Cameron at 10

by Anthony Seldon

  Number 10 communications directors (earlier called ‘press secretaries’) had traditionally come from newspapers – for example, Joe Haines under Wilson, Bernard Ingham under Thatcher, and Alastair Campbell under Blair. Cameron’s team are excited about Oliver’s experience of broadcasting. He arrives with a bang, making it clear that much of Coulson’s operation was out of date. ‘It’s all very old school, very slow and reactive: 1980s mentality,’ he is heard to say. He wants the whole operation shifted towards digital and social media. Regular Thursday slots are arranged for Cameron to talk to regional radio stations from Number 10. He continues with the ‘PM Direct’ meetings, which give Cameron the opportunity to meet and talk to people across the country. Cameron even starts ‘tweeting’.16 There is, however, a downside: handling the media in the wake of the hacking scandal would inevitably create friction. Fiercely loyal to his boss, Oliver takes on the press lobby, making enemies in the process. Not all in Number 10 adapt easily to the new style. They dislike the criticisms of Coulson’s style, and hanker for the man with whom they had worked so closely through good times and bad for four years. It is all new territory for Cameron’s close-knit inner circle. They are initially wary of the new broom, and it takes a full two years to embrace Oliver fully. But by mid-2013, he has earned his spurs, and he achieves a unique feat for a post-2010 addition to Number 10 by being accepted as a respected insider of the Cameron court. He travels regularly on tours with the PM abroad and in the UK, they talk or text several times daily, and he is a regular and influential member of the PM’s 8.30 a.m. and 4 p.m. meetings.

  However, partly as a result of the departure of Coulson, morale in Number 10 slumps badly in early 2011. It is the first sustained period of reversal the team has experienced in government, and they are yet to develop resilience. Cameron is under fire from all sides: the economy is not improving, a series of U-turns in January and February, on the sale of forests and cuts in housing benefit, damage confidence in him.17 Suddenly Cameron, and Osborne too, appear at sea and struggling.

  Cameron now compounds any errors over Coulson by not distancing himself from Murdoch and the tentacles of the News International empire. He continues to see Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie, an old school friend. In May, the Sun asks for his support to reopen the search for lost child Madeleine McCann, which he readily agrees to out of sympathy. But it prompts questions about whether he was ‘pressured’ into giving favours to News International.18 Was it demanding payback for its support at the 2010 general election? Cameron keeps trying to turn the spotlight onto the government’s domestic achievements, but the probing doesn’t go away. A fresh inquiry into the hacking scandal set up in January keeps the issue in the public eye, and Labour MPs Chris Bryant and Tom Watson are gaining traction with their questioning about whether Murdoch’s support was being traded for commercial advantage. In the summer, always a highly charged time at Westminster, Culture Secretary Hunt announces in the House of Commons on 30 June that the government is ready to give the green light to Murdoch’s bid for BSkyB, giving him enormous power over broadcasting.19

  However, on 5 July, Murdoch’s hopes of extending his empire are shattered. The Guardian reports that the News of the World had hacked the phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, while she was still officially missing. Ed Miliband seizes the moment, ushering in his most vibrant and effective period as leader. He tackles Brooks head on, suggesting she consider her position in the company, and takes aim at News International. Dominoes start falling. On 7 July 2011, News International chairman James Murdoch announces the closure of the News of the World. On 8 July, Coulson is taken into custody on suspicion of conspiring to hack phones and corruption. On 13 July, News Corp withdraws its bid for BSkyB.20 On the same day, Cameron announces that Lord Leveson will head an inquiry into the media. On 15 July, Rebekah Brooks resigns as CEO of News International. Two days later, she too is taken into police custody before being bailed. On 19 July, Rupert and James Murdoch, father and son, as well as Rebekah Brooks, are humbled before the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. The nation revels in a rare moment of Schadenfreude at the expense of the Murdoch family.

  Following a week of fast-moving developments, Cameron cuts short a visit to South Africa to make an emergency statement on the crisis in the House of Commons on 20 July. He comes the closest yet to making an apology. ‘Of course I regret, and I am extremely sorry about, the furore it has caused,’ he tells MPs. ‘If it turns out that Andy Coulson knew about hacking at the News of the World, he will not only have lied to me, but he will have lied to the police, a select committee and the Press Complaints Commission, and of course perjured himself in a court of law … if it turns out that I have been lied to, that would be the moment for a profound apology.’21 In a test of stamina, he answers 138 questions from MPs after the statement. It is a bruising experience, but he survives.22

  When announcing the inquiry a week earlier, Cameron says that the aim is ‘to bring this ugly chapter to a close and ensure that nothing like it can ever happen again’.23 It is a naive hope. The Lib Dems and the Conservatives are not in agreement. Cameron’s team want to stop the inquiry investigating the role of politicians; the Lib Dems do not, and win. Cameron initially resisted setting up any inquiry at all. He had visibly reeled when Craig Oliver told him on 7 July that the News of the World was closing. He goes up to the flat and talks about how to respond with Osborne, Llewellyn, senior aide Oliver Dowden and with Craig Oliver. Heywood has been arguing forcefully that an independent inquiry establishing the facts would be in the prime minister’s own interests. Cameron’s political staff agree, believing it is the only way to draw the sting from Ed Miliband’s ferocious attack. Gove vehemently disagrees. He subsequently briefs the press against Heywood for advocating the inquiry, which to Gove, as a former journalist, is anathema. Cameron knows that an inquiry will be a minefield, but he heeds Heywood’s advice: he has to do something to stop the firestorm gathering around him. ‘Camp Cameron was hanging by a thread,’ recalls a senior figure in Number 10. ‘He had to find a way of getting through this and calming everything down.’ He is under the greatest pressure in his premiership to date by a distance.

  Discussions follow over who should chair the inquiry. O’Donnell is one of many to advise against appointing a judge, on the grounds that their investigations go on forever (Saville’s twelve years on Bloody Sunday are still fresh in everyone’s mind). Nevertheless, they land on Lord Justice Leveson because he has gravitas, and is known to be seeking one of the top positions in the judiciary, and is thus unlikely to want to spread out the inquiry too long. The Lib Dems are strongly supportive of the inquiry, and want it conducted in as public a manner as possible. The decision is taken that the inquiry will be televised, adding extra layers of strain on Cameron and Number 10.

  Problem over? Those who hoped Coulson’s departure, and announcing the inquiry, would calm the storm are in for a rude shock. Cameron’s woes are only just beginning. Miliband’s tail is up – he knows he has Cameron on the run. Any honeymoon Cameron may have enjoyed with the media is over, as they probe consistently and relentlessly. One of his team offers this interpretation of what is happening: the ‘Telegraph and Mail think Cameron got into bed with News International before the general election, that he fell in love with Rebekah Brooks who persuaded him to appoint Coulson, an act of naivety and folly that led to the setting up of Leveson, which is going to stuff the British press. For that reason, they are giving us hell.’ Their questions rain down on Number 10. Did Hunt break the ministerial code in dealing directly with News Corp over the BSkyB bid? Was Cameron foolish bringing Coulson into Downing Street? What due diligence did he undertake? Had he allowed the Murdoch empire undue influence over him? When his judgement and integrity are called into question, it galls him, and makes him miserable. He has only himself to blame. It is his worst episode in Downing Street.

  Cameron projects his anger onto Miliband who he thinks is posturing cynically.
His distress reaches new levels when, on 30 April 2012, the Labour leader forces him to the House to answer ‘an urgent question’ about whether Hunt breached the ministerial code in his handling of News Corp’s bid for BSkyB. Speaker John Bercow’s support of Miliband’s action infuriates Cameron: he regards Bercow as biased and currying favour with Labour. Nerves are very frayed. Llewellyn insists the close team avoid any hostile briefing of the press. Heywood’s critics believe he pushed Cameron towards an inquiry, not because it is in the PM’s interests, but because it suits the Civil Service to rein in News International. In truth, Heywood advocated an inquiry because he judged it to be the best way for Cameron to respond to allegations of impropriety.

  Cameron’s personal discomfort grows the next month. He endures acute personal humiliation when personal texts he sent Brooks are released, which he sometimes signed off ‘LOL’, mistakenly believing it stood for ‘lots of love’ (rather than ‘laugh out loud’). They are universally and rightly condemned as embarrassing and inappropriate, above all because they are between a prime minister and a senior figure in a highly partisan media outlet. Some of Cameron’s aides became frustrated earlier by his unwillingness to criticise Brooks personally and say publicly that she should stand down. They wonder whether he has learnt the lesson from his misplaced loyalty to Coulson. Cameron is in a terrible place, skewered in a complex web of loyalties and sense of duty. Charlie Brooks is close not only to Cameron but also to Cameron’s brother Alex. ‘Charlie is one of my oldest friends. I’m not going to dump him,’ he tells his team. He has yet to learn it is his duty as prime minister to stand back from any friendships that might compromise him or cloud his judgement.

  The most hazardous moment for Cameron is when he is called to give evidence on 14 June 2012 in front of the Leveson Inquiry. He is questioned for nearly six hours. Number 10 had begun to prepare for the appearance in March and much of his time and energy is devoted to it. Tristan Pedelty, an official in the Private Office and a former barrister, pilots him through the evidence. Cameron worries about his memory and whether he overplayed his hand in his written statement to the inquiry: was his memory at fault? He is often prone to fret about the reliability of his memory when unsupported by written documents. He worries about his ability to master so much detail: he describes it as like a marathon PMQs session. He remains acutely embarrassed about the texts to Brooks. But he is sure of his ground with Murdoch, and tells the inquiry he doesn’t believe he overstepped any mark, or has gone any further in his relations with News Corp than Blair and Brown had done. Officials have never seen him so anxious or exercised, before or since. Equally, they have no sense of a ‘guilty secret’ that might be rooted out in the inquiry. Some pressure on him eases after Hunt, who has himself been brought under intense scrutiny, provides what are generally considered reasonable explanations for his decisions on BSkyB. Cameron’s appearance in front of the inquiry adds to the febrile atmosphere inside Number 10 during the summer of 2012. The unravelling of the Budget, unpopularity of the NHS reforms and threat of a fuel strike all contribute – as we see in subsequent chapters – to falling poll ratings for Cameron personally and the Conservatives. Aside from the respite of the Olympics, this is a bleak time. Discussion inside Number 10 is about a general feeling of drift and loss of grip as much as it is about Leveson.

  The 2,000-page Leveson Report arrives in Downing Street on 28 November 2012. Leveson had indeed moved, as expected, with commendable speed. As with the Saville Report, Number 10 is given twenty-four hours to prepare its response before publication. Llewellyn, Oliver, Dowden and Heywood pore over the principal findings. There is huge relief that the inquiry found no evidence of wrongdoing or impropriety by either Cameron or Hunt. It also finds there was no breach of the ministerial code. Had Hunt not been exonerated, his inevitable resignation would have been very damaging indeed to Cameron. There is, however, a serious sting in the tail. Cameron always recognised that the inquiry could be a minefield, and his apprehensions are justified in the recommendation that a new body to regulate the press be set up. Even though this body would be non-statutory, its existence would be ‘underpinned’ in legislation. The Guardian is positive, News International, understandably, are not overtly hostile. The Telegraph group is against, but the main opposition comes from the Mail group. The report divides the coalition. Clegg approves of proposals to protect the public from unjustified media intrusion. Cameron’s view on regulation is more nuanced. He doesn’t want to impose anything that smacks of political interference with a free press, fearing that any party that introduces mandatory regulation will be ‘done over’ all the way up to the next general election. The notion also grates with his instinct on the sanctity of press freedom.

  With Labour and Lib Dems in favour of regulation, and the press overwhelmingly against, Cameron’s response is to hand the problem over to his ‘arch-fixer’, Oliver Letwin. Following negotiations with James Harding, outgoing editor of The Times, Letwin proposes on 14 March 2013 that press regulation be overseen by a Royal Charter, similar to the one that brought the Bank of England and the BBC into being. But the Royal Charter is not a compromise that the press will accept because it still maintains the spectre of press regulation, anathema to most of the profession. The Spectator leads the way in declaring it will not sign up to any Royal Charter. In April, the press produces its own proposals.24 Any collective will to act is being lost. The whole fandango to make the press more responsible and accountable fizzles out. Inevitably, many think.

  There is a final twist in the tale. In October, a romantic affair between Rebekah Brooks and Coulson is revealed at the phone-hacking trial. It makes Cameron’s judgement in befriending both appear even more tawdry. On 24 June 2014, the verdict of the court is announced: Brooks and other defendants are cleared, Coulson is found guilty and jailed for eighteen months. ‘I think, once again, it throws up very serious questions about David Cameron’s judgement in bringing a criminal into the heart of Downing Street despite repeated warnings,’ is Miliband’s fiery response.25 To add further embarrassment, Cameron decides to go on television to make a ‘full and frank apology’ for hiring Coulson.26 His comments are immediately criticised by the judge presiding over the phone-hacking trial for launching ‘open season’ on Coulson while the jury is considering other charges against him. The jury is later discharged and a retrial is announced. ‘It was unwise. He should have taken some legal advice first, but I doubt whether it crossed David’s mind,’ Ken Clarke, a former QC, tells the media.27 On 21 November, Coulson is released from prison with a tag under curfew, after serving five months.28

  Cameron was greatly unsettled and traumatised by the whole episode. Exceptional though Coulson was as his communications director before and after Cameron became PM, his appointment was a very major error of judgement given the toxicity of the phone-hacking scandal. It revealed how naive Cameron was in dealing with figures far more worldly-wise than him, above all the Murdoch family and Rebekah Brooks, and how flawed his openly trusting approach could be, as indeed could be that of his inner circle. They were a world apart from the harder-nosed courts of Blair, with figures like Campbell and Mandelson, and of Brown, schooled in Labour’s tribal politics.

  By initially backing Leveson but then turning away from its recommendation for statutory regulation, Cameron further managed to earn contempt from all sides. The cynical Whitehall view is that ‘governments in the end always give way to the press, every single time’. The fact that Cameron’s worst episode as PM came in one of the areas where he had personal expertise, public relations – he had been director of corporate affairs at ITV company Carlton in the 1990s – makes it all the more perplexing. He displayed insufficient maturity in understanding the dignity of the office of prime minister and the need to be above suspicion, which includes ensuring that one’s close friends are also above suspicion. Most prime ministers have tumbles and lapses in Downing Street – the pressure is so intense, it’s not surprising. The question remained:
had Cameron learnt sufficiently from his errors of judgement?

  NINE

  Taking on Gaddafi

  February–September 2011

  Monday 21 February 2011. Cameron goes for a walk through the highly charged streets of Cairo. North Africa is in turmoil. Five weeks before, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia had resigned after violent protests. Events there sparked a wave of unrest across the Arab world. On 25 January, thousands of protestors gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square demanding the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, autocrat leader of Egypt since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. On 11 February, the protestors in Egypt achieved their goal: Mubarak was gone. As Cameron walks the streets and inhales the febrile air, he feels vindicated in his first decision taken in the ‘Arab Spring’ – not to come out in support of the existing regimes and urge them to take back control of their countries.

  Back at home, however, his Cabinet is divided on the subject. Defence Secretary Liam Fox urges caution, arguing ‘it is unclear what our long-term strategy is’.1 So too does MI6 head John Sawers, who warns of the danger of mistaking the middle classes protesting as demonstrative of a genuine revolution in the country more generally. At the other pole stands Michael Gove, ranging far from his education brief, who argues that failure to support the protestors could alienate Britain from the Egyptian population. Cameron wants to be the first world leader to go out to see the Arab Spring for himself. On the flight on the way out, he tells his team, ‘This is a great opportunity to talk to those running Egypt to help ensure this really is a genuine transition from military to civilian rule.’2 At the time, it is felt that it would be possible to deal with the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) who had been formed after the toppling of President Mubarak, despite their links to the Muslim Brotherhood. ‘They really didn’t understand properly what they were up against,’ says one senior figure in the intelligence community. As Cameron talks to passers-by in Cairo, his strong instinct is to support these ‘brave people’ with their aspirations to replace corrupt and authoritarian regimes. On the streets, he is relaxed, though his security detail are far from happy. Later he meets interim Egyptian prime minister, Ahmed Shafik. Many in Britain at the time share Cameron’s optimism that the fall of Mubarak might open the door for civil society to reaffirm itself, and for Egypt to have a modern constitution and democracy. He reckons that if the protests fail to produce a stable alternative government, the Egyptian army would always step in again, and little would have been lost.