- há 19 horas
As David Cameron wins a shock majority at the 2015 general election, the implications immediately dawn on all concerned. There is no coalition negotiation to stop the Conservatives from fulfilling an election pledge to hold a referendum on whether Britain should leave the EU.
Nigel Farage fails to win a seat and resigns as UKIP leader but quickly U-turns. He sets up Leave.EU to campaign for Brexit. Meanwhile, as Cameron continues his negotiation with the EU, his demands are watered down. It makes it even more important he recruits Boris Johnson and Michael Gove to the Remain campaign - but they haven't yet made a decision.
Nigel Farage fails to win a seat and resigns as UKIP leader but quickly U-turns. He sets up Leave.EU to campaign for Brexit. Meanwhile, as Cameron continues his negotiation with the EU, his demands are watered down. It makes it even more important he recruits Boris Johnson and Michael Gove to the Remain campaign - but they haven't yet made a decision.
Categoria
📚
AprendizadoTranscrição
00:13The vote to leave the European Union changed the course of British history.
00:18Both seem unimaginably distant and like yesterday.
00:23Ten years on, this is the story of the EU referendum told by those inside the campaigns.
00:31They were putting pressure on me to do joint events with Cameron.
00:35I said, no, it's not going to convince anybody other than we both look desperate.
00:40It was very difficult because I was a campaigner, but I was also the prime minister.
00:47I said, this is not Project Fear, this is Project Apocalypse.
00:51This is something that is far graver than just worrying people about leaving the European
00:55Union.
00:57I got the impression very, very early that the people that ran though leave, they didn't
01:03really want to win.
01:05It was nothing to do with the EU, Britain's place in the world.
01:10It was Game of Thrones.
01:12That's what Boris Johnson was playing and he could see the Iron Throne right there about
01:16to be vacated.
01:18I don't think at that point he really believed in it.
01:21He believed it was going to lose.
01:23Watch out team, watch out.
01:24Everybody says I did this in order to be PM.
01:29I would have become prime minister anyway.
01:46As the country voted in the 2015 general election, few expected it would lead to a referendum on
01:53whether Britain should leave the EU.
01:56What's going to happen?
01:58What's going to go on?
02:00The Bay Hall, one in four, still on this side of the express vote to keep Britain great.
02:05The Guardian, it couldn't be closer.
02:11We gathered in the prime minister's home on election day and there was a real feeling
02:15in the air that we may have lost this or at least that Labour would be the largest party
02:20and be able to form a government.
02:21I remember that afternoon I wrote a speech which would have effectively been conceding
02:28because you've always got to be ready for every eventuality and I remember reading it
02:31to my team.
02:33David Cameron's mood throughout the evening became bleaker and bleaker.
02:39We then sat down to watch the BBC exit poll.
02:42It was a really heart-stopping moment just simply not knowing what the result was going to be.
02:48But here it is, ten o'clock, and we are saying the Conservatives are the largest party in the EU.
02:56I remember the exit polls as if it was yesterday.
02:59It was a moment of great joy for me that we had worked really hard.
03:03I think we'd run a good government for five years and we had the chance of serving again.
03:08Quite remarkable this exit poll.
03:10The Conservatives on 316.
03:13That's up nine since the last election in 2010.
03:22On the night of the election, I mean I was up in the north of England in my own constituency,
03:27so I wasn't with the rest of the team.
03:29And a huge cheer went up with the group of people I was with and then I immediately phoned David.
03:36We no longer had a coalition, we no longer had Liberal Democrats,
03:39but in some ways it was going to be harder to govern.
03:42I mean, it was an exciting time, but I knew we had made a promise
03:46to hold a referendum before the middle of the Parliament.
03:51Cameron's victory left Labour and the Liberal Democrats leaderless.
03:57And now it's time for someone else to take forward the leadership of this party.
04:01And therefore I announce that I will be resigning as leader of the Liberal Democrats.
04:09It was also an eventful night for UKIP leader Nigel Farage.
04:15Nigel Paul Farage.
04:18Who was hoping to be elected as an MP for the first time.
04:22UKIP, 16,026.
04:28Craig McKinley, the Conservative Party candidate.
04:3518,848.
04:39Election Day 2015 didn't win the seat down in Thanet.
04:43So, yeah, there was a sense of disappointment about that.
04:46When the count came through, I remember him walking off stage,
04:49we went out the back and he sat in a corner on his own for about ten minutes.
04:56He was exhausted, he was pissed off, he had lost.
05:01So there he was on the clifftop. That's it, I'm finished.
05:05There hasn't been a single day of my life since 1994
05:07that has not been dominated by UKIP.
05:10I haven't had a fortnight's holiday since October 1993.
05:13I intend to take the summer off, enjoy myself a little bit,
05:18not do very much politics at all.
05:22Nigel can get a bit emotional sometimes, can't he?
05:25So he needed to have his moment, his tantrum, and then recalibrate.
05:29I was down for about 24 hours.
05:33I woke up the next morning and I've not won a seat.
05:37That's life.
05:38But the government's been elected
05:40and they promised us a referendum on European Union membership.
05:43They then thought, hang on, maybe I shouldn't resign.
05:46If there is a referendum coming, perhaps I better be a part of it.
05:49So I then unresigned very, very quickly.
05:56David Cameron had won a majority of 12.
05:59His first opportunity to speak to his newly elected cohort came at the 1922 committee,
06:06a meeting of backbench Tory MPs, dozens of them determined to leave the EU.
06:13We went into the 1922 committee and there was a lot of banging of desks and cheering
06:18and are scarcely believing that the Conservative Party had gone from being in a coalition government
06:24to actually having an overall majority.
06:26I deliberately sat right up the top of the room, near where the Prime Minister David Cameron would be.
06:33And I sat facing so I could see the rest of the room, see how they were going to react.
06:37I strongly recall that David Cameron looked like a man who was surprised he'd won.
06:42He did not look elated.
06:44He looked daunted, actually, by what he was now going to have to do.
06:49There was the dawning realisation that having a majority did mean that we would finally get that referendum.
06:56David Cameron's making this good fist of trying to look pleased that he's still the Prime Minister.
07:00So he thanks George Osborne, his great master strategist.
07:04And I'm looking around this packed room of elated people.
07:07And I think, where's George?
07:10I think we expected to stay in office, but we didn't expect to win outright.
07:16And so there's that moment when you're exhausted and you've won.
07:20And then, you know, politics is, and now?
07:23And I spotted him sitting on the steps next to the big committee table.
07:29So almost hiding, he wasn't making himself seen, but he was sitting there with the arms on his knees and
07:34his head down.
07:36You know, this was a despondent looking man.
07:38And I thought, yeah, you didn't expect to have to hold a referendum because you thought you'd bargain it away
07:43with the Lib Dems.
07:44There was a feeling, I think, that there was a virus inside the Conservative Party.
07:48And a lot of people had come to feel that dealing with the Europe issue was more important than the
07:52party itself.
07:54Immediately it was clear the big issue was now going to be the EU referendum.
07:58And that was going to dominate the coming period in politics.
08:04Before holding the referendum, David Cameron promised to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the EU.
08:13David Cameron is attempting something no EU leader has done before.
08:17Asking every other country to agree a set of reforms that will then be put to a national vote on
08:24whether to remain in or leave the European Union.
08:28But that summer, the EU faced a more pressing problem.
08:35The hunt for safety, prosperity or both, is right now causing the biggest movement of people since World War II.
08:44Hundreds of thousands of refugees, many fleeing the war in Syria, were arriving on Europe's shores.
08:53You can't harden your heart to scenes like this.
08:57These are some of the latest migrants making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean.
09:03Many have lost their lives.
09:08For Cameron, the race was on to hold the referendum before another huge wave of migrants provided further ammunition for
09:15Euro-sceptics.
09:18Nigel was starting to get excited. This referendum, this is going to be good.
09:21I don't know when they're going to call it, but it's going to happen.
09:23But after the election, he was exhausted.
09:26So I said, do you want to come on holiday? Do you want to come fishing?
09:29And he said, yes, yes, that's good. Let's go and do that.
09:31So I said, why don't you come to Belize?
09:46I went away with one of my advisors, Aaron Banks, for a few days.
09:50And we talked about what were the sequencing being? What were the time being?
09:54And I was convinced that Cameron would go early.
09:58What amazed me about Nigel was just how deep his understanding of politics is.
10:03And he realized that the referendum was more than just Brexit.
10:06It would be to do with the future of the Conservative Party.
10:12I knew from day one that the Conservative Party would back Remain, the Conservative establishment would back Remain, but that
10:21some would break away.
10:22And so we needed a separate campaign.
10:25We need to get out ahead of the Conservatives who will try to avoid immigration as an issue.
10:30They found it always too difficult, too awkward to discuss.
10:34So we decided in those weeks following the election, we'd get going.
10:40So that's how we created this Leave.EU campaign.
10:46Good morning.
10:48It was at the UKIP conference in the autumn of that year that we launched Leave.EU.
10:55The best thing we did was to start early because that then forced others who wanted to come out for
11:02Leave to get their campaign going as well.
11:07The UKIP leader's brand of politics was a concern for many Conservatives who wanted to leave the EU.
11:15It wasn't going to win a referendum where you need to win over the broad consensus of the population.
11:22Too many people were alienated by the Faroge brand.
11:28Tory Eurosceptics like Jenkin wanted their own campaign and knew just the man to run it.
11:35Gordon Brown's chief economic adviser is now republishing a pamphlet he wrote a few years ago saying what a terrible
11:41idea the Euro is.
11:43Fifteen years earlier, Dominic Cummings had successfully run an operation to stop Britain joining the Euro.
11:49He was the obvious choice to run Vote Leave.
11:56I knew he was the guy who could do the job because he's fearless in his campaigning.
12:02Dominic goes all in on something.
12:05In some ways a bit like a sort of SAS general.
12:07He's able to use or point to the fortification you want to take.
12:13He's all in to take that fortification, come what may, using whatever methods necessary to do it.
12:21Elliot and Cummings were determined to launch Vote Leave with a bold claim.
12:28I'm at my desk and Dom walks past and goes, Oliver, roughly speaking, how much do we send to the
12:35EU every week?
12:36So I basically went on to the official government stats, the so-called pink book, and found the numbers and
12:42simply divide it by 52.
12:44So it's roughly speaking about 350 million pounds a week, taken as a gross figure.
12:50Do you want that figure?
12:51And he goes, yeah, absolutely.
12:52And I said, why do you want it?
12:54And he goes, oh, no reason, don't worry about it.
13:01Every week, the United Kingdom sends 350 million pounds of taxpayers' money to the EU.
13:10We did use it deliberately.
13:12In doing that, it helped everyone discuss what is the balance sheet?
13:16What's the true balance sheet?
13:18That's 20 billion pounds per year.
13:21The reason why that figure drove everyone crazy is that we were using true figures.
13:29But Cummings' figure did not account for the rebate, around 80 million pounds, or EU money spent in the UK.
13:39It was a fantastic video, but I thought, we can't use 350 million, that's the gross figure, we've got to
13:45use the net figure, otherwise we'll be completely lampooned and ridiculed.
13:51From the minute that Vote Leave was launched, and that was in direct response to what Leave.eu had done,
13:57I thought, look, there must be a coming together of some kind, there must be an accommodation of some kind.
14:03It makes sense.
14:04It makes sense to have a campaign with a lot of the political spectrum represented.
14:11A meeting between Farage's Leave.eu and Dominic Cummings' Vote Leave was organised.
14:18They said that immigration and Nigel would put middle class voters off from voting for Brexit, and that he should
14:26be sidelined.
14:27What they didn't realise was that actually both Dominic and I had a very clear idea about how the referendum
14:34campaign could and should be won.
14:37And it wasn't basically going all in on immigration and concentrating on the core vote. You needed a more sophisticated
14:42campaign.
14:43They thought we would actually lose the referendum on our side because of the negatives. So, you know, the 38
14:50% of the population that were not going to vote Leave hated Farage.
14:54Ah, look, there's a minus approval rating. What they didn't understand was on the positive side of the equation, we
15:00could increase turnout.
15:01It started getting into a row, so Aaron was not holding back, he was piling in.
15:09Certainly Cummings and Banks had a lot to say about each other.
15:12I told him straight to his face what I thought of him, you know, that he was a political spad
15:17that never done anything with his life, never amounted to anything.
15:20And who was he to tell me, you know, anything really.
15:25And then he responded with, you know, a four letter expletive, starting with C.
15:33That's when we knew pretty much that there was no way there was going to be any joining of the
15:40forces.
15:46Meanwhile, the Remain side had their own problems.
15:51Peter Mandelson was an experienced former Labour minister and EU commissioner.
15:57He was organising a cross-party campaign and wanted to get the Prime Minister signed up right away.
16:06I met David Cameron at a leaving party for a number of ten officials.
16:10And he came up to me and we started talking about the prospects for the referendum.
16:15And I said, well, we've really got to start mobilising, we've got to start organising.
16:20And he said, hold on, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
16:23You know, we haven't even had a negotiation yet.
16:26We have to maintain the illusion that we might even, if the negotiation is disappointing, recommend that we leave the
16:33European Union.
16:35This gave me, you know, it was a real problem because, you know, on the one hand, I had a
16:42conservative leader and prime minister who was trying to sort of put the brakes on and not being entirely enthusiastic.
16:48And on the other hand, Jeremy Corbyn.
16:51Jeremy Corbyn elected as leader of the Labour Party.
16:55A moment some of his critics hoped they'd never see.
16:57Now the challenge is, can he make the group hug last?
17:01Can he keep Labour together?
17:05In the leadership campaign in 2015, Jeremy was the only candidate who wasn't just to kind of absolutely remain enthusiastic.
17:12A lot of the Shadow Cabinet were very anxious about that.
17:14They wanted just a very clear answer, Jeremy, you are supporting him.
17:18And Jeremy sort of paused and gave his view of the EU, which is a mixed bag.
17:21I was saying that I see social advantages.
17:25I see the point about, about, um, trade within Europe.
17:30I do think we have to be there, but not be tied into free market economics, which will damage the
17:37whole of the economic strategy I wanted to put forward, which is about a public investment led economic revival in
17:44Britain.
17:45You could see the minute he said that, they just cut him off.
17:47But we are supporting him.
17:49I said, yes, we'll campaign for it with the qualification, and I made this qualification from the very beginning, that
17:56we weren't going to campaign jointly with the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats.
17:59It was going to be our campaign, it'd be a Labour campaign, which would also be about the need to
18:05change and reform the EU.
18:09Without direct support from either Corbyn or Cameron, Mandelson and his cross-party group decided to press on and launch,
18:18using the name Britain Stronger in Europe.
18:24We were getting very close to launch date, we didn't have a chair, and somebody had been talking to Stuart
18:30Rose, who'd been the chairman of Marks & Spencer.
18:34Nobody was more surprised than I to have a phone call one day saying, Stuart, you know, we've got this
18:39campaign now to remain in Europe, and you're the man to do it.
18:42And I said, you must be joking.
18:45And then I had another phone call, you know, an hour later saying, Stuart, you're just a man.
18:49Then I had another phone call saying, Stuart, you're just a man.
18:51And I kept saying, no, no, no, no, I'm not the man.
18:55But they lent on me very heavily.
19:00Stuart's speech had been approved, and it had been briefed.
19:02And when a speech is briefed in politics, it means it's already being written up, and the media are expecting
19:07the lines to be delivered.
19:09But at the 11th hour, he decided he didn't like some of those lines.
19:12I'm used to going through a debate to make sure that we get the best line.
19:16We all understand it, and you believe in what you're saying, you know.
19:19And it's very hard to stand up when someone gives you a script and suddenly start spouting forth on this
19:24stuff when half of you don't believe.
19:26And there was the word quitter.
19:27I mean, instinctively, it said to me, Stuart, we really shouldn't be calling people who don't want to stay in
19:32Europe quitters, because it's a negative.
19:35I remember sitting there with the speech, and I had my pen out saying, you know, I'm not saying this,
19:40I'm not saying that, or trying to change words.
19:46Welcome to the launch of Britain is Stronger in Europe campaign.
19:51It was kind of like taking a world class lock forward from a rugby team and trying to make him
19:57open the batting for England in the ashes.
20:00He was a brilliant sportsman, but playing the wrong sport.
20:04I am not saying, and we are not saying, that we would not survive from being without the EU.
20:09But I'm saying that, but I'm asking the very real question, would we thrive?
20:16I thought the launch went extremely badly. If I'd been me, I'd have marked myself three out of ten.
20:20And it really was that bad.
20:23Watching the launch of the Stronger in campaign, our heads were in our hands.
20:27From that moment on, the campaign was mocked.
20:30And I think that that really catalyzed the sense that if we don't get a grip of this, we are
20:34going to lose this.
20:37Craig Oliver was dispatched to meet the leaders of Stronger in.
20:42When I was shown the polling, what was clear was on one side we had a third of people who
20:46were going to be out come what may.
20:48We had a third of people on the other side who were going to be in come what may.
20:52And in the middle were a sceptical group.
20:54They didn't particularly care about European unity, but they did care about whether it was going to impact on their
20:59pocket.
21:00I think the thing that really ensured that the number ten folks were comfortable with the Remain campaign was our
21:07insistence that we understood economic risk had to be a critical part of the message.
21:13The other thing I was keen to persuade them of was that we weren't a bunch of Euro-nutters.
21:19That we did understand where the British public were.
21:23That we weren't just taking for granted.
21:25That we could just sort of conjure up Ode to Joy and play the music and just march off into
21:30the sunset and win this referendum.
21:33So by the end of that meeting, I felt, look, we can work together.
21:37We can be part of a team.
21:39And that that should be what we did going forward.
21:41We shouldn't reject them.
21:44In public, though, Cameron insisted he could still opt for leave if his negotiation with the EU failed to deliver
21:53special concessions.
22:00But his chance of success was made far more difficult by the ongoing refugee crisis, which was dominating nightly news
22:09coverage.
22:09A desperate scramble to get on board as Hungary opens its main railway station to thousands of migrants who want
22:17to get to Western Europe.
22:18We are real people.
22:20There was a crush to get back from the tear gas.
22:26We are human.
22:27We're trying to be someplace safe.
22:29Why are they hitting us?
22:31They travel onwards, propelled by hope.
22:35Most heading for Germany.
22:42i remember talking to david in november of 2015 the one thing that i said to him and this was
22:48more
22:49by way of being an advisor than a friend um was that immigration was going to be key unless
22:57in this negotiation it was clear that there'd been a significant win in terms of
23:02britain's capacity to control free movement and to control migration then it would be much more
23:08difficult for him to sell any deal the most obvious answer to having some measure of immigration
23:15control from people coming from other eu countries was simply to have an emergency break a cap on
23:21numbers so that if for instance in a given year it was going over 50 000 you could say right
23:27we're
23:27pulling the emergency break the cap comes into operation no more can come for this year until
23:33the numbers come down when cameron consulted the eu's most powerful leader german chancellor
23:43angela merkel she gave him worrying feedback
23:48i talked to her about it at length and she said this is not negotiable this is something the european
23:54union cannot allow the freedom of movement is one of the four freedoms in the european union of freedom
24:00of of goods and services and capital and people and you can't do that the eu's rejection of cameron's
24:10demand made it even more important he had the backing of his high-profile colleagues the christmas
24:18holiday provided an opportunity for him to test the water david cameron invited me and my family
24:25to check us and it was a very relaxed family gathering we talked about you know shared friends
24:29food football uh all the things that the friends would probably talk to each other about i think you
24:37know part of the reason we were there was dave reminding michael of what it was that he had you
24:43this is who we are this is this is you know i'm the prime minister this is checkers you know
24:47this is
24:48the environment i thought you're like a kind of subtle sort of do you really want to give all this
24:53up
24:54sort of a thing we talked about almost everything apart from the looming vote on the european union but
25:01david on the whole didn't really like talking uh in detail about politics or policy when he had
25:07downtime it might come up uh tangentially uh but it wasn't a subject that uh uh he liked to address
25:16and i had my own reasons for not really wanting to disturb the festive atmosphere by bringing up
25:21anything uncomfortable day is very diplomatic human actually uh i've always admired that ability
25:29and and he just sort of uh you know we were sort of i think we were sort of in
25:34charge of the
25:34children or something i don't know the others had gone away or gone for a walk or gone for a
25:38swim
25:39i remember sitting on the sofa talking to to sarah and asking her you know i hope i'm going to
25:45be
25:45all right that michael will be you know supporting and on my side so i just said to him you
25:51know uh you
25:52know michael's life he like he doesn't he's not scared of europe he thinks that europe takes lots of
25:56liberties but i think he'll probably ultimately come down to to your way of thinking i thought you know i
26:02genuinely thought that would be the case because we were close um and we'd done so much together i
26:08thought we'd be in the same team next in cameron's sights was boris johnson the mayor of london had
26:20also become an mp at the 2015 election he'd never had a cabinet job for david cameron's point of view
26:28in
26:29meetings he would say look we've got to try and bind this guy in it's the old lyndon johnson thing
26:33of wanting somebody inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in
26:39the two men had a decades-old rivalry
26:43they were both at school together and when men of a certain class say school what they mean is
26:50eaten and the rivalry really started there the fact that dave became prime minister first
26:57even though he was two years younger i think really riled boris he thought that it was his turn
27:05to be world king before it was david cameron's i wanted to have you know just a personal conversation
27:12with boris without any aids or other people around just sort of the two of us and we always talked
27:19about our joint love of tennis um i had this wonderful deal where i could use the american
27:25ambassador's court next to regent's park and it was a sort of peaceful place to go for some rest and
27:31recreation
27:32i love playing tennis and um dave is actually very good he's a he's a left-hander um sorry left
27:39hand and he's very hard to beat i i find i've never beaten him i think my sister rachel has
27:44beaten him i'm proud to say
27:45um and i've beaten rachel so that counts as a sort of partial uh victory of a camera
27:53first of all you know he did thrash me but that's fine and he then he then said look um
27:59would you
28:01consider joining us on the on the remain campaign and you know it'd be much better if you i'd love
28:06to
28:06have you in the cabinet you you should have a top five job and i wasn't sure what the exact
28:12hierarchy
28:12was i knew there was there was uh you know i've obviously thought about it uh um out of pure
28:18curiosity what was his job there's there's prime minister um uh i'm saying chancellor home secretary
28:26foreign secretary uh that's four and what is the fifth mystery i didn't say which job it was i said
28:35beer no doubt you know defense is a top five job for instance i wanted him you know to understand
28:41that
28:41i valued his contribution that he would be a major part of the government going forward
28:45being offered a top five job by the prime minister it's pretty a fantastic thing so i was i was
28:53interested
28:53and excited david cameron came back from that tennis meeting feeling doubly good one that he'd beaten
29:01bonnie johnson at tennis and two that he may have a concession that he would actually join
29:06the government cbi shame on you cbi voice of brussels while david cameron was fighting to keep the
29:14conservative party united vote leaves chief strategist dominic cummings was already working
29:20to sabotage this one of the most important things that a government can deliver is long-term economic
29:27security and stability come on come on come on guys if you sit down now you can ask me a
29:35question
29:35rather than uh making fools of yourself by just um standing up and protesting we got in because vote
29:41leave formed um a company for us and um we pretended to be businessmen
29:47it became clear very quickly after the event that certain people certain mps really didn't like
29:55what we had done i was absolutely furious i'm afraid i even now i want politics to be noble
30:03i think politics is important they just laid into dom and said that they had to respect david cameron
30:10that he was the prime minister he was leader of the conservative party and how could we do this
30:15it was just an appalling neglect of a fundamental requirement of our campaign that it should leave
30:23the conservative party fit to actually carry out the result of the referendum whichever way it went
30:28dom just turned around and said you are wrong you can either support leaving the eu or you can support
30:35david cameron and if you don't like that there's the door
30:41i went to see dominic cummings and i explained i didn't think that vote leave could be some kind of
30:49political terrorist campaign just blowing things up dominic was absolutely furious and he took me
30:54outside into the stalwart and bellowed at me i had been at work during the day and so i went
31:01over to
31:01the offices at about six o'clock in the evening up i go in the lift up to the vote
31:07leave floor the doors
31:08open as if curtains on a stage and there are two characters on the stage looking at each other and
31:14i'm
31:15looking at them and they're about this far apart one is bernard jenkins and the others dom cummings
31:21he was shouting at me um and very very angry and trying to intimidate me um
31:30in an almost uncontrolled way bernard is looking really quite disconcerted while dom says something
31:38along the lines of if you ever say something like that to me again i'm going to make sure you
31:42never
31:43are going to be allowed in this office again do you hear me i certainly felt his spittle on my
31:48face
31:49and i was just thinking this is a very serious breakdown in a relationship and a very serious
31:56threat to the good governance of vote leave from my point of view from that moment on um
32:04certainly dominic should have been removed because what he showed was that he was not willing to be
32:09held to account and that's the recurrent theme of all of the time i've known him it was not just
32:16tory brexiteers cummings was alienating my problem with him was that he didn't seem to think that mps
32:23really had much um you know should have much say in anything he seemed to not uh understand or not
32:30want
32:31to understand that you know what was happening at the ground level at the grassroots level was going
32:36to be very very important for nigel farage and his team securing a labor mp would be a coup
32:48the rumblings had started within the vote leave group about the fact that um you know a lot of them
32:56weren't happy with what cummings and elliott were doing at all it was really obvious to me that you
33:00needed to get the labor vote out if we had any chance of really uh winning and that seemed to
33:11be
33:11something that leave eu and particularly aaron and andy understood better we encouraged kate to come and
33:19join uh leave.eu we basically said yeah leave it with us we're going to build a ground campaign
33:27in a move unprecedented for a labor mp kate hoey agreed to share the stage with nigel farage
33:36i get up there in the morning there's a queue i said what's this for and they said oh this
33:42is for
33:42the you know the campaign the leave campaign um i hear you're doing a rally i said yeah but
33:48not for another about five hours but yeah we keep we're queuing the traffic jams we caused it was
33:53extraordinary i said mate we hardly advertised this we thought we were going to have 200 people
33:59you've got 1600 people in that room and they all here to hear what you've got to say oh they
34:07said the
34:07blood drained from his face as he realized this is going big deal
34:14i'd never met nigel it was slightly concerning i mean you have to remember that in those days there
34:20was a feeling about nigel that was just pretty horrible a lot of people had very very very strong
34:26views about him and there was always this feeling uh you know oh if i go on a platform with
34:31nigel
34:32farage are people going to start calling me a racist she probably like many labor figures thought i was
34:36voldemort or something like that i sat down with case and i thought well the most important thing
34:43don't try too hard just be what you are and i think within 10 minutes actually we hit it off
34:51the kettering rally was a very trumpian kind of rally i didn't know there was going to be music
34:56i didn't know that i was going to have to walk up this long alleyway and you know between people
35:00cheering
35:03we are finding that people are coming out and saying at last within the labor movement there is
35:10some kind of debate we're fed up with the europhiles who've been running our party
35:16it was very moving because there was no doubt about it that there were
35:20lots of people there who were not um tory voters kate turned to me and said these are
35:26labor supporters these are not conservative supporters these are people who feel that they've
35:33been left behind let down by the political class
35:41nigel walks in like the messiah with all these people clapping and standing and these tories behind
35:47us going what the you know this is mental how the hell is nigel for us having that reaction this
35:54is so important that it's not about left or right but it's about right or wrong and we know what's
36:02right and we must win this referendum
36:11for nigel it was the first time he had been with all party members on a stage and
36:19i think he was quite emotional about it too that day it was almost like that group of people were
36:27welcoming me in albeit slightly nervously whereas the snobbier end of the equation within vote leave
36:34would have nothing to do with me
36:41at vote leave's headquarters unhappiness with the leadership of dominic cummings could no longer be
36:48ignored by this time quite a lot of mps were saying have you got rid of dominic yet
36:54there began to be a sort of consensus that something had to be done if the campaign was
37:00to be saved the result was an agreement in general to draw up a contract which would move dominic away
37:08from the day-to-day operations now it just happened that i was already discussing a contract with him it
37:14was really as to whether he should be a contractual employee or a freelance operator i said look
37:20let's have a one-to-one discussion in private
37:28i mean just a normal day to begin with but then dom says the board want me to go
37:34across the river to the other building
37:40once we sat down and we were looking at each other i said dominic
37:44i'm sorry i brought you here under false pretenses i said uh it's not working you've upset too many
37:51people came into the vote leave office and something felt very different matt elliott our
37:57chief executive came to me with a very long face and said have you heard what's happening
38:02and i said no what what what's going on and he said well the board have summoned dominic
38:07and they're going to fire him and i said what this is going to be catastrophic we can't lose our
38:11campaign manager what are we doing here let's let's go over there and do something about it
38:16by the stage a number of senior members had joined the meeting and i handed dominic a draft contract
38:23which actually i've got here um and it's a contractor agreement which made him a strategic advisor
38:31rather than the campaign director i think this document gave him quite a shock
38:36and he started uh texting clearly texting back to his colleagues
38:42suddenly i'm pulled into the corridor by our head of operations who goes there's a coup the
38:48board are trying to make dom resign dominic was saying i'm going to walk out and i'll take the
38:52whole team with me and i in that moment i thought this whole thing this whole thing which i've been
38:59working towards for the better part of 30 years is about to collapse over some some stupid personality
39:04clash so we decided that we need to draft a letter making it very clear that if they forced dom
39:11out
39:11we would all walk out of the blue i got a call from dominic cummings dominic had been working with
39:18me in the past at the department for education and dominic was uncharacteristically agitated
39:23he was normally ice cool uh in most conversations about politics it was clear that there was something
39:30that was up in the campaign and dominic asked me if i could uh speak to a couple of people
39:36i talked
39:38to a couple of mps who were involved in vote leave and i said look i haven't made up my
39:42mind to
39:42definitively yet david hasn't concluded his negotiations however i have to tell you if dominic
39:48cummings is not playing a role in this campaign then i'm not going to be playing uh any sort of
39:54prominent
39:55role at all either cummings supporters had saved him i saw dom that evening after the attempted coup
40:06and i asked him how he was doing and he just looked back at me and said we need the
40:10cavalry to arrive
40:15in early february a draft of cameron's eu deal was published
40:28i'm sitting at my desk in city hall and dave calls me up to say you know how's it going
40:33with the
40:34decision-making process on the the eu referendum i said to him look i'm really sorry but you know
40:40the way things are going the way my mind's moving at the moment i think i'm going to go with
40:45leave
40:45i said look i know you think that my renegotiation hasn't achieved everything you think it should
40:51but you've never backed uh leaving the eu before you've argued for reform you're a eurosceptic fine
40:57but you've never argued for leaving so don't start now he did get a bit testy and he and he
41:02said
41:03well if you do that i will you up forever and i was i was a bit intimidated by that
41:08because i didn't
41:09you know it's a forever it's a long time to be you know fucked up by uh you know the
41:14the instruments
41:14of government with all the you know trained fucker uppers i don't remember saying that but look i was
41:20getting very passionate about it because i knew that boris had a huge role to play in this i went
41:26back to see my family later on that that evening i said well look you know had a bit of
41:29a bust up with
41:30dave earlier on about about the eu thing boris relayed that cameron had said to him if you support
41:40leave i'll fuck you up forever i thought it was actually surprisingly weak in a way and i thought
41:49it was surprising that they weren't talking about the issues marina wheeler boris johnson's wife
41:58was celebrating her recent appointment as a qc he's not here no so i was hoping to persuade you
42:05that you might not need to stay around here actually she had long-standing concerns about
42:10the eu's increasing hold over uk law david cameron had come back saying that he had achieved a great
42:18deal by managing to exempt the uk from ever closer union the real problem with ever closer union
42:26was that the court of justice used this as a way of expanding the reach of eu law and expanding
42:34and the whole scope of the project and what cameron had achieved in terms of agreement wasn't going to
42:41touch that i've known marina since i was a small kid we've both been small she's basically a a liberal
42:51soul right she's not a uh a foaming xenophobe the absolute opposite as a lawyer i began to be more
42:58and more aware of that process of what the court was was doing and i did have that conversation with
43:06boris i was very struck when she said that she too was inclined to vote lee personally i felt you
43:14know
43:14the country will choose you can't just keep quiet that is aggregating responsibility but he was coming
43:23under great pressure to stick with cameron i didn't particularly want to upset the apple car i didn't
43:29want to you know um be up forever you know why you know
43:42as boris johnson wavered david cameron decided he and george osborne needed to confront michael gove
43:51david cameron once described the world of politics as being divided into two types of people team
43:56players and wankers and from david's point of view uh i've been a team player in the past so uh
44:02when uh
44:03there was a requirement to fall into line on the eu referendum uh i think he naturally assumed that
44:08i would be uh a team player then i really remember that meeting and it wasn't just a meeting it
44:15was a
44:15meeting of friends you know we we were people who had lived together for 10 years in terms of our
44:21work
44:21in terms of our holidays you know we knew each other's families george and i tried to spell out for
44:27him what we thought the consequences would be if he supported leave and if as a result leave gained
44:34a lot of traction and won i basically pleaded with michael i said if you go to the leave campaign
44:41you
44:41are going to give it credibility which it doesn't currently have it's got a kind of farage tinge to
44:47it which puts a lot of respectable people off boris johnson is going to get fomo and feel he has
44:52to be
44:53put up and david cameron is going to have to resign if we lose don't kid yourself that this government
45:00can continue if you've lost this big referendum and everything we have worked for is going to be
45:06shattered for me the fundamental problem with britain's membership of the european union is that
45:12laws were imposed on us that we couldn't alter or change and european union law for all of the member
45:20states is supreme and i said whatever your sort of particular concerns about parliamentary sovereignty
45:27we are you know a country that needs the economic support of the eu and frankly you know what's going
45:33to happen if we leave who's going to be happy vladimir putin's going to be happy the chinese
45:38president's going to be happy and doesn't that tell you what this really means for the west i made it
45:44clear to them i'm sorry this is something i deeply believe i didn't want this referendum but now i have
45:52to make a choice this was a bombshell that someone who i was very close to was a key part
45:57of the team
45:58was wavering and then effectively saying i think i'm going to go with leave for me there was a choice
46:06between staying close to what i believed and you know relative moral cowardice and suppressing that in
46:13order to well to safeguard personal relationships a week later boris johnson invited gove to dinner
46:29i had some warning because i cooked a pretty delicious slow roast lamb and it turned out that
46:38the the purpose of the evening was for boris and michael to discuss this impending decision
46:50i think what we were both thinking was well you know do we want to go through the the pain
46:55of being
46:56at variance with the prime minister seeming to be difficult uh being mutineers and then probably losing
47:04uh and then you know being um cast out as splitters and and you know whatever
47:14we started off i think upstairs um you know chatting around then we went downstairs to eat dinner
47:23marina had cooked lamb um while we were eating and discussing the pros and cons of our membership of the
47:31the eu the phone rang it was oliver letman who was uh david cameron's policy suprema boris put it on
47:38speaker you were trying to sort out this question of whether you could somehow assert the supremacy of
47:45uk law over european law although i was trying hard not to show that i was listening to this i
47:53mean obviously i was
47:54hearing sort of snippets of it and i thought hmm i mean it sounded pretty unlikely to me it became
48:02clear
48:02during the conversation that britain remaining in the european union would mean britain continuing to be
48:08subject to european laws and the european court of justice we couldn't change those laws we'd have to
48:14accept of a closer union whatever the deal said and that for me was a clincher
48:22but michael gove did not tell the prime minister he'd made his decision
48:36i'll be battling for britain if we can get a good deal i'll take that deal but i will not
48:42take a deal
48:42that doesn't meet what we need
48:58the next evening just as cameron was about to announce the deal he'd secured from his eu
49:03counterparts news broke from london in a blow to the prime minister the bbc has been told that one of
49:10his
49:11closest cabinet allies michael gove will campaign to leave the eu we were at the end of an incredibly
49:19long negotiation and it was a shock that it was being done at the moment when i was preparing to
49:26think how i would talk to the country about this um now let me say about michael gove michael is
49:37one of my
49:38my oldest and closest friends so of course i'm disappointed that we're not going to be on the
49:43same side as we have this vital argument about our country's future
50:04cameron returned home to launch the referendum
50:09he called the first saturday cabinet meeting since the falklands war in 1982
50:17it felt momentous to be walking into that cabinet meeting we're all conscious that
50:25it was a meeting that might play a significant part in history there was lots of support for
50:32the prime minister's deal there are other cabinet members who made their views
50:37playing that they were on the leaf side
50:40it was worrying to hear different views on one campaign that the government was going to be running
50:47it's difficult enough in politics to all follow one leader one plan
50:54and the concept of us all having different views and picking sides
51:00was going to be very different from what we got used to i think the most powerful intervention came
51:05from michael gove where he emphasized that he just couldn't pass up the opportunity to
51:11secure the uk's place as an independent self-governing democracy i just spoke from the heart that this
51:17was the moment that britain could choose to be an independent self-governing nation and for me that
51:24was above all the most important consideration
51:32those who want to leave europe cannot tell you if british businesses would be able to access
51:37europe's free trade single market or if working people's jobs are safe or how much prices would rise
51:44all they're offering is a risk at a time of uncertainty on monday i will go to parliament
51:51and propose that the british people decide our future in europe through an in-out referendum
51:58on thursday the 23rd of june when the prime minister actually announced the date i thought holy
52:05shit that is so soon we've got so much to do in order to win that referendum but the leavers
52:13had a
52:13plan immediately after that cabinet and they came together very quickly i had a jaguar xf which are
52:19parked up outside the house and the ministers came over from downing street so i put a great escape on
52:26and drove them over to vote leave i remember looking in my rear view mirror and thinking how slightly
52:32absurd it was to see four members of the cabinet crammed into a car heading to vote leave it was
52:37a very
52:37strange moment theresa villiers the northern ireland secretary had a government car for personal
52:47protection reasons and she invited me to join her to go to the vote leave headquarters the car journey
52:54it was quite quiet and solemn i think both michael and i were conscious that these next
53:03hours days weeks of the referendum could have a big impact on the future of our country potentially
53:10and and significantly an impact on us and our careers personally michael was perhaps not quite
53:18his ebullient self mr gove tell us why you're getting to the prime minister i'm normally a relatively
53:25obedient uh person i was reflecting on what a momentous decision this was ladies and gentlemen
53:32please join me in welcoming vote leaves
53:39it's me who opened the door and asked everybody to welcome them to the campaign and it was a
53:43genuine moment of joy that suddenly the cavalry had now arrived
53:53now i remember watching it with david cameron on tv just like every other citizen and it was a real
53:59shock because these were you know our colleagues our friends some cases close personal friends i think
54:06that was the first moment we realized my god this is going to be proper kind of civil war inside
54:11the
54:11conservative party you know there's something you know there's something about a civil war which is
54:17which kind of hits you here
54:24just one person was left on the fence
54:31that morning i sat on the sofa opposite the prime minister trying to discuss firing the gun on the
54:37campaign and i remember a clear moment where david cameron had his blackberry in front of him and i
54:42stopped talking and just let him read it and when he'd finished he just looked up at me and said
54:46well it looks like out and he didn't need to say to me that that was boris johnson's email
54:54within hours johnson seemed to have u-turned i was just getting bombarded with phone calls from people
55:03i know and love saying you know if you vote leave you'll be tendering your resignation from the human
55:10race you'll be joining you know bigots and xenophobes incorporated it's like you know my spirit sinks i
55:16oh god then i sent another message to dave um you know recording my growing depression about the
55:24situation i wasn't hopeful about the depression setting in obviously but i was hopeful um that he
55:29was really having second thoughts about supporting leave my advice to boris was to go by himself to
55:40our house in oxfordshire in tame and write a case for leave and write a case for remain
55:47and just get it completely clear in your own mind i did like and i i i wrote about a
55:52thousand words or so
55:53uh for for leave and i i talked to marina and we we talked it over it contained
56:03what i thought were the fundamental issues about sovereignty and it was clear that some of what i'd
56:09been saying um had had an impact when i sat down to write the second piece the best argument i
56:16could
56:16come up with was david cameron's deal wasn't any good but you know it never he was never going to
56:22get
56:22a good deal uh and we might as well just grin and bear it boris hates being on his own
56:30so i texted him to
56:32say you know what are you doing and he said why don't you come to tame and have lunch
56:38rachel turns up and she's brought lasagna and uh very kind of her thought it was fantastic i could
56:46sense this pent-up anxiety and sort of tension so i said why don't we go and play tennis
56:54so we hit balls to each other and i was trying to work out his thinking
57:00i said i don't get it if you want to be prime minister which you do why wouldn't you support
57:07david cameron who said he's only doing one term and then you'd be the natural successor and he was
57:14saying but that's not what i'm thinking i don't give a fuck about being prime minister i was getting
57:22incredibly impatient with arguments based on what might happen to me
57:31they went back inside and rachel johnson a committed remainer read her brother's two articles
57:39and i say well it's quite obvious the column for remain is very powerful and conclusive
57:49and the column for leave is all about how if we were in the eu we couldn't determine the height
57:54of
57:54wing mirrors on our trucks and i was like is that it is that the best you've got there was
58:01nothing in
58:01the the the article for remain except you know doing the right thing by dave and anyway i remember him
58:08saying to me and being very struck by this that he'd re-read the column for remain and he said
58:13and it
58:13made me feel sick at some deep level it is an emotional thing you know you either want you the
58:20country to be independent or or you think that we should create a federal europe
58:35to the front nigel i said it's got nothing to do with boris it's about stopping nigel
58:42it was a very powerful image it's an image by the way that if you used it today
58:47you'd probably get very little criticism
58:51david cameron said we need a shock factor and i said to look we've had the shock factor
58:56joe cox was assassinated
59:17so
59:22so
59:23so
59:23so
Comentários