Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem

Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017

Copyright © Tim Shipman 2017

Cover illustration by Morten Morland/Spectator

Tim Shipman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008264383

Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008264390

Version: 2018-05-01

Dedication

For Charlotte

Epigraphs

fall out v.

1 quarrel

3 come out of formation

fallout n.

1 radioactive debris caused by a nuclear explosion or accident

2 the adverse side effects of a situation

The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1991 edn)

‘It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood’

Theodore Roosevelt, 23 April 1910

‘Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth’

Mike Tyson

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraphs

Acknowledgements

Timeline

Introduction: Four Minutes to Ten

PART ONE: GENESIS

1 ‘Brexit Means Brexit’

2 ‘No Running Commentary’

3 The Enemy Gets a Vote

4 Enemies of the People?

5 How Do You Solve a Problem Like Boris?

6 Ivan the Terrible

7 Lancaster House

8 The White House

9 Triggered

PART TWO: HUBRIS

10 ‘Economically Illiterate’

11 The Snarling Duds of May?

PART THREE: NEMESIS

12 Bolt From the Blue

13 Leninists and Lennonists

14 ‘Another Galaxy’

15 Strong and Stable

16 From Sharks to Minnows

17 Manifesto Destiny

18 ‘Nothing Has Changed!’

19 Manchester

20 ‘This Isn’t Working’

21 I, Maybot

22 The Corbyn Surge

23 Political Alchemy

24 London Bridge

25 Mayday!

PART FOUR: CATHARSIS

26 Shellshock

27 The Four Horsemen

28 Florence and the Maychine Malfunction

29 ‘Sufficient Progress …’

Conclusion: May Was Weak in June

Appendix 1: Results of the 2017 Local Elections

Appendix 2: Results of the 2017 General Election

Appendix 3: Chris Wilkins’ Strategy

Appendix 4: Lynton Crosby’s Strategy

Appendix 5: Seumas Milne’s Strategy

List of Illustrations

Picture Section

Notes

Index

Also by Tim Shipman

About the Author

About the Publisher

Acknowledgements

This is the second book I never intended to write. Just as with All Out War, my 2016 book on the Brexit referendum campaign, Fall Out is the product of extraordinary events. The original intention was to add a few chapters to All Out War to bring the Brexit story up to date with the declaration of Article 50 in the spring of 2017. Then Theresa May called a general election and the inexorable logic of writing a sequel overwhelmed me. The fallout from the EU referendum and the general election is still with us. It was perhaps the most extraordinary of my lifetime. It led the Tory Party to fall out with itself and fall out of formation.

This book is based on more than one hundred interviews conducted primarily between July and October 2017. Last time I listed most of the primary sources. This time I have not done so since many more of them are still in prominent posts and most were reluctant to be named. That said, only a very small number of people refused to cooperate. Those who talked to me include fifteen members of Theresa May’s Downing Street staff, twenty ministers, including thirteen of cabinet rank, more than twenty-five Tory campaign staff, more than a dozen senior figures in the Labour Party, the shadow cabinet, Jeremy Corbyn’s office and the trade unions, as well as civil servants, special advisers, diplomats, former ministers, MPs and pollsters.

During the time covered by this book I interviewed Theresa May three times and accompanied her on her visit to the White House. I also conducted on-the-record interviews with David Davis, Boris Johnson, Damian Green, Michael Gove, John McDonnell, Nigel Farage, Arron Banks and Michael Fallon. I have drawn on the unpublished transcripts of these conversations.

As before, some people agreed to certain observations being ‘on the record’ but most of the time we spoke on the understanding that I would construct a narrative of events without signalling the origin of every fact and quote. Where I have directly quoted someone or attributed thoughts or feelings to them, I have spoken to them, the person they were addressing, someone else in the room who observed their behaviour, or someone to whom they recounted details of the incident or conversation. You should not assume that the obvious source is the correct one. Many of those who spoke to me off the record have written newspaper articles, given interviews or spoken publicly about their views. Where this is the case I have footnoted published sources in the text.

I will repeat a couple of stylistic warnings I issued in All Out War. Westminster is a profane place and I have sought to capture the language of the age. Be warned. Peers are referred to by the name by which they are best known. Knights of the realm are ‘Sir’ on first usage then stripped of their titles. In no one’s world is Stephen Gilbert, Lord Gilbert of Panteg and anyone who has tried to call Lynton Crosby ‘Sir’ gets a look that discourages repetition.

The Brexit negotiations and the general election are a complex series of interlocking and overlapping events. In seeking to impose narrative order not everything is presented in strictly chronological order. This felt necessary to prevent Fall Out descending into a recitation of ‘one damn thing after another’. Part One covers the negotiations over Brexit between September 2016 and March 2017, when Theresa May triggered Article 50. Part Two covers the internal battles of the May government – which pitted her chiefs of staff against other senior members of the administration – to try to explain how the culture they had created affected the election campaign and their own demise. Part Three covers the election and Part Four the subsequent leadership plotting and its implications for Brexit, culminating in the phase one exit agreement in December 2017.

With events still live there are many people who will not like what they find in these pages. We do not know yet how Brexit will end or how the 2017 election will impact on the future history of the Conservative Party, still less whether 2017 represented the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning for Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. I have sought to honestly convey the events as they seemed to the participants at the time. My personal view is that Britain must make the best of its future. Good people on both sides of the referendum result have a role to play. Capitalising on the benefits of Brexit requires a cold-eyed understanding of the complications.

While people have behaved with conviction as well as ambition they have not always behaved well. I have known Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill for a decade. If I have highlighted some of the extremes of their characters as they were experienced by others, I can only say my own contacts with them have almost always been positive. Both are dedicated public servants and – away from the stresses of office – charming company. If they did not always seem so to colleagues, it is worth remembering that all the best political operators I have known – Damian McBride, Dominic Cummings and Alastair Campbell among them – have been divisive figures.

At HarperCollins I am deeply indebted to the incomparable Arabella Pike, whose image will adorn the next edition of the Illustrated Oxford Dictionary alongside the word ‘sangfroid’. I hope she persuades David Cameron to file quicker than I did. Iain Hunt and Robert Lacey dealt with a mountain of words with similar forbearance. I’m also grateful to Marianne Tatepo, who sorted the pictures and much else besides and the legendary Helen Ellis. My agent, Victoria Hobbs, and all at A. M. Heath kept up my morale at key moments.

Special thanks must go again to my Sancho Panza, Gabriel Pogrund, who contributed acute reporting, several insightful interviews and the fastest transcription services in the West. Hannah McGrath let me see unpublished material from election night. I am also grateful to both old comrades – George Greenwood, Harriet Marsden and Oliver Milne – and new – Sebastien Ash, Megan Baynes, Isabelle Boulert, Tony Diver, Caitlin Doherty, Emily Hawkins, Anna Hollingsworth, Michael Mander, Conor Matchett, Holly Pyne and Josh Stein – for their help in turning more than one hundred hours of interviews into seven hundred thousand words of transcripts. I’m grateful to Natasha Clark for the introductions to such a keen young team.

At the Sunday Times, I am indebted to Martin Ivens, Sarah Baxter and Ben Preston for offering space to the political reporting on which this book was built. Ray Wells was generous with his time sourcing the pictures. There is no better wingman in covering Brexit than Bojan Pancevski, the king of the Brussels correspondents and no wiser partner in crime than Caroline Wheeler, who held the fort when this book took over. Richard Kerbaj helped with the fallout from the terrorist attacks. Elsewhere in Westminster, I’m grateful to Jim Waterson for guiding me through the digital election battle and David Wooding for sharing a transcript.

My greatest debt remains to my family, particularly my amazing wife Charlotte, who have put up with more absences than anyone should have to endure – and to Kate and Michael Todman for indulging a monosyllabic house guest for the second summer in succession.

Tim Shipman

Westminster, Preggio, Camerata, San Nicolo,Church Knowle, Studland and Blackheath

July–October 2017

Timeline

2016

23 Jun – Britain votes to leave the European Union by a margin of 52 per cent to 48 per cent

29 Jun – Other 27 member states agree a ‘no negotiations without notification’ stance on Brexit talks and Article 50

13 Jul – Theresa May becomes prime minister and pledges to create ‘a country that works for everyone’

7 Sep – May insists she will not give a ‘running commentary’ on Brexit negotiations

24 Sep – Jeremy Corbyn re-elected as Labour Party leader

30 Sep – Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s CEO, says he could scrap potential new investment in its Sunderland plant

2 Oct – In Brexit speech to party conference, May says she will trigger Article 50 before the end of March and create a Great Repeal Bill to replace the 1972 European Communities Act

5 Oct – In main speech to party conference, May criticises ‘citizens of nowhere’

6 Oct – Keir Starmer appointed shadow Brexit secretary

27 Oct – Nissan says it will build its Qashqai and X-Trail models at its Sunderland plant, protecting 7,000 jobs

2 Nov – At Spectator awards dinner May compares Boris Johnson to a dog that was put down

3 Nov – High Court rules that only Parliament not the government has the power to trigger Article 50

4 Nov – Daily Mail calls the judges ‘enemies of the people’

8 Nov – Donald Trump elected the 45th president of the United States

14 Nov – FT reveals the EU wants a €60 billion exit bill from Britain

15 Nov – Boris Johnson tells a Czech paper the UK will ‘probably’ leave the customs union and is reprimanded by May

19 Nov – Johnson accused of turning up to a cabinet Brexit meeting with the wrong papers

20 Nov – Sixty pro-Brexit Tory MPs demand Britain leaves the single market

21 Nov – Trump calls for Nigel Farage to be made British ambassador to Washington

7 Dec – MPs back government amendment to opposition day debate saying the government must set out its Brexit plans but also that Article 50 should be triggered by the end of March

8 Dec – Johnson calls Saudi Arabia a ‘puppeteer’ in the Middle East, sparking a rebuke from Downing Street and fears he will resign

11 Dec – Fiona Hill’s ‘Trousergate’ texts to Nicky Morgan, banning her from Downing Street, are published

15 Dec – BBC reveals that Sir Ivan Rogers has privately warned ministers a post-Brexit trade deal might take ten years

2017

4 Jan – Ivan Rogers resigns

10 Jan – Corbyn announces a wage cap in his ‘Trump relaunch’

17 Jan – In speech at Lancaster House May announces Britain will seek a hard Brexit leaving the single market, the customs union and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. She says ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’

24 Jan – Supreme Court votes 8–3 to uphold the High Court ruling

25 Jan – Downing Street says Brexit plans will be set out in a white paper

27 Jan – May meets and holds hands with Trump at the White House

1 Feb – Article 50 bill passes second reading by 498 votes to 114

2 Feb – White paper published echoing the Lancaster House speech

7 Feb – Government defeats amendment 110 which would have given Parliament the right to a vote on Brexit following a deal with Team 2019 Tory rebels

9 Feb – Article 50 bill passes Commons by 494 votes to 122

16 Feb – May’s aides hold strategy meeting at Chequers for the 2020 election

17 Feb – Tony Blair makes a speech urging Britons to ‘rise up’ against Brexit

7 Mar – House of Lords amends Article 50 bill to guarantee a ‘meaningful vote’ on Brexit deal. Lord Heseltine sacked

8 Mar – In his spring budget, Philip Hammond raises National Insurance contributions for the self-employed

13 Mar – Nicola Sturgeon confirms she will ask for permission to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence, playing into Ruth Davidson’s hands

14 Mar – Article 50 bill finally gets royal assent

15 Mar – May forces Hammond into humiliating U-turn on National Insurance

17 Mar – George Osborne named editor of the Evening Standard, overshadowing May’s Plan for Britain

29 Mar – May signs letter triggering Article 50

18 Apr – May announces that she is calling a general election

26 Apr – May dines with Jean-Claude Juncker at Downing Street. Details of the meal leak and are blamed on his chief of staff Martin Selmayr

4 May – In local elections Tories make big gains

10 May – Labour manifesto leaks

16 May – Labour manifesto published

18 May – Conservative manifesto published, includes plans for a controversial social care policy

21 May – Polls show Tory support ‘dropping off a cliff’. Lynton Crosby says care could lose the election

22 May – May U-turns, scrapping the care plan but insisting ‘nothing has changed’. Manchester Arena terror attack that night leads to a pause in the campaign

24 May – In Downing Street meeting, May is warned the numbers are bad

3 Jun – London Bridge terror attack puts police cuts at the top of the agenda

8 Jun – General election: the Conservatives win 317 seats, down thirteen and lose their majority. Labour gains thirty seats

9 Jun – May visits the queen and says she has a deal with the DUP then fails to apologise for losing seats

11 Jun – Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill resign as chiefs of staff

12 Jun – May apologises to 1922 Committee and endures criticism from ministers in cabinet

14 Jun – Grenfell Tower disaster plunges the government into a new crisis and May into a ‘personal crisis’

19 Jun – First round of Davis–Barnier Brexit negotiations

26 Jun – Andrew Mitchell and Nicky Morgan tell One Nation dinner Theresa May should resign

6 Jul – CBI demands a transition period with no time limits

20 Jul – Second round of Davis–Barnier talks

31 Aug – Third round of Davis–Barnier talks ends in fractious deadlock

7 Sep – Select group of cabinet ministers shown policy paper by Oliver Robbins setting out plans for May’s Florence speech

12 Sep – Philip Hammond tells Lords Economic Affairs Committee there must be a ‘status quo’ transition

15 Sep – Boris Johnson publishes 4,200-word article in the Daily Telegraph challenging May’s authority on Brexit

18 Sep – Oliver Robbins leaves DExEU to run Cabinet Office Brexit unit

22 Sep – During speech in Florence, May says Britain will seek a status quo transition lasting ‘about’ two years and hints the UK will pay €20 billion to the EU in that time

30 Sep – Johnson sets out his four ‘red lines’ for Brexit

4 Oct – Theresa May’s conference speech descends into disaster

16 Oct – May dines with Jean-Claude Juncker. A leak suggests she was ‘begging’ for help

19 Oct – At Brussels summit, May pleads with EU leaders to get the trade talks moving

22 Nov – Hammond’s second budget of the year cuts stamp duty for first-time buyers

4 Dec – DUP pulls the plug on May’s exit deal, plunging the talks into fresh crisis

8 Dec – May strikes phase one Brexit deal when Commission pronounces that ‘sufficient progress’ has been made on money, citizens and the Irish border

Introduction

Four Minutes to Ten

The first clue that something was wrong was the look on Fiona Hill’s face. One of Theresa May’s two chiefs of staff emerged from the safe space reserved for the senior staff at the rear of the war room in Conservative Campaign Headquarters. She was looking for the other chief, Nick Timothy. Hill was a thin and elegantly dressed brunette in her early forties whose waif-like appearance concealed a backbone of pure galvanised steel. ‘Where’s Nick?’ she asked. Her voice was a sweet Scottish lilt that belied a tongue which could crack like a whip. Hill was a figure of authority but her voice betrayed her nervousness. ‘Her face was just white,’ a witness recalled.

In the weeks to come those who were there would see the next few moments unfold again and again in their mind’s eye like a Martin Scorsese film, indelible images that jump-cut into a portrait of unfolding disaster. A member of the Conservative media team, which Hill had commanded for the previous seven weeks, said, ‘I looked at her and thought, “That’s not somebody who’s been told good news.” She grabbed Nick and took him to the Derby room.’ It was Thursday 8 June. Election day. The aide looked at his watch, so he would remember the time. ‘The moment I knew it was fucked was at 9.56 p.m.,’ he said.

Nick Timothy looked both like he meant business and like an egghead – fitting for one of the best Conservative policy brains of his generation. Like many political players he was a figure of contradictions, sometimes easy company, smoothly charming to both men and women. He spoke with an accent that betrayed a little of his Midlands upbringing and a great deal of the relentless inner drive that had taken him from working-class Birmingham to the pinnacle of a Conservative government. Thirty-seven and balding on top, Timothy had become a recognisable public figure thanks to the lustrous beard he wore, which would not have looked out of place on a nineteenth-century Russian novelist. In Tory circles ‘Timmy’ was most usually compared to the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, the last Tory prime minister to sit in the House of Lords.

When Hill and Timothy emerged from the side room and made their way to the safe space again, others, anxious now, stood rooted to the spot. ‘The two of them were the only people moving,’ one recalled. A Conservative special adviser – a ‘spad’ to all those in Westminster – turned to Liz Sanderson, one of May’s Downing Street staff, and asked what sort of percentage lead the Tories would need in the exit poll to have a good night. ‘I don’t know what good is supposed to look like,’ the adviser said. As Big Ben struck ten, the BBC’s David Dimbleby announced that Britain was on course for a hung Parliament. The Conservatives were set to lose seats. ‘It dropped on the screen and I thought, “Well it ain’t fucking that.” I burst into laughter because that is my reaction to anything totally catastrophic.’

No one else was laughing. ‘The whole place was like someone had been murdered,’ another spad recalled. There was a paralysing quiet. ‘Panic looked like the most wonderfully British panic, which was total fucking silence,’ a Downing Street official said. ‘The air just went from the room. It was like a vacuum.’

Hill and Timothy spoke to Theresa May by phone. The prime minister was at home in her Maidenhead constituency. They agreed to await the results. Inside, May prepared for the worst. She had already had a little cry. After a seven-week campaign which was supposed to be a victory lap, May had taken her party backwards. Over the next eight hours, her expected majority of sixty or more dissolved into a net loss of thirteen seats. Conservative staff fell into a deep depression. The campaign had not been enjoyable but the prospect of victory had kept them going. Now that was gone. ‘I felt like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption,’ one spad said. ‘I had crawled through a mile of shit and there was supposed to be a boat or money or Morgan Freeman coming to hug me at the end. Instead, it was just a pile of poo, and I was stuck in a pond with the rain pouring down on me.’

The political implications were as acute as the personal. A prime minister who had seemed impregnably strong was suddenly dangerously weak and fighting for her career. An election called to strengthen Britain’s hand in negotiations on the country’s exit from the European Union – ‘Brexit’ as it was now known to everyone – had left the UK disempowered at a critical moment in her history. May’s two closest aides, who had been as dominant a duopoly as 10 Downing Street has ever seen, saw their power evaporate. Timothy and Hill had helped to create the public being of Theresa May. They were her greatest cheerleaders and defenders. Now they were to be sacrificial lambs for the disaster that was unfolding, their best service to throw themselves to the wolves so that she might escape their jaws.