Cameron at 10

by Anthony Seldon

  The following day, 22 February, Cameron is in his hotel room in Doha, Qatar, watching the television screen. He is captivated and excited by the images of the protestors in Libya, who had taken to the streets of Benghazi within days of the fall of Mubarak. Gaddafi has ordered the Libyan army to crack down hard, and already a hundred protestors have been killed.3 Cameron feels a deep sense of Schadenfreude at the plight of Gaddafi. By his side stands John Casson, Tom Fletcher’s successor. Cameron is fortunate in his foreign affairs private secretaries. Fletcher had given him insight into the issues and personalities gleaned from two years serving Brown. As focus switches to the Arab world, enter Casson, an Arabist who has recently been overseeing North Africa and the Middle East in the Foreign Office. Since taking over in November 2010, he has been coaxing Cameron towards a vision for the whole African continent, and for reform and democratisation in the Arab world.

  That evening, Cameron has a long dinner with Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, prime minister of Qatar. For the next two years, ‘HBJ’, as he is known, will be the foreign leader Cameron speaks to most in the region. They sit down at a small round table, an army of attendants anxiously watching on. He launches into a tirade, telling Cameron that Gaddafi is mad and finished and that other Arab leaders needed to say so. What’s more, the Russians have to realise this fact, he tells the PM. The Qatari prime minister touches a raw nerve in Cameron, who has a visceral dislike of the Libyan leader. The murder of the young policewoman Yvonne Fletcher by a Libyan outside their embassy in St James’s Square, London, in April 1984 happened when he was still at Eton – a formative time for him. Four years later came the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing 270 people, mostly British and American citizens. When the bomb was proven to have been planted by a Libyan, Cameron became still more angry. He was repulsed by Tony Blair’s decision in his final term to rehabilitate Gaddafi, which is why he argued strongly in 2009 against the Scottish government’s return of the bomber al-Megrahi on grounds of illness to Libya. Gordon Brown claimed that it was the Scottish government who had taken the decision. Cameron did not believe him, and once inside Number 10, asked Gus O’Donnell to conduct a review into the episode. It concluded that the previous government ‘did all it could to facilitate’ the release of al-Megrahi, and that lobbying by BP over its commercial interests in Libya ‘played a part’ in its decision to release Libyan prisoners.4 In the autumn of 2010, Cameron came under diplomatic pressure to attend a summit that Gaddafi was hosting. He declined forthrightly. Gaddafi felt slighted. Cameron said he would go nowhere near him. It is a very personal animosity. A timely release of the report into the al-Megrahi affair took place in early February 2011.5 ‘Let’s make a joint public statement saying that war crimes have been committed,’ Cameron now says to HBJ over the table. The Qatari prime minister agrees, expressing his exasperation at Gaddafi’s corrupt behaviour and betrayal. ‘Well, I have no love for Gaddafi!’ Cameron replies. He tells HBJ about his revulsion over Yvonne Fletcher and Lockerbie.

  The next day, 23 February, Cameron and his party fly on to see the sultan of Oman. The day before, Gaddafi makes a televised speech vowing to catch the demonstrators like ‘rats’. If the protestors do not surrender, he will ‘slaughter’ them.6 He will never give up power, he says, and would rather die a martyr. Cameron is tired. It is half-term week, and the trip has been emotionally and physically exhausting. He would like to be back home relaxing with his children. But the sultan has been anticipating his visit eagerly and has laid on a very long and very splendid meal. A note is brought in which is intercepted by Casson: ‘Call London’, it says. Casson asks the sultan’s permission to leave the table and goes outside. ‘British expats are in danger in Libya,’ he is told down the line. The day before, Cameron had spoken out strongly in support of the protestors in Libya. As war breaks out, British civilians are in imminent danger. The Foreign Office is not having its most glorious hour. It has chartered a plane to evacuate some of the 500 British citizens estimated still to be in Libya, but it has broken down at Gatwick and ten hours are lost while it is repaired. The media goes to town on the government’s prevarication, contrasting it to the French, German and Brazilian governments who have chartered planes and ships immediately to bring out their own nationals. Cameron rarely loses his temper, but he does so now. He is furious that the wheels of government have ground to a halt.

  The Coulson and phone-hacking sagas have changed the entire mood music in the UK. Cameron is under fire from the press for being on a trip when he should be dealing with the crisis at home. Hypocrisy is another charge: why is he accepting hospitality from undemocratic sheikhs when he is encouraging democracy elsewhere in the Arab world? As soon as he can politely extract himself from the sultan’s sumptuous table, he makes a conference call to William Hague and Liam Fox. They debate the pros and cons of sending in military aircraft to Libya. Cameron hears too much equivocation. ‘Just send the RAF in and do it now,’ he instructs them. A C130 transport plane is promptly dispatched from the south of England to collect the oil workers from the desert. It comes under small-arms fire from a Gaddafi loyalist on the ground. Had the plane come down, it would have been one of the biggest crises of the premiership. The incident is hushed up, but the Foreign Office blames Number 10 for briefing against it over the handling of the evacuation. An ugly moment is exacerbated a week later on 4 March when six SAS soldiers dropped into Libya are arrested and sent home.7 Cameron has already apologised for the bungle over the evacuation, and on 7 March, Hague takes responsibility for the failed military operation. Not a good start.

  The SAS adventure is a harbinger of a new and far more serious turn of events in Libya. So far, Cameron has not crossed the Rubicon. Anti-Gaddafi rebels in Libya come under intense pressure over the next few days and on 26 February, a UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) freezes Gaddafi’s assets and imposes an arms embargo on the country. Two days later, Cameron proposes to fellow leaders a ‘no-fly zone’ over Libya to deter Gaddafi’s use of jet fighters against the rebels. ‘Go now,’ Cameron urges Gaddafi. On 2 March, he tells the House of Commons that the international community are considering his suggestion of a no-fly zone. He is becoming increasingly convinced that a military response may be needed, and instructs the MoD to draw up plans. Gaddafi’s reply is to intensify his assault against rebels in Misrata to the east of Tripoli. Cameron is speaking regularly to Nicolas Sarkozy in France: they want to act militarily, but do not want to do so without US support. Obama is sitting on the fence and does not want to play ball.8 Cameron’s support for a no-fly zone is melting away.

  Cameron is working particularly closely with Llewellyn, who draws on his experience as an adviser to Paddy Ashdown, when he was high representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 2000s. David Richards, newly promoted to chief of the defence staff, believes that Llewellyn is egging on Cameron. They have a model of the Balkans in their heads, Richards surmises, notably the massacre at Srebrenica in July 1995.9 By acting now, they think they can prevent another Srebrenica unfolding in Benghazi. Cameron knows of Richards’ scepticism, and he discusses the difference between them with his team. He’s all too aware of the long shadow cast by Iraq, which suggests that military intervention by the West in a Muslim country is well nigh impossible to countenance. But he is determined not to abandon those fighting Gaddafi. He has been much influenced by a book, Last Chance: The Middle East in the Balance by David Gardner of the Financial Times. ‘Unless the Arab countries can find a way out of this pit of autocracy, their people will be condemned to bleak lives of despair’, Gardner writes.10 Cameron is full of zeal: his instincts are with the people on the streets. Weighing heavily in his mind is the human cost of inaction. His moral purpose is fully shared by Llewellyn.

  A divide is opening up on the NSC with Richards, and less strongly John Sawers, warning about the risks of a ‘half-baked’ military intervention. They believe that the ‘idea of a simple no-fly zone’ will make no differe
nce to the situation on the ground. Hague is in favour, cautiously, of military intervention. In Cabinet, George Osborne and Michael Gove are most supportive of action, as is – to Number 10’s surprise – Ken Clarke, who nine years before defied the Tory whip and voted against the Iraq War. Fox argues that Britain cannot possibly engage in an open-ended commitment at the very time, following the SDSR review, when it is regrouping its defence forces. The deteriorating position in Yemen and Bahrain concerns him, and he thinks it will be a mistake to put all the British military assets into Libya.11 A generational split is opening up in the daily meetings of the NSC. Younger members, dubbed the ‘forty-something generation’ – including Cameron, Clegg, Llewellyn and others – for whom Bosnia was a formative experience, are in favour of action; older voices, and almost all officials, are advising, ‘We will have to strike a deal with Gaddafi.’ Some military and intelligence officials believe Cameron’s team are ‘twenty years out of date when it comes to dealing with conflict’, having not been immersed in the Iraq and Afghan campaigns.

  On 6 March, Gaddafi’s army launches a tank and artillery counter-offensive against the rebels, smashing their disorganised forces, and advances swiftly along the Libyan coast towards Benghazi where he plans to put down the uprising. On Monday 7 March, the differences between Cabinet members come out into the open at a special Cabinet meeting held in Derby. Cameron startles ministers by saying he does not regard UN support as a prerequisite for military intervention in Libya, desirable though it may be. He is becoming steelier by the day. He convenes a private meeting in Downing Street for Libyan exiles and specialists: their overwhelming message is that the uprising is genuinely nationalist and democratic, and Libya will not descend into a tribal war if the West intervenes.12

  The NSC start meeting at least once a day: there are sixty-nine meetings of the full NSC or its Libya subcommittee over the entire episode. Cameron is becoming increasingly impatient with the Whitehall machine. He forces the pace and demands papers from the NSC secretariat. It produces a menu of options including air strikes and mentoring teams to guide the rebel forces. One option alone is off the table, ‘boots on the ground’, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one is advocating this. Cameron understands the risks of doing so. Rather he wants to strengthen the opposition to Gaddafi and he believes that support from the international community is necessary if they are to achieve that. Cameron says that he’s willing to risk failure; officials, however, are reluctant to consider failure as an option. An NSC meeting later in that month tellingly reveals the widening split between Cameron and his officials over Libya as well as illustrating the PM’s own motivations on the matter. Upon declaring to those assembled that ‘intervention in Libya is in the British national interest, speak now or hold your peace’, the prime minister is confronted by John Sawers, who disputes this is a matter of national interest. He wants to do it for humanitarian reasons, Sawers tells him. Cameron is surprised by the challenge, but quickly answers somewhat unsatisfactorily, ‘Yes, yes, but it is important that we do these things.’ It is answers like this that lead many in the intelligence and defence community to worry that the whole situation is ‘not clearly thought through’.

  On 11 March, EU leaders meet at an emergency summit in Brussels to discuss the deteriorating situation. Cameron arrives wanting a very tough communiqué in support of decisive action. He has been talking daily to an increasingly emotional Sarkozy, who is saying that Libya is the great humanitarian issue of the day. On the other hand, some argue he has not been talking or working closely enough with Obama. At dinner with fellow leaders, Sarkozy becomes so angry with the failure of other leaders to support the emerging Anglo-French initiative that he storms out dramatically. Cameron follows him out of the room to placate him. ‘Forget it,’ the French president snaps at him, ‘I’ve had enough of these people.’ ‘Well Nicolas,’ Cameron replies, ‘I still think we should have a go and get some language that could be useful for us.’ ‘I disagree. It’s better to tell the media they are complete weaklings who are happy to see Gaddafi massacre innocent people.’ ‘No, no,’ replies Cameron, ‘it’s important to try and get at least some support as long as we have a chance.’ He soothes Sarkozy enough to bring him back to the table, but their fellow EU leaders are still far from convinced of the need for a strong EU response. Conspicuous in its opposition is Germany. Angela Merkel feels let down and out of the loop. Obama has had an eleventh-hour change of heart, and is now in favour of supporting a no-fly zone, although it is still unclear whether the US would take part. But his switch wasn’t communicated to Merkel earlier. The Americans feel that they are being bounced into action, due to a lack of communication, and this explains their later desire to ‘supersede what the Europeans had been doing’. Ever since 1945, a core tenet of German foreign policy has been to support the US and French line. Where they diverge, as over Iraq in 2003, the decision is always to go with one or the other. On Libya, Germany finds herself at odds with both of her traditional allies.13 Merkel later tells Cameron that one of her biggest regrets of her time as chancellor was for Germany to end up outside the coalition over Libya. But within her own closed circle, she is unapologetic about Libya, and feels vindicated by the subsequent course of events.

  Cameron and Sarkozy have more success with the Arab League, who they have been intensively lobbying. Hague’s lobbying of the Egyptian Secretary General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, is crucial. On 12 March, the Arab League calls for the UN Security Council to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, saying that the Gaddafi government has ‘lost its sovereignty’. On 14 March, however, embarrassment is caused in London and Paris when Saudi and Emirati troops help crush protests in Bahrain, shattering any illusion that the Gulf States are being supportive in Libya because of a newfound affection for democracy and human rights. Their concerns remain stability, not democracy.

  Arab support, regardless of the niceties, is crucial in gaining UN Security Council support for Resolution 1973, advocating ‘all necessary measures’ to be taken to protect Libyan civilians. Cameron and Sarkozy concentrate their lobbying on the White House. Peter Ricketts’ contacts in the Obama administration help, as does lobbying by long-serving British ambassador, Nigel Sheinwald. Their task is not helped by the administration being split down the middle, which explains Obama’s wobbling. In favour of UNSCR 1973 are Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, and UN ambassador Susan Rice. In opposition are most of the State Department, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon. The Pentagon and State Department talk to their opposite numbers in London, smelling their scepticism, which does nothing to increase their own enthusiasm for action.

  It is St Patrick’s Day weekend, the big annual Irish celebration in the US calendar. Sheinwald talks to Obama in the margins of the celebrations. It’s clear there will be military action from the British and French, he says, with or without the Americans. Obama’s unclear position has been causing concern and anxiety in Downing Street. ‘He won’t take our calls because he doesn’t know where he stands. It’s not very impressive,’ spits out one aide.

  On 12 March, with the UN Security Council debate imminent, Cameron phones Merkel. ‘I know you are very sceptical on this, but can you at least abstain? It will be a very close vote,’ he pleads. ‘I don’t want to vote against my comrades. I think I will abstain. But I will not participate militarily,’ she says. As an aside, she says to Cameron, to whom she’s becoming increasingly close: ‘One day, I really want you to tell me what it is with Libya: why are you so obsessed with it?’ She speaks in English. Cameron likes her directness. ‘He’s killing large numbers of people. It’s not like Darfur or Cote d’Ivoire,’ two places where recent massacres had occurred, he responds. She pauses. ‘I think I see why you see it differently.’ She likes Cameron and seeks to understand why they are at loggerheads.

  On 17 March, to the surprise of many who thought that the Russians would block it, UNSCR 1973 is passed by ten vo
tes to zero, with five abstentions (Russia, Germany, Brazil, China and India). Cameron now has legal cover from the UN. In his mind and that of his aides, he must avoid anything akin to the anarchic decision-making process of Blair in the run-up to the Iraq War. He knows that the first fresh British military intervention since Iraq will be much the stronger for explicit UN authorisation. All involved weigh the possibility that they will face the prospect of Iraq-style inquiries hanging over them in the future. No one wants to be involved in any decision which is not completely defensible, not least with the Chilcot Inquiry, the last of several into the Iraq War, still in full swing. Support of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) and Arab League has fortified the cause immeasurably: there is genuine regional support from other Arab and Muslim states. This is to be no Holy War against Islam.

  On Friday 18 March, Cameron holds an emergency Cabinet meeting. It is briefed out to the media that no ministers are considering resigning in disagreement, as Robin Cook and Clare Short did from Blair’s Cabinet over Iraq in 2003.14 Fox, despite earlier qualms, is now totally behind the action proposed. As ministers arrive at the meeting, the written legal advice from the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, giving his opinion on the legitimacy of any actions is placed in front of each seat around the Cabinet table.15 Later that day, Cameron makes a statement in the House of Commons, flanked by the Attorney General, emphasising again that there are no difficulties on the legality of any action that might take place. The PM commits British forces to enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya. As Matthew d’Ancona, the journalist closest to the Cameron team, writes in his column for the Sunday Telegraph two days later, ‘whatever now happens in the skies of Benghazi and the streets of Tripoli, there will be no allegations in the months and years to come that the PM misled the Commons, or that the conflict was conducted by a “sofa government”’.16 Cameron’s team remain acutely aware of the lessons of the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. They knew they could not proceed without full legal cover and proper consultation of the Cabinet.