David
Cameron unleashes ‘project fear’
Downing
Street will put the prime minister front-and-center in a big-spending
referendum campaign.
By ALEX SPENCE
2/26/16, 5:30 AM CET
LONDON — British
voters will never love the European Union. But maybe they can be
terrified into voting not to leave it.
As a four-month
media blitz kicked off this week, instilling fear into Britons if
they decide to break with mainland Europe was Downing Street’s
strategy for defeating the Brexit camp. In speeches and interviews,
David Cameron and his allies bluntly warned of shock to the economy
and the job market and terrorist attacks if Britain leaves.
The tabloids have
dubbed the campaign “Project Fear.”
It’s a re-run of
the playbook that prevailed in the Scottish independence vote two
years ago.
This time, the
stakes are even higher and Cameron himself will be front-and-center
of the campaign, using television appearances, interviews and social
media to convince 45 million voters that a Brexit vote is too much of
a gamble, whatever their reservations about Brussels.
Key advisers include
Chancellor George Osborne and Downing Street’s communications
strategist Craig Oliver, who both worked on the Scottish campaign.
Joining them in Project Fear 2 is Jim Messina, a former campaign
strategist for Barack Obama, who helped Cameron win a majority in
last year’s general elections.
Reinforcing that
message this week were a couple of coordinated open letters from
prominent figures, a staple of British election campaigns.
The prime minister’s
camp suffered an early blow, with Tory heavyweights Boris Johnson and
Michael Gove throwing their support behind Brexit. Cameron kicked off
his campaign to keep Britain in the EU on the defensive, after the
conservative media pilloried his deal with Brussels. But his allies
are confident he will rebound, if they keep making the argument that
leaving the European Union would be a gamble not worth taking.
No. 10’s media
strategy over the next few months, according to a senior official, is
to “keep making the case with the PM, who is seen by many millions
on TV.”
In speeches and
interviews in recent days, Cameron has reiterated the same handful of
soundbites.
A vote to leave is a
“leap in the dark.” Britain is “safer, stronger, better”
staying in. The deal with Brussels, while not perfect, ended the
prospect of European migrants getting “something for nothing,” by
taking money from the British state before they’ve worked there.
Remaining in the EU, without being part of its two failing treaties,
Schengen and the euro, mean Britain getting the “best of both
worlds.”
Reinforcing that
message this week were a couple of coordinated open letters from
prominent figures, a staple of British election campaigns. A letter
from a group of powerful chief executives warned of the potential
economic consequences of a Brexit vote. In a separate letter to the
Daily Telegraph, former military chiefs warned of security threats
from Russia to ISIL.
“In a dangerous
world, [EU membership] helps us to safeguard our people, our
prosperity and our way of life,” they said.
TV campaign
The prime minister
will personally be much more involved in this campaign than he was in
the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, when he took a back
seat rather than risk provoking a backlash among Scottish voters
disgruntled at the Westminster leadership. This time, Cameron — a
former public relations man — will lead from the front, throwing
the full weight of his office, and his personal authority, behind the
campaign.
He is an effective
campaigner, his supporters say, and his ability to connect with
voters is stronger than he is given credit for. They cite his
undisputed achievements: He defied predictions last May and led
Conservatives to their first outright majority in a general election
since the early 1990s. He has won referendum campaigns twice before.
Televised debates
will also feature heavily in the campaign.
The focus of the
media strategy will be the main TV channels, such as the BBC and ITV.
Downing Street,
influenced by Oliver, a former senior BBC journalist, regards the
broadcasters as by far the most important media outlet shaping public
opinion; their nightly news bulletins reach millions of people every
night. Unlike the newspapers, TV networks are legally obliged to be
impartial. Viewers of their news bulletins will get a less hostile
take on Cameron’s comments than readers of some of the print media.
(That works to the other side’s advantage, too.)
Hours after
returning from Brussels last weekend, Cameron appeared on the Andrew
Marr Show, the BBC’s main Sunday morning current affairs TV
program, which is closely watched by London media and political
elites. In the coming weeks, his team will use the broadcasters to
also get their message far beyond the Westminster bubble, to voters
who don’t pay much attention to the day-to-day cut-and-thrust of
politics. In the run-up to the general election, for example, he
appeared several times on Good Morning Britain, a lightweight,
magazine-style breakfast show on ITV, the main commercially-funded
network.
Televised debates
will also feature heavily in the campaign.
The BBC is planning
three live programs in the run-up to the vote: a debate on May 19 in
Glasgow, aimed at young voters “who are traditionally alienated by
conventional political coverage;” a special edition of its weekly
Question Time Q&A show on June 19, with one senior figure from
each side of the In-Out referendum debate; and a live debate at
London’s Wembley Arena two days before the vote, billed by the
public broadcaster as “BBC’s biggest ever campaign event.”
There was a huge row
between the political parties before the general election last year
about the format of these debates. Cameron, running ahead of the
other leaders in approval ratings, thought he had little to gain from
agreeing to a head-to-head on TV with his main opponents.
In the end, he
agreed to take part in one conventional leaders debate, but his other
live appearances were restricted to question-and-answer sessions with
presenters and a studio audience, rather than a direct confrontation
on stage with his main opponents. Pundits criticized the prime
inister as “out of touch” and “running scared,” but insisting
that the debates be held on his terms did not hurt him on the day of
the vote.
‘Weird leap’
Print media is a
more of a problem for Cameron.
The Guardian and the
Financial Times will likely urge their readers in editorials to
Remain, but, unlike previous votes in recent years, much of the
influential right-wing press has so far lined up against him.
Coverage of his deal with Brussels in the Times, the Sun, the
Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and the Daily Express was scathing.
“Who do EU think
you’re kidding Mr Cameron?” said the front page headline in the
Sun after his initial agreement with European Council President
Donald Tusk was revealed.
With their
readerships declining, it is arguable just how much influence these
newspapers still have over voters’ decisions. They still sell
millions of copies a day and often drive the broadcasters’ news
agenda, putting Cameron’s camp in a bind: they can’t simply write
them off as implacably Euroskeptic, and have them relentlessly attack
him day-after-day for the next few months.
“It’s not a
combination you want to be up against,” John Rentoul, a columnist
for the Independent newspaper, said in an interview.
Fortunately for the
prime minister, the right-wing press is not a uniform block and most,
for all their reservations about the EU, are still biddable. Despite
their bluster about Brussels, most of them haven’t yet committed
explicitly to Brexit. (The Daily Express is an exception.)
Recent editorials
have seemed as concerned about making the campaign a genuine contest
as they have about its actual outcome. It may be that, after all the
bluster and rhetoric, several of the conservative papers end up
urging their readers to vote to stay.
Voters are likely to
face a barrage of emails, leaflets, billboards and online video
advertisements from the campaign groups
Rupert Murdoch’s
Times and Sun will be worth watching. Murdoch is instinctively
anti-EU, but would also weigh up what Brexit would mean for his
European businesses. A report in the Mail on Sunday last year claimed
he agreed privately with ministers that his newspaper would not
support Brexit. In a tweet in response to that story, Murdoch
described the Mail on Sunday’s claim as a “weird leap,” but did
not deny it.
Cameron will also
use less obvious media channels to reach voters. In the general
election campaign last year, he gave a video interview to Heat, a
gossipy women’s magazine, in which he discussed multi-tasking, his
fear of rats and the Kardashians. He was widely mocked by the
Westminster-Fleet Street establishment. He also did a live-streamed
Q&A with BuzzFeed, which was hailed as novel for a British
leader.
Big spender
The campaign will
also involve aggressive use of social media.
The Conservatives
made extensive use of Facebook in the run-up to last year’s general
election, spending more than £1 million on likes and advertisements
targeting voters. British political strategists have followed the
social media straetgy deployed by their American counterparts in
presidential campaigns, targeting swing voters on Facebook and using
Twitter to galvanize supporters, rally volunteers and engage key
journalists.
Social media is
“rocketing up in importance to political parties,” said Carl
Miller, research director at the Centre for the Analysis of Social
Media at the think tank Demos.
Voters are likely to
face a barrage of emails, leaflets, billboards and online video
advertisements from the campaign groups in the next few months.
“It would be fair
to say it will be the biggest-spending referendum campaign ever [in
the U.K.],” Benedict Pringle, a commentator on political
advertising, said in an interview.
Under referendum
rules, the campaign advertising will be done through the official
campaign group, Britain Stronger In Europe. Officially designated
groups are entitled to spend up to £7 million on the campaign and
are granted a set amount of free advertising time on TV.
Britain Stonger in
Europe has not waited for the campaign to officially begin to start
trying to reach voters, Pringle points out. It has already run
several video advertisements online, including one that resembles the
type of attack ads common in American campaigns, using the
opposition’s own statements against them.
Judging by other
campaigns recently, the rhetoric will get rancorous and the blows
will get personal.
In the lead-up to
the vote on reforming the electoral system in 2011, Cameron’s side
mercilessly singled out Nick Clegg, the leading figure arguing for
change, even though he was Cameron’s deputy prime minister and
close ally.
Before the general
election last year, the Conservatives relentlessly attacked Ed
Miliband’s credibility. A Tory poster showing a tiny Miliband
peering out from the suit pocket of the Scottish nationalist Alex
Salmond, playing on voters’ concerns that a victory for Labour
could give the Scottish National Party more influence in Westminster,
was one of the most enduring and effective images during the
campaign.
Expect this campaign
to highlight divisive figures on the Leave side, such as Nigel Farage
and George Galloway. London Mayor Boris Johnson may be harder to
discredit, because of his national popularity, but Cameron’s allies
are convinced that they can poke holes in his credibility by
highlighting his flip-flopping on Europe, persuading voters of his
personal ambitions to take over Cameron’s job, mocking his
cartoonish antics, and questioning his governing skills.
It’s not a simple
question of choosing between “yes” and “no,” they will warn
voters.
They will try to
frame the debate as a question: Who do you trust with the nation’s
future? The chancellor of the Exchequer, the governor of the Bank of
England, and the country’s military and business leaders — or a
group of eccentrics?
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