reckon you guys think I can take Paul’s job.’ But he made it clear that despite his successful career, he did not yet feel capable of doing such a big job, and that he would never betray Stephenson: ‘My loyalty is with Dom and Paul, and if they leave I would go too.’ He predicted, ‘The entire media team and research team would probably walk out at that point.’ Jenkin seemed taken aback. Oxley recognised that without Elliott’s patronage and advice he ‘wouldn’t be much’ at such a young age, but when he had to nail his colours to the mast he chose Cummings. He raced back to the office and said to Stephenson, ‘If I have to go and find a job, I will do.’ It was partly that Cummings and Stephenson had taken him on and trusted him, it was partly that ‘These were the only guys who’d shown me they were willing to win the campaign.’
‘The Ox is a very loyal and great man,’ says Stephenson, ‘and was very important in stopping the whole thing from happening.’
When Cummings returned to Westminster Tower, he rallied his troops. Channelling the spirit of Zulu, he said, ‘Gentlemen, we are surrounded. The good news is that we can shoot in any direction and we’ll have a direct hit.’
Michael Gove first heard about the attempted coup when he received a text from the Daily Mail journalist Andrew Pierce saying Cummings was going to be sacked. He rang Cummings to offer assistance. ‘Dom is rarely agitated, and even though he wasn’t agitated, he was clearly in the middle of a drama,’ Gove recalled. He then made a series of calls, to Peter Cruddas, the Tory treasurer who was funding Vote Leave, to Steve Baker and to Bernard Jenkin. To each of them he delivered the same message: ‘Look, I haven’t declared yet, but you won’t have a chance of winning if you get rid of Dom.’ The subtext, unstated, was that if Cummings was to go they would have little chance of securing Gove’s support.
Jenkin said later that Gove was ‘completely unexplicit’ about joining the campaign, but ‘the implication was, hang in there until cavalry arrive’. During the call he sought to placate Gove, telling him, ‘Michael, if you come over you’ll have a good campaign to join.’
Gove replied, ‘Bernard, it won’t be a good campaign unless Dom Cummings is running it.’ He acknowledged the anger about the CBI stunt and the ‘abrasive and undiplomatic’ nature of Cummings’ interactions with MPs, but backed him up on the central proposition that the campaign could not be won by the Palaeosceptics. To Cummings, he offered a little advice: ‘The brutal candour of your analysis is correct, but you’re leaving other people to sweep up after you. So you should restrain yourself.’
Chris Bruni-Lowe believed Cummings also played the Gove card to save himself: ‘Cummings said, “I can get you Gove.” And then that stopped it.’
Through it all, Cummings had one simple thought: in less than a month David Cameron would go to Brussels and finalise his deal. At that point, he believed, ‘Michael will be on my side and then I’ll be able to wrap all this shit up.’
While Gove was putting in calls, further soundings were taken in the Vote Leave office. ‘Ricardo’ Howell, the whizzkid of the research department, and his boss Oliver Lewis said that they would also walk. It became clear to Halsall and the other board members that Elliott had lost the office. As one Vote Leave staffer explained later, ‘Being generous to him, most people didn’t see what Matthew did, whereas they saw what Dom and Paul did. Being less generous, it was that they thought he wasn’t actually doing anything.’ Elliott was struggling to get donors to hand over money, but he had delegated the task of signing up business supporters to Lewis.
In the end, the key staff sided with Cummings because they thought he was their best hope of a referendum victory, and they believed he was a meritocrat. ‘People wonder why so many staff are loyal to Dom and all the rest of it given his abrasive nature,’ one said. ‘It’s because he doesn’t choose phoneys, he only chooses people who are capable, and he’s incredibly loyal to people who are talented and he goes to bat for them.’ Another staff member, reflecting at the end of the campaign, said, ‘There’s a number of reasons why we won. Cummings was responsible for more than half of why we were good and effective.’
As the situation became clear, Cummings took a call from a member of the board: ‘We’ve reconsidered the situation. The staff won’t agree to your going, therefore we think that maybe you should stay. But if you are going to stay …’ Thus commenced a negotiation about the future governance structure of the campaign that was to last a fortnight.
Vote Leave staff say that by the end of the day Elliott, having gambled and failed, was ‘sucking up’ to Cummings, telling him, ‘Oh, Dom, all your training in Moscow must have really helped you with being able to get off that. Hats off to you.’
Elliott is adamant that he did not conspire against Cummings, that he believed their double act was the way to win the referendum, and that going it alone, or in tandem with Arron Banks, would have condemned Leave to defeat: ‘Lots of donors and MPs came to me. They were trying to tempt me to ditch Dom and do it myself. I knew I’d be forced to join up with the other lot, it would be an embarrassing failure, and we’d lose. Even from a selfish point of view, there was no point in me wielding the dagger. I wanted to win the referendum, and I knew I couldn’t do that without Dom at my side.’
Cummings’ allies believe Elliott saw the opportunity to emerge as top dog and – at the very least – did not talk the board out of it. Gove’s view was more generous than some. A friend said, ‘Michael thought Matthew was not particularly brave on behalf of his comrades, but nor was he plotting against them. He was passive.’
The events of 25 January irreparably harmed some relations in the office. When Elliott found out that Oxley had sided with Cummings they had to have a reconciliation breakfast. Elliott’s relationship with Victoria Woodcock never recovered. With Cummings it was hugely awkward. A Cummings loyalist said, ‘Imagine: you’re sat next to the person who tried to sack you, who’s then said, “Nothing to do with me, it was the MPs.”’
As a result of the peace talks it was agreed that a campaign committee would be established, giving a forum in which MPs could challenge Cummings. The make-up of the board changed, with John Mills stepping down. Jenkin persuaded Nigel Lawson to take over as chairman. Lawson agreed, on the condition that Cummings and Elliott left the board. Jenkin said, ‘It was Dominic’s difficulty in accepting that there had to be proper governance which led to the row. He was determined to be unaccountable, and what occurred is he basically agreed to be accountable.’ In truth, the changes were merely cosmetic. Cummings did agree to moderate his public utterances, but nothing changed the fact that he – with Paul Stephenson and Victoria Woodcock – continued to make every major campaign decision without consulting the MPs. ‘We had to create a string of Potemkin committees for people to attend while the core team actually did the campaign,’ Cummings explained.2
A deal was also agreed to present the attempted coup to the media as having intended to oust both Cummings and Elliott, in order to minimise coverage of the rupture between them. Ten members of staff were summoned to a ‘farcical meeting’ at which they were told that ‘this was a joint attempt to remove Elliott and Cummings together’. ‘It was self-evidently bullshit, and everyone in the room with two brain cells knew it was bullshit,’ said one of those present. ‘The outcome was no quotes would go out in Dom’s name, Dom would remove himself from Twitter and just tweet random things about science. The idea was to have Elliott front and centre of the campaign, which is what he wanted, unsurprisingly. After that, every quote from the campaign was in his name – other than a couple from Rob when they were really, really outrageous.’
The fallout continued for days. Stories were briefed to the papers blaming Jenkin and Grayling for the abortive coup. Jenkin was furious, and Daniel Hannan visited Vote Leave and ‘gave them a proper bollocking’. On the Wednesday evening, with the atmosphere still tense, Oxley took it upon himself to call Steve Baker and say, ‘We have to get this sorted.’ There were rumours that Conservatives for Britain were threatening