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Brexit A Very British Civil War S01E01 Demons Unleashed engsub fullepisode🔥
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00:13The vote to leave the European Union changed the course of British history.
00:18Both seem unimaginably distant and like yesterday.
00:24Ten 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.
00:41It 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 bail, one in four, still on this side of the express vote to keep Britain great.
02:05The Guardian, it couldn't be closer.
02:12We gathered in the Prime Minister's home on election day and there was a real feeling in
02:16the 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.
02:22I 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
02:32to my team.
02:34David Cameron's mood throughout the evening became bleaker and bleaker.
02:39We then sat down to watch the BBC exit poll.
02:43It was a really heart-stopping moment, just simply not knowing what the result was going
02:48to be.
02:49But here it is, 10 o'clock, and we are saying the Conservatives are the largest party.
02:57I remember the exit polls, if it was yesterday, it was a moment of great joy for me that we
03:02had 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, the Conservatives on 316.
03:14That'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 and a huge cheer went up with the group of people
03:33I was with and then I immediately phoned David.
03:36We no longer had a coalition, we no longer had Liberal Democrats, but in some ways it
03:40was going to be harder to govern.
03:42I mean, it was an exciting time, but I knew we had made a promise to hold a referendum
03:48before the middle of the parliament.
03:52Cameron'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.
04:02And therefore I announced 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.
04:27Craig McKinley, the Conservative Party candidate.
04:3318,838.
04:40Election Day 2015 didn't win the seat down in Thanet.
04:44So, yeah, there was a sense of disappointment about that.
04:46When the count came through, I remember him walking off stage.
04:50We 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 cliff top.
05:03That's it, I'm finished.
05:05There hasn't been a single day of my life since 1994 that has not been dominated by UKIP.
05:10I haven't had a fortnight's holiday since October 1993.
05:14I intend to take the summer off.
05:16Enjoy myself a little bit.
05:18Not do very much politics at all.
05:23Nigel can get a bit emotional sometimes, can't he?
05:25So he needed to have his moment, his tantrum, and then recalibrate.
05:30I 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 and they've promised us a referendum on European Union membership.
05:43And then thought, hang on, maybe I shouldn't resign.
05:46If there is a referendum coming, perhaps I'd better be a part of it.
05:49So I then unresigned very, very quickly.
05:56David Cameron had won a majority of 12.
06:00His first opportunity to speak to his newly elected cohort came at the 1922 committee.
06:06A meeting of backbench Tory MPs.
06:09Dozens of them determined to leave the EU.
06:14We went into the 1922 committee and there was a lot of banging of desks and cheering.
06:19And 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.
06:38I 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?
07:24And I spotted him sitting on the steps next to the big committee table.
07:29So, almost hiding. He wasn't making himself seen.
07:32But he was sitting there with arms on his knees and his 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
07:41because you thought you'd bargain it away with 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
07:51was more important than the party 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
08:08to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the EU.
08:13David Cameron is attempting something no EU leader has done before.
08:18asking every other country to agree a set of reforms
08:21that will then be put to a national vote
08:23on whether 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
08:39is right now causing the biggest movement of people since World War II.
08:44Hundreds of thousands of refugees, many fleeing the war in Syria,
08:49were arriving on Europe's shores.
08:53You can't harden your heart for scenes like this.
08:58These are some of the latest migrants making the perilous journey
09:01across the Mediterranean.
09:03Many have lost their lives.
09:08For Cameron, the race was on to hold the referendum
09:11before another huge wave of migrants
09:14provided further ammunition for Eurosceptics.
09:18Nigel was starting to get excited.
09:19This 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?
09:28Do you want to come fishing?
09:29And he said, yes, yes, that's good.
09:30Let's go and do that.
09:31So I said, why don't you come to Belize?
09:46I went away with one of my advisers, Aaron Banks, for a few days.
09:50And we talked about, what were the sequencing being?
09:53What 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 realised 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,
10:18the Conservative establishment would back Remain,
10:21but that some would break away.
10:23He said, we need a separate campaign.
10:25We need to get out ahead of the Conservatives
10:26who will try to avoid immigration as an issue.
10:31They found it always too difficult, too awkward to discuss.
10:35So we decided in those weeks following the election, we'd get going.
10:40So that's how we created this Leave.EU campaign.
10:45All right, Nigel. Good morning.
10:48It was at the UKIP conference in the autumn of that year
10:51that we launched Leave.EU.
10:55The best thing we did was to start early,
10:58because that then forced others who wanted to come out for Leave
11:02to get their campaign going as well.
11:07The UKIP leader's brand of politics was a concern for many Conservatives
11:11who 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.
11:23Too many people were alienated by the Farage 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
11:40saying what a terrible idea the Euro is.
11:43Fifteen years earlier, Dominic Cummings had successfully run an operation to stop Britain joining the Euro.
11:50He was the obvious choice to run Vote Leave.
11:57I 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.
12:08He's able to, if you sort of 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,
12:32Oliver, roughly speaking, how much do we send to the EU every week?
12:36So I basically went on to the official government stats, the so-called pink book,
12:41and found the numbers and simply divide it by 52.
12:44And so it's roughly speaking about 350 million pounds a week, you know, taken as a gross figure.
12:50Do you want that figure? And he goes, yeah, absolutely.
12:53And I said, well, why do you want it?
12:54And he goes, oh, no reason, don't worry about it.
13:02Every week, the United Kingdom sends 350 million pounds of taxpayers' money to the EU.
13:10We did use it deliberately. In doing that, it helped everyone discuss what is the balance sheet.
13:17What'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.
13:30But 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.
13:44We've got to use 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. It 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 call vote. You needed a more sophisticated
14:42campaign.
14:43They thought we would actually lose the referendum on our side because of the negatives.
14:49So, you know, the 38% of the population that were not going to Vote Leave hated Farage.
14:54Ah, look, there's a minus approval rating.
14:56What they didn't understand was on the positive side of the equation, we could increase turnout.
15:02It 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 spar
15:18that had never done anything with his life, never amounted to anything.
15:21And 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.
15:45Meanwhile, 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 and he came up to me
16:11and we started talking about the prospects for the referendum.
16:16And I said, well, we've really got to start mobilising, we've got to start organising.
16:21He said, hold on, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
16:24You 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
16:34European 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.
16:55The 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 kind of absolutely remaining enthusiastic.
17:12A lot of the Shadow Cabinet were very anxious about that.
17:15They 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.
17:22I was saying that I see social advantages.
17:25I see the point about 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,
17:40which is about a public investment-led economic revival in Britain.
17:45You could see the minute he said that, they just cut him off.
17:48But we are supporting him.
17:49I said, yes, we'll campaign for it with the qualification.
17:53And I made this qualification from the very beginning that we weren't going to campaign jointly with the Conservatives or
17:59Liberal Democrats.
18:00It was going to be our campaign.
18:01It'd be a Labour campaign, which would also be about the need to change and reform the EU.
18:10Without 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.
18:25We were getting very close to launch date.
18:27We didn't have a chair.
18:29And somebody had been talking to Stuart Rose, 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.
18:43And 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.
18:50Then I had another phone call saying, Stuart, you're just a man.
18:52And I kept saying, no, no, no, no, I'm not the man.
18:56But they lent on me very heavily.
19:00Stuart's speech had been approved, and it had been briefed.
19:03And when a speech is briefed in politics, it means it's already being written up, and the media are expecting
19:08the 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
19:25stuff when half of you don't believe them.
19:26But 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
19:33Europe 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, but
20:10I'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. And
20:21it really was that bad.
20:23Watching the launch of the Stronger in campaign, our heads were in our hands. From that moment on, the campaign
20:29was 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.
20:38Craig Oliver was dispatched to meet the leaders of Stronger in.
20:43When I was shown the polling, what was clear was on one side we had a third of people who
20:47were 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 skeptical group. They didn't particularly care about European unity, but they did care about
20:58whether it was going to impact on their pocket.
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.
21:20That we did understand where the British public were.
21:24That 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. We shouldn't reject them.
21:45In public though, Cameron insisted he could still opt for leave if his negotiation with the EU failed to deliver
21:53special concessions.
22:01But his chance of success was made far more difficult by the ongoing refugee crisis, which was dominating nightly news
22:09coverage.
22:10A 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. We are real people.
22:23There was a crush to get back from the tear gas.
22:26We are human. We're trying to be someplace safe. Why are they hitting us?
22:31They travel onwards, propelled by hope, most heading for Germany.
22:42I remember talking to David in November of 2015.
22:47The one thing that I said to him, and this was more by way of being an advisor than a
22:52friend, was that immigration was going to be key.
22:56Unless, in this negotiation, it was clear that there had been a significant win in terms of Britain's capacity to
23:03control free movement and to control migration, then it would be much more difficult for him to sell any deal.
23:10The most obvious answer to having some measure of immigration control from people coming from other EU countries was simply
23:19to have an emergency break, a cap on numbers.
23:22So that if, for instance, in a given year it was going over 50,000, you could say, right, we're
23:28pulling the emergency break, the cap comes into operation, no more can come for this year until the numbers come
23:34down.
23:38When Cameron consulted the EU's most powerful leader, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, she gave him worrying feedback.
23:48I talked to her about it at length and she said, this is not negotiable.
23:53This is something the European Union cannot allow.
23:56The freedom of movement is one of the four freedoms in the European Union, a freedom of goods and services
24:02and capital and people.
24:04And you can't do that.
24:07The EU's rejection of Cameron's demand made it even more important he had the backing of his high profile colleagues.
24:17The Christmas holiday provided an opportunity for him to test the water.
24:23David Cameron invited me and my family to Chequers and it was a very relaxed family gathering.
24:28We talked about, you know, shared friends, food, football, all of the things that friends would probably talk to each
24:34other about.
24:36I think, you know, part of the reason we were there was Dave reminding Michael of what it was that
24:42he had, you know, this is who we are, this is, this is, you know, I'm the prime minister, this
24:47is Chequers, you know, this is the environment.
24:49I thought, you know, like a kind of subtle sort of, do you really want to give all this up
24:54sort of a thing.
24:55We talked about almost everything apart from the looming vote on the European Union, but David on the whole didn't
25:02really like talking in detail about politics or policy when he had downtime.
25:08It might come up tangentially, but it wasn't a subject that he liked to address.
25:16And I had my own reasons for not really wanting to disturb the festive atmosphere by bringing up anything uncomfortable.
25:23Dave's very diplomatic human, actually. I've always admired that ability.
25:30And he just sort of, you know, we were sort of, I think we were sort of in charge of
25:34the children or something.
25:35I think the others had gone away or gone for a walk or gone for a swim.
25:39I remember sitting on the sofa talking to Sarah and asking her, you know, I hope I'm going to be
25:45all right,
25:46that Michael will be, you know, supporting and on my side.
25:50So I just said to him, you know, you know what Michael's life, like he doesn't, he's not scared of
25:55Europe.
25:55He thinks that Europe takes lots of liberties, but I think he'll probably ultimately come down to your way of
26:00thinking.
26:01I thought, you know, I genuinely thought that would be the case because we were close and we'd done so
26:08much together.
26:08I thought we'd be on the same team.
26:15Next in Cameron's sights was Boris Johnson.
26:18The mayor of London had also become an MP at the 2015 election.
26:24He'd never had a cabinet job.
26:27For David Cameron's point of view in meetings, he would say, look, we've got to try and bind this guy
26:31in.
26:32It's the old Lyndon Johnson thing of wanting somebody inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing
26:37in.
26:39The two men had a decades old rivalry.
26:43They were both at school together.
26:46And when men of a certain class say school, what they mean is Eton.
26:51And the rivalry really started there.
26:54The fact that Dave became prime minister first, even though he was two years younger,
26:59I think really riled Boris.
27:02He thought that it was his turn to be world king before it was David Cameron's.
27:08I wanted to have, you know, just a personal conversation with Boris without any aides or other people around, just
27:16sort of the two of us.
27:18And we always talked about our joint love of tennis.
27:22I had this wonderful deal where I could use the American ambassador's court next to Regent's Park,
27:28and it was a sort of peaceful place to go for some rest and recreation.
27:33I love playing tennis.
27:35And Dave is actually very good.
27:37He's a left-hander.
27:39Sorry, left-hander.
27:40And he's very hard to beat.
27:42I've never beaten him.
27:43I think my sister Rachel has beaten him, I'm proud to say.
27:46And I've beaten Rachel, so that counts as a sort of partial victory over Cameron.
27:53First of all, you know, he did thrash me, but that's fine.
27:56And he then, he then said, look, would you consider joining us on the Remain campaign?
28:05And, you know, it'd be much better if you, I'd love to have you in the cabinet.
28:08You should have a top five job.
28:10And I wasn't sure what the exact hierarchy was.
28:13I knew there was, there was, you know, I've obviously thought about it.
28:17Out of pure curiosity, you know, what was his job?
28:20There's, there's Prime Minister, Home Secretary, Chancellor, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary.
28:28That's four.
28:30And what is the fifth?
28:31Mystery.
28:32I didn't say which job it was.
28:35I said, beer, no doubt.
28:36You know, defence is a top five job, for instance.
28:39I wanted him, you know, to understand that I valued his contribution,
28:43that he would be a major part of the government going forward.
28:46Being offered a top five job by the Prime Minister, it's a pretty fantastic thing.
28:51So I was, I was interested and excited.
28:57David Cameron came back from that tennis meeting feeling doubly good.
29:01One, that he'd beaten Boris Johnson at tennis.
29:03And two, that he may have a concession that he would actually join the government.
29:08CBI!
29:09Shame on you!
29:10CBI!
29:11Voice of Brussels!
29:12While David Cameron was fighting to keep the Conservative Party united,
29:16Vote Leave's Chief Strategist Dominic Cummings was already working to sabotage this.
29:22One of the most important things that a government can deliver
29:26is long-term economic security and stability.
29:30CBI!
29:31Voice of Brussels!
29:32Come on.
29:32Come on, guys.
29:34If you sit down now, you can ask me a question rather than making fools of yourself
29:37by just standing up and protesting.
29:40We got in because Vote Leave formed a company for us
29:44and we pretended to be businessmen.
29:48It became clear very quickly after the event
29:51that certain people, certain MPs, really didn't like what we had done.
29:57I was absolutely furious.
29:59I'm afraid that I, even now, I want politics to be noble.
30:03I think politics is important.
30:05They just laid into Dom and said that you had to respect David Cameron,
30:10that he was the Prime Minister, that he was leader of the Conservative Party,
30:14and how could we do this?
30:16It was just an appalling neglect of a fundamental requirement of our campaign
30:22that it should leave the Conservative Party fit to actually carry out the result of the referendum,
30:27whichever way it went.
30:29Dom just turned around and said, you are wrong.
30:33You can either support leaving the EU or you can support David Cameron.
30:36And if you don't like that, there's the door.
30:42I went to see Dominic Cummings and I explained.
30:45I didn't think that Vote Leave could be some kind of political terrorist campaign
30:50just blowing things up.
30:52Dominic was absolutely furious and he took me outside into the stairwell
30:56and bellowed at me.
30:58I had been at work during the day and so I went over to the offices at about 6 o
31:03'clock in the evening.
31:04Up I go in the lift, up to the Vote Leave floor, the doors open as if curtains on a
31:10stage
31:10and there are two characters on the stage looking at each other and I'm looking at them
31:16and they're about this far apart.
31:18One is Bernard Jenkin and the other is Dom Cummings.
31:21He was shouting at me and very, very angry and trying to intimidate me
31:30in an almost uncontrolled way.
31:33Bernard is looking really quite disconcerted while Dom says something along the lines of,
31:39if you ever say something like that to me again, I'm going to make sure you never
31:43are going to be allowed in this office again. Do you hear me?
31:46I certainly felt his spittle on my face.
31:49And I was just thinking this is a very serious breakdown in a relationship
31:54and a very serious threat to the good governance of Vote Leave.
32:01From my point of view from that moment on, certainly Dominic should have been removed
32:07because what he showed was that he was not willing to be held to account
32:10and that's the recurrent theme of all of the time I've known him.
32:15It was not just Tory Brexiteers Cummings was alienating.
32:20My problem with him was that he didn't seem to think that MPs really had much,
32:26you know, should have much say in anything.
32:27He seemed to not understand or not want to understand that, you know,
32:33what was happening at the ground level, at the grassroots level,
32:36was going to be very, very important.
32:41For Nigel Farage and his team, securing a Labour MP would be a coup.
32:48The rumblings had started within the Vote Leave group about the fact that,
32:54you know, a lot of them weren't happy with what Cummings and Elliot were doing at all.
32:58It was really obvious to me that you needed to get the Labour vote out if we had any chance
33:05of really winning.
33:08And that seemed to be something that Leave.EU, in particular Aaron and Andy, understood better.
33:18We encouraged Kate to come and join Leave.EU.
33:22We basically said, yeah, leave it with us, we're going to build a ground campaign.
33:27In a move unprecedented for a Labour MP, Kate Hoey agreed to share the stage with Nigel Farage.
33:36I get up there in the morning, there's a queue.
33:40I said, what's this for?
33:42And they said, oh, this is for the, you know, the campaign, the Leave campaign.
33:46I hear you're doing a rally. I said, yeah, but not for another, about five hours.
33:50But yeah, we're queuing.
33:52The traffic jams, we call us, it was extraordinary.
33:54I said, mate, we hardly advertise this.
33:57We thought we were going to have 200 people.
33:59You've got 1,600 people in that room and they're all here to hear what you've got to say.
34:07They said, the blood drained from his face as he realised, this is a big deal.
34:14I'd never met Nigel.
34:16It was slightly concerning.
34:18I mean, you have to remember that in those days, there was a feeling about Nigel that was just pretty
34:23horrible.
34:24A lot of people had very, very, very strong views about him.
34:27And there was always this feeling, you know, oh, if I go on a platform with Nigel Farage, are people
34:33going to start calling me a racist?
34:35She probably, like many Labour figures, thought I was Voldemort or something like that.
34:38I sat down with Kate and I thought, well, the most important thing, don't try too hard, just be what
34:45you are.
34:45And I think within 10 minutes, actually, we hit it off.
34:51The Kettering rally was a very Trumpian kind of rally.
34:54I 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 Labour movement, there is some kind
35:11of debate.
35:11We are fed up with the Europhiles who have been running our party.
35:16It was very moving because there was no doubt about it that there were lots of people there who were
35:22not Tory voters.
35:25Kate turned to me and said, these are Labour supporters. These are not Conservative supporters.
35:30These are people who feel that they have been left behind, let down by the political class.
35:41Nigel walks in like the Messiah, with all these people clapping and standing.
35:45These Tories behind us going, what the? You know, this is mental.
35:51How the hell is Nigel Farage having that reaction?
35:53This is so important that it's not about left or right, but it's about right or wrong.
36:01And we know what's right and we must win this referendum.
36:11For Nigel, it was the first time he had been with all party members on a stage.
36:19And I think he was quite emotional about it too that day.
36:24It was almost like that group of people were welcoming me in, albeit slightly nervously.
36:30Whereas the snobbier end of the equation within Vote Leave would have nothing to do with it.
36:41At Vote Leave's headquarters, unhappiness with the leadership of Dominic Cummings could no longer be ignored.
36:49By this time, quite a lot of MPs were saying, have you got rid of Dominic yet?
36:55There began to be a sort of consensus that something had to be done if the campaign was to be
37:01saved.
37:02The result was an agreement in general to draw up a contract which would move Dominic away from the day
37:09-to-day operations.
37:10Now, it just happened that I was already discussing a contract with him.
37:14It was really as to whether he should be a contractual employee or a freelance operator.
37:19I said, look, let's have a one-to-one discussion in private.
37:29I mean, it's just a normal day to begin with.
37:31But then Dom says, the board want me to go across the river to the other building.
37:40Once we sat down and we were looking at each other, I said, Dominic, I'm sorry, I brought you here
37:45under false pretenses.
37:47I said, it's not working. You've upset too many people.
37:53I came into the Vote Leave office and something felt very different.
37:57Matt Elliott, our chief executive, came to me with a very long face and said, have you heard what's happening?
38:02And I said, no, what's going on? And he said, well, the board have summoned Dominic and they're going to
38:08fire him.
38:09And I said, what? This is going to be catastrophic. We can't lose our campaign manager.
38:12What are we doing here? Let's go over there and do something about it.
38:16By this stage, a number of senior members had joined the meeting and I handed Dominic a draft contract, which
38:24actually I've got here.
38:26And it's a contractor agreement, which made him a strategic advisor rather than a campaign director.
38:33I think this document gave him quite a shock. And he started 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 board are trying
38:48to make Dom resign.
38:50Dominic was saying, I'm going to walk out and I'll take the whole team with me.
38:53And I, in that moment, I thought this whole thing, this whole thing, which I've been working towards for the
39:01better part of 30 years is about to collapse over some, some stupid personality clash.
39:05So we decided that we need to draft a letter, making it very clear that if they forced Dom out,
39:11we would all walk.
39:14Out of the blue, I got a call from Dominic Cummings. Dominic had been working with me in the past
39:19at the Department for Education and Dominic was uncharacteristically agitated.
39:23He was normally ice cool in most conversations about politics.
39:29It was clear that there was something that was up in the campaign.
39:33And Dominic asked me if I could speak to a couple of people.
39:37I talked to a couple of MPs who were involved in Vote Leave and I said, look, I haven't made
39:42up my mind definitively yet.
39:44David hasn't concluded his negotiations.
39:46However, I have to tell you, if Dominic Cummings is not playing a role in this campaign,
39:51then I'm not going to be playing any sort of prominent role at all either.
39:59Cummings supporters had saved him.
40:02I saw Dom that evening after the attempted coup and I asked him how he was doing.
40:08And he just looked back at me and said, we need the cavalry to arrive.
40:16In early February, a draft of Cameron's EU deal was published.
40:29I'm sitting at my desk in Sydney Hall and Dave calls me up to say, you know, how's it going
40:34with the decision making process on the EU referendum.
40:38I said to him, look, I'm really sorry, but, you know, the way things are going, the way my mind's
40:42moving at the moment, I think I'm going to go with leave.
40:46I said, look, I know you think that my renegotiation hasn't achieved everything you think it should, but you've never
40:52backed leaving the EU before.
40:55You've argued for reform, you're a Eurosceptic, fine, but you've never argued for leaving.
40:58So don't start now.
41:00He did get a bit testy and he said, well, if you do that, I will fuck you up forever.
41:06And I was a bit intimidated by that because I didn't, you know, forever is a long time to be,
41:11you know, fucked up by, you know, the instruments of government with all the, you know, trained fucker uppers.
41:18I don't remember saying that, but look, I was getting very passionate about it because I knew that Boris had
41:24a huge role to play in this.
41:26I went back to see my family later on that evening. I said, well, look, you know, I had a
41:29bit of a bust up with Dave earlier on about, about the EU thing.
41:35Boris relayed that Cameron had said to him, if you support leave, I'll fuck you up forever.
41:43I thought it was actually surprisingly weak in a way. And I thought it was surprising that they weren't talking
41:52about the issues.
41:55Marina Wheeler, Boris Johnson's wife, was celebrating her recent appointment as a QC.
42:02Is Boris at home?
42:03He's not here, no.
42:04I was hoping to persuade you that you might not need to stay around here, actually.
42:08She had longstanding concerns about the EU's increasing hold over UK law.
42:14David Cameron had come back saying that he had achieved a great deal by managing to exempt the UK from
42:22Ever Closer Union.
42:23The real problem with Ever Closer Union was that the Court of Justice used this as a way of expanding
42:31the reach of EU law and expanding the whole scope of the project.
42:37And what Cameron had achieved in terms of agreement wasn't going to touch that.
42:43I've known Marina since I was a small kid. We've both been small.
42:49She's basically a liberal soul, right? She's not a foaming xenophobe. The absolute opposite.
42:55As a lawyer, I began to be more and more aware of that process of what the court was doing.
43:03And I did have that conversation with Boris.
43:07I was very struck when she said that she too was inclined to vote Lee.
43:13Personally, I felt, you know, the country will choose. You can't just keep quiet. That is abrogating responsibility.
43:21But he was coming under great pressure to stick with Cameron.
43:27I didn't particularly want to upset the apple cart. I didn't want to, you know, be fucked up forever. Why,
43:37you know?
43:43As 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 players and wankers.
43:57And from David's point of view, I'd been a team player in the past.
44:01So when there was a requirement to fall into line on the EU referendum, I think he naturally assumed that
44:08I would be a team player then.
44:12No, I really remember that meeting. And it wasn't just a meeting. It was a meeting of friends.
44:16You know, we were people who had lived together for ten years in terms of our work, in terms of
44:22our holidays.
44:23You know, we knew each other's families.
44:25George and I tried to spell out for him what we thought the consequences would be if he supported Leave
44:32and if, as a result, Leave gained a lot of traction and won.
44:36I basically pleaded with Michael. I said, if you go to the Leave campaign, you are going to give it
44:42credibility,
44:42which it doesn't currently have. It's got a kind of farage tinge to it, which puts a lot of respectable
44:48people off.
44:49Boris Johnson is going to get FOMO and feel he has to be put up.
44:54And David Cameron is going to have to resign if we lose.
44:59Don't kid yourself that this government can continue if you've lost this big referendum.
45:03And everything we have worked for is going to be shattered.
45:07For me, the fundamental problem with Britain's membership of the European Union is that laws were imposed on us that
45:14we couldn't alter or change.
45:17And European Union law for all of the member states is supreme.
45:22And I said, whatever your particular concerns about parliamentary sovereignty, we are, you know, a country that needs the economic
45:30support of the EU.
45:31And frankly, you know, what's going to happen if we leave? Who's going to be happy?
45:36Vladimir Putin's going to be happy. The Chinese president's going to be happy.
45:39And doesn't that tell you what this really means for the West?
45:43I made it clear to them, I'm sorry, this is something I deeply believe.
45:49I didn't want this referendum, but now I have to make a choice.
45:53This was a bombshell that someone who I was very close to, was a key part of the team, was
45:59wavering and then effectively saying, I think I'm going to go with leave.
46:04For me, there was a choice between staying close to what I believed and, you know, relative moral cowardice and
46:11suppressing that in order to, well, to safeguard personal relationships.
46:22A week later, Boris Johnson invited Gove to dinner.
46:29I had some warning because I cooked a pretty delicious slow roast lamb.
46:35And it turned out that 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 pain of
46:55being at variance with the prime minister, seeming to be difficult, being mutineers and then probably losing and then, you
47:06know, being cast out as splitters and, you know, whatever.
47:15We started off, I think, upstairs, you know, chatting around, then we went downstairs to eat dinner.
47:24Marina had cooked lamb.
47:26While we were eating and discussing the pros and cons of our membership of the EU, the phone rang.
47:33It was Oliver Letwin, who was David Cameron's policy supremo.
47:37Boris put it on speaker.
47:38We were trying to sort out this question of whether you could somehow assert the supremacy of UK law over
47:47European law.
47:49Although I was trying hard not to show that I was listening to this.
47:53I mean, obviously, I was hearing sort of snippets of it.
47:57And I thought, hmm, I mean, it sounded pretty unlikely to me.
48:01It became clear during the conversation that Britain remaining in the European Union would mean Britain continuing to be subject
48:09to European laws and the European Court of Justice.
48:12We couldn't change those laws.
48:14We'd have to accept of a closer union whatever the deal said.
48:19And that, for me, was a clincher.
48:23But Michael Gove did not tell the prime minister he'd made his decision.
48:37I'll be battling for Britain. If we can get a good deal, I'll take that deal.
48:41But I will not take a deal that 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 counterparts, news broke
49:06from London.
49:07In a blow to the prime minister, the BBC has been told that one of his closest cabinet allies, Michael
49:13Gove, will campaign to leave the EU.
49:17We were at the end of an incredibly long negotiation.
49:21And it was a shock that it was being done at the moment when I was preparing to think how
49:27I would talk to the country about this.
49:35Now, let me say about Michael Gove. Michael is one of my oldest and closest friends.
49:41So, of course, I'm disappointed that we're not going to be on the same side as we have this vital
49:45argument 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.
50:22We're all conscious that it was a meeting that might play a significant part in history.
50:30There was lots of support for the prime minister's deal.
50:35There are other cabinet members who made their views plain that they were on the leaf side.
50:39It 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 was going to be very different from what
51:02we got used to.
51:03I think the most powerful intervention came from Michael Gove, where he emphasized that he just couldn't pass up the
51:09opportunity to secure the UK's place as an independent, self-governing democracy.
51:15I just spoke from the heart that this was the moment that Britain could choose to be an independent, self
51:22-governing nation.
51:23And for me, that was, above all, the most important consideration.
51:32Those who want to leave Europe cannot tell you if British businesses would be able to access Europe's free trade
51:38single market,
51:39or if working people's jobs are safe, or how much prices would rise.
51:45All they're offering is a risk at a time of uncertainty.
51:49On Monday, I will go to Parliament and propose that the British people decide our future in Europe through an
51:57in-out referendum on Thursday the 23rd of June.
52:02When the Prime Minister actually announced the date, I thought, holy shit, that is so soon.
52:08We've got so much to do in order to win that referendum.
52:12But the Leavers had a plan immediately after that Cabinet, and they came together very quickly.
52:18I had a Jaguar XF, which were parked up outside the House, and the ministers came over from Downing Street.
52:25So I put a great escape on and drove them over to vote leave.
52:29I remember looking in my rearview mirror and thinking how slightly absurd it was to see four members of the
52:34Cabinet crammed into a car heading to vote leave.
52:37It was a very strange moment.
52:43Theresa Villiers, the Northern Ireland secretary, had a government car for personal protection reasons,
52:48and she invited me to join her to go to the vote leave headquarters.
52:53The car journey, it was quite quiet and solemn.
52:58I think both Michael and I were conscious that these next hours, days, weeks of the referendum could have a
53:07big impact on the future of our country,
53:10potentially and significantly an impact on us and our careers personally.
53:16Michael was perhaps not quite his ebullient self.
53:19Mr Gove, tell us why you're going to go to the Prime Minister.
53:23I'm normally a relatively ebullient person.
53:27I was reflecting on what a momentous decision this was.
53:32Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming vote leaves.
53:39It's me who opened the door and asked everybody to welcome them to the campaign.
53:43And it was a genuine moment of joy that suddenly the cavalry had now arrived.
53:53I remember watching it with David Cameron on TV, just like every other citizen.
53:58And it was a real shock because these were, you know, our colleagues, our friends, some cases close personal friends.
54:05I think that was the first moment we realised, my God, this is going to be proper kind of civil
54:11war inside the Conservative Party.
54:12You know, there's something, you know, there's something about a civil war, which is, which kind of hits you here.
54:24Just one person was left on the fence.
54:27Your comments, Mr Johnson.
54:32That morning, I sat on the sofa opposite the Prime Minister trying to discuss firing the gun on the campaign.
54:37And I remember a clear moment where David Cameron had his blackberry in front of him.
54:42And I stopped talking and just let him read it.
54:44And when he'd finished, he just looked up at me and said, well, it looks like out.
54:48And he didn't need to say to me that that was Boris Johnson's email.
54:54Within hours, Johnson seemed to have U-turned.
54:59I was just getting bombarded with phone calls from people I know and love saying, you know, if you vote
55:08leave, you'll be tendering your resignation of the human race.
55:11You'll be joining, you know, bigots and xenophobes incorporated.
55:14It's like, you know, my spirit thinks I'm gone.
55:17Then I sent another message to Dave, you know, recording my growing depression about the situation.
55:25I wasn't hopeful about the depression setting in, obviously, but I was hopeful that he was really having second thoughts
55:31about supporting leave.
55:36My advice to Boris was to go by himself to our house in Oxfordshire in Tame and write a case
55:45for leave and write a case for remain and just get it completely clear in your own mind.
55:50I did and I wrote about a thousand words or so for leave.
55:55And I talked to Marina and we talked it over.
56:00It contained what I thought were the fundamental issues about sovereignty.
56:07And it was clear that some of what I'd been saying had had an impact.
56:13When I sat down to write the second piece, the best argument I could come up with was David Cameron's
56:18deal wasn't any good, but, you know,
56:20he was never, he was never going to get a good deal and we might as well just grin and
56:25bear it.
56:28Boris hates being on his own.
56:30So I texted him to say, you know, what are you doing?
56:34And he said, why don't you come to Tame and have lunch?
56:38Rachel turns up and she's brought lasagna and very kind of her, thought it was fantastic.
56:46I could sense this pent up anxiety and sort of tension.
56:50So I said, why don't we go and play tennis?
56:54So we hit balls to each other.
56:56And I was trying to work out his thinking.
57:00I said, I don't get it.
57:02If you want to be prime minister, which you do, why wouldn't you support David Cameron,
57:08who said he's only doing one term and then you'd be the natural successor?
57:14And he was saying, but that's not what I'm thinking.
57:17I don't give a fuck about being prime minister.
57:21I was getting incredibly 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.
57:43The 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 wing mirrors on our trucks.
57:57And I was like, is that it? Is that the best you've got?
58:00There was nothing in the article for Remain except, you know, doing the right thing by day.
58:06Anyway.
58:07I remember him saying to me, and being very struck by this, that he'd re-read the column for Remain.
58:12And he said, and it made me feel sick.
58:15At some deep level, it is an emotional thing.
58:18You know, you either want the country to be independent, or you think that we should create a federal Europe.
58:35To the front, Nigel!
58:37I said, it's got nothing to do with Boris, it's about stopping Nigel.
58:42It was a very powerful image.
58:45It's an image, by the way, that if you used it today, you'd probably get very little criticism.
58:51David Cameron said, we need a shock factor.
58:53And I said to him, look, we've had the shock factor.
58:56Joe Cox was assassinated.
58:59Robert that doesn't matter if he had my feelings pardoned.
59:03I said beforeIII footage to come out of monument.
59:09To what your rigtig offers, only a fairy tale became known that funny face of therapist.
59:13That's damn event.
59:13That's just a riding ofonnement.
59:14We'll see you again just scroll through this form.
59:14You can tell as if there's anything to be meget Souven shelter.
59:22I had to pride.
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