The polls switched from ‘Leave’ to ‘Remain’ in the final days. Populus, both in its private findings for the ‘Remain’ camp and in its public surveys, produced the most optimistic findings. The misplaced confidence in Number 10 as the referendum approached also meant that the campaign did not use two pieces of ammunition that insiders believe could have had a vital impact during the final days.
I have seen a poster, created by the international advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, of a smiling Nigel Farage lying comfortably in bed with the message ‘Don’t wake up having done something you regret.’ It could, in the eyes of key strategists working for the campaign, have been as devastatingly effective as the poster depicting Ed Miliband in the pocket of Alex Salmond, the former Scottish National Party leader, during the 2015 election campaign.
But it was not used because the Downing Street team in the form of Craig Oliver said it was ‘too personal’. Their conclusion was not challenged at the time by the other parties but senior figures have since told me of their huge regret it was not used. A Number 10 insider told me that it was pulled because it seemed wrong to use such a toxic picture so close to the death of Jo Cox. Similarly, an idea to create a nationwide poster with a photo of Boris Johnson in a woolly hat knocking on the door of Number 10 – taken when he negotiated with Cameron before his decision on where to stand in the referendum – and a message advising voters ‘be careful what you wish for’ never saw the light of day. It was considered to be unnecessary, potentially counter-productive and, again, ‘too personal’. Throughout, Cameron had given orders to avoid personal attacks on Johnson.
Strategists also regret that polls showing ‘Remain’ with a comfortable lead were published during the day of voting. It may well have contributed to the growing national feeling that the ‘In’ camp was heading for certain victory and may have encouraged the wave of protest votes against ‘the Establishment’. For days afterwards the airwaves were full of people admitting they had voted ‘Leave’ in the expectation of losing, explaining that they wanted to give a kick to the Brussels machine.
They were not the only ones. Johnson admitted when he declared for ‘Leave’ that he did not expect to win, and sources close to the ‘Leave’ campaign have told me that Johnson privately was never confident. The strong view at Westminster and elsewhere was that Johnson had signed up to ‘Leave’ to boost his own standing with the Conservative parliamentary party and, crucially, with the members who would pick the next leader. One former minister told me: ‘Of course Boris did not expect to win and he did not want to win. A narrow victory for Cameron would have suited him better than a Brexit for which he and no one else had prepared.’
At 10 p.m. as voting closed, ‘Remain’ thought it had won and started briefing why. Farage conceded prematurely; Michael Gove went to bed believing he had lost. Then came the result from Sunderland which showed that the ‘Leave’ vote was far higher than expected in that Labour area. It was not a rogue outcome and was matched as further results came in. Farage withdrew his concession. In Number 10, Cameron knew that his gamble had failed and prepared his resignation speech.
The essay-crisis PM got through until 2016 but then the Great Examiner, the British people, caught up with him. Now Theresa May is picking up the pieces.
Cameron got it wrong. It will be years, perhaps a decade, before Britain knows for sure whether it has benefited or suffered from his mistake.
John and Edwina: The Liverpool Novel
At around 9 p.m. on the evening of 27 September 2002, Robert Thomson, editor of The Times, stunned his colleagues by doing an impromptu jig around the office. Thomson suffered from a notoriously bad back and his manoeuvres might normally have caused him some pain. But the editor was too excited to feel any discomfort. He had just received from me a statement from John Major, the former prime minister, confirming that he had an affair with Edwina Currie.
It was the trigger that meant a specially prepared, secret edition of the paper – replacing a phoney earlier one that had been sent out to fool rivals – could be published and a story that was to shake the political and non-political worlds would arrive at the breakfast tables. I have been told by many people over the years that it was one of those jaw-dropping stories that made them remember where they were when they first heard it. Major was seen as the ultimate grey man, while Currie had been one of the country’s most flamboyant political figures with a gift for publicity matched only by Margaret Thatcher.
It was the culmination of an extraordinary cloak-and-dagger operation that depended on the few people who knew about the contents of Currie’s diaries maintaining complete and utter confidentiality about them. It was a scheme that could have gone wrong at any point. It would be an astonishing scoop for the publishers Little, Brown and for the paper, which had paid to serialize it, but it was no good to either if the story leaked and it ran across the front pages of other papers as well.
I had been assigned the task of reading the diaries, satisfying myself that the story was true and plausible, and then assuring everyone else in the loop that it was. Further, my job would be to write it up as the main front-page story, known in the industry as the ‘splash’, and most important of all to contact John Major on the day, breaking the news to him that a secret he had lived with for much of his life was out, and getting a reaction from him if that was at all possible. That was all!
Robert Thomson was adamant that the story would not be published unless Major had been told. Normal journalistic courtesy and propriety demanded it. Whether he would confirm it, we had no way of knowing. If he denied it, we were in trouble. But getting to him was paramount. And on the night of 27 September 2002, I nearly failed in one of the most critical missions an editor has ever asked me to undertake.
The story of how it almost went horribly wrong has never been told – until now.
Robert had called me down to the office two weeks beforehand. He had been editor for six months, having joined The Times from the Financial Times. We had immediately struck up a good relationship, with me organizing a series of lunches and dinners at which he got to know leading politicians. He asked me what I knew about Edwina Currie and John Major and whether it was possible they had ever had a relationship. I was agog. He knew that, if true, it was an extraordinary story. But having spent most of his working life away from British politics, he was testing whether I saw it in the same light. My reaction told him. He asked me to read the diaries – but without telling a soul.
A manuscript arrived at my home by special delivery and I spent the next few nights racing through it, growing more and more stunned. I knew Major pretty well, and in the years before he soared to very high office he was someone with whom I often discussed the issues of the day. At this stage I was reading only the early entries in the diaries and Currie was writing intimately about her relationship with a man she called ‘B’. She called him B for no other reason than he was the second man in her life.
A typical entry was this: ‘Spoke to B this evening – I’m so glad he was in. Oddly enough I need the diary more now that he’s so busy. I wonder if it will start to fade. It’s so hard when I don’t see him. Still, I’ve thought that every year and we are still at it.’ The affair had started in 1984 and this was September 1987.
Another entry read: ‘I saw B again on Friday. I was in the area where he lives and his wife offered their home for a rest, which I appreciated. It’s nice, a bit plain and unimaginative. To my horror, the magic started to work again and in a very big way. When we parted he held my hand a long time and squeezed it, even though other people were there.’
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