For the Record

by David Cameron

  On 3 July, John Major of all people came out and said that this was ‘not the time’, and the reforms were ‘wrong in principle’. I was surprised at this unhelpful intervention from a former prime minister who had always been so supportive, and amazed that this was the issue he’d picked. A few days later came a letter to all Conservative MPs attacking the proposals from former cabinet ministers including Geoffrey Howe and Norman Lamont.

  It would have been less puzzling if it was just Tory grandees standing in the way of progressive modernisers, but the new intake was proving just as stubborn. Some who, as far as I was aware, had never expressed a view on the Lords were now speaking about it like it was some great moral crusade. Charlotte Leslie, the modernising, boxing MP for Bristol North West, sent me a note declaring that she could ‘never live with herself’ if she voted for Lords reform. Penny Mordaunt and Mike Freer – sane and sensible new MPs – felt the same.

  Were people really that passionate about keeping the Lords as they were? Or were they just anti-change, anti-coalition, or anti-me? Whichever it was, the whole thing had become a bandwagon – one that was about to knock me down.

  Looking back at the lead-up to the vote, I can see my mistakes so clearly. The first was that I thought the position we had developed in opposition, going back to Iain Duncan Smith’s leadership, was a moderate and reasonable one, and therefore one that our MPs had got behind. The truth was that a lot of Conservative MPs had always disliked the idea of an elected house, and had only allowed it to become part of the programme because they never expected us to do it.

  My second mistake was that I never sufficiently articulated the facts that the reform we envisaged was not just moderate and reasonable, but evolutionary. It would be done in stages. And if no one wanted to go beyond stage one, we could leave it there. One hundred and twenty elected peers out of five hundred – that was all they had to vote for, and it would mean we would secure boundary reform. Was that really the end of the world?

  I was personally convinced that Lords reform would never get beyond stage one. As soon as the first intake of elected peers had one dinner in the Peers’ Dining Room they would, I was sure, be seduced by the luxury of the place and the new status quo would assert itself in the corridors of power. I would get the mixed House, with elected and appointed elements, that I wanted.

  But I didn’t convey that message with enough force to enough people. Great leaders have to be great educators, I know that. But this was one issue among so many during what I’d call the ‘year of horrors’. I simply didn’t have the time to guide my colleagues through every twist and turn, and I’m not sure they had the inclination to listen or comply.

  The third crucial mistake was that I never conveyed how important boundary reform was. Not only did Tory MPs feel little ownership of the ‘Coalition Agreement’ that had been thrashed out in 70 Whitehall; they didn’t feel part of the bargains within it. They regarded boundary (and therefore Lords) reform as my issue, not theirs. It was the head–body problem all over again. Not enough people understood that boundary reform was hugely important to an overall Conservative victory at the next election.

  And of course when it came to individual constituencies, the truth was more mixed. If boundaries changed, our present MPs might gain a more Tory-voting area (good), acquire a more Labour-leaning area (bad), or see their seat eliminated altogether (very bad). Some otherwise perfectly sensible Tory MPs saw the boundary changes as threatening the very identities of their constituencies. For instance, there was outrage from the new Conservative MPs in Cornwall that one of their seats would have to cross the county border and include a part of Devon. The horror. I had once joked before an interview with the veteran presenter of ITV West Country, Bob Constantine, that a constituency crossing the River Tamar couldn’t be that serious a problem. ‘It’s the Tamar, not the Amazon for Heaven’s sake,’ was how I rather indelicately put it. They couldn’t resist broadcasting my comment.

  Fourth, I never showed how passionate I was about the whole thing. There were times I let my reasonableness spill over into being too accommodating and conciliatory. My colleagues couldn’t see the belief, the passion: on this issue I didn’t give enough of a lead.

  People tend to assume that prime ministers surround themselves with yes-men and women. Not true. The chief whip, Patrick McLoughlin, warned in the days before the vote, ‘If you’re going around telling people that it doesn’t really matter, don’t be surprised if we fucking lose.’

  On 9 July, Nick Clegg introduced in the House of Commons the second reading of the Bill and the programme motion. The second reading debate was due to last for two days. We had allowed a further ten days for debate in ‘committee of the whole House’, which was plenty. Labour, as expected, scented blood and wanted to inflict a defeat on the government by voting against the programme motion.

  Even before Nick rose to his feet, backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg stood up with a spurious point of order. Though he was from the new intake and still in his early forties, Jacob was a caricature of an old-fashioned Tory: double-breasted suits, cut-glass accent and socially conservative views. He was also a prolific parliamentary rebel. He tried to argue that this should be a hybrid Bill, which would take much longer to be passed. The speaker ruled it shouldn’t.

  Others were constantly rising to interrupt Nick’s opening speech. It was maddening to see my own party sabotaging this – self-sabotaging, given the ramifications for the next election.

  I sat down with Nick the next morning and made one last attempt to save the situation. I proposed that we ditch the programme motion, carry on putting the second reading to a vote the following day, and then try to get Conservative MPs on board – through a bit of retrospective education I should have done earlier – before we tried to take it to a third reading. If they agreed not to talk it out, we wouldn’t need the programme motion. But I knew that if the rebellion on the second reading was big, that would be it for the reform. We would never be able to win enough MPs round, and the Bill would be killed with verbosity.

  Later that day George Young, the leader of the House, withdrew the programme motion. At 10 o’clock that evening the vote on the second reading took place. It passed, but ninety-one Conservatives rebelled against the three-line whip.

  I wasn’t angry with the ninety-one. I knew the party was split on this issue. But I was angry with one MP who had misled his colleagues in order to manipulate the vote. Jesse Norman had texted fellow Conservative MPs saying, ‘The PM desperately needs the Bill to be knocked off. There is no manifesto commitment now that the programme motion has been withdrawn …’ He said that rebelling ‘will help the PM … the government won’t need your vote’.

  With these words he had given the impression that I had sanctioned a vote against the Bill. My even temper left me right there, and when I spotted him sauntering through the Lobby I went up to him and said it wasn’t acceptable behaviour or the action of an honourable Member, and that he should send a text round saying that it wasn’t my view. He was deeply apologetic, and did clarify his remarks. But it was too late.

  Oliver Letwin did his best over the summer to try to find a way of winning round enough of the ninety-one to make the proposal, or at least a version of it, fly again. But he couldn’t make it happen. Lords reform was dead. So was boundary reform – and potentially our chances of a majority in three years’ time.

  What about the coalition? Was that dead?

  The experience left us more hard-bitten, but we still wanted to make the coalition work. So these issues that brought us to the brink of divorce ended up in a renewal of our vows.

  Oliver Letwin and I had been discussing for some time the idea of a formal stock-take of the Parliament so far, and an official look ahead to the second half. It developed into a plan to reboot the coalition by launching the ‘Mid-Term Review’ and ‘Programme for Government Update’.

  Our future plans inc
luded a new Single-Tier Pension which would reduce the unfair means test. Rather than getting £100 per week plus however much of the £40 pension credit you were deemed entitled to, you’d get the whole £140 regardless. There would be more provisions for childcare for working parents, balanced by the 2012 Budget’s measures to taper child benefit for those earning over £50,000 and stop it for those over £60,000. We did, however, fail on one of the biggest long-term problems – capping the cost of social care for individuals. That is one of my greatest regrets.

  On the evening of 10 January, three days after our relaunch (no Rose Garden this time, just the wood-panelled State Dining Room), Clegg came up to the flat for a drink in a really good mood. As I opened a bottle of wine, he told me his thinking. He was enjoying being in government; he felt he’d got the levers, and he now knew how to pull them. He had a stronger team around him, and despite the pressure from his party he wanted the coalition to go all the way to 2015.

  His priorities for the year ahead would be nailing down all the main policies and shoring up his MPs to help each of them defend their seats based on incumbency. There was a slight worry that he’d lose his own seat in Sheffield Hallam. But he said that if the next election resulted in another hung Parliament, and it was possible to have another coalition with us, he would want to do that.

  This wasn’t the first conversation we’d had about this, but it was perhaps the most explicit. Usually the only time I’d air such thoughts was when occasionally the Quad met for dinner in the Downing Street flat. George and I would choose our language very carefully. We’d mention historical parallels, mainly the National Governments of the 1930s, and ‘would not rule anything out’. Nick and Danny would respond by not ruling anything out either.

  Whether that meant not fielding candidates against each other in some seats, or running on some kind of joint ticket, we never discussed in any great detail. But we knew that the coalition’s task on the economy, on politics and on society was unlikely to be a one-term job, and that there would have been merits to extending our alliance.

  ‘Would the Tories stomach it?’ Nick wondered during that conversation in January 2013.

  ‘I think it’s difficult,’ I said. ‘I think we’d have to do it in a different way. We’d have to give Conservative MPs the chance to vote on the deal. Though it would of course,’ I added, ‘be a vote on whether they wanted to remain in government or go into opposition.’ I said this with a smile, because I knew such a choice would inevitably lead to such a deal’s approval.

  I regret that we didn’t find a way to deliver this, on their side or ours, and I often wonder what might have happened had I been able to do so.

  27

  Wedding Rings, Olympic Rings

  It was a boiling-hot July morning in 1981 when my brother Alex, sister Tania and I packed away our sleeping bags after a night on the hard ground opposite Buckingham Palace.

  We were thirsty and exhausted; none of us had slept a wink. But the atmosphere on the Mall was amazing. People from all over the world had come together for this strange summer sleepover, and now we were chatting, cheering and craning our necks to get a glimpse of the soon-to-be-weds going past in their royal carriages on the way to St Paul’s Cathedral.

  It was called ‘the fairy-tale wedding’, and for fourteen-year-old me the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer was like a fairy tale. I thought I had the best view on earth as I watched the beautiful young bride and her new husband whisk past us before appearing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. Despite all that would happen in their marriage, it still shines out to me as a special day. And never could I have dreamed that, thirty years later, I would have an even better view of their son at his own wedding in Westminster Abbey.

  I have always been a passionate monarchist, but never able to explain precisely why. A person’s future should be determined by their talent and hard work, not by the accident of their birth – my whole political life has been dedicated to that meritocratic ideal. And yet here I am, ardently supporting an institution that is founded on hereditary privilege.

  For me, it comes down to two things: patriotism and practicality. Steeped in our history, the royal family is a focal point for the nation. It embodies the most British of values – duty, tradition, stoicism – and projects those values around the world. It provides our country with a head of state, and gives us stability as a result. The boost to tourism and diplomacy is immeasurable, and it also brings us the gift of national occasions we can all share. It’s no wonder so many republics envy us.

  The three decades between these two royal weddings – Charles and Diana in 1981; Kate and William in 2011 – were a turbulent time for the monarchy, with multiple divorces, the Queen’s ‘annus horribilis’, and of course the tragic death of that beautiful princess, who was still so young.

  But my time as prime minister coincided with a time of recovery for the royals. There was the engagement and marriage of a future heir to the throne, and two births. There were also national milestones – the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Commonwealth Games, the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War and the seventieth anniversaries of D-Day, VE Day and VJ Day – in which they played a key role. The Queen celebrated sixty years on the throne, and shortly afterwards became the longest-serving monarch in our history. In this age of change we value more than ever the continuity our constitutional sovereign brings. Far from there being uncertainty, the monarchy is here to stay.

  I wanted to do what I could as prime minister to cement this position. Early on, George and I decided we needed to address their funding. Until 1760 the monarch met all official expenses from hereditary revenues, which included the profits of the Crown Estate (the property portfolio which today includes everything from London streets to coastal paths). George III agreed to surrender these hereditary revenues in return for an annual grant set by government, called the ‘Civil List’.

  While this was a sensible and enduring arrangement, in recent years it had meant a painful annual discussion on every aspect of royal expenditure, accompanied by a tabloid-led debate about whether individual members of the family were ‘good value for money’.

  All that meant that it was almost impossible to increase the money that went to the royals, even though some of their vital infrastructure was crumbling – and even though in the twenty years up to 2012 the royal financing had seen a cut in its budget of 50 per cent in real terms.

  This was compounded by the fact that, for various complicated reasons, the Civil List had given them too much money in the early 1990s, which had then been saved during the course of the decade, and spent over the following decade. This meant that, come 2010, to coin a phrase, there was no money left. So in 2012, to put the royal finances on a more secure and sustainable footing, we scrapped the Civil List and replaced it with a 15 per cent share of profits from the Crown Estate. In the event, it turned out to be a generous settlement.

  Soon we had the good news that the Queen’s eldest grandson, Prince William, was to marry his long-time girlfriend Catherine Middleton. I had already got to know William and Kate quite well. They were a warm, charming couple, who genuinely loved each other and wanted to build a life together. I was thrilled for them.

  The prime minister has an odd role in such national events. You’re not directly responsible for running things – but if things go wrong, it’s your fault. I got stuck in, overseeing everything from street parties (slapping down spoilsport councils that tried to stop the parties by preventing road closures) to security (chairing COBR meetings to make sure enough police would be on the streets).

  Friday, 29 April 2011 was another hot and dry day – and we had made it a national holiday, just as William’s parents’ wedding had been thirty years before. Samantha looked stunning in a turquoise dress, and our car to Westminster Abbey followed the Household Cavalry along the gravel-covered Horse Guards Parade in a cloud of dust, their met
al breastplates glinting in the morning sunshine.

  We watched the ceremony from the quire stalls alongside Ed Miliband, Nick and Miriam. It was magical. The princes in their military uniforms. The twenty-foot trees lining the aisle. The feeling that you were watching something that could have happened in any one of the last ten centuries, and wouldn’t have looked that different.

  On that day, the country – indeed the world – came together. The thousands of street parties, the million people lining the route, the near-billion viewers watching the vows, the flypast and the kiss on the balcony on their TV screens. Our own street party outside Nos 10 and 11, which included local schoolchildren and residents of local care homes, is a particularly happy memory.

  The palace, where we went after the ceremony, was familiar territory for me. Every Wednesday evening while Parliament was sitting I followed the same routine: arriving at the palace, walking down the corridor, trying not to step on the sleeping corgis, and being escorted to the Queen’s study, where the small yet sturdy woman is standing to greet you. ‘The prime minister, Your Majesty,’ says the equerry, and you both bow. He then leaves, you walk forward and bow again as you shake the Queen’s hand and say, ‘Good evening, Your Majesty.’ She points you to the usual chair. And from then on it’s ‘Ma’am’ – as it says in the films – rhyming with ‘jam’.