Cameron at 10

by Anthony Seldon

  Cameron has a more intensive briefing about this meeting with Putin than for almost any other of his premiership. He is warned that the Russian PM may well begin by attacking him and try to throw him off balance. But he is pleasantly surprised by Putin, who he sees in the much less grand PM’s office. Putin begins going through a stack of note cards reciting statistics about how disappointing the balance of trade still is between Russia and Britain. This is not promising: but he is told Putin regularly starts meetings in this way. Then he switches and becomes more positive and personable, recognising that Cameron is sincere in wanting to forge a personal relationship. Putin waxes lyrical about closer co-operation through gas pipelines, and in particular advocates an extension of Nord Stream, which goes through the Baltic Sea to north-east Germany, to allow Russian gas to be delivered to the UK. As a show of good faith, and to get a dialogue moving, Cameron says he will create a premium visa service for Russian business people in return for Russia lifting the ban on British beef, a common policy linkage in British negotiations with Russia that bemused the Russians. In response, the Russians would allow certain British people who had been banned from Russia back into the country.

  The visit unlocks a flood of ideas built up over the four years: almost all possibilities for Anglo-Russian co-operation are now on the table, including science, space and energy. The NSC agree to future energy co-operation – despite qualms about getting into bed with the Russians. ‘If you are interested in civil nuclear co-operation with Rolls-Royce, or working with us in other countries to secure a design approval for nuclear power stations, we are up for it’, is typical of the messages from London. Much of the thinking is from Number 10 or the Cabinet Office rather than generated by the Foreign Office. Periodic phone calls between Cameron and Putin begin, though Putin is apt to be volatile, and typically starts with long silences before launching into a long list of complaints. One of his grittier complaints is over Libya, where he feels Cameron has double-crossed him, and that the British and French intended regime change all along. Syria is another, and growing, source of difference. The trend line, though, is definitely upwards.

  The next big event in the relationship between Cameron and Putin is the London Olympics. Putin wants to come over to watch the judo. Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign-policy adviser, calls Downing Street and asks ‘Will the prime minister see Putin?’

  ‘Of course he will,’ the reply comes back.

  ‘Will the prime minister go to the judo with Putin?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, he will.’ ‘Are you sure?’ Even for the Russians, this line of questioning is unusually persistent.

  ‘Yes, certainly. He will not pull out at the last minute,’ adds the official, to reassure him.

  ‘Right,’ Ushakov says, ‘Putin will come.’ It is agreed that the leaders will first meet up at Number 10. They have forty minutes in a conversation described as ‘fairly consequential’, before leaving by car together for the Olympics. Russian judo star Tagir Khaybulaev wins the gold medal. Putin is extraordinarily excited, though the result is expected. ‘Shake his hand at the medal ceremony,’ Cameron whispers to him.

  ‘Oh no, no, I can’t,’ says Putin, bashfully.

  ‘Yes you can and you must,’ urges Cameron.

  So Putin goes down to the podium and he is rewarded when the victorious gold medallist later praises him on Russian prime-time TV.16 A bigger PR coup for Putin could not be imagined. He is so pleased that he rings Number 10 from his plane (British officials comment wryly that their own phones never seem to work from British planes). ‘Can I talk to the prime minister?’ he asks. Cameron comes on the line to hear Putin overflowing with enthusiasm: ‘Thank you David! That was an astonishing day. So kind of you to do this. I really appreciate it.’ It is definitely one of Cameron’s diplomatic highlights in his diplomatic-heavy Olympic Games. Cameron is touched and rather taken aback by Putin’s response.

  Their next significant encounter takes place at the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where Putin has invited Cameron to talk about Syria. Cameron is accompanied by Ed Llewellyn, Hugh Powell, John Casson and Kim Darroch. The meeting has been brokered by Darroch and his opposite number, Ushakov, to explore a middle way on Syria. Cameron’s party are hosted at an ornate if somewhat faded villa overlooking the Black Sea. The leaders talk for three hours and by the end are finding some common ground. Cameron reprises his customary toughness about Islamic extremism and the global threat from terror. This chimes with Putin, who has had his own problems with terrorism. Agreements have yet to be reached, but Putin still shepherds the party off to a gargantuan lunch consisting of ten courses, some of which are modelled on British architecture. The pudding is a series of models of iconic buildings in burnt caramel, including Big Ben. Putin wants to push the boat out as far as he can, and has brought in a British chef who has worked at the Savoy. After lunch, he shows Cameron the preparation for the Winter Olympics, which he is overseeing personally. By the time Cameron’s helicopter returns, they are, in the words of one aide, ‘great, backslapping mates’. The PM’s party are in high spirits on the return to London, believing a corner has been truly turned in Anglo-Russian relations and that Cameron will have leverage as the European leader with whom Putin can do business.

  But no amount of bonhomie can disguise the fact that Syria is proving a big problem, despite the harmony in Sochi. Differences with Putin come to a head at Cameron’s G8 summit at Lough Erne in June 2013. Putin arrives in Number 10 for discussions the evening before, and progress seems to be made. But everything falls apart the next day at the summit itself, when the body language between Obama and Putin is described as ‘very bad’. Cameron is trying desperately to achieve a common G8 policy on the way ahead, but the likelihood of securing any meaningful unanimity is disappearing.

  The next Cameron/Putin meeting, the last cordial one they will have, comes at the G20 summit at St Petersburg on 5–6 September. Despite continuing differences over Syria, both leaders feel they have a sufficiently close relationship to talk at the end of the day, following a dazzling light show at St Petersburg’s Peterhof Palace. The schedule overruns, and consequently the light show doesn’t begin until 1 a.m., with Cameron and Putin eventually sitting down to talk at about 2.30. They cover the usual ground: energy, trade and Syria. Both abide by their agreed formula that, where they disagree, they are grown-ups and can transcend differences for the sake of the wider relationship. But it is late, they are prickly, and neither likes being lectured by the other. The conversation takes a bizarre twist and they end up having a ‘bickerfest’ about gay rights, both wanting to have the last word. Cameron is riding a high horse using arguments fresh from his jousting on gay marriage back home, while Putin argues that Russia’s future demography will have problems if gay people are allowed to marry each other, and that the country will not have enough children to secure its future. At times they seem to be enjoying it, at times they seem angry. They are acting like executives at a sales conference who have stayed up too late at the bar. Aides on both sides just wish they’d shut up so they can all go to bed, amazed that they are still talking so late into the night in the midst of such an important international event.

  It is Ukraine, however, not Syria, that undoes all Cameron’s careful bridge-building. Putin is clear that he will not allow Ukraine to fall into the Western camp. The West collectively fails to recognise that Ukraine is a failing state, divided into an eastern part that looks to Russia, and a western side that looks to Europe. Had it pumped money into Ukraine in the autumn of 2013, and reassured the Ukrainian elite that they had Western support, then Putin might not have had the window to become involved himself. But it is now too late for that, and all too predictably, Yanukovych looks straight towards Moscow.

  Angered by Yanukovych turning Ukraine towards Russia, and reneging on an understanding he gave them, protestors demonstrate in Kiev. By late January 2014, thousands begin to join the ‘Euromaidan’ unrest demanding new elections. Number 10 is in daily conversat
ion with the British ambassador in Kiev, Simon Smith, as the tension rises. On 18 February, violent clashes break out between police and protestors. Security forces start firing on protestors in and around Independence Square, killing at least fifty.17 Yanukovych’s heavy-handed measures achieve little. Four days later, he flees to Russia. The world takes a deep breath and awaits the Kremlin’s response. On 27 February, Obama has an inconclusive telephone conversation with Putin. Two hours later, Putin, who is in Sochi, orders thinly disguised Russian soldiers into Crimea. The Crimean Peninsula is a part of Ukraine, but has a large Russian population, and is also the location of the strategically important port of Sevastopol, the home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Within days the region is annexed to Russia. The response in the West, according to Time magazine, is ‘disbelief bordering on disorientation’.18 Within weeks, Russian-backed rebels declare independence in the east of Ukraine. London is stunned: an official from the Foreign Office records: ‘Even those of us who were used to dealing with Russia were deeply shocked. Putin was tearing up the rulebook of international diplomacy in such a brazen way.’

  Cameron still has sufficient relationship left with Putin to have three telephone conversations with him in February and March. Cameron is blunt: ‘Your relationship with us will face increasing difficulties unless you stop the aggression.’ Putin replies, ‘This is my backyard. The West has repeatedly humiliated me, over Libya, over Syria, etc., for the last ten years.’ It is clear Putin feels the US are behind a plan to bring Ukraine into NATO and to push his Black Sea Fleet out of Sevastopol. He believes that Russian interests were under grave peril. Long discussions take place in the NSC over the limited options on offer to them. It is evident that Putin’s reading of recent history is very different from theirs. It is equally clear that having an enemy suits his domestic political interests very well. Ministers divide between the ideologues, like Michael Gove and Oliver Letwin, who believe that strong action is necessary, and realists who recognise that British options are few.

  Cameron is wide awake to the risk that Ukraine is under, but equally aware that there can be no conceivable military involvement, which might provoke an unstoppable and unpredictably severe military response from the Kremlin. ‘From day one, Cameron is clear that we should not make the mistake of encouraging Kiev to fight based on [the assumption] they will have Western military support,’ says a Cameron aide. Obama is increasingly stymied too, caught between indignation at Russian intentions and practical realism.

  Cameron opts for a twin-track approach: keep talking to Putin bilaterally, while being in the vanguard with the EU pushing for sanctions, which strike him as the most viable weapon available to the West. Ahead of an EU Council on 6 March, he begins lobbying fellow EU leaders to introduce sanctions against Russia, alongside generous financial support to Ukraine. Herman Van Rompuy, who is the chair, is not in favour of a robust response, so before the Council Cameron convenes a meeting in the British delegation office with Angela Merkel, François Hollande, Matteo Renzi and Donald Tusk to try to gird them into resolute action. He hands them a paper, drafted by the NSC. ‘We were far from confident that it would be accepted,’ recalls Llewellyn.19 However, events in Ukraine that day, where separatist agitation was accelerating in the east, are a catalyst to action. Merkel is strongly supportive, as is Tusk. The British are gratified at Hollande getting behind it. Renzi does also, but he is too new in office to have much impact. Sanctions are agreed, with travel bans and asset freezes against Russian individuals and organisations, though the British are disappointed that their own role in galvanising the EU does not receive more coverage. At a second EU Council on 20–21 March, Cameron invites himself to the pre-meeting held by the Nordic states, where he encourages them to speak up at the imminent meeting: ‘We needed to hear their voice on sanctions,’ says an official, ‘and they don’t always contribute forcefully.’ If Cameron hadn’t taken the strong line he did at the EU, the British believe it is likely that sanctions would not have been as tough, or lasted so long. After this flurry of activity, Cameron’s influence over Ukraine, and more generally on the international stage, begins to fade.

  He comes under increasing pressure as the year draws on to focus on domestic and political matters, with the election less than a year away. In 2008, Sarkozy had played a key diplomatic role during the war between Russia and Georgia, but Cameron does not believe he can be a similar broker over Ukraine. ‘You are not suggesting that I do this, are you?’ Cameron asks when the option is discussed at a meeting of the NSC. An official who was present believes Cameron did not rate his prospects, especially without the backing of Washington. Ultimately, he takes a back seat, saying he is happy for Merkel to lead on Ukraine. She speaks Russian, unlike him, and has a deep understanding of the region: as she tells Cameron, she backpacked around the Ukrainian Donbass as a teenager. Cameron trusts her judgement, that the West must be robust as the best way of de-escalating fighting and danger. She and Putin have over forty conversations about Ukraine. ‘She has an empathy for the place and an understanding of the issues that we would have been foolish not to utilise,’ says a senior aide.20 The British are even content to go along with the perception that France is a pivotal ally working with Germany trying to resolve Ukraine, even if France’s involvement is largely tokenistic. But jibes that Britain is absent from the top table hurt.

  The shooting down over Ukraine of the Malaysian airliner MH17 on 17 July, with Russian-backed forces the likely culprits, strengthens the resolve of the Europeans to stand up to Putin. Cameron himself seems to be an increasingly isolated and mistrusted figure in the EU. His foreign policy, which promised so much in 2010–11, is becoming roundly criticised. The Economist describes coalition foreign policy as ‘feeble’, while the Spectator dismisses it as ‘dismal’.21 Internally too, voices in the Foreign Office and beyond are critical that Cameron isn’t willing to invest the time in foreign policy or to pick up the phone more to European leaders, above all Merkel. To David Richards, the reasons are clear: ‘In Ukraine, as in Syria and Libya, there is a lack of strategy and statesmanship. The problem is the inability to think things through. Too often it seems to be more about the Notting Hill liberal agenda rather than statecraft.’22

  Miliband seizes on this critique to attack Cameron for retreating from the world. Practically, as well as personally, the Syrian defeat at the end of August has diminished Britain’s standing in the world, as well as Cameron’s self-confidence and willingness to be an activist prime minister abroad. He is deeply frustrated by being unable to shape a more convincing narrative for all the effort that he has put into foreign policy during his premiership. But he’s still prime minister and is far from giving up on making an impact on the world stage. He continues with his twin-track policy towards Russia. He is prominent among those at the G7 (Russia having been suspended) in Brussels on 4 and 5 June 2014, who argue that Russia cannot break all the rules of international behaviour and remain in the club. But equally, he keeps his personal line open to Putin, talking at the airport in Paris at the time of the D-Day seventieth commemoration, and at Brisbane on 15 and 16 November at the G20. Cameron felt it offered a ‘glimmer of light’. Messages come back to London from the British Embassy in Moscow that Putin ‘still respects’ Cameron, while finding him at the tough end of EU leaders. Throughout the autumn of 2014 and the spring of 2015, Cameron continues to watch Ukraine nervously, uncertain whether Putin’s next move will be to attack eastern Ukraine openly with a full-scale military invasion. All the while, he has to ward off increasingly vocal internal pressures – from the Foreign Office, which is concerned that he is not involved in the discussions alongside Merkel, and the senior military, who want him to sound more threatening in the name of deterrence.

  Had Cameron missed a trick in not seeing that Putin was being boxed into a corner with the EU’s overtures to Ukraine in 2013? Could he not have used his close understanding of Putin’s mindset and insecurities to have counselled that the EU back off for f
ear of provoking the very response that occurred in 2014? The answers are unknowable. Of course Cameron could do little to solve Ukraine’s deep-rooted internal animosities, or counter Russia’s resurgent ambitions. But if there was a failure of Western imagination, Cameron must share the blame with his fellow leaders.

  THIRTY

  2014 Budget: Powering the North

  March 2014–February 2015

  ‘From as early as 2010, I’d focused on the 2014 Budget as being a Budget for savers,’ says George Osborne.1 He knew it would be his penultimate Budget before the general election. ‘We had in mind that the centrepiece of the Budget would be abolishing the 10p tax rate for savings.’2 The proposal is well received in the Treasury, in part because of the 10p rate’s complexity, especially with some of those least adept at claiming the benefit.