Tim Shipman - Fall Out - A Year of Political Mayhem

It was clear to Davis that Robbins put more time and effort into the Downing Street half of his job. ‘His primary concern was the relationship with Nick [Timothy] because he knew nothing was decided by anyone else,’ a DExEU source said. Robbins was not alone in this attitude. Those who had served in the Cabinet Office’s EU secretariat could not see the point of DExEU. ‘There was resentment among the officials that they had ministers at all,’ said a source close to Davis. ‘They just thought they should report to Number 10.’ Davis war-gamed various scenarios for the Brexit negotiations but could never get Robbins to discuss ‘the plan’ – the strategy for the negotiation, which cards Britain held and when they should be played. More than one official concluded, ‘It was all in Olly’s head. It wasn’t really a properly functioning relationship.’

DExEU was not the only new department established that summer. May also ordered the creation of a Department for International Trade (DIT) to drum up deals with countries outside the EU. She handed the keys to Liam Fox, a former defence secretary and Brexiteer whose cabinet career had ended in controversy under Cameron but who was an enthusiast for free trade and travel and had cleverly cultivated May for years. ‘Liam would take her out for lunch, which no one else could bear to do,’ a special adviser recalled. DIT was slower to get off the ground but cannibalised UK trade policy and UK Export Finance, took the Defence Export Services Organisation from the Ministry of Defence and grabbed UK Trade and Investment, the part of the Foreign Office which was supposed to promote business out of Britain’s embassies overseas. It would take until January, six months after the department was set up, to get a permanent secretary: Antonia Romeo, another Heywood protégée. It was not until June 2017 that Britain acquired a lead trade negotiator. Crawford Falconer, an experienced New Zealander, took the job after the first choice, Canadian Jonathan Fried, walked away at the final stage because Heywood refused to raise the £260,000 salary.

When tackling Brexit, May had learned three crucial lessons from David Cameron’s renegotiation with Brussels before the referendum. The first was to ask for what Britain wanted, rather than making an opening offer calibrated to what the rest of the EU might accept. The second was to at least look like you were prepared to walk away from the talks to maximise leverage. The third was not to broadcast her negotiating position in advance to the media or MPs. A sound tactic this might have been, but by September 2016 May’s reticence in spelling out what Brexit really meant had led to claims she was ‘dithering’. The only announcement had been a reassurance to farmers and universities, on 13 August, that until 2020 they would keep the same level of subsidy outside the EU as they enjoyed inside it.

MPs on both sides of the EU divide were twitchy. Ken Clarke, the former cabinet minister and arch-Europhile, accused May of running a ‘government with no policies’. As the party conference approached – it was to be held, appropriately, in Timothy’s home city of Birmingham – May knew she had to add flesh to ‘Brexit means Brexit’.

The prime minister’s challenge was to reassure Brexiteers that she would honour the result of the referendum, despite her decision to vote Remain and despite insisting to those who voted to stay that she would get the best deal possible. The first part of the equation was made easier by May’s less than enthusiastic support for Cameron. ‘She was a reluctant Remainer,’ said one adviser, ‘but she’s never been any fan of the EU. She was absolutely comfortable in her own skin about why we were leaving.’ Timothy was a longstanding Brexiteer and Fiona Hill, while also a Remain voter, was quickly reconciled to the result and an enthusiast for the opportunities Brexit offered. May saw her first priority as confirming the triumph of the 52 per cent, both to prevent civil disorder and protect her own position within the Conservative Party. She told her closest aides, ‘We need to keep this country stable because this could get quite messy.’ The senior Eurosceptics, including veterans like Bill Cash, Bernard Jenkin and John Redwood, plus Steve Baker – the leader of the backbench Eurosceptic forces during the referendum campaign – were agitating. ‘It was a hugely tense moment leading up to conference,’ one sceptic said. ‘Was she going to do Brexit properly or not? All hell could have broken loose.’ A Downing Street aide said, ‘We had to be absolutely clear with the party that Brexit really did mean Brexit – and with some parts of the country. Any confusion would have led to real disruption and calls for another referendum.’ May’s view was, ‘We live in a democracy, democracy has spoken. Now we have to enact it.’

Tory leaders usually give their big conference speech before lunch on the Wednesday. May was keen to lay out her vision for Britain, but if that was not to be drowned out by Brexit she would need to deliver it separately – and first. Timothy said, ‘It’s unsustainable to wait until Wednesday to hear from Theresa when it’s her first conference as leader.’ Hill agreed: ‘We need two speeches and a plan for Europe. Then we can have a big conference speech about our domestic agenda.’ May was ‘already there’ and agreed immediately. She would give a short speech on the Sunday on Brexit.

Used to governing by speech, May’s aides say she used the writing process to define policy, rather than have the speech reflect a pre-ordained line. Timothy discussed with May what she wanted and then wrote a text. The finer points were clarified in ‘an iterative process’ involving May, Timothy, Hill, Jojo Penn, the deputy chief of staff, and Chris Wilkins, the head of strategy who had penned May’s ‘nasty party’ speech fourteen years earlier. ‘The first draft is a hypothesis that either she agrees with or not,’ one of those involved said. ‘Nick being Nick would write the most “out there” option and it would get reined in. The process of drafting and editing gets Theresa to the point of, “Yes, that’s what I want to say.”’

Timothy and May were clear on three things: leaving the European Union meant leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, and leaving with it the single market and customs union over which its judges held sway. Anything else, Timothy believed, would leave May open to the charge that she was trying to undermine the referendum vote, and put the other EU countries in a position to claim that Britain wanted the benefits of EU membership – free access to markets – without the downsides – the cost and the need to accept rules made elsewhere. By opting out of all these areas, May could then try to negotiate some of the benefits without being tied to the institutions. ‘Nick’s view,’ a Downing Street aide said, ‘was that you’re always going to be accused of cherry picking and they’re going to say you can’t cherry pick. Therefore, we should try and forge our own way forward with a new relationship. Nick largely wrote the speech and took pleasure in doing so.’

In the speech, May was to say, ‘There is no such thing as a choice between “soft Brexit” and “hard Brexit”. This line of argument – in which “soft Brexit” amounts to some form of continued EU membership and “hard Brexit” is a conscious decision to reject trade with Europe – is simply a false dichotomy.’ May explained her new deal ‘is not going to be a “Norway model”. It’s not going to be a “Switzerland model”. It is going to be an agreement between an independent, sovereign United Kingdom and the European Union.’ Timothy said later, ‘If you seek a partial relationship the danger is that you will be in the worst of all worlds, where you will be a rule-taker with none of the advantages of being in, but you will also sacrifice some of the advantages of being out.’