How Vote Leave won the EU referendum

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Boris Johnson MP, a high profile leader of the Leave campaign, addresses the public in York recently

“It was the two Bs wot won it: Boris and borders.” This remark by a Vote Leave insider neatly captures how Britain’s gang of Eurosceptics achieved Brexit — a tight, pithy message combined with a big personality turned out to be a ruthlessly effective formula.

The Brexiters have proved the polls wrong; the betting markets and conventional wisdom, too. But looking away from the data, their victory is not a total surprise. From the first day of the referendum campaign, the Vote Leave campaign believed Brexit was a possibility.

It is hard to dispute that Vote Leave ran a far superior campaign to their pro-EU rivals, Britain Stronger In Europe. From the off, it was more disciplined, with tighter messaging and better personalities. Instead of arguing about a number on the side of a bus, it trotted out the line “Vote leave, take back control” at every opportunity. On posters, doorsteps and during the TV debates, Vote Leave had a careful plan, hatched by campaigning masterminds Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings, based on internal research and focus groups.

David Cameron’s renegotiation with Britain’s EU partners was an Achilles heel for the Remain campaign. Ever since his Bloomberg speech three years ago, promising an In/Out EU referendum, expectations were set for substantial reform. The prime minister’s “new settlement” earlier this year did not achieve that. There was a desire for change and Mr Cameron only tweaked the status quo. Although he is likely fall on his sword after this result, it is not Mr Cameron’s fault alone — other European leaders, such as Angela Merkel, must wonder whether the paltry deal they offered the British electorate could have been better.

From the beginning of the campaign, Remainers insisted that they had “won” the economic argument and the weight of expert opinion — the IMF, IFS and the Treasury — had swung it for them. But campaign sources point out that Vote Leave’s predecessor, Business for Britain, spent three years working on the economic case for Brexit. Lord Bamford of JCB, James Dyson and John Longworth did not undergo overnight conversions to the Leave cause. Brexiters also neutralised the economic argument by moving the campaign on to territory more comfortable for them: immigration and Turkey. Ultimately, this seems to have appealed more to voters.

You tell us: voters chose to leave the EU. Now what?

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The state of British politics and its parties will be dissected during the next few days, but the state of the Labour party will almost certainly be pointed to as one of the factors behind Brexit. The accusation that Jeremy Corbyn did not pull his weight during the campaign is one that pro-EU Labour MPs will begin to raise. But the party has big challenges ahead: the views of its metropolitan leadership are now entirely divorced from its core voters in the rest of the country. Putting Labour back together is going to make the Conservatives’ job look easy.

The role of the media in this campaign must also be taken into account. For almost a quarter of a century, Fleet Street has been fomenting Eurosceptic sentiment. The media operation from Stronger In was unable to compete with the populist message orchestrated by tabloid newspapers such as the Sun.

Now we are through the looking glass, both British politics and the economy have to be rebuilt. The repercussions of this vote cannot be understated — everything we know about Westminster is about to change. But for a moment, stop and marvel at the people who achieved this. Most observers said it could not be done, yet Britain has now voted to leave the EU.

sebastian.payne@ft.com