Krishna
This is the story of Brexit, told with humour and verve, with all the behind the scenes details and monumental mistakes by those involved on all sides. Fun to read. It starts with David Cameron’s blunders and the pressures he was under at that time.
This, as the author himself admits, is just the story of the leaders – the elite – who were instrumental in creating and facing the crisis that was Brexit, and how that battle went awry, from the point of view of the people who wanted to remain in EU. This is not about the people who are impacted by it and those who voted for it. In other words, it is not the ground up story of what pressures caused the Brexit referendum and why people felt the way they did but who were the Conservative leaders who fought for and against the referendum and a behind the scenes look at the shenanigans behind the scene. For instance how Boris Johnson was thwarted from becoming the Prime Minister by Michael Gove, who developed his own Prime Ministerial ambitions and how come Theresa May was able to seize the mantle. Of course, this book was written at that period and so does not deal with the ultimate comeback of Boris later.
Starts with the pressures Cameron faced on the European question right from the time he competed and won the election to be the Conservative leader.
His snubbing by Angela Merkel whom he thought was a steadfast ally and his being forced to make rash promises to win the leadership race are all told well.
Several blunders by Cameron are stated. How he airily promised referendum to quell the pressure on him by critics and how he airily dismissed the warnings from several party colleagues, especially Osborne who warned him not to give in, and how he had supreme confidence that he can charm Angela Merkel to take his side – a futile wish, as it turned out.
It is shocking to see how Nigel Farrage’s UK Independence party was manipulated by conservative pro-Brexit politician Carswell ruthlessly by even pretending to join the party in order to detoxify it and thereby add its supporters to the diehard Tory members who were implacably opposed to staying in the EU.
Enter Dominic Cummings to lead the ‘Yes to Brexit’ campaign. Interesting personality.
The ‘Leave’ group was having conflicts with strategy and what is important to win a ‘Leave’. Nigel Farage did not think that Cummings and company were even serious and dismissed them as elites who would buckle under government pressure. Cummings and others thought Nigel was focusing on the wrong issue – since immigration, while very important to their target group, will also put off a lot of undecided voters whose support they needed to win the referendum for their group. But at least they were organized – in rival groups. The ‘In’ group did not have a strategy or a slogan for a while and when they tried to do something about it, Cameron decided that it was ‘too premature’ and will weaken their hand in negotiating a good deal with the Union. The contract could not be more stark, especially as it dawned on the pro Europe group that the public opinion was even between the two groups and they had a big fight in their hands.
The Leave Campaign won important victories, for instance, in getting the judges to quash both the combining of the date with a midterm election as well as the phrasing of the question, which was a leading question formed to elicit a ‘stay’ vote.
It goes on – hindsight is 20/20 – to say what blunders Cameron did in his EU negotiations despite advice to be more aggressive in his ask. The book argues that the weak vision – carefully tailored to what EU be able to stomach – may have added to the dissatisfaction of the masses and drew a significant enough proportion of the undecided population to the ‘Leave’ side. Add to it the slick organization and the crucial rebellion of the Conservative MPs engineered by the ‘Leave’ campaign and it is easy to see the seeds of the defeat in the Brexit referendum to ‘Stronger in (Europe)’ movement that was fighting to get a ‘Stay’ decision in the referendum.
Michael Gove’s ambiguous statements lulled Cameran into believing that, even though Gove believed in Brexit, his loyalty to Cameran will keep him on the Remain side. He was to be proved disastrously wrong, and his exit gave Boris Johnson, the then mayor of London the final courage to declare for Leave. Interesting power play there, explained in more detail than this in the book. Even Gove’s wife was left guessing about which way he would go – at least according to his wife, of which several others were skeptical; they were scathing about Gove’s deliberate treachery and duplicity right up to the moment that he broke for the ‘Leave’ side.
Boris Johnson’s struggles are described well – how he struggled with the decision and how he decided to back Leave when he realized that the deal Cameron was working on was so hollow that it would not satisfy the opponents are all explained.
As an aside, it is interesting to see the author surprised by the reaction in the political circles to an interview given by Boris Johnson to The Economist. The author says that many were surprised to see the storm about an interview in a “low circulation highbrow magazine like the Economist”. (By the way, the same Economist favourably reviewed this book but still, this made me chuckle a bit. Not that it is not true in its essence, but few would label the magazine this way).
The struggles of Boris before he declared for Leave are described in great detail, including speculations on whether he did it purely to further his career. (I think the book ends before he realized the second ambition of his childhood, ‘To be the British Prime Minister’. The first one was, interestingly, ‘To be the World King’.)
Interestingly, the Remain Team seems to have lost mainly because they were not allowed to fight with their full might. Cameron simply seems to have been too passive and outlawed attacks on Gove and Johnson, while the other side was free to sling mud on the PM and others directly. The reasoning seems to be that Cameron had already decided that the referendum was as good as won. He seemed to think that the tactics that worked for the Scottish Independence vote, which he had won, would work now too, oblivious to the damage being done by the Leave campaign. He was looking past the referendum and worried that vitriol thrown at the dissidents would damage the Conservative party.
So, even though the official Remain campaigners included Labour and Lib Dems too, he forbade anyone to directly attack Johnson and Gove, both of whom were effectively campaigning to get their message forcefully out.
We get to know quite a lot about the very fine details of the battle. The internecine war between Vote Leave and UKIP and the other leave organization. How Nigel Farage and Conservative Brexiteers cooperated together to bring the right result, how David Cameron was confident of winning right up to the last results and how both Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage had convinced themselves that they had narrowly lost. Boris even had prepared only a concession speech and he and Gove were peacefully asleep while the results were coming in through the night. In addition even after the results were known, Jeremy Corbyn who has always been anti EU was unconcerned that Brexit side won, even though most of his party was for staying in EU. He seemed to have done everything to ‘not help’ in the fight for the ‘Stay’ group.
The individual accounts of each member of the group – both Leave and Stay – are a bit much. But overall you get a clear sense of having had a ringside seat on the politics and follies of all concerned.
The race to claim credit further created rancor between Farage and the Vote Leave group.
The book goes on to describe the bloodbath after, when Cameron decided to resign and the leadership bloodbath that followed.
All in all, an interesting book but too much detail if you want to know overall what happened. The drama is there; the struggle of both sides is there; but Cameron comes out as a person who did not demand enough to satisfy a majority of his people, did not do enough to counter the lies on the other side – a rosy picture of all gain and no pain if they voted to exit – and also tying the hands of his own side for the sake of party unity over the cause he believed in.
Boris Johnson comes across as a wavering maverick with a good turn of phrase and an enormous popularity with the masses.
When Johnson was chaotic in his leadership aspirations – as he normally is – and had not even prepared a speech on the day of the speech, Gove had second thoughts and decided to run for the Prime Minister himself. This was the stab in the back that Johnson had not expected and he knew that his chances in that election was gone. He withdrew and endorsed others. Michael Gove self imploded but there were many questions and doubts that he had planned this treachery all along. His wife Sarah Vine, who had encouraged him but unfortunately send the private letter to a source (she claimed that it was a mistake) was nicknamed Lady Macbeth for the bloodbath – figurative of course – she was considered instrumental in designing with her husband.
By contrast, the goodbye speech of David Cameron was graciousness itself and brought tears to the eyes of every member of his audience.
The leadership battle between the supremely prepared (what an irony on account of what transpired later, right) Theresa May and the challengers Michael Gove and Wendy Leadsom is well described.
Jeremy Corbyn on the other side was facing a revolt over his atrocious performance on the Brexit affair. A known Eurosceptic, as the leader of Labour which wanted to be in EU, he was just indifferent and did not give any support at all to his own party folks working for the ‘Stay’ cause. After the shocking results, he faced a revolt with two thirds of his party MPs expressing no confidence in him and he still clung on, refusing to resign. (He is not mandated to resign but did not realize how untenable his position was). That was a really odd behaviour, the exact opposite of the graceful exit of the Prime Minister Cameron.
Leadsom, realizing she had no chance of winning, and shaken by the vitriol thrown at her for what was reported as her personal attacks on May (She was reported as being better suited to be a PM since she had children and a stake in the future of England – considered a direct dig at the childless May), decided to withdraw from the race, allowing May to be selected unopposed and shortening the gap between Cameron’s departure and the inauguration of a new Prime Minister.
I did complain about ‘too much detail’ but if you keep reading, it grows on you. For instance there are interesting discussions about BBC’s concept of impartiality in the coverage of the two sides. In their quest to give ‘equal time’ to both sides to show their neutrality, did they abdicate flagging obvious falsehoods in their coverage? The author takes no position but simply reports the views of all, which actually improves the reading as you are left to think and make your own conclusions.
The ending is incomplete in the light of your reading now. He stops at Theresa May assuming premiership and her ruthless cull of the old guard – ‘The Night of the Long Stiletto’ as a pun on the night of the long knives. Her subsequent travails and the insurgency (again) in the Conservative party paving the way for the triumphant return of Boris as Prime Minister – are all left out. After all, you had to stop when you are ready to publish, right?
The conclusion is, if anything, more spectacular than the book. The personal animosities and sense of betrayal among close friends, the irony of the family of some Leave members being strong Remain supporters and vice versa – all are told brilliantly.
The analysis of why Remain Lost is comprehensive – even though you kind of know the whys and hows of the defeat, reading it all put together this way gives you a solid perspective and is deeply satisfying.
A great story, well told
8/10
= = Krishna