Graham Brady and the executive of the 1922 Committee come on a visitation to Downing Street. They are not happy. ‘You do realise that there is now a serious prospect that you could have the distinction of being the last ever Conservative prime minister,’ they tell him.9 Cameron listens stony-faced. After the grilling, Osborne warns Cameron that a challenge by angry backbenchers might follow a lost referendum. This is not remotely what Cameron wants to hear in the present climate. At the end of February, with just ten weeks to polling day on 5 May, polls are even more in favour of the ‘Yes’ campaign: one by Ipsos MORI puts ‘Yes’ on 49% with ‘No’ on 37%.10
Matthew Elliott – co-founder of the TaxPayers’ Alliance (a think-tank dedicated to low taxation) and a vigorous campaigner – is brought in to spearhead the all-party ‘No’ campaign, to run alongside the Conservatives’ own campaign. He gives a bleak presentation to Cameron’s team on the outlook. Unless robust financial effort is put into the cause, the referendum will be lost.11 Panic is mounting in growing sections of the party: more start saying the Conservatives will never achieve an overall majority again if AV is brought in. Among Cameron’s circle, Osborne is the most agitated; strategist and pollster Andrew Cooper is the most sanguine, believing that the tide will turn and the ‘No’ campaign will triumph.
Osborne convinces them more impetus is needed. Stephen Gilbert, Conservative director of campaigning, is brought in to transform the campaign. An experienced organiser, he has known from the outset that the key to defeating AV is to get out the Labour vote against it: Labour too will lose out if AV is introduced. Gilbert works with Andrew Feldman to ensure that the campaign is properly funded and energised. Cameron’s team are particularly irked by the ‘Yes’ campaign being awarded a huge grant from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Cameron knows raising more money is key, but he is becoming uneasy with the aggressive turn campaigning is taking. He knows it will damage his relationship with Clegg and his Lib Dem partners if he himself accepts the upfront role Osborne is urging him to take. The vitriol against the Lib Dems is about to become personal.
Writing on the influential website ConservativeHome, former MP and journalist Paul Goodman anticipates the angst of Conservative MPs should the referendum be lost: ‘First he [Cameron] messes up the election. Now he’s messed up the referendum. We’ll never govern again on our own – and I’m going to lose my seat.’12 Right-wing websites and commentators are saying Cameron has been weak in his running of the coalition and should be giving the Lib Dems a much harder time; indeed, that he should never have conceded the referendum in the first place. Cameron is caught between a rock and a hard place. Attack Clegg and he strains the coalition: hold back, and his party attack him. To the Lib Dems, Cameron’s predicament is a symptom of his weakness in his party. Libya is taking up much of his attention in these months. He is at a loss to know what to do. Osborne has heard enough: he can take no more fence-sitting. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘we have to win this fucking thing; who cares what Clegg thinks?’ There are no ifs and buts. Cameron listens in silence. So do other members of the team in his study, watching how he will respond. Later that day, Cameron calls Feldman: ‘I absolutely agree with George,’ he says. ‘We cannot lose this.’13
Everything now changes from February. Cameron puts Number 10 on a war footing, telling his staff to get right behind the ‘No’ campaign, and instructs CCHQ to organise at least one major activity for him on AV each week.14 There is no love between Labour and Conservative in the marriage of convenience that is the ‘No’ campaign. Labour’s team are pleased by the new Tory activism. But on funding, they take the view that ‘you fucking Tories can raise the money we need’. Self-made millionaire Peter Cruddas is duly brought in by Feldman to help them do so, recognising that the ‘Yes’ campaign is still better organised and funded. Money soon starts to flow and confidence rises. Clegg’s team are incandescent about Cameron’s new tack. They suspect the PM at best of turning a blind eye, at worst of ordering the ‘No’ campaign to personalise their attacks on Clegg. The Lib Dem leader’s poll ratings are on floor level: Clegg’s aides surmise the Conservatives are capitalising on his weakness by turning the leader of the ‘Yes’ campaign into an object of public ridicule, in effect making the referendum not about AV but Clegg himself. To the Lib Dems, Cameron’s action is in direct contravention of earlier (if disputed) understandings. It is ‘the great betrayal’.
The energy that Osborne and Stephen Gilbert bring to the campaign from Downing Street, and the funds that Feldman and Cruddas acquire from CCHQ, combine with the newfound bellicosity of the prime minister. The voices of Conservative criticism are placated. On 18 February, Cameron gives his principal speech in the referendum campaign at the Royal United Services Institute. He tells his audience outright that AV will be ‘bad for democracy’.15 The all-party ‘No’ campaign, which becomes primarily the vehicle to mobilise the Labour vote for polling day, is increasingly bypassed by Number 10. Cameron and Osborne divide up phone calls to newspaper editors and commentators, urging them to fight AV. Eventually the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Sun and The Times all come out against. The Lib Dems are furious when they hear about the calls.
The ‘No’ campaign, reflecting strenuous market research, focuses their campaign on the ‘three Cs’: cost, complexity and Clegg. Television adverts feature a horse race in which the third-placed rider goes on to win, and another has Alan B’Stard – the louche star of the 1980s and 1990s television comedy show The New Statesman, played by Rik Mayall – winning an AV election. Labour’s team on the ‘No’ campaign are delighted to see Clegg, a figure they despise, besmirched: ‘They are only too happy to tear strips off Nick Clegg. Labour loved this stuff,’ says Elliott.16 The ‘Yes’ campaign try to respond in kind. One of their posters features a photograph of the British National Party leader, Nick Griffin, with the strapline ‘He’s voting “NO”. How about you?’ But their campaign is lacklustre by comparison. So successful has the ‘No’ campaign become that Labour are alarmed that it is becoming a ‘Tory front’ with Cameron using it to gain profile for himself and his party. On 18 April Labour Party heavyweight John Reid appears on a platform beside Cameron, to the delight of the ‘No’ campaign. The morning after, the Guardian publish a poll showing that support for AV is collapsing.17 Osborne asks CCHQ what more he could do by way of a ‘big intervention’ to help the ‘No’ cause. ‘Lend your authority as chancellor to our claims about the cost to taxpayers of AV,’ he is told. To Lib Dem fury, the No to AV campaign says the change will cost the country £250 million, leading Chris Huhne to write an angry letter on 24 April asking Osborne to deny this claim.18 For Clegg, ‘the spring of 2011 was the lowest of the low’.19
Number 10 is finding it hard to maintain the story that Cameron is not responsible himself for the personal attacks and that they are instead down to Labour: ‘Basically we convinced ourselves that it was Labour who forced us to play tough. But this was a fairly thin fig leaf,’ admits one of Cameron’s inner circle. They know the attacks will anger Clegg: it is a calculated risk, but one they feel they have to take. They draw the line merely at personal or nasty stories about Clegg or the Lib Dems.
Not that Clegg sees it that way. At the height of the campaign he visits his parents near Oxford with his wife and children. ‘Look, we’ve just got this leaflet through the door,’ his father tells him, ‘it’s outrageous.’ Clegg junior is handed the leaflet depicting what he describes as ‘incredibly personalised stuff about me’.20 He believes the personal attacks are wholly gratuitous and can under no circumstances be justified. He is sickened by the Tory mantra: ‘It’s Labour’s fault, not