Despite all the fighting over which faction is working with who that’s taken place over the past few days, MP members of the Vote Leave campaign are actually rather upbeat. In private conversations that I’ve had over the past few days, a number of MPs who had been worried about the campaign have told me that they think it has turned a corner with the restructure that was announced earlier last week.
The Vote Leave bunch do not want to merge with Leave.EU for a number of reasons, but one is simply that it would be difficult with such a small amount of time left before the referendum. But there’s nothing to stop the groups working together, and co-ordinating their activities, rather than the current situation of a lot of friendly fire between Leave.EU and Vote Leave. Figures in Vote Leave tried to engineer a ceasefire in the past week, but this failed within hours, with the other side rebuffing the approach.
Arron Banks made this clear in his interview with the Times at the weekend, in which he said that ‘the enemy for us is not the ‘In’ campaign – they’re laughable – the enemy is our own side… Our job is to defeat the enemy and move on.’
One of the reasons that a number of MPs split off from Vote Leave and joined Grassroots Out is that there was a disagreement over tactics and whether the campaigns should focus their efforts on doorstep canvassing or street stalls and town hall meetings or leaflets. It’s hardly a big ideological split that means the two groups can’t work together – indeed, the two groups should be able to complement one another if they manage to find a way of avoiding endless furious fights.
Peter Bone, one of the MPs who set up Grassroots Out, is considering applying for designation on behalf of his group so that the other independent campaigns have an organisation to unite under. This has not gone down well with the Vote Leave bunch, who see GO as a front for Banks’ Leave.EU. But Bone argues that his organisation is mobilising non-Westminster campaigning, saying: ‘We have been surprised by the pent up frustration about the lack of campaigning going on. People just want to get out there.’ There doesn’t seem pent-up desire for the different groups to unite just yet, though.
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