Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem. Tim Shipman
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the chiefs, Osborne was both a threat to May and guilty of talking down Britain. To the consternation of some of his MP colleagues, Osborne had landed six highly paid jobs after leaving the cabinet. One was as a research fellow with the McCain Institute for International Leadership in Arizona. When Osborne spoke at a fundraising dinner for the Institute in London, one of those present texted Nick Timothy an account of his speech: ‘Doom and gloom. Danger is coming. We need EU to provide peace and prosperity. He said he was going to research the origins of populism and how to restore proper politicians to government, like him.’ The guest next to the spy described Osborne’s view as ‘a crock of shit’. A source close to May said, ‘Some might say is unpatriotic.’
On 1 December, the assorted battalions of non-Tory Remainers secured a landmark victory, when Liberal Democrat Sarah Olney beat Zac Goldsmith to win the Richmond Park by-election. Goldsmith had stood down as Conservative MP to honour a promise to force a by-election if the government approved a third runway at Heathrow airport. He ran as an independent but fell nearly two thousand votes short. The Greens withdrew their candidate to improve Olney’s chances following a hustings run by More United, a campaign set up that summer in memory of Jo Cox, the Labour MP slain by a far-right fanatic during the referendum campaign. Lance Price – a former spokesman for Tony Blair – was the group’s mouthpiece and it became another forum where Remainers could compare notes. Downing Street insisted the vote would ‘change nothing’ of May’s approach to Brexit, but said it had solidified her intention not to call a general election.
Labour lost their deposit in Richmond Park, but the party was ready – after four months of infighting triggered by the referendum – to play a leading role in the Brexit drama.
Jeremy Corbyn’s problems had begun the day after the EU referendum, when he said in an interview that Article 50 should be triggered immediately. This enraged Labour MPs backing Remain and prompted an attempt to oust him. Corbyn’s supporters believed he was misunderstood. One of his closest allies said, ‘Jeremy came out and said Article 50 will have to be triggered. That’s a statement of fact. That’s what the referendum was about. He wasn’t saying it needed to be triggered right now. It was a wilful misinterpretation. There was a period of mass hysteria after the referendum result.’
Corbyn was already under fire from Labour officials, who accused him of lacklustre effort for the Remain cause during the referendum and his closest aides of active sabotage. Corbyn, his chief adviser Seumas Milne and shadow chancellor John McDonnell were all longstanding critics of the single market, which they regarded as a capitalists’ club that penalised workers. Another aide said, ‘There are aspects of the EU we didn’t like and we don’t like, for example state aid and forced privatisation. That’s why we campaign to “remain but reform”. That’s where we thought the public were.’ But a senior official at Labour headquarters said, ‘Had Jeremy campaigned during the referendum like he was to do during the general election, I don’t think we’d be leaving the EU. I genuinely think he’s to blame for this. It was absolutely shameful.’
The coup was triggered by the sacking of Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, the weekend after the referendum just as he was about to resign. More than sixty frontbenchers jumped ship and – in a stunning rebuke to Corbyn – 172 MPs voted to remove him in a no-confidence vote. Just forty wanted him as leader but Corbyn refused to go, citing his mandate from the party membership.
In the subsequent leadership election, however, Corbyn’s upbeat campaigning persuaded more than one hundred thousand new members to join the party and propelled him to another victory, this time over Owen Smith. Europe became a feature of the leadership election, with Smith arguing that Labour should fight for a second referendum and seek to overturn Brexit. Had he won, Labour would have been in the simple position of battling for the 48 per cent and telling voters they were wrong. It might have finished the party but it would have had the benefit of simplicity. Instead, Corbyn immediately ruled out a second referendum. On the morning of the result he went for coffee with his closest aide, Seumas Milne, and two of his press spokesmen, Kevin Slocombe and Matt Zarb-Cousin. ‘We straight away said you’ve got to respect the result of the referendum,’ one explained.
Even once he had cemented his position, Corbyn’s approach to Brexit was confused, but his equivocation perhaps reflected the ambiguities many voters felt towards the EU. His challenge was to show that he could mount a competent opposition to the government and reconcile the pro-Remain views of voters and party members in their metropolitan seats with the working-class supporters who backed Brexit in the Northern towns. After the party conference, Corbyn’s team set up a Brexit subcommittee, chaired by the leader, which included John McDonnell, Diane Abbott, Emily Thornberry and Jon Trickett, plus the new shadow Brexit secretary, former director of public prosecutions Sir Keir Starmer. His appointment brought a forensic legal mind to the task and neutralised someone Corbyn’s team saw as a threat. ‘People were of the view that it was necessary to have Keir in the tent, that he was a potential future leadership candidate,’ a source said. ‘If you have him in the tent, locked into a difficult area, there’s a lot to be said for that.’
For the next six months Labour pursued a twin approach. Corbyn and his closest aides sought to focus Brexit policy, not on the institutional arrangements which were obsessing the government, but on what choices made by the Tories would mean for ordinary workers. That allowed them to turn Brexit into just one more domestic political issue. A Corbyn aide said, ‘For the leadership, it’s not about the process, it’s about different visions for the future. The government has the low-wage, low-growth economy, we’ve got the high-wage, high-growth, high-investment, high-skill economy with an interventionist state.’ Labour warned that a chaotic – or sometimes ‘shambolic’ – Brexit would hurt the working poor. They demanded a ‘Brexit that works for Britain and puts jobs, living standards and the economy first’.
Even as the leadership coup was still raging, John McDonnell gave a speech on 1 July laying out five Labour principles for Brexit. He called for existing workers’ rights to be protected; for UK businesses to have the freedom to trade with the EU and EU businesses with the UK; for protection of residency rights for EU citizens living in the UK, and for UK citizens elsewhere in Europe; for the UK to stay part of the European Investment Bank; and for UK financial services to keep their access to the EU.
In parallel with this approach, Starmer and Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, lawyers both, sought to find ways of tripping up the government and harassing them on the institutional details. On 11 October, Starmer and Thornberry issued 170 questions for the Tories on their Brexit plans. The effort was not focused but it was the right idea. In the weeks ahead, they began demanding a white paper and the right for Parliament to approve the Brexit plans. ‘The first thing to do was to try to get government to move on from this position of “No running commentary”,’ a Corbyn aide said. That was how Labour came to devise its opposition day motion calling for the government to spell out its plan. Starmer said, ‘Parliament and the public need to know the basic terms the Government is seeking to achieve from Brexit. This issue is too important to be left mired in uncertainty any longer.’
When the motion went down, the Tory Remainers were wary of being seen to form a cross-party alliance with the opposition, but the motion offered them a chance to show Downing Street that they were a force to be reckoned with. Briefings began to appear that up to forty Conservative MPs might back the motion.
Around the same time, Fiona Hill had reached out to Morgan and Burt and invited them in to Downing Street for two face-to-face meetings. She told them, ‘I voted Remain as well, but believe me when I tell you it’s all going to be okay because I’m in the middle of it. Britain will be better than ever.’ The Remainers explained that they wanted a white paper. They believed, wrongly as it was to transpire, that there would come a time when May would need them and their votes to help face down the Eurosceptics. ‘At that point we all expected that the prime minister would have to make compromises which would upset the Brexiteers,’ a former minister said. ‘We talked about, “How do we help her to make those compromises and be there to support her when she does?”’
Nicky Morgan, Anna Soubry, Alistair Burt, Dominic Grieve, Ben Howlett and Neil Carmichael all went to