This might have been the take-off moment for the Big Society. But instead, it begins to unravel. The relaunch fails to achieve the impact that Hilton hopes for. Aside from the NCS, many of the initiatives do not capture the public imagination. Personal relationships are seriously deteriorating. On top of excluding him from meetings of the Quad, Osborne now refuses to let Hilton attend his bilateral meetings with Cameron and deliberately cuts him out from key papers. Hilton is furious. Nat Wei, a peer, who was appointed as an unpaid adviser on the Big Society before the general election, and who continued in government, leaves the role in May 2011. It is a bad sign. Lib Dem enthusiasm for the agenda is replaced by cold hostility. Even before Polly Mackenzie departs on maternity leave in autumn 2011, her relationship with Hilton sours. ‘The Lib Dems hate the Big Society,’ Hilton is regularly heard to say. He is particularly angry that Clegg and Communities Secretary Eric Pickles gang up to emasculate the proposal for elected mayors as they fear the animosity of their councillors and activists on the ground. ‘Dave really believed in local mayors,’ fumes Hilton. ‘But he wasn’t going to bust up the coalition over it.’20 Heywood, who has worked as hard as anyone to facilitate what Hilton was trying to do, begins to show doubt. ‘At some point, from early/mid-2011, Jeremy decided to dodge the bullet and move onto the next thing,’ says one insider.
Hilton falls out badly with Paul Kirby, head of an expanded Policy Unit since February 2011. On 1 June, a private diary records that ‘Hilton doesn’t like Kirby’ and feels he is being undermined by him; Kirby is openly contemptuous of Steve, and ‘whereas Heywood always respects Steve and tempers him when necessary, Paul always seeks to undermine him’. Hilton complains that ‘Paul Kirby is George’s person. It’s been like Yes, Minister with me being kept out of things. I’m told I’ve been copied in on key documents, but I only receive them at the last minute, when it’s too late.’ Hilton protests to Cameron about being marginalised from the work of the Policy Unit: ‘Your job is to make it happen,’ Cameron responds brusquely. Hilton now excludes himself from the twice-daily meetings in the PM’s room, which he considers reactive and unstrategic. Distance is growing from Cameron’s team, who were once so close to him. Hilton soon falls out with Andrew Cooper, who had arrived in Number 10 as director of strategy in March 2011. ‘The prospect of polling and focus groups makes me physically ill,’ Hilton tells him. Ed Llewellyn and Kate Fall have been his closest friends and allies for years, but he grows apart from even them too. He becomes scornful of Coulson’s successor, Craig Oliver. He blames Rupert Harrison for leading Osborne astray.
Fatally, differences are beginning to appear between Hilton and Cameron himself: ‘He is completely falling for the fucking establishment line, we are never going to get anywhere like this!’ he says. He speculates that there are two sides to Cameron: the radical, who he loves, and the traditionalist, who he doesn’t. He fears Cameron’s liking for due process as prime minister is trumping the radical side. There is much unhappiness among Cameron’s close team in the first half of 2011. They retain great affection for Hilton, and, following the departure of Coulson, are deeply anxious not to lose another member of their tight group, least of all when under so much attack from party and press. But Hilton’s iconoclasm, his bombastic style, his lack of discipline and his anger are making enemies across the piece, and causing untold worries: ‘We are always trying to find the right niche for him,’ says one. ‘It was so much easier in Opposition, but he remains the intellectual live wire among us. We need him,’ says another.
Cameron is not giving up on Hilton just yet. He consents to a further Big Society relaunch, in Milton Keynes on 23 May. It includes the announcement that ministers will lead from the front, pledging themselves to undertake a day of voluntary service a year. ‘The Big Society is not some fluffy add-on to more gritty and more important subjects,’ Cameron insists.21 But the reaction of the media remains as cynical as ever. Polls are published showing that the agenda will either be neutral or damaging to the Conservatives at the next general election.22 This is toxic.
The policies Hilton is driving are running into new kinds of problems, cranking up tension still further. He wants the Open Public Services White Paper to be radical, but is thwarted by the Lib Dems, who keep pushing back publication. Officials say progress is difficult with both coalition partners in such different places. Hilton is insistent that contracts be subject to more competition, and public services be opened up more to private sector providers. A high point of tension comes in July 2011 with a Cameron article in the Daily Telegraph written by Hilton, which lays out the aims and principles of the White Paper.23 The Lib Dems hate its advocacy of competition and profits and continue to push publication back to after the summer recess. Hilton wants the Office of Fair Trading to act against monopolies in the public sector, as they do against monopolies in the private sector. For a while, Richard Reeves, Clegg’s director of strategy, is supportive, but Clegg’s implacable opposition to personal budgets in health and social care and competition in public services proves decisive. Losing this battle is a major blow to Hilton.
Lib Dem opposition now thwarts another of his crusades. He wants to liberalise the labour market and asks Adrian Beecroft, a venture capitalist, to look at how this might be done. Beecroft’s suggestions include making it far more difficult for employees who have been dismissed to appeal to employment tribunals. Cameron gives his backing to Hilton, but he runs headlong into the opposition of Business Secretary Vince Cable, who considers this his domain. Hilton cannot understand Cameron’s reluctance simply to push it through against Cable’s blocking. He does not have time for the nuances of holding the coalition together. Progress with the business community and entrepreneurs seems to be getting nowhere, while the TUC, which strongly opposes the plans, is having its way. The forces are stacked too heavily against him. He works tirelessly to build up support for the changes, but he has to admit defeat. Months later, Cameron tells him candidly, ‘I couldn’t tell Vince Cable what to do. I couldn’t overrule him on this.’
On 1 June 2011, Hilton has a frank talk with Silva. They acknowledge they are trying to fight on too many fronts and together draw up a Venn diagram with the overlapping areas in the middle denoting what is really important to both of them. This brings forty areas down to just ten, which they decide to concentrate on. They draft a note, with initials in brackets showing which of them will be principally responsible for driving each agenda item forward in the coming year. They are: open public services White Paper (SH), mayors and decentralisation (SH), families (SH), Somerset House (SH), marketing Britain (SH), Tech City (RS), pharmaceutical industry (RS), sex trafficking (RS), planning (RS), well-being/social value (SH and RH). ‘Somerset House’ refers to Hilton’s obsession that the entire British Empire had been run from buildings that size in the nineteenth century, and that the Civil Service should be shrunk down to the same size today, an idea which, unsurprisingly, provokes anger among senior mandarins. ‘Pharmaceutical industry’ speaks of the determination to make Britain world class in the life sciences. ‘Sex trafficking’ refers to curbing the sex-slave problem.
Hilton’s rationalisation of priorities comes too late. ‘He let himself become involved in minor issues and lost sight of the big picture,’ is the verdict of one senior official. Perhaps the forces are now arrayed too strongly against him. On Monday 20 June, he has a frank conversation with his policy colleagues, having read rumours in the press again over the weekend that he is on the verge of resigning. ‘As you can see, I am still here. We have known each other for years. We are friends in the Tory Party, not in some psychodrama. When we disagree it is a genuine policy disagreement. My role for the prime minister is to push the agenda forward. Others are here to push it back, and that is fine. We are grown-ups and disagreement is fine.’
Matters come to a head at Chequers, where senior ministers assemble for a political Cabinet on Sunday 24 July. Hilton has been uncharacteristically depressed in the early summer. Letwi
n and Danny Alexander have prepared a paper advocating a new coalition agreement for the second half of the government. Hilton believes their whole approach is fundamentally wrong, and argues they should be first trying to ‘implement the radical things we said we’d do rather than water them down’. Hilton finds a quiet moment and confronts Cameron: ‘We haven’t done a thousandth of what we should have done. The government is far too timid. We are wasting our chance. You need to put me in charge rather than people like Ed [Llewellyn] and Craig [Oliver].’ An acrimonious discussion follows. Cameron is losing patience. His team are feeling undermined. Reports leak that Hilton will shortly be leaving Number 10 – variants of that story have been in circulation in the building since New Year.
The riots in August, which he sees as a great opportunity to reassert the importance of the Big Society, came at the right time for him. The riots have happened, he says, because of insufficient regard for community, personal responsibility and family. The social policy review is set up. He returns to Number 10 in September in a much happier frame of mind. But the old problems soon emerge. Hilton is infringing a golden rule of Cameron’s inner circle – you do not talk to the press. It alienates him badly from them. Deep down, the mood is changing. Trust has been lost and Hilton’s old friends are afraid of what he might be telling the press about them. But they still do not want to lose a second member of the team. He must be taken off day-to-day policy work and immerse himself instead in long-term thinking, with a seat in the office outside the prime minister’s study, alongside Llewellyn, Fall and Heywood. Cameron says he wants him at all his meetings, even those with Osborne. But he doesn’t come. Neither does he take up his seat at his desk in his office.
The annual party conference in October 2011 is a crunch point. Hilton fights hard for his decentralisation agenda to be in the prime minister’s speech. Cameron’s team argue that it is jarring when the country’s attention is so focused on austerity and terrorism. Prioritising decentralisation will seem irrelevant. A fight takes place over a line that Hilton has written for Cameron: ‘The purpose of my leadership is to unleash your leadership.’ Cooper is particularly unhappy and says the line should be cut. ‘Most people do not want to run their library, they don’t want to run their school, they want government to do these things, and to lead them, not to be leaders themselves,’ he says. Cooper is attacking the very soul of the Big Society. After heated discussions, they compromise with Cameron delivering the line: ‘That’s why so much of my leadership is about unleashing your leadership.’
Christmas 2011 at Chequers. Hilton tells Cameron to get rid of Kirby as head of the Policy Unit. Cameron tells Hilton outright he will not do this, but repeats that he wants Hilton there at all his meetings. Hilton has begun listening to other voices. Nigel Lawson tells him that he can only remain as a backseat driver for so long. Blair regrets that his advisers were not more radical than he was as prime minister. Rachel is tired of her husband’s unhappiness. She has had a second baby and remembers the happy time they spent in California after their first baby was born. She thinks this is where their future lies. At Chequers in early January 2012, Hilton tells Cameron he is contemplating resigning. The prime minister tells him to sort himself out.
Of all Hilton’s defeats, he finds the lack of progress on Civil Service reform hardest to stomach, because Cameron cannot claim as usual that the Lib Dems are blocking it. Responding to Hilton’s frustrations, Letwin had suggested that Hilton throw his passion into reforming the Civil Service, a campaign for which Letwin, as well as Maude, are keen enthusiasts. While Maude works with permanent secretaries across Whitehall to draw up a coherent reform plan, Hilton and Silva immediately start work on a number of separate proposals. The central idea is still to shrink the Civil Service radically ‘so it is small enough to fit inside Somerset House’, and make it more open and competitive, ending the public sector monopoly over the delivery of services. But in Hilton’s final few months they run into problems with Heywood, now Cabinet Secretary, and Bob Kerslake, the newly appointed head of the Civil Service from January 2012. Both are open to reforming the Civil Service and increasing its efficiency, but the extreme changes Hilton envisages frightens them because they believe it will drastically reduce the Civil Service’s capability and ability to support governments. While Heywood is still willing to seek an accommodation with Hilton, Kerslake finds his way of working too unfocused and disorganised. It does not augur well.
Had the Civil Service reformers themselves been unified, they might have prevailed even against the mighty Whitehall. But difficulties had started to appear in 2011 even before the promotions of Heywood and Kerslake. Differences with Maude and, unusually, with Hilton’s principal lieutenant, Silva, blunted the focus. Hilton is categorical that the Civil Service has to be cut by 70% and wants that figure written into the policy proposal. Silva thinks it more sensible to begin small, with the Department for Education where Michael Gove is such an enthusiastic supporter, and prove that dramatic efficiency savings can be made, before scaling up across the entire Civil Service. For Hilton, the 70% figure is a red line. In 2012, when Kerslake and senior officials from the department propose a more modest downsizing at one meeting, conscious of the impact on morale, Hilton explodes. ‘You haven’t done what I wanted to do.’ Turning his fire on Kerslake, he shouts, ‘You’re lying about what I want to achieve!’ before storming out of the room. ‘He just lost his bottle,’ Kerslake recalls, ‘he swore at me and slammed the door. In my view some of his work never really added up to a coherent body of argument.’24 Meetings on Civil Service reform drag on and failure to achieve progress in this area, more than anything, destroy Hilton’s morale.
The approaching death of the Big Society had been evident the previous autumn: ‘more a fizzling out than one deliberate decision’, says an insider. One by one, totemic Big Society policies fall. A Civil Exchange report later says the Big Society ‘largely failed’ to meet its goals.25 The initial fervour around the post-riots social policy review dissipates into nothing. Elected mayors fail to capture the imagination and succeed only in Liverpool. Police and Crime Commissioners are elected on painfully low turnouts. On 8 February 2012, Hilton presents a set of slides on Civil Service reform to Cameron, hoping to win him over. ‘They weren’t very good,’ recalls one senior official. ‘He hadn’t really thought it through very much.’ Hilton is bitterly disappointed that Cameron fails to give him the backing he needs. ‘If you wanted me to be radical you should have won me a general election victory,’ Cameron tells Hilton.
In March, relations plummet to a new low. The prime minister is to give a speech to the Institute of Civil Engineering. Hilton has been working hard to introduce radical reforms into the road network, and to promote ‘Boris Island’ as London’s new airport. He is in despair when he reads the text on 19 March. ‘If this is where we are going, it is all useless. The government is useless. We’ve given up on everything. What the fuck is the point in carrying on?’ This time, there is to be no going back. ‘The Big Society might not have been a very good idea,’ he says to anyone who will listen, ‘but it was the only fucking idea we had.’ Around Downing Street, he is regularly heard to make comments like ‘Fucking hell, I don’t know what they stand for anymore or what the fucking point is in being here.’
The end comes swiftly in the spring of 2012. He goes to Washington with Cameron in March but tells him before they travel that he is leaving. Hilton has run out of allies. Clegg objects strongly to his neo-Thatcherite policies in his final phase. Hilton’s attempts to portray Cameron in the media as a free-market liberal prove too much. Osborne lost faith months ago and is not fighting to retain him. Craig Oliver is thoroughly alienated from him and finds him ‘massively destabilising’. Llewellyn has become alienated by his briefing. A mawkish moment had occurred at Osborne’s fortieth birthday party at Dorneywood in 2011 when Hilton had embraced Llewellyn and made out that they were great friends; but the gulf has now become unbridgeable. Kate Fall is the la
st of the inner court to hold faith, but even she feels that the team will be more cohesive without him. Andrew Feldman has repeatedly told Cameron, ‘You’ve got to let him go.’ The noise is building and building. Before Easter, Hilton finally leaves for California.
The arrangement is that he is to reappear for annual party conferences. But his reign is over. With him goes a creative genius and innovation that is never to be replaced. Indeed, arguably Number 10 has never seen such a creative, one-man Policy Unit. Whitehall breathes a collective sigh of relief when he leaves, though within three months, forward-thinking mandarins are mourning the loss of the impetus, urgency and fresh thinking he provided. His departure sounds the death knell for the Big Society, though some of it remains and Cameron regards aspects of it, like the National Citizen Service, as among his proudest achievements. Volunteering and charitable giving rates grow despite the economic gloom. But in his 2012 party conference speech, which places individual aspiration and Britain’s role in the ‘global race’ at the heart of the Tory message, the Big Society is hardly mentioned.
Letting Hilton go is one of the hardest things Cameron has to do as prime minister. He never loses his love and admiration for him, and is profoundly pained that his philosopher has had such a difficult ride in government. Despite all that has happened, their strong friendship endures. Cameron’s remaining team begin to think Hilton has become a security blanket, preventing his boss from realising he can flourish without him. Whether Cameron will be able to find his voice without his muse by his side remains to be seen. Osborne, Llewellyn, Fall and Oliver tell him, ‘You can’t talk about the Big Society.’ Cameron tellingly responds: ‘It’s our idea for reforming the country. We can’t just drop it. It’s what we are all about!’
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