For the Record

by David Cameron

  There were two essential bits of preparation for the famous ‘audience with the Queen’.

  One: always check the BBC headlines, in case you’ve missed something (I usually turned up just after the 6 o’clock news, and in any event, she is phenomenally well-informed).

  Two: always check what’s going on in the horse-racing world. A quick call to Tom Goff, my racing expert friend, would bring me up to speed on whether one of the Queen’s horses had won that week, or another had recently had a foal. Her knowledge of the turf is prodigious. During a separate conversation, the week after my father died, the Queen said how sorry she was, and asked if his horse was running at Windsor that evening. It was. I had absolutely no idea about it, and was completely lost for words.

  There is never anyone else in the meeting, just the two of you. She was better-informed about foreign affairs than many politicians, not least because she would see most British ambassadors before they left the country, and all foreign ones shortly after they arrived.

  After the allotted hour, the conversation would come to an end. I often found myself leaving with greater clarity about the issues of the day and a greater resolve to tackle them.

  And no matter how miserable the political scene or the news that day, I never left without something of a spring in my step. The Queen has that effect on you. Not surprising really – you’ve just spent an hour with one of the world’s greatest public servants. Although I admit that a little edge was added to proceedings by the fact that, when things were going wrong, you remember that she started with Winston Churchill, I was her twelfth prime minister, and she had – quite literally – heard it all before. Whatever her political views – and she genuinely never gave anything away – it felt as if we were a team. I was a much better prime minister than I would have been without those weekly doses of wisdom.

  It was at Balmoral, though, that I saw the Queen at home, informal and relaxed. How can it be informal and relaxed when you’re in a castle in the Scottish Highlands? In early September Samantha and I would arrive for a weekend stay in the castle. I was often tempted, but we never took the children – the pressure would have been too great. Florence was still a baby when she first met the Queen, at a No. 10 lunch to celebrate Prince Philip’s ninetieth birthday. She grabbed the Queen’s pearl necklace and briefly refused to let go.

  As the rhythm of our years was quite similar, the Queen and I would bond over our summer exhaustion. The difference was, I had been on that schedule for six years – she had done it for over sixty.

  The visit to Balmoral always included a formal audience. We would meet in the Queen’s study, full of pictures, letters, memorabilia and dog paraphernalia. I lapped up the Balmoral experience. Throughout the place there is the stamp of Queen Victoria, VRI (‘Victoria Regina Imperatrix’) – even on the wallpaper – and in the park and up into the hills are monuments to her children, to Prince Albert and to her dear friend John Brown.

  Every year I was asked whether I’d like to fish for salmon, shoot grouse, ride one of the Queen’s Highland ponies or go red-deer-stalking. I love doing all those things, but I had cut down on country sports after becoming Conservative leader in 2005. I had enough problems dealing with the ‘posh’ accusation without being photographed with a gun in one hand and a dead bird in the other. Still, I managed all the sports at Balmoral except the deer-stalking.

  Alongside her racehorses the Queen has one of the best – if not the best – collections of Highland ponies. These hardy creatures can carry dead stags off the hill on their backs, and can work in all conditions. They are also fun to ride, and can pick a safe path up the steepest hills. The only problem is their broad backs. After two hours exploring the hills and glens around Balmoral I would be walking like John Wayne for a week.

  One year Sam and I chose to go for a walk, and were given a map and a suggested route. The Queen is keen that you should have complete solitude, and Balmoral is the one place your close protection team is left behind as you head up into the hills. It was bliss to be genuinely alone for a few hours, and we wandered for miles, forgetting to consult the map. Eventually we saw a Land Rover and flagged it down to ask the way. The head of the Duke appeared out the window and he snorted, ‘You’re completely lost, aren’t you Prime Minister?’

  The pinnacle of the visit was Prince Philip’s Bothy Barbecue. The Queen drives you at breakneck speed across the moor to a bothy – a stone hut originally built for deer-stalkers and shepherds. The Duke of Edinburgh is outside, tongs in hand, smoke rising from a row of sizzling grouse. And then the two of them, and whichever other Windsors are around at the time, cook and serve you dinner. Literally, the Queen of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth Realms topping up your drinks, clearing up your plates and washing up.

  Trips to Balmoral were usually accompanied by visits to Birkhall, the beautiful house on the river left by the Queen Mother to Prince Charles. While I would see the heir to the throne on many other occasions, and started having regular audiences with him towards the end of my time at No. 10, it was at Birkhall that we had time for some longer conversations. His appreciation for art and design and his love of nature are everywhere to see. The house and gardens are immaculate, and a door to the garden is always left open so the red squirrels can come in and feed off a variety of titbits he has left for them.

  While I was PM the controversy about the letters Charles wrote to ministers and prime ministers exploded, after the Guardian had used a series of Freedom of Information requests to get hold of them. I received a few of these letters – always in his own hand and always detailed and thorough – and had no sympathy with those who complained about them. Why shouldn’t the heir to the throne write to ministers with suggestions, questions and ideas? And why should those letters be made public? In my view, he had a perfect right to ask questions, and to do so privately. Ministers of course had the right to reject his suggestions if they thought they overstepped the mark.

  In my own experience, in both letters and conversations Charles restricted his enquiries and entreaties to subjects in which he was an expert. And when I say ‘expert’, I really mean it: he has a detailed knowledge, reads deeply and consults with authorities from all over the world.

  I also have no truck with people who think that his strong opinions will make it harder for Charles to stay inside the correct boundaries for a constitutional monarch. He understands perfectly that the role of a monarch is different to that of an heir to the throne – and said so specifically to me on more than one occasion. His interest in these subjects shows how much he cares about his country and his people.

  Did I act on his suggestions? In some areas – protecting our oceans from environmental degradation and acting against wildlife poaching in Africa – he did encourage greater attention and action. In others – like planning – he encouraged me to think more about the issue. And on some matters – complementary medicine, for instance – I would listen politely and say clearly where I agreed or disagreed. When the Supreme Court ordered the release of the letters he’d written in 2004–05, many people were disappointed to discover that they were as I’ve just implied: uncontroversial and occasionally esoteric. After the election I sought cross-party support to protect confidential letters.

  As an ardent monarchist I had been looking forward to June 2012, when Her Majesty would mark sixty years on the throne. It would precede another great national event, the Olympic and Paralympic Games just two months later. After the Omnishambles Budget, and with the slow economic recovery, a fractious coalition and restless backbenches, we – I – needed a golden summer.

  Once again, we decided that it should be a national holiday. As I explained the idea to Her Majesty, I detected a modest reluctance, although of course she agreed that it was a matter for Parliament.

  As ever, she was probably right: the Office for National Statistics is meticulous in marking down these days as reductions in GDP, and in this c
ase the extra bank holiday possibly tipped the figures for the second quarter of the year into the negative.

  The highlight of the Jubilee came on Sunday, 3 June, when a celebratory flotilla of a thousand vessels sailed down the Thames. Barges, cutters, sailing boats, gondolas, canoes, dinghies, even the Dunkirk little ships were led by the royal barge, The Spirit of Chartwell. And it poured with rain. Incredibly, the Queen and Prince Philip, aged eighty-six and ninety, stood on deck for four whole hours. Duty, tradition, stoicism – their profoundly British behaviour matched the profoundly British weather. I was at the end of the route at Tower Bridge to greet the shivering royals. The Duchess of Cornwall made a beeline for the cups of tea, and told me she had thought she would expire out there. No one wanted to go against the Queen’s example, so everyone spent the proper amount of time on deck.

  It was fitting that the Jubilee should fall in the year Britain was to host the greatest event on earth – the Olympics – the first time we’d done so since 1948.

  John Major had set up the National Lottery and guaranteed a sustainable source of funding for UK sport, and from that acorn grew the mightiest team of competitors in our history. Tony Blair helped bring together the bid team, and did a great deal to help win. Gordon Brown helped to make sure the infrastructure was in place. Former banker Paul Deighton and construction boss John Armitt delivered the stunning Olympic Park. And Seb Coe, who led the bid team and then the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), deserves more credit than anyone else for realising Britain’s Olympic dream.

  Yet as the Games grew closer, there was a big task left for me. The PM’s role was – as ever – one of oversight and course-correction. On my first day in office I was given a briefing that left me in no doubt about where the buck stopped: ‘The government carries the ultimate financial and reputational risk and has to deliver significant services to ensure the successful operation of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012.’

  I appointed a young civil servant, Simon Case, to lead the Delivery Team in Whitehall (and marked him out as a brilliant future principal private secretary – a job he would do for both me and Theresa May). And I made Jeremy Hunt secretary of state for culture, media, Olympics and sport, because I knew how good he was at gripping issues. With a successful business career behind him, Jeremy brought an easy manner and a great brain to politics. He was the most collegiate of all my cabinet ministers, a team player to his fingertips.

  I buried myself in the details, receiving regular updates from Jeremy on every aspect of the planning – immigration queues, ticketing, road closures, everything. We held monthly stock-take meetings, and come 2012 turned this into a proper cabinet committee. When I was given a note by a private secretary tipping me off about Theresa May and the Home Office finding Jeremy’s interference aggravating, I replied, ‘Hunt is right to be aggravating.’ I totally had his back.

  I was determined to do more than just get through the Games, tapping the ball into the net after the goal had been set up. Our party had promised in its manifesto to bring about lasting benefits for the country as a whole, and I wanted to wring every conceivable advantage out of this huge opportunity.

  Transforming east London, where the Games were being held. Igniting the spirit of volunteering. Bringing more trade and investment into the country. Boosting ‘brand Britain’ around the world. Nurturing the medal-winners of the future. Demonstrating that Britain could deliver big, transformational projects. And getting more people, particularly young people, into sport.

  But in the lead-up, security was my biggest worry. The murder of members of the Israeli team at the Munich Games in 1972 has hung over every subsequent Olympics. We couldn’t take a single chance with safety, which meant deploying 15,000 police officers on peak days. It meant having the helicopter carrier and assault ship HMS Ocean berthed in the Thames. I even went to visit the Puma and Lynx helicopter pilots and their teams who had the responsibility of shooting down any terrorist light-aircraft attack. We had snipers on the roofs of buildings and anti-aircraft missiles on the top of high-rise blocks of flats.

  G4S had been contracted to provide guards for things like bag searches and door security. The original contract had been for 2,000 staff, but they had agreed to increase this to 10,000 when it became clear that many more would be needed. But on 11 July 2012, two weeks before the Games were meant to begin, they revealed they couldn’t provide anywhere near that number.

  Total panic. We were hosting the world’s biggest event, and we hadn’t got enough security guards. Thank God there were troops on standby, but there were huge disagreements about how many of them should be deployed. Listening to all sides, and hearing the clock ticking down to the opening ceremony, I had one of my bang-the-table, cut-the-nonsense moments. I insisted that 17,000 troops would be deployed overall. I didn’t care what it would cost or how ‘sending in the army’ looked. Security was non-negotiable. As ever, our service personnel were amazing, and the public loved their presence, which added to the patriotic atmosphere.

  Finally, the day of the opening ceremony came. Two years earlier the great film-maker Danny Boyle, top director and producer Stephen Daldry and Seb Coe had come to Downing Street to present their creative vision. We couldn’t outdo Beijing on budget, pyrotechnics or scale, but we could wow the world with something even more special: culture, charm and creativity. They showed me the mood boards, they played me videos, we even went to visit their studios. I loved it – this magical mus­-ical tour of Britain so ambitious it would make a West End production look like am dram. I said I thought there needed to be more national pride – more Churchill and Battle of Britain. And I immediately vetoed one of the more bonkers ideas – a section featuring Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

  They told me about one brilliant, top-secret sketch idea that might be a tall order. I told Her Majesty I really thought she should do it. She and James Bond are two of the best things about Britain, and bringing them together would be fantastic. It wasn’t tacky, it wouldn’t dumb down the monarchy, it would be really brilliant …

  The Olympics opening ceremony was an occasion so daring it surprised everyone. The centre of the stadium was covered in grass, with children playing, actual livestock grazing and a choir singing ‘Jerusalem’. Suddenly, the bucolic scene was swept away as great chimneystacks pushed up through the ground to the sound of a thousand drummers, heralding the arrival of the Industrial Revolution. Kenneth Branagh played Brunel and read from Shakespeare. Steelworkers forged giant Olympic rings.

  Parades and performers poured onto the stage: Sgt Pepper-era Beatles, Windrush immigrants, First World War Tommies, Suffragettes, Chelsea Pensioners, colliery bands. As the Red Arrows flew overhead and the London Symphony Orchestra blared out Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’, I thought it doesn’t get madder or more British than this.

  Then there was an act devoted to the health service, featuring children, nurses and doctors from Great Ormond Street Hospital. The lights dimmed and the illuminated beds spelled out the initials ‘GOSH’, then ‘NHS’. It was particularly moving for Samantha and me, as we had spent so many days and nights in that extraordinary hospital with Ivan.

  And then it happened: a short film was played on the big screens, featuring Daniel Craig as James Bond. He wanders into Buckingham Palace, along a corridor, avoiding the corgis, and meets a person, her back to the camera, who you first think must be an actor playing the monarch. ‘Good evening, Mr Bond,’ she – the actual Queen – says, before they depart the palace and head towards a helicopter. Suddenly there is an actual helicopter above the stadium, and two people looking remarkably Bond- and Queen-like parachute in as the 007 theme tune plays. Moments later, the Queen and Prince Philip appear next to Sam and me in the VIP box. Absolutely brilliant.

  The ceremony then took us through the decades, via a celebration of British film and pop music. I wondered what the Queen was making of it all. Was she a fan o
f Led Zeppelin? Did she like the Eurythmics? The Happy Mondays? Dizzee Rascal, who came on to sing ‘Bonkers’?

  During the ceremony I felt as if all my problems had melted away. But something always turns up. In the following days it was the fact that there were vast numbers of empty seats at the events. How could that be? People had entered ballots, paying top whack, praying they could be a part of this. Who the hell had a ticket and wasn’t turning up?

  Well, the rules state that a certain number of tickets must be allocated to the media, athletes and the all-powerful IOC, together with large numbers allocated to national Olympic organisations. So many officials and dignitaries from the IOC show up that it’s like an invasion by a foreign country. The problem was that many of these dignitaries could not be bothered to attend the early rounds of Olympic events, while many national organisations had not sold their full complement of tickets.

  The Olympic rules also stipulate that host countries must do things like seal off entire traffic lanes for VIPs, and change local bylaws so as to prevent protests. It’s absurd, but you have to play along with it. But I wasn’t prepared to tolerate this seat-allocation rule. It wasn’t a nuisance, like the roads, it was a scandal. I made sure – another cut-the-nonsense decree – that any empty seat would be offered to a schoolchild or a soldier.

  I wanted to be there in the stands too, cheering on Team GB. I thought it was my duty, although I confess it wasn’t one that I performed reluctantly.

  But it didn’t start well.

  First up, I watched the men’s cycling road race on the Mall. Britain’s Mark Cavendish was tipped for gold, but sadly he finished twenty-ninth.

  Then I went to the Aquatics Centre to see our gold hopes Tom Daley and Peter Waterfield in the synchronised diving – and they came fourth. As if to rub it in, François Hollande watched his team win a surprise gold in the pool.