The seven-year long Rejoin campaign
The unpersoning of Boris Johnson seems to be part of the long game
It’s almost seven years to the day since the Brexit vote – yet Brexit is still very much a live issue, cropping up virtually every day in association with some disaster or problem.
This is no accident. For in fact the campaigning never stopped. A bit like with Scottish independence, a losing referendum campaign solidified a political alliance, gave it something to aim at and a clear picture of who its opponents are; a politics of purpose to gather around.
As the campaigning barrister and fox-beater Jolyon Maugham put it in 2019,
I’ve found a sense of moral purpose. I think a lot of people are experiencing a similar epiphany. We are learning that there are no grownups in the room.
The ‘us’ of the ‘adults in the room’ had lost, but the group still had all those advantages it had before, yet not fully exploited in the cause: established, familiar narratives; pretty much the whole Establishment on board, with the crucial economic and financial Establishment at its heart; dominance in the institutions of state, including the para-state of ‘independent’ quangoes; an organised civil society, including political parties in the European Parliament, that had widely benefited from EU funding and patronage; a command of the sources of authoritative assertion like academia; and much else besides.
To those things have been added the weight of EU power and influence since the vote: helping to create a cacophony of opinion and fact (or ‘evidence’) all leaning in one direction, seeking certain results and doing what they can to generate and highlight them.
Seven years on and Brexit still trends virtually every day on British Twitter as its opponents, in Britain, in Europe and the United States seek to tie everything bad that has happened in Britain to it – with quite a degree of success, as seen in the regular polling.
Indeed Brexit has come to serve as a catch-all for everything bad that has happened since the vote: and plenty has happened which is bad. Brexit can be blamed for anything and everything, serving as a state of things, Brexit Britain, rather than a discrete event or thing. As something with no definable boundaries it can be attached to anything you like. The other day the QC leading the Covid inquiry blamed the lack of pandemic preparation on planning for a No-Deal Brexit. Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney has blamed high inflation on Brexit. Even Mad Vlad Putin’s war in Ukraine has been blamed by some on Brexit, despite properly starting in 2014.
As a source of causation, this is a gift that keeps on giving.
A Remainer blob conspiracy?
Some denigrate such thoughts as conjuring up a non-existent ‘blob conspiracy’. This sounds like the sensible, mature thing to say.
For my part, while I wouldn’t normally use the word ‘conspiracy’, at the very least I think there’s no lack of evidence for a ‘blob’ which is resolutely opposed to Brexit and wields a lot of political power, both in the two chambers of Parliament and widely across the institutions of state and our top-down civil society.
In researching this piece, I’ve gone back into some of my old documents about Brexit and the EU. There are ten of them. One, on the Remain (now ‘rejoin’) campaigning element, stretches to 74 pages – including the supporting roles played by the Civil Service and other institutions.
You can’t generate all of this stuff from a phantom.
In 2018, Bloomberg published an article entitled, ‘Inside the Secret Plot to stop Brexit’. It started with the following hushed words,
Early every Wednesday morning, 15 people leave their homes and travel separately to a secret location in central London, where, over cups of filter coffee and plates of cookies, they plot to stop Brexit. Those who gather, bleary-eyed, in the meeting room are a mix of women and men, old and young. They include politicians and activists, both professional and little-known, though their identities haven’t been formally released.
The article was about the Best for Britain group, which is still going but now publicly directs itself to defeating the Conservative Government rather than to rejoining per se - though this changed positioning speaks of the classic nexus of spin doctors and polling, focus groups plus intensive committee meetings designed to hit the sweet spot of public opinion.
“Some involved privately confide that the access to senior EU politicians has been “extraordinary.”, the Bloomberg piece noted. Chuka Umunna (remember him), commented: “If a crisis is precipitated and there were a general election, or a new national poll, we would be granted the time to do that.”*
*Note there the language of causation rather than action, determinism rather than agency, passive rather than active voice – ‘is precipitated’ rather than ‘we precipitate’.
Tony Blair lobbied President Macron of France to be tough on Britain during negotiations in order to prevent a proper departure from the EU – something Macron certainly delivered.
I don’t know about you, but all of this sounds rather like a sort of conspiracy to me, albeit the word conjures up small and secretive cabals plotting to overthrow governments, while this is not small and much of it is quite visible.
To this day, the European Movement organisation which has taken over leadership of ‘Rejoin’ efforts, employs 15 staff and an array of leading political and communications folk, led by Michael ‘Hezza’ Heseltine, former Conservative minister and European Commissioner. This speaks of no shortage of funding, replicating what Best for Britain and People’s Vote managed to mobilise (George Soros amongst the big funders for the former).
As Lord Malloch-Brown has written on behalf of Best for Britain: “While we are not in an election period we can accept donations from individuals and companies based both in the UK and abroad…”
This thing is not going away; it is active and pressing buttons all over official and media Britain and beyond.
The unpersoning of Boris Johnson
And this brings us to Boris Johnson and his defenestration.
I’ve got to be honest here: all the #partygate stuff has interested me hardly at all. I’ve mostly tried to avoid it. The thing itself is inherently uninteresting to me, all about whether someone was in the room when cake was eaten, whether he ate cake, whether he knew about parties being had in Downing Street during Covid restrictions. Etc, etc.
Sure, maybe he broke his own rules and maybe he was ‘economical with the truth’ in discussing it. And maybe some Tory advisers and civil servants took the piss as well. But I’ve got to be honest, I don’t really care. My instinct is that the thing itself is more about Boris’ carelessness than anything else: and carelessness isn’t a great qualification for a political leader but it doesn’t seem like a crime of the century. Yet there is a concerted effort to treat it precisely like that, which seems sinister to me (even if he lied, I mean it’s as if no politician has ever lied about anything – there is some serious dishonesty going on here about the whole thing, widely, in concert).
They are really trying to destroy this man: to make him an unperson in his own country, unable to show his face and live a vaguely normal life without suffering harassment and abuse.
And it seems clear to me that this is closely related to Boris’ leading role in Brexit. All the talk from leading figures about the ‘damage he has done … to the country’, it all flows back to Brexit; it pretty much all comes from the usual suspects too. Keeping the focus on Boris, keeping hounding him for whatever real or imagined infraction, also keeps Brexit itself in the spotlight, allowing the media to wheel out all the old ‘grandees’ to say again what they’ve said a hundred times already.
I don’t know whether all this has been orchestrated from a central position. Often these frenzies take on a momentum of their own. However I remember how, after the Brexit vote happened, some Remain campaign people were very annoyed about how David Cameron and George Osborne had refused to sanction personal attacks on Boris and other Tories involved on the Leave side.
It was important they said, to get some stabs in at the leader.
Well, they've certainly got their way now.
The campaign rumbles on, seven years and counting.
While I commend your style, Ben, I find some of your points quite lacking. For one thing, you've done nothing to support the argument that the UK isn't in a worse position since/because of Brexit, only poked a bit of fun at those who have claimed the opposite (your caricatures are of course well-picked). Secondly, you've highlighted an undeniable conspiracy by some to stop/reverse Brexit, but you completely ignore the well-documented Tufton St conspiracy which headed and bankrolled the entire campaign in the run up to the referendum.
Lastly, the reason I'm commenting, is your complete disregard ("I don't really care") for Boris Johnson's dishonesty and complete lack of integrity. The devious self-servant has completely abandoned any duty to his constituents and instead spent the last year making his millions privately, completely demonstrating to anybody who, apparently like yourself, hadn't already realised that it was all opportunism for him. Nobody is trying to 'unperson' him - rather, we should all just recognise him for the terrible, egotistical person that he is.
Really enjoyed this piece. So refreshing to hear the increasingly rare sceptical view. JRM will be next to be unpersoned though he may prove harder as substantially well off and independent and highly articulate.