The highs and lows of Project Fear versus Project Hate

Bozza, said Hezza, had been guilty of making “preposterous, obscene political remarks”, he was losing it with his outlandish rhetoric and had effectively blown his chances of ever becoming prime minister.

It was only a few days earlier when the former London mayor had rattled the Remain cage by suggesting the EU and Hitler had the same aim of creating a European superstate; albeit by different methods.

It presented Mr Johnson’s opponents with an open goal and underlined how much of the debate would be about “playing the man”; Remain strategists believed that the more they could personalise the arguments towards the idiosyncratic Uxbridge MP and, even better, towards Ukip’s equally idiosyncratic Nigel Farage, the better their campaign’s chances would be.

On the same day as Lord Heseltine’s broadside, David Cameron enraged the Brexit camp by suggesting the only people who would be rubbing their hands at Britain quitting the EU were Russian president Vladimir Putin and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of so-called Islamic State.

The heat in the debate was turned up.

Just two hours before purdah – the period when the Whitehall machine falls into a campaign sleep – struck, the Treasury ended a flow of anti-Brexit statistics with another dire warning about how leaving the EU could hit pensions. Pensioners, who are known to be the most likely section of society to vote, were, so opinion polls told us, largely pro-Brexit. The target was carefully chosen.

Chief Leaver Iain Duncan Smith branded the Treasury move “utterly outrageous” and as purdah began anti-EU MPs demanded any pro-EU links on government websites should be removed.

Then another Tory grandee made a splash.

Sir John Major angrily took to the airwaves to have another mighty swipe at the Brexit Conservatives, denouncing their campaign as “deceitful” and “verging on the squalid”. He dismissed Mr Johnson as a “court jester” and suggested that leaving the NHS in his hands and those of Michael Gove would be “about as safe with them as a pet hamster would be with a hungry python”.

The Remain camp was beginning to look jittery, a feeling underlined when the Prime Minister upped the rhetoric, warning that Brexit was like “putting a bomb under the economy”.

A break in the clouds appeared for the In camp when Tory Sarah Wollaston, a former GP who chairs the Commons health committee, dramatically switched sides, complaining that Brexit’s claims on the NHS – that there would be lots more money for health care if Britain quit the EU – were simply untrue.

Then, out of the blue, Mr Cameron held an impromptu Westminster press conference – his first in more than two years - to expose the Brexit camp’s catalogue of “untruths”. Vote Leave insisted Mr Cameron was panicking. It was difficult to argue the point.

Some 48 hours later, there was the enticing confrontation between Nicola Sturgeon and Mr Johnson. The First Minister supposedly had to be “cajoled” to share a platform with Tory cabinet minister Amber Rudd for Remain, but Stronger In appeared desperate to get back on the front foot and the SNP leader was “box office,” said one source.

Ms Sturgeon was her usual combative self, upbraiding the chief Leave campaigner for putting his personal ambitions to be in No 10 before the interests of the country. Ms Rudd quipped that BoJo might be the life and soul of the party but he was “not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening”.

Labour’s Angela Eagle took Mr Johnson to task over the claim on Vote Leave’s battle bus that Britain handed over £350 million a week to Brussels. “Take that lie off your bus,” declared the shadow business secretary. But the chief Outer insisted this was “cold, hard cash” that belonged to the British people, who would spend it more wisely than those pesky Eurocrats.

The personal attacks on the Uxbridge MP missed their mark and the lasting impression from the debate was how calm and collected the Brexiters were as they repeatedly used the mantra “take back control”. Leave tails continued to rise.

Within 24 hours, the tables appeared to have turned fully when a poll of 2,000 adults for The Independent gave the Leave camp a 10-point lead; 55 per cent to 45.

Ukip’s Nigel Farage sensed the momentum had shifted his way. “People are fed up of being threatened by David Cameron. People are beginning to put two fingers up to the political class,” he declared.

Alarm bells began to ring in Downing Street. The PM appeared on the BBC TV’s Marr Show to insist his message had been “hugely optimistic and positive” about staying in the EU. But Mr Cameron looked subdued, as if for the first time he realised that this was a battle he could lose.

Yet instead of changing tack and toning down the rhetoric, George Osborne popped up to double up on his apocalyptic vision following a vote to leave.

The chancellor produced a “Brexit budget,” which set out how tax rises and spending cuts would be needed to fill a £30 billion black hole left by a decision to break away from Brussels.

“It’s a lose-lose situation for British families and we shouldn’t risk it,” declared Mr Osborne.

But his anti-EU Conservative colleagues were incensed by what they dubbed his “punishment budget” and almost 70 of them, including Mr Gove, made clear they would never vote for it. Given Labour and the SNP also said they would oppose more austerity, it was difficult to see how the chancellor would ever get such an economic statement through the Commons.

As the key debate over the twin pillars of the economy and immigration rumbled on, with equally fraught warnings over recession and Turkey’s accession to the EU, the Labour leadership finally got its act together as senior figures hit the campaign trail to woo working class voters toying with Brexit.

As another poll put the Leave camp 10 points clear, the Labour leader gathered his shadow cabinet and union bosses at the TUC headquarters in London to appeal to the “whole Labour movement” to protect jobs and workers’ rights by voting Remain.

As if by magic, Mr Cameron suddenly disappeared from the media spotlight to be replaced by Gordon Brown. Shades of Scotland? The former premier gave a keynote speech in Leicester, reinforcing the Labour themes. It later emerged the PM had originally been due to give the speech.

Leave and, in particular, Mr Farage were increasingly upbeat, insisting that while it was not over until the fat lady sang, the momentum was now with the Out campaign; indeed, the Ukip leader hoped that Brexit would lead onto Frexit, Dexit, Nexit, etc.

With just a week to go, the ebullient Ukip MEP was in London’s Smith Square unveiling another poster. But this one had a different impact. It showed a trail of refugees, taken on the Croatian border, with the words “breaking point”.

Mr Farage’s fear-raising over the migrant crisis was poised to take the In-Out debate into even more intemperate territory as the home-run to polling day appeared.

But within hours the rising heat and intensity of the referendum campaign was brought to a sudden, tragic halt with the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox. A stunned country took a sharp intake of breath at the gunning down on a Yorkshire street of one of its politicians.

For more than 48 hours the campaigning stopped as people took in the terrible news. When it was suggested that the suspected killer had cried out “Britain First” as he took the life of the 41-year-old parliamentarian, a direct connection was made with the campaign.

Calls were made for the tone of the debate, increasingly shrill and aggressive, to be lowered. But once campaigning began again, normal service was resumed.

Baroness Warsi, the former cabinet minister, who had initially backed Leave, decided to change sides, decrying the “xenophobia” of the Ukip poster. Mr Farage smelt a rat and claimed her defection was a “No 10 put-up job”.

He went even further and condemned Mr Cameron for what he said was the PM’s “despicable” use of Ms Cox’s death to further the Remain campaign. The Tory leader brushed aside the claim and stressed how the murdered MP was for unity not division.

Leading Brexiters, Messrs Gove and Johnson, also sought to distance themselves from the Ukip poster. The Justice Secretary said he had ”shuddered” when he saw it; the ex-mayor said he was “profoundly unhappy” with it.

Friends and colleagues of Ms Cox pointed out how her political approach had always been one of tolerance and co-operation. When the UK Parliament was recalled to pay tribute to her, in his contribution, Labour’s Stephen Kinnock noted how the pro-EU MP for Batley and Spen would have responded with outrage at the Ukip poster and its “calculated narrative of cynicism, division and despair”.

There was a sense that in that 48-hour pause, something significant had happened. The momentum that had been with Leave had been stopped in its tracks. Had the outraged response to the Ukip poster raised a telling question-mark in the minds of wavering voters?

The next polls showed six-point leads for Remain. The markets responded positively. Billions of pounds were added to share prices and sterling rose.

Immigration that had for so long been a clear strength of the Brexit argument had become diluted with the outraged response. Crucially perhaps for the Remain side, its opponents appeared split as Messrs Gove and Johnson sought frantically to distance themselves from Mr Farage and that poster.

As the clock ticked down, Wembley Arena became the venue for one last big showdown in front of an audience of 6,000 people between the Remainers and the Leavers, seeing Ruth Davidson taking on her Tory colleague Boris Johnson.

Ahead of time, there were suggestions that if the idiosyncratic “blonde Beatle” ever got his hands on the Tory leadership post a Brexit vote, Ruth would “do a Murdo” and declare a UDI for the Scottish Tories. The blue on blue psychodrama looked like running to a box set.

The BBC’s Great Debate boiled down the campaign to its negative essence: Project Fear versus Project Hate; shroud-waving over the economy and immigration.

By the end, not only were the politicians exhausted by the process of claims and counterclaims, facts and counterfacts but so too were the bamboozled public.

Democracy, fantastically conceived, can be tortuous to deliver.