Why Leave won and Remain lost

IN referendums there has to be a loser, and where there is a loser there must be a failed strategy. Right? Well, kind of. The truth of the EU referendum is that neither campaign was particularly effective.

However, the Leave team won and so history will tell us that they ran the better campaign – that’s politics.

There were, for sure, aspects of the Leave campaign that worked well.

The most striking success is that, after the official designation was given to the more moderate Vote Leave outfit, it became well-messaged and disciplined.

Some people did not like Vote Leave’s gravitation to an immigration-based rhetoric, but they gave the message in a disciplined way.

Crucially, they left their party politics at the door, and this unification is the main reason they won both the three-on-three TV debates.

And the presence of Michael Gove, offering intellectual rigour, decency and dependability, was vital – without him, I suspect they’d have lost.

And what of remain? Many say that Project Fear lost them the referendum, but I would offer one defence – all incumbent campaigns, in elections and referendums, must highlight the risks of change.

The key is to do so without going over the top and indulging in fantastic scaremongering.

Ruth Davidson got this spot on, but too many of her colleagues overstepped the mark and they cost votes as a result.

Voters tend to know when they’re being led up the garden path.

A final lesson for the Remain campaign is that they proved themselves to be utterly unable to lay their party politics to one side for the greater good.

Labour remainers, in particular, spent at least as much time during set-piece debates criticising the Conservative government as they did lauding the EU.

Remain didn’t lose for one big reason – rather, for many small ones.