How remain failed: the inside story of a doomed campaign

These centrists were the ruling class of an unrecognised state – call it Remainia – whose people were divided between the Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems; like a tribe whose homeland has been partitioned by some insouciant Victorian cartographer... Cameron ... and George Osborne believed... “It will be about jobs and the economy and it won’t even be close.”... the campaign’s core message: “The choice in this referendum is economic security and global influence as part of the EU, or a leap in the dark....
This was the first time Cameron experienced ... campaign with most of Fleet Street lined up on the opposing side ... ferocious treatment usually reserved for Labour leaders. ... Focus groups reflected ... ingrained unwillingness to believe any statistical argument presented by the government...
Cameron accused the leave side of “resorting to total untruths" ... Cameron’s attack fed an atmosphere of general detachment from rational argument and empirical evidence... highlighting economic risk was portrayed as hysterical fear-mongering, no more anchored in reason than the leave side’s mobilisation of anti-immigration feeling.
focus groups were telling us that people wanted the facts, but didn’t trust politicians to give them the facts... But they did trust ‘experts’... the leave side pursued a strategy of undermining the very idea of independent authority.
the which was bound by impartiality rules to present the claims of both sides as equally valid...gave a free ride to the rubbishing of institutions.
lower-income, working-class supporters, who were far more sceptical about the case for remaining... The remainers’ warning not to gamble with economic security was failing to resonate. “Emotional fear wasn’t credible because they felt their lives were already shit,”