Cameron at 10: From Election to Brexit

Cameron’s record as a leader abroad, however, is more mixed. He seized the initiative on insisting that British troops withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and worked hard to try to ensure that the handover to the Afghans was smooth. Credit is due for the timely and orderly way he brought Britain’s involvement in this long-running war to an end. Another lesson he learnt from Blair’s government was to avoid any hint of the ‘sofa government’ that marked the Iraq War in 2003. He thus set up the National Security Council soon after the general election in 2010, which met weekly and which he himself chaired. The organisation’s first great test came over British intervention in Libya. This was driven by Cameron personally, backed by all members of the NSC and by the Cabinet, and additionally supported by a United Nations resolution. The conclusion of the war and the downfall of Gaddafi in the autumn of 2011 brought Cameron short-term acclaim. He hoped along with many others in the heady initial days of the Arab Spring for a new dawn of democracy across the Arab world. This optimism faltered during the following years as Libya descended into violence and tribal infighting, and Syria was torn apart by civil war. His attempt to involve Britain militarily against Syria’s President Assad in August 2013, after Assad used chemical weapons against his own people, produced Cameron’s biggest first-term foreign policy reversal, when he was defeated in the House of Commons. This defeat, and the deteriorating position in Libya, made him less inclined to assert his will in the final year and a half leading up to the general election in 2015. Humanitarian instincts drove him to intervene in Libya in 2011, and to try to intervene in Syria in 2013. He was not the first British leader whose aspirations in the region were to be thwarted by forces far more powerful than anything they could control. He can be criticised certainly for acting; equally, inaction would have resulted in opprobrium, and other risks. His foreign policy was marked by a strong ethical underpinning.

The recovery of the British economy and Cameron’s strong relationship with President Obama were significant in countering the widespread narrative about a loss of British influence on the world stage. Hard though it may be to discern a consistent shape to Cameron’s foreign policy, he succeeded in keeping Britain safe, improving the relationship with the US after the Brown years and in promoting the British brand abroad.

But these years were not a time of heroes. Other national leaders in the West struggled to assert themselves on the world stage. Obama, François Hollande, and leaders across the EU all experienced difficulties given the economic climate, the rise of China and India, Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, and militant Islam’s success in Syria and Iraq. Only Merkel in Germany emerged with credit from these problematic years, though continuing difficulties facing the eurozone and in finding a solution to migration dented her authority. Ultimately, the failure of Cameron’s European gamble will cast a long shadow over his foreign policy record.

David Cameron’s calm stewardship of the coalition government of 2010–15, and his piloting Britain through profound economic weakness back to economic vitality, will be his greatest achievements. His record during these years compares favourably to the first terms of Thatcher and Blair. By defying the odds in winning the 2015 general election, he led his party back into office with an overall majority, a signal personal achievement. Ultimately, he could not prevail against the juggernaut of Euroscepticism in his own party, the press and country. The Conservative Party has not been as divided on any issue since the 1840s, while the nation has not been so divided since the Suez Crisis in 1956. His strengths were his high intelligence, work rate, calm under pressure, integrity and courage. His failings – impetuosity, naivety at times and lack of strategic clarity – were those of a young man. The youngest prime minister for one hundred and ninety-eight years, he was arguably at the peak of his powers when he fell on his sword.

The first six months of his second term showed considerable promise in carving out a distinctly personal agenda focusing on what became known as the ‘life chances’ agenda. The commitment to One Nation Toryism that he made on the steps of Number 10 after his 2015 election victory now lies unfulfilled. To his closest supporters and aides, Cameron’s inability to execute this agenda, which had only begun to crystallise, is one of the tragic consequences of the European referendum. No one knows how the remaining two or three years of his second term would have panned out had the country voted differently. We will never know what David Cameron might have achieved had he not departed in 2016. History tends to condemn prime ministers for one major mistake – Lord North for the loss of the American colonies, Anthony Eden for Suez and Blair for Iraq. It would be cruel and wrong for Cameron’s premiership to be so castigated. He achieved much during his six years. We believe he had little or no choice but to call a Referendum and that he could not have done more to achieve the terms he did in February 2016. But he should have delayed calling the Referendum till better terms were given, difficult though it would have been, and fought a more positive, authoritative campaign.

Anthony Seldon and Peter Snowdon

July 2016

ONE

First Night in Downing Street

11 May 2010

‘Snap out of it: we have a job to do,’ barks Jeremy Heywood, Number 10’s permanent secretary, the senior official, the top dog. It is 7.55 p.m. on Tuesday 11 May. Outside, dusk is descending. Staff are still dazed from Gordon and Sarah Brown’s deeply emotional departure moments before.1 They stand around the departed PM’s open-plan office torpid, drained. Many have tears in their eyes. ‘The prime minister will be here in half an hour.’ Heywood’s piercing voice urges them back into action.2 Tom Fletcher, Brown’s (and now about to be David Cameron’s) foreign policy adviser, changes his red and yellow striped tie to one with blue and yellow stripes. Ever the diplomat, he wants to shift emotional and political gear before his new boss arrives in the building.3 Dirty mugs and plates are spirited away, out-of-date papers removed, computer screens cleared. Here is the British Civil Service at action stations. The king is dead. Long live the king.

Just after 8 p.m., Brown delivers his farewell statement to the media circus outside Number 10. His former staff are too busy inside to notice. Three hundred yards down Whitehall, a similar riot of activity is taking place in the Leader of the Opposition’s office in Parliament in the Norman Shaw building. Ed Llewellyn, Cameron’s chief of staff, receives a call from the American ambassador: ‘It looks like you guys are going across the road. The president wants to be the first to talk to your man when he gets there.’4 Coalition conversations with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg are still ongoing, though they are close to reaching an agreement. Cameron’s wife, Samantha, is caught off guard by the fast-flowing action. She is called in the early evening by Kate Fall, Cameron’s gatekeeper and senior female aide, at the family’s London home in Notting Hill: ‘You’re going to have to come down soon. David is about to form a government.’ ‘I don’t have to get dressed up, do I? I’m at home with the kids.’ ‘Er, not yet,’ Fall replies. Minutes later, Fall calls her back. ‘Get ready. You’ll need to put your dress on quickly.’ With moments to spare, Samantha arrives at Cameron’s office.

David and Samantha are bundled into a car to Buckingham Palace for the Queen to invite him to become prime minister, Britain’s youngest for nearly 200 years. Their hands touch in the back of the car. Their lives are about to change forever, but the short journey gives them final moments of peace. The car sweeps through the open gates. Cameron, still calm, ascends the wide stairs to where Her Majesty awaits him. He listens with barely concealed pride as she invites him to form a government. Audience over, and now in the official prime minister’s car under police escort, they are driven the half-mile to Downing Street.

His team have been advised by Heywood to enter Number 10 by the Cabinet Office entrance on Whitehall. Most of them have never been inside Downing Street. They walk down its long central corridor from the Cabinet Room to the front lobby in awe, before heading outside. Standing in front of the door to Number 11, they observe the lectern that Brown has just spoken from still standing on solitary duty outside the black front door of Number 10. Liz Sugg, who organises Cameron’s trips, wants to tell him not to use the lectern and where to stand for his first speech as prime minister. She knows he is on his way back from the Palace, but is unable to get through. ‘So this is what it’s going to be like now he is prime minister,’ she thinks to herself, ‘he won’t be able to take my calls.’ Then her mobile rings. It is Cameron. ‘Sorry, I was ringing my mum,’ he tells her as if they are old friends sharing a latte at Starbucks. She tells him – she is nothing if not emphatic – exactly where his car is to stop, and where he is to speak.5

At 8.42 p.m., the prime minister’s small convoy drives into Downing Street. He steps out beside a visibly pregnant Samantha, and delivers the statement he has put the finishing touches to just moments before:

Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new government and I have accepted … our country has a hung Parliament where no party has an overall majority and we have some deep and pressing problems – a huge deficit, deep social problems, and a political system in need of reform. For those reasons I aim to form a proper and full coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats … I believe that is the best way to get the strong government that we need … This is going to be hard and difficult work.

Huddled on the pavement in front of Number 11, his aides watch anxiously. ‘I’ll never forget that evening. The sun was setting. It was twilight, adding to the magic. While he was speaking, crowds in Whitehall were shouting. Helicopters were hovering overhead. It all seemed surreal,’ recalls Cameron’s political private secretary, Laurence Mann.6 The new prime minister and Samantha walk to the front door. An official removes the microphone. Cameron poses with Samantha on the front steps, hugging her awkwardly. As the door is opened, he gives a final wave. A few chants float in from the streets: ‘Gordon out!’ vies with ‘Tories out!’ before the sounds of the outside world fall away with the closing of the door. He has arrived.

Staff line up along the long corridor from front door to Cabinet Room, clapping him and Samantha. His small team follow on behind. One looks down at his shoes in embarrassment, overcome by the occasion. Another notices the smell of newly cleaned carpet. Cameron turns round at the end of the line and says a few words to his new staff who less than forty-five minutes before had been tearfully clapping out Gordon and Sarah. Samantha is peeled away. Kate Fall goes with her, dividing her time that first evening between looking after both of the principals.

Inside the Cabinet Room, Cameron greets Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell and Heywood. Britain’s two top officials brief him about his most pressing tasks – some, such as procedures in the event of nuclear threats, are held over to the following morning.7 His staff are shown to their offices. They are amazed to be presented with appointment cards showing the PM’s diary neatly typed up. ‘I realised then that this is the Rolls-Royce state in action,’ recalls one.8 Cameron is escorted through the double doors at the end of the Cabinet Room into his office, which Blair used and called his ‘den’, at almost the furthest possible point in the Downing Street warren from Brown’s office in Number 12. He looks around, disconcerted to see doors on each side, the other leading on to the long room where his aides and officials will work. He wonders about having people constantly entering his office from both sides.9 Number 10 has no ideal room for a prime minister; nothing like the Oval Office. Unlike the White House, it was not purpose-built, but evolved from history. Discussions have taken place in the preceding weeks whether, should Cameron win, he would occupy the space Brown had chosen in Number 12, move upstairs in Number 10 to the office Thatcher had worked from, or use the den.10 Cameron briefly flirts with the idea of using the White Room, one of the state rooms on the first floor, with views across to St James’s Park and Horse Guards Parade. Heywood, Fall and Llewellyn later persuade him to use the den, for practical and security reasons.

Discussions had taken place also about Heywood in the preceding weeks. Should he stay? He had been very close – perhaps too close – to Labour’s operation under both Blair and Brown. Was he a Labour man? He had been intimately involved in all Labour’s decisions for the previous few years, bar a period (2004–7) when he left the Civil Service for the private sector. Some of these decisions under Labour Cameron and George Osborne thought were disastrous. They knew Heywood believed passionately in capitalism, but was he enough of a free marketeer, enough of an enthusiast for competition and the small-enterprise initiatives they wanted to see? But it was decided before the election that Heywood, one of the most omni-competent officials since 1945, was too important to lose.

Present in the den at nine o’clock that first evening are Llewellyn, Cameron’s chief of staff since 2005; Osborne, his master strategist; Steve Hilton, his exuberant and intellectually brilliant thinker; and Andy Coulson, his worldly-wise head of communications. It had been felt by some observers that tension between them had seriously hampered Cameron’s election campaign, but tonight their feelings are temporarily put aside.

The den clears suddenly at 9.10 p.m. when Fletcher enters to announce the Obama call is coming through. ‘Here I am, just us in the room, less than half an hour after he’s entered the building, with the American president waiting to speak,’ Fletcher thinks to himself.11 The two national leaders barely know each other. The White House are aware they mucked up the relationship in the president’s first year by being brusque to Brown, who they found needy. Obama thus wants to get off on the right foot with the new prime minister. ‘Congratulations,’ he booms down the secure line. Cameron has not used the apparatus before and has just been briefed that officials will be listening to his every word, taking careful notes. The prime minister is businesslike, savouring the moment when he says ‘I’m speaking from Number 10’ for the first time. When he does so, he winks to his aide. ‘Come over and see me in the White House,’ Obama says. This is a big deal, and very welcome news to the team. They are delighted to hear him utter the totemic words ‘special relationship’ between the US and Britain. The call is short and to the point. As the line goes dead, Coulson is agreeing the lines to brief about it with Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary. Coulson is anxious to get it right, and not hype it beyond what the White House wants. Cameron’s team are now playing in an altogether new league.

Llewellyn and Fletcher decide which foreign leader talks to the PM and when. Next on his list is the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. ‘Your job is to defend UK interests and my job is to defend German interests,’ she tells a dazed Cameron, who has just been given a briefing on hedge funds, an issue between both nations at the time. Her tone is polite but formal. The chancellor is still cross that he withdrew the Conservative Party from the European People’s Party (EPP) in May 2009. Their call gives no hint of the warmth that will develop after the first few months, though she invites him nevertheless to visit her in Germany. From France, President Sarkozy – always anxious for the limelight – is pressing to speak to Cameron. He will have to wait. The team debate whether Cameron should visit Germany or France first. Stephen Harper, Canadian prime minister, gets in with a quick call: ‘Take it all in and pace yourself,’ he tells the new prime minister.12 This sounds better, Cameron thinks, sensing here is someone with whom he will be able to relate.

He is enjoying his new toy. He looks up from the telephone to see aides anxiously pointing to their watches. He is running late for his address to the Conservative Party. He is driven the short distance to the House of Commons accompanied by the special protection officers who have been at his side in the weeks leading up to the election and will now accompany him for the remainder of his premiership, and indeed the rest of his life. His new escorts follow him up the stairs to the Grand Committee Room where he is greeted with wild cheering from Conservative parliamentarians. The chief whip, Patrick McLoughlin, calls for silence with the words ‘Colleagues, the prime minister.’ ‘I can honestly say that I was the first person to call him prime minister in public,’ McLoughlin recalls.13

It is 10.06 p.m. The atmosphere in the cramped room is near hysterical with excitement. After the long election campaign, MPs have endured a further five days of uncertainty until it becomes clear only a couple of hours before that Cameron will be prime minister. Aides recall ‘a ferocious cheer, banging of desks and wild excitement’ after he makes a short speech about events during the historic day.14 It will not always be this cordial when Cameron meets his party’s MPs. Farewells over, the team repair to Cameron’s former office in the Norman Shaw building. Osborne’s team join them and together they tuck in to pizzas in celebration.15

Cameron relaxes in his old haunt among old friends, but becomes aware that Llewellyn and Fall are telling him he needs to go back to Downing Street. Once there, Cameron returns to the phone, absorbing the quickest of briefings between calls. Sarkozy will be his ‘best friend and biggest rival’. ‘I need you to tell me when I get it wrong,’ Cameron says to his officials. A respectful conversation with Manmohan Singh of India follows while calls stack up with the Japanese and Chinese. Meanwhile, calls are still being put through from Number 10 to Gordon Brown, who is being driven to the airport to head north to Scotland. Obama and other leaders are keen to bid farewell to the former prime minister. At one point, Brown rings Number 10 to thank Fletcher for his assistance with the calls. It is a surreal moment. Foreign leaders would have been surprised if they knew that their words to Brown a few hours before – ‘It’s a pity you are having to leave because you were so good’ – were being noted down by the same official who heard them say to Cameron, ‘We always wanted you to win. It’ll be great and we can now reset this relationship in a much better way.’

William Hague is present at Number 10 for much of the evening. Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, wants to congratulate him, but officials decide that the call should wait until the following morning as he is yet to be formally appointed Foreign Secretary. Hague, ever philosophical, accepts their advice with a smile, and walks through to Brown’s old office in Number 12 where more pizza is being shared by Cameron’s small team. With amazingly few exceptions, here are the team who will carry him through the entire five years. They are his four closest Cabinet colleagues: Osborne, Hague, fixer extraordinaire Oliver Letwin and close friend and colleague Michael Gove. His aides are Llewellyn, Hilton, Coulson, Fall, Oliver Dowden (a senior party aide), and Laurence Mann. Present too are the officials, Heywood, Fletcher, James Bowler, the PM’s principal private secretary, and Rupert Harrison, Osborne’s heavyweight economist and multi-talented chief of staff who is still only in his early thirties.

The new incumbents notice the pen marks on the table and ask officials, ‘Is this where Gordon stubbed his pen? Is this where he threw his phone?’ Their questions are not driven by point-scoring, but more by awed curiosity: ‘There was no gloating,’ notes one. Officials’ first impressions of Cameron that night are that he is more level and composed than they had expected. Already they detect a calmer and more orderly tone to Downing Street. Cameron’s team start drifting away from 1 a.m. The adventure for which they have worked tirelessly since Cameron became party leader four and a half years before is about to begin. Llewellyn leaves at 3 a.m. ‘It was the most exciting night of my life,’ he recalls.16

TWO

Origin of ‘Plan A’

September 2008–February 2010

The most important decision to be taken by the Cameron government of 2010–15 was made before it even got into power. The decision had three distinct phases: the autumn of 2008, June 2009 and the autumn of 2009. Together they formed the building blocks of what became known as ‘Plan A’: placing deficit reduction at the very heart of their economic strategy. It provided the coalition government with its core narrative and principal claim to success, and it gave a coherent platform for the Lib Dems to sign up to and their rationale for remaining in the government. But these very decisions in 2008 and 2009 were also to cleave Cameron’s team right down the middle, to contribute to him losing his stride in the 2010 general election, and almost certainly cost the Conservatives an overall majority. It is important thus to examine this history.

The first plank in the Plan A platform was put in place in the autumn of 2008. On 15 September, Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old investment bank and the fourth largest in the United States, filed for bankruptcy. The shockwaves triggered the global financial crisis. Jon Cunliffe, a senior official in the Cabinet Office, sent an email around Whitehall: ‘If we don’t do something now the whole system is going to go down. We have to act.’1 That week, the survival of British banks RBS and HBOS was at stake. As Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Labour Party gathered in Manchester for their annual conference on 20 September, Brown was brought a note to say that Goldman Sachs, the bluest of blue-chip banks, might be on the verge of going under. The British economy was in dire danger. Cameron and Osborne regarded Brown as the principal architect of the economic position the country found itself in. But it was the PM who held the initiative, and was about to absolve himself of any blame.

Brown took the unusual step of addressing the Labour conference on the opening Saturday, speaking without notes and with gravitas about the profound problems in the global economy. It underpinned his own position in the party, as well as in the country, as the leader uniquely placed to handle the grave predicament. His main speech on Tuesday 23 September was preceded by a masterstroke. The conference expected him on the podium, but his wife Sarah walked on to the stage. ‘Every day I see him motivated to work for the best interests of the people around the country,’ she said, concluding her two minutes by introducing ‘my husband, the leader of your party, your prime minister, Gordon Brown’. It was a coup.2 He remained on a high throughout the speech. His most effective line was that it was ‘no time for a novice’, referring not only to Cameron, but also to Brown’s would-be challenger, David Miliband. The most powerful of his three conference speeches as prime minister, it further underwrote his credentials as saviour of the nation. Brown left Britain on 24 September on a much-hyped trip to New York and Washington, leaving Cameron and Osborne behind at their conference desperately trying to find a way to make an impact. As PM, he had found a role.