The Bad Boys of Brexit E-Book

Arron Banks

• Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

FULLY UPDATED Arron Banks enjoyed a life of happy anonymity flogging car insurance in Bristol until he dipped his toes into the sharkinfested waters of politics and decided to plunge right in. Charging into battle for Brexit, he tore up the political rule book, sinking £8 million of his personal fortune into a mad-cap campaign targeting ordinary voters up and down the country. His anti-establishment crusade upset everyone from Victoria Beckham to NASA and left MPs open-mouthed. Lurching from comedy to crisis (often several times a day), he found himself in the glare of the media spotlight, fending off daily bollockings from Nigel Farage and po-faced MPs. From talking Brexit with Trump and trying not to embarrass the Queen, to courting communists and wasting a fortune on a pop concert that descended into farce, this is his honest, uncensored and highly entertaining diary of the campaign that changed the course of history.

Leseprobe

To the 17.4 million

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This diary covers one of the most exhausting and intense twelve-month periods of my life.

In the heat of the campaign, I never even thought about writing a book, so my records were all a bit of a jumble. Anyway, I can’t imagine myself sitting down religiously every evening and writing up the day’s events. So I have reconstructed what happened and what I thought at the time using emails, texts, documents, daily diaries – and my own fallible memory.

I’ve been careful not to give myself hindsight and have done my very best to capture exactly how I felt at the time. It is all still very vivid. I had a lot of help from Andy Wigmore, whose extraordinary memory for detail brought great colour to what is essentially a joint account.

The Leave.EU campaign was a huge collective endeavour and I want to thank those who, for one reason or another, do not receive their proper due in this book.

The team in Andy’s office in London made an invaluable contribution to the wider campaign, making sure that every EU failing was put under the microscope and every Remain campaign scare story squashed.

Special thanks to Brian Monteith, the head of press in that office, who very often had to pick up the pieces after Wiggy and I decided to lob a grenade into the debate; as well as our lead writer Jack Montgomery, who managed the press effort day to day, advised on online content and helped with this book.

No less indispensable was Jordan Ryan, who had the dubious pleasure of serving as Wiggy’s only adviser in the early days of the campaign and created our very best original content, often on personal initiative.

We absolutely could not have done without Victoria Hughes, who organised everything from the Grassroots Out rallies to Nigel’s battle bus tour. Putting these events together while also trying to keep on top of Wiggy’s whereabouts was like herding cats with rabies. She was assisted with some of this by Laura Bier-Nielsen, a keen nineteen-year-old volunteer, who delayed going to university to throw herself into the campaign.

I want to thank our backroom team in Bristol: Pierre Shepherd, Tom Brooke, Tom Price, Tony Strickland and the rest of the research and social media staff, who helped us to grow what became the biggest online campaign of the referendum. Holly Gardner managed thousands of dedicated volunteers from Land’s End to the north of Scotland. Pam Watts and the staff in our hard-pressed call centre made an invaluable contribution, particularly Rudolph, our Slovakian media darling.

Also due a special mention in Bristol are Peter Hargreaves, who really dug deep for Brexit, and his son Robert, who joined our team in Bristol towards the end and got stuck in at the coalface. Beyond our own immediate team there was also Ewen Stewart, our economic adviser, and Stuart Coster, who helped Brian organise our ‘special ops’ around Westminster. Alex Story and Alex Deane – thank you for your intelligence and humour.

Simon Heffer was a particular source of inspiration, always generous when sharing the benefits of his knowledge and experience with us. Raheem Kassam from Breitbart also deserves thanks for his support, strategic advice and encouragement. Chris Bruni-Lowe, Gawain Towler, Michael Heaver, John Gill, Joe Jenkins and especially Dan Jukes, and the rest of the UKIP boys and girls, were close collaborators and always happy to co-operate. To Robin Birley, owner of 5 Hertford Street and a generous supporter of the cause, thank you for your hospitality throughout and after the campaign.

I could not have written this without the brilliant Isabel Oakeshott who lived in my head for ten weeks – I fear she will never be the same again. She has shared a big part of our adventure and I can’t thank her and her editorial team enough.

Finally, thanks to all the voters who passionately supported the Leave.EU campaign and made 23 June our Independence Day.

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

I have co-authored several high-profile books, all of which have been challenging in their own way. None quite prepared me for this project.

Arron’s diary was researched and written in ten weeks, a near-impossible timeframe. I was only able to meet the deadline by drafting in several researchers who helped trawl through thousands of emails and text messages sent and received by Arron during the campaign, as well as Twitter accounts, media reports and Leave.EU’s press releases.

Special thanks to Louis Trupia, a brilliant and endlessly enthusiastic Oxford undergraduate drafted in at three days’ notice in the middle of his summer holiday. He provided invaluable research. Thanks also to reporter Nick Mutch and investigative journalist Margaret Crick. There were many sleepless nights but, thanks to this team, somehow we all got the job done.

Isabel Oakeshott

CONTENTS

Title PageDedicationAcknowledgements Cast of Characters How It Began PART 1: JULY–SEPTEMBER 2015PART 2: OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2015PART 3: JANUARY–MARCH 2016PART 4: APRIL–MAY 2016PART 5: JUNE–JULY 2016Epilogue AfterwordPlatesCopyright

CAST OF CHARACTERS

THE BAD BOYS

Arron Banks (Banksy): Boisterous Bristol-based insurance tycoon, diamond mine owner, philanthropist and man of the people. Leave.EU co-chairman and main funder. Mild-mannered with a hint of menace. Expelled from school for pinching lead off the roof and flogging it on the side.

Andy Wigmore (Wiggy): Banks’s wingman and business associate. Described by himself as the ‘worst head of communications in the world’. Former aide to senior Tory politicians, who now run a mile if he’s around. Expelled from his Catholic school for pinching communion wine and flogging it on the side.

Nigel Farage: Banks’s hero and Mr Brexit himself. Charismatic long-standing leader of UKIP and MEP. Disdained by the chattering classes, but led his party from the margins to victory in the 2014 European elections and delivered 3.9 million votes in the 2015 general election. Survives his eighteen-hour working days on a diet of cigarettes and alcohol. Despite the public bravado, prone to bouts of gloom.

Richard Tice (Mr Collegiate): The acceptable face of Leave.EU. The yin to Banks’s yang. Public school-educated property tycoon, sportsman and ridiculously handsome winner in life. The one they’d want speaking to the police if they were all in a car and got pulled over.

James Pryor (Jimbo, the Happy Hippy): Straggly-haired former Tory Party aide infamous in Conservative Central Office for smoking cannabis while driving Margaret Thatcher’s lectern around. Deserted to the Referendum Party, then went to UKIP. Also deserted from South African Special Forces. General fixer for Banks and keeps an eye on his business interests in Africa.

Honorary bad boy – Kate Hoey: Steely Labour MP from Ulster who finds herself sucked into the chaotic Banks/Wigmore operation. Pretends to disapprove of their antics but secretly enjoys the ride. One of the few Eurosceptics in her party with the guts to back Brexit, but prone to outbreaks of anxiety about appearing in too many photos with Farage.

ASSOCIATES

Liz Bilney: The responsible adult, resident human being and chief executive at Leave.EU. Life is a losing battle to bring Banks’s and Wigmore’s antics under control. The best she can hope is that they don’t land her in prison. Super-efficient and doesn’t hesitate to tear strips off the duo when required, which is frequently.

Gerry Gunster: Banks’s big hire from the US as campaign strategist. Consummate Washington insider with a magic touch when it comes to referendums. Had no idea what he was getting into with Banks and Wigmore. In polite company, pretends he doesn’t know them.

Katya Banks: Banks’s Russian wife, daughter of a local government official and a teacher in Ekaterinburg. Speaks six languages and studied French at the Sorbonne. A larger-than-life extrovert who was caught up in a spy scandal in 2010. The number plate on the family Range Rover is X MI5 SPY.

Jack Montgomery: Scottish waiter plucked from obscurity to serve as lead writer, content adviser and sometime spokesman for Leave.EU. Spent the early days of the campaign sending furtive emails from the cutlery-polishing section of his restaurant to Banks, who decided he had an eye for a story and brought him in.

MONEY MEN

Peter Hargreaves: Billionaire co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown financial advisers, which he started from spare bedroom in his Bristol flat. Thinks British finance industry will thrive free of Brussels straitjacket. Favourite hobby is digging vegetables; rarely bets more than a fiver at the races. Frugal lifestyle and reputation as an awkward bugger mean it will be hard for Banks to prise donations out of him, but if he does it will be worth the effort.

Jim Mellon: Banks’s Isle-of-Man based friend and business partner whose deep pockets help get the campaign up and running. Said to be worth £850 million, he has a reputation for making the right call, including predicting the financial crisis, though he did once lose millions by investing in a dodgy brand of high-strength fish oil. Supposedly hates his nickname of ‘the British Warren Buffett’, but nobody believes him.

VOTE LEAVE

Matthew Elliott: Banks’s nemesis. Smooth-talking chief executive of Vote Leave, which rivalled Leave.EU for status as the official Out campaign. Impeccably connected at Westminster, his mild manner and inscrutable expression mask a steely ambition. Plays the organ in church and (unlike Banks and Wigmore) has few obvious vices.

Dominic Cummings: Dishevelled campaign director of VL, he is Elliott’s provisional wing. Hitman tendencies made Downing Street despair when he was a special adviser to Michael Gove as Education Secretary. Worked on the anti-euro campaign in the 1990s. Revels in his image as Westminster outsider, but is well in with journalists, who gleefully write him up as maverick brainbox plotter and, in one case, married him.

John Mills: Piggy in the middle in the long war of attrition between VL and Leave.EU. Chaired VL for much of the campaign, but constantly flirted with defecting to the more entertaining and Labour-friendly Banks/Wigmore operation. Very wealthy entrepreneur behind JML, the teleshopping channel, he is Labour’s biggest non-union donor. Liked by all sides.

Lord (Nigel) Lawson of Blaby: Father of Nigella, replaced Mills as chairman of VL. Regarded, chiefly by Nigel Lawson, as the grandest figure and hugest intellect on the Leave side. As Chancellor under Margaret Thatcher, he fought to get Britain into the Exchange Rate Mechanism, test-bed for the single currency. Memorably resigned because he couldn’t stomach her Euroscepticism and now lives in France.

Daniel Hannan: Conservative MEP with cult following on libertarian free-market wing of the Eurosceptic movement. Has a store of literary bons mots for every occasion. Douglas Carswell’s brain and best chum.

GRASSROOTS OUT

Peter Bone: Dreary founder of Grassroots Out, which Banks supports. Stalwart of Eurosceptic ‘bastard’ tendency on the Tory back benches who senses his day may at last have come. Described as ‘the voice of Michael Caine in the body of the Demon Headmaster’. Takes avuncular care of Tom Pursglove, whom he considers a future Prime Minister. He is alone in this – and many things.

Tom Pursglove: Bone’s bag carrier and amanuensis. They function as a single entity, Boneglove. The youngest Tory MP, he makes up for lack of experience by getting up the noses of Banks and his team with his hissy fits and demands for better stage make-up. Once threatened to sack his PA for having drinks with UKIP staff.

Nick Wood: GO’s florid-faced head of press, fighting constant turf war with Wigmore. Former press secretary to Tory leaders William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith, suspected by Banks’s staff of being a none-too-subtle double agent for Vote Leave.

UKIP

Douglas Carswell: Arch-enemy of Farage. UKIP’s only MP, representing Clacton in Essex. Defected from the Conservatives in 2014, but seen by many Kippers as a Tory plant. Member of VL board and bosom buddy of Hannan.

Chris Bruni-Lowe: Farage’s energetic director of strategy and data nerd. Rules the UKIP office through brutal, laddish mockery, but spends his money on elaborate spa days for a little fluffy dog. Used to work for Carswell in the Tory Party and seen by some in UKIP as the best thing to come out of the MP’s defection.

Gawain Towler: No knight more loyal at the round table of King Nigel. Farage made Gawain head of press after accosting him in a pub (where else?) in 2006. Rarely deviates from uniform of tweed jacket, corduroys and a waistcoat, even on a hot summer day.

George Cottrell (Posh George): Nigel’s office fixer. Posh to the point of caricature and wilfully abrasive, but extremely generous when it comes to picking up the bar tab. Nephew of Lord Hesketh, Tory minister under Thatcher and John Major, who defected to UKIP. Media

Richard Desmond: Famously rude and off-the-wall cigar smoker and proprietor of Express newspapers. Started out as a cloakroom attendant and drummer – he still has a drum kit in his office. Made his name as publisher of top-shelf titles like Asian Babes and Big Ones. Banks’s most powerful media ally.

Robbie Gibb: Put-upon, bald-headed BBC executive. All sides believe the Beeb’s referendum coverage is biased and Gibb has the impossible job of keeping them all happy, so always looks anxious. Brother of Tory government minister Nick Gibb, his outward demeanour as a grey BBC bureaucrat masks a lively streak. Once amused guests at a Westminster party by getting physical with a cardboard cut-out of Margaret Thatcher.

Andrew Pierce: Veteran political columnist at the Daily Mail and broadcaster at LBC. Waspish, camp and good to have on your side. Always in the market for juicy gossip and loves a good-humoured bitch. Isn’t afraid who he upsets, but is afraid of going bald.

Simon Heffer: Influential right-wing columnist on the Telegraph who likes good lunches and shooting. Banks and Wigmore cultivate him with briefings and the occasional freebie. A convinced Outer, he sees eye to eye with them on almost everything.

Lucy Fisher: Well-spoken young Times political reporter. Always eager for a story, becomes one of Banks’s favourite media contacts after they meet at a party.

OTHERS

Lord (Michael) Ashcroft of Chichester: Self-made billionaire and international man of mystery. Lovingly cultivates Bond villain image – not entirely tongue in cheek. Wearer of many hats: businessman, author, pollster, philanthropist and irreverent tweeter. His millions kept the Conservative Party show on the road for years but he plays his political cards closer to his chest these days.

Richard North: Tireless campaigner for decades on his hobby horses of Euroscepticism and food hygiene. Formerly Farage’s head of research, they fell out while sharing an office in Brussels. He and his son Peter let rip with regular tirades of abuse against Banks and Wigmore, who respond in kind.

LOCATIONS

Lysander House: Banks’s HQ. A David Brent-style office block in Catbrain Lane on the outskirts of Bristol. The main local landmarks are the M5 and a Harvester restaurant. The natural home for the Leave.EU call centre.

Millbank Tower: Leave.EU’s London base after Banks reluctantly decides they need an office close to the hated Westminster bubble. Hideous 1960s skyscraper on the Embankment near the Houses of Parliament. Overlooks the much smaller and uglier tower occupied by VL across the river. Formerly the nerve centre of New Labour control freakery, where Peter Mandelson masterminded the triumph of Tony Blair.

Old Down: Banks’s country estate on the outskirts of Bristol, bought from musician Mike Oldfield in 2008. He restored the Victorian manor house and hires it out as a wedding venue. It’s also good for wining and dining journalists, politicians and potential supporters of the cause. Banks stocked its park with llamas. Home is a house on the estate where he lives with Katya and three of his five children, Darren (16), Olivia (13) and Peter (11). Handy for Catbrain Lane.

5 Hertford Street: Private members’ establishment in Mayfair opened by Robin Birley, doyen of the London club scene. Less fusty than more traditional gentlemen’s clubs, but still exclusive. Perfect for a hush-hush lunch and a bit of discreet arm-twisting. Features all-important smoking terrace so Farage has no excuse to refuse invitations.

Pretoria: Banks’s second home in South Africa, where he spent much of his childhood. His base when he needs to check up on his diamond mining interests in South Africa and Lesotho. Oscar Pistorius used to be a neighbour.

HOW IT BEGAN

In a way, it all started in a pub in Guernsey.

It was June 2015, and the Tories had just won the general election. The party would now have to deliver its pledge to hold an EU referendum.

The election campaign had been gruelling, and UKIP leader Nigel Farage was feeling battered. His attempt to win a parliamentary seat had ended in failure and he was unsure what the future held. When an old friend invited him to join a short business cruise for two or three dozen right-leaning industrialists on Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth, he was glad to accept.

Also on that cruise was a political strategist named Matthew Elliott. The brains behind the influential TaxPayers’ Alliance think tank, Elliott was a familiar figure in Westminster circles. He was delighted by the opportunity to network with some of the wealthiest political donors in the country. He had big plans for the year ahead.

The ship had docked for a few hours and Farage, who likes nothing better than sampling a new hostelry, had run ashore for a lunchtime pint. As he sat with a beer in St Peter Port, he spotted Elliott strolling by and beckoned him in. The discussion that followed would determine how the battle for Britain to leave the European Union would take shape.

Both men expected to play a central role. Elliott already had one successful referendum under his belt (the No to AV plebiscite on an alternative voting system in 2012) and was part of the political establishment. Respected by senior Tories and political journalists alike, over the years he had amassed a network of rich patrons who could be called upon to back his projects. By the time he and Farage met on the cruise, he had already laid the foundations for his bid to mastermind the referendum campaign by setting up a Eurosceptic pressure group called Business for Britain.

For his part, Farage had been preparing for the referendum all his political life. He had spent the best part of a quarter of a century fighting to get Britain out of the EU. Now, as the man who had done more than any other individual to bring about the referendum, he naturally expected to be at the heart of the campaign. Where did he figure in Elliott’s game plan?

This is what the two men discussed that day. The tension was not just about egos – though egos certainly played a part. At heart was a fundamental difference of opinion over how the campaign should be fought and whether Farage should be at the forefront. ‘I think you should leave it to the experts,’ Elliott told him – by which he meant strategists like himself.

Farage was affronted. He was also worried. Years of grassroots campaigning all over Britain had taught him that immigration was a massive issue among working-class and lower-middle-class voters. When it came to Britain’s relationship with Brussels, he knew that the EU’s sacred open borders policy was the issue that most rankled with these groups, however queasy it made the bien pensants in London. Of course he recognised the importance of arguments about business and sovereignty, but he was adamant that deepening public concern about mass migration was the key to Brexit.

Elliott disagreed. He believed focusing on immigration would drag the campaign into a fatal row about racism and xenophobia. He also believed Farage was too divisive to win over floating voters. Plus, he wanted to give Prime Minister David Cameron a chance to negotiate a better deal with Brussels – as the PM had always promised the electorate – before committing himself to an Out campaign.

There was little common ground.

A horn sounded, signalling that the Queen Mary was preparing to leave port, and the pair hurried back to the ship. Reflecting on their conversation, Farage fell into a gloom. He now had deep misgivings about the looming campaign. On his return from the cruise, he called me. ‘We’re going to lose this referendum unless we do something,’ he told me anxiously. I listened carefully to what Nigel had to say, and knew immediately that I wanted to help. I knew there was no greater champion of the Eurosceptic cause, and trusted his judgement implicitly. I also liked him enormously. I was ready to do whatever it took.

Our relationship had not begun well. We first met in the grand environs of the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall in summer 2014. Nigel, a twenty-a-day man, immediately upset staff by lighting up a cigarette. He was extremely grumpy when politely asked to desist, becoming even more bad tempered and rude when he was told he could not even smoke in the garden. He started muttering about Britain being ‘a free country’ and I began to have visions of my membership of the club being revoked. It did not help that we were both feeling under the weather. He seemed on edge throughout, and I left the encounter unimpressed. Nonetheless, I admired what he was doing, and indicated that I might be willing to support UKIP financially at some point in the future.

That moment came far sooner than I expected, following a remarkable upturn in UKIP’s political fortunes. In the autumn of 2014, two Tory MPs – Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless – dramatically defected, and Farage was keen to keep up the momentum.

At the time, I was still a member of the Conservatives, having been very active in the party when I was young. At the age of twenty-one, I had been vice-chairman of my local Tory association and had stood as a councillor in a Labour stronghold in Basingstoke. I was the youngest Conservative candidate in the country and received a letter from Margaret Thatcher acknowledging this special status. I failed to win the ward, however, and ended up pursuing a career in business instead.

For a long time I was too busy with my career and bringing up a young family to get actively involved in politics again. I never lost interest in politics, however, and watched with dismay as John Major blithely signed away our control over our borders via the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.

As power ebbed from Westminster, I knew it would be much harder to hold our elected representatives to account, and that this lack of accountability would lead inevitably to shoddy government and lower standards in public life. The erosion of our ability to determine our own laws and choose our way of life had only just begun. I hated it, and I couldn’t understand why the party that was supposed to be more dedicated to upholding our historic constitution and hard-won democratic freedoms than any other was now palming everything off to a clique of anonymous, unelected foreign officials. It felt like a betrayal. Though I remained a member of the Tory Party, and supported my local association financially, I was becoming increasingly disillusioned by the party’s weak stance on Europe.

That first meeting with Farage, unsatisfactory as it was, marked a turning point in my political allegiances. Not long afterwards, he rang rather tentatively asking whether I might consider making a donation of £100,000, which he said could be presented as another defection, albeit by a donor not an MP. I immediately agreed. My businesses in this country and overseas, where I own a number of diamond mines, were doing very well. I wanted to give something back, and help the fight to get Britain out of the EU.

My decision to give money to UKIP gave me an unpleasant taste of the way big political power players dismiss people like me who are not part of the club. On the morning the donation was made public, I was sitting in bed eating toast and honey and flicked on Sky News to see William Hague snootily dismissing me as a nobody.

A few minutes later, Farage was on the phone. ‘The Foreign Secretary is all over the television saying he doesn’t know who you are, and nobody he knows has ever heard of you,’ he reported.

‘I know,’ I replied. ‘What a cheek! Let’s up the donation to £1 million!’

Farage was amazed. He had been more than happy with the original amount, and didn’t believe I was serious.

‘I mean it,’ I said firmly. ‘Let’s do this.’

‘OK, leave it with me,’ Farage replied excitably.

At which point he hotfooted it off to brief the press. Speculation was rife that more Tory MPs were going to change sides, and Nigel, somewhat disingenuously, was briefing that another defection was imminent.

Before I’d had time to gather my thoughts, hundreds of journalists and cameramen began descending on Old Down, my country estate. The scenes that followed were totally chaotic. In my fit of pique, I had forgotten that my wife and I were due to host a major fundraiser for a Belize children’s charity that evening. We had invited the wife of the Prime Minister of Belize, who was staying with us, as well as half the members of the South West Conservative Party. Also joining us was as a senior figure from the Commonwealth Society with close links to the royal household, who was due to arrive early.

To his bemusement, the unfortunate Palace insider appeared at exactly the same time as the press pack were arriving. (His response to the bizarre unfolding spectacle was some most uncourtly language: ‘Holy shit.’)

Farage himself arrived in high spirits and ordered me to get out and face the cameras. As I emerged from the house and nervously surveyed the scene, I could see a ripple of disgust spread through the press pack. They had been dragged down the M4 on a false premise, and did nothing to hide their disappointment that I was not a politician.

Having come all this way, however, they were loath to waste the story, and my new donation was headline news.

When they had all buggered off, I suggested Farage spend the night at Old Down, and invited him to do the charity auction at our fundraising dinner. The Conservatives I’d invited were surprised and dismayed that their host had not only dramatically left the party but also forced them to spend an evening with Farage. It’s fair to say the reaction was mixed. At least one inebriated and indignant guest had to be escorted from the premises after becoming abusive towards our special guest. Nonetheless, the evening was a roaring success and raised a lot of money for a great cause.

I was still high on adrenalin after all the guests had departed, and took it into my head to clamber onto the roof of my Land Rover to watch the sun rise.

Not long afterwards, Farage, who had stopped drinking only a little earlier and can have had no more than two hours’ sleep, emerged from the house bright as a button and found me in a crumpled heap on the gravel, having rolled off the car with an ungainly thud and fallen asleep where I landed.

It marked the beginning of what has become a firm friendship.

In the months that followed, I became increasingly involved in UKIP politics. As a businessman, I was shocked and dismayed by what I learned about the inner workings of the party. It was hopelessly dysfunctional and ill-prepared for campaigning.

It was far less of a threat to the Conservatives than it appeared. Nonetheless, Farage’s huge personal following frightened them. They certainly did not want him becoming an MP. As I was to discover, they were ready to go to any lengths to prevent it happening, including, apparently, breaking the law.

In this enterprise, they had a highly valuable and willing accomplice in the shape of the recently converted UKIP MP for Clacton. As one of just two Kippers in the Commons, Carswell was in a powerful position. His decision to defect must have been quite a wrench. He had been actively involved in the Tory Party for at least fifteen years, and an MP for almost a decade. The Eurosceptic Tory MEP Dan Hannan was one of his closest friends. His arrival was a huge boost for UKIP, helping to create the credibility and energy it needed to do well in 2015, but it would return to haunt Farage.

From the start, there were lingering suspicions among some Kippers that his decision was not made on principle. Clacton is a staunchly Eurosceptic part of the country, and private polling suggested that UKIP was a serious threat to the sitting MP. Carswell was in very real danger of losing his seat.

Only he knows whether his heart was ever really in leaving the Conservative Party, but it is interesting that he went to great lengths to ensure that if his great gamble backfired, he would be well looked after. Arrangements were put in place for him to receive a considerable sum of money from UKIP if he failed to win the by-election triggered by his defection. In the event, he held onto the seat, and the compensation package proved unnecessary.

Fast forward to the general election, and Farage’s own bid to enter Parliament turned South Thanet into the most bitterly contested seat in the country. In an increasingly febrile atmosphere, an array of individuals and organisations of all political hues coalesced to thwart him. It was not a fair fight. We now know that the Conservative Party had no compunction about busting legal spending limits, pouring huge sums of money and other resources into the seat. They used a variety of ruses to mask their activities. Moreover, it appears they may also have got their hands on some very useful inside information.

Carswell was one of just three individuals with access to UKIP’s highly sensitive private polling on target seats. This detailed data identified specific streets and households whose support would be pivotal to win the seat. With an official role overseeing UKIP’s target seat campaign, Carswell was supposed to use it to do everything in his power to propel candidates to victory – including the party leader.

As the battle for the seat intensified, Farage was surprised and concerned to find that Tory activists were targeting the exact same individuals in South Thanet. It now appears that they were doing so via a highly unethical ‘push polling’ operation based in the south-west London suburb of Kingston, which involved using loaded questions to plant negative ideas about Nigel in voters’ minds.

How did they come to be so well informed?

We may never know. Long after polling day, however, my own forensic post-mortem examination of South Thanet revealed something quite remarkable: Carswell was routinely downloading the data and sending it to an anonymous computer server.

He did so on six separate occasions. While there were files on every target seat in the country, curiously, only the information about South Thanet was shared. Quite where the information went once it left our offices, nobody knows, but I can make an educated guess: the Tories. This private data could have made it much easier for the Tories to target floating voters in the constituency.

Farage duly lost the seat. Soon after the election, he resigned as UKIP leader.

Taken together, the excessive spending, the push polling, and the very murky ‘sharing’ of UKIP’s private data suggest an extraordinary stitch-up by the Tories. This information is now in the hands of the police.

Farage’s notorious decision to ‘un-resign’ was prompted by a hostile phone call from Carswell. Now UKIP’s only MP (Reckless having lost his seat) and in control of £650,000 of taxpayers’ money designed to support opposition parties, Carswell was more empowered than ever. During a highly unpleasant exchange, he told Farage to stay out of the referendum campaign. It was a step too far, and it backfired. Farage returned to the leadership, determined to play the campaign his own way.

Now deeply mistrustful of the Tories and elements within his own party, he asked me to consider running it. I said yes immediately.

I cared so much about the cause, and was so outraged by his treatment, that I was ready to put in several million pounds from my own fortune. In July 2015, with my friend and business associate Andy ‘Wiggy’ Wigmore, I began building the campaign.

Nigel had a clear vision for our role. Knowing that the Conservatives would avoid talking about immigration, he wanted us to put the issue at the forefront of our efforts. Our brief was to do what even he could not: be as provocative as required to keep immigration at the top of the agenda.

This book is the story of how we responded.

Our methods were unorthodox and often landed us in hot water. We were undoubtedly the ‘bad boys’ of the referendum campaign.

Our belligerent approach to politicians and other people we felt were letting down the country upset the establishment and we fell out with everyone from NASA to Posh Spice. At times, even Farage thought we went too far.

Yet it worked. Through the power of social media, we were creating an extraordinary mass movement, drawing in swathes of voters neglected by the main political parties. At times our social media reach hit nearly 20 million people in a week – a third of the entire population.

We never set out to cosy up to politicians or even to influence them. Our strategy was to go direct to the people, using techniques that bypassed the mainstream media. It may have appeared chaotic, but the thinking behind it was very clear. In America, Donald Trump, the ultimate political outsider, is doing similar things.

For all the larks, we took our efforts to persuade the Electoral Commission to designate us as the official Leave campaign extremely seriously. In the end, we failed. In hindsight, it’s not surprising. We were rank outsiders, and could be loose cannons. In any case, it turned out to be a good thing. So far from giving up, we proceeded to run a parallel operation to the official campaign run by Elliott. While we were constrained by legal spending limits, we were otherwise gloriously unaccountable.

Ours became the guerrilla war. It was not for the faint-hearted, but we enjoyed almost every minute. I believe it was pivotal to the outcome of the referendum.

This is my diary of our adventures.

Arron Banks,

September 2016

PART 1:

JULY–SEPTEMBER 2015

JULY 2015

1 JULY

A summer break with Farage

We’re off. After far too long pounding the streets of South Thanet with our fellow fruitcakes and loonies, Nigel and I are doing a runner from reality and flying to the sunnier climes of Belize.

He’s exhausted and needs a change of scene. The drama of his resignation from the UKIP leadership followed by his now-infamous un-resignation was mentally and physically draining.

His adviser Raheem Kassam, a young right-wing firebrand, used to have him in the sauna every other day sweating buckets, so he wouldn’t look all damp-faced and shifty – the dreaded ‘Nixon lip’ – at hustings. On at least one occasion this led to a half-conscious Farage having to avert his eyes as Kassam engaged in a sweaty naked wrestling match with a local idiot who was trying to snap a sly picture of the UKIP leader’s tackle for BuzzFeed. It was like a scene from .