PM must heed The Godfather over ill-judged hatred of Boris Johnson
Remain campaign's anger over BoJo as 'face of Brexit' could backfire badly
“NEVER hate your enemies. It affects your judgement,” warned Michael Corleone.
But the Remain campaign isn’t heeding The Godfather’s advice. It is letting itself be driven mad by its loathing of Boris Johnson.
Boris’s decision to back Out infuriated David Cameron, who had always been convinced that Boris was not a Leaver and wasn’t a rival to him.
However, he was wrong on both counts. While George Osborne is even more scathing about Boris and his motivations than the PM.
But this coordinated and Downing Street sanctioned assault on Boris is In’s biggest mistake of the campaign, and one that could backfire badly on it.
Why? Because it makes Boris, the most popular politician in the country, the face of Brexit, not Nigel Farage.
“The ‘Farage’s Britain v the future’ line works for it. But the Boris attacks blunt that.
It isn’t Farage’s Britain, it is Boris’s Britain”, one Vote Leave-supporting MP tells me.
The In campaign wants to hammer home in the last ten days of the campaign the idea that if we leave, this will be Farage’s country. But it has now put the spotlight on Boris.
Boris has come out of this with his standing enhanced. By not rising to the bait, he’s shown that he’s not a hothead
Another consequence of the attack on Boris is that the referendum, inevitably, becomes seen through the lens of the Tory leadership.
This isn’t just bad news for Tory party unity post-referendum, but also makes it harder to get Labour voters to support In because it drowns out Labour’s message.
Remember too that Boris is more popular with Labour voters than most Tory politicians.
So, the idea of him as Prime Minister is unlikely to send a shiver down their spines.
Senior figures on the Remain side think the assault on Boris worked because voters think he is in it for himself and that he’s a hypocrite.
But on Thursday night, In went for his personal life as much as his shifting policy positions.
And trying to punch someone below the belt just doesn’t look good.
The Remainers have forgotten what the Tory modernisers used to know, that what you say about your opponent — and how you say it — says more to the voter about you than about them.
Going after Boris in such a personal way just made Remain look rattled.
Boris himself has come out of this with his standing enhanced. By not rising to the bait, he’s shown that he’s not a hothead.
“He was Al, the young Eton scholar, not Boris,” says one friend of his restrained performance.
Boris was, perhaps, helped by the fact that his wife Marina was there.
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At the end of the debate, the pair enjoyed a glass of wine with the rest of the Leave team.
One influential figure in Vote Leave, though, warns: “Downing Street has got far more ammunition than we at Leave have. That’s just a structural fact you have to factor in.”
Before polling day, there’ll be further interventions from the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund, while George Osborne will deliver the Mansion House speech on Thursday.
But one close Cameron ally frets: “The economic argument doesn’t seem to ring with as much clarity as the immigration one.”
And an In-supporting Cabinet minister warns: “All the romance, the idealism and decisiveness is on the other side.”
Many on the Leave side have long calculated that, realistically, the best they could do in this campaign was to come close enough to keep open the prospect of another referendum.
But now they are daring to believe that they could actually win.
Remain's plea to Corbyn following low Labour votes
THE Remain campaign’s biggest worry right now is that it isn’t doing well enough with Labour voters.
Cameron’s closest allies have pleaded with Labour to get Jeremy Corbyn to proclaim from the rooftops that Labour voters will be worse off financially if we Brexit.
But Corbyn is dragging his feet on this, though I understand he’ll say that Britain will be better off inside the EU, this weekend.
Labour MPs are very nervous about what the canvas returns in their own areas are telling them.
It is running 70-30 for Brexit in some seats, I’m told.
“What I am most struck by is Labour MPs’ gloom about the big northern cities,” says one Cabinet minister closely involved with the In campaign.
Some on the Labour side think this problem was highly predictable, given concerns about immigration and the Tory faces dominating the campaign.
“There should have been a panic for years,” one tells me.
What is freaking out some Labour MPs is what happened in Scotland.
There, a referendum put the party on the opposite side from much of its traditional support base.
The result – every Scottish Labour MP bar one lost their seat at the next General Election.
The worry of Labour MPs, particularly in the north, is that the same could happen to them.
On the Remain side they admit that many Labour seats, including Yvette Cooper’s, will almost certainly vote Out.
But they are still confident that enough Labour voters will back In for them to win.
Whether Britain votes In or Out, the gap between the Labour leadership and the party’s traditional, working class base is only getting bigger.
Boris put on Rudd alert
Well, she is one of the most pro-EU members of the Government.
WHAT motivated Amber Rudd to take aim at Boris time and time again in Thursday night’s debate?
There’s also the fact that, in going after Boris like this, she was pleasing David Cameron – he tweeted in praise of her straight after the debate.
As one Boris ally fumes, this was: “A tacit admission that it was sanctioned by No10.”
Plus, you should know that Boris’s Bullingdon Club mates attempted to debag her brother Roland when he was at Oxford University.
But I wonder if a Boris joke might have explained her willingness to go after him – he once greeted her by saying: “Hello Amber, how are the traffic lights?”
Suffice to say, she didn’t see the funny side.
Hay or go
THE slog of the campaign trail has its consolations for politicians.
After George Osborne and Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson had finished their farming photo-op in the borders on Thursday, they retreated to the farmhouse.
There, Davidson, whose father managed a distillery, gave Osborne a quick whisky lesson.
They raised a wee dram of peaty Islay whisky to Osborne getting through his referendum interview with Andrew Neil, and then had one to wish Davidson luck in the BBC’s Wembley debate, where she will face off against Boris just two days before polling day.
We can expect Davidson to keep up the In campaign’s anti-Boris barrage.
“She’s definitely not a fan,” says an ally of hers.
Ladies in waiting
ITV’s EU referendum debate was striking for five out of the six people on stage being women.
But this caused a mild panic as half-time neared, as the organisers feared that there wouldn’t be enough toilets if everyone wanted a loo break.
But luckily for them, not all of the female speakers felt the call of nature.