It can also lead to the most unfair of outcomes. Someone who gets the most first preferences in the first round can be overtaken as more and more second and third preferences are taken into account. It could be, as I put it, a ‘Parliament of second choices’. Ask David Miliband. He won the first three rounds of voting in the Labour leadership election, but then lost the final round to his brother Ed.
Both the proportional and the preferential systems would make our system less decisive. They would lead to more coalitions. This was perhaps an odd argument at a time when I was enthusiastically leading a coalition, but I did genuinely believe that the clarity and decisiveness of our system were good things.
From the very beginning we were clear that the Conservatives would campaign with vigour for the status quo. I do accept that we also gave the impression that the AV referendum wouldn’t be allowed to hinder the coalition. In fact, we were all so keen to make it work that both Oliver Letwin and Michael Gove individually offered to me to campaign for AV, even though they were more inclined to my side of the argument. I told them it wasn’t necessary: granting the referendum brought the Lib Dems into the tent; winning it would keep the Conservative Party from leaving it.
The truth was that I did crank up my involvement in the campaign to revive the flagging ‘No2AV’ campaign as the referendum approached.
Matthew Elliott from the Taxpayers’ Alliance was doing a reasonable job as campaign director, particularly in signing up some big Labour figures and uniting Labour and Conservatives over the cause. Rodney Leach – a sort of Tory philosopher king, who had run Business for Sterling opposing British membership of the euro – was an effective chair.
But financially they were struggling. The Yes campaign had benefited from large donations, and we were seeing the impact in the polls. After No had initially been ahead, on 12 February 2011 a ComRes poll put Yes on 40 per cent and No on 30 per cent. Populus showed a strong Yes lead on 19 February. Panic – we might lose this – began to set in, especially after the 1922 Executive Committee paid me a visit and expressed their fears about a loss.
The fact was that we needed the big guns, and the big money – and I could do something to help that. What would be worse: damaging the coalition, or damaging democracy? I had to weigh it up. The latter was far worse.
I helped secure the hugely successful entrepreneur and Tory donor Peter Cruddas as treasurer, and I asked Stephen Gilbert to keep an eye on Matthew Elliott. I stepped up my own public involvement too, with visits, newspaper op-eds and speeches. The detail was important. Our polling was showing us that, when AV wasn’t explained to people, it was more popular than first past the post; but the minute you told them how complicated and costly it was, they swung back to the status quo.
There was one more desperate measure to consider. Stephen Gilbert came into my morning meeting in Downing Street one day, and waited afterwards to talk to George and me alone. He said the No campaign wanted to add a third ‘c’ to the argument about how ‘costly’ and ‘complicated’ AV was: ‘Clegg’. It could harness his dwindling popularity to show that AV would mean more coalitions, and more Cleggs playing kingmaker in British politics.
The Tory tribe was gearing up for another of its uprisings. This time it probably wouldn’t be regicide, but it would be another grassroots revolt that I could do without. So I said: ‘Do it.’ I didn’t agree every word and every picture. But I did wince when I eventually saw the leaflets with a picture of Clegg holding that sign saying he wouldn’t vote for tuition fees, and the words ‘AV will lead to more broken promises’.
Politics is a brutal business. You have to campaign with all you’ve got. You have to put long-term interests above immediate concerns, and your own party and survival above other parties and leaders – however much you like and get on with them.
The weekend before the referendum was the first May bank holiday, and I stayed at Chequers with the family and some friends. In the early hours of Monday morning I received a call from a duty clerk saying that President Obama wanted to speak to me on the phone. When he came through at 3.15 a.m. he told me that Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda, had been killed by US forces in Pakistan.
I was delighted at the news. This was the man who had plotted 9/11 – the biggest terror attack in history, which had also caused the largest loss of British life in any such attack. He had inspired attacks like London 7/7 and others around the world. He was a mass murderer, and richly deserved his fate.
Before 7 a.m. I had filmed a statement for the TV cameras. Then it was back to Chequers for more meetings and phone calls, including with prime minister Yousaf Gilani of Pakistan – the country where bin Laden had been living, in the centre of a busy town, all along …
The next day at cabinet, Lib Dem energy secretary Chris Huhne confronted me about the AV leaflets. No was pulling ahead in the polls, and the Yes campaign was rattled. He tossed copies of the offending literature down on the cabinet table, asking if George had been behind them, and demanding I sack whoever approved them. I mumbled something about not personally approving every leaflet, and made the point that there was a Conservative campaign I was responsible for, and an all-party campaign that included other parties. Nick Clegg looked embarrassed. Everyone else was silent. Then George piped up: ‘This is the British cabinet, not some sub-Jeremy Paxman interview on Newsnight.’ It was just enough to deflate Huhne. I moved on to the next item on the agenda, and the meeting continued as if nothing had happened.
Then came polling day. That evening, as the results started to come in, I returned from dinner and watched the TV. The polls were good. There seemed to be nothing to worry about – and I slept soundly.
It wasn’t until the morning that it was confirmed: No won by 68 per cent to 32 per cent. Turnout was 42 per cent.
I don’t look upon the victory with much fondness. It was, in the coalition story, a miserable little episode. And things between our parties would never quite be the same.
That said, my relationship with Nick did recover. He came to Dean in August, just a few months after the result. We played tennis, had lunch and talked about how to get the coalition back on the road. It was a big deal after such a rocky patch in our relationship, and even my children were excited about his arrival. I remember Nancy saying, ‘Dad, is NICK CLEGG really coming here to Dean? Wow!’
Between the result of the referendum and that lunch, something else happened. It helped to bring the coalition back together. But it showed that the Lib Dems were wrong on one thing. Our society was broken.
That summer I went with Sam and the children to Tuscany. We rented a large villa with friends, surrounded by olive groves and vineyards. It was blissful: playing tennis, reading by the pool, visiting churches and galleries, with young children running around everywhere.
Which makes holidaying as prime minister sound fairly peaceful. It isn’t. No matter how remote your retreat, you’re never completely alone. There are police with you constantly. Not only your own protection team, who are always nearby, but the host country’s police as well – in Italy’s case the regular Polizia, the military-style Carabinieri, and even the Forestry Corps.
There is always work. A small Downing Street team is permanently on hand in a nearby hotel or villa wherever you go. Every morning a small number of items were brought to me for signing, deciding and reading. And then there was my red box, full of ‘summer reading’ written by hard-working staff wanting to clear their desks before the break, analysing all sorts of complex issues at great length and presented to me just in time for my holiday.
And of course the press are never far away. When we arrived at Arezzo Cathedral to look at the frescos by Piero della Francesca there were about fifteen paparazzi waiting for us – tipped off, I’m sure, by the Italian police.
Usually the press would (sort of) stick to the much-mocked deal my press office struck with them. Our side of the bargain was one highly co
ntrived snap of Sam and me – drinking coffee, walking along, or, for some reason – and this happened two years in a row – pointing at fish in a market. Theirs was to leave us alone for the rest of the trip.
On this particular holiday, the scene for our photo call was set in the town of Montevarchi. I wandered up to the counter of the carefully chosen bar and ordered tea for Sam and an espresso for me. I asked the waitress if she’d be bringing them over, but she said no, so I paid there, waited for the drinks to come and then took them to a table. Did I give a tip? No. It would have been like tipping when you leave Starbucks. When we left, the journalists interviewed the waitress and asked if I’d given her a tip … Now they had a picture and a story.
What had inevitably been named ‘tip-gate’ carried on when the poor waitress wrote to me a few days later saying her name was now mud in Montevarchi because she’d snubbed the British prime minister. She invited me back to the bar, and this time I went with seven-year-old Nancy. We ordered lemonade and a beer, and Nancy handed her a large tip. The waitress then gave me a bizarre-looking cocktail, which she had named the ‘Cameron Tuscan Dream’. It was one part espresso, one part Vin Santo liqueur and one part cream. I drank it smiling happily – photographers had already assembled – and narrowly avoided giving them the even better story of the prime minister being violently sick on camera.
What I’ll remember most about Tuscany was Elwen, then five, deciding he wanted to spend lots of time with me. Father–son relationships can be complex things. I am not sure I was the best dad when he was a toddler. Like many boys, Elwen was a human dynamo, requiring exercise and attention in vast amounts. Sam was much better at handling the oversupply of energy and the occasional tantrum. When I tried to help I often seemed to make the problem worse.
Looking back, the answer seems simple: the more things you do together, the easier it gets. Maybe we were both struggling a bit with memories of Ivan. During this summer the dynamics suddenly changed, and I had the time to make the most of it. We went for walks on our own, and seemed to make a new connection. Every morning Elwen would say, ‘Where are we going to go for a walk today?’ He just wanted to chat. It is a lovely thing when your young ones hit an age when they become your companion as well as your child.
Towards the end of the first week away I was having to spend more and more time on phone calls, with the problems in the Eurozone and America’s reluctance to deal with its deficit creating a new storm in the markets. The steps by the front door of the house had the best mobile phone reception, and I would spend hours there, nursing a cup of coffee, taking calls from Mervyn King, then George, and then Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. It wasn’t panic stations for us. Britain was looking something of a safe haven: we had taken some of the difficult decisions, and weren’t wrapped up in the disastrous euro project. But what happened on the continent would affect us, and we were trying to coordinate actions and messages that would deliver greater stability.
Every morning I would read the media summary that CCHQ’s press office emailed to Conservative MPs, staff and activists. On Friday, 5 August I had seen the story about the shooting of Mark Duggan by police officers in Tottenham. The police said they were attempting to arrest him on suspicion that he had a firearm and was planning an attack, but the facts about what exactly happened weren’t clear. People had begun to protest outside the local police station, and that evening the protests turned into an altercation with police.
On the Sunday morning I woke to find that local shops had been trashed and looted, and police officers had been injured. I was appalled, but had faith that the police would contain the situation. Yet that night the chaos – mainly vandalism and looting – spread across the capital. Police made a hundred arrests and charged sixteen people.
On Monday I left the villa at midnight, having said I wanted a COBR meeting first thing, Parliament recalled that week, and a range of visits planned. I was met by a small jet at Pisa, and spent the journey catching up on documents flown out in a red box. By 4 a.m. I was back in Downing Street and straight to bed.
It didn’t take me long in the job to realise that ‘If in doubt, get back’ was the right motto. You are always better overreacting than underreacting to a crisis. This is not just about appearances: there is a moment when a situation is worsening and you know your intervention can be decisive. Time and again I would find that there are some things only a prime minister can do. We talk about the Whitehall machine as if the PM just presses a start button. The reality is that when things get rough it is the PM who must pull the levers and turn the cogs him or herself, day after day.
Two hours after my head had hit the pillow I was at the kitchen table studying the latest situation reports. The previous night had seen the worst rioting yet. Almost every London borough was affected. Much of the criminality was planned online, via messaging apps and social media.
There had been the most dreadful scenes. Masked gangs smashing shop windows. People brazenly walking down the street with arms full of TVs and trainers. Children kicking police officers. Historic buildings – people’s livelihoods and homes – engulfed by flames. People jumping from burning windows. Others attacking firefighters as they tried to tackle the blaze.
I felt sickened that so many people were capable of such violence and criminality, and amazed that it could spread in this way. I felt embarrassed for Britain, too. Just a few months earlier, new technology had helped young people in the Arab world to fight for democracy – and here young Britons were, using it for theft and destruction.
Above all, I felt angry. Angry with the perpetrators and angry that the police hadn’t contained the disturbances. I also felt angry with those trying to make political capital out of the whole thing. Some were saying the events were a response to the killing of Mark Duggan, and poor police and community relations. But I couldn’t see what raiding Debenhams in Clapham Junction had to do with that tragic incident.
Others were saying it was about anger with politicians and cuts. But people weren’t attacking Parliament, they were attacking private property. And anyway, the cuts hadn’t kicked in yet.
It wasn’t about race – this involved people of all backgrounds. And it wasn’t about poverty. People weren’t stealing food. They were stealing designer clothes and boasting about it on their smartphones. Some of the looters were from comfortable, middle-class backgrounds.
I was equally clear that the shortcomings in the response to the riots had nothing to do with cuts to the police budget. The problem was the numbers deployed on the streets, not the total numbers of police employed. The problem was also the approach they took to the disorder.
I asked to see Theresa May and the Acting Met Police commissioner, Tim Godwin, in my office. I was clear. What had happened the night before was unacceptable, and could not happen again. As I left, Tim Godwin said to me, slightly muffled, ‘I’m very sorry, Prime Minister, about what’s happened.’ That, for me, was acknowledgement that the police had made a mistake. They didn’t spot quickly enough that what had started as an attack on them had become an attack on private property. The number of officers deployed was too small, and they were slow to switch from dealing with a public order protest, where you protect life and not property, to criminality and looting, where you have to get physical and make arrests.
We sat around the COBR table: me, Theresa May, Hugh Orde from the Association of Chief Police Officers, the top officials from the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defence, MI5 and GCHQ, and, on speakerphone, the chief constables of Greater Manchester and West Midlands Police, where unrest had also broken out.
The first job at these meetings is to try to get the facts straight. I challenged the police on how many officers had been on the streets the night before last, and how many there were going to be that night. There was an awful lot of ‘Oh well, Prime Minister, there’ll be forty PSUs [Police Support Units].’
So oft
en in politics, jargon and acronyms prevent non-expert politicians from having a sensible conversation with experts. It frequently drove me mad – and never more so than now. ‘Stop talking about bloody PSUs. I want to know how many actual officers will be on the streets.’ I wanted him to be absolutely clear that there would be 16,000 – I’d been advised that this was the optimum number for dealing with such civil unrest. I wanted a figure, not jargon, and I wanted him to say it out loud so I could repeat it. That’s the beauty of COBR: you nail people’s feet to the floor.
The next task at these meetings is to make sure every avenue is being explored. I asked about contingency plans if the violence continued to escalate. Should there be baton rounds (plastic bullets)? Should there be water cannon? In what circumstances should we bring in the army?
The police were sniffy about water cannon: ‘They’ve never been used on the mainland, Prime Minister. They’re kept in Northern Ireland.’ I said, ‘Look, we don’t know what’s going to happen next. I don’t want to come back to this meeting in two days’ time and find we needed to use water cannon but we didn’t have any contingency plans.’ Hugh Orde said we could have two within twenty-four hours. So I said, ‘Thank you, right, done,’ and then, again, repeated it in public.
I went outside the door of No. 10 and, via the media, addressed those responsible for the criminality: ‘You are not only wrecking the lives of others, you’re not only wrecking your own communities; you are potentially wrecking your own life too.’
Then I began what I privately called my ‘riots tour’, starting in Croydon with the fantastic local Tory MP Gavin Barwell, who had been incredibly active. He’d convened a group of local people, and they all said the same thing: the police weren’t there, they backed off, they didn’t protect our property. Many were left fending off rioters with their bare hands.
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