Br Polit https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-017-0065-5

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Gambling on Europe: and the 2016 referendum

Julie Smith1,2

Ó Macmillan Publishers Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2017

Abstract Membership of the European Union has divided British political parties for decades. On taking office, David Cameron hoped to move his Conservative Party beyond the electorally rather unwelcome focus on ‘Europe’. By 2013, he felt the best way to resolve the divisions in his own party was to try to renegotiate the UK’s membership of the EU and hold a referendum on continuing membership. This article argues that the gamble was Cameron’s to lose but that a combination of poor judgement and ill-timing on his part alongside the more potent message of the Leave campaign contributed to precisely the outcome Cameron did not want: he lost office; the country looked set to the leave the EU; and the divisions within his party were far from healed.

Keywords Brexit Á Conservative Party Á David Cameron Á Referendum Á Renegotiation Á Vote Leave

Introduction

Shortly after becoming leader of the Conservative Party in December 2005 David Cameron made clear that he did not want his party to ‘keep banging on about Europe’ (d’Ancona 2013, p. 241). Yet his leadership and legacy would both come to be defined by the question of the UK’s membership of the European Union. Having realised that the question would not go away, Cameron arrived at the triad of ‘reform, renegotiation, referendum’, outlined in his landmark Bloomberg Speech of 23 January 2013, which was intended to stem the onslaught from his backbenchers

& Julie Smith [email protected]

1 Department of Politics and International Studies, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK 2 House of Lords, London, UK J. Smith and party grassroots. The simple message belied the complexity of the gamble he was taking. It was a three-level game (party, country, EU) that would require skill and timing as well as a degree of chance. It would necessitate, firstly, the ability to persuade his EU partners of the need for reform; secondly, demonstrating to his party that he had secured sufficient change in the EU, or at least in the UK’s relationship with the EU, to render ongoing membership acceptable; and, finally, likewise convincing the electorate of the merits of remaining. At face value, the approach seemed well thought out; the reality proved otherwise. Cameron’s gamble went a step too far. He staked his country to secure his party and lost both. Barely a year after the referendum, there was already a huge corpus of literature on the causes and consequences of Brexit. Blow-by-blow insider accounts, for example, by Cameron’s Remain-supporting advisor Craig Oliver (2017), Leave donor Aaron Banks (2017) and political journalist Tim Shipman (2016) were complemented by a more analytical piece by leading Leave strategist Dominic Cummings (2017), while some former parliamentarians including Mac- shane (2016) published their thoughts. Smith (2017) and Glencross (2016) both sought to put the vote into a wider historical perspective. Psephologists were also swift to publish, with works by Hobolt (2016), Curtice (2017) and Clarke et al. (2017a, b) worthy of note. Goodwin and Milazzo (2017) addressed the thorny question of immigration, an issue which, coupled with the emergence of a section of society which felt itself to be left behind by globalisation and European integration, could help explain the vote to Leave. Lawyers such as Kenneth Armstrong (2017) have provided their analyses about the referendum, with rather more work to follow on the detailed legal consequences. Many commentators have focused on short-term and contingent factors that contributed to the outcome, giving detailed accounts of the referendum campaigns’ respective strengths and weaknesses. Others such as Thompson (2017) address whether more structural factors may have made the decision to leave the EU inevitable given the UK’s long-running divergence from the EU mainstream, which was compounded by the Eurozone crisis almost a decade earlier. The precise reasons for Brexit will form the stuff of scholarly research for a generation to come and will undoubtedly spawn myriad doctoral theses. The aim of this article is rather more limited in its ambitions, namely to analyse Cameron’s ‘gamble’ and how he lost his bet. It argues that a series of contingent factors, mostly linked to Cameron’s repeated mistiming and failure to understand the rules of the game he was playing, contributed to the very outcome he sought to avoid. As Cummings (2017) has argued, the vote to leave the EU was far from inevitable. Indeed, at the outset, the Leave campaign believed, with some justification, that the odds were stacked against it. With hindsight, it is clear there were long-term structural factors that contributed to the decision to leave the EU, but a stronger Remain campaign and better terms of renegotiation could have ensured that the UK voted to stay in the EU rather than leave. The gamble was the Remainers’ to lose. Cameron got his timing wrong and failed at every stage to learn the lessons of Harold Wilson’s similar gambit in 1975; lessons that were only too clearly articulated during the passage of the EU Referendum Act 2015: outside interference and any apparent attempts by the Government to swing the vote would be vilified. Where Wilson could rely on a pro-European media landscape and Gambling on Europe: David Cameron and the 2016 referendum business elites, not to mention the majority of Conservative voters (supporters of his own Labour Party were more divided) to support remaining in the Common Market, as well as a deferential public willing to listen to such advocates of staying, Cameron could count on none of these things. His party was bitterly divided, with members of his own Cabinet among those most actively campaigning to leave the EU, while the Labour Party’s low-key support for membership did little to assist him. An agreement to disagree in the form of waiving cabinet responsibility helped overcome Labour’s divisions in 1975; in 2016, the situation was one of open warfare within the Conservative Party, as ministers jockeyed for position to succeed a prime minister who, in an unguarded moment, had already announced he would not serve a third term (Shipman 2016). Cameron had reckoned without the depth of passion among those minded to leave—a passion seemingly lacking among those advocating staying in the EU. More crucially, he did not give himself sufficient time either to negotiate reforms adequate to placate the sceptics or to prepare the ground for the referendum campaign itself. When he pledged to hold a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, he undoubtedly hoped to end the persistent divisions over ‘Europe’ that had dogged his party for a quarter of a century. It was certainly a risk, but it was a gamble that Cameron—a man famously lucky in politics—believed he could win and ‘win big’ (60:40 in favour of remain, sources claimed). No need to prepare for departure from the club; Britain would be staying, or so the expectations went. Thus, when the UK did vote to leave, no arrangements were in place for negotiating its departure. Preparing for the unwanted answer to the referendum question may have been viewed as indicating a lack of confidence by Cameron and his team. Failure to do so put the UK at a marked disadvantage compared to the EU27 as it prepared to leave the Union, as Theresa May would find out.

Cameron and Europe

Cameron, like most Conservatives of his generation marked by the events of Black Wednesday, considered himself ‘Eurosceptic’ although the EU was not something about which he was deeply concerned.1 He showed an early willingness to gamble with European relations, however. While running for the party leadership in 2005, Cameron pledged to take the Conservative Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) out of the group of the European People’s Party (EPP) in the EP, in the hope of taking support from the more clearly Eurosceptic leadership hopefuls David Davis and Liam Fox (d’Ancona 2013, p. 242). This rather casual choice worked as a short-term tactic as Cameron secured the nomination and the party leadership. Yet it was an early indication of a cavalier attitude towards potential EU partners: a poor long-term strategy in an organisation that relies on compromise, networks and alliances. It presaged a difficult relationship with the EU27 in which Cameron’s

1 As Ashcroft and Oakeshott (2015, pp. 489–490) note, there was always a degree of uncertainty as to how Eurosceptic Cameron actually was, although they claim that in 2000, he actively sought to persuade researcher Sean Gabb that he was ‘sceptic’, recognising the importance among grassroots members of being seen to be so. J. Smith failure to understand the rules of the game would repeatedly see him wrong-footed, not least because he was not invited to attend EPP summit meetings once he finally delivered on his promise to leave the grouping at the time of the 2009 EP elections. His tenure as PM thus reflected a favoured Brussels dictum: ‘if you are not at the table, you are on the menu’ (Smith 2015, 2017). Nor did his actions ‘sedate the hardcore backbenchers’ as d’Ancona (2013, p. 242) put it. ‘Europe’ overshadowed Cameron’s leadership from early on despite his assertion that his party should focus rather less on an internally divisive topic that was nonetheless of low political salience among voters (d’Ancona 2013). A commitment to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty inevitably had to be dropped when that Treaty was ratified in late 2009, 6 months before the Conservatives took office in May 2010 as the leading partner in coalition with the strongly pro-EU Liberal Democrats. For some hard-line Eurosceptics this seemed like a climb-down, reflecting a shift from the Eurosceptic stance Cameron had espoused in order to secure his election as leader (d’Ancona 2013, p. 241). The issue might have been dropped in the normal circumstances of a majority Government in which the Conservative manifesto could be implemented in full and MPs could have expected preferment during the course of a four- or five-year Parliament, rendering them less likely to rebel. However, the need for a coalition constrained the Conservatives’ ability to follow their own agenda, while backbench MPs’ prospects of promotion were significantly diminished as Liberal Democrats were given ministerial positions. Against a backdrop of a Coalition majority of 80, disgruntled backbenchers were especially vocal in their demands for a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. Initially opposed to an in/out referendum, in January 2013 Cameron finally offered his backbench Eurosceptics a glimmer of hope. At a speech at the London offices of Bloomberg he promised to seek his ‘three Rs’ should the Conservatives hold power alone after the 2015 election. The speech, explicitly given as leader of the Conservative Party rather than as Prime Minister, was both sufficiently pro-European not to alienate either pro-Europeans in his own party or the Tories’ pro-EU Lib Dem partners and sufficiently clear in its offer of a referendum to placate the most hard-line Eurosceptics in his party and potentially take the sting out of the electoral challenge posed by UKIP (see Smith 2015). Cameron made the risky pledge ostensibly to tackle his most pressing problem: to hold his own party together. The Bloomberg Speech appeared to defuse the EU issue and he was able to complete his 5 years as PM at the head of a Coalition Government with his party virtually intact—the defections to UKIP of two MPs, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless, and one major donor, Aaron Banks, being the only significant casualties.2 While UKIP won the largest share of the vote in the 2014 elections to the European Parliament—the first time the party had taken the most votes in a national poll—that was on the basis of a much lower turnout than could be expected in a general election, representing only about 10% of the electorate. The electoral threat from UKIP had receded somewhat and with it some

2 Banks’s defection was treated so dismissively by Foreign Secretary William Hague that he rapidly increased his donation to UKIP to £1 m and his commitment to the Brexit cause was clearly cemented (Banks 2017). Gambling on Europe: David Cameron and the 2016 referendum of the frustrations of the Tory backbenchers. Cameron went into the 2015 election the leader of an ostensibly united party but with the opinion polls showing another hung parliament was likely, meaning that he would not have had to deliver on his promise. A further coalition with the Liberal Democrats would have provided ample cover to claim that the Bloomberg offer was no longer on the table; an outright defeat leading to a Labour-led government would also have ensured that the idea of a referendum was off the table. The result would prove catastrophic for Cameron.

Losing his timing; losing his touch

The short-term solution to Cameron’s European problem would prove to be his undoing. The surprise result saw the Conservatives returned with a small overall majority—Cameron could not look to others to delay moves to deliver the three Rs. Not only was he forced to deliver them but the timeframe he had set himself—a referendum by the end of 2017—became an additional stumbling block. Carefully designed to allow the maximum period for the renegotiation, a two-year window between the expected UK election of May 2015 and the French and German elections in the Spring and Autumn of 2017, allowing the referendum to be held by December 2017, seemed feasible. Yet it was clear from the time of the Bloomberg Speech that this would not give the PM enough time to negotiate meaningful reform of the EU, which would have required treaty reform and ratification across the EU, potentially including referendums in various states and, on past experience, likely to be protracted. Nonetheless, there was some hope that the two-year window would permit serious negotiations to take place. Ahead of the election it was assumed that any referendum would be held in May 2017, before the UK acceded to the rotating Presidency of the EU on 1st July 2017. In the aftermath of the election, it became common knowledge that Cameron hoped to bring forward the date of the referendum to June 2016. The logic was to take the European question off the Conservatives’ agenda. If all had gone to plan, 2015 would have been the last Tory Party Conference in which it was an issue. Cameron was also anxious that the referendum should not be preceded by another summer during which migrants seeking asylum in Europe were pictured drowning in the Mediterranean, which he feared would fuel further Eurosceptism in the UK as the EU seemed incapable of responding effectively. However, the change significantly truncated the time available for securing a good outcome in the negotiations and for campaigning in the subsequent referendum. Nor did Cameron outline his position straightaway, causing frustration among European leaders who complained they did not know what he wanted. Only after taking soundings across the EU did he make explicit his demands, at a speech in Chatham House and in a formal letter to President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, on 10th November 2015 (Cameron 2015). Having made clear that he hoped to get agreement by the February 2016 European Council meeting, Cameron further reduced his leverage: the other 27 knew that they had the upper hand because Cameron needed a deal; they did not. Cameron had eschewed an alternative approach, initially favoured by advocates of Leave when they believed themselves to be the underdogs, namely to hold two J. Smith referendums, the first on whether to renegotiate the terms of membership, the second on the outcome of the negotiations. The initial referendum could have been held at shorter notice and would have given Cameron a negotiating mandate, which would in turn have strengthened his hand when dealing with EU partners, empowering rather than constraining him. In his letter to Tusk, Cameron (2015) spoke of ‘setting out the areas where I am seeking reforms to address the concerns of the British people over our membership of the European Union’. Meaningful reform of the EU had dropped off the agenda almost entirely and the negotiation was on a far narrower prospectus than many Brexiteers had hoped. Cameron packaged his demands into four clusters or ‘baskets’—‘economic governance’, ‘competitiveness’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘immigra- tion’—largely mirroring the Bloomberg agenda but with the addition of immigra- tion, which had become more pressing since that speech.3 Cameron’s wish-list was too limited for many Eurosceptics. Yet for his 27 EU colleagues it was rather too far-reaching, requiring changes that could impact negatively on some of their own citizens and/or businesses and potentially provide incentives for Eurosceptics in other states to seek opt-outs, further undermining cohesion in the EU. Cameron had already discovered the first difficulty in winning his gamble—finding reforms acceptable to both British Eurosceptics and the other member states. Cameron asked Tory parliamentarians not to declare for remain or leave until after he had completed his negotiations, since early declarations would weaken his hand: if the 27 believed the UK would remain regardless, there was little incentive to offer an advantageous deal; if it was inevitably going to leave there was likewise no incentive to offer the UK a favourable deal, or any deal at all, and a divided party would scarcely give credibility to his cause. Only if the negotiations would make a difference to the proposed plebiscite would it be worth making the concessions. Moreover, without adequately preparing the ground for reforming the UK’s relations with the EU and lacking the necessary allies within the EU, Cameron was always destined to find it difficult to secure the changes required. He needed to persuade the EU of the merits of his demands for reform and of the imperative to get the right deal in order to hold his party together and persuade the citizens of the UK of the benefits of EU membership. Cameron needed to convince his EU partners that there was a very real chance that he would walk away from the negotiating table and recommend leaving the EU, as Boris Johnson (2015) cogently argued in his first speech on returning to the House of Commons in 2015. At times Cameron did say he could envisage recommending leaving the EU should he not get what he needed in the negotiation. However, his negotiating hand was weakened by a widely held view that he believed the UK was better off in the EU, rendering it difficult for him to play the tough strategy required. He did secure some significant commitments in the renegotiation, not least agreement on non-discrimination for non-Eurozone countries, which was beneficial to the UK’s financial services, and agreement on the

3 For further discussion of Cameron’s Chatham House speech and letter to the Council President, see Smith (2016, 2017). Gambling on Europe: David Cameron and the 2016 referendum more symbolic matter that the UK would no longer be committed to ‘ever-closer union’. Most MPs and MEPs refrained from making their positions clear until the negotiations were over as Cameron had requested. For many on both sides of the in/ out divide, this was simply out of courtesy to the PM as they had already made up their minds.4 For others, there was a genuine openness to seeing what Cameron could achieve. The outcome offered little to placate those concerned about sovereignty, immigration or benefits payments. This was not surprising since each of the aspects the UK sought to negotiate were fundamental to the integration process. Pooling of sovereignty has been integral to the European Union since the first Communities were created in the 1950s—only by exiting the Union would the UK be able to regain formal sovereignty. Yet, in the twenty-first century, characterised as it is by globalisation and economic interdependence, such sovereignty cannot be more then symbolic, as Remainers sought in vain to argue. Cameron did not secure a sufficiently comprehensive deal to persuade many of the Tory MPs who had dutifully kept their own counsel until the negotiations were complete. As former Chancellor Norman Lamont put it, he felt that the proposed welfare changes would ‘make no difference’ (Lamont 2016). Such reactions were widespread and little was done by the PM or the media to persuade people otherwise. Cameron had deliberately scaled back his demands to something he believed might be achievable rather than aim higher as many sceptics would have preferred him to do. He thereby reduced his chances of winning their support, and hence the referendum, when the deal was finally agreed. After all the time and effort put into the negotiations, and the goodwill expended at EU level, they were effectively ignored by Cameron and his fellow Remainers as soon as the deal was reached, deployed not at all during the referendum campaign that followed. While the Cabinet accepted his recommendation that the deal meant the Government should advocate remaining in the EU, Cameron’s decision that MPs and even ministers could have a free vote, in the spirit of the fact that a referendum was to be held precisely because the issue was one that cut across party lines MPs, ensured that splits in the Cabinet were clear from the outset. One or two Cabinet members such as Theresa Villiers were long-standing Brexiteers who were expected to campaign to leave the EU. However, Cameron was taken off-guard by the decision of his friend and traditional ally, Michael Gove, to support the Leave campaign, having previously understood that Gove would put their friendship ahead of any personal views on the EU (Oliver 2017; see also Shipman 2016). Gove’s decision to become a co-chairman of Vote Leave, the umbrella organisation that would ultimately secure the Electoral Commission’s designation as the official Leave body proved a crucial element in the course of the referendum. Gove was a senior and accomplished, if not popular, politician who was able to articulate a cogent case for leaving the EU. Coupled with the last-minute decision of former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to support Leave, Cameron was faced with serious players supporting the opposing side of the referendum, quite unlike Wilson in 1975 when only those on the political margins wanted to leave the Common

4 This was made clear in private conversations with the author. J. Smith

Market. Cameron’s difficulties were compounded by constant speculation about the succession, given his ill-timed comment during the 2015 election that he would not serve more than a second full term as Prime Minister if the Conservatives won the election. Having effectively triggered a leadership battle, the referendum provided an opportunity for the media to speculate on the succession and they used the referendum as a proxy for that battle. The upshot was a marked reluctance on the part of Cameron to participate in debates, particularly any ‘blue-on-blue’ debates (Oliver 2017), contributing to the weakness of the Remain campaign which it had long been assumed Cameron would personally lead once the renegotiations were complete. The last of Cameron’s three hurdles—persuading the citizens to vote to remain in the EU—should in some ways have been the easiest. Remaining in the EU was the status quo option, usually seen to be the easier way to win a referendum, and the weight of the political establishment was behind Cameron and Remain. The Labour Party was formally committed to continued EU membership as were the long- standing pro-EU Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party (SNP). Yet, the reality was rather different. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was a veteran Eurosceptic who found it difficult to evince any passion in favour of remaining in the EU. Nor did other pro-EU parties devote themselves to securing a Remain vote as whole- heartedly as they might: all were more focused on local issues until 6th May 2016 after the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections and local elections in England had taken place, when less than 7 weeks remained until the referendum. By then, the Leave campaign had been focused on the key date of 23rd June for several months and was building up significant momentum. The SNP had urged Cameron not to hold the referendum in June but to delay it until September—his failure to do highlighted his flawed timing yet again.

The referendum

While Cameron was renegotiating the UK’s membership of the EU, parliament was debating what came to be named the European Union Referendum Act 2015, which provided the rules for the referendum. The proposals came from the Government, with advice from the Electoral Commission, whose views on the question on the ballot paper prevailed. Attempts by MPs and peers to extend the franchise to permit 16 and 17 year olds as well as EU nationals resident in the UK and British citizens resident in other EU states for 15 years or longer were all rejected by the Government. Nor was any attention paid to making the referendum legally binding, which could have been put on the face of the bill. As it was, the legislation was silent on the matter, ensuring the outcome was not legally binding even though political commitments ensured the politicians could not countenance ignoring the outcome of the poll. At the time the legislation was passing through Parliament, there was scarcely any thought that the outcome might be to leave the EU, which may have explained the Government’s unwillingness to go into battle for rules that leavers would have railed against. Starting as the clear outsider, the Leave campaign, keen to portray itself as the underdog, fighting against ‘elites’ and ‘the Gambling on Europe: David Cameron and the 2016 referendum

Establishment’, proved to be disciplined, well funded and on message. It would outstrip Remain in three key areas: message, money and media.

Message

‘Vote Leave: Take back control’ exhorted those who advocated withdrawal from the EU. It was clear and emotive. Crucially, it told voters what they needed to do: go to the ballot box and cross the box marked ‘Leave the European Union’. The Remain campaign struggled to provide similar clarity of message or purpose. It proved to be rather fragmented, lacking in direction or passion and suffering from a name— Britain Stronger in Europe (BSE)—that bore little relation to the question on the ballot paper. Being ‘stronger, safer, better off’ simply could not compete, not least because so few of those who articulated the Remain message did so with conviction. Apologetic Remainers spent much of their time unintentionally reinforcing the message of the Leavers with phrases like, ‘The EU’s not perfect’, ‘The EU needs to be reformed’. No state is perfect; no institution is perfect; the UK is not perfect, but few politicians feel the need to make such comments in a national context, certainly not when trying to advocate a cause. Yet they repeatedly did so in their attempts to persuade voters to stay in the EU. Such language followed decades during which those seeking to leave the EU actively set the agenda, while those who favoured membership believed their job had been done in 1975 when the UK voted 2 to 1 to stay in the Common Market. A good deal of complacency therefore needed to be overcome during the referendum campaign—and Cameron’s timing had left very little opportunity for this. The Leave campaign’s focus on taking back control was applied to several different themes, each designed to attract sections of undecided voters or shore up those minded to leave. It was portrayed as a way to regain sovereignty, by taking back control of ‘our laws’; to tackle immigration—take back control of ‘our borders’; trade and, crucially, money. The UK contributions to the EU budget have been a source of frustration for decades and in a masterful stroke, Vote Leave coupled the issue with the sacred cow in British politics, namely the NHS. The campaign’s most visible point (not least because it was painted on the side of a double-decker bus) was that the UK sends £350 m a week to the EU, which could be spent on the NHS instead. The figures were spurious and hotly contested. Many of the Leavers admitted in private that they were not based in fact but that did not matter. Every time a Leave campaigner was challenged about the numbers during the campaign and told the figure was about half that claimed, they would simply say, ‘Well it’s still a lot of money’, which was undeniable, even if it represented only a tiny fraction of government spending. Perhaps inevitably, there was swift back-tracking from this commitment to the NHS after the referendum, until Boris Johnson suddenly recommitted to it in a dramatic move in September 2017 (Johnson 2017). The point was then picked up again in November 2017 as the Chief Executive of NHS England called on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to deliver on the £350 m promise in the Budget, despite the fact that Philip Hammond had been one of the strongest advocates of staying in the EU and had not signed up to Vote Leave’s numbers. J. Smith

Complacency was replaced by hysteria on the Remain side, or so the media coverage implied. Yet the attempts at ‘Project Fear’ did not have the desired effect. In part, this was the nature of the messages put out by the Remainers, with their focus on money rather than identity (see, for example, Goodwin and Milazzo 2017 for a discussion of the immigration question). Such a strategy was always risky. As research by Chatham House showed in late 2015, immigration was an area of vulnerability for the Remain side and of strength for the Leavers (Goodwin and Milazzo 2015). As the referendum moved onto immigration, the Remain side found it hard to gain traction, having no clear rebuttals to the Leavers’ arguments, or their own counter-narrative (see Oliver 2017). The Remainers failed, for example, to press home the point that EU law already allows the Border Agency to deport EU nationals without means of support, a crucial point that could potentially have helped to offset the Leavers’ claims. The salience of the issue reflected the media’s long-standing interest in questions of immigration and is indicative of the interplay between the message and the medium in the UK’s EU relations.

Media

In a further miscalculation, Cameron had failed to anticipate that normally loyal newspapers could not be relied upon to support his campaign to keep the UK in the EU. Whereas in both the 2014 Scottish referendum and the 2015 general election, the Conservatives could count on much of the print media to bolster variants of ‘Project Fear’, the same could not be said of the 2016 referendum. By 2016, the British public had been receiving negative media reporting of the EU for decades, referred to by Daddow (2012) as ‘the Murdoch effect’. This had a huge, untold impact on long-term attitudes within the British public at large, and had contributed to the negative rhetoric in the Conservative Party for many years as grassroots members articulated sceptical views of the sort articulated by and , which they expected their MPs to reflect. Such coverage only increased during the referendum. Traditional Conservative-leaning newspapers such as the Telegraph and Mail, which were onside for Better Together and the general election were deeply Eurosceptic and could not be relied upon to support the case for remaining in the EU. In the event, the Mail on Sunday, endorsed Remain, as did the Times, Guardian and Observer and the left-wing Mirror, while and Daily Mail supported leaving the EU, as did the Telegraph, Sun and Express. Like the campaigns themselves, the print media coverage of the referendum was at times both hyperbolic and misleading.5 While the relative lack of support from the print media was frustrating, it could and should have been anticipated given the battles waged against ‘Brussels’ over the years, not least by Boris Johnson when he wrote for the Daily Telegraph. By contrast, the BBC was scrupulous in its endeavours to offer ‘balance’ in what it interpreted as its duty as a public service provider. This approach caused immense frustration among Remainers as expert and well-informed arguments for staying in the EU were

5 For an extensive analysis of the media coverage throughout the campaign, see Moore and Ramsay (2017). Gambling on Europe: David Cameron and the 2016 referendum

‘balanced’ by one lone voice from the other side (very often Bernard Jenkin) saying ‘I disagree’ but offering little hard factual refutation of the Remain argument. Such coverage may have been ‘balanced’, but it failed in its duty to inform and educate, as journalists did little to correct inaccuracies. Overall, the traditional media did little to assist the Remain cause. Nor was social media any more helpful to Remainers, as the Leave campaigns ran slick operations, with Vote Leave using highly effective targeting advertising, and Leave.EU also showing a considerable social media presence.

Money

The Political Parties and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA 2000) and the EU Referendum Act 2015 set out the formal rules for funding and expenditure regulations in the referendums, which was intended to create a level-playing field. Provision was made accordingly for maximum spending limits for the designated Remain and Leave umbrella organisations, BSE and Vote Leave, respectively. However, the rather Byzantine rules also permitted political parties to spend up to certain limits according to their share of the vote in the previous general election. Leave campaigners were thus exercised by the fact that they were likely to be heavily outspent by Remain, since only UKIP and the DUP would support their cause, whereas all the other national parties were expected to support Remain. However, since the split in the Conservatives ran through the parliamentary party and party members, the Party remained formally neutral during the referendum, even though Cameron personally and the Conservative Government as a whole were committed to remain. This meant that the Remain campaign was rather less well- funded than might have been anticipated as the Conservatives did not spend the £5 m they were entitled to do (given that the party had secured considerable donations ahead of the referendum, its coffers were rather better filled for the snap general election of 2017 than those of the other parties). Conversely and controversially, the Government spent £9 m on a pamphlet about the referendum sent to every household in the guise of ‘information’. The leavers were outraged (Worcester et al., 2017, pp. 75–76), at least in public. In private, they freely admitted that the episode gave than a lot of free airtime and assisted in the fundraising efforts. Both the Leave and Remain campaigns were heavily funded by major donors, in the case of Remain by Lord [David] Sainsbury, while Leave was largely financed by five large donors (McCall and Watts 2017; Electoral Commission 2017). Starting as the outsiders, Leave were able to stress that the Establishment was against them, which helped in their fundraising efforts to the extent that they were able to outspend Remain 52 to 48 (Electoral Commission 2017). This was coincidently in line with the 52:48 split in the referendum result, which reflected a series of tactical mistakes compounding Cameron’s strategic errors and problems of money, message and medium. Cameron made one final error. Aside from the failure to make the outcome of the referendum legally binding, his determination that no planning should be undertaken for the eventuality of Leave prevailing ensured that the legacy was J. Smith not just a decision to quit the EU. It was of a party and country deeply divided over the legitimacy of the outcome and the way Brexit should be delivered, as Theresa May, the unexpected beneficiary of his failed gamble, would rapidly discover.

Handing over to a novice gambler

The day after the referendum it was clear that neither Cameron nor the UK were remaining. He resigned as Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister rather than triggering Article 50, as he had previously insisted he would do in the event of a (seemingly unimaginable) vote to pull out of the EU (Rawnsley 2017), leaving it to his successor to decide what ‘Brexit’ would mean in practice. His anointed successor, the passionately pro-Remain Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, could not now take the reins. There ensued an unedifying leadership election in which the agent of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, knifed his candidate and then proposed himself as the best choice for the job—a view shared by few of his colleagues who saw Gove return to the backbenches, at least temporarily. Hard Brexiteers opted for Andrea Leadsom, while a majority of their parliamentary colleagues backed Theresa May, a quiet Remainer who committed to the job of delivering Brexit with the zeal of the convert. ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and ‘We’re going to make a success of it’, she repeated over and over. May’s mandate on becoming Conservative leader and Prime Minister, was singular: to deliver Brexit. Cameron had bequeathed her a majority of twelve seats and a parliamentary party that broadly accepted the results of the referendum to take back control. The promise of taking back control, which had been at the heart of the Leave campaign’s message, caused some problems. For May, it seemed to mean taking control for herself as PM, rather than control returning to parliament whence it had originally come, as most constitutionalists and many lawyers argued it should. Only after a failed bid to trigger Article 50 without parliamentary approval was thwarted by the Supreme Court following action taken by Gina Miller did the Prime Minister concede that Parliamentary approval was required before the EU could be formally notified of the UK’s intention to leave (R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union 2017). When the two-clause bill was finally brought before parliament, it caused heated debate, despite cross-party agreement that the results of the referendum had to be respected. The Prime Minister expressed frustration at any attempt to amend the legislation, for example by including a reference to securing the rights of EU nationals already resident in the UK, a matter on which there had been near universal agreement both during and immediately after the referendum.6 The legislation passed through the Commons un-amended, in part because MPs sought to pass the legislation as promptly as possible in order not to delay triggering Article 50 beyond the PM’s chosen date of late March 2017. The House of Lords did vote through amendments to the bill but inevitably backed down once the Commons had reasserted their desire not to accept any amendments. Nonetheless

6 At the time, the sole block on such a decision seemed to be Theresa May in her previous guise as Home Secretary, in which post she had failed to get a grip of the problem. Gambling on Europe: David Cameron and the 2016 referendum pro-Brexit Tories emerged to threaten the Lords if they tried to block Brexit—an accusation that was without foundation, as peers were intent on performing their role as a scrutinising and revising chamber, in which, with the exception of the Liberal Democrat benches, there was little or no appetite to defy the will of the Commons. Although the legislation passed without amendment and despite the Govern- ment’s clear if small majority in the House of Commons, on 18th April 2017, May called a general election, seemingly destined to be a ‘Brexit election’, in order to consolidate her mandate to deliver Brexit. ‘Britain is leaving the European Union and there can be no turning back … At this moment of enormous national significance there should be unity here in Westminster, but instead there is division. The country is coming together, but Westminster is not’, she argued (BBC News 2017). Having failed to secure unwavering support of the type expected in an autocracy rather than a democracy, the normally cautious Theresa May was taking a gamble, albeit on a seemingly safe bet. With a huge lead in the opinion polls there was much talk of a large Conservative majority that would indeed have allowed the PM to interpret Brexit as she saw fit. It did not go to plan. Just like Cameron a year earlier, May had gambled on Europe and lost, albeit in an election where little attention was paid to the EU; as in the past, ‘Europe’ was of low salience for voters in the 2017 general election. Rather than increase the Tory majority, she was faced with a hung parliament, a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from Northern Ireland and a series of challenges over Brexit as her authority was severely damaged. Yet the attempts by the pro-EU Liberal Democrats to turn the election into a campaign on giving the people a say on the withdrawal deal also backfired, with the party securing its lowest percentage of the vote since 1959, suggesting that membership of the EU, which had so polarised voters just a year earlier and which seemed still to divide the country, despite May’s assertion that it was coming together, was not a top priority for most voters (BFPG 2017). The election did appear to mark a return of two-party politics, to a level not seen since the 1970s, with Labour and the Conservatives securing the vast majority of votes as the UKIP vote of 2015 dropped back and voters reverted to the two catch-all parties. With Labour accepting that the result of the 2016 referendum had to be respected, the PM claimed that 85% of voters had voted for parties that wanted to leave the EU. May’s analysis was a gross over-simplification: acceptance of a popular vote is scarcely the same as advocating or favouring a position. If May’s Tories had fallen in behind a mantra of need to accept ‘the will of the people’—and to reunite as a party—Labour had different reasons for accepting the inevitability of Brexit in their 2017 manifesto. Aside from the views still widely attributed to their veteran Eurosceptic leader, many pro-EU Labour MPs found themselves profoundly at odds with the wishes of their erstwhile supporters in traditional Labour heartlands, in contrast to many pro-Brexit Tory MPs who represented seats where Remain had prevailed in the referendum. The response of Labour MPs was to accept their voters’ desire to leave the EU, although there was not a shared Labour vision on what form Brexit should take. Indeed, the one glimmer of satisfaction for the Conservatives was the fact that Brexit now clearly divided Labour as it had done decades before. J. Smith

Conclusions

Helen Thompson has argued that ‘the underlying structural forces generated by Britain’s singular macro-political economy created a relatively high degree of probability that the denouement of Britain’s membership of the EU would be reached under the conditions of the Conservative party being in office’ (Thompson 2017, p. 435). There is no contradiction between that analysis and the assessment that David Cameron made an unnecessary gamble and played his hand very poorly. The decision to hold the referendum was taken for reasons of internal party politics, not because of public demand for such a poll; until that time, the EU had been an issue of low political salience. Following the referendum, it again slipped down the agenda for the vast majority of voters as shown by opinion polling by BMG ahead of the general election (British Foreign Policy Group 2017). May’s stated justification for the 2017 general election was the need to secure Brexit and yet the issue played little part in the election, which focused on the economy, the Tories’ social care policy and the relative merits of May and Corbyn. Like Cameron, she had put her career on the line over the European question. Unlike Cameron, she did not immediately resign following the humiliating loss of her parliamentary majority, but it was another lost gamble on Europe, this time a gamble that damaged the Conservative Party—the very organ Cameron had been so keen to strengthen. Cummings (2017) reminds us of Bismarck’s claim that ‘Politics is gambling for high stakes with other people’s money’. Cameron’s gamble had been for the highest stakes; his loss would affect party, country and the EU, a deep irony for a politician who ‘knew that the party had suffered electorally because it appeared to be too preoccupied by Europe’ (d’Ancona 2013, p. 240). The ultimate irony was that his two earliest supporters for leader, Gove and Johnson, had overseen his demise, while the Eurosceptic opponents, Fox and Davis, found themselves alongside Johnson in the Cabinet tasked with delivering Brexit. The divisions that Cameron sought to overcome with his Bloomberg pledge merely resulted in a truce within the Conservative Party. The underlying tensions were put aside before the 2015 general election only to re-emerge during the referendum campaign. On becoming Prime Minister, Theresa May stressed the importance of the country coming back together. What she also desperately needed was for the Conservative Party to come back together. And to a very large extent, it had done prior to the general election. Despite a limited number of MPs and peers defying the whip on the Notification of Withdrawal Bill, there were no serious rebellions and the legislation passed without amendment, with veteran Europhile MP Ken Clarke the only Conservative to vote against. Remain Conservatives had accepted the outcome of the referendum and, if not happy, were at least willing to reunite around Brexit, rather than damage the party’s electoral chances. However, the divisions would re-emerge following Theresa May’s electoral gamble as Brexiteers, not least her Foreign Secretary Johnson (2017), sought to force her to accept a hard Brexit position as he rather upstaged the Prime Minister’s carefully crafted Florence speech (May 2017)—fully vindicating the problems that d’Ancona (2013, p. 240) claims Danny Finkelstein had identified as facing all her predecessors Gambling on Europe: David Cameron and the 2016 referendum as Tory leader: ‘that some Tory Eurosceptics ‘wouldn’t take ‘‘Yes’’ for an answer’. No matter what the Conservative leader—Major, Hague, Duncan Smith, Howard and now Cameron—proposed, there would always be a core of irreconcilables, convinced that they were being sold out or stitched up’. The same would be true for May. More than a year after the referendum, the Party’s divisions were again making the news. Cameron’s gamble had failed personally and politically. He lost his job and political reputation and the referendum had neither ended divisions within his party nor kept his country in the Union. The loss for Cameron was immediate; the impact for his party, the UK and for the EU would take many years fully to evaluate.

Acknowledgements The author is grateful to Donna Doerbeck, Geoffrey Edwards and David Yates for comments on earlier drafts of this article, and to the editors for their support. Any errors remain her own.

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