I warned hyperbole was hurting us
THURSDAY, MAY 26
I WAKE at five, knowing I’m not getting back to sleep.
I plough through the pro-Brexit, anti-us stories – then send the PM a digest.
He picks up on my highlighting of The Times editorial saying we should be worried by how little people trust us over Europe, that we are hyperbolic, and suggest we got a better renegotiation deal than we did. We discuss whether we need to do something to correct this.
I arrive in Downing Street for a meeting chaired by George Osborne, but five minutes in, the PM wants to talk to us from the G7 summit in Japan. The No10 switchboard put the call through to Ed Llewellyn’s BlackBerry. He places it on a chair where Larry the Downing Street cat often sits. It is thick with white fur.
DC sounds cheerful. I tell him it’s immigration day – with deeply uncomfortable numbers about the possibility of another four million people coming to England in the next few years being published and net migration figures, which are now 330,000 (well over three times our target).
There’s no point in hiding it – the immigration numbers will be an unmitigated disaster for the Remain campaign, and our response is no more than a sticking plaster on a gaping (possibly fatal) wound.
Almost as concerning is that a commentariat view is growing that we are overdoing it on the economy. I sum this up in an email to him: ‘A view is crystallising in the commentariat that we are hyperbolic in terms of our focus on the economy if we leave. The consequence is that people are starting to feel they are being spun. The effect of this may be they become switched off, disengaged and don’t vote; or they believe the crap that it is all an establishment conspiracy and are driven into the arms of Leave.
‘This does not mean we should back off risk as a core message. Risk is fundamental to this campaign – and it must be clear in people’s minds as they vote. What we need to consider is our tone.
‘We almost have the opposite issue to the Election.
‘Then people thought you didn’t want it enough. Now we look like we want it too much.
‘I think we need to tap into your statesman quality more and shift tone a little.’