Alan Johnson is taking no prisoners in Labour’s campaign to remain in the European Union, find Adam Harrison and Jerome Neil

As we enter his office overlooking Parliament Square, Alan Johnson is seated behind his desk, scribbling away. ‘I’m just writing to a cleaner, the owner of a café, a woman who started her own business making jam in her kitchen, a builder from Liverpool’, he explains. ‘They’re the kind of voices we want.’

As the head of Labour In, what is his take on how the campaign to remain in the European Union is going? ‘We’ve kind of won on the economy, and we’re ahead on all the polling … I think we’re winning on security, as well. I suppose what you worry about with the kind of populist, headline-grabbing, outrageous stuff you get from the “Leave” side is whether that has any effect on the polling … I think the British people will take a long sober look at this, but it does grab the headlines.’

Part of the Brexiteers’ problem is that they have no vision of where they want to get to, Johnson says. ‘They’ve painted all kinds of pictures, but none of them are worth looking at for very long. Which is amazing given that, for some of them, this is their life’s ambition’.

Johnson does not mince his words about the Leave campaign and its figureheads.

‘You look to the other side, and … you’ve got Iain Duncan Smith, you’ve got Chris Grayling. You’ve got Boris [Johnson], who I don’t think anyone’s finding funny any more after what he said about the Hillsborough families in 2004 – I’m surprised that hasn’t been resuscitated as an example of his terrible judgement. Then the reference to Obama and now the bizarre reference to Hitler. They’ve got [Nigel] Farage, and they’re welcome to him, and they’ve got [Marine] Le Pen, saying that she’ll come over and support them. And George Galloway. I mean, if it was a beauty contest there’s some pretty ugly political personalities on that side’.

He is candid, nevertheless, that he would have preferred Boris Johnson to be on the ‘In’ campaign. ‘I have to confess, he had two articles ready to publish in the Telegraph, and I wish it had been the article for “Remain”. Of course, because he’s kind of box office as a politician. [But] I think [Michael] Heseltine was right, he’s not doing himself any favours.’

We meet in Westminster on the day of the Queen’s speech – if nothing else, do its contents not serve to remind the country that British laws are not, as some would have it, ‘made in Brussels’, but instead homegrown? ‘I think the Queen’s speech – and every previous Queen’s speech and every bit of analysis that you care to make – suggests it’s not Brussels ruling us. And where they do make decisions, of course, it’s ministers in elected governments and co-decided most of the time by an elected parliament,’ the former home secretary replies.

Brexiteers, mostly notably Michael Gove, have spent much of their time loudly complaining that the EU ties the hands of the government in Westminster. Johnson is bordering on the incredulous at such claims. ‘I mean, I was a minister in five different cabinet positions for 11 years. I can’t remember a single day when a civil servant came to me and said, “You can’t do that” because of Europe … Didn’t affect me in health, didn’t affect me in education, didn’t affect me in the Home Office … When [Gove] was questioned by Laura Kuenssberg, precisely what were you told? He said it was an infrastructure project, which makes me suspicious, that he’s … using artistic licence. I really do suspect that, in a certain sense, Gove’s making it up. I’d like to know all the details’.

Other misconceptions that Johnson is keen to slay include ‘TTIP’ – the free trade deal between the EU and United States which is regularly wheeled out by opponents of the EU. ‘There’s lots of advantages in TTIP, great advantages in a trade deal with America’, he says. It is actually the EU which is ensuring that TTIP meets the social aims Labour supporters back, he argues. ‘When America comes to do a trade deal with us [post-Brexit], it will be “Here’s where you sign”, and under a Tory government who may be trying to put things back in that Labour MEPs, while we were in the European Union, were taking out.’

The former trade union general secretary is clear that the support of the unions for a ‘Remain’ vote is absolutely vital. ‘I bumped into [a Labour supporter] on a doorstep in Leamington Spa this afternoon. We spent a bit of time with her and said, “Look, you know, this is where the trade unions stand.” I think she’s converted from a “Leave” to a “Remain”.’ He singles out public service union Unison for particular praise. ‘Unison actually consulted their members, not just their activists, their members, on this and got an overwhelming majority to say we should campaign to remain. This is in the very union, the health service, where TTIP was meant to be so damaging.’

Other critics from the left have warned that the party’s support for ‘Remain’ risks seeing it head the same way as Labour in Scotland. Johnson is robust in his view that the party must stand its ground. ‘I don’t buy all this guff from some of the “Leave” side, the handful of Labour people who say that this is going to damage us, because it will strengthen UKIP. I mean, their argument is really for us to be a totally unprincipled party and just to kind of speak one way out of one side of our mouth in one part of the country … I mean, that’s nasty, ugly politics.’

Indeed, former welfare minister Frank Field has warned that Labour risks losing ‘a swath’ of voters to Nigel Farage. Johnson is quick again to hit back. ‘Frank Field, amazingly, said that we are writing the second longest suicide note in history,’ he says. ‘Of course, the longest suicide note in history was the ‘83 manifesto, the only time we’ve ever stood on a platform of withdrawing from the European Union.’

As for those on the right, allies of necessity in this fight, Johnson muses that he wants ‘Tory pro-Europeans to have a higher profile. They’re out there, but it seems to me if you get adopted as a Tory candidate you have to kind of suppress your pro-Europeanism. There’s no new Heseltine or [Ken] Clarke. There are people doing a grand job like Nick Herbert and Damian Green [but] it’s bloody tough for them because the whole party seems to have crystallised into this grumpy, sepia-tinted world of the 50s, maybe as a reaction to UKIP.’

But it will be up to Labour voters and activists to help secure a win for ‘Remain’, and the party leadership to issue a clarion call to its voters. We relate the story of one Labour MP whose voters were proudly telling him that they would vote ‘Leave’ to ‘get one back at David Cameron’. The party leader finally coming out unequivocally for ‘Remain’ really made a difference, says Johnson. ‘Jeremy [Corbyn] made his speech and suddenly it was headlines and people saw the leader of the Labour party saying we’re for “In”. That’s a very important message to carry around. There’s a lot of loyalty to the Labour party: “If the Labour party say that then I’m going to think again about it”.’

And on Northern Ireland, where Labour In has been campaigning, has he not been surprised at the government’s seemingly relaxed attitude to Theresa Villiers backing Brexit, with a multitude of issues around the impact there? Especially at a time when MI5 has raised the terror risk from Irish republicanism to ‘substantial’. ‘Totally … It’s amazing where Theresa Villiers is on this, and amazing where the first minister is … How are they going to police that border? It’s kind of regression … because it will be a border between a European Union country and a non-European Union country … I think the 1.3 million voters over there are crucial, and Theresa Villiers is totally out of tune with it. I have to say, it’s the only interesting thing I’ve ever heard her say, and I disagree with her fundamentally on it.’

If Northern Ireland has not yet come to the fore in the debate, thanks to ‘Leave’ campaigners, Turkey has. And Johnson is scathing about them. ‘It’s a funny thing isn’t it, that the “Leave” side accuse the “Remain” side of fear-mongering, and yet they say 75 million Turks are going to be queuing to come over here.’ The EU is the answer to such fears, Johnson argues. ‘You should turn the argument around: so we’re outside the European Union, which means we can’t veto Turkey’s entry … If that’s your worry, stay in the European Union to stop it’.

He is keener than most to talk about immigration, and believes Labour In may need to strike out in this direction on its own. ‘In Stronger In, who we get on very well with … there’s a sense that they just want to avoid [immigration], and just stick to the economy. I think we ought to take it head-on.’ Again, the EU is part of the solution. ‘We ought to make the argument that actually, if immigration’s your main problem … we’re going to be worse off outside the European Union … You know, people in Syria won’t say, “Oh, nice, Britain’s left the European Union, let’s not try to go there any more” … I hope by the end of this campaign we’d have done something to address those concerns of our supporters’.

Johnson is full of praise for ‘how the party is coming together on this and making our job much easier to convince people on the doorstep’. But hovering in the near distance now is the vote itself – and its fallout. Few foresaw the political realignment set in place by the Scottish referendum. If the UK votes to leave, should Labour commit to re-entry, we ask. This is a question perhaps too big to answer right now. ‘I’m not even thinking about that, or answering questions on that, no’, he responds. ‘I’m not contemplating chucking myself off Westminster Bridge – yet. Which is the only sensible reaction to voting to leave,’ he adds, with a dash of dark humour. Johnson is joking, though the sheer unknowability of the state of affairs after 23 June means we cannot yet make out the big national questions that the result will pose us. But Britain’s leaders will be called upon to give some big answers, and they may need to do so pretty quickly.