Cameron at 10

by Anthony Seldon

  The risk of a leadership challenge to Cameron had been reduced by the introduction by William Hague when party leader of new rules requiring 15% of MPs to write letters to the chairman of the 1922 Committee to trigger a vote of confidence. The change deliberately discourages a challenge because, assuming the chair is acting with integrity, no MP knows if their letter is the first or the last needed. Had a confidence vote in Cameron been triggered he would have won it comfortably, but with a very significant minority voting against, 1922 insiders say. Such a vote would have been damaging for him, and could have precipitated a chain of events leading to his departure. (Although from the first time Cameron came into danger in 2007, Hague himself has made it known that if the leader goes, he would go too.28)

  The 1922 Committee executive say that they will have a conference call on the Friday after the election to take stock of the position, before convening a full meeting of the parliamentary party on the Monday morning. Cameron’s team that polling-day lunchtime sense that there are a worrying number of backbenchers who would relish a fight, and would prefer to go into Opposition than be part of another coalition with the Lib Dems, so they aim to corral a group of supporters made up of ministers, traditional loyalists and those who hope for promotion in the following five years, to vote down the refuseniks. For several weeks, Gove and Gavin Williamson have been working to identify possible candidates. Their task is made much harder because several heavyweight loyalists, such as former ministers Tony Baldry and Stephen Dorrell, who could have happily told the 1922 Committee to ‘stop panicking’, are standing down as MPs at the election. Having figures known to be Number 10 stooges would be pointless. They worry that they might not be able to find sufficient supporters to champion their cause. Equally they are unsure of the precise numbers of those willing to speak out against them.

  After lunch, at about 2 p.m., Cameron leaves for Dean. An hour later, speechwriter Clare Foges arrives to work directly with the PM. She finds an apparently empty house, sits down and waits. After a short while, Cameron comes downstairs and says, ‘Right, shall we begin the speeches?’ He wants three separate speeches drafted. Best-case scenario is they have enough seats to form a coalition with the Lib Dems or the DUP: he dictates a few thoughts to her which she works up into a speech, completed later by him and Osborne. The second speech anticipates Labour being behind but trying to form a majority with the SNP. Llewellyn has distilled the thoughts from the midday meeting and emailed them to Foges, arguing that Labour has no democratic case for forming a coalition as the electorate voted on the basis that Miliband had expressly ruled out such an arrangement.

  The third speech is the bleakest. With the house still quiet, Cameron airs various thoughts which Foges takes down, before working them up into a speech on her laptop. Later that afternoon, a very small group of Cameron, Samantha, Osborne, Llewellyn and Fall go for a walk through the woods near Cameron’s house. They continue to discuss post-election outcomes. All the while, they are receiving mixed messages; some reports are optimistic, others pessimistic talking of high Labour turnout. At one point, Cameron asks, ‘Are you sure we don’t need to have “speech zero”?’ This is in the event of the Conservatives winning an overall majority. The collective feeling is that, in the very unlikely event of that happening, it will be easy enough for him to construct what he needs to say. As one member of the group says, it would be a ‘nice problem to have’.

  Afterwards they settle down on garden chairs for drinks on the patio. ‘I’m going to read you the speech,’ Cameron tells them. They go very quiet. They all know that this is effectively the ‘if we lose’ speech. It opens, ‘It is clear that we have not won and that I will have to go. I will be seeing the Queen later this morning.’ He goes on to say poignantly, ‘I hope they will say I did my duty. Being the prime minister of this country is the best job that one can possibly have. I wish Ed and Justine every success in doing it. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve.’ The state of the country when he walked through the front door of Number 10 five years ago comes next, and he lists some of the achievements, including creating 2 million jobs. ‘I will stay on as party leader until July but will not be making any comments or sharing any thoughts on my successor,’ he concludes. The mood that evening amongst them all is ‘very bleak’. As he talks, Fall, Sugg and Foges have tears in their eyes. Everyone is hugely emotional. Cameron has convinced himself that he will not be prime minister in twenty-four hours. They talk about plans for him and Samantha leaving Downing Street. They are annoyed by news, as it happens incorrect, that the Milibands are demanding they are out by Saturday morning, which they feel contrasts with the courtesy they extended to Gordon Brown in May 2010. Cameron is extremely down that evening: ‘The mood had turned very dark,’ recalls one present.

  At 7.30 p.m. they have a supper of steak pie which Cameron had brought down from Scotland the previous day. Apprehension mounts as the evening wears on. The final polls have not made for good reading. YouGov has Labour and Conservative tied on 34%.29 ICM, which they, along with many, read as the gold standard, comes out at 35% each.30 Populus says it is going to be extraordinarily tight: ‘The reality is that, when we were confronted by this, our confidence ebbed away,’ says one. At 9 p.m. two conference calls take place by prior arrangement. The first is with the media spokespeople at CCHQ, the second with Cabinet ministers. Cameron thanks them for all they have done during the campaign and they briefly discuss how to respond to the various scenarios. Ever conscious of the way that remarks said early on can shape the environment, Cameron urges his ministers to remain calm and disciplined until they know the whole picture. At 9.20 p.m. they go through from the dining room to the living room and put on the television. His phone rings: ‘We’re going to be fine. We’re going to get 300,’ Feldman tells him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cameron replies despondently. ‘I’m just not sure it’s possible.’

  ‘We’re really confident that our voters have come out in numbers. Internal tracking says we’re going to be 300,’ his old friend says before signing off. Those still in the team from 2010 – Llewellyn, Fall and Sugg – sit in the same seats to watch television as they did five years before. A car arrives to take Osborne off for a helicopter flight up to his constituency of Tatton in Cheshire. Like millions of others in the country, Cameron and his team huddle round the television waiting anxiously for the clock to strike ten o’clock.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘The sweetest victory’

  7–8 May 2015

  To Cameron’s team gathered round the television at his home in Dean in Oxfordshire, the seconds tick agonisingly slowly until, as Big Ben strikes 10 p.m., David Dimbleby announces: ‘We are saying the Conservatives are the largest party. Here are the figures which we have. Quite remarkable this exit poll. The Conservatives on 316, that’s up nine since the last election in 2010. Ed Miliband for Labour, seventy-seven behind him at 239, down 19. If that is the story, it is a quite sensational story.’1 Cameron’s team cannot believe what they are hearing. There is a long pause before they cry out in joy and start hugging each other wildly. ‘Sensational David, an extraordinary night if, if, that exit poll is right,’ says Nick Robinson shortly after. His words inject a note of caution. ‘Hold on, it’s only an exit poll,’ say Cameron’s team. ‘Why might it be any more right than all the other polls which have us level pegging?’ The final prediction from CCHQ had the Conservatives up to 315; so maybe the exit poll is right, they wonder.

  Cautious optimism gradually replaces the depression of earlier in the evening. Cameron, Ed Llewellyn and Kate Fall hold conference calls with Lynton Crosby in London and George Osborne in Tatton. Crosby impresses on them the need to remain cautious and they agree that Cabinet ministers should not stray from this line. An email is immediately circulated to them before they take to the airwaves. Crosby believes that they will finish in the 315/316 area, but says it all depends on a very small number of voters in the seats they are defending against Labour. Can they
hold these? ‘We know we’ve killed the Lib Dems, but what happens if we can’t hang on to our trickier seats?’ Cameron starts to worry about who they will partner in a government if the Lib Dems are wiped out: ‘Look, if we get 316 we’ll be fine, we needn’t worry about the Lib Dems,’ he is told. ‘Oh my God, yes. I don’t care – we can go it alone,’ he exclaims. He is finding it difficult to take it all in, and is in a state of shock: ‘He is very emotional, genuinely stunned,’ says one.

  The mood quickly falls when the BBC report a YouGov poll which puts the Conservatives on 284, completely in line with the opinion polls, and which is based on a big sample on polling day. ‘It was an emotional rollercoaster,’ says one. Glued to the television, they debate which is right: the near unanimity on the opinion polls, or the exit poll, which was accurate in both the 2010 and 2005 elections. The guru here is Craig Oliver, who had been the editor of the BBC’s general election results programme in 2010. They all turn to him as he confirms that the exit poll in 2010 was indeed 100% accurate, and he explains why he has so much faith in John Curtice, the renowned psephologist behind the exit poll. While waiting for the first results, a party watching television at the home of the president of Cameron’s constituency association, PR adviser Peter Gummer, rush down the street to congratulate Cameron’s team. There is general excitement, but also agonising uncertainty. The plan was for Cameron to have gone upstairs for a couple of hours’ sleep after the exit poll was declared, but he is far too much on edge.

  The first result to be declared, the safe Labour seat of Houghton and Sunderland South at 10.55 p.m., tells them little except for the total collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote from 13.9% and 5,292 in 2010 to just 2.1% and 791. Cameron’s team remain on a knife-edge until other results come in. It takes an unusually long time for the first results to be declared in the Conservative/Labour marginal seats. There is palpable relief as the early results confirm the prediction of the exit poll rather than the YouGov poll. At 1.48 a.m., Nuneaton declares. This is one of those marginal Conservative seats in the Midlands vulnerable to Labour, which Labour needs to win. Huge effort has been poured into the constituency in support of the candidate Marcus Jones, with Cameron paying a personal visit. They all know how much the result matters. Labour needs a 2.3% swing to win it; but the swing is in the other direction, 4% towards the Conservatives whose vote increases by 2,000 votes. ‘That was the big confirmation,’ records Llewellyn. To Osborne, the other key vote that night is one not even highlighted by the BBC, North Warwickshire, where the Conservative majority increases from fifty-four to 2,973, while Labour suffers a 4% fall in the vote. ‘Those two results were hugely significant. It told us that we might be on track for an overall majority,’ recalls Osborne.2 Shortly after 2 a.m., Cameron’s party leave Dean for the count in Witney’s Windrush Leisure Centre. The sound of the Sky helicopter tracking the convoy brings out the crowds from the villages who wave as they shoot past. At 2.44 a.m. Cameron walks into the leisure centre, facing a wall of photographers, cameramen, reporters and supporters. He is shown to a small upstairs gym full of equipment smelling of sweaty socks. Llewellyn peels off to go to CCHQ. The remaining party set up temporary camp before becoming glued to the television.

  At 3.29 a.m., the Lib Dem Ed Davey’s result in Kingston and Surbiton is declared, revealing a Conservative gain for James Berry with a majority of nearly 3,000. ‘Hang on, we might just have the numbers we need,’ says Liz Sugg.3 At 4.32 a.m., they hear Boris Johnson speaking after his success in Uxbridge: ‘The people of Britain after a long and exhausting campaign have finally spoken.’ Fall says it is at about this time that they start to realise they will win a majority.4 Cameron asks for some paper and one of his favoured blue Sharpie pens. He turns to Craig Oliver and says, ‘I suppose we’d better write a speech soon – what shall we say?’

  ‘You should reclaim “One Nation” – it’s what you think and who you are. We want people to know that even if they didn’t vote for you, you have something to say to them. You want to be their prime minister too,’ Oliver replies.

  It chimes immediately with what Cameron had been thinking. ‘I think you’re right – we should never have let Miliband try to take that away from us. We should reclaim it.’ He also believes that it would contain an implicit reference to the sensational result in Scotland, where the SNP are on course to win all but three seats. A few minutes later, Osborne calls from Tatton and Cameron runs the idea by him. He likes it.5 ‘Yes, that is the right thing for you to say now,’ the chancellor says. Cameron then sits at a chair and writes out his script. The Telford declaration at 4.45 a.m. and Gower at 5.11 a.m., both Conservative gains from Labour, tell them not only that they have fought off the Labour attack, but that they are making inroads into long-held Labour territory. At 5.23 a.m., Miliband speaks after his Doncaster result: it is ‘a very disappointing and difficult night for the Labour Party’.

  At 5.43 a.m., after successfully holding his own seat, Cameron delivers his first public utterance of the night. ‘If you want a home that you can own of your own, if you want security and dignity in retirement, we are on your side … I want my party, and, I hope, a government I would like to lead, to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost, the mantle of one nation, one United Kingdom.’6 His core idea is that he doesn’t want there to be an adversarial relationship between government and the people; he wants to reach out to the whole country. At 5.52 a.m. he gets in his car, sitting beside Samantha, with his team in other vehicles. As they drive east towards the rising sun, he is on the phone talking and sending messages. It is now daylight. ‘Cornwall North, my God!’ texts one aide to him from the car behind after the result is declared, another Conservative gain from the Lib Dems – a seat they had held for twenty-three years.

  Cameron speaks to Llewellyn about the plans. It is now clear that an overall majority of indeterminate size will be achieved; Cameron is still finding it hard to believe. Then he calls Crosby: ‘I’m going to give you a massive hug, Lynton,’ he tells him. He is in regular touch with Osborne whose result in Tatton is declared just as Cameron’s car pulls up to CCHQ in Westminster at 7.15 a.m. He is in a state of some euphoria. Crosby, Feldman, Gilbert and Textor are there to greet him in the lobby. They take him into the large open-plan office: ‘Thank you. You are an amazing team,’ he tells them while standing on a filing cabinet placed on its side. ‘Five more years! Five more years!’ chant his rapturous audience in return. Somebody present films his speech and puts it on YouTube. Cameron compares the victory to elections that he has known, 1987, 1992 and 2010, and tells them that ‘this is the sweetest victory of them all … The pundits got it wrong. The pollsters got it wrong. The commentators got it wrong.’7 After much hugging and cheering, he is swept back down to the car.

  At 7.30 a.m. he arrives back at Number 10. When he sees his staff waiting for him, headed by his principal private secretary Chris Martin, he gives them all hugs – ‘unusual, because although he’s a very nice man, he’s not usually tactile’, says one of his team – before going upstairs to the flat to see the children off to school. At 8 a.m. he comes back downstairs. Christopher Geidt, the Queen’s private secretary, is in the main corridor, finalising arrangements for the day. The plan had been for the Queen to stay at Windsor in the expectation that coalition talks would last some days, but she was to return to London if necessary, so the prime minister could have an audience with her. However, by 6 a.m., when it looks like Cameron would be back, and it would be like a ‘normal’ election, Downing Street and Palace officials discuss how to respond. Keen to avoid speculation that the Queen had been working on the assumption of coalition talks, arrangements are made for her to return to Buckingham Palace. Difficulties arise over the precise form of words to be released about her meeting with Cameron: officials suggest the press be told that the Queen will see the prime minister ‘at the conclusion of the coalition government’ and that the prime minister ‘now has the intention of forming a Conservative government’.
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br />   At 8.05 a.m., the BBC predicts that Cameron will receive 329 seats, with a majority in single figures. The news is brought to Cameron while he is talking in his study to Jeremy Heywood and Chris Martin about immediate plans for the day. At 8.16 they learn that Ed Balls has lost his Morley and Outwood seat to the Conservatives, a massive defeat for the Labour cause. Not since Michael Portillo lost his seat in Labour’s landslide in 1997 has such a heavyweight figure been so brutally ejected. Before going up to the flat for a couple of hours’ sleep, Cameron shares his thoughts with aides about what he might say in the keynote address he will shortly have to deliver, reiterating that ‘I want to make a speech with One Nation sentiments in it.’