Inside Story: Politics, Intrigue and Treachery from Thatcher to Brexit. Philip Webster

      Now May’s main task was to handle the consequences of that fateful vote. ‘Brexit means Brexit and we are going to make a success of it,’ she said at her launch. Quite what Brexit really means will only become clear in the years ahead, but on one thing May was clear: ‘There will be no attempt to remain in the EU.’

      May, though, made plain that she is determined to get the best possible deal for Britain from the negotiations that will set the terms of departure.

      She put the astute and pragmatic David Davis, a former Europe minister, in charge of a new department that will implement Brexit. Though he and Johnson backed the ‘Leave’ effort, neither are ideologically ‘anti-Europe’ and May is clearly hoping they can secure an outcome that will maintain some kind of access from outside to the single market while securing concessions on freedom of movement. It may take years.

      I covered the removal of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister, as I describe later in this book. Whatever you felt about her, Thatcher’s downfall was a personal tragedy, a Shakespearean drama as the MPs and ministers she had helped to three election victories turned on her because they felt she could not win a fourth. June 2016 was a personal tragedy for Cameron. Whether the nation will regret or embrace the outcome in the long term is impossible to tell. But the aftermath at the top of the Conservative Party seemed at times more like farce than tragedy.

      How could it have come to this? How could David Cameron, the man who told his party to stop banging on about Europe, have somehow contrived to take his country out of it? How was it that the PM who earned a reputation as a lucky general ran out of luck when it mattered most?

      The story begins with his party’s recent history. Cameron became party leader after he wowed the party faithful in 2005. But his MPs were never as certain about him as his activists were. They were unsure about his efforts to modernize the Tories but went along with him in the expectation that he would see off Gordon Brown easily in 2010 and return them to power. He became prime minister, yes, but only in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and his half-victory left many MPs disappointed with him.

      23 January 2013 was the day that sealed the fate of Cameron, many in his government and the country. He announced there would be an ‘in-out’ referendum by the end of 2017 at the latest. In October 2011 some eighty-one Tory MPs had demanded a referendum in a Commons vote, showing him the scale of the internal problem he faced. UKIP was on the march, winning the European elections in 2014 while two Tory MPs were to defect and win by-elections under the UKIP banner.

      Cameron had agonized discussions with his Cabinet, in private one-on-one conversations and together. I can confirm that both George Osborne and Michael Gove urged him not to do it, Osborne because he feared the country might vote to leave, and Gove because, as a devout sceptic, he could see himself ending up fighting his friend and prime minister.

      In an e-mail to Cameron, Gove warned that if he granted a referendum it would not bring peace to the party and that he would continue to be ‘harried’, and that it was dangerous to commit to a plebiscite before it was known what reforms Europe would offer up. Gove, at this stage, did not explicitly say to Cameron that he would campaign against him, but the PM could have been in no doubt about his deep concerns.

      As the negotiations with Brussels reached their climax in the winter of 2015, Cameron several times asked Gove’s friends – including Osborne, Ed Vaizey (culture minister) and Nick Boles – whether Gove would be ‘all right’ when the time came. But it was clear from a number of newspaper stories since the party conference in October that Gove was likely to be in the opposite camp and that he was ‘conflicted’ about opposing his friend the prime minister.

      As Cameron prepared to announce the referendum date on Saturday, 20 February, Ed Llewellyn (his chief of staff) approached Gove and told him Downing Street needed to know that he would be on side in view of the extensive media coverage the coming weekend. Gove told him that he could not be and would campaign in line with his long-stated beliefs. It was a big blow to Cameron.

      Cameron himself confirmed the news publicly: ‘Michael is one of my oldest and closest friends but he has wanted to get Britain to pull out of the EU for about thirty years,’ he said. ‘So of course I am disappointed that we are not going to be on the same side as we have this vital argument about our country’s future. I am disappointed but I am not surprised.’

      Gove said:

      It pains me to have to disagree with the Prime Minister on any issue. My instinct is to support him through good times and bad.

      But I cannot duck the choice which the Prime Minister has given every one of us. In a few months’ time we will all have the opportunity to decide whether Britain should stay in the European Union or leave. I believe our country would be freer, fairer and better off outside the EU. And if, at this moment of decision, I didn’t say what I believe I would not be true to my convictions or my country.

      Johnson and Gove had dined together and agreed that a late initiative by Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister and Cameron’s close adviser, to change the Act authorizing the UK’s accession to the EU to bolster the UK’s parliamentary sovereignty was not sufficient to assuage their doubts, but Gove was as much in the dark as Cameron about what Johnson would decide. He only learnt that he was to be in the Brexit camp on the Saturday afternoon before Johnson made his announcement on Sunday, 21 February.

      After winning what most considered an underwhelming renegotiation package, Cameron had bitten the bullet and announced 23 June as the day of decision. He had gone for the fastest-possible timetable, rejecting the advice of his strategist, Lynton Crosby, who warned that it could turn into a protest vote.

      Cameron had hoped to persuade Johnson to come on side, and at a forty-minute meeting in Number 10 the previous week, he offered him various posts in the coming reshuffle. The former mayor was undecided until the very last minute. When he did declare, Cameron and others accused him of doing so for opportunistic reasons of self-advancement. There can be little doubt that he did it because he saw it as a way eventually of taking Cameron’s job.

      I learn there were few tears in Downing Street when Gove plunged the knife into Johnson, although Cameron believed that Gove’s behaviour would win sympathy in the party for Johnson. Gove earned the displeasure of Cameron and close friends for campaigning with vigour for Brexit. They had hoped and believed he would play a low-key role. Gove’s position was known but Cameron had not expected his erstwhile friend – the atmosphere between them now as I write this is glacial, according to an insider – to campaign so strongly and, he felt, personally against him.

      As was widely reported, Cameron’s wife, Samantha, had a stand-up row with Gove’s wife, Sarah Vine, at a friend’s party, accusing Gove of betrayal and abandoning her husband’s premiership. Other friendships and family relationships across the country were similarly strained as the campaign developed into mud-slinging and bitterness. Gove told me after he had pulled out of the contest:

      I did not relish being on the opposite side to David but it became clear to me during the course of the campaign that if it was going to be conducted in a professional way, I had to speak up for my beliefs. Having made the decision, I had to argue in the way I did. But I tried to make the case without personal attacks and on the basis of principle.

      The warnings from Osborne and Gove were acutely prophetic but back in 2013, Cameron, the gambler, had had enough of the Tory Right,