Cameron at 10

by Anthony Seldon

  At 10.30, he is back down in his office. ‘I can’t sleep, I’m too excited,’ he tells his staff. He is exercised about the statement he will shortly deliver, one that will further define his second term, and contextualise his first. Drafts are handed to him, one of which contains the phrase ‘closing the gap between rich and poor’. He doesn’t like this. ‘Too Milibandy,’ he says. He wants something more in tune with what he said in the manifesto and during the campaign. Officials are buzzing around outside his office. They are as surprised as anyone to find him back in the room that morning: ‘In their wildest dreams, the team might have been hoping for a coalition but defeat was the most likely scenario the day before, and here they are back in power,’ says an aide. At 10.55 a.m., Cameron’s train of thought is interrupted by an aide saying that Miliband is on the line: ‘I was just calling to offer my congratulations. You won a famous victory. Most of the pollsters said it wasn’t going to happen,’ says Labour’s leader, who has led his party to one of its worst defeats.

  ‘That is very kind of you,’ Cameron replies. ‘You are right about the pollsters. I had no idea what the outcome was going to be. You spoke with real credit, good arguments, some points I know I need to address. What you said this morning about bringing the UK together and treating governments of the UK with real respect was right. We’ve all got to rebuild Scotland. Ed, I wish you the best of luck. We’ve not always agreed with each other, but worked effectively where we needed to and maintained cordial relations outside the Chamber. Thank you for the call.’

  ‘Give my best to Sam and the kids,’ Miliband says.

  ‘Same to yours. Gruelling for both families,’ Cameron replies.

  ‘Take care’, says Miliband, signing off. It is a brief call. Miliband is about to offer his resignation as party leader. Both men are utterly drained and exhausted, but the tone is conspicuously gracious. Immediately after it, Cameron turns to his team: ‘We should say something about Ed in my remarks,’ and the words are then inserted. ‘We should say something nice about Nick too,’ he adds. That is also done.

  At 11.10 a.m., Oliver Letwin arrives at his office. Cameron wants him to remain at his right hand, responsible for the Cabinet Office. Rumours abound that Clegg is going to resign. It had been a disastrous night for the Lib Dems. The polls had suggested they might retain twenty-five to thirty seats. Ultimately, they keep just eight, losing every single seat in their traditional heartland of the south-west. The Queen is still not settled back at Buckingham Palace: there is no hurry for Cameron to see her. So at 11.20, he spends twenty minutes in his office pondering his new Cabinet. Little preparation has taken place, as they had not expected to be back. Officials normally start planning for reshuffles well in advance, and have all the moves neatly mapped out. Now they have barely anything in place. Additionally, Cameron will have twenty-five more jobs to appoint to Conservatives than he did five years before. The big offices of state have already been decided: Osborne will remain at the Treasury, May at the Home Office, Hammond at the Foreign Office and Fallon at Defence. Uncertainty hangs over the future of Gove, who has proved to be a rebarbative chief whip. In the run-up to the EU referendum, a more emollient character will be needed. Also with 331 seats, the final Conservative majority is just twelve, and a lot of massaging of the party will be required. Mark Harper, widely liked across the party, is chosen. But what job to give Gove? Will he take Justice Secretary? He will, with all the status of the Lord Chancellor’s job wrapped up in it.

  At 11.24 a.m., Cameron learns that Farage has resigned as leader of UKIP, having failed to win Thanet South, the seat on the Kent coast which he made such a personal mission. ‘There was this extraordinary feeling that all our political opponents had been put to the sword. Ed Miliband forced to resign, Ed Balls losing his seat, the Lib Dems decimated, Nick Clegg resigning, Farage not even getting a seat. All our critics over the previous five years had been completely confounded,’ says Osborne.8

  While Cameron is preparing to leave for the Palace, his team watch the chairman of the 1922 Committee, Graham Brady, being interviewed on television. The last five years have seen a constant battle against backbenchers, with many of them arguing Cameron could not win an outright majority. For a moment, they feel the pleasure of vindication.

  At 12.24 p.m., Cameron is driven through the front gates with Samantha to see the Queen. After twenty minutes, he leaves the Palace and returns to Downing Street. On the way, he consults with his team about his speech, and they say, ‘Take your time. Get ready for it, don’t be hurried.’ He decides that he is not quite ready, so he comes back into Number 10. Twelve minutes later, he emerges in front of the cameras: ‘I’ve been proud to lead the first coalition government in seventy years, and I want to thank all those who worked so hard to make it a success; and in particular, on this day, Nick Clegg. Elections can be bruising clashes of ideas and arguments, and a lot of people who believe profoundly in public service have seen that service cut short. Ed Miliband rang me this morning to wish me luck with the new government; it was a typically generous gesture from someone who is clearly in public service for all the right reasons.’

  He concludes: ‘This is a country with unrivalled skills and creativeness; a country with such good humour, and such great compassion, and I’m convinced that if we draw on all of this, then we can take these islands, with our proud history, and build an even prouder future. Together we can make Great Britain greater still. Thank you.’9 He finishes speaking at 1.16 p.m., and reaches for Samantha, who is watching with the team from the steps outside Number 11, the same place they had stood five years earlier. Elated, he clasps her hand and walks back towards Number 10, before turning for the cameras. At 1.17 p.m., the front door closes behind them.

  CONCLUSION

  Cameron 2010–2015

  The Verdict

  What then are we to make of ‘Cameron at Number 10’ during 2010–15? We should not judge prime ministers as if they all served on a level playing field. Some come to power blessed with advantages, none more so in recent years than Tony Blair who in 1997 inherited a strong economy, enjoyed a large majority and led a unified Labour Party. Cameron’s inheritance in May 2010 was one of the most challenging for fifty years, worse than the situation Wilson faced in 1974 or arguably even Thatcher in 1979. Yes, he had the good fortune to face Ed Miliband as Labour leader – Miliband’s brother and leadership contender in 2010, David, would have posed a greater challenge – and to have no serious rivals around the Cabinet table to spark a leadership election. Boris Johnson, the one figure with more popular appeal to Tory voters than him, was ruled out by not being in Parliament. Where Blair had, in Gordon Brown, a chancellor who undermined him, significantly damaging his effectiveness as premier, Cameron had a chancellor who enhanced his own authority and effectiveness. Cameron was fortunate too to have William Hague affirming his leadership, especially earlier in his premiership, with all the authority and experience a former party leader carries. His decision to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats usefully shielded him from unpopular decisions, particularly over public spending cuts. By entering the coalition, the Liberal Democrats believed they were taking a brave decision – albeit one that would cost them dear at the polls.

  But there the blessings end. Cameron’s difficulty in managing his party was exacerbated by his failure to win an overall majority in May 2010. He came to power at a time of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. His response was to say that the coalition was ‘governing in the national interest’ – a phrase which imbued his speeches and statements for most of his first twelve months in power. The constraints of the economy and coalition politics were never far from the surface. Like Konrad Adenauer, chancellor of West Germany (1949–63), Cameron displayed uncanny instincts for holding his party and coalition together, but did not win over hearts and minds.

  Cameron came to power at a time of widespread anti-establishment feeling and disillusion across the nation. It contributed to British politics b
eing in an unusually febrile and volatile state after 2010. The stellar rise of UKIP in 2013–14 threatened the most dangerous split on the right for generations. Cameron had the Conservative press on his back from 2011–13 partly in anger at his setting up the Leveson Inquiry. As with John Major, but unlike with Margaret Thatcher, he had few cheerleaders among the right-wing commentariat or Tory grandees. Most were unwilling or unable to give him credit for his strengths and achievements, or to credit his difficulties. The Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011, designed to bind the coalition together, denied him the opportunity to call an election at a moment of his own choosing, depriving him of a critical tool in disciplining his party. He faced a turbulent House of Lords, an assertive judiciary, rampant Scottish nationalism, and EU laws that constrained his ability to limit immigration from the EU.

  Such difficulties explain some if not all of Cameron’s problems. His unforced error in presiding over a confused message in the 2010 general election proved to be crucial. Direction of the Conservative campaign was split, and the prospectus divided between the optimistic if inchoate ‘Big Society’ and the overdone pessimism of austerity on the economy. The election could have been won outright against a discredited prime minister and Labour Party, and a country disillusioned with thirteen years of Labour rule. Cameron was thus to a significant extent the author of some of his own problems during these five years. He was determined not to preside over the same divided campaign in the 2015 election. Vindication followed with the party achieving an overall majority, its first in twenty-three years. Cameron’s outright victory confounded the predictions of opinion pollsters and many commentators from both sides of the political spectrum. Critics said he only won because of last-minute fears of an SNP–Labour alliance, but research suggests economic arguments and Cameron’s qualities over Miliband were decisive. Victory shattered Miliband’s Labour Party as well as Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. Both parties lost their leaders after the general election and immediately descended into disarray. The Conservatives, despite their slender majority, gained a political hegemony and confidence in the months that followed which they have not known since before Black Wednesday in 1992.

  On perhaps the greatest political issue of his day, the European Union, which had torn his party apart for fifty years since Macmillan first tried to gain British entry in 1961, Cameron should be criticised for arriving in office with little coherent plan beyond a naive aspiration that it must not overshadow his premiership. When he produced a strategy in January 2013 with the referendum pledge, he too often gave the impression that he was reacting to events rather than mastering them. That said, no Conservative leader since Britain joined the European Community in 1973, Thatcher included, had held the party together on Europe. His grasping the referendum might yet bring the party a degree of unity on the EU, or at least acceptance, that it has lacked for forty years.

  Cameron’s deficiencies as a long-term, strategic thinker are another criticism, notably in foreign policy. Again and again in these pages, we see a short-term, reactive premier, the Cameron often portrayed in the press. But the attack should not be overplayed or judged devoid of context. If Cameron lacked principles, how do we explain his standing by Plan A on the economy, gay marriage and the decision to spend 0.7% of GNP on international development? He expended considerable political capital in remaining fixed on each of these policies. The five years were characterised by an uneasy mix of dogged adherence to such policies while displaying marked flexibility on others. He stuck by what he deemed the most important factors: coalition survival and economic recovery. Circumstances openly militated against long-termism, and flexibility is a virtue as well as a vice; often for Cameron it was additionally a necessity.

  The economic recovery of 2010–15 defined the character of the coalition and Cameron’s premiership. Economists will argue whether the deficit should have been cut more quickly, or slowly, and whether it was the global economy rather than government policy which was more responsible for the restoration of economic fortunes. Osborne’s failure to eliminate the structural deficit during the life of the parliament, a commitment abandoned after only two years, brought much criticism at the time, though government spending as a proportion of GDP fell from some 45% to 40%, which is a significant reduction in such a short period. In only five years in power, Cameron and Osborne achieved a reduction in public spending as a proportion of GDP approximately equal to the reduction achieved by Thatcher during the whole of her eleven years in power. By 2014 Britain had the fastest growth rate in the G7, with a strong record on job creation, and falling unemployment (2.2 million more were in work than in 2010), helped by low inflation and low interest rates.

  Cameron and Osborne stuck by Plan A, albeit with modification, in the face of severe pressure, particularly during 2011–13. Public spending cuts were painfully felt, particularly by the young, who saw their benefits decline while pensioners were protected. Recovery was hampered by the continuing eurozone crisis and slowdown in global economic growth, but was helped by the fall in oil prices. Productivity remained sluggish by international standards, and real wages struggled to recover to pre-recession levels. The rise in living standards was skewed towards the south-east, which only began to be addressed by Osborne in his Northern Powerhouse strategy from mid-2014. Cameron invested great energy for a prime minister in his role as ‘chief salesman’ for the UK abroad, galvanising British companies to export, though export growth remained disappointing. He and Osborne worked hard to inject a more entrepreneurial spirit into British industry, symbolised by Tech-City in East London.

  Osborne’s contribution to this government and Cameron’s premiership was seminal. Like Cameron, he grew in stature over the five years, recovering strongly from his personal errors of judgement early on, notably the failure to win the 2010 general election and the omnishambles Budget of 2012. He was responsible for much of the tactical thinking of the government, though Cameron would overrule if Osborne was being too tactical or he considered his judgement was wrong. The most instinctive political operator in Cameron’s team, Osborne also possessed the quickest and subtlest mind. He was the most media-savvy and calculating of Cameron’s team: the others, including Cameron, could be almost guileless by comparison. Cameron delegated Budgets and fiscal events to Osborne, but he was always the more dominant, as when he prevented Osborne from reducing income tax to 40% in the 2012 budget, deterring him from laying into the Lib Dems and gaining tactical advantage at the expense of long-term strategy. He gave him cover and succour when deeply wounded for much of 2012. They spoke to each other almost every morning and every evening over the five years, enjoying the most successful and harmonious political relationship at the top of the last hundred years. The secret of the success was the way they complemented each other: to an uncanny degree they thought as one.

  Osborne always knew when to bite his lip, defer to Cameron’s seniority, and, uniquely in modern British politics, neither the PM’s nor the chancellor’s teams ever briefed against the other. There were differences of emphasis, certainly, and in these, Cameron’s view prevailed. Osborne would have preferred to have been more aggressively liberal on social issues, more of a neocon on foreign policy, tougher on colleagues and backbenchers, and more of a tax and economic reformer, though it was the economic situation rather than Cameron that was the principal restraint. Cameron, the older figure by five years, was always more of a shire Tory, while Osborne was more of an urban liberal.

  School reform took prominence among domestic achievements, the work of one minister above all: Michael Gove. He ferociously drove through a series of controversial reforms to make exams more rigorous, to improve the quality of teaching and to give schools more autonomy, establishing an altogether new breed of ‘free schools’, while greatly accelerating Labour’s programme of academies. When Gove was moved in July 2014, his successor Nicky Morgan was given clear instructions to continue his crusade, albeit with a more conciliatory approach. The success of the education ref
orm agenda is far from established, however, with many academies struggling to meet expectations set for them, while the mark on social mobility will not be seen for many years.

  Welfare was the second major domestic achievement, with Iain Duncan Smith introducing significant if contentious reforms to the benefits system to ensure that welfare was targeted at the most deserving, and those out of work were encouraged back into employment. He stuck doggedly to his flagship policy, Universal Credit, and against the odds, remained in office throughout the parliament and into the next. Many of his welfare reforms have already contributed towards fiscal consolidation and shifting the terms of the public debate on welfare. Health policy was more uneven still, with two very different phases: a difficult two years when Andrew Lansley tried to introduce some important if flawed reforms to the NHS, and a second when Jeremy Hunt drove through amended reforms and pacified the NHS so that it was not the predominant issue at the 2015 election. The reforms remain highly controversial, the subject of avid continuing debate, while fundamental issues of affordability are left unresolved. At the Home Office, often the most difficult department of state, Theresa May ran a tighter ship than many of her predecessors, battled to control non-EU immigration, and oversaw a reduction in crime despite severe cuts in the Home Office budget. Domestic successes came in several other areas, including public sector reform, but not in others, with plans for elected mayors in major British cities being largely rejected in local referenda. The record on new housing, the environment and reducing poverty, even with Lib Dem interventions, remained weak. With much of the domestic policy agenda still awaiting validation and in want of overall coherence, Cameron has further to go before he can be seen as a great social reforming prime minister.