Beer and Loathing on the Campaign Trail: 125 days inside the EU Referendum Circus

From flotillas to gorillas, debating to hating, the EU referendum campaign had everything but the truth

Boris Johnson is tipped as the next Prime Minister as British voters opt for Brexit (PA WIRE)

‘Special status’ for the United Kingdom within the EU was not secured in time for the last Eurostar out of Brussels, which meant that, at 9.44pm on Friday 19 February, when a tweet from a sleep-starved Prime Minister made a referendum on membership of the European Union an imminent certainty, I was already a few miles off Calais Frethun station, and heading for St Pancras International.

Migrant camps on one side. On the other, giant cash and carries where swarms of Brits come to load up on cheap French wine. Trade versus immigration.

For a glorious moment, the perfect metaphor was there, until I realised with no small sadness that it was all irrelevant. None of it would be true.

That the French put far less tax on their booze than we do is their government’s decision - and our government’s. And what European directive can possibly deter illegal immigrants from seeking to break into Britain?

How often I have wondered, in the months that have followed, as lies of luminous brilliance have shot in meteor showers across the political firmament, as whole galaxies of bull**** have swirled with such hypnotic majesty, whether I should have foreseen right then how microscopically little the truth would come to matter.

That David Cameron was able to command Michael Gove, Chris Grayling and Priti Patel to turn up for work on a Saturday morning might, in retrospect be considered the high watermark of his authority over his own party, as the cabinet formally met, agreed to disagree and a date was set: 23 June.

In any event, his was not the front door that mattered. It would be 24 hours before Boris Johnson, having given the Prime Minister 10 minutes notice via text message, announced that he would be campaigning against him. The battle lines were drawn. Boris emerged from his home in Islington and into the waiting throng. He had ‘agonised for months’ but had made up his mind.

That he now argues to leave with such passionate intensity tells you something crucially important about the man. It may also indicate the imminent end of the world as Yeats foresaw it. Today is the day of the referendum, things may yet fall apart, and the best no doubt still do lack all conviction.

Boris Johnson addresses supporters during a rally for the 'Vote Leave' campaign on April 15, 2016 in Manchester

That David Cameron took himself not to Parliament but to Chippenham, to a German manufacturer of train signalling equipment to announce the terms of his renegotiation was also portentous, and not merely because the event started late owing to a signal failure.

It took place against the heady backdrop of arguably the most uniquely one-sided set of newspaper front pages of recent years. Some concessions on child benefit payments to EU migrants whose kids still lived outside the UK, a highly contentious policy that until David Cameron had proudly boasted of having restricted it, the vast majority of the population were not even aware of. An exclusion from the principle of "ever closer union", whatever that is meant to mean in real terms.

“Call that a deal, Dave?” asked the Daily Mail, at the end of months and months of short haul treks to Europe for bilateral meetings and vacuous press conferences with world leaders. It would be more months still before Ryanair would paint a plane with the yet to be launched ‘Stronger In’ slogans down the side, and allow George Osborne, Vince Cable and Ed Balls to stride out from beneath its wing in an aircraft hangar at Stansted airport. He could have done with it earlier.

In the coming weeks, the North Korean-style “workplace visit” would be honed to perfection. A sympathetic business, ideally with some connection to the European Union would be closed down for the morning. Cameron would arrive. Workers would be “welcome” to take part in a “Q and A” under the watchful eye of their bosses, usually on live television, too.

In these early days, the leave side’s primary focus was on arguing with itself. ‘Vote Leave’ had the guys from the cabinet, Leave.EU appeared to be made up of Ukip and most of the less well hinged fringes of the Conservative party. And they were easy to spot because they’d all had luminous green polyester ties made. There we were in a restaurant in Exeter, on an overnight stay with the Vote Leave Battle Bus, when ITV announced Nigel Farage had been chosen for their TV debate with the Prime Minister, ahead of Johnson or Gove. Fiery quotes were handed out. Not for the first or last time, threats of legal action would be forthcoming.

To their credit, this occasionally pyrotechnic infighting appeared genuine. It took months to work out there was genius at work here. Every morning, in their headquarters on Milbank, Vote Leave would invite the media to hear Michael Gove dismantle the apparent flaws at the heart of European jurisprudence, or Frank Field tell in hushed tones how the EU is not on the side of the poor. By night, Nigel Farage and Peter Bone would be at some am-dram theatre in Stoke-on-Trent, leading a crowd of EDL-sympathising septuagenarians in call-and-response shouts of ‘We Want Our Country Back’, studiously solidifying the kind of electoral coalition that, at least in my view, might well be enough today. Who do we want the country back from? The hard-working men and women desperate to make up our pension deficit. When do we want it back? 1973.

Justice Secretary Gove for the legal stuff (he might not have an actual law degree but he has got a gold brocade frock coat), Farage for the immigration stuff, Boris for a magical twist of the two and some hilarious untruths about EU teabag recycling regulations thrown in. When the Vote Leave Battle Bus launched in Truro, Cornwall, he leant out of its window waving a Cornish Pasty about - a foodstuff specially protected by EU law. Who else could get away with it? Later that day, he would dress up as Bane from The Dark Knight Rises and smelt a metal £350m cheque made out to the EU.

It’s hard to pinpoint when the lies began in earnest but they started to stick when they were backed up by algebra. When George Osborne started handing out a big booklet from the Treasury, full of lengthy equations that led to the overwhelming number – that Brexit came with a price tag of £4,300 a household – it didn’t win the war, but it did change it.

The terms of engagement narrowed. Immigration versus the economy. What would come first? World War Three or the Turks? A city the size of Istanbul, coming over the Channel in boats.

In media “spin rooms” we’ve sat and laughed as every last opinion is spoken, “as a mum.” As they’ve taken it in turns to stare down the barrel of the camera and compelled us to “take back control of our borders” but every single time stopped short of saying net migration will go down. As we’ve been told not to “take a risk” but “there’s risks on both sides.”

There have been D-day Veterans on one side, Battle of Britain pilots on the other, both demanding you not walk away from what they’d fought for. England “fans” outside the Queen Victoria pub in Marseille have chanted “F*** Off Europe We’re All Voting Out.”

One day it’s the experts’ fault. The next it’s the Nazis’. Somewhere in the midst of all this, Ken Livingstone went on his never-ending Hitler Was A Zionist World Media Tour and hid in a disabled toilet to get away from another Labour MP who was pointing in his face and calling him a Nazi apologist. It’s hard to remember all this was ostensibly nothing to do with Europe. At one point, history will have to recall, the former Mayor of London was punched by a gorilla.

Boris Johnson salutes the crowd with a Cornish pasty as he boards the Vote Leave campaign bus in Truro, Cornwall

And in that rarefied air, of course, there was Captain Nigel, sailing up the Thames in his naval regalia, leading a flotilla of fishing boats in a brief and quite wonderfully mad naval battle with Bob Geldof. One of those boats stopped for a moment to turn their hoses in good humour on a dinghy with two little children perched at the front, speeding up the Thames, proudly waving their IN flags and beaming - beaming - with the joy of it all, at least until Nigel Farage summoned his most righteous anger to turn upon Geldof, for “showing his absolute contempt for honest working class people”. (In fact, he was showing his absolute contempt for a dishonest public schoolboy).

What was going on? The polls were shifting to leave. The odds were drifting. The markets were moving, and just as the “lonely road” Nigel Farage likes to claim he’s walked for two decades and counting seemed finally to open out ahead of him, the mask slipped. The pint spilt. The cigarette smoke cleared. The mirror cracked. Breaking Point.

In five hours, the mother of those children in the dinghy had been murdered in the street, by a man who would give his name in court as, “Death to Traitors”, Freedom For Britain.’

In the days since, Farage has appeared uncharacteristically unsure of himself. We have all had a glimpse of the Dulwich schoolboy, who was once made a Prefect, forcing a teacher to object on account of him being a “neo-fascist.” That teacher wrote a long letter to the headmaster, citing the time Farage and others had “marched through a Sussex village late at night singing Hitler Youth Songs.”

So where does it all leave us? Today we will walk into the polling booths, each of us either profoundly confused or cursed with profound certainty. No one seems to know what will happen. The murmurings are forming a murmuration around Remain, but no one knows for sure.

In my view, it’s well known that elections are won by building winning coalitions. The Independent’s former Arts Editor David Lister, who was with the newspaper from its first day to its last, wrote here two days ago how he is “old enough to remember before 1973, when Britain was - guess what - the fifth largest economy in the world.” The Independent’s former Economics Editor, Sean O’Grady, a man once employed by the Liberal Democrat party, is voting out because, in my own summary, the wildly disparate economies of the nation states of Europe cannot be harmonised and expect to remain competitive.

A movement that can unite these people with Britain First and the Marseille mob appears to have a reach wider and deeper than its opposite side.

The polling company Ipsos Mori likes to talk of the “status quo” bias in national referendum. In Scotland, in Quebec and with the New Zealand flag, the quiet change-resistant elder voter turns up at the polling station and quietly ensures things stay the same.

But this referendum is like no other. For the quiet, change-resistant elder voter, Leave is the status quo. Vote Brexit and it’s 1971 tomorrow morning.


 Post-referendum, there will be little point of Ukip and its leader Nigel Farage

It might take around 13 million votes to win this referendum. Turnout will be higher than at the last election, when Ukip got 3.8 million on its own, when voters were being asked a different question entirely.

That said, the other side appears to have Nick Clegg, Bobby George, John Barnes, every single bookmaker and the ghost of Margaret Thatcher. That too should be enough.

As the heat has gone up and the light has gone all but out in the last few weeks, I have made the rather glib observation around the pub table that referendums prove that loathing politicians is crucial to the proper functioning of a parliamentary democracy. Blame this class of satisfied careerists for all our misfortunes and get on with our otherwise happy lives. A referendum, on the other hand, appears to make us hate one another, a dramatic twist in events for which the consequences might be profound.

And then, one of this satisfied careerist class was murdered on the street by a man high on the fumes of hate from the fire of his own lonely empowerment, and she was revealed not to be a satisfied careerist at all, but a young woman who was deeply unsatisfied by the state of the world and was minded to do something about it.

Jo Cox was drawn to politics for its power to do good, and it let her down. Maybe not tomorrow, but hopefully some time soon, it might be time to get back to it.

The EU referendum debate has so far been characterised by bias, distortion and exaggeration. So until 23 June we we’re running a series of question and answer features that explain the most important issues in a detailed, dispassionate way to help inform your decision.

What is Brexit and why are we having an EU referendum?

Does the UK need to take more control of its sovereignty?

Could the UK media swing the EU referendum one way or another?

Will the UK benefit from being released from EU laws?

Will we gain or lose rights by leaving the European Union?

Will Brexit mean that Europeans have to leave the UK?

Will leaving the EU lead to the break-up of the UK?

What will happen to immigration if there's Brexit?

Will Brexit make the UK more or less safe?

Will the UK benefit from being released from EU laws?

Will leaving the EU save taxpayers money and mean more money for the NHS?

What will Brexit mean for British tourists booking holidays in the EU?

Will Brexit help or damage the environment?

Will Brexit mean that Europeans have to leave the UK?

What will Brexit mean for British expats in Europe?