All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class
by Tim Shipman
(William Collins, £25)
In a book replete with memorable lines, Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman quotes an English worker telling a Leave [the EU] focus group that: “I’ve worked in a factory for the past 15 years, and I’m paid less than I was 15 years ago. All the people who I work with, who used to be mates of mine, are now Eastern Europeans. My kid’s the only one in his class speaking English. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Leave effectively targeted this man and people like him. Its pitch was essentially this: because we are members of the EU we have to allow free movement of migrants into Britain. Migrants are displacing British workers, driving down wages, putting pressure on housing and the NHS.
Only by leaving the EU can Britain introduce the border controls that will bring migration under control and protect British jobs and services.
That this argument did not stand up to scrutiny, was irrelevant in the age of ‘post-truth’ politics. Consistency mattered more than veracity: the point was to hammer home the message until it attained the status of accepted truth.
Shipman makes the important point that many Labour voters had no idea where the party stood on Europe. Jeremy Corbyn offered little guidance. He kept a low profile during the campaign, and failed to play an active part in the Stronger In campaign, beyond making a few tepidly pro-EU remarks.
Corbyn’s strategy wasn’t dissimilar to that employed by former Home Secretary Theresa May whom PM Cameron dubbed ‘submarine May’ because she kept ‘disappearing’ when words from her would have been useful. An unenthusiastic Remainer, but an ambitious politician, May largely sat out the campaign, positioning herself as non-partisan, someone who could unite the divided Tory party after June 23, as she is now attempting to do.
Would vigorous interventions by these prominent politicians have increased the vote for remaining in the EU? We’ll never know. But it’s safe to assume that it would have made some difference.
Remain’s economic arguments didn’t wash. British electors didn’t like being lectured by Eurocrats, bankers and industrialists – the very people they blamed (and not without reason) for the recent recession. And they did not take kindly to what they perceived as President Obama’s clumsy patronising attempt to sway voters.
Cameron himself must bear much of the blame for his defeat. Like his predecessors he did not do enough to educate the British people about Europe. He underestimated the strength of Eurosceptic feeling within his party. His continual criticism of the EU during his public life helped prepare the ground for his defeat in the referendum. He did not secure the concessions on migration from the EU that might have swung waverers.
Objective, well-sourced, and thorough, All Out War reads like the definitive account of a bitterly-fought campaign. The consequences of the outcome are still obscure. Worse struggles seem to be in the offing, not just for the UK, but for Ireland too.