On 7 January 2015, Cameron is in the prime minister’s office in the House of Commons preparing for PMQs, as reports start coming through of a terrorist attack in Paris at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. With events moving at rapid pace and uncertainty over the numbers involved, it is difficult to know the extent of the attack. One of his staff emails him: ‘It looks bad.’ Visibly perturbed, he opens PMQs at midday by condemning the ‘barbaric attacks’.21 Reports are still coming in as he travels at 3 p.m. to the British Museum with Angela Merkel to visit ‘Memories of a Nation’, a special exhibition about German history. The two leaders make a joint statement at the museum about the attacks: ‘All of us that live in Europe strongly condemn these attacks and our thoughts go out to the French people,’ says Merkel, while Cameron speaks of the ‘huge sympathy’ he has for the families of those killed: ‘We must never allow the values we hold dear, of democracy, of freedom of speech, to be damaged by these terrorists.’22 It is already getting dark as they arrive back at Downing Street at 4.30 p.m. It is decided to create two precedents that afternoon: first, to have the German chancellor briefed directly by the heads of MI5 and MI6, Andrew Parker and Alex Younger, who has succeeded John Sawers; second, to make a joint call to the French president from the conference telephone in Cameron’s office. They are steely if emotional during the phone call, and offer Hollande all the help that they can. By now it is clear that ten employees of the magazine have been killed, along with two policemen. The following day, the 8th, a policewoman is shot dead in Paris by another terrorist, who goes on to murder four people at a Kosher supermarket the next day, before being killed himself.
Hollande decides to make a public display of international solidarity and invites world leaders to Paris on Sunday 11 January. Cameron is initially unsure whether he will be able to attend, but as the momentum from other leaders becomes clear, he changes his plans and decides to go. He flies out that morning with Ed Llewellyn from Northolt to Vélizy-Villacoublay air base, from where he is driven straight to the British residence on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. From there, they walk the short distance to the Elysée Palace before buses take them to the Place de la République. Cameron is deeply moved by the public expressions of support for the murdered Charlie Hebdo employees. He notes wryly how on most occasions when world leaders travel in coaches, to and from G20s and other summits, the crowd is booing, but here they are applauding wildly, displaying their banners – ‘Je Suis Charlie’ and ‘Nous Sommes Charlie’. After the demonstrations, Cameron gives interviews at the British Embassy. He is shocked by the whole episode, struck by how close to home it is and how easily it could happen in Britain. He knows that the quality of British security and police work, and strict legal controls on firearms, have been partly responsible for preventing such vile attacks on British soil; he also knows that luck inevitably has played a significant role.
THIRTY-EIGHT
A Diminished Britain?
September 2014–March 2015
‘One of the rare issues on which Cameron will lose his temper is if they try challenging him over development spending,’ says an aide. At a time of austerity, Cameron comes under regular pressure about this issue. His dogged commitment to it, while refusing in the final months to commit to a similar pledge on defence, is seen in some quarters as perverse. Criticism reaches a climax on both sides of the Atlantic in late 2014 and early 2015 with even Obama expressing concern at his meeting with Cameron in the White House in January 2015, about Britain’s plans for defence spending. Why does Cameron’s lead on the world stage, so forthright in his first three and a half years, appear to have gone into reverse?
At the Gleneagles G8 summit in July 2005, chaired by Tony Blair, the G8 committed itself to spend 0.7% of gross national income on overseas development. When Cameron became Conservative Party leader in December 2005, he retained Andrew Mitchell, who was committed to the target, as shadow International Development Secretary. For five years in Opposition, he and Mitchell worked very closely to make development a priority area for the Conservatives.1 Why did Cameron give it such high standing? Christianity is not an overt force in Cameron’s life, as it is for some who are strong supporters of development. Political factors certainly played a part: the party needed to reposition itself and shed its ‘nasty’ and reactionary image, and development was an ideal symbol. But the crusade is about much more than that. He understands the benefits for Britain of the diplomatic clout and authority that an emphasis on ‘soft power’ can provide. In July 2007, he visited Rwanda when his own Witney constituency was suffering from floods, which brought him his first serious taste of adverse publicity on his development priority. Aides speak of the ‘special place that Rwanda has in his heart’, dating in part back to his sense that the party had not done enough in response to the genocide in 1994. On his 2007 visit he committed the Conservatives to achieving the Gleneagles target within six years, and spoke powerfully about his personal commitment to the cause of development. The 0.7% figure in the 2010 Conservative manifesto, a commitment eagerly supported by the Lib Dems, readily finds its way into the Coalition Agreement. Danny Alexander, in charge of the 2010 Spending Review, oversees a debate about whether the figure should apply immediately or be delayed until 2015: ‘In the end we decided that it should be met by 2013, which secured broad agreement,’ he says.2 Cameron and Mitchell, now Secretary of State, reserve a third of this budget for conflict prevention, and helping to support fragile states.
Cameron continues to invest time and political capital in this area, going far beyond support for the 0.7% figure. In 2011, he delivers a major speech in Lagos, arguing that Africa should be seen as a place of opportunity, and that democratic capitalism is superior to authoritarian capitalism (the little dig at the Chinese does not go unnoticed).3 He believes economic and political freedom, rather than aid, best lift people out of poverty, and he wants spending to focus on measurable objectives such as immunisation. Right-wing critics of development policy constantly irritate him, and shortly before his Lagos speech, he deliberately takes a question from a Daily Mail journalist at the end of the Deauville summit in May 2011, using it as a chance to attack all the reasons critics give for opposing the 0.7% figure.
The critical point on the 0.7% commitment comes in early 2012, with the economy still not responding, and further cuts to be found. Mitchell, aware of the threat, approaches Osborne to persuade the Treasury to stick to the 0.7% commitment, recognising that 2013 is the year in which the government had agreed to reach it. Throughout 2012 into 2013, the prime minister is still one of the very few to actively support 0.7%. In 2013, Justine Greening, who replaced Mitchell at International Development in September 2012, comes under intense pressure from the MoD who are quick to make their case in public. She outmanoeuvres the MoD.4 Within the Quad, even Clegg begins to say, ‘You know, it would make our lives much easier if we push back the 0.7%.’ Cameron considers this and speaks to Osborne about it, but in the end, they come out against change. Why, especially at a time of such intense pressure? The reasons include: Cameron’s personal commitment; a desire to avoid war with charities and non-governmental organisations, including with popular figures like Bob Geldof; and critically a desire not to break promises. Cameron and Osborne look to Australia, where the prime minister Kevin Rudd had received widespread opprobrium in 2010 after deferring his carbon cap-and-trade commitment. Both PM and chancellor have also absorbed the lessons of Clegg reneging on his tuition-fees pledge. ‘We won’t make any new friends by dropping it, we’ll still have the Daily Mail on our back, and we’ll look like people who have no principles’ is their view. The 0.7% target is reached in 2013, and Britain is the only G8 country to do so (the US spends less than 0.2% – although its GDP is six times greater than that of the UK), while Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg and the UAE are the only other nations to reach it. Despite consistently meeting the target for three decades, the Netherlands falls short in 2013.5
In
the summer of that year, Cameron reads Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, a book which further underpins his belief that open political and economic institutions, rather than autocracies, are the most likely to create sustainable success and prosperity. He is also persuaded by Mitchell to accept Ban Ki-moon’s invitation to co-chair the UN high-level panel on development to explore future targets after the Millennium Development Goals. While in New York in the summer of 2014 he writes an article for the Wall Street Journal, in which he argues against corruption and for greater transparency in the developing world.6 He texts Mitchell to thank him for persuading him to accept the position. Somalia is a country in which the prime minister invests a great deal of personal effort, trying against the odds to bring more stability. A conference in May, organised by Mitchell before his departure, successfully galvanises international support. Cameron takes a strong lead in July 2014 at the Girl Summit, which Justine Greening asks him to co-host, and he speaks movingly about female genital mutilation.
A difficulty had arisen at the end of June, immediately prior to this summit, when, with the support of Mitchell, the Lib Dem former Scotland Secretary Michael Moore tabled a private member’s bill to enshrine the 0.7% target into law.7 This is a moment of peril for Cameron, as it would lock the government into spending more than £12 billion annually on development. A handful of Conservatives make it noisily clear that this is a step too far. Cameron and Osborne are in a corner and know they have no way out except to support the measure, or see the Lib Dems take the credit and have opprobrium rain down on them. Instead, Parliament faces down fire from some on the right wing of the Conservative Party, notably Philip Davies and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Deft work from Greening and Conservative whips sees the bill pass the Commons by a majority of 146 to six, but passage through the House of Lords is trickier with some opposition, including from heavyweight establishment figures like former chancellor Nigel Lawson and former Cabinet Secretary, Robin Butler.
When Ebola erupts in Africa in September 2014, he again takes a lead. That month, Obama says to him: ‘Look, this really is urgent, I need you to take care of Sierra Leone, François Hollande to take care of Guinea, while we do Liberia.’ The joint effort is significant in arresting the spread of the disease. Along with his support for gay marriage, Cameron’s commitment to international development is his principal stand for liberal and humanitarian values. It wins him few friends in his party, and brings particular turbulence in the months leading up to the general election with many, not just on the right, wanting more money on defence; but his commitment is striking.
The development/defence trade-off sticks in the craw of Cameron’s right wing and the military. When the question had been raised in 2013 as to which country would host the biannual NATO summit in September 2014, Cameron willingly put up his hand: it would coincide with the end of Britain’s thirteen-year war in Afghanistan, and he is eager to show the world that Britain takes its commitments to NATO and international security very seriously. Number 10 is conscious that the country has not held a NATO summit since the last summer of the Thatcher era in July 1990, marking the end of the Cold War. With Putin on the warpath, the spectre of an aggressive leader in the Kremlin becomes a real concern. The dominant issue of the summit will inevitably now be how to deal with Russian aggression in Ukraine.
To help gain fresh perspective, Cameron convenes a meeting in late July 2014 in the large dining room at Number 10. A range of political and military figures are invited, including former Labour Defence Secretary and NATO Secretary General George Robertson, former Chief of the General Staff Mike Jackson, and former Labour Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett. Michael Fallon, who has just taken over from Philip Hammond as Defence Secretary, starts out chairing the meeting until Cameron takes over. The PM gives an overview for twenty minutes, and then listens to the range of views. One person present describes it as ‘a bit of a charm offensive to seek our views as to what might come out of the NATO summit’. Cameron is conscious of the force of history bearing down on him from the east. He wants the summit to make an impact.
Number 10, though, has become disillusioned with the official Whitehall machine’s attempts at producing the distinctive agenda Cameron wants, so Downing Street special adviser Daniel Korski and colleagues in the Policy Unit seize the initiative, collating a number of ideas. These include a joint expeditionary force for NATO, and an Armed Forces Declaration, a tribute to the sixty-fifth anniversary of NATO’s formation. Crucially, the agenda includes a fresh commitment to meet the target, first formulated in 2006, of spending a minimum of 2% of GDP on defence. The Treasury and officials in Number 10 counsel against mentioning 2%, arguing that it is unaffordable. The Whitehall machine is so sceptical about whether agreement could indeed be reached on such a broad agenda that an aide has to go round foreign leaders before the official photo, pen in hand, to get them to sign up to a presentational version of the Armed Forces Declaration.
Newport and Cardiff in South Wales provide the venue for the summit, with roads closed for weeks as part of a massive security operation, including twelve miles of security fencing acting as a ‘ring of steel’. The summit is indeed hyped as ‘the most important since [the] fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989’, which is not without foundation.8 For Number 10, a core subtext is using the summit to push the EU towards sanctions on Russia in response to its aggression in Ukraine, which again receives less media notice than they would have liked. Cameron is pleased that the summit does indeed reinvigorate a sense of collective security among member states after several years of the alliance’s focus not being on threats to Europe itself. But while many of the debates and serious-sounding resolutions quickly fade from international memory, the commitment to the 2% for defence spending does not. The 2% figure, about which Cameron feels strongly, is barely discussed in the National Security Council before the summit. As one senior British officer wondered at the time, ‘I think the PM may be painting himself into a corner on this.’ Sure enough, the commitment, hastily conceived, comes back to haunt him. The military are not going to let him forget it.
Many still have lingering resentments dating back to the 2010 Spending Review and the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), believing that defence has been overly clobbered in the austerity cuts. A particular cause of concern is the decision to scrap Harrier jets and decommission the Ark Royal (the Royal Navy’s sole aircraft carrier) earlier than planned, and without replacements for the best part of a decade. The military dismiss the SDSR as a mere cost-cutting exercise, and pin their hopes on a new strategic review in late 2015 properly identifying the priorities for Britain’s role in the world.9 Retired generals, admirals and air chiefs are rising out of their armchairs and finding common voice with serving officers – a dangerous alliance, especially when conjoined with right-wing Conservative backbenchers. Information starts to be dripped into the media, which is regularly reminded that in October 2010 Cameron had announced that Britain ‘will require year-on-year, in real terms, growth in the defence budget in the years beyond 2015’.10 Despite this weight of criticism, Number 10 continue to believe that it called the 2010 SDSR right: ‘We didn’t need tanks and heavy equipment as the generals wanted. We need flexible forces and linked battlefield functions such as ISTAR [information, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance systems] for today’s battles against ISIS,’ says one aide.
Are Cameron and Osborne now on different sides of the argument? They were certainly at one in the early years in power, believing that Labour had wasted billions of pounds on defence, and had run the MoD poorly. They protect the equipment programme in 2010, and appoint Hammond as Fox’s successor in October 2011, hoping his sharp financial brain will help ensure value for money. But where Cameron sees the romance of the British armed forces, and revels in being a staunch defender of his country, Osborne focuses more on the pounds and pence. He is adamant that if the government is going to make savings
and complete the job of deficit reduction, cuts will have to be made in defence spending, ‘or we have no hope of balancing the budget by 2020’. Treasury officials are fiercely behind him in their belief that there is still huge wastage in defence: ‘There are too many admirals, too many generals, too many chauffeurs,’ one says. They argue forcefully in late 2014 and early 2015 that the procurement budget is excessive, and that the quality of Britain’s defence and foreign policy will not be jeopardised by planned cuts. ‘Defence is good for a billion’ is how the service chiefs characterise the Treasury’s attitude to their spending. They have read the Treasury’s steely-eyed world view perfectly. With the economy set to expand, the Treasury believe that committing to a fixed target of 2% will pin down far too much money on defence, create an awkward precedent for other departments (Education might demand protection too), and prevent the completion of deficit reduction. Osborne blankly refuses to let the 2% commitment be included in the Conservative manifesto for the 2015 election. Elections, as Crosby would agree, are not won on defence.
Month after month, the pressure mounts on Cameron. Senior backbenchers including Bernard Jenkin and Rory Stewart, chairman of the Defence Select Committee, are leading the sceptics. In February 2015, the committee criticises the ‘strikingly modest’ role that British forces are playing in fighting the ISIS.11 The military’s close connections with backbench Conservatives are now seriously fuelling the criticisms within both camps. Cameron is becoming so irritated by the barrage of criticism that it further emboldens him to resist making a definite pledge for Britain to maintain the 2% figure. He retorts that he has made a ten-year commitment to increase equipment, and to maintain the ground forces at their current level, and to stick by Trident. ‘You’ve got Putin buggering around, you’ve got ISIS, you’ve got Obama doing crazy things with Iran and we are not backing our own defence,’ retorts one former Cabinet minister, throwing up his arms in horror. Cameron succeeds in neutralising defence as an issue during the election campaign, when only UKIP and the Democratic Unionist Party commit to the 2% target. Beneath the surface, are the questions being asked about Britain’s place in the world damaging to Cameron’s leadership? Why is the media-savvy PM not responding more to what the right-wing press want him to do?
Cameron at 10 Page 54
