BORIS’S DYNAMITE TEXT

REVEALED: How ‘reckless’ Johnson kept changing his mind on Brexit right up to the wire – and always expected to lose

SPECULATION over whether Boris Johnson will back Cameron or put himself at the head of the Brexit campaign is at fever pitch. Anxious Cameron is in No 10 awaiting news of Johnson’s intentions.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20 D-DAY FOR BORIS

I GO into a small group meeting in No10 with the PM, George Osborne, Kate Fall and Ed Llewellyn. DC’s trying to frame what he wants to say to Cabinet when he looks at his BlackBerry. He takes some time to read a message, elbows on his knees, glasses on the tip of his nose. With a resigned look, DC says: ‘Well… it looks like Out.’ In fact, the email left no room for doubt – it’s clear Boris is going for Out.

He then reads it out. It begins by saying how he has been a tortured soul, but he has to ‘go with his heart’. There’s a real concern that what he calls a ‘hate machine’ will try to destroy him after taking this decision, saying there are plenty out there who will want to attack, ‘some of whom will earn good money’. He suggests at the end that he thinks we will end up staying in.

There’s a moment when we absorb what has happened. Some look sick, others resigned. Some wonder if we should leak it. I am clear we should not. We don’t want to wind Boris up by starting a war and stealing his thunder. That will detract from our message and anger MPs.

Four hours after the initial message, at around 1pm, I get a call from DC, by now at his home in Witney, to make sure I am stopping anyone tempted to reveal that Boris sent a message saying he will support Leave. The reason is there’s been another text suggesting he might change his mind and back Remain. I’m struck by how reckless Boris is being – we could just blurt all of this out at any time. His big moment could end with him badly tarnished.

I ask DC what makes him so sure Boris is wobbling. He reads out some parts of the text including the phrase ‘depression is setting in’, followed by a clear sense that he’s reconsidering. Neither of us is left in any doubt.

I am struck by two things: Boris is genuinely in turmoil, flip-flopping within a matter of hours; and his cavalier approach.

He must understand that the stakes are even higher for DC than for him. So why is he unburdening himself in this way to the man who could be so damaged if he chooses to go for Leave?

The PM says: ‘If he is in that much doubt the logical thing to do is go with the status quo.’ Others are less charitable, questioning his motivation. The following day, the frenzy over Boris being about to announce his intentions reaches fever pitch.

He comes out just before 5pm with a typically chaotic press conference outside his home and announces he will be supporting Leave. All the key journalists are waiting – and must have been warned something was up a while ago. I get endless calls about when the PM knew. Boris’s team say he informed DC on Saturday morning. That’s true, but they are missing out the subsequent wobble, which we didn’t disclose.

I call the PM. He received a final text from Boris just nine minutes before he told the world. This makes it tricky for us in terms of letting people know what really happened. We agree I should say: ‘The final confirmation to the PM was made shortly before the announcement,’ though I won’t reveal the wobble. If pressed, I do reveal that final text came in the quarter of an hour before the press conference. Again, that doesn’t reveal there was a wobble.

Many in No 10 are smarting, annoyed that there has been so much dithering over something so crucial. A few believe it’s little more than a straightforward political calculation to ensure Boris has the best chance of sitting in No 10 in just a few months. Many refuse to believe that he is even an Outer, because much of his argument seems to be that voting Leave need not mean leaving, but another opportunity to renegotiate better terms and have a second referendum.

Late on, DC calls me just as I flop on to the sofa exhausted. He tells me that Boris’s final message was clear he doesn’t expect to win, believing Brexit will be ‘crushed’. He says Boris is really a ‘confused Inner’, and their previous conversations confirmed that view to him, with discussions about tactics to get the best possible deal. ‘He actually said he thought we could leave and still have a seat on the European Council – still making decisions.’ The bottom line is, this is the new reality. It will be a proper fight now, with the papers billing it as a ‘Clash of the Titans’ – the two biggest Conservatives locked in mortal combat.

One day in the middle of May, I sit round the fringes of political cabinet and observe Boris’s body language. He looks exhausted, his wide, pallid right hand spreadeagled across his face. I wonder if he is asleep.

The PM has been irritated by Boris attempting to make hay with the leaked Serco letter [a letter from the FTSE 250 company has been portrayed as part of a conspiracy – big business working with Government before an EU deal was done], coming close to accusing the PM of being corrupt. Michael Heseltine does an interview with the BBC and does not spare Boris. It is a relentless takedown.

But by the end of the month, I worry we are in serious trouble because of the blue-on-blue soap opera. It’s not that I think we’re going to lose, it’s more we may not be able to move forward if we win.

Gove and Boris have written an open letter to the PM, criticising him for clinging to his pledge to cut net migration to the tens of thousands. They say he’s ‘corroding public trust’.

It feels like an act of war, motivated by an intention to kill. It’s intensely personal, effectively accusing the PM of a lack of integrity. We would hesitate to say it about a leader of the Opposition, let alone someone in our own party.

DC thinks it ‘depressing beyond belief’ and ‘deeply maddening’. Some of my colleagues are angry that Gove is part of a Government that has this as its policy and Boris stood on it as part of the manifesto and yet they are attacking it. I understand their position, but also think it’s like calling men out for visiting a brothel by saying they are supposed to be Christians.

The following day, the Sunday papers are ugly. There is an evening meeting at the PM’s home in Oxfordshire. DC says: ‘People keep saying they think it will be all right – but I’m very worried.’

He runs through our response options to the Gove/Boris letter:

1: Be Zen, refuse to rise (as we are now). 2: Fight back. 3: Call out their strategy. We know what they’re up to and won’t fall for it.

He chalks off number 2 as making things worse. I’m reminded of the saying, ‘Don’t wrestle a pig. The pig likes it and you get covered in s**t.’

He also thinks 3 doesn’t work because it’s too clever. Which takes us back to 1. The next time they say anything, we call it ‘increasingly desperate’ and move on.

On Tuesday, May 31, the Leave campaign briefs they would stop the EU imposing VAT on fuel bills, saving the average consumer £60 a year. It removes any doubt that Leave is setting itself up as an alternative Government, complete with their own policies to be enacted should Cameron and Osborne lose. The words ‘attempted coup’ spring to mind. Others at No10 agree.

Then on Saturday, a 2,000-word letter signed by Boris and Gove is full of claims about Turkey joining the EU and how there’ll be 300,000 more jobs if we leave. It’s the most deceitful thing they’ve tried so far.

At a meeting with the PM during the week, I slump on the sofa outside his office next to George, who is sniggering as he reads a piece by Matthew Parris who says of Gove ‘… when he grows eloquent I can-

This feels like an act of war, motivated by an intention to kill

Boris is wobbling. His message says “depression is setting in”. It’s clear that he’s reconsidering

not quite banish from my nostrils the smell of burning witches’. George and I are unable to stop laughing.

After the referendum, I’m watching Boris’s speech on Thursday, June 30, in which he is expected to announce he is a Conservative leadership candidate. He tells his audience he has concluded he cannot be leader. There’s an eruption in No10. Someone texts: ‘OMFG!’

Gove announces he is standing. It’s either an act of extraordinary chutzpah, or it reveals a basic failure to understand that people will be horrified by his behaviour. The man who told everyone he believed in Boris enough to be his campaign manager, now effectively saying it was a terrible misjudgment. As Boris prepared his speech that morning after Gove had cut him off at the knees, his world must have felt as if it was crumbling around him.

In the leadership campaign, many finally saw the personal ambition and willingness to deceive they had not spotted in Gove before.

© Craig Oliver, 2016