Cameron at 10

by Anthony Seldon

  ‘Parliament has the ability to vote down parts of it,’ he tells her.

  Everyone will go to the barricades, if that is his position, she replies. She tries again to convince him to take a more flexible stance. She then suggests it would be easier for him to veto the whole deal.

  Now it is his turn to be direct. ‘I’ll block it if I have to,’ he says, ‘but I am not afraid to negotiate, nor for coming back for annual budgets. But I am not blocking it for the sake of blocking it.’

  There are twenty-five others in the European Union that she has to get on board, she replies, exasperated now.

  He talks to her about Plan A and austerity in the UK, and how the electorate can’t understand why the EU is increasing its budget at the very time that they have to face spending cuts in welfare, defence and health.

  She is unmoved by his pleas. How can it be that you keep putting yourself up as our opponent and we all hate you and isolate you, she says. Why can’t he make any tactical shifts, just as Germany has had to make? She tells him that they have to work together to find a coalition of support. ‘There is a chance that we can do this. But it is not a given.’ She tells him that if Germany is seen as too closely identified with Britain, then everything will be lost. She worries that Britain is the EU’s ‘problem child’ and asks him to work with her to mitigate this perception. She asks him to talk to the likes of the Dutch and Swedes, and to make more effort with Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland. They discuss budget numbers that Cameron thinks he might be able to live with. ‘Can you make an effort to reach out to your friends?’ she asks.

  Cameron decides to capitalise on Hollande’s attempt to work with the Italians to block the deal, which is alienating Merkel. At the conclusion of the Council on 8 February, after twenty-six hours of negotiation, Cameron secures a cut of 3.3% (€32 billion) in the seven-year European budget. The pleas of Hollande to relax austerity and increase spending are swept aside. Cameron achieves some of the best headlines on Europe for a British prime minister for many years. The Daily Telegraph describes the result as a ‘victory’ for Cameron, while the Guardian calls the deal ‘historic’.21

  Alas, his early successes in 2013 do not herald a new era of harmony with the Conservative Party. Hardened Eurosceptics have little confidence in his Bloomberg pledge on the referendum and pressure him to bring forward legislation for an in/out referendum into the present parliament. They want legislation on a referendum included in the Queen’s Speech. Knowing that Clegg will not countenance such a proposition and preferring to have the legislation in the next parliament, Cameron declines. The Conservative MPs nevertheless draft a bill for a referendum by the end of 2017. Number 10 is in a flat spin, uncertain how to react. They hoped Bloomberg would substantially close down Eurosceptic rumbling. Cabinet is divided, and nerves are further rattled when Michael Gove, never totally reliable in the eyes of Number 10, says in public that he might vote to leave the EU in the referendum, suggesting that Number 10 is losing control over Cabinet and that it is open season for Cabinet ministers to express their views on the EU freely.22 For avowed Eurosceptics like Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, Bloomberg ‘was an important step, because it delivered a chance to have a vote, but more importantly for me it provided an opportunity to discuss restoring our trading relationship with the rest of the world and our ability to make our own laws in Parliament’.23 Here there is consensus with Europhiles like Ken Clarke, who welcomed what was a ‘very pro-European speech’. ‘From the moment he announced it, all the hard-line Eurosceptics have been putting pressure on him to bring forward subjects like the free movement of people which they know he can’t negotiate. Unfortunately, he has made UKIP, though I know David thinks the reverse. Nigel Farage was a fringe player until David Cameron announced a referendum.’24

  Things get worse when on 7 May 2013 former Chancellor Lord Lawson calls for an exit from the EU in an article in The Times. He dismisses any concessions that Cameron might be able to win from Brussels as ‘inconsequential’.25 Eight days later, 114 Conservative MPs vote for an amendment expressing ‘regret’ that the referendum bill was not in the Queen’s Speech.26 Cameron is on a trip to the US and so is not at the debate, which goes down badly with his party. A private member’s bill is introduced by James Wharton, calling for a referendum by 2017. With begrudging senior Conservative support, it passes the Commons by 304 votes to zero after Labour and the Lib Dems abstain, but fails to pass through the Lords, and an attempt to revive it in 2014 is unsuccessful.27 In November 2013, Conservative MP Adam Afriyie introduces an amendment calling for an EU referendum before the next election. A new poll suggests that around a third of Conservative Party members support an early referendum on the EU.28 MPs vote against the amendment by 249 to fifteen.

  Cameron is confident that he can charm his fellow EU leaders and secure a deal to put before the British electorate. But as 2013 moves into 2014, he becomes progressively more Eurosceptic. His three objectives – to pacify Eurosceptic critics, neutralise UKIP, and take the EU off the front pages – are all under heavy pressure. Whatever successes he may have in Europe, and however hard he tries to hold his party together, he never seems to satisfy his Eurosceptic MPs. His leadership remains under strain. And life is about to get much worse.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Gay Marriage Saga

  October 2011–July 2013

  Cameron’s stock with Conservative backbenchers is low and falling. He needs to avoid anything that will further unsettle the party. Above all, he should avoid introducing something that was neither in the election manifesto, nor the Coalition Agreement, and that threatens to undermine support for what he is trying to achieve on the economy and core domestic policy areas. Yet introduce something utterly unexpected is exactly what he chooses to do. Out of a blue sky, or so it would seem, he announces in his 2011 party conference speech that he is consulting over the possibility of legalising gay marriage. A bomb detonates in the party. Few issues so divide opinion both in the party at large or even within Number 10. Many see the initiative as a self-inflicted wound. Others see it as authentic Cameron, pursuing a course of action courageously regardless of the hostility it arouses.

  Cameron believes that gay and straight people should be treated the same. At Oxford and beyond, some of his closest friends are gay. Before he became party leader he voted to retain a version of the controversial ‘Section 28’, banning the teaching of homosexuality in schools, but the following year he voted in favour of the Civil Partnership Bill.

  In his speech to the party conference in Blackpool in 2005, which propelled his leadership bid, he went out of his way to endorse marriage: ‘We’ll support marriage because it is a great institution. So we’ll back it through the tax system.’1 He and Steve Hilton shared very similar beliefs about the importance of family stability. ‘Both of us felt very strongly about marriage and wanted to make it a central feature of his platform,’ says Hilton. Not all in Cameron’s court agreed: they saw marriage as old-fashioned, preachy and politically risky to talk about.2 In his party conference speech the following year, Cameron returned to the theme of the sanctity of marriage, but with a twist. ‘There is something special about marriage … what you are doing really means something,’ he said; ‘and by the way, it means something whether you are a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and another man.’3 By placing gay marriage in the context of family and social stability, rather than gay rights, this line drew applause from the party faithful – something that would have been unthinkable just years before. Cameron was saying that ‘we believe in marriage, we believe in it for everyone. At its heart, it’s about commitment, whether it’s straight or same sex, not about whether it’s men or women.’

  Although not a man of traditional faith himself, Cameron is close to the Reverend Mark Abrey, vicar of St Nicholas’s Church in Chadlington near Dean, who helped clarify his thinking on marriage. At an Easter reception at Downing Street in 2014, Cameron says of him: ‘I can’t
think of anyone who [is] more loving or thoughtful or kind than Mark.’4 Cameron’s non-doctrinal approach to religion helps to explain why he is comfortable with the concept of gay marriage. He was no exception: apart from evangelical Christians who vociferously opposed it, opinion polls suggested that a majority of Christians supported gay marriage.5

  The crash in 2008 removed the whole issue of marriage and morality from the spotlight for a time, and only in the run-up to the 2010 election did it reappear. Hilton wanted Cameron to do something ‘that will show that we are not just pro-vested interests and pro-frumpy people in the shires, but we can be liberal and compassionate’. He tasked policy adviser Sean Worth to go and look at the subject. Worth produced a paper called ‘Gay Marriage’, which argued that right-of-centre parties in the US and elsewhere were often supportive of gay marriage for conservative reasons. This was encouraging as it would provide ammunition against social conservatives. But Andy Coulson came out ‘dead against it’. Putting it in the manifesto, he said, with the polls narrowing, would be a mistake. James O’Shaughnessy, who was writing the manifesto, thought similarly. ‘We took soundings from a number of groups: there was ambivalence towards it even from the gay community. They hear views that it is a bourgeois aspiration, that it won’t appeal to the gay community, and that for those who want it, there are already civil partnerships.’ The team conclude, ‘What’s the point if it is going to piss off a lot of people and not win us any votes?’ So it was quietly dropped from the manifesto, a decision that would return to haunt Cameron.

  Fast forward to September 2011. Cameron is mulling over with his team about what he might say at the conference in Manchester the following month. He is being hammered over austerity, and there has been a spate of newspaper articles questioning what, if anything, he believes in. When prompted during an interview on the Today programme, he described himself as a ‘common sense Conservative’, eschewing the phrase ‘modern compassionate Conservative’ that had characterised his early period as party leader.6 In September, Andrew Cooper writes a memo to Cameron. ‘Abandoning modern, compassionate Conservatism would be a serious, potentially fatal, political error,’ he warns. It means continuing with ‘the modernising edge’ that he displayed in Opposition and not ‘subcontracting modern and progressive policies to the Lib Dems’. Cooper argues that Cameron should intervene to claim ownership of the issue of gay marriage. In doing so, he would have to overrule objections to a consultation from Iain Duncan Smith and Philip Hammond on the Cabinet Home Affairs Committee, and commit to legislation before the end of the parliament. It would also mean seeing off the Liberal Democrats.

  Cameron and Osborne are told that Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem Minister for Equalities, will be announcing Lib Dem support for gay marriage at their conference. Cameron has a clear choice: agree to her announcing it at the Lib Dem conference, which will require some form of corresponding announcement at the Tory conference, or block her from doing so, and risk the Lib Dems announcing it anyway, and leaking that the Conservatives had tried to stop them doing so. Cooper insists Cameron has an opportunity to reaffirm his modernising credentials. ‘There is no reason to allow this to be claimed as a Lib Dem internal victory. We should be doing it because we are a modern party opposed to discrimination against gay people, not because the Lib Dems compelled us to do it.’ Cameron is persuaded.

  Another influence is Michael Salter, head of broadcasting in Number 10, described as Cameron’s ‘go-to gay’ on the issue. According to Pink News, Salter ‘played a key role in assisting the PM and other members of the government on LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] policies, most notably equal marriage’.7 Cameron instructs a press briefing ahead of the Liberal Democrat conference stating that he will support gay marriage, scooping Featherstone’s announcement. Despite disagreements within Cameron’s camp – Coulson has gone but there are those who are still opposed – a section supporting gay marriage is drafted for Cameron’s conference speech.

  What he says is, ‘I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.’8 The phrase, Hilton recalls, comes from American politics. After Hilton’s departure the following spring, it becomes convenient to scapegoat him for having inserted gay marriage into the speech; but the decision has Cameron’s and Osborne’s fingerprints all over it. After the announcement is made, a lull follows. The hornets’ nest has been stirred. Cameron receives much praise for his stand and despite support from some religious people, religious bodies in general respond critically, believing that marriage is being redefined. Cameron and his team have very little idea quite how disconcerted and angry their party in the country is about to become.

  On 15 March 2012, a twelve-week consultation on ‘Equal Marriage’ is announced. The public are invited to submit thoughts on changes to the law to allow same-sex couples to enter into civil marriage, and to allow those already in civil partnerships to convert it into marriage. At each fresh threshold, a heated debate takes place within Downing Street. Osborne and Cameron urge the policy forward. Oliver Dowden, who is close to MPs and to the party at large, is one of the more resistant. Ed Llewellyn, Kate Fall and Craig Oliver strongly agree with the policy, but are very worried about the timing. Messages from MPs are relayed in their meetings: ‘Don’t you imbeciles in Number 10 know anything?’ ‘Can’t you see how foolish this is?’ ‘Why are you doing this when everything else is falling apart?’ Cooper makes several presentations to backbench MPs citing private polling. ‘Of all the things this government is doing right now, it’s about the only one that is popular,’ he tells them, adding that the British public will quickly become used to a new social norm, just as it had done over abortion and civil partnerships.9 Some are convinced; many are not.

  Opposition grows over the consultation period. The Church of England says the government ‘misunderstand[s] the legal nature of marriage in this country. They mistake the form of the ceremony for the institution itself.’10 A lobby group called Coalition for Marriage, in favour of traditional marriage and against any redefinition of it, claims it has collected 200,000 signatures: ‘This consultation is a sham,’ it says.11 To release some of the pressure, Cameron announces on 24 May that there will be a ‘free vote’ on any future bill. The media portrays this as yet another Cameron U-turn, coming on the coat-tails of pasties and caravans, and in the wake of all the U-turns of 2011–12.12 Clegg is not happy, and attacks the free-vote decision on The Andrew Marr show: ‘I don’t think this is something that should be the subject of a great free-for-all because we’re not asking people to make a decision of conscience,’ he says.13 The departure of Hilton in spring 2012 is seen as an opportunity to drop the proposals as he has been so closely identified with them. Cameron decides to pause, to take stock of party feeling. To coincide with the party conference in October, the Sunday Telegraph publishes a survey of party constituency chairmen showing that 71% want the issue to be abandoned, believing that it is having a detrimental effect on local constituency membership.14 Alan Duncan, a serving minister and the first openly gay Tory MP, is one of many critics: ‘It is losing us 20% of our membership. It is just so badly explained. Why are we doing it? To purge accusations of Blimpism? It is poison to the party.’15

  Cameron and Osborne nevertheless take the decision that autumn to introduce a bill on gay marriage into Parliament. ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this now?’ they are repeatedly asked in their meetings with the sceptics, who say that many gay people are happy with civil partnerships. The word ‘UKIP’ is being heard increasingly in Cameron’s ears: ‘Gay marriage may well be a factor fuelling its rise,’ says one, ‘adding weight to those who want to pull the plug.’ ‘I never thought David understood how very unpopular the issue was. If you believe something very strongly, you can be blind to how others think,’ says another. Cameron is aware that many elderly party members are deeply opposed, but still believes that he has the majority of public opinion behind him. ‘
Out of all the correspondence he received from party members in his ten years as leader, this was the number one issue raised by a country mile,’ says Number 10 aide Laurence Mann.16 Andrew Feldman commissions detailed analysis of the impact of the gay-marriage issue on party membership, which confounds what many internal critics have been saying: it shows that the party lost more members through death than through members resigning during the passage of the bill.

  Osborne is unwavering. He tells the team: ‘It will send out a message if we do this; and it will send out a message if we don’t do it.’ Cameron says, ‘Unless you are making some Neanderthal judgement on gays, those who are gay should have the same rights as those who are not.’ ‘There is something very stubborn about David Cameron. He wants to do this and he really doesn’t like the attitudes of those who are against,’ says another in his team. The risk of not pushing ahead and being seen to be weak is a seminal consideration. Following the messy aftermath of the omnishambles Budget, he adamantly refuses to countenance anything that might be construed a ‘U-turn’. Another reversal could, he believes, irrevocably define his administration as weak and indecisive. If they are going to do it, they daren’t risk doing so any later, with the European elections in 2014 and the general election a year later. They must do it now. ‘How can we speed this up?’ soon becomes the mantra of Number 10. In a rare public intervention outside his Treasury brief, Osborne writes an article in The Times on 13 November 2012, arguing that ‘Successful political parties reflect the modern societies they aspire to lead,’ and that there is significant support in the country for gay marriage.17 The consultation report is published on 11 December. It finds that gay marriage is supported by the majority of respondents. Critics are quick to point out that the majority is narrow, and that submissions had been accepted not just from the UK but from all over the world.18