‘Canaries in the coalmine of populism’: an oral history of the Brexit campaign, told by those with a front row seat

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 , announces the date of the vote: 23 June 2016. The next day, Boris Johnson, then the mayor of London , says he will campaign for leave . Bernard Jenkin , a senior Conservative backbencher, campaigned for leave: The starting gun was really fired in the [2013] speech. I went to see David Cameron after that and begged him not to hold an in/out referendum, simply because it would smash the Conservative party. He said to me: “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. David Cameron at an EU summit in Brussels, the day before announcing the date of the referendum. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images David Lidington , minister for Europe 2010-2016 and a close Cameron ally, campaigned for remain: [Holding the referendum] was very much a prime ministerial decision. I didn’t think it was the right one, but I understood David’s reasoning. He was the prime minister, and his view was that this was an opportunity to lance the boil of disaffection within the Conservative party over Europe. I always felt that it was 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. …