WHAT IF Boris Johnson had campaigned for REMAIN?

Jonathan Simpson
Nov 3 · 6 min read

Prime Minister Johnson beamed, exit polls showed he was on track for his third electoral victory. Since throwing his famed campaigning energy behind Remain in 2016 (which won by 68:32), on the surface at least, there seemed little doubt as to his and the country’s future.

Since summer 2016 he had gone on to win a healthy enough majority for the Conservatives (340 seats) and was now on track to win a second European referendum.

Truthfully, the EU was not yet ready for the Digital Single Market and Capital Markets Union that this referendum was all about, but it suited Britain and Johnson to seize the initiative and get behind these proposals early on.

Back in 2016 after a faltering start, the victorious Remain campaign had whipped up a storm once Johnson had come on board: viral videos full of images of the London Olympics and the beautiful places of Europe, peppered with his soundbites from TV shows were EVERYWHERE.

David Cameron didn’t like surrendering the limelight but he had said he wouldn’t fight another election as PM, and so with an eye to the throne, Johnson pushed in, did his best to sound ‘Churchillian’ and EVERYONE lapped it up.

“Our grandparents liberated this continent, and we shall retain our right to roam in it, not as spoil of war but as a reward for peace ” he intoned at the Wembley debate. Coupled with his bashing of Donald Trump for his awful remarks about muslim Americans, this message had played well with urban liberals around the UK.

[Johnson] “it was Churchill’s idea, but… by God, it was Maggie wot made it work”.

Left-leaning Londoners HATED this message — perhaps it jarred with them to be reminded that the Single Market was Thatcher’s achievement — but those who attempted an analysis of the win (no one was really that interested) concluded that it was probably this line, alongside chancellor George Osborne’s alarmist warnings about pension funds tanking that delivered the votes of retired English southerners that were vital to the win.

Shire Tories had voted to remain, so too had older C2s. It was the words of an automotive worker (Jim at the Dagenham plant who Johnson had spoke to on the campaign trail) that seemed to capture the mood and galvanise their vote. On the morning of the 23rd of June 2016, the SUN headline boomed out “VOTE REMAIN AND RETIRE IN SPAIN” — the newspaper even ran competitions to win Algarve property!

The Eurosceptics put up a fight, but Johnson swotted aside “fallacious” arguments about the ratcheting up of federal integration on the Marr show:

“Of course we won’t join the Euro [guffaw] — it’s a bloody stupid idea [chortle]… and, [serious face] look Andrew, any other, further integration would be put to the British people in a further referendum ”

And so, buoyed by the Remain victory, the increased conservative majority, and the desire for more power at the ‘top table’, this was that further referendum. The UK Government wanted Britain to be the country that spearheaded the creation of the Capital Markets Union and the Digital Single Market — the mouthpieces of the EU Institutions were very pleased indeed.

Depending on your social media filters, this new referendum campaign to form the DSM and CMU was either astoundingly and idealistically pro-Europe or unabashedly aggressive about national self-interest.

Again, social media was peppered with PM Johnson’s soundbites to various audiences:

[The EU Single Market was a] “Cash cow we must milk”

“English is the language of the internet”

“London IS the capital of Europe”

“Europe benefits from British creativity”

“Industries of the future” and so on…

Combining these two areas of European integration into one referendum, let alone one referendum question (!), was of course highly contentious and motivated by partisan politics. US-led Tech investment in London had exploded during the year-and-a-half following the Remain win and the Labour Party was badly split.

So in the campaign media the overwhelming emphasis was on the Digital Single Market, something with huge appeal to millennial voters. Under Cameron they had remained iffy about the Conservatives, but they were drifting away from Labour due to its ineffectiveness and lingering antisemitism crisis.

This supposedly “one nation” Tory government, and it’s DSM “Industries of the future” pitch played well with these young voters — certainly better than a subdued Corbyn’s mutterings about the CMU being about “big banks, international capital”…

This time there was no Jean-Claude Juncker gaffes to worry about for David Cameron was now the president of the EU commission! Angela Merkel seemed to get on well him: British enthusiasm for the single market was excellent for Germany, plus being of comparably shallow intellect, he stayed well out of Single currency stuff. And Cameron had a natural affinity, well, more of a shared vanity with the French president Emile Macron — any policy differences were soon forgotten as Cameron was a “winner” who it was good to be photographed with.

To those that were still interested in what he had to say, it was obvious that Tony Blair was more-than-a-bit jealous, appearing now and again making flattering remarks about “Cameron the moderniser”, but no one paid much attention. Foreign Minister Lord Osborne was busy collecting the diplomatic contacts he would later use in a lucrative Blair-inspired consultancy career of his own. Osborne was highly respected among international figures; John McCain, Justin Trudeau, Christine Lagarde and so on, but remained intensely disliked by the British electorate, so a peerage and the Foreign office seemed like a good fit for him.

Sajid Javid had become Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was starting to tinker with supply-side reform; reducing tax on investment in machinery and workforce training in order to improve productivity, but also making more money available for building homes.

Despite these victories in the press, the government was of course a ramshackle chaos — the Cameron modernisation project was always a matter of PR rather than policy, and now Boris was at the helm!

Following the Remain victory it was hard to know where to put the handful of cabinet ministers who had been brexiteers. Being the only one of broadsheet-reading intelligence, Michael Gove was left at the Ministry of Justice, the press hailed him as “a compassionate conservative” and a “great Tory reformer” — in reality of course he was just sorting out the awful mess left by the hapless Chris Grayling. It was hoped he could be persuaded to clear up Iain Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit mess next — perhaps a peerage would do the trick.

Theresa May remained at the Home Office, the unglamorous workhorse role given to her by the Tory posh boys. Her incredibly tough line of returning jihadis made her a favourite of the right wing press, and popular in the country generally, and gave the Daily Mail something to write about now Europe was off the table.

It was speculated that Daniel Hannan MEP, the conservative ideologue who had done so much to secure the EU membership referendum, would go in to exile as an Ulster Unionist like his intellectual hero Enoch Powell, but he stayed as an MEP — and why wouldn’t he given the perks! Besides, being a British Conservative MEP was also a good perch to make simplistic Youtube videos about free market economics and sell dire books to disgruntled conservatives throughout the Anglo-sphere — that this so-called champion of free enterprise sustained his living from the public purse went unnoticed. From time to time he did voice support for the Single Market.

After a brief stint on the right wing Trump News Network (Mr. Trump had very narrowly lost the US presidential election and caused some uproar, his news network eventually folded due to financial irregularities), Nigel Farage had become a sad clown figure popping up in the tabloids and appearing on reality TV programmes every now and again — it was actually quite hard not to feel sorry for him.

AND SO, with its mediocre, showman-led government, creaky infrastructure, desperately unequal health outcomes, booming service industry, world-leading university research, headline-grabbing technology sector, swamped legal system, impending social care crisis and the greatest capital city on earth, the United Kingdom was leading Europe.

Boris Johnson had campaigned for Remain.

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