Читать книгу Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem - Tim Shipman, Tim Shipman - Страница 7

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 I have drawn on the unpublished transcripts of these conversations.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