William Collins
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017
Copyright © Tim Shipman 2017
Cover illustration by Morten Morland/Spectator
Tim Shipman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008264383
Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008264390
Version: 2018-05-01
fall out v.
1 quarrel
3 come out of formation
fallout n.
1 radioactive debris caused by a nuclear explosion or accident
2 the adverse side effects of a situation
The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1991 edn)
‘It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood’
Theodore Roosevelt, 23 April 1910
‘Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth’
Mike Tyson
This is the second book I never intended to write. Just as with All Out War, my 2016 book on the Brexit referendum campaign, Fall Out is the product of extraordinary events. The original intention was to add a few chapters to All Out War to bring the Brexit story up to date with the declaration of Article 50 in the spring of 2017. Then Theresa May called a general election and the inexorable logic of writing a sequel overwhelmed me. The fallout from the EU referendum and the general election is still with us. It was perhaps the most extraordinary of my lifetime. It led the Tory Party to fall out with itself and fall out of formation.
This book is based on more than one hundred interviews conducted primarily between July and October 2017. Last time I listed most of the primary sources. This time I have not done so since many more of them are still in prominent posts and most were reluctant to be named. That said, only a very small number of people refused to cooperate. Those who talked to me include fifteen members of Theresa May’s Downing Street staff, twenty ministers, including thirteen of cabinet rank, more than twenty-five Tory campaign staff, more than a dozen senior figures in the Labour Party, the shadow cabinet, Jeremy Corbyn’s office and the trade unions, as well as civil servants, special advisers, diplomats, former ministers, MPs and pollsters.
During the time covered by this book I interviewed Theresa May three times and accompanied her on her visit to the White House. I also conducted on-the-record interviews with David Davis, Boris Johnson, Damian Green, Michael Gove, John McDonnell, Nigel Farage, Arron Banks and Michael Fallon. I have drawn on the unpublished transcripts of these conversations.
As before, some people agreed to certain observations being ‘on the record’ but most of the time we spoke on the understanding that I would construct a narrative of events without signalling the origin of every fact and quote. Where I have directly quoted someone or attributed thoughts or feelings to them, I have spoken to them, the person they were addressing, someone else in the room who observed their behaviour, or someone to whom they recounted details of the incident or conversation. You should not assume that the obvious source is the correct one. Many of those who spoke to me off the record have written newspaper articles, given interviews or spoken publicly about their views. Where this is the case I have footnoted published sources in the text.