For the Record

by David Cameron

  ‘The last supper’, as it was called, was lasagne in the State Dining Room. This was for the people who had been there from the beginning. Consistent supporters like Tony Gallagher and Michael Spencer. The MPs who first supported my leadership bid, like Hugo Swire and Greg Barker. Advisers, some of whom had been with me for over a decade. Family friends who had been particularly supportive over the past decade.

  At 1 a.m., after George and Kate had made speeches, I popped downstairs, where I found my private office still typing away at their computers, getting ready for the arrival of their new boss. I teased them that they’d already forgotten about me. ‘It’s going to be fine tomorrow,’ I said – to reassure myself as much as them.

  I was nervous for my last PMQs. I had lots of points to make, things to say, stories to tell, and I was worried I wouldn’t get them all in. Over the years I had addressed 5,500 questions from the despatch box – how many I’d actually answered I would leave up to the opposition to decide, I quipped. But after all those appearances, after a record ninety-two hours of statements, I would truly miss it.

  And it was a tribute to that House that I ended with: ‘I will miss the roar of the crowd and I will miss the barbs from the opposition, but I will be willing you on. When I say “willing you on”, I do not just mean willing on the new prime minister at this despatch box, or indeed just willing on the government front bench and defending the manifesto that I helped to put together. I mean willing all of you on, because people come here with huge passion for the issues they care about and with great love for the constituencies that they represent. I will also be willing on this place. Yes, we can be pretty tough, and we test and challenge our leaders – perhaps more than some other countries – but that is something we should be proud of, and we should keep at it. I hope that you will all keep at it, and I shall will you on as you do.’ I ended: ‘The last thing I would say is that you can achieve a lot of things in politics. You can get a lot of things done. And that in the end, the public service, the national interest, that is what it is all about. Nothing is really impossible if you put your mind to it. After all, as I once said, I was the future once.’

  My side – and a few on Labour’s benches – stood to applaud. I’d said everything I wanted to say.

  I went back to my office in No. 10 for one last time, and sat and waited for the end with Ed, Kate, George, Craig, my press secretary Graeme Wilson and, with a whole chair to himself, Larry the cat. He wouldn’t be coming with me. Downing Street was his home.

  Finally I walked down the long hallway from the back of the building to the front door. I was clapped out, just as I’d been clapped in. Just before we reached the door Liz stopped me, Sam and the children in the hallway, having learned from Thatcher’s departure that tipping a PM straight out into the street after they’ve said goodbye to the staff is a recipe for tears. It was her final act of logistical and emotional genius, and it gave me just the right amount of time to gather myself.

  I stepped into the street and spoke from the lectern. Florence stood coyly with her head poked between her mum and her sister. She had been nonchalantly talking about moving ‘back to the old house’, even though she’d never actually been there. ‘They sometimes kicked the red boxes full of work,’ I said, as I paid tribute to the children. ‘Florence, you once climbed into one before a foreign trip and said, “Take me with you.”’ I looked at her and she started beaming. ‘Well, no more boxes.’

  Then, my last words in office. ‘It has been the greatest honour of my life, to serve our country as prime minister over these last six years and to serve as leader of my party for almost eleven years, and as we leave for the last time, my only wish is continued success for this great country that I love so very much.’

  With that I turned to my team, who were assembled outside the front of No. 11, and gave them a wave. As they headed to a pub on Trafalgar Square, I’d be at the other end of The Mall, seeing the Queen. After our conversation she invited Sam and the children in. We were worried about them bowing and curtseying properly, but they behaved impecc­ably. I was so proud of them all that day.

  The ‘old house’ wouldn’t be ready for us to move back into for some time, as it was rented out, so we ended up staying at my friend Alan Parker’s house for a few nights before we found longer-term digs. It was an odd first evening rattling around in a strange place, rooting for the remote control. It was quiet, too. No duty clerks. No Liz. No red boxes. As I tucked Florence in she asked, ‘Daddy, when are we going back home?’

  There were still some commitments I was determined to keep. When a memorial is unveiled to fallen police officers, it is convention that prime ministers attend. The ceremony for PC Fiona Bone and PC Nicola Hughes, who had been murdered in the line of duty in 2012, was now in Theresa May’s diary, but it would be impossible for her to travel up to Tameside in Manchester on her first day as PM. I was more than happy to go.

  That evening I went to Chatsworth in Derbyshire for Patrick McLoughlin’s party marking thirty years in Parliament. He was amazed I didn’t cancel, but I hate to let people down. It was one of those orange July evenings, and after the speeches were over Liz and I sat on the grass by the river waiting for our helicopter, drinking a bottle of wine and reflecting on what an extraordinary time it had been.

  Sam was spending the next few days going back to Downing Street to pack our things. She joked that I didn’t want to help. I did – I’m very good at bubble wrap and boxes – but the truth is that I didn’t want to go back to Downing Street. It didn’t feel right.

  So Sam was charged with packing up six years’ worth of stuff on her own. I roared with laughter when she told me that when she had finished she put on some music, rolled a cigarette (in the stress of it all we had both started smoking again) and had a final dance around the kitchen – just as the new residents, Theresa and Philip May, walked in. She showed them around and said we hoped it would be as happy a home for them as it had been for us.

  I always said I would like to remain as Witney’s MP even after my premiership had ended, and five days after I left Downing Street I returned to the House for the debate I had called on the renewal of Trident. It was the first time I’d been on the backbenches since 2003. Sitting there, I realised what a difficult existence being an ex-PM in the House of Commons was going to be. If you are silent, you are seen as brooding. If you speak, you are viewed as undermining your successor. In the modern age, when scrutiny of MPs is constant and they are expected to have, and to voice, an opinion on everything, it’s very difficult for a former prime minister to stay on the backbenches. While I always hoped it would be possible, friends persuaded me that my continued presence would be bad for the new PM and miserable for me. I am sure they were right.

  So on 12 September 2016 I announced my decision to leave the House. I would be temporarily appointed a ‘Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead’ – yet another parliamentary anachronism through which an MP disqualifies him or herself from sitting in Parliament.

  But what about prime ministers who vacate their seats – what are they called? In America, a president remains ‘President’ for life. In Britain, you don’t. I think our way is better. In a democracy, political office is temporary and egalitarian. You enter as a civilian, and you return to being a civilian. Going from prime minister to plain old David Cameron overnight was a blunt but important reminder of that.

  In many respects, I lament my political career ending so fast. I’d gone from MP to party leader to prime minister to private citizen in the space of just fifteen years. I was always glad I’d got into Parliament young, because I wanted to be there for a long time, and thought I would be. Instead, I was a former prime minister and a retired MP at the age of forty-nine.

  In other respects, it wasn’t at all brief. I was leader of the opposition for five years before I won the highest office, which meant that I held the job longer than anyone since Neil Kin
nock. I was prime minister for twice as long as my predecessor Gordon Brown, and the longest-serving Conservative Party leader since Thatcher, and before her, Churchill. People commiserated with me for only getting to serve one year of the five I had won at the 2015 election, but I always knew I was going to struggle to make the full term after such a bruising campaign. Had it not been for the Brexit result I would probably have ended up being in power for eight years; instead I was there for six.

  Six dramatic years for our country and for our world. The aftermath of the financial crash, the Eurozone crisis, withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, the Syrian tragedy, the invasion of Ukraine, the continued rise of China, the proliferation of technology and social media – this period was densely packed with momentous trends and events. I had crammed it fuller still, with wide-ranging reforms and, yes, referendums.

  I look at my time in office as a ‘before and after’.

  I took over the oldest and most successful political party in the world when it was at one of its lowest ebbs. We’d suffered three consecutive election defeats. We had little to say on anything beyond crime, tax cuts and Europe. We still carried the ‘rivers of blood’, milk-snatching, poll-taxing, Section 28 baggage collected over decades. Just seventeen of our MPs were women, and only two were from ethnic minority backgrounds. Swathes of the population wouldn’t go anywhere near us.

  After my modernising mission, things did change. We had refined a progressive conservative doctrine that matched centre-right methods with the issues of the day. We had something to say on the things that mattered to modern Britain – indeed, we became the leading voices on tackling everything from poverty to climate change, gay rights to overseas aid. We now had seventeen BME MPs, sixty-eight women MPs, and a cabinet that reflected modern Britain.

  Making the Conservative Party electable was the mission I was given when I took on the leadership. When I became prime minister, my central task was to turn our economy around. It wasn’t so long ago that we had had the worst deficit in our peacetime history, were spending more on our debts than on our defences, and unemployment was over 8 per cent.

  Now that I was leaving the deficit was two-thirds lower and the economy was growing faster than any other in the G7. More new businesses had been started than at any time in our history, and we were doing more trade with the fastest-growing parts of the world. Most importantly, employment hit a record high, and unemployment was at its lowest rate since the mid-1970s – under 5 per cent and falling.

  I thought of the 2.5 million more people who were now in work. Of the million more running their own businesses. Of the four million people who had paid income tax when we came to power who now didn’t pay a penny. And of all those finally earning a National Living Wage.

  When I first walked through the door of No. 10 as prime minister, it had seemed Britain’s problems – from declining educational standards to ballooning welfare spending– were written in indelible ink. It seemed inevitable that poverty was passed down through the generations, and gay people were denied the rights straight people enjoyed. Patients who had waited months for operations were consigned to mixed-sex wards, and superbugs were rife in our hospitals. There was no pro-Union plan to deal with Scotland’s slide towards separation. Terrorism was spreading, and global warming seemed unstoppable.

  It was not possible to solve everything in just six years. But we did change the narrative. And we’d done that by helping to change life for millions of individuals. There were now 1.4 million more pupils in ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ schools. Over 200,000 young people had completed National Citizen Service. Nearly three million had started apprenticeships. More young people and more disadvantaged young people were going to university. The result was a country that offered more opportunity to more people.

  Some talk about ‘austerity’ and the difficult decisions we had to take on the economy. But what they don’t mention enough is that despite all this, inequality and poverty fell. There were 500,000 fewer people in absolute poverty, including 100,000 fewer children. The rich were paying a higher share of tax than ever before. There were 500,000 fewer children living in workless households, the lowest figure on record. Thirty thousand same-sex people tied the knot in the two years after the law was changed. The elderly were better off than at any time in our history. We were determined to tackle the economic crisis in a different way to Margaret Thatcher, and in that we succeeded. The economy was undoubtedly stronger, and Britain was fairer, and more equal.

  Hospital infections, mixed-sex wards, year-long waits for operations were off the front pages because they were largely out of our hospitals. The Cancer Drugs Fund was saving lives. Crime was down by over a quarter. Vast screeds of terrorist material were wiped from the internet and key hate preachers kicked out of the country. Our society was safer, and healthier.

  The new respect agenda from Westminster towards the devolved governments was firmly established, bolstered by NATO and G8 conferences hosted in Wales and Northern Ireland. The regions became burgeoning powerhouses of manufacturing, tech and the arts. The lingering wrong of Bloody Sunday was addressed, and relations with our nearest neighbour the Republic of Ireland were at an all-time high. One sour note was the collapse of power-sharing in Stormont, which continues as I write.

  Britain had gone all but coal-free. We were a renewables capital of the world, and more importantly had made solar and wind power financially viable. We were at the heart of the worldwide consensus on halting global warming. Our country was cleaner and greener.

  The black hole in our defence budget had been addressed, difficult decisions made, and investment in new equipment was now on the up. Countless lives had been saved through our aid budget commitment. To give one example: we had paid for the vaccination of seventy-six million children worldwide against diseases like TB, measles, rubella, pneumonia and diarrhoea. The best estimate is that without that investment, 1.4 million of them would have died. I think of the lives those children have gone on to lead, and the chances they have been given. We were the second-biggest donor in the world during the Syrian tragedy, and led the response to most global crises, from Ebola to the migration crisis. It was undeniable: Britain was standing taller in the world.

  Our party showed that you could do more with less. We proved in an increasingly polarised age that politics wasn’t either/or – you could be pro-defence and pro-aid; pro-family and pro-equality; pro-public services and pro-fiscal prudence. We demonstrated that you could take the difficult decisions and win elections – and that a government could achieve a lot in just six years.

  We also showed that coalition could work in this country. We took over a hundred Bills to assent, and implemented a huge programme of reforms, including putting our economy back on course.

  When I look at this record, there are some key themes that shine through for me. We kept our promises. Politicians are often accused of breaking their word, but we said we’d honour our UN aid commitment and our NATO defence pledge. Others didn’t. We did.

  We confronted some of the longest-running sores in our politics. Again, there is a perennial complaint that politicians just kick cans down roads. But by sorting out our defences, building a long-term solution for university funding, addressing the Scottish question and voting reform, we grasped nettles that had been neglected for decades.

  We also looked to the future. Whether it was building new railway lines, reforming public sector pensions or renewing Trident, we always had the horizon in mind. Politicians are known for quick fixes and easy wins; we made a beeline for the difficult things. Many will come to fru­-ition long after we’re gone.

  We gave power away – lots of it. ‘Empowering’ might be Whitehall jargon, but it applies to so much of what we did. We empowered local groups, through the Big Society, to take over pubs and run their own community centres. We empowered teachers, doctors, council chiefs and prison governors, through our public service re
forms and our drive towards localism. We empowered cities and an entire Northern Powerhouse, as well as Holyrood, the Senedd and Stormont, which got greater financial and tax-raising authority. Scotland now has one of the most powerful devolved parliaments in the world. And yes, we empowered people, by giving them the ultimate say on the most important questions.

  In fact, the decision to hold a referendum on membership of the EU encompasses all these trends. It was both a promise kept and a sore confronted. It was the ultimate display of handing power to the masses, and it had the long term at its heart.

  As I’ve said, I do not regret holding the referendum. But I deeply regret the result, and I still think Brexit is the wrong path for our country. The best deal for Britain was the one we had, the one I renegotiated. Anything else does not give us the best of both worlds that my deal built on. Most worryingly, our departure, whatever form it takes, jeopardises all the things we’ve achieved, from the strength of our nation’s finances to the stability of our United Kingdom.

  We did warn that that was the price of a Leave vote. I don’t buy the argument that people didn’t know what they were voting for, or that misinformation propagated during the campaign means that the result should be annulled. Yes, there was fake news. But there was also the biggest distribution of a leaflet in recent British history. There was a ubiquitous campaign led by the most well known and respected voices. The view that people aren’t qualified to vote on an issue that is so complex and important is one that I do not share. The act of electing our MPs is complex and important, but we think people are able to make their minds up on that. So they are competent enough to make their mind up on an issue like EU membership.