Cameron's Resignation and Aftermath

This is the Guardian give the British people a referendum with a very simple In or out choice to stay in the European Union or to come out altogether This week marks ten years since the UK voted to leave the European Union. This is a once in a lifetime chance for us to take back control of this country If we vote leave on june twenty third we can take back control of E three hundred fifty million p a week. They lied about the costs of Europe. they lied about Turkey's entrance to Europe. and they haveve lied about this here tonight too and it's not good enough. You deserve the truth. des It's fair to say that Brexit changed the UK forever Ten years on, the vote and fallout are still front and center of British politics Nigel You're a fraud. You've gone into parliament and you've played games Over the last few weeks, we've been speaking to a number of the leading figures in both the Brexit and the Remain campaigns They've told us how some of those key decisions unfolded and why Brexit caught so many people off guard. I'm Karen Stacy, and you're listening to Politics Weekly Brexit Pural history start what I think is the most important general election in a generation. There is a huge amount at stake. It is a very stark choice It's twenty fifteen. David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party and the Prime Minister of the UK. just launched his general election campaign. We put all of that at risk with Ed Milliband and labour, more taxes, more debt, more spending, more waste, all of the things that got us into the mess in the first place. It is a high stakes election. He was right, but maybe not for the reasons he just listed I remember covering that campaign. We spent weeks talking about spending pledges, about tax, about welfare cuts But actually what happened in those few weeks? was that David Cameron made one of the most fateful promises ever made by a British prime Mister in out referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union. The British people really do deserve a referendum. on whether to stay in a reformed European Union or leave. And I have been very clear I will not lead a government does not deliver that. I went to see David Cameron and begged him not to do an in out referendum simply because would smashed the Conservative partarty That's Bernard Jenkin Conservative MP longtime Eurosptic and a prominent member of the Vote Lave campaign He said to me I know fifty conservative MPs may vote leave. We can live with that And I immediately realized she just didn't really understand the Conservative Party at all. I had never wanted to have such a polarizing referendum But I remember saying on the morning after the election I've never been for leave, but if it's a question of signing up for all these treaties giving up our sovereignty on the journey towards a federal Europe or leaving then I'm for leave and It's worth remembering European integration is a continuing process. It was an escalator. we had to get off. And if we couldn' negotiate our way out of that escalator than we had to get office And of course, David Cameron's negotiation was a complete flop. My memory of the firing the Sting gun Craig Oliver was David Cameron's right hand man at the time and his head of communications at number ten. We'd actually spent a lot of time in Brussels renegotiating what the EU is prepared to give the UK in terms of renegotiation And I think a lot of us had felt during that renegotiation that it was a bit of a fool's error. These are good proposals that I think will have the batlking of the British people because they mean no more something for nothing. and that's a vital value for Britain. There was nothing that we could do. There was no bar that we could cross that would persuade anybody on the leave side that actually we'd got a good deal Conservative MP David Liddington was Europe Minister at the time, he was absolutely central to David Cameron's inner team. I remember him touring European capitals, trying to get them to agree to various concessions that Cameron wanted. We have a number of opt outs and Britain recently vetoed the so called Fiscal maged Why this need to renegotiate your place in Europe becausecause we think that there's some big challenges that face Europe as well as the UK in terms of its place within the European Union. But even he was caught off guard by that referendum pledge I was completely gobsmacked when I was told that David Cameron was about to make the referendum pledge. This was something that had been talked about Ver quietly. I had been for some weeks at the dispatch box explaining to the sort of Euroskeceptic right on the Tory back benches why a referendum was a bad idea and why membership of the EU, despite all of its frustrations, was nevertheless in Britain's national interests. It was very much a prime ministerial decision I didn't think it was the right one and I regretted it. and still do. I always felt that this was like chucking lumps of red meat too pursuing wolves from the sled. and You know, they would goal up the lump and then they would'm sure as hell come back for more Fray Gulver again David Cameron went out into Downing Street and announced that there would be a referendum. It was not a surprise to anybody that this was going to be the case On Monday, I will commence the process set out under our Reerendum Act I will go to Parliament and propose that the British people decide our future in Europe in out referendum On Thursday, the twenty third of June The joice is in your hands. My recommendation is clear. I believe that Britain will be safer strronger and better off in a reformed European Union Immediately it felt as everything started flowing incredibly fast A number of cabinet ministers who were no longer bound by collective responsibility announced that they were going for leave And the referendum started with a huge momentum that only increased over the next six or eight weeks be lying if I said Id remembered where I was when the referendum was called? Jess Phillips is the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley. At the time, she'd only just been elected. Almost certainly in the Chamber of the House of Commons. I seem to recall we had lots and lots and lots of votes I the age of people who had to be to vote in the election, like what day it would be on, what the question would be on. I have a sort of vague recollection. I do have one recollection of being in the same lobby as David Cameron at one point. and me turning to him and saying, whyy are we in the same lobby with each other? And he was like, I don't know, I don't know what we're voting on. And I thought, Jesus, he's the Prime Minister and he doesn't know what we're voting on During that time, there was a lot of focus on what was Boris Johnson going to do. Here's Craig Oliver. At first there was a message from him saying that he was going to go for leave A few hours later, there was a message saying he was reconsidering And then a few hours after that, just a few minutes before he actually announced that he was going for leave there was a message that basically said I am finally doing it I think there's the narrative that he does everything for sort of self interested reasons Will Walden knows Boris Johnson better than almost anyone He was one of his closest advisors for years before the referendum, during it and afterwards I was within that weekend in almost its entirety. And I think like vast majority of the country, people were unsure which way to go. And I don't think Boris was any different. Was there any political calculation in his eventual decision? Probably there was But I think the truth of it is he was genuinely divided. was he was pro European. He just had problems with the EU. you know, he'd grown up in Brussels. And I think he was divided. and I think the two columns he wrote were an example of that But the weekend I think, was a sort of increasing vortex of pressure in his head. You He spent the weekend at his Oxfordshire farmhouse buuffeted from all sides, Cameron, Osborne, others, plenty of people who wanted him to go out, family and the like. And I think by the time he arrived back in London to sort of press pack sitting outside his house, I think he genuinely had not made up his mind. And I spent that afternoon with him, and he veered all over the place like the proverbial shopping trroop And he was very stressed. and at one stage he just looked at me and he said, you know, would you what should I do? And I said to him in fairly colorful language, I'm not making the most consequential decision you'll ever make. You need to make that decision. you need to be sure about it and for the right reason At that point he looked at me and he went you're right. Let's get on with it. Let's make the difference. I' had better to come out and say something because I could see that you were all You're all going great in a great mass. It actually then took him another hour of barricating to rev. And at that point he went outside and I think you know that announcement changed the course of histry where I' got you. It's my view that after thirty years of writing about this We have a chance actually to do something. I have a chance actually to do something I would like to see a new relationship M on trade on cooperation, but as I say, without much less of this sur national element. So that is where I amm coming from, and that is why I have decided after a huge amount of heartache because I did not want to do anything. I wanted the last thing I wanted was to go against U David Cameron or the goovernor But after a great deal of hearte, I don't think there's anything else I can do. I will be advocating they leave or whatever the team is called I understand there are many of them. but I think that is basically because I want better deal people of this country So what did David Cameron make of Boris Johnson's decision David Liddington was there. When it came to Boris Johnson, I was with David on that occasion and I do remember that he his political team were pretty shocked and fed up at Boris Johnson's decision. I think it's fair to say that David Camerersman was more upset by Michael Gold's decision to opt for leave. I think that represented the breach of a much closer personal friendship than the the relationship that David Cameron had with Boris Johnson As the rememaining Lave campaigns kicked off, tensions bubbled up quite early on, both between the two camps and within them. of Britain W to know the facts before they vote on the twenty third of June The treasury analysis steps away from the rhetoric and sets out the facts Britain would be permanently poorer if we left the European Union Under any alternative, we'd trade less, we'd do less business. there would be less investment. it's suppose somebody came to us all today twenty sixteen and said Bonjour, could't We've got this brilliant idea for a new project to take all these higgy piggy nations and turn them into a single political unit with a single currency and gradually moving actually ever more rapidly towards a single system of government.. And you Brits will have to sign up While the Leavaveide accused Rain of running Project Fear, Boris Johnson had his now famous maybe infamous Brexit bus. Will Walden again There was a thing in Boris's mind that which I think was genuinely true but also conflicting. I think when he made the decision to go out. I think he thought he would play some part in the campaign, but not the part he ended up playing. And I think he never expected the sort of snowballing of the bus. three hundred fifty million pounds a week go to Brussels. And I think we ought to decide ourselves how we spend that money I would suggest he spended on their edges. He has always been a great campaigner. and I think that you know, vote' played a blinder by putting him on the bus repeatedly sending him to places where they felt he would make a discernible difference. Yes, we do, don't we? They're running our country down. We can take back our country and the government of our country. I hope you'll all get to it f it' is the most exciting campaign any of us have ever been involved in Go to it, everybody, campign So for example, we never went to Northern Ireland, we never went to Scotland, we never went to Wales, but we went to Stoke or wherever it might be or Essex or wherever. you know the number of times we went to places you know was a multiplier effect. We went to the same places again and again and again and kept hitting it. And the bus enabled him to do that. It was like his mobile talking shop. And I think the most striking thing about the bus on day one was the three hundred fifty million do we sent to the EU every week. And I remember him looking at the bus and sort of cocking his eye at me like, hang on a minute. is that how we going to justify that? And so it came to pass that journalists spent the whole time on the bus arguing about the three hundred fifty million as we traveled around the country And I think the view of von't leave was let them ask the question because even if they say it's one hundred and seventy million do after the rebate and after know after the programs that put in place, people are still sitting at home thinking that's a hell of a lot of money Bernard Jenkin remembers is that the Lave campaign was underestimated even from the start I also believed throughout the period that though we were starting from miles behind I supppose we're very much in favor of staying in the EU rather than leaving at the outset David Cameron and George Oskin thought they would easily win So their over confonfidence was completely unjustified And of course, we turned it around during the campaign. Remaining in the EU might have been the safer option. For Jess Phillips, the Labour MP, The remaining campaign felt messy And even at times elitist, So I quite quickly got involved with the people who were running the Remain campaign. and it was unlike any campaign I'd ever been part of, not that I've never been part of a disorganized campaign I have, but it was very disorganized, actually for being on the ground, like trying to knock doors in my constituency, for example It was sort of impossibility because you had no base to go from because it wasn't people's party political preferences. So we were sort of in the field making up what we were doing like, okay, well we'll go to people who are labour who maybe are more likely to be remain. That was absolutely not the case necessarily. So I was trying to, I suppose make it more retail the idea because I don't think that people what I definitely know about the people in who I live amongst my family, my friends, is that sort of demonic things that were being suggested would happen in the wake of Brexit didn't really mean anything to any of them. Like they were like, well we can't get oses now, you know? People weren't that worried about immigration is not the big doorstep issue, housing, cost of living, These are the big doorstep issues. and I just didn't really feel like we had any message for them Tom Watson was Labour's deputy leader at the time, and he remembers feeling troubled when he began speaking to Labour MPs about what their constituents intended to do. I was very fearful that the Brexit campaigners were going to win quite early on in the campaign Mainly because I rang all our Labour MPs to ask what they thought the referendum outcome would be And they said, They were certain the Yes campaign was going to win But then I asked them how it was going in their constituency. And they said, oh no, they're all going to vote for Brexit in my constituency. So just seemed to me that The whole campaign was based on hope and vapourors A did the end It proved to be so As the Brexit campaign rumbled on, David Cameron played what could have been his Trump card endorsement for remain or at least an apparent endorsement from the then U. S. presresident Barack Obama Barack Obama came to number ten Downing Street and it was definitely clear that he thought that it was a bad idea for the UK to leave the EU. He could not see why that was a grown up or sensible thing to do that wouldn't do economics. Oh to the UK and it standing in the world And so there was discussion about what he might say at his P press conference with Davily Cameron And there was a bit of a discussion with George Osborne, where he said, look, in terms of getting an international trade deal with the United States, we would have to get to the back of the queue. And Obama said, will that be helpful if I said that? And there was a sort of mood that broadly it would I think it's fair to say that Maybe some point down the line There might be a UK. US trade agreement, but it's not going to happen anytime soon because our focus is in negotiating with a big bloc, the European Union to get a trade agreement done And UK is going to be in the back of the cebe You used the words in the press conference and people said, well, that sounds like somebody's told you to say that because you use the word Q instead of line My view is that actually Obama saying that had a real impact in terms of making people think twice I think that the Lave campaign saying that an American president coming in and interfering in our politics is inappropriate and wrong was massively overdone this sort of sense that somehow he transgressed and had really offended the UK by doing this really was a bit of nonsense that I don't think had as much impact as the Pident of the United States saying, guys, you better look before you leap here For many of the people we spoke to for this episode It was those final few days of the campaign that stick out partartly because of just how heated and divisive they became Will Walden remembers Boris Johnson's reaction at the time So the breaking point poster was nearly a turning point for Boris on this campaign. And you know, he said himself that at that point he nearly considered quitting But let me first the point. Do you see that why people would regard this as xenophobic and racist? I mean, there you are in front of a poster full of brown faces on the move Coming into Europe with a big banner headline, saying brereaking point, The only white face has been obscured by text Many people took that as deeply offensive And I ask you again, do you want to take this opportunity to say sorry the Schengen zone is at breaking point, that's undeniable. The picture was true. It wasn't doctored. This referendum for Boris was not an immigration referendum question, although it was for many people. It was a question of sovereignty. He had Turkish ancestry and he was a pro immigration in mayayor of London. And he always used to say to me, know Look, at the end of the day, if we have in twenty years time, eight million doars people living here or a hundred million people living here. If people are happy with that and we have a debate about that, that's fine. We just need to be able to control those numbers if people are unhappy with that. So his argument was pretty simple on the immigration stuff. So when did he saw this poster? and he was not consulted on it and I was not brief on it beforeand. He went apoplectic and I took a call. I was at my in law's house in Wiltshire and they had a long drive and on the end of the drive, they have a farm gate. And I took a call outside and I put the phone on the farm gate and I stepped back three or four feet and it wasn't on a speaker phone and I could still hear him shouting and swearing He was furious, but he was very uncomfortable with it, very uncomfortable with the idea of that. And I think it was the closest he came to quitting the campaign. I think the best difficul day of mine professional life was a week before the voting Greay Oliver on those final days. Nigel Farage released his breaking point poster, which he claimed was a lot of migrants entering into the EU. It turned out that the picture actually wasn't of that. And that was deeply shocking and seeing how that got covered and the way in which the media was all over it exploded everywhere. And it was given a kind of seriousness that I think think it deserved And then a few hours after that I got a call telling me that they'd heard that the MP Joe Cox had been murdered Fx is one of Westminster's newest MPs and by all accounts has worked tirelessly since her election last May you. to the people of Batley and Spain putting your trust in me Today she held a surgery in the local library meeeting constituents Tom Watson in the last week of the campaign The worst day of my political life by a country mile happened when Joe was murdered, Joe Cox was murdered. and I just remember it so well about be nice. ' this bit of a white baseball cap on I get a jacket with a gun. On the sixteenth of June days before the referendum vote Joe Cox, the labour MP, was murdered. sending shockwaves around the country Just Phillips was a close friend of hers So I was it Joe Cox's house forty eight hours before She was killed. She'd held a party to celebrate those of us in the twenty fifteen. intake of members of Parliament to sort of like, you know we survived a year sort of thing as I was leaving because I was going off with some girlfriends to Spain for the weekend And As I was saying goodbye to her, she said to me What do you think is going to happen And I sort of said I don't know. and soon She told me that she was scared. Jim was of the people She represented and I think she knew before theres The way it was going to go, she had a sense that It was by no means a done deal and she was worried I told her that it would be alright and I gave her a cuddling. I feel grateful that I told her that I loved her And the last thing I ever said to her was, lookook, it'll be okay and I'll see you on the flip side of this And obviously, I didn't ever see her again Just before one o'clock today Joe Cox, MP for Butley and Spenborough was attacked in Market Street Bristol I am now very sad to have to report she has died as a result of her injuries beforefore going into further detail I would like to express our deepest sympathies to her family and friends trajectic I found out that she had died from a news flash that came up on my phone whilst I was in Spain and Because I then looked at my phone and I saw that I had what seems now in my memory like hundreds of missed calls I sort of didn't believe it. I thoughtelt like the news was a mistake And it was just the ns that she'd been stabbed And so in some sort of stupid, I don't know, crazy moment in my head I rang her like she was gonna answer So I just sent her some messages just said or you know, like You're going to be okay. just call me when you're feeling better and Let me know how you doing? and that I love you sort of couldn't believe that it could like it would be that bad So sort of entered into this period of just thinking, oh it's going to be fine I remember crying in the arms of The Saker's chaplain Rose Hudduston, who's a wonderful human being and she was very caring to labour MPs who were Obviously devastated because then we had The suspension of campaigning. and I remember talking to David Cameron and others And concern that the last weekend we wouldn't be campaigning, but Nobody in the Labour Party was ready to do anything after Joe's death. They needed a time to grieve There was a real sense definitely amongst her friends in Westminster certainly that we all wanted to be together. So I came home from Spain and I remember going to be with Wes immediately and Anna Eley and others because Like they were the people who would understand like as much as my friends were being kind to me and all of that, people didn't understand the way it made us feel, then it made us feel like we were hunted, that our jobs put us at risk Nobody ever really explicitly said that it was in the febraile nature of that debate which was so febraile and horrible for lots of us involved. We were called traitors. It actually got worse after that actually the way that members of Parliament got treated. Is not rauffin? Wh Oh He St out the tragors now Oh Bye in the sort of the debates that happened after the referendum, we sort of forgot this be kind message that had been put around during the actual campaign. and as Brexit was or wasn't delivered and we had all those millions of votes, it became very, very, very fee and worse for members of Parliament, not better. The thing I resent the most is The idea that Joe Cox's murder just became one of those things like People get murdered sort of thing and that is not how it felt to me, it's not how it felt to my colleagues. Let's pause here Good evening and welcome to Weembley and The great debate Voting now only one day away in the most important decision the United Kingdom has been asked to make gener In the final days of the campaign, the BBC had its EU referendum the Great Dbate at the enormous Wembley arerena Michelle Hussein, the presenter, remembers what it was like to be part of the team on air that night. So I came into playing a role in the presenting lineup that day, having We've done a lot of campaign reporting to the Today prorograme, to many parts of the country The European Union was a noble dream in the last century But today It has failed, It has turned into a nightmare. If we as a country decide to quit, then we're out for good, there's no going back. twentyenty eight Member States cannot even organise a takeaway curry, let alone what they are going to do The moment of that whole night that stood out for me very clearly was when Boris Jonswg said, let's make the UK our independence Day. If we stand up for democracy We will be speaking up for hundreds of millions of people around Europe who agree with us, but you currently have no voice. And if we vott leave, and take back control I believe that this Thursday can be our country's indndependence Day. And the eruption in the hall from those who were planning to vote for leave was just immense. There was a real an audience that had been quite still You know, peopleople had not been shouting for one side or the other. It had been really a very quiet audience. It felt like half the room not just reacted, but responded with so much intensity of emotion. Not just the fact that people were cheering for one side or the other, but it just felt that there was a fervour seemed absent on the other side Jess Phillips tells us about those final few days I think I got a sense we were going to lose about a week out before the actual referenda. I also I went to the last remain sort of rally was in Birm at Birmingham University And it was Gordon Brown, Harriet Harman, David Cameron some other like, I don't know, Grandies And they all rocked up on this big Romani bus and I remember David Cameron looking around and seeing me in the audience and sort of mouthing Thank you to me moment in his face Definitely remembered the sense that he thought we were going to lose. He looked worried. And yeah, that was the day before the vote Referendum Day a vote on Britain's membership of the European Union A record forty six million people are eligible to take part. polls close at ten PM then on the twenty third of june twenty sixteen After months of campaigning, Britain finally went to the polls While the remain campaign had been the favorites to the start, things were now looking like they were on a knife edge Will Walden talks about that final day So the twenty four hours leading up to the referendum result being declared were extraordinary not least because For most of that day of voting, we were stuck in Scotland with Boris and his family at his daughter's graduation. and we had a plane problem on the way back to City airport that left us scrambling to reach the polling station. and I remember distinctly running down the road in Islington to get in there to vote because I knew that the one thing that would look really bad is if the leader of the vote campaign didn't manage to actually register a vote. was So focused on this that I had not clocked that on the DLR back from City Airport to into London, he'd managed to tell a member of the public that Vote leeave were going to lose. And I'd always told him day't engageed with the public on the tube. And it turned out that guy was a pro remain labor activist who then went and told someone. So the first thing that we saw on the TV wasas Boris Johson ably predicting after ten o'clock that the vote leave had lost. And I think for all his efforts, he thought they probably had, it was going to be tight, but they probably hadn't done enough Good evening and welcome at the end of this momentous day, when each one of us has had the chance to say what kind of country We want to live. At ten o'clock the polling stations close after weeks, months years of arguments And we'll have the answer to the question that's haunted British politics for so long Do we want to be in of the Eve Chris Hope, then the teelegraph's chief political correspondent I've been following Nigel Farage for much of the campaign and he spent referendum nights at the Leave campaign's partarty. He seemed to be enjoying it. It was a usual farraage chat, but he didn't give me the impression he thought he had won. And then on the night of the result He threw a big party at the top of the Millbank Ter in Westminster in London I arrived there I think around nine PM Nigel Farrs turned up around ten thirty PM. I was right in front of him When he effectively said he thought that The Remain campaign had won. And now I'm not conceding But my sense of this, is that the goovernment's registration scheme, two million voters on Fty our extension maybe what tips the balance. I hope I'm wrong. We did our best. We had a go, but it wasn't enough or was that effect. He also did a message on Twitter for the same effect. And then we hung around and waited for the results and then Sundnderland came in with a big swing towards leave. It was quite extraordinary. I was receiving messages from people saying, this is something is happening here something that many of us, including me had not expected Nigel Farage and his team were in a side room, a VIP room that I couldn't get access to, but he'd pop out every so often and talk to us cameras started to arrive when it became clear that the party to be at wasn't the one held by the remaining campaign, it was the one being held By the lead campaign and I was ated and it got really interesting by pretty soon if I remember the booze ran out and the entire group decamped to a bar in the basement. of the Millbank Tower where the drinking continued Meanwhile, Robert Pestam, ITV's political editor. was across the River Thames at the Rain campaign partarty Night after night on ITV's news at ten. during the EU referendum campaign, I said that if we voted to leave the EU, We would be poorer. The economics were decisively against suceeds. And so on the night itself after the polls close and the sort of speculation rumors were that the British people had voted to remain I thought Okay, the British people have done what they normally do, which is they voted in a but economically rational way, the pound rose. So then I found myself on the south bank at the remain party and we saw the results coming in, particularly the one that stays in my memory is the one from Sundland. The total number of votes cast in favour of Lave was eightighty two thousand. It was as though a massive freezer door had been open. the temperature in the war absolutely plumeted. Well, at twenty minutes to five, we can now say the decision taken in nineteen seventy five by this country to join the common market has been reversed by this referendum. to leave the EU Pceded by weeks and months of argument and dispute and all the rest of it, the British people have spoken and the answer is we're out . Let june the twenty third go down in our history as our indndependence dayay So what was Boris Johnson doing H's Will Walter den at the back of his house where he worked, a sort of study that looked over the garden and they had a big screen TV in there and everyone was assembled there. And I think initially he was pretty pessimistic. And the moment where he leapt off the sofa and said I think we're going to win this was when the result in Sundnderland came in. And I think that that for him changed everything. And he then became for the next few hours sort of like comedically focused on the betting markets and looking at the betting markets change and reflect that change in the results. And he grew increasingly confident that we were going to win. then of course when it was declared I think the reality of it hit him really, really subddenly. He was both euphoric and sort of me it's like, my God, what happens next You know, I tried to send I remember trying to send him to bed because he needed to rest. And he he suddenly appeared in the living room sort of a five and is later dressed bizarrely in sort of surfing shorts and a Brazilian football shirt to sort of report that he couldn't get to sleep and he needed to focus on the speech he was going to give the next morning Craig Oliver, however, was with David Cameron. As the night unfolded David Cameron's closest team gathered the afternoon of the voting of the referendum And there was a debate about whether or not he should resign if he lost the referendum. And a number of people in the room were of the view that he owed to the country to stay on for stability to continue. My view very, very strongly was that if you lose this referendum, you should go. And there were two reasons for that. One, he just spent the last few months trying to persuade everybody that the right thing to do was to remain in the EU and they'd gone against that. And the second thing was that I wanted him to do it for his own personal dignity At four in the morning after the result had come through, I walked through to the Prime Minister's office have a chat with him And we talked about this again and he said to me, G, do you think I do have to resign and we talked about it and I said, look I sadly, I think You do And he agreed again that this was the case. He walked outside and we watched it on television and Sam was standing outside him And I think people at that moment, when they saw Sam come out with him, they knew that he was going to resign. It wasn't just going to be another state I fought this campaign in the only way I know how which is to say directly and passionately what I think and feel Head, heart and soul I held nothing back I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain is stronger, safer and better off inside the European Union And I made clear the referendum was about this and this alone Not the future of any single politician, including myself But the British people have made a very clear decision to take a different path And as such, I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction And it was very emotional inside his private office at number ten. He walked back in He said to us, lookook, you've all been a great team. I don't blame you at all. I think you're amazing. And I'm just sorry that we couldn't push it over the line. and there were a lot of people crying at that point And then he went into his office with Sam and shut the door and they had a private moment together And after that, there really wasn't very much to do. We went and met some of the remain campaign had a drink with them and people just prettyret low um, feeling pretty beaten up. And then seeing Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, I remember that very, very clearly. We were standing in a pub that was weirdly open in the morning the shortage mark and seeing them come aheld And they both looked totally shocked as if they'd never really intended this to happen and didn't really know what to do next. We're walldden again. when David Cameron resigned with Samantha Cameron by his side in Downing Street. I think Boris hadn't appreciated the idea that Cameron would go. and when he did go, I think Boris felt reallyally genuinely heartfelt concern for David and Samon. I remember him saying looking at her she looks at her and's like, o my god, o my god o. and was really obsessed by that. And then focusing on delivering this speech of vote Leave, which was a total car crash In voting to leave the EU, it is vital to stress There is now no need for haste And indeed, as the Prime Mister has just said Nothing will change over the short term except that work will have to begin on how to give effect to the will of the people and to extricate this country from the suupernational system And as the Prime Mister has rightly said There is no need to invoke Article fifty And to those who may be anxious whether at home or abroad. This does not mean that the United Kingdom will be in any way this united Nor indeed Does it mean that it will be any less? What became clear very quickly, and I think Boris has admitted it since, there was no plan. there was no plan of, you know, what do we do if we suddenly find ourselves needing the answers? know to this decision. And I think where that really dawned on him, the significance of it was when we left the house to go to Vae Leave. He lived in a very pro remain area in Islington in North London and we had to have probably twenty police officers to get us in the cars People were furious that they felt that Boris had given away their stake in the future. There were a lot of young people on bicycles and people were so angry with it. And I remember sitting in the car and we zoomed off down the road and the light changed to red and the guy didn't make it in time for the change and slammed on the brakes. And we were basically caught by hundreds of cyclists Tpped banging on the car door, banging on the window, telling him what they thought of him. But I think it was at that point that Boris realized the magnitude of the decision that had been made and how that was going to change the course of politics and change the course of this country. For many who cover politics or work within it, Brexit was a turning point H's Robert Pestter. It was a night where I had to reassess. my view of how Whether it's referendums or general elections, how people vote Because in the end I had to assess why the economics had not been decisive. Um than I wrote an entire book called WTF to try and explain How I had misunderstood the drivers of this vote Craig Oliver And the thing that really struck me was that every major political party, apart from UKIip had supported remaining in the EU And this was the first time that we realized we were a bit like canaries in the coal mine of populism the first time that we realized that that Just because the establishment thought something and campaigned for something and people were told that this isn't going to be good for you, that people weren't necessarily going to believe it now And then the rest is history. Later that year, Donald Trump was elected. We've had Cin Cistella, AFD It was an extraordinary moment of realisation. Westminster was stunn Large parts of the media were st Jenkin Brexit had been a long time shocked David Cameron and Georgesport is how many conservative MPs. I would posed that secretly More than half the Parliamentary Party voted L I wouldn't be surprised if quite a number of Ministers said they voted remain. but actually they voted leave because they didn't want to alienate George Osborne and David Cameron who held all the power in the party. The idea Nigel Farage. is what won it is complete Niff If it had been left to Nigel Farraage He would have campaigned only on immigration. He would have alienated the middle ground. the whole point about vote leave is we knew that thirty five percent would vote leave come what May. We knew that thirty thirty five percent would vote remain come what may, it's a question of what the middle ground of voters would do And we explained to them the consequences of staying in the European Union that we would pay over more and more money, we'd lose more and more control. and it was time to take back control of our money and our borders and our laws That's what people votred for Thanks for listening A huge thanks to Bernard Jenkin, Craig Oliver David Lydington, Jess Phillips, Will Walden, Tom Watson Michelle Hussein, Chris Hope, and Robert Peston for sharing their memories And big thanks to Pippaquira Ben Quinn, Jessica Elger, Esther Adley, and Alexandra Toppping for conducting the interviews Please like and follow Politics weekly to make sure you keep getting our episodes in your feed This episode was produced by Frankie Toby, music by Axel Ccutier, Executive producer is Maz Epahjaj Bye This is the Guardian