Ten years have passed since that queasy morning of 24 June 2016, when Boris Johnson and Michael Gove addressed the cameras to hail the victory of the Vote Leave campaign, and a leap into the unknown for the UK. But the story of how Britain got there began five months earlier, with a single announcement.
On 20-21 February 2016, David Cameron, having promised in 2013 that a future Conservative government would offer a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, set the date: 23 June. The very next day, Boris Johnson, then the mayor of London, said he would campaign for leave. Bernard Jenkin, a senior Conservative backbencher who campaigned for leave, recalled pleading with Cameron not to hold the vote: 'I said to him: “I know 50 Conservative MPs may vote leave, but we can live with that.” And I immediately realised he didn’t really understand the Conservative party at all.'
“Ten years on, Brexit insiders recount the campaign's key moments, from the £350m NHS pledge to Cameron's fateful decision.”
David Lidington, minister for Europe and a close Cameron ally, described the prime minister’s decision as 'like chucking lumps of red meat to pursuing wolves from the sled. They would gobble up the lump, and then they would sure as hell come back for more.' Craig Oliver, director of communications for No 10 and the official remain campaign, felt the campaign was in trouble from the start: 'The beating heart of the party felt very, very much around leave, and anybody who had fought on the side of remain was not going to be acceptable as a prime minister.'
In the no-holds-barred battle that spring, alluring promises were made. One of Vote Leave’s most memorable adverts pleaded: 'Every week we send £350m to Brussels. Money that’s wasted. That’s enough to build a new hospital every week.' That figure was contested from the start; experts pointed out it ignored the rebate and EU funding for UK projects. But Johnson revelled in the row, repeating the figure after the result, and it was plastered on the side of Vote Leave’s battlebus.
So did the NHS get that injection? Max Warner, an expert on health and social care spending at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, notes that health spending has risen in real terms – but that is a long-term trend: 'Consistently over time, going back almost as far as the start of the NHS, we as a country spend more on health, more or less every year.' The £350m pledge was not directly delivered as a new weekly sum. Two years after the referendum, in 2018, prime minister Theresa May announced a five-year funding settlement at the Royal Free hospital in north London – but the original promise had already been diluted.
The campaign also saw tragedy. Jo Cox’s murder and David Cameron’s resignation shaped the UK’s future, as did the five months that encompassed Johnson siding with Vote Leave. Will Walden, director of communications for Johnson, said of his boss at the time: 'I don’t think Boris was any different [from the public unsure which way to go].' But the decision was made, and the consequences are still being measured a decade on.