By Anthony Barnett
There is only a “least bad time” for raising the question of who should lead a movement you are backing to the hilt. My movement is the People’s Vote campaign for a referendum on Theresa May’s deal. Should it be called, we will face the question of who will be the designated organisation, receiving the lion’s share of funding. On balance I think it is best to pose this question now.
I’m still afraid that May’s deal will pass, with some tweaks to the backstop. But the welcome turn in Labour’s approach, plus the fragmentation of the political parties, means that the Commons could decide that May’s deal must be ratified by the voters. In which case, the People’s Vote becomes a reality and staying in the EU a genuine possibility.
So who should frame the remain agenda of a second campaign?
In the 2016 referendum, Vote Leave was designated as the lead organisation for Brexit and defined the argument around Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and their deceitful battle bus and compelling slogan, take back control. The designated remain campaign was Britain Stronger in Europe, headed by David Cameron and overseen outside Downing Street by Peter Mandelson. It blocked positive arguments for EU membership and pushed a lacklustre Project Fear.
Today, Britain Stronger in Europe has changed its name to Open Britain and plays a controlling role in the People’s Vote campaign. The campaign’s communication strategy, headed by Tom Baldwin, who worked for Ed Miliband, has been brilliant. Baldwin set out to inspire an “insurgency” against Brexit. He backed younger activists with their own organisations. They have transformed opposition to Brexit into a popular cause.
But pro-Europeans have to be coldly realistic. Open Britain is chaired by the super-rich Roland Rudd, with Alastair Campbell and Mandelson as key players. It platforms Tony Blair. Not only is it preposterous for them to claim to lead an insurgency, the likelihood is that they would lose a second referendum. I don’t say this in a spirit of sectarianism; what matters are policies, not personalities. One of the advantages the Brexiteers had in 2016 was that different organisations campaigned for it. The public responded to their shared passion, not their disagreements. Arguments over substance can build a cause.
And a new referendum would hinge on an issue of principle. Are the anti-Brexit side attempting to reverse the verdict of 2016 and revert to the status quo of the Cameron years? Or are we agreeing that there is a huge democratic problem with the way the elite have governed Britain, but that leaving the EU will make this worse not better?
The latter embraces the justified heart of the Brexit protest and seeks to build on its democratic, anti-elite energy. It is the only way to win and, just as important, because it reaches out to leave voters, can generate the positive energy to create a new consensus afterwards. Those who sustained the old order for so long and have never resiled from it cannot convincingly promise such change.
If they lead the pro-EU side in a new referendum, we will be destroyed. A well-funded alliance will deploy its expertise and, boy, will they throw in everything they can, and more, to secure Brexit.
Their key skill is in the dark arts of voter suppression. Paul Hilder has set out an authoritative analysis of how it works. Voter suppression uses psychographic algorithms to identify key segments of the population. They are then forensically targeted with quick videos showing, for example, Blair on the People’s Vote platform and then on a ski ride in Davos, calling for a new referendum – with his net worth as the subtitle. The message: that the referendum is a rip-off and “they are all the same”. Market testing reveals what images and phrases “work”. The aim is not to convert, but to disillusion and thereby turn young voters especially into abstainers.
A strong rebuttal of such foul and cynical methods has a chance of defeating them. But if the images used include Mandelson on a yacht with George Osborne and the notorious Russian aluminium oligarch Oleg Deripaska, not to speak of Blair, and they are at the helm of the campaign to remain, such charges will have the sting of truth.
Of course, everyone must be given the opportunity to redeem themselves. At this crucial moment, the best way that current controllers of the People’s Vote can do so is to step aside.
They will, anyway, be anathema to the Labour leaders on whom any popular vote now depends, since they have called for one. The point of principle, however, is that if we get the referendum the country deserves, we remainers cannot afford to recycle 2016 and win it narrowly on a negative platform with transactional definition of who we are as a people.
Instead we need the designated campaign to be inspired by democracy and led by the new generation. For beyond the familiar faces, new and often female leaders are emerging with the creative energy to set out a European path that backs free movement, governs migration, welcomes good regulation and secures our liberties and freedom.
The direction of the pro-European side in any new referendum is therefore an issue that will have to be confronted. It is best to do so now and have it in the open. A new approach that takes on board the bold anti-establishment impulse of Brexit could also reassure hesitant MPs in leave seats. For it gives them an honourable, democratic message for their constituents, that builds on Brexit’s demand for change and thereby lays to rest the prime minister’s absurd claim that another vote means “breaking faith” with the first.