Remain Means Remain (and other stories)

By Tom Black, George Kearton, Jack Tindale and 7 more

What if Remain had won in 2016? What if Britain had never joined the EEC? What if groups other than Europe had decided to unite?

In this EU-themed collection from Sea Lion Press and edited by Tom Black (Agent Lavender, Shuffling the Deck, Zonen), you will find some worlds very like our own, and others very dissimilar indeed. Questions as simple as “what if Maastricht failed?” are posed, along scenarios as complex as an ideologically-reversed Cold War or a federalised British Empire.

A group of Sea Lion Press' most imaginative authors comes together to present a collection of stories all born out of the shock Leave result in 2016. It seemed a very good time to consider how history might not have turned out as it did. Sea Lion Press now invites you to do so.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sea Lion Press
• Release date: Jul 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386788430

Book preview

These stories are a work of fiction. While ‘real-world’ characters may appear, the nature of the divergent story means any depictions herein are fictionalised and in no way an indication of real events. Above all, characterisations have been developed with the primary aim of telling a compelling story.

Published by Sea Lion Press, 2017. All rights reserved.

Foreword

Tom Black

The EU referendum result of June 2016 was perhaps the biggest political upset in modern British history. It triggered dramatic ructions in Westminster and beyond, and its consequences are, at time of writing, still not understood.

What is certain, however, is that the victory for the Leave side in that referendum gave pause to millions who thought history was on one clear, albeit meandering, path. A sense that the world was inexorably moving closer together came to a dramatic halt. What better time to consider other junctures at which such a halt might have come? Alternate history is unlikely to ever be more than a parlour game, though a sophisticated one. But considering moments at which history ‘rattled over the points’ has its own small merit. Here, in a collection of stories by some of Sea Lion Press’ most imaginative authors, you are invited to consider different courses of action for Britain, Europe, and the wider concept of supranational unions.

In these pages, you will find some worlds very like our own, and others very dissimilar indeed. Questions as simple as what if Maastricht failed? are posed alongside scenarios as complex as an ideologically-reversed Cold War or a federalised British Empire. You can find out what the 1970s might have been like if Britain had never entered Europe, or what 2016 would be like if it had never left.

My thanks to Jack Tindale for an excellent cover illustration, and to all of the authors who contributed to this collection. If you are new to Sea Lion Press, you can find its whole catalogue and further information at sealionpress.co.uk.

Remain Means Remain

Tom Black

How Remain edged it: winning the future by the skin of your teeth

the guardian, 5th July 2016

If we had let them talk about immigration closer to polling day, we’d have been toast, Roland Rudd tells me as he empties a sachet of Splenda into a cup of coffee. By ‘them’, he means Leave.EU. Lucky for us, they fought us on immigration from before the date was even set, so we could talk out their arguments and make the last two weeks about the economy. By ‘we’, he means Britain Stronger In Europe, the first centre-left campaign to win a national contest in the UK since 2005.

It may seem odd to characterise a campaign led by a Conservative Prime Minister and run by his chief of staff as ‘centre-left’, but BSE (they foresaw and embraced the mad cow jokes) was an unholy alliance of centrist politicians that can easily be called centre-left compared to what it was up against. Rudd is the brother of the Energy Secretary, but dines with Peter Mandelson and was close to Blair in the later years of his premiership and the years immediately following it. Right now, he’s avidly explaining how BSE made it their paramount priority every day to hit the six and ten. Referring to leading the six and ten o’clock news bulletins, it’s the creed of the man who stepped in to captain a ship that – just – steered clear of rocks in the final moments.

There had been talk of Will Straw, son of Jack, running the show. Rumour has it a late-night call from a nervous Cameron put the kibosh on that, and with hindsight it was an odd idea to expect a thirtysomething failed parliamentary candidate to run what the government considered the most important cross-party campaign group in modern history. Straw took the pre-demotion well, serving ably as communications director while Craig Oliver, Cameron's director of communications and a key Downing Street ally since Andy Coulson's 2011 departure, was talked into the top job at the eleventh hour. The high-flying Oliver was highly reluctant to take the job when he realised he would need to relinquish his Downing Street pass, something which very nearly derailed proceedings, but a personal and heartfelt appeal from Cameron over a private dinner changed his mind.

Straw-for-Oliver wasn’t the only early shake-up in personnel terms. It’s forgotten about now, but Lord Stuart Rose was briefly the chair of what quickly earned the nickname ‘Stronger In’. His public reasons for stepping down from such a frontline role after only eight days were vague and family-related, but Rudd confirms what is now an open secret that a brief media training session led to dropped jaws and a quick chat about his future in the organisation. Rose was relieved to be offered an ‘out’, and proved much better at wooing big business backers to fund the Remain campaign behind closed doors.

One thing I was never sure about was the letters, Rudd says, referring to BSE’s beloved practice of setpiece letters, often published as advertising on page 5 of the Times or Telegraph, informing readers that captains of industry or celebrities were dead against what the Remain campaign termed ‘Brexit’ at every opportunity. It’s easy to see why – it’s an ugly word, and focus group data suggested its similarities to the word ‘toxic’ made it far less popular than ‘Leave’. This approach had its limits – during the ‘Wobbly Weekend’, where the polls seemed to show Leave surging into the lead for two days, some bright spark who had worked on the AV campaign suggested it might be safest to explicitly campaign against the option on the ballot that we didn’t agree with. Something like 12% of people think Brexit means staying in the EU. I think that lad saved our bacon – he must have remembered what it was like working for a campaign that wasn’t named after the bloody thing they wanted.

It all added up to a lean, mean rebuttal machine that was always in pole position to dominate the day's headlines with a positive story about Europe or a negative warning from a respected figure. But as Rudd went to great lengths to inform me when we first sat down, there was genuine fear that no real answer on immigration was being offered. Cameron's renegotiation had failed to get anything substantive on the subject, and the Leave campaign knew it was their trump card. The campaign took the huge gamble of encouraging them to play it early. We tactically vacated the field on immigration, so to speak, Rudd tells me, we encouraged them to throw all their muck at us and at the issue, gambling that it wouldn't stick and make them look amateurish and racist. I thought the online advert that said 'no Czechs please, we're British' was our jackpot, but then I saw that bloody bus with David Cameron dressed as an Ottoman Sultan...

The gamble paid off, and the machine that had been created around Oliver, Straw, Rudd, Peter Mandelson and others was ready to strike at just the right moment. For more on Stronger In’s internal successes, I recommend last week's excellent article in the Sunday Times by Tim Shipman, whose book Hold The Line promises to be an exceptional inside story of both campaigns. The rest of this story owes more to the Leave campaign’s failings than it does Stronger In’s strengths, just as Remain’s eventual win did. Most Stronger In campaigners I spoke to agreed with that analysis.

Hard though it may be to believe now, the lawsuit-riddled and teetering organisation registered with Companies House as ‘Leave.EU LIMITED’ was just one month ago the most terrifying opponent the British establishment had ever faced. Like Churchill and the U-Boats in the Atlantic, Cameron admitted to friends that Leave.EU, with its unapologetic vulgarities and flirtation with Trumpism, was the only thing that truly frightens me. The 52-48 result proved it was a formidable opponent, but the mark it has left on our democracy will run deeper. Its posters still line our streets, its paid-for adverts on social media still scream about Muslims at people who just logged on to see their friends’ wedding photos. Its impact on UKIP, with which it seems all but certain to merge, is a smaller concern to David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn than the impact it has had on discourse in this country. Both men now lead parties with MPs openly calling for immigration to come back onto the table and for the Remain vote not to be used as an excuse to maintain what one backbencher called the swarm.

It didn’t have to be this way. Leave.EU’s rival for the official designation as ‘the Leave campaign’, Vote Leave, started with real promise. ‘Vote Leave, take control’ seemed a slightly off-piste slogan but data suggested it was testing extremely well. The appointment of Dominic Cummings, mastermind of the No2AV campaign and the successful rejection of a North East Assembly in 2004, brought huge skill to the table and, via Cummings’ personal links to Michael Gove, appeared to promise a plethora of big beasts who would get behind the campaign. Cummings quickly recognised that with virtually everyone the public had heard of lining up behind Stronger In, Vote Leave’s best chance was to position itself as the totally anti-establishment choice. Rabble-rousing social media and public performances became the order of the day.

It would be this that made certain Cummings’ – and thus Vote Leave’s – downfall. Concerns over abrasive behaviour and damaging stunts led to Eurosceptic MPs and internal figures revolting against Cummings in January. The ambush by two students of the PM’s speech to the CBI played particularly badly, with one MP disavowing the campaign altogether on the grounds that he could not be seen to be associated with a group that put the Prime Minister in danger. After a short struggle, Cummings left the campaign, his valedictory speech to staff quickly entering legend. No footage of it has emerged, but witnesses insist it would have made Malcolm Tucker blush.

The nervous MPs must have kicked themselves within days, when confidence in Matthew Elliott, Cummings’ de facto successor, disappeared and half the campaign staff answered the siren song of Leave.EU. Many of the MPs themselves swiftly followed suit, harbouring doubts over the rival campaign’s aggressive focus on immigration and obsession with using Nigel Farage as a frontman, but unable to ignore its deep pockets and – now – organisational clout. Vote Leave didn’t wrap up as an organisation – it was taken over by Bernard Jenkin and a handful of old-school Eurosceptics who could not countenance aligning with what they had labelled ‘the I’m not racist but campaign’. But it was a shadow of its former self in both scale and – crucially – funds. All but two of its major donors switched to Leave.EU, which already had at least one personal fortune behind it.

While Cummings was not a silver bullet, there’s little doubt his continued leadership would have kept Vote Leave a distinct entity far longer, and possibly made them competitive in the contest to be the official campaign. In the event, the official designation went to Leave.EU by a landslide, the rump Vote Leave scoring only 8 points out of a possible 32. Leave.EU scored 29. Cummings, who is currently living in a converted pillbox in Albania and will publish a new translation of Livy next year, was unavailable for comment at time of writing.

The irony of jumpy Eurosceptics abandoning Vote Leave for its poor taste and vulgar stunts and then aligning with Leave.EU is not merely something that can be observed in hindsight. At the time, sources close to prominent frontbenchers looking to align with Leave were saying they knew that if Vote Leave was the respectable end of Euroscepticism, Leave.EU was the proudly unrespectable end. Originally called ‘In The KNOw’ back when the two options on the ballot paper were going to be ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, Leave.EU changed its name but kept its puerile and pugilistic style when the Electoral Commission made its recommendations. You say pugilistic, but that’s exactly the reason we acted like that, a senior Leave.EU organiser tells me as he dabs barbecue sauce from his cheeks, I didn’t know what ‘pugilistic’ meant until six months ago when people like you started calling me it in Guardian articles. Neither did millions of people. I’m sure millions of people still don’t. So why is it people like you get to run the country?

I try to explain that I’m not running the country, but my dining companion (who agreed to be quoted in full, but declined to give his name due to some legal trouble at the moment) shuts me up. No, you know what I mean. We had a chance to do something here, a real chance to get back at the powers that be, so we did everything we could. Did we break some rules? Yeah, probably. Do I care? Not a monkey’s. Did he bring any mayo?

The two of us are sat in a Wetherspoon’s in Southend. Leave.EU paraphenalia still hangs behind the bar. The pub chain’s CEO publicly supported Leave, but the