Civil war in the Battle for Britain

Clashing egos, secret briefings, a tide of leaks and Darling’s furious threat to quit. A united front at Better Together? Not likely...

AN unlikely alliance of politicians and volunteers, Better Together should have been united in its bid to stop the break-up of Britain. Astonishingly, it was instead riven with jealousy, petty rivalry and political ambitions. Here, political journalist JOE PIKE, who had unprecedented access to Better Together’s inner sanctum, reveals how the desperate battle to win the hearts and minds of Scottish voters was fought by an organisation very much at war with itself.

IT was the beginning of a diabolical weekend for Better Together, captured by the screaming headline ‘Campaign to save the UK in crisis’. The date was Friday, March 28, 2014, and The Scottish Daily Mail’s political editor, Alan Roden, had an exclusive story that began: ‘Leaders of Scotland’s No campaign are holding crisis talks today as they battle internal splits and rising support for independence.’

The previous critical Mail article about the organisation had been before Christmas, when ‘ senior Conservatives’ described Alistair Darling as ‘useless’ and ‘comatose’. This time, the paper’s reference to ‘Better Together board members’ made them the focus of suspicion. Someone needed to track down the source and stem the flow of damaging leaks.

Later that day, Better Together’s board met secretly in Glasgow’s Jurys Inn Hotel, away from the campaign’s HQ in order to avoid further Press interest.

‘In a testament to the Better Together way, the room hadn’t even been booked properly,’ complained one attendee. The meeting had been originally scheduled to discuss marketing strategy but the morning’s Daily Mail article transformed the atmosphere.

Mr Darling surprised everyone. He was enraged. ‘If this continues, I’m going,’ he said. ‘I don’t need the hassle. I don’t need people inside this room briefing against me. If you do, I’m going to quit.’

‘It was brilliant,’ said one board member. ‘Normally if you have insomnia, Alistair’s your man, but this time he got really angry.’

Mr Darling had recognised the danger of any breakdown of trust at the top of the organisation and knew he had to stamp it out.

Around the meeting table, nobody named the suspected leaker. Rob Shorthouse, the group’s director of communications, had been tasked with tracking down the source.

All fingers pointed to Craig Harrow, convener of the Scottish Lib Dems. ‘We acted shocked,’ remembered one board member. ‘It’s terrible; who could do such a thing?

‘But we all knew it was Craig. His views were correct but a story in the Mail was hardly going to help.’

The anger privately directed towards Mr Harrow for his apparent i ndiscretion was palpable. ‘ He reminds me of Penfold in Danger Mouse, the bespectacled hamster,’ said one colleague. ‘And he’s got more faces than a town hall clock.’

Part of the frustration was that Mr Harrow was one of the most experienced and knowledgeable campaigners on the board and, more importantly, Mr Darling respected him. ‘Alistair was furious,’ claimed a close colleague, ‘because Harrow wasn’t in some loose orbit of the organisation. He had done a lot of the heavy lifting.’

To add to the difficulties, in Aberdeen, Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie was critical of the campaign’s tone and launched a ‘sunshine strategy’ for the referendum – a thinly veiled attack on the negativity of Better Together. ‘People need to know there’s something great about the United Kingdom,’ he told reporters.

Mr Rennie’s predecessor as leader, Tavish Scott, was more direct in his criticism. ‘I don’t think Alistair Darling is pulling that whole swathe of people back into definitely voting for the Union,’ he said.

That evening, the Better Together team had a rare night off. But it was soon ruined. David Ross, its head of press, was at a family party flicking through his phone when he spotted an article on the Guardian website that made him feel physically sick.

Nicholas Watt, the paper’s impeccably connected chief political correspondent, had spoken to a UK Government minister who had said that ‘of course there would be a currency union’ if Scots voted for independence.

Mr Watt had rung the Downing Street press office, instead of the No campaign in Scotland, for a comment in response to his story, so Better Together had no prior warning. Mr Ross i mmediately phoned round his senior colleagues, who were soon inundated with calls and texts from journalists.

‘It’s p***. I don’t know who said it. It’s not true,’ was the exasperated response to media inquiries.

Meanwhile, the Yes campaign, long criticised for not putting forward a Plan B on currency, seized on the story as proof they could keep the pound. ‘It was the worst moment by a million miles,’ moaned one Better Together campaigner.

‘Our whole argument was based on currency. If that fell, the whole thing could crumble.’

The Guardian story described the ministerial source as ‘at the heart of the pro-Union campaign’ and someone who would play a ‘central role in the negotiations over the break- up of the UK if there were a Yes vote’.

With the Scottish Lib Dem conference taking place in Aberdeen, hundreds of miles away from Westminster, fingers were soon pointed at the party’s ‘moronic ministers’.

Suspicions later turned on Tory Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin – normally kept away from the media – and Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond. The l atter claimed that as he was in the US, he was innocent, to which the No campaign privately pointed out that geographical distance in 2014 would not preclude communication with journalists.

Mr Darling was furious at such a serious lapse coming from the UK Government i tself. Yet, having spent decades in Westminster, he was well aware of Mr Watt’s beguiling technique: never asking questions, just chatting and waiting for his next exclusive. The following day, Mr Darling phoned the editors of Sunday newspapers to try to talk down the story.

In such an unrelenting campaign, it was difficult to retain the confidence of all parties, particularly when the polls were hesitant.

And, more concerning, the media view of the No campaign had also changed. ‘ Journalists were bored with Better Together being ahead,’ admitted a senior staff member. ‘It didn’t matter what we did, the narrative was that we were rubbish.’

Better Together also found it almost impossible to combat the Yes campaign’s mindset. ‘We were trying to put forward facts to convince people who have ideologies with no interest in fact,’ claimed one senior figure. ‘It was infuriating, like whack-a-mole.’

Another campaign chief argued, with an equally inspired simile: ‘It was like a monster horror film. You plunge a stake through their heart but they sit up in the coffin again and again.’

Over the first four months of 2014, even with the early interventions on

currency, opinion polls suggested Yes Scotland increased its support base from 33 to 37 per cent. In the same period, the No campaign slid from 48 to 45 per cent.

Yes Scotland argued that this proved the manifesto for an independent Scotland in the White Paper was sinking in and they were winning the arguments.

Adding to the challenges, Gordon Aikman, Better Together’s director of research, had been diagnosed with the degenerative neurological condition motor neurone disease, and had to step back from many of his duties. Mr Aikman had been the point of contact for many in the UK Government, and his illness left campaign director Blair McDougall even more extended.

‘It was hard to keep motivated,’ explained a senior campaigner. ‘Everyone talked about how c**p we were; many people were ill, Gordon being diagnosed upset a lot

of people and had a profound effect on the mood.’

With no money to expand the team, briefings against the boss, shifting polls and personality clashes, many were pushed to their limits. ‘It really was so tough,’ said one involved. ‘It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.’

In another unexpected twist, a new member of the research team, who had recently returned from working in Sierra Leone, fell ill and was hospitalised until ebola was ruled out.

Yet, among the strain of spring 2014, there was one moment of sheer joy. It was long past midnight on Tuesday, April 29, 2014, and Mr McDougall had just got to sleep at his home in Glasgow’s South Side after checking the front pages of the Scottish first editions.

That was until he was woken by his heavily pregnant wife. Mary McDougall was starting to have contractions. After making their way downstairs, the couple phoned the hospital. ‘You’ve got a good bit of time yet,’ they were told, ‘so start thinking about coming i n but there’s no hurry.’

Mr McDougall went to brush his teeth, but suddenly his focused calm turned to sheer panic. He heard his wife screaming and, all of a sudden, it started to happen. He phoned 999. ‘Wash your hands,’ the operator said. ‘Take off your ring and get ready to deliver.’ Mr McDougall had one of the most high-pressure jobs in UK politics, without the added challenge of DIY midwifery. ‘Our first child was a 70hour labour, so we were a bit complacent,’ he later explained.

An addition to the clan just before the start of the intense final summer months of the campaign was not intentional. ‘Our first child was born with IVF and the result of long- term planning,’ he told a reporter. Roaring with laughter, he added: ‘The second one certainly wasn’t.’ The ambulance arrived with minutes to spare and at 3.15am, Gus McDougall was born on the living-room floor.

It was a rare moment of happiness in an otherwise arduous campaign: a reminder that Scots would be deciding not just their own future but the future of their children and grandchildren.

And it was also a crashing illustration that life continued outside the bubble of the independence referendum.

Project Fear: How An Unlikely Alliance Left A Kingdom United, But A Country Divided, by Joe Pike, will be published September 18, by Biteback Publishing, price £12.99