Читать книгу All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class - Tim Shipman, Tim Shipman - Страница 20

The moment Jeremy Corbyn revealed what he really thought about the European Union came at a hustings during the Labour leadership contest in Warrington – the final such event organised by the party. It was Saturday, 25 July 2015, and the battle to succeed Ed Miliband was entering a crucial phase. The Blairite Liz Kendall, after an early flurry of media attention, had faded. Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper were locked in an ever more bitter battle to be the flagwaver of the party moderates, the volume increasing as the contested ideological space narrowed. To the incredulity of the party’s power-brokers, Corbyn, a sixty-six-year-old veteran from the hard left who had spent his career in exile on the backbenches, had emerged as the favourite to win.

Corbyn was a very unlikely leader. A rebellious backbencher, to the point of parody, for thirty years, he had only run because other members of the hard left like John McDonnell and Diane Abbott had already tried and failed. He only made the ballot paper because grandees like Margaret Beckett and Sadiq Khan had loaned him their nominations in order to ‘widen the debate’. Now he was barrelling to victory on a wave of support from enthusiastic young leftists who admired his plain speaking and apparent personal decency – a sort of ageing Forrest Gump – backed up by Bennites who learned how to fight procedural battles in the 1980s and entryists from Trotskyite fringe groups. Having found no candidate they thought could win a general election, Labour activists resolved to elect the one who made them feel best about themselves in defeat.

Much ink has been spilled about Corbyn’s true views on Europe, but no one seriously disputes that for much of his career he was a dedicated and consistent opponent of British membership of the European Union. In the 1975 referendum Corbyn voted to leave. Labour’s attitude to Europe changed when Jacques Delors, then president of the European Commission, made a keynote speech at the 1988 Trades Union Congress and outlined plans for ‘social Europe’, where workers’ rights were enshrined in international law and social benefits were provided across the Continent. But Corbyn remained a Eurosceptic. Indeed, he became a close friend of the Tory Palaeosceptics campaigning against the Maastricht Treaty. ‘Jeremy is a rigidly stuck in the seventies politician,’ says the then shadow lord chancellor Charlie Falconer. ‘That had made him – and he was quite proud of this – quite a pal of the Maastricht rebels. They had always counted Jeremy in as part of their calculations. Jeremy is somebody who almost prides himself on his good relations with obstreperous right-wing Tory rebels.’

At the Warrington hustings, Burnham, Cooper, Kendall and Corbyn were all asked directly if they would ‘rule out voting “No” or campaigning for “No”’ ahead of the referendum. The first three all ruled it out; Corbyn did not: ‘No I wouldn’t rule it out … Because Cameron quite clearly follows an agenda which is about trading away workers’ rights, is about trading away environmental protection, is about trading away much of what is in the social chapter.’

If that part of his answer was at least sympathetic to notions of a social Europe, he went on to make clear that his objection to the EU stemmed from a belief that it was too friendly to big companies, the ‘capitalist club’ that other left-wingers had criticised before Delors came along: ‘The EU also knowingly, deliberately maintains a number of tax havens and tax-evasion posts around the Continent – Luxembourg, Monaco and a number of others. I think we should be making demands: universal workers’ rights, universal environmental protection, end the race to the bottom on corporate taxation, end the race to the bottom in working wage protection.’ He concluded, ‘We should be negotiating on those demands rather than saying blanketly we’re going to support whatever Cameron comes out with in one, two years’ time, whenever he finally decides to hold this referendum.’

Corbyn’s views caused a crisis at the top of the party because they were at odds with Labour policy, confirmed by the acting leader Harriet Harman after the general election, in two key regards. Harman, backed up by Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, and Charlie Falconer, had ditched Labour’s opposition to holding a referendum, which some saw as a contributory factor in Ed Miliband’s defeat. She had also confirmed that the party supported Cameron’s plan to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with Brussels and the Referendum Bill to set up the process. Most importantly, she had confirmed that in all circumstances Labour would campaign to stay in.

‘We did that on the basis that we’d lost a general election, and the Tories had got an overall majority,’ said Falconer. ‘Therefore the right thing to do was to accept that. But we did it explicitly on the basis that we were very pro-Europe.’ There was no opposition in the shadow cabinet.

Harman’s other key decision was that she wanted to set up a Labour campaign separate from the umbrella Remain effort which became Stronger In. Many Labour politicians believed it had been a mistake to campaign alongside the Conservatives during the Scottish independence referendum. Labour’s involvement in Better Together had led to them being branded ‘tartan Tories’ by Nationalists, and was blamed for the party losing all but one of its Scottish seats in the 2015 general election. ‘Her view was that Better Together and Scotland had been such a disaster that no cross-party thing could ever work again,’ a Labour official said.

Interestingly, even before he was recruited by Stronger In, Will Straw had written to Harman on 10 June saying this was a mistake. He pointed out that while association with the Conservatives in Scotland had been counterproductive, ‘Labour has the need to show economic credibility in England to gain votes from Conservatives. Part of our rehabilitation with the electorate could take place if our leadership shared a platform with respected centrist voices from other parties.’ He also warned, with some prescience, that ‘an isolated and underfunded “Labour Yes” campaign could potentially undermine efforts to keep Britain in the EU’, since failure to canvass and encourage ‘Labour voters in low-turnout areas’ could mean many would ‘not see the case for voting and stay at home’.

Straw was ignored, and Alan Johnson was put in charge of a totally separate ‘Labour In for Britain’ campaign. Johnson, the mild-mannered former home secretary, had been happily writing critically acclaimed memoirs and periodically resisting requests to lead a coup against Ed Miliband when he was asked to become the campaign’s chairman: ‘Hilary Benn and Harriet Harman nabbed me in the voting lobby and asked if I’d lead the campaign. I said I’ll lead it if it’s an unequivocal Remain campaign.’ Johnson asked Harman, ‘Do you want to wait until we have a new leader?’ and she replied, ‘No, let’s get going.’

Working with Johnson were Brian Duggan, a personable, ginger-haired Labour official who had worked with Labour MEPs, and Sam Bacon, who cut his teeth with Chris Bryant, one of the most pro-European members of the shadow cabinet.

When Johnson saw Corbyn’s equivocal comments at Warrington, he knew immediately that they could be a major problem, and was quick to demand clarity. He told the Observer that weekend: ‘The Labour Party ditched its anti-European stance in the mid-eighties, at the beginning of our long march back to electability. The membership has a right to know if any leadership candidate wants to take the party (and the country) back to its isolationist past.’1 Labour’s Europe spokesman, Pat McFadden, went further, suggesting that Corbyn was lining up ‘with Nigel Farage on a nationalist nostalgia trip.’2

After his appointment, Johnson saw three tasks ahead of him: ‘Our job in the campaign was to unite the party, to make the argument, to get the vote out. Johnson believed Corbyn was still an Outer: ‘I watched the leadership campaign with great interest. We all knew Jeremy was against [the EU]. He’s not changed his mind about anything since he was fifteen; why would he change his mind on that?’

When Corbyn won a landslide victory on 12 September, one of the priorities of his new frontbench colleagues was to get him to come clean about his views, and to use Labour’s annual conference to confirm the party’s pro-EU stance. ‘Jeremy had said, over the course of his leadership campaign, that he was unsure as to whether he would campaign to remain or leave,’ a Labour official said. ‘There was a mood from different sections in the party that he had to be clear about what his own personal position was.’

Corbyn was not just under pressure from the party establishment. His closest ally John McDonnell, who he was to appoint shadow chancellor, wanted him to keep Labour out of the referendum debate altogether until Cameron returned with his deal in February. A source who worked closely with Corbyn said, ‘John McDonnell was most hostile to the EU, and he would have been pleased if we’d been campaigning to leave. John argued forcefully that we should say nothing until February.’ Corbyn would have to choose. But despite his big win in the leadership election, the appointment of his first shadow cabinet was a shambles.

On Sunday, 13 September, amid farcical scenes, journalists were able to listen at the door of Corbyn’s office for news of the latest moves as one moderate frontbencher after another – including the leadership candidates Cooper and Kendall – announced that they would not serve in his shadow cabinet. Those who were prepared to stay on vowed to extract concessions on Europe.

Charlie Falconer, who met the new leader in the Commons office of Rosie Winterton, Labour’s chief whip, on the Sunday afternoon, was the first up. He said afterwards, ‘A very important part of the shadow cabinet formation, which Rosie orchestrated, was that a term of a lot of us joining was that Jeremy would support Remain in the European referendum. It was very well known that Jeremy’s attitude towards the European Union had always been that it was a capitalist club, which he opposed. When Corbyn asked him to be shadow justice secretary, Falconer said, ‘That’s ridiculous, because we disagree on Trident, we disagree on the European Union, we disagree on economic policy, we disagree on everything.’

Corbyn had run his campaign offering to paper over profound differences of approach with a ‘new politics’ in which debate would be encouraged and dissent allowed. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he told Falconer. ‘We’re going to be in a new era where you can all express your views.’ Still unconvinced, Falconer made it clear that on the EU, things had to go beyond free expression – the policy had to be adhered to: ‘The European Union issue is going to be a totally different issue. I can’t be in the shadow cabinet if the position is that we’re opposing or you’re opposing remaining in the European Union. It’s absolutely key.’ Corbyn’s answer was vague, but apparently affirmative: ‘That would be no problem.’ He suggested that he was prepared to support the Remain cause as a way of resisting right-wing policies.

Hilary Benn told Corbyn he would only serve as shadow foreign secretary in the same circumstances Falconer had outlined. Vernon Coaker and Luciana Berger took the same view, and secured Corbyn’s agreement that Alan Johnson would continue as the campaign chief.

Even after the arm-twisting, Corbyn still sounded unsure when he addressed a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party the following Monday evening, telling MPs, ‘We can’t just give Cameron a blank cheque.’ Fearing that the agreed position was already being eroded, Pat McFadden, the shadow Europe minister, made it clear that he would resign unless there was an unambiguous commitment to campaign to stay. On Wednesday, 16 September, the day of Corbyn’s first appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions, his chief of staff Simon Fletcher suggested getting the top people together – Benn, McDonnell and Angela Eagle, the shadow business secretary – to agree a joint position. The new leader returned to his office ‘really full of himself, his chest puffed out’, sat down with his arm draped over the back of the chair and promptly deferred to his shadow chancellor. Addressing McDonnell, he said, ‘John, do you want to take us through your logic on this?’

McDonnell observed that there had been media reports that the Tories wanted to water down employment rights. ‘In order to stop them from doing so we should take an anti-position on the referendum until we are satisfied it doesn’t have any of this stuff,’ he said. Corbyn’s closest ally was advocating backing Leave when the party had already been campaigning to remain for three months. Benn immediately exclaimed, ‘That is untenable! Conference has reasserted that we are a party for In. That’s not going to happen.’ McDonnell replied, ‘Fine, fine; we won’t take a position.’ But Eagle said, ‘We can’t not take a position.’ She warned, ‘We are going to lose unless we campaign.’ At this McDonnell ‘got really angry’, a source present said. ‘His jaw started jutting out. He did not want to be told he was wrong.’ Eventually Corbyn gave way, agreeing to a joint statement with Hilary Benn that ‘Labour will be campaigning in the referendum for the UK to stay in the European Union.’ Cynics noticed that Corbyn stopped short of saying he would personally campaign in that way.

In an attempt to make things more secure, the frontbenchers ensured that a line was written into a document called the ‘PLP briefing’, which gives statements some constitutional force, stating that Labour would campaign for Remain. Alan Johnson called the document ‘sacred, like the Dead Sea Scrolls of the party’.

The joint statement was written by Benn’s aide Imran Ahmed, who had devised a slogan to help frontbenchers memorise the case for staying in, which he called ‘JIGSI’ – jobs, investment, growth, security and influence in the world. In the months ahead Labour policy advisers became accustomed to Ahmed singing ‘Getting jigsy with it,’ and doing a dance to ram home the argument.

If Benn’s team thought they had Corbyn’s acquiescence, they were swiftly disappointed. An op ed article for the Financial Times, under both Corbyn and Benn’s bylines, was completely rewritten by Seumas Milne until it was unrecognisable. The original draft stressed the positives: ‘The EU’s single market offers the best hope of cooperating across borders to support workers’ and to ‘protect consumers’, and ‘enhances the UK’s influence in the world’ – straight out of the JIGSI playbook. The Milne-Corbyn version, which was published, stressed the ‘widely shared feeling that Europe is something of an exclusive club, rather than a democratic forum for social progress’, condemned the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and observed, ‘The treatment of Greece has appalled many who consider themselves pro-European internationalists.’ Benn was ‘horrified’ when he saw the article. A Labour official said, ‘They wanted to argue Europe was shit but let’s stay in it. Jeremy didn’t win his campaign by saying, “I’m old and disgusting and I look like a hobo that’s pissed himself.” He said, “I’m great, look at me, I’m Jesus Christ.”’

Alan Johnson wanted a reassurance that he would still be leading the campaign. He met Corbyn the Thursday after his election. Johnson found him vague, unfocused and keen to talk about almost anything other than the matter in hand: ‘We had a conversation more about books. He was very interested in my books, he’s tried to write five or six himself. He never actually said, “I want you to carry on with this job,” or anything about Europe at all really. We just had a natter, and I was happy coming out that he hadn’t sacked me! I wasn’t really trying to get anything from it, I was trying to get a feel for getting him into a position where he’d come out and say “I’m for remaining in the EU.”’

If Johnson had known how difficult it would be to get Corbyn to say that – or even to get another meeting with him, he might have tried a little harder to pin the leader down.

One reason why Corbyn had been prepared to bow to the overwhelming pressure in the party to approve official support for Remain was that the trade unions were firm supporters of the EU. Over the summer Brian Duggan put Alan Johnson, a former postman who rose to be general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, in front of as many union bosses as he could. Since he was running an independent campaign, Johnson was able to reassure them that they would not have to ‘hold hands with David Cameron and George Osborne’. A campaign source said, ‘We needed to get as many of the unions as possible on the side of Remain, both from a political point of view, because they could talk to their members, but also from a financial point of view, so they could make active financial contributions and donations to the campaign.’

Johnson’s key phone call was to Len McCluskey, the boss of Unite, Britain’s biggest union and Labour’s biggest donor. Unite would eventually contribute around a quarter of the campaign’s £4 million budget.

One reason why most unions got on board is that a secret operation had been under way over the summer to ensure that David Cameron dropped from his renegotiation any attempt to repatriate control of social and employment legislation. In January there had been reports that the prime minister intended to demand an opt-out from EU employment social protection laws such as the working-time directive and the agency workers’ directive. By August the idea was dead. Senior figures in Labour and the trade union movement, including Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, made private representations to Downing Street making it clear that they would not support the campaign if social and employment legislation was thrown into doubt. Eventually Ivan Rogers, the UK’s permanent representative in Brussels, sent word that ‘they weren’t going to be part of the renegotiation’. A Labour source confirmed, ‘We said, “We cannot guarantee Labour’s political support for a remain campaign or for a remain vote if you do this.” Cameron wasn’t going to go near it, because we put sufficient pressure on him. That allowed us to go back to the trade unions and say, “You need to front up for Remain.”’

The final piece in the Labour jigsaw was to reaffirm Labour’s policy at Corbyn’s first party conference in charge, to bind his hands going into the campaign. First they had to kill off a motion tabled by the GMB union that would have delayed Labour from making any decision until after Cameron had his deal – the same argument John McDonnell had been making. That would have been followed by a special conference to determine Labour’s position. ‘That would have been an absolute disaster,’ says Alan Johnson. ‘That would have meant the Labour Party had nothing to say on this issue on a timetable determined by the PM until he came back in February, then we’d have had to scramble around just as the campaign was beginning. It was a nonsense.’

Johnson spoke to Paul Kenny, the outgoing general secretary of the GMB, who said, ‘Don’t worry, Alan, we’ll sort it out.’ Kenny went to work with Pat McFadden and agreed that the GMB would work to pass a differently-worded motion which summarised Labour’s existing pro-EU policy. It ended up passing without a vote, and established two important principles. The key section read: ‘Conference supports the membership of the EU as a strategic as well as an economic asset to Britain and the Labour Party approves of UK membership of the EU.’ Secondly, it made clear that Labour would not share a platform with the Tories, and reinforced the support for EU employment rights: ‘Conference opposes working with any campaign or faction in the forthcoming Referendum which supports or advocates cutting employment or social rights for people working in the United Kingdom.’

The Europhile faction was amazed that they had got the motion through without meddling from Corbyn’s advisers, particularly Seumas Milne, his director of communications, and Andrew Fisher, his director of policy. ‘It pulled one over on his advisers,’ said Johnson, ‘because Jeremy’s advisers – Seumas Milne, Andy Fisher – absolutely wanted to leave. They might be leaders of the Labour Party, but they’ve got the hammer and sickle tattooed somewhere.’

Another source said Corbyn’s office was too busy enjoying his leadership lap of honour to understand the significance of what had happened: ‘They hadn’t realised that we had locked in Labour to a pro-European remain position.’

Labour In for Britain finally launched at the start of December. Alan Johnson was satisfied with where he had got to: ‘We’ve got the leader – who’s not in favour of the EU – saying he’ll campaign for it. And we’ve got a unanimous decision on a very good motion.’ When the launch occurred, though, ‘Jeremy didn’t come anywhere near it.’

That was only the start of Johnson’s problems, but as David Cameron watched from afar that autumn he had every hope of having the Labour Party on-side when he completed his renegotiation. The prime minister’s bigger problem was that he was facing a well-coordinated campaign of attacks from his own benches to water down the Referendum Bill.