All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class. Tim Shipman
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‘For us, the European Union is a means to an end – prosperity, stability, the anchor of freedom and democracy both within Europe and beyond her shores – not an end in itself.’ He warned, ‘democratic consent for the EU in Britain is now wafer-thin’.
Cameron spelt out his demands: more competitiveness and the completion of the single market, an end to ‘one size fits all’ integration. He said this would mean Britain abandoning the goal of ‘ever closer union’ written into the Treaty of Rome. He added, ‘Power must be able to flow back to member states, not just away from them,’ and called for ‘a bigger and more significant role for national parliaments’. Finally, he demanded new rules that ‘work fairly for those inside [the euro] and out’. Heeding Merkel’s advice on how to pitch his call for reform, he said, ‘I am not a British isolationist. I don’t just want a better deal for Britain, I want a better deal for Europe too.’
Largely forgotten afterwards, Cameron predicted that ‘in the next few years the EU will need to agree on Treaty change’, gifting him an occasion when Britain could get its new grand bargain. But when Germany cooled to that idea, his leverage was removed. Also forgotten, given how central it became to his deal, the speech included not one reference to immigration or migration.
Coming to the crux of the matter, he declared, ‘I am in favour of a referendum. I believe in confronting this issue – shaping it, leading the debate, not simply hoping a difficult situation will go away.’ Those looking back at the speech after the referendum would have been amused to find this entreaty: ‘It will be a decision we will have to take with cool heads. Proponents of both sides of the argument will need to avoid exaggerating their claims.’ Nevertheless, Cameron vowed that if he got the deal he wanted, ‘I will campaign for it with all my heart and soul’.
The speech was met with a rapturous reception at home, where the sceptics seized on one key phrase: ‘We need fundamental, far-reaching change.’ When he entered the Commons chamber for PMQs later that morning he was met with a barrage of cheers. The Eurosceptics had got what they wanted.
Speaking in 2016, a Cameron aide said his main error was to lay out ‘red lines’, but not to use the speech to level with voters and his MPs that it was a starting point for discussion with Brussels, rather than an inviolable text. ‘The problem was that we didn’t make arguments like “We’re going to have to compromise,”’ a senior figure in Number 10 said. ‘It was a huge error.’ The Palaeosceptics who rejoiced at the speech were like Biblical or Koranic literalists – they planned to hold Cameron to every word of it. Bernard Jenkin seized on the comment that national parliaments were ‘the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU’, and warned Cameron, ‘You’ve really got to deliver on this otherwise the Conservative Party will tear itself to pieces.’ Cameron’s response was to wave his hand dismissively and say, ‘When the referendum comes the party will split, and that’ll just have to be that.’ To Jenkin the prime minister had the air of a man who had made the promise of a referendum that he never thought he would actually have to deliver, since by now few thought the Conservatives could win an overall majority at the 2015 general election and govern without the Lib Dems, who may have sought to veto any referendum. Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, said, ‘I have no doubt that the thinking in Downing Street … was that the outcome was likely to be a coalition government and … that this referendum would be traded away.’14
For once, though, Cameron had gone far enough to satisfy the bulk of backbench opinion. He had adopted a position sufficiently robust to prevent the party disintegrating before the general election. For almost two years the Tory troublemakers, to adopt the classic dictum, would direct most of their piss outside the tent, and when they seemed in danger of misplacing the urinal – introducing a Private Member’s Bill to hold a referendum – Cameron ended up adopting the Bill. But he was soon to discover the accuracy of one minister’s theory of parliamentary urinators: ‘Westminster is not divided into people inside the tent pissing out and people outside the tent pissing in, it is divided into people who piss and people who don’t. It doesn’t matter where the pissers stand, the piss always gets into the tent eventually.’ As a description of what Cameron’s Bloomberg speech set in train, it was hard to top.
The key question from this period is: could the referendum have been avoided, and if it could not, did Cameron have to offer an in/out vote by the end of 2017? When the cabinet was informed of the decision it horrified the veteran Europhile Ken Clarke: ‘I was not consulted. I read about it in the newspaper. We had a row about it, but it was a done deal. I think it was the most reckless and irresponsible decision.’15 Yet even a dyed-in-the-wool Europhile like Alistair Burt gave Cameron the benefit of the doubt: ‘I don’t blame the prime minister for calling the referendum, because you can’t keep the people hostage, and it was important, not just for party management but important for the country, that the people had this vote.’ There were practical concerns too. David Lidington, Cameron’s Europe minister, said, ‘Had he not promised the referendum, I think it would have been hugely difficult to win the 2015 general election at all.’
Cameron’s aides believed failure to announce a referendum would have led to a leadership challenge when Ukip won the European elections in 2014. ‘The idea that the PM was going to survive and face down his party is for the birds. We would have had a new leader coming in saying “I’m going to call a referendum,” and probably saying they were going to back Brexit,’ one said. The pollster Andrew Cooper agreed: ‘If he’d taken the party on, I think he would have lost. Ukip was on the rise, the party was in revolt.’
Yet one of Cameron’s closest aides believed that he may have stepped back from the brink if the Bloomberg speech had come after the Scottish referendum in September 2014, which uncorked the uncontrollable passions about which George Osborne had warned: ‘After the Scottish referendum experience we realised you’re unleashing things you can’t control. That’s the one thing I’d say would have changed our mind.’ By the time Tory high command collectively came to recognise the risks, it was too late.
If Cameron had to offer a referendum, he did not have to offer an in/out referendum. A group of Eurosceptics – Bill Cash, Bernard Jenkin and John Redwood – went to see the prime minister before the Bloomberg speech to suggest he lance the boil by holding a ‘mandate referendum’ with the question ‘Do you agree that the United Kingdom should establish a new relationship with our European partners based on trade and cooperation?’ Cameron was at first interested in the idea, but later asked, ‘Who’s going to oppose that?’ Jenkin replied, ‘Exactly!’ But Cameron saw the plan as potentially dangerous. He did not believe Britain’s links to the EU should be confined to trade. Jenkin said, ‘That referendum question, if approved, would have been completely incompatible with our present terms of membership. So he shied away from that and went for the in/out referendum.’
There were other options. Cameron could have devised his own mandate referendum, giving him licence to secure a deal when a treaty was next agreed. He could have defied the Liberal Democrats and begun a process of renegotiation with Merkel over a number of years, blaming his coalition partners for the lack of an immediate vote. He certainly did not have to say that there would be a referendum before the end of 2017. He could even have attempted to face down his party and confront their arguments. But in truth he had set himself on the path of tactical retreat from the moment he agreed to pull the Tories out of the EPP during his leadership campaign.
In calling for ‘fundamental, far-reaching change’ of Britain’s relationship with the EU, the Bloomberg speech raised expectations that would be very difficult to meet. To get what he wanted from the other member states and keep Britain in Europe, Cameron had to persuade them that he was prepared to leave, a posture that was regarded as incredible by the sceptics at home, who demanded that he threaten to lead the UK out, while telling the world that he was only bluffing. As Tony Blair was to remark, ‘David Cameron’s strategy is a bit like the guy in Blazing Saddles who says, “Put your hands up or I’ll blow my brains out!”’16
Rising immigration,