Cameron leaves for Belgium with low expectations. On Wednesday, both Reinfeldt and Rutte confirm that if there is to be a vote, they will support Juncker.25 On the afternoon of Thursday 26 June, Cameron and all of his EU counterparts attend a ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing of the Ypres Salient, before dedicating a memorial bench inscribed with the word ‘peace’ in each of the EU’s twenty-four official languages.26 The venue has been deliberately chosen because of the approaching centenary of the outbreak of the First World War that August. Ypres was the site of incessant fighting on the Western Front throughout the war, and the scene of the greatest concentration of German and British loss of life. After the poignant ceremony, the leaders repair to the medieval Cloth Hall, rebuilt with money from German reparations in the 1920s and 1930s. During the dinner, much of the conversation between EU leaders is about reconciliation in Europe and avoids discussion of the EU’s current problems. Cameron’s remarks about Britain’s role in reshaping modern Europe after the horrors of two world wars are well received. Merkel is distracted by Germany playing the US in the World Cup, and is thrilled by her country’s 1–0 victory. The conversation after dinner moves back to the present. Only Cameron and Orbán want to speak about the Spitzenkandidaten; to all the others it is a done deal, which will only cause aggravation by bringing it up again now. They don’t want to hear Cameron talking about Juncker’s nomination being ‘an irreversible step which would hand power from the European Council to the European Parliament’.27 They have had enough of it all.
The next morning, the leaders travel to Brussels for the formal part of the Council. The morning is largely spent on Ukraine and Russia. At lunchtime, the vote that the PM forces takes place. It is a total humiliation for Cameron. Some fellow feeling for his position amongst leaders comes out in the communiqué, which is generous to him, and observes that Merkel will want to consider the British position carefully when looking at the other top jobs shortly to be decided.28 The next day, Barroso welcomes Juncker to the Commission. Ken Clarke, who knows Juncker, is asked to phone him to help smooth things over. On 30 June, Cameron calls Juncker himself to congratulate him on his new post. They meet on 17 July, which includes an embarrassing ‘high five’ accompanied by a cringeworthy press statement saying that ‘this is how Juncker greets quite a lot of people’.29
Two EU issues remain prominent in Cameron’s mind: the renegotiation, on which he has decided he must keep quiet until after the general election; and acquiring a top economic job for the UK in the new Commission. On 17 July, Cameron presses Juncker hard: ‘I don’t rule out giving you an economic post,’ Juncker tells him; equally, ‘I don’t say that I definitely will.’ Amongst the several economic jobs up for grabs, commissioner for financial stability and financial services is the favoured one. The British keep up the pressure on Brussels, thinking they may well end up with a lesser economic portfolio such as internal markets, or energy. Juncker’s backing is all-important, but it will not be easy given Cameron’s relentless efforts to block him. His relations with Cameron’s predecessors have not been good either. They were poisonous with Blair, notably after Britain took over the European presidency in 2005, and were arguably worse with Brown, who fell out with him over tax and the position of the City of London.
Cameron immediately starts the search for an ideal candidate. The first thought is an MP, but Cameron reacts strongly against this because it would trigger a by-election. Their search moves to the House of Lords, and they alight on Jonathan Hill, who succeeded Lord Strathclyde as Leader of the Lords in January 2013. Hill had worked for Major as Political Secretary in Number 10, and Cameron thinks that he has the intellect, charm and persuasive skills to succeed in the post.
At a meeting in Brussels several weeks later, Juncker accedes to British wishes and offers Hill the financial services portfolio. This is seen by Number 10 as a good result, because Juncker has yet to allocate the other portfolios and is clearly favouring Britain. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk is nominated for the presidency of the Council, again showing Cameron’s influence. Tusk will be useful. Cameron has worked closely with him over Ukraine, and he will be an ally in the event of a renegotiation. On 10 September, Hill is formally nominated as commissioner for financial stability and financial services. Some anti-British feeling is thought in Number 10 to be responsible for hostile questioning of him in front of MEPs, which means that he has to be recalled before being confirmed on 8 October.30
With Hill’s appointment out of the way, Cameron’s engagement with Europe steadily recedes. He at last achieves his initial stated aim of not allowing the EU to distract him unduly. The prize of a renegotiation with the EU on terms that achieve greater legitimacy among the British public lies in the future. If he can enable a rededication of the country to the EU for another forty years, he will be very happy. In the meantime, he knows that his record on Europe has been at best uneven. Though he always claimed that his detachment from the EPP was the right decision, it was taken for narrow tactical reasons to outflank his two Eurosceptic rivals, Liam Fox and David Davis, during the 2005 leadership election. It hampered his ability to make progress in the European Parliament. ‘Had anyone thought about the longer-term consequences of where that would land them?’ asks one senior diplomat. ‘No. Had they taken any palliative action to rebuild relations with centre-right parties on a systematic basis? No. There was no strategy.’
Cameron came to power without a strong vision for Europe, and by 2015 it was political events at home that led him to the grand strategy of the renegotiation and referendum. He and Osborne quickly realised that further treaty change would be needed after 2010, and that Europe was changing far more than they had anticipated in the wake of the eurozone crisis. Cameron became PM not knowing Merkel, though she became the most important and powerful political ally he had in Europe over the five years. When they were in step, such as on the issue of the European budget, his life was much easier. But without her support, he remained very isolated, as the Juncker saga showed all too clearly. As Cameron’s first term drew to a close, the question was whether her support would be solid enough to help him achieve the prize of a meaningful renegotiation.
THIRTY-FIVE
Final Autumn
September–December 2014
It is 6 p.m. on Sunday 21 September at Chequers. Cameron is relaxing over a pre-dinner drink with George Osborne and Craig Oliver, discussing the party conference a week away. He is in good spirits, still relieved about the Scottish referendum result two days before. He spent the Friday and Saturday at Dean with Steve Hilton and his wife Rachel Whetstone, who found him in notably ‘good spirits’. But as he ponders the future with his two trusted colleagues, he is alive to the challenges ahead and focusing hard on how to meet them. His position in the party is still far from secure. Word has come to Number 10 that, had the Scottish referendum been lost, senior Tories would have started a bandwagon to unseat him.1 ‘There were people who were very much solid, traditional Tory loyalists for whom that was an unthinkable event,’ recalls one senior party figure. ‘The PM might have found that the Nicholas Soames’s of this world, who have been among his greatest cheerleaders, could suddenly become the greatest critics.’ The polls remain static and worrying: the Conservatives are averaging 32% against Labour’s 35%. Following Douglas Carswell’s defection to UKIP three weeks before, chatter is incessant about another imminent defection. Miliband gave two strong conference speeches in 2012 and 2013, and Cameron’s team assume he will do so again. The right of the party and the commentariat are still growling about the ousting of Michael Gove and Owen Paterson: they are asking, ‘Where’s the beef? Does this prime minister have any policies of his own?’
Cameron’s challenge is to come up with a message that will excite voters in the fast-approaching 2015 general election. How exactly do they move the rhetoric away from cuts? Lynton Crosby’s mantra about the long-term economic plan is forever in their ears, but they feel they need to offer more.
Cameron’s speech the following week will be his last great opportunity to lay out his stall ahead of the election campaign. ‘We need to score, and score demonstrably,’ says Craig Oliver. A repetition of the PM’s performance in 2011 and 2013, which failed to ignite his audience, must be avoided. Miliband’s successful 2013 conference speech, where his announcement of an energy-price freeze set the agenda for several months, provides the catalyst for a policy-rich speech. ‘My sense was that Ed Miliband would make another big announcement and what we needed to do was effectively launch the campaign,’ recalls one person working on the speech. Since June or July, a small group of five, including Osborne and Rupert Harrison, have been working up a cunning tax plan for Cameron to announce at the conference. If proof is needed about the continuation of the unparalleled bond between prime minister and chancellor, which lasts to the end of the parliament, it can be found in Osborne’s generosity in allowing Cameron to make the tax announcement, rather than bagging it for his own speech.
At 7.30 p.m., speechwriter Clare Foges arrives for dinner, and the following morning, Gove, Crosby and Ameet Gill join them to thrash out a final script. Cameron has had a particularly busy September: aside from the referendum, he has been at the UN for the General Assembly and chaired the NATO summit at Newport in South Wales. As a result, ‘the speech didn’t crystallise until shortly before’ the conference, with only six or seven days to go. Foges has been advocating the idea of ‘a new British era’ to capitalise on the referendum result. ‘I am so proud to stand here as prime minister of four nations in one United Kingdom’ is her idea for the opening, projecting Cameron as a ‘steward of the nation’ with a ream of policies he wants to achieve in the next five years. Gove agrees that the text has to be elevated ‘above mere transactional details’. But Crosby’s emphasis on security, tax announcements and the long-term economic plan prevails. ‘Conferring security at every stage of your life’ becomes the working theme of the speech.
Cameron, unlike Thatcher, doesn’t want to be up half the night before the speech finishing it off. He wants it locked down long beforehand. The session that morning is therefore crucial. By lunchtime, the main elements are all in place. On tax, he will steal the thunder from the Lib Dems, whose conference begins in twelve days, by announcing that the personal allowance for income tax will rise to £12,500. More popular still, he will say the threshold on the 40p tax band will rise from £41,900 to £50,000 by the end of the next parliament. A series of further statements are agreed, to convince voters that ‘there is something in it for them’. For young house buyers, he will say that ‘we will help you get a place of your own’ with ‘Help to Buy’ and a plan to build 100,000 affordable homes, available only to first-time buyers. For parents, he will promise a good school for all, and will chastise shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt for his opposition to free schools. For the elderly, there is the promise of future pension reform. For England, he will ‘deliver’ on his promise of ‘English votes for English laws’. For those tempted by UKIP, immigration will be at the heart of his EU renegotiation strategy, and the Human Rights Act will be scrapped. For the young, there will be a place on the National Citizen Service. His strongest anger and passion will be reserved for Labour’s policy on the NHS, which he thinks is ‘scaremongering’. He will thus pledge to protect the NHS budget for England. Cameron’s team plot how they will throw the press off the scent by briefing ahead of the conference that his NHS budget promise will be at the heart of the speech, to give the tax announcements maximum surprise value.
Miliband knows his own conference speech in Manchester is one of the challenges of his political career. Once again he decides to deliver it without notes, as Cameron had done in 2007. Miliband’s personal ratings lag a long way behind Cameron’s, at minus 55% to minus 14%,2 and he hopes the speech will show he is prime ministerial, a natural leader. But his hopes are dashed as he delivers a lacklustre performance and omits mention of the deficit, which becomes the dominant narrative about not only his speech but also the entire party conference, handing perfect ammunition to critics inside and outside the Labour Party. Cameron’s team are thus in unusually buoyant mood as the week draws to an end and they prepare to travel to Birmingham.
But on Saturday comes the deliberately timed defection of Mark Reckless to UKIP. Cameron is mortified and incandescent. Late that night, when Andrew Feldman has a drink with him in his room, he is still fuming. His old university friend keeps trying to bolster his spirits, telling him how they have more members at conference than anyone can remember and that everyone is in remarkably good spirits. He has only limited success.3 Cameron’s anger mirrors that of his team: ‘the fucker has come along and blown everything’ is their collective thought that Saturday. But Feldman’s optimism proves well placed. By Monday, the team begin reporting that that ‘the journos seem pissed off that Reckless hasn’t put us on our knees. They keep asking why we are not all depressed by it. They assume we have something up our sleeve.’
Osborne’s speech on Monday announces that a future Conservative government will freeze benefits below inflation for a further two years. Its aim is to throw down the gauntlet, saying to Labour, ‘This is how we would cut £3 billion from the deficit: what will you do?’4 Cameron’s speech on Wednesday 1 October is his most combative to date:
A few weeks ago, Ed Balls said that in thirteen years of government, Labour had made ‘some mistakes’. Some mistakes? Excuse me? You were the people who left Britain with the biggest peacetime deficit in history … who gave us the deepest recession since the war … who destroyed our pensions system, bust our banking system … who left a million young people out of work, 5 million on out-of-work benefits – and hundreds of billions of debt. Some mistakes? Labour were just one big mistake.5
The emotion in Cameron’s voice is clear when he delivers the most heartfelt part of his speech, on the NHS:
From Labour last week, we heard the same old rubbish about the Conservatives and the NHS. Spreading complete and utter lies … I am someone who has relied on the NHS – whose family knows more than most how important it is … who knows what it’s like to go to hospital night after night with a child in your arms … knowing that when you get there, you have people who will care for that child and love that child like their own. How dare they suggest I would ever put that at risk for other people’s children? How dare they frighten those who are relying on the NHS right now!6
For all the bluntness of Cameron’s onslaught, Miliband will return to this NHS attack even more forcefully in the election campaign.
To assert his credentials, not only in the forthcoming election but also against any would-be contenders in the Conservative Party, Cameron highlights his qualities as leader. Looking directly at the camera, he says ‘you cannot be prime minister of this country, and forget the most important issue that we face’, a jibe at Miliband omitting to mention the deficit. To counter the accusations of complacency and the charge that he feels an entitlement to be prime minister, one of the most repetitive criticisms of him, he responds: ‘I don’t claim to be a perfect leader, but I am your public servant, standing here, wanting to make the country so much better.’ To counter the accusations that the Conservatives are heartless, and Labour have a monopoly on care, he claims that the Tories are ‘the real party of compassion and social justice’.7
After the speech, Rupert Harrison plants himself by Craig Oliver’s side for the post-conference briefing. ‘I deliberately brought Rupert with me to ensure we had all the answers to the detailed questions we’d undoubtedly be asked. The previous week Labour had got themselves into a tangle – unable to answer key points on a policy, eventually having to gather the lobby round a speakerphone so they could talk to an expert in London,’ Oliver says.8 The press are upbeat. The speech has had an electrifying effect on the audience. ‘Gone were the warnings of more pain, more spending cuts, more austerity to come,’ reports the BBC’s Nick Robinson. ‘David Cameron and his party came to Birmingham fearin
g the worst – more defections and more divisions. They leave here believing they might just still be in with a chance.’9 The Mail titles have not been notably friendly to Cameron over the previous four and a half years, and concerted efforts have been made of late to bring them onside. The speech helps win them back: ‘at last he gets it’ is their line.10 To the Spectator’s Isabel Hardman, it is ‘one of the best speeches he has given since entering government’.11 Further support comes from Spectator editor Fraser Nelson: ‘his performance is a reminder of why, even now, he remains the Tory party’s single greatest asset … his speech was a powerful invocation of the strengths of Conservatism … it was passionate, eloquent, and overall, a speech of a prime minister’.12 Murdoch has never become a bosom buddy of Cameron’s, but The Times has warmed. More important than any commentary is the galvanising effect the speech has on the party faithful. The mood of the conference has gone from foreboding at the start, to a Dunkirk defiance, before ending on a high.
The success of the conference does nothing, however, to shift opinion polls. All eyes now turn to Osborne to pull something out of the bag in his Autumn Statement. Throughout October and November, boosted by falling oil prices, the outlook for the economy looks increasingly optimistic. Cameron and Osborne take every chance to travel the country in search of photo opportunities in factories, construction sites and businesses, to highlight the positive employment statistics. The luminous high-visibility vests and hard hats become constant props. Osborne hopes the statement will repeat the acclaim of his March Budget, though the opportunities for reprising the trick are few and narrowing. It may well be the last fiscal event of the coalition: the Lib Dems are saying they will not allow a Budget in the spring of 2015.
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