Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem. Tim Shipman
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and fast. Fortunately, Team 2019 weren’t the only pressure group on the Conservative backbenches.
Steve Baker was looking at Twitter on his phone when he heard a cheer and looked up. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘You’ve just been made chairman of the ERG,’ came the answer. The ERG was the European Research Group, once a group of Conservative MPs who had got together to fund a researcher, now the shock troops of the Eurosceptic right. During the referendum campaign Baker, a former RAF engineer and amateur military strategist, had masterminded a guerrilla campaign against his own government to boost the chances of the Brexiteers, most notably changing the wording of the referendum question in a way that experts said had boosted Leave’s chances by four percentage points. In September 2016, Baker disbanded Conservatives for Britain, his old pressure group, and after May’s conference speech, over breakfast in dining room A of the House of Commons, he had been elected by acclamation to repeat the trick with the ERG. This time, his goal was to keep his government on the track it had set, rather than knock it off course. By then two external Brexit groups had been set up. The businessmen Richard Tice and John Longworth led Leave Means Leave. Michael Gove and Boris Johnson lent their support to Change Britain, run by Gisela Stuart, the Labour MP they had worked with on the Vote Leave campaign.
Baker brought in a new MP, Michael Tomlinson, as his deputy while Suella Fernandes and Anne-Marie Trevelyan became vice chairmen. Every Monday Baker met with the ‘steering group’ of Paleosceptic veterans – Bill Cash, Bernard Jenkin, John Redwood, Peter Lilley and Iain Duncan Smith among them – who had led them into the battles over the Maastricht Treaty twenty-five years earlier. ‘Without them nothing moves,’ an ERG source said. ‘With them everything starts shaking and quaking.’ Soon, Baker had a WhatsApp group with eighty Tory MPs signed up and awaiting instructions.
On 20 November, Suella Fernandes fired the first shot, fronting a letter signed by sixty Tory MPs, including seven former cabinet ministers, which demanded that May pull Britain out of the single market and the customs union. Baker controlled which MPs did broadcast interviews for all the main Eurosceptic groups and fed in practical ideas to Stephen Parkinson, one of May’s Downing Street political aides. Baker was also in close touch with Gavin Williamson, who told MPs, ‘Steve’s here to support the government now.’ Williamson had a different name for the group of Eurosceptics, regarding them as less house-trained – The Taliban. They got special trips to Downing Street. Some MPs referred to Baker as ‘the real deputy chief whip’. At the same time, Baker kept up the pressure for a hard Brexit. ‘There was a real tension between rolling the pitch in a way which we knew was helpful and unhelpfully driving them forwards,’ an MP recalled. ‘It was loyal activism.’
When the day of the opposition debate arrived, Gavin Williamson feared amendments would be added to the Labour motion to impose greater obligations on the government. He did not want an embarrassing defeat. He contacted Team 2019 and informed them that he would be tabling an amendment of his own to the Labour motion accepting that the government would spell out its Brexit plans. Team 2019 were duty bound to vote for a government amendment that gave them what they wanted. Keir Starmer had been outmanoeuvred. The rebels had won – or so they thought.
Steve Baker was sitting in Williamson’s office when the text of the government amendment was sent to the table office. It called on ‘the Prime Minister to commit to publishing the Government’s plan for leaving the EU before Article 50 is invoked’, but there was a kicker. Williamson had added, ‘this House should respect the wishes of the United Kingdom as expressed in the referendum on 23 June; and further calls on the Government to invoke Article 50 by 31 March 2017’. The chief whip had given ground where he needed to and was now bouncing the Remainers into supporting May’s timetable for triggering Article 50. Williamson handed Baker the text of the amendment. Baker photographed it, tweeted the picture and texted a link to the entire parliamentary press lobby. A wry smile crossed Williamson’s lips. With Cronos the tarantula looking on, he said, ‘Steve, you’re really quite organised, aren’t you?’ Baker replied, ‘Yes chief, I am.’ They both fell about laughing.
The motion was passed by 461 votes to 89. It was a non-binding vote, but through his manoeuvrings Williamson had ensured that, more than a month before the Supreme Court ruled definitively on whether Parliament should have to approve the triggering of Article 50, MPs had voted to support doing exactly that. ‘His amendment completely spoiled their rebellion, and turned everything on its head,’ a leading Eurosceptic MP said. ‘It was a brilliant, brilliant piece of work by the government chief whip.’
It was also to contribute to one of the most spectacular rows of May’s first year in power. Team 2019, particularly Anna Soubry, felt they had been misled. ‘Anna was absolutely furious she was being asked to vote for something which accepted the triggering of Article 50,’ a colleague recalled. ‘She felt very betrayed. At that point the disillusionment started to set in. We realised that Downing Street were not interested in us, they were only into appeasing the Brexiteers.’
The incident which weaponised the relationship between Team 2019 and Downing Street became known as ‘Trousergate’. It began in mid-November when Liz Sanderson, the Downing Street head of features, agreed that Theresa May would sit down with the Sunday Times Magazine for an interview and a glossy shoot with a portrait photographer. Sanderson was a former feature writer with the Mail on Sunday who had joined the Home Office as a special adviser after Hill was forced to resign. She put together a briefing note to May and the day before the interview, she and Katie Perrior, the director of communications, were called to see the prime minister. Knowing May would be expected to open up about herself for a long-form interview, they took her through a few obvious lines of questioning. When they had finished, Perrior asked the prime minister, ‘Do you need a stylist?’
‘No,’ said May.
‘Are you sure? I mean they’re offering it, so if you want it go for it.’
‘I don’t want a stylist.’
‘What about hair and make-up?’
Again May said ‘No’, but there was hesitation in her voice. She changed her mind: ‘I wouldn’t mind.’
Perrior then asked if Sanderson could inspect the Mays’ private flat above 11 Downing Street. ‘I know it’s your home but we might want to rearrange some things because we want the photos to look fab,’ she explained. May readily agreed. Sanderson did a recce and was happy that everything looked smart.
At 7 p.m. that evening, the day before the shoot, Fiona Hill marched to the press office and began shouting at Sanderson. Minutes earlier she had demanded a list of British designers. ‘I need that list now! How the fuck did this happen?’
Perrior emerged from her office to find out what was going on. ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.
In front of the entire press office, Hill said, ‘No, it fucking isn’t all right. You have taken your eye off the ball again.’ Perrior asked what the problem was. ‘Where are the clothes?’ Hill asked. Perrior explained that the prime minister had been fully briefed by Sanderson and ‘the prime minister said she doesn’t want a stylist and she wants to choose her own clothes’.
Hill was furious: ‘First. Fucking. Mistake. Why on earth did you listen to that?’
‘Because she’s the prime minister. Anyway, her clothes are fantastic. She always looks good.’
‘Big mistake. You need to realise that the PM does not know her own mind on this stuff and needs me to be the one making these decisions for her. First of all, it shows you’re not in control of this, at all. Secondly, where are the fucking hydrangeas?’ Perrior was lost for words, recalling a line from the film The Devil Wears Prada about a bullying boss in the fashion industry and her obsession with flowers. Hill continued, ‘Flowers? Hydrangeas? You know, brighten up the flat a bit. Second big fail.’
Perrior suggested getting the Sunday Times people to bring some in the morning. ‘I want hydrangeas now!’ said Hill. Perrior dispatched her PA, armed with Perrior’s credit card, to locate hydrangeas at seven o’clock in the evening. While that was