All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class. Tim Shipman
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far short of the opportunities that we identified, with the vast majority of key underperforming EU policy areas unaddressed.’ The prime minister had ‘partially achieved’ ten of their objectives, but had ‘not attempted’ another eleven. Business for Britain, before it morphed into Vote Leave, had also fenced Cameron in. Matthew Elliott said, ‘We were very confident by the time he came back with his deal that we could win that expectations game.’ The Eurosceptics unleashed an effective media barrage.’ On the day, Richard Tice, the co-chairman of Leave.EU, said, ‘The prime minister promised half a loaf, begged for a crust and came home with crumbs.’ Daniel Hannan tweeted, ‘Britain banged the table and aggressively demanded the status quo. The EU, after some mandatory faux-agonising, agreed.’
Hannan believes the limited nature of the deal dramatically increased the number of Tory MPs and MEPs prepared to defy Cameron and back Leave. In the end more than 140 MPs did so – three times the number of hardcore sceptics. ‘I cannot overestimate the impact of the deal,’ says Hannan. ‘The view was: if this is how they treat us now, when we are about to vote on leaving, imagine how they will treat us the day after we vote to remain. That pushed so many people.’ Nigel Farage agreed the deal was a crucial moment: ‘If it had been something real on migration, I think it would have been much harder for us to win. Much harder.’
Given the deal’s reception, could Cameron ever have grasped the nettle and – as he had obliquely threatened – lead the Out campaign? No one close to him thinks so. ‘There were little moments where his heart said, “You know what, fuck it, it would be great to do this,”’ one confidant explained. ‘But he saw how much Britain’s influence was magnified by “being in the room”. He’s an innate conservative in the small “c”, not wanting to change stuff sense.’
The poor media and public reception for the deal persuaded Britain Stronger In Europe to ditch their plans to promote it, and to focus instead on their core messages. In Downing Street Craig Oliver and Ameet Gill were both keen to move on. ‘Maybe if in the first week we’d absolutely sold the welfare brake we wouldn’t have got into such a mess over immigration later, but I don’t think that would have happened really,’ a campaign source said. ‘Number 10 shat themselves when the right-wing press turned against it, and they decided, “Right, we’ll never mention this ever again.”’ Ryan Coetzee, Stronger In’s head of strategy, agreed that there was no point in lingering on the outcome of the renegotiation: ‘The deal that was done on benefits didn’t address the fundamental concern which people had. Therefore the decision was “Let’s move the hell out of this negotiation as soon as possible and let’s make the core case.” Despite not having something to offer on immigration, we did have a lead on the economy. We did have a lead on risk.’
The problem with the core case was that its lead advocate was Cameron, who until that very day had been claiming he could back Leave if the deal was sub-par. This troubled Coetzee: ‘I think the most legitimately potent argument of the leave campaign, was “If it’s such a catastrophe to leave, why were you prepared to do it in February?”’ David Chaplin regarded the renegotiation as one of Remain’s ‘biggest strategic weaknesses’ for this reason: ‘You have this landmark policy, Euroscepticism, for decades, then you do a massive U-turn and say, “Actually, we have to stay.” You lose people’s trust. Cameron did a handbrake turn on Europe.’
The deal was banished from Stronger In’s script. Two months later, when Joe Carberry suggested in a planning meeting that they refer to the renegotiation, one of those present says, ‘Craig Oliver laughed out loud and said, “No, no, no, we never mention that.”’
Even if they had wanted to talk about the deal that weekend, it’s doubtful the campaign would have been successful, because at 5 p.m. on Sunday, 21 February Boris Johnson followed Michael Gove and declared that he would back Brexit. David Cameron had been to Brussels and – within the narrow parameters he had set himself – got largely what he wanted. Yet in the moment of this qualified success he had also suffered his most grievous blow as prime minister, the one that would ultimately bring him down.
9
Oliver Letwin was determined to give his mission one more go, even if it was beginning to resemble Mission: Impossible. Cerebral but absent-minded, the Cabinet Office minister was someone who could not be let out in public, but he was David Cameron’s most adept policy fixer.
His task this time was to convince Boris Johnson to back the Remain campaign by producing a new Sovereignty Bill that would enshrine in law the idea that the British Parliament, not the European Court of Justice, was the master of the UK’s destiny. There was just one problem with the plan: every senior government lawyer from the Attorney General downwards believed that each form of words Letwin had come up with was either irrelevant or illegal. Johnson was also coming to that conclusion. The mayor of London had floated the idea himself in early November 2015, and persuaded Cameron to include it in his speech to Chatham House on the day of his ‘Dear Donald’ letter to Tusk. The experience of running up against the limits of what was possible in reforming the EU was pushing Johnson towards the exit door. Michael Gove had not been convinced either, which is why David Cameron had taken responsibility for sorting out the ‘sovereignty lock’ away from the justice secretary and passed it to Letwin.
It was after 9 p.m. on Tuesday, 16 February – two days before Cameron began his summit marathon in Brussels – when Letwin dialled Johnson’s mobile. When the phone went, the mayor of London was sitting at the dinner table in his Islington home, several glasses of wine to the good. Letwin launched into his best case for the sovereignty plan, but had barely opened his mouth when Johnson said, ‘Oliver, how good to hear from you. Do you mind if I put you on speakerphone? I’ve got the lord chancellor here.’ Johnson pushed a plate aside and placed his iPhone between himself and Gove and said, ‘Michael, what would you like to ask?’
Letwin had called to try to circumvent Gove’s growing influence over Johnson, only to find them dining together. His shock can be imagined, but he remained the model of cordiality. He and his officials ran through the latest iteration of the plan as Johnson added Martin Howe, a QC who was the nephew of Thatcher’s foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe, to the call. ‘He was being patched through from Barbados, where he was on holiday,’ says Johnson. ‘Oliver was on the line with his civil servants. We discussed the latest draft. It was obvious listening to Martin Howe that it wasn’t really going to fly.’ Letwin realised he had failed: Johnson would not be persuaded. He reported back to Cameron, who invited Johnson to 10 Downing Street the following day for a final reckoning.
Dinner that night at Johnson’s home in Islington was the most important culinary confab in British politics since Tony Blair and Gordon Brown sealed a pact that would clear the way for Blair to run for the Labour leadership in 1994. The Granita restaurant in which Brown agreed to stand aside, in return for promises still disputed to this day, is long since defunct. But it is noteworthy that its location, 127 Upper Street, was just four hundred yards from Johnson’s home. In its impact on the country, the BoGo Concordat has every right to be considered the more significant event.
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