For the Record

by David Cameron

  But the strategy I set out during PMQs on 18 June 2014 included a vital role for our military. It could take various forms – from hostage rescue attempts to delivering aid supplies. It could also include direct intervention: airstrikes. The reasons for involving our military were even more powerful, I thought, than when we went into Afghanistan to eject al-Qaeda. But I knew I’d be hamstrung by what happened with the Syria vote the year before.

  I was confident in our capabilities. We had one of the finest military and intelligence machines in the world. We also had most of the world on our side, and in Iraq a friendly country asking for our help, so help we should. But in both Iraq and Syria the picture was muddied by competing interests.

  In Syria, our enemies’ enemy was certainly not our friend. Doing a deal with Assad to rid his country of ISIS was out of the question. In any event, given that Assad’s brutality was driving ISIS recruitment, such a strategy would ultimately be self-defeating.

  Nor in either country was our friend’s enemy our enemy. Our NATO allies the Turks treated Kurdish separatists as terrorists, but the Kurdish Peshmerga were the finest anti-ISIS fighters, and we worked closely with them.

  Before we could consider any intervention, the first priority was domestic security: specifically, ensuring that our anti-terror legislation was up to scratch. Every time the threats had changed, we’d updated our laws, for example to tackle the IRA and then the emerging domestic threat after 9/11. More importantly, this was a different scale of threat, as those responsible were prepared to die in the act of taking as many lives as possible. Indeed, martyrdom was part of their creed. That had never been the case with the IRA.

  In opposition I had voted for many of Tony Blair’s proposals for dealing with terrorism, but withheld support for those instruments that seemed too blunt. We needed targeted, tough measures that were in tune with the British way of doing things. But now, with the threat of people leaving our shores to wage jihad – and to return to Britain and commit atrocities – it was clear to me that we needed to do more.

  We had already brought in powers to stop suspects from travelling to the region, by seizing their passports. We had broadened the law so that people could be prosecuted more easily for terrorist activity committed abroad, and had removed tens of thousands of items of terrorist material from the internet. Now we would go further, giving police the power to remove passports at borders. As well as being able to deprive dual nationals of their UK citizenship if it was merited, and barring foreign nationals, we would now be able to temporarily exclude British nationals from entering the UK. Airlines would have to comply with our no-fly lists, and share their information. I was astonished to find out how lax airport security was in certain countries – people could literally board a plane in Egypt or Tunisia without being searched. We made sure all countries complied with our security checks.

  It wasn’t just about treating the symptoms of extremism; it was also about defeating the causes. From tougher powers to ban hate preachers, to proscribing some extremist organisations altogether, we would challenge the false utopia being sold to young, impressionable people. I had grown up at a time when communism held similar promise for idealistic youngsters; and the way we defeated that was by exposing its flaws and demonstrating the virtues of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. It was time to do so again. We did much of this through RICU, which really came into its own when the battle was on to prevent more young Britons being sold a lie and joining the jihad.

  But it was not yet time for airstrikes. In June 2014 my NSC summing-up included the words ‘not planning military action’. We were still pursuing other ways of confronting ISIS. The US had taken the lead with air support for Iraqi and Peshmerga troops, and in mid-June Obama had ordered US forces to assist Iraqi forces, with a military and diplomatic presence (but, pointedly, no airstrikes). Meanwhile we were supporting local forces by giving them the kit and training they needed, and promoting political change in Iraq.

  Then, in August, ISIS advanced into Sinjar, a part of northern Iraq populated by a close-knit community of the Yazidi religion. What followed – the murder of Yazidi men, sexual enslavement of women and girls, and conscription of boys – was truly horrific. Thousands of Yazidis were left trapped on Mount Sinjar, running out of food and other essentials. This was a minority group under siege, and chillingly, the word ‘genocide’ was starting to be used.

  I decided that our military would need to be involved in action, and that there was no time for a parliamentary vote. I came back from my holiday to chair COBR on 13 and 14 August. We were already supporting anti-ISIS forces, but I asked for increased military support for the Kurdish Peshmerga. I authorised Hercules transport planes to join the Americans and drop water and medicine to the besieged Yazidis. Tornado fighter jets also undertook surveillance. Eventually, after a tricky operation, the Kurdish Peshmerga broke the siege, and many victims were able to escape.

  From then on I could hear the clock ticking. The ISIS advance continued. More hostages were being taken. More foreign fighters were arriving in Mosul and Raqqa. More plots to cause death and destruction in the West were being hatched. And with ISIS just thirty-seven miles from Baghdad, it wasn’t beyond possibility that the Iraqi capital could fall. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the only way we could hope to destroy ISIS was through airstrikes. When, then, would we authorise our fighter jets to take to the skies?

  Obama was particularly criticised for his delay in authorising airstrikes. But it was smart politics. We agreed that intervening on behalf of the man who had helped to create the situation, the partisan, Sunni-marginalising Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, would be a disaster. Before we did anything big, Maliki had to go.

  It was only after pressure from the Shia religious authorities that Maliki agreed to step down in August. In September, Haider al-Abadi was appointed as his successor. He had lived in the UK for many years, and still spoke English with a slight south London accent. While he was clearly no angel, I believed I could work with him.

  The appointment of someone who was less sectarian and less prone to corruption was key. Ban Ki-moon was spot-on when he said that ‘Missiles may kill terrorists, but good governance kills terrorism.’ Just as people turned to the Taliban because it appeared to deliver some form of protection from lawlessness, many embraced ISIS because it promised to provide basic services.

  On Saturday, 20 September, Iraq’s new government formally asked for military assistance (I had made it clear to Obama that we wouldn’t be able to support military action until after the Scottish referendum). On the Sunday evening I assembled a meeting at Chequers with key cabinet ministers. Nick Clegg was very helpful, very pro-airstrikes. Michael Gove was anti, arguing that we didn’t have a majority, and therefore shouldn’t recall Parliament.

  The obvious problem was that it made no strategic sense to attack ISIS in Iraq but not Syria. But not being able to act in Syria wasn’t a reason not to act in Iraq. At that moment we had to focus on what we could do.

  We left with the coalition in agreement. We had the legal go-ahead, based on the fact that Iraq was asking for help to defend itself against ISIS. We were acting as part of an international coalition of sixty countries, many of them from the region. We had public support, with YouGov showing 57 per cent for airstrikes and 24 per cent against. Plus, Obama had already launched airstrikes. There was just one more thing required. I couldn’t risk chancing rejection in Parliament again; I needed to be confident of Labour’s support before a vote. That meant winning round Ed Miliband.

  After the breakdown of trust over Syria, I knew I needed to do things differently this time. It would, I calculated, be easier for him to give his support if negotiations were at arm’s length, and led by national security advisers. But I did discuss the issue with him briefly on a couple of occasions, culminating in a phone call while I was at the UN General Assembly in New York.

  I told
him that I planned to ask for the recall of Parliament. From his tone, I felt he was still looking for an excuse not to support military action. He said: ‘What guarantee can you give that there will be Arab countries involved in the bombing over Iraq?’

  I rolled my eyes. I said that I was fairly confident, because five Arab countries had just bombed Syria. But I couldn’t say 100 per cent: there were complications, because the Iraqi government feared that Sunni states bombing parts of Iraq might provoke a Shia backlash. Miliband said that if we couldn’t produce a Sunni, Arab state that was willing to support a bombing action, Labour would find it hard to support us.

  Could this be it? Another arbitrary red line from Ed that would scupper the whole thing? It was Wednesday. Parliament would vote on Friday. I had an idea. I had spent a lot of time building a relationship with Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi. I texted him, then called to ask him to confirm that he would support bombing in Iraq. He agreed.

  In cabinet that Thursday I set out the facts. ISIS was a mortal threat. Iraq had asked for support. The legal advice was very clear. We had a strategy to degrade and destroy ISIS. Jordan, Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar had all participated in airstrikes in Syria, and were, ‘subject to the permission of the Iraqi government … prepared to conduct strikes in Iraq’.

  Then there was Parliament. With Miliband whipping his MPs to support the motion, the only remaining question was how many MPs, on all sides, would actually vote for it. Just like the ill-fated Syria vote a little over a year earlier, much would hinge on the speech I gave in the Commons.

  I set out the level of ISIS brutality, lest anyone was in any doubt about it. I emphasised that if it were left unchecked, we would face a terrorist caliphate on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a NATO member, with a determination to attack our country. But I wasn’t naïve. I knew that regaining the territory ISIS had taken wouldn’t automatically change the hearts and minds it had captured. Even after ISIS had been dealt with, I knew future prime ministers would be standing at the despatch box dealing with Islamist extremism.

  That evening, Parliament voted by 524 to 43 in favour of military intervention (the Labour backbencher Jeremy Corbyn was a teller, and gave the result from the ‘no’ lobby). I was relieved, but I was also angry. Of the forty-three MPs who voted against, six were Conservatives. And seventy abstained, including twenty-one from our own benches.

  This was an organisation that murdered gay people, enslaved women, raped children, maimed, beheaded, even crucified people for minor misdemeanours. It was planning bombings and shootings in Britain. It was beheading our aid workers. What would have to happen for these MPs – who, incidentally, tended to be those perennially calling for higher defence spending – to vote for intervention?

  Fortunately they weren’t able to derail our action. The following Tuesday, Tornados would be in Iraqi skies, taking out ISIS’s sources of finance, its weapons stores and, of course, its ringleaders. We would soon be responsible for the second-highest number of airstrikes, after the US. Meanwhile we gave Kurdish Peshmerga, Jordanian and Lebanese forces millions of pounds’ worth of medical supplies, machine guns, mortars and body armour. We trained thousands of Iraqi soldiers, police and Peshmerga. We gave humanitarian assistance to areas liberated from ISIS, and helped to rebuild their schools, police stations and electricity generators

  Iraq wasn’t the only place we would need our military to counter this extremist menace.

  Boko Haram in Nigeria was linked to al-Qaeda, and believed Western education and lifestyles were a sin (the meaning behind its name). It too wanted to institute a caliphate, and like ISIS it would use whatever barbaric means it thought necessary.

  In early 2014 a group of its fighters entered the government secondary school in the village of Chibok, seizing 276 teenage girls. They were taken to camps deep in the forest. The Christians among them were forced to convert to Islam. Many were sold as slaves, entering the same endless violent nightmare the Yazidi women had suffered.

  As a ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ campaign spread across the world, we embedded a team of military and intelligence experts in Nigeria, and sent spy planes and Tornados with thermal imaging to search for the missing girls. And, amazingly, from the skies above a forest three times the size of Wales, we managed to locate some of them.

  But Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, seemed to be asleep at the wheel. When he eventually made a statement, it was to accuse the campaigners of politicising the tragedy. And absolutely crucially, when we offered to help rescue the girls we had located, he refused.

  Yet again, the problem was a weak government and corruption. The Nigerian army was so hollowed out by venal, politically appointed generals that it was incapable of participating in operations with US/UK assistance. The NSC concluded that we had to play the long game, focusing on a much bigger training effort for the Nigerian military and intelligence forces, and trying to promote more energetic leaders from the younger generation. The Archbishop of Canterbury, as an expert on Nigeria, could be particularly useful on this, and I invited him to join our NSC discussion.

  Some of the girls have managed to escape over the following four years, and others have been released, but over a hundred are still missing. Once again, the combination of Islamist extremism and bad governance proved fatal.

  How did I feel about all this at the end of 2014? The answer is, depressed. ISIS now occupied an area larger than Britain. A similar brand of terrorism was being wrought by Boko Haram in west Africa, by another ISIS affiliate in north Africa, and by al-Shabab (‘the youth’) in east Africa, while related groups were springing up in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and the Caucasus. There seemed to be no stopping an evil ideology that seduced minds from the badlands of Syria to bedrooms in Birmingham. When I spoke about the challenge publicly I tried to remain measured and resolute. But privately I did ask myself, would we ever be able to defeat this thing?

  40

  Scotland Remains

  It was the evening of Friday, 5 September 2014, and I collapsed on the sofa in the flat. I had just flown back from the NATO summit in Wales, and would have to be back at RAF Northolt first thing for my annual visit to Balmoral.

  We loved our trips to Scotland, but this year Sam stayed at home with the children (it was to be Florence’s first day at primary school the next day). So I flew up to Aberdeen alone with my thoughts. And there was a lot to think about.

  In two weeks the voters of Scotland would decide whether to remain in a Union with England, Wales and Northern Ireland, or to end our 307-year history as a United Kingdom.

  This wasn’t like the referendum on membership of the European Union. It wasn’t a question about whether to remain in a relatively recent association with some neighbouring states, the success of which was at least debatable. It was about the break-up of our country. In my view there was no debate about its success. It is the greatest grouping of nations the world has ever known.

  I arrived at Birkhall with the recent news that, for the first time, those saying they would vote Yes – to leave the UK – had taken a lead by two percentage points, 51 to 49. Shortly I’d be having an audience with the Queen at Balmoral Castle: she, the woman who had reigned over the United Kingdom for sixty-two years; me, the man who had allowed a vote on its possible disintegration.

  Of course, she was completely charming – they all were. But as Prince Philip showed me the barbecue he had designed to roast grouse and sausages over charcoal when we were all up at the hillside bothy, the referendum was clearly on everyone’s mind. They gingerly asked questions about it, but knew they shouldn’t express too strong an opinion. That is the reality of a constitutional monarchy within a parliamentary democracy: a prime minister can instigate a sequence of events that could change the make-up of the country; the royal family can’t even express a view on it.

  And then the next day at breakfas
t, there it was in cold print. Among the kippers and the kedgeree was the Sunday Times, with the headline ‘Yes Vote Leads in Scots Poll’. The Queen wasn’t there; she usually had breakfast alone. Instead, I was surrounded by some ladies-in-waiting, equerries, and the moderator of the Church of Scotland. I tried to reassure them about ‘rogue polls’, about the fact that newspapers loved contrary findings, and what the average poll had been during the long campaign, but I was struggling to convince myself, let alone them.

  It had already been the longest campaign in British history, at twenty-eight months. It had also been the most cross-party campaign, with the three-way alliance between the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Labour advocating No testing my ability to work with my political opponents more than any prime minister before me.

  It was obvious from the start that our parties would take different roles in what became the ‘Better Together’ campaign.

  With the most Scottish MPs in the Westminster Parliament, and as the official opposition in Holyrood, it made sense for Labour to be the public face of it. That meant putting the even-minded, intelligent former chancellor Alistair Darling at the helm.

  The Conservatives were the obvious financers, with Ian Taylor, Andrew Fraser and Donald Houston among the big donors. We put one of our best-known MSPs, David McLetchie, on the board of directors (tragically, David died in August 2013 – a huge loss); installed the director of the Scottish Conservatives, Mark McInnes, at the heart of the campaign; and charged Andrew Cooper with conducting the polling that would help to steer the strategy.

  At the start of 2014, Andrew identified several groups of voters, ranging from ‘mature status quo’, who were certain to vote No, to ‘Scottish exceptionalists’ and ‘blue-collar bravehearts’, who were equally committed to the Yes camp. The key demographics were where the battle would be won or lost. The definite No voters made up about 40 per cent of the electorate, and the confirmed Yes voters 30 per cent. That left 30 per cent – a million people – who could go either way. If they split evenly, the outcome would be a comfortable No victory of around 55 per cent to 45 per cent. If Salmond managed to lure more of them than not, we would be on the rockiest ground.