Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

Popular support for the EU was uncertain. Brussels was a red rag to the nationalist Right. The bankers and the London “elite” were unpopular. The answer of the Remain campaign was to double down. It set up its base camp in the City. Its strategy was never to win voters to the EU. The EU, the strategists decided, was unsellable. Europe’s politicians were asked not to make appearances in Britain. They would only make matters worse. Headed by the top PR team of the conservative party, backed up by Liberals and Labour, the Remain campaign had one message: “British voters will never love the European Union. But maybe they can be terrified into voting not to leave it.”28 It was a strategy aptly dubbed “Project Fear”—a term first coined in the context of the Scottish independence referendum in 2014. Its architects were the Australian PR guru Lynton Crosby and Jim Messina, who had been hired from Obama’s White House. Messina made clear what he thought the stakes were: “Given these challenging economic times, the very last thing we should do is risk the U.K. and EU economies with this risky [Brexit] move.”29 What Messina and his cohorts meant by “the economy” was business. So their campaign set itself to winning a popular majority for the simple and unapologetic proposition that if the EU was good for UK business, then Remain was good for Britain. Fifty of Britain’s leading firms were persuaded to sign a statement that Britain will be “stronger, safer and better off” in a “reformed...