Inside Brexit: Craig Oliver recounts battle for the soul of Britain
Last June, on the morning after the so-called Brexit referendum, when British voters narrowly chose to leave the European Union, then British prime minister David Cameron felt he had to step aside.
"I held nothing back, I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain is stronger, safer and better off inside the European Union," he said in his resignation speech.
Throughout the campaign, one of Cameron's most loyal and active team members was his director of politics and communications, Craig Oliver.
Oliver tells The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti when the vote came in, it was a moment of mixed emotions.
"Obviously we felt desperately sorry that we'd lost. I thought it was a wrong decision for the country. But it had also been a very bitter and bloody divisive fight, and so there was a sense in which relief of it being over as well I think."
"You couldn't find anybody who thought that the leave side had won which is a quite an extraordinary situation," says Oliver, author of Unleashing Demons: The Inside Story of Brexit.
"So hedge funds were betting on it. The currency markets were set for a level that we would remain. All the pollsters were saying that the remain side was going to win probably by about eight points."
Then when it was slowly becoming clear the vote for Britain to remain in the EU was less probable, Oliver describes it as "walking on a path to safety only to suddenly drop into quicksand and realize that nobody is going to pull you out of it."
Oliver says a referendum was years in the making, "the slow train just happened to arrive in the station on Cameron's watch."
He explains the huge amount of pressure the prime minister was under to call the referendum as "scores of Conservative MPs were bailing on anything and everything to do with Europe."
"David Cameron felt that it was necessary to actually try and get this boulder out of the road of British politics in order that we could move on."
Listen to the full conversation at the top of this web post.
This segment was produced by The Current's Howard Goldenthal.