by Craig Oliver
HMRC was informed that the fund was set up. It was listed in the Financial Times.
Crucially when an investor sold a unit in the fund, they should and would comply with their own country’s tax laws. The Camerons did this.
The fund moved to Dublin in 2012 to comply with EU regulations. An alarm bell rings in my head at this point – the Telegraph today was all about the ‘mystery’ around the fund moving to Dublin in 2012, when it was renamed Blairmore Equities Fund.
We ask a series of questions and it is made clear that if it was in the UK, it wouldn’t pay any more tax.
I go from feeling sick about this – and having a small worry that this could all unravel to the point where the PM ends up having to resign – to thinking this is OK.
A plan starts to come together in my head: if we are to get the PM to defend his story, it needs to be clear that Blairmore isn’t dodgy. I call Robert Peston, ITV’s new political editor, The Times, the FT and the BBC.
When that is all done, the PM arrives looking as cool and in control as ever.
I’m keeping it together, but I notice that each time I finish a task related to this or the leaflet, I sigh heavily.
We quickly boil all of this down to one question: was there any tax advantage to the fund being held offshore? The answer is no. The reason is important, because it allows us to be clear that the fund was not about tax avoidance.
I take a break with the comms team to watch the BBC 6 p.m. and ITV 6.30 news on the release of the Government leaflet.
The BBC piece is a dream – taking people through all our key points and why we are doing it. Robert Oxley, the Leave person put up to respond, hasn’t thought his attack through properly. He says it’s all about distracting from the PM’s tax affairs. Seriously? But it does reveal a strategy to make DC appear dodgy wherever possible.
I literally punch the air when I see ITV is leading on this. They have Peter Bone MP wearing his fluorescent green ‘Grass Roots Out’ tie saying it is an abuse and the PM will have to explain himself. The package repeats the BBC in being a brilliant exposition of our case.
When that is done I sit at my terminal and begin to write what the PM is going to say on his tax affairs tomorrow. Nick Peppiatt stands next to me as we go through the finer details. It’s not too painful a process and this is what I start the statement with:
It’s been a difficult few days, where I’ve seen my late father, who I loved very much, being criticised for his business dealings. The hardest thing of all is a lot of it has been based on a misunderstanding – that Blairmore was created to avoid tax.
It wasn’t.
Then we go into the facts of what actually happened. Some think the opening is a little cheesy, but DC is happy with it.
The next hour is spent going through the Q&A. It’s real in-the-weeds stuff that will mean little to most people, but could trip us up if we don’t get it right.
At 8.30 p.m., I say, ‘I haven’t stepped outside the office since I got here at 7.30 a.m. this morning.’
As I get up to leave, I have to chat on the phone to a tax lawyer, who can look at the fund and say it isn’t dodgy. I get into a cab, so I can talk to him all the way home. When I arrive and hang up, I have six missed calls I need to deal with.
Graeme and I chat late on about our current hellish situation. He describes the sensation as like driving at 100 mph towards a series of brick walls and then swerving at the last second to avoid a smash.
The truth is – we haven’t handled this well. The whole building is laser-focused on Europe – and it’s another thing that slipped. We have looked on the run and not been in full possession of the facts.
Chapter 15
We’ve Just Got to Win This Thing
ON THURSDAY MORNING, I’m cheered up by the leaflet still being the lead on BBC News. The Leave campaign continues to do our work for us – screaming either that it’s not fair or that we’re doing it to cover up the PM’s tax affairs.
Instead of going into No. 10, I’m driven to Northolt, where I am to be taken by helicopter to pick up the PM in his constituency.
I’m in email hell with several chains adding to and clarifying lines to take on tax.
We land in the field next to the PM’s home. A minibus and a police Range Rover are waiting nearby. DC and his protection officer join me and Will MacFarlane, the private secretary on this trip. Between me and the PM are a basket of fruit and two flasks of coffee. It’s a strange mix of luxury and cheap – the coffee served in too-thin paper cups, which mean gripping the rim with fingertips to avoid being scalded.
We start by looking at the papers. The leaflet was a late drop for them, but just enough time to ensure it ends up on a lot of front pages. The Leave camp still haven’t settled on a line.
It’s job done in comms terms, but I ask DC how much bad blood the tax issue will have caused. He turns and looks out the window at the rolling fields and Cotswold stone houses and says, ‘A lot … it’s bad …’ He pauses for a moment before saying, ‘But look, we’ve just got to win this thing …’
We spend the rest of the twenty-minute journey with me putting him through his paces for the interview I have arranged with Robert Peston. I know there will be next to nothing on the leaflet and a lot on Blairmore.
We arrive at the business school, which looks like a very agreeable campus. There are a couple of protestors as we get out of the car, who can barely muster the energy to shout, ‘When are you going to do the right thing by junior doctors?’
After a few preliminaries, we’re into the main event – telling young people why they need to vote to remain in the EU. The line we’ve agreed is, ‘Young people have the most to gain by remaining in the EU – jobs, education, travel – and the most to lose by leaving.’
He’s surrounded by around 250 students, some on a spiral staircase and balcony. He takes off his jacket and Hugo Swire, the local MP, who is sitting in the audience, grabs it.
It’s quite a feisty encounter, but nothing he can’t handle. I stand in the audience, with a good view. To my left are a few hacks. To my right, a number of young Conservatives. One can’t be more than twenty-two, but is wearing the fustiest of tweed jackets and a red tie. Every time the PM says anything vaguely good about the EU, he mutters, ‘Rubbish!’ under his breath, but it doesn’t get more raucous than that.
It’s going well – apart from a slightly weird moment where he says he likes to watch Glastonbury at home with a fire, despite it being in June. Apparently he does watch it with a fire.
We are taken to another part of the building to do the interview. Peston has no knowledge that he’s about to get a big story. I take him into a side room and say, ‘He’s going to talk to you about his tax affairs.’ I’m not sure he registers what I’ve said.
We go through to a low-lit room, where the interview is to be done. There’s a handshake shot and then we are into it.
We start on tax. The PM gets what he has to say out, but he isn’t quite as fluent as usual. We’ve been discussing if he will say he will publish his tax return, and agreed to leave some wiggle room, but in the interview he is clear he will do it. This is a major story.
I let the interview run – it’s important he makes clear as often as possible that Blairmore wasn’t a tax avoidance scheme. He keeps saying, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ which seems to have unfortunate echoes of ‘I am not a crook!’
At the end, I conclude it was fine.
DC disappears into a political reception and I call back to base to let people know what’s been going on. I decide that we should get a transcript of which parts need to be sent to the lobby, but will only confirm when I’ve read it properly.
The helicopter journey back to his home at Dean is a case of four seasons in one day, blustery wind, then sunshine, then flying into hail, which is like suddenly flicking on a radio that is tuned to static at full volume.
We land back in the field next to his house. Then I take off without the PM – back i
n Northolt at 4 p.m. My phone doesn’t stop ringing for the next few hours. I agree on which extracts can be put to the lobby, brief Anna Soubry, catch up with most of the home team … then watch the Peston interview before talking it through with the PM.
The next few hours are blotted out with calls again. At one point, I walk back from Waitrose in the pouring rain, answering questions about when the PM put the Blairmore shares in his and Sam’s name, because by splitting it in two, it meant they both avoided capital gains tax.
I find myself in the hell of painstakingly going through the detail with journalists who are clearly bamboozled, but have to write a story. The crucial calls are with the BBC’s James Landale and Peston again. At 10 p.m. Peston is particularly good, saying that we need to remember that politics is also about real human beings and that the human response to people attacking a man you loved was to tell them to ‘Bugger off!’ It’s clear that’s why we got in trouble this week – and people will get that.
When I have watched both programmes, DC calls. ‘I don’t know if it’s just that I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, but that seemed a hell of a lot better.’
Tomorrow we will have to look at releasing his tax returns, but I feel I can sleep easy tonight.
The joy is short-lived and ends when the Friday’s papers come through.
It’s starting to feel like we are in a perfect storm. Much of the Conservative party is going nuts about the leaflet and many MPs are threatening not to cooperate with any form of parliamentary business.
A friend who is a backbench MP calls to say, ‘It’s now certain that there will be a leadership challenge after the referendum.’
A few of us gather round the table in my office and begin the process of working out the release of the PM’s tax returns.
The fact is we’re utter novices in this world. We discover the PM invested in something called the Vietnamese Enterprise Fund. We’re told it’s perfectly legitimate, but will the lobby see it that way? Who knows what it invested in? We think it’s fine, but what if it’s not?
Another bit of paper points to £3,089 in royalties on the book Cameron on Cameron by Dylan Jones. We work out he gave the money to charity.
There’s money from the rent of his house and it’s also clear that the PM’s mother gave him two gifts of £100k in 2011, following the £300k he received from his father’s will. The question is – was this a deliberate attempt to ensure he did not pay inheritance tax? The £300k in the will is below the inheritance tax limit. Had his father given him £500k, it would have been significantly above. Was this planned?
We move on to the speech he is due to give at tomorrow’s Conservative Party Spring Forum. I’m told to come up with an intro that will work – acknowledging it’s not been great this week, but we haven’t been misleading people.
I spend the rest of the day running people through our side of the story. The most effective line is that this was about a son protecting his parents and his wider family. I use it fairly shamelessly, to the extent that I feel the need to call him up and tell him what I’m up to.
Endless meetings, endless calls … all firming up getting the tax returns out there.
Yesterday I called a halt to them going out today. Boy are we glad about that now. There are endless finicky details … experts to be called … payslips to be checked.
I leave late, knowing I will be back in early. I thank the press team. We are all feeling shattered – not knowing where this is heading. The whole thing really could blow up …
On Saturday 9 April, I come in exhausted – at my desk by 7.45 a.m. I go downstairs, but of course what passes for a canteen is empty. I go to where the ‘House’ staff make tea and find Laurence Mann hoping to get some, too.
He tells me he hasn’t been home since Wednesday night.
A financial expert called Graham Aaronson and his assistant are already waiting in the political office – super smartly dressed, and straight out of central casting. DC comes in, dressed for his speech. He wants to run a rule over what we are announcing, and to know the accountants are happy. Of course, what they think is normal might not live up to the lobby’s world view.
The big sticking point is over whether we should reveal that DC’s mother gave him two £100k gifts.
The reason she did was that his brother inherited the family home and his sisters got the mews house in London. He was supposed to get the pension. But of course, it was completely gone. His mother wanted to balance things out.
After going round the houses a bit, I say, ‘The lesson of this week is supposedly, “Get it all out there.” If it’s true people will be able to work out from this that there is some missing cash, we do need to put it out there.’
There’s a bit of black humour about how all the advisers in No. 10 are being written off as complete morons and DC says, ‘I’m really sorry you guys are getting all the blame.’
We feel like we are in uncharted territory. I tell him I think we’re doing the right thing. It’s not comfortable, but we have to have faith that he hasn’t done anything wrong. He nods. He has clearly been wrestling with this.
The thing I’m more worried about is the sense that the Government is really wobbling at the moment. We need to change that.
A few of us head through to my office and plough through the document we will release later and the Q&A. It’s heavy going – we don’t want to make a mistake. Numbers fly around; so does financial management jargon. All of us work hard to keep up. I’m glad to have the excuse of going to the Connaught Rooms, where the PM is giving his speech.
We stop outside, ready to jog up the stairs, past a phalanx of hacks. As we do, someone shouts, ‘Are you going to resign, Prime Minister?’ The rest is a blur of words, where I can only pick out ‘tax’ and ‘offshore’.
We are taken into a small room off the main hall where one of Theresa May’s SpAds is waiting. I watch DC from backstage. The opening of his speech is a masterclass. He tells them it hasn’t been the best of weeks and pauses for laughter. He tells them not to blame ‘nameless’ advisers in No. 10 … it has been his fault – he wanted to protect his family. Whatever you think of it, it works.
He then goes on to give eight reasons why this Government is really on the ball.
When he is done, Zac Goldsmith and Boris follow us back to the small room. Boris is saying, ‘Brilliant, brilliant speech!’ to no one in particular. I find myself next to him as we jog upstairs to a room full of activists. He huffs and puffs about all the ‘financial nonsense’ that’s been going on.
A picture is taken with volunteers from the London campaign – and we are off. DC gets into the car back to Dean. I get in a cab back to No. 10. The driver says he’s never been asked for that address before. He asks me whether we should Leave or Remain in Europe. I give him the chat and at the end, he tells me I have persuaded him.
There’s a crowd of about a hundred protestors outside No. 10. Some are wearing pig snouts. One has a giant rod with what appears to be a pig hanging from it with DC’s face on it. They seem remarkably placid. Back in the PM’s office, we watch the pictures on Sky.
The last details go into the press release and the Q&A. Everyone is jumpy and exhausted.
It’s approaching 3 p.m. when I send the email to the lobby.
We all agree to go home and take the calls from there. I have got two of the trickiest customers – Tim Shipman, from the Sunday Times, and Simon Walters from the Mail on Sunday, as well as all the broadcasters.
The key thing is telling them about the two £100k cash gifts. They seem OK about this. But a couple of hours later, the Mail on Sunday is on saying they think it is a tax dodge. Their point is that if the PM’s dad had given him £500k in the will, he’d have been liable for tax, but doing it this way means that if his mum doesn’t die within seven years, he won’t pay any.
I start by being dismissive. I call Geordie Greig and say I’d be surprised if the paper suggests this was wrong, given that the PM has give
n a full explanation that it wasn’t about avoiding tax and was about evening out the will, which others accept. He seems reassuring.
But at 9 p.m. Simon Walters calls me and says, ‘It’s the splash, I’m afraid.’
‘Seriously? The Mail on Sunday is critical of the PM about his mother giving him the kind of gift that happens on a smaller scale in millions of families?’
When I see the front page, it is worse than I feared: ‘CAMERON TAX BILL DODGE ON MOTHER’S £200K GIFT’. The copy is shocking.
I call the PM, but can’t get him. I see if the No. 10 switchboard can track him down.
They call the protection cops, who are reluctant to get him out of a function. I tell them they have to. More minutes crawl by.
He comes on and I explain the situation. I tell him, ‘We are considering a statement,’ and he sighs heavily.
It’s past midnight when he calls again. He is worried that the Mail on Sunday is being so difficult. ‘Labour will leap on this now. Just as we were getting out of it …’
‘Let’s see what the morning brings – it may not be that bad.’ He takes a little comfort from this. We agree to talk early. I collapse into bed, wondering just how much trouble we are in.
I struggle to sleep past 5 a.m. and get up and go through the papers. This is the torturous side of this job – unable to rest properly at the crucial moments.
There’s something genuinely shocking about seeing the Mail on Sunday splash on a claim that the PM’s mother’s gift was a tax dodge.
I’ve also started getting supportive, ‘Are you OK?’ texts, which is the surest of signs things are falling apart.
I find myself hoping Corbyn will blow it on Marr as I go for a run round the park – hoping to burn off some nervous energy.
DC calls to say the papers are better than he thought. I tell him to watch Corbyn and let’s have a conference call after.
Marr starts well, with a press review by Iain Dale and Polly Toynbee. Polly is reduced to saying, ‘He hasn’t done anything wrong, but he is rich.’ Iain is excellent, robust in his defence of family tax planning.
