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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In these divided and divisive times, what is the future course for our politics? In this ground-breaking book, Nick Timothy, one of Britain's leading conservative thinkers and commentators, explores the powerful forces driving great changes in our economy, society and democracy. Drawing on his experience at the top of government, Timothy traces the crisis of Western democracy back to both the mistaken assumptions of philosophical liberalism and the rise of ideological ultra-liberalism on left, right and centre. Sparing no sacred cows, he proposes a new kind of conservatism that respects personal freedom but also demands solidarity. He argues that only by rediscovering a unifying sense of the common good and restoring a mutual web of responsibilities between all citizens and institutions can we reject the extremes of economic and cultural liberalism, overcome our divisions, and remake one nation. He goes on to outline an ambitious practical plan for change, covering issues ranging from immigration to the regulation of Big Tech. Nick Timothy's original, forensic and thought-provoking analysis is a must-read for anybody tired by the old dogmas of the liberal left, right and centre. It is a major contribution to the debate on the future of conservatism as it grapples with geopolitical shifts, cultural change, and economic uncertainty.
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Seitenzahl: 520
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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CONTENTS
Cover
Front Matter
Introduction: Out of the Arena
Riding high
Behind the scenes
Brexit
The election campaign
All too human
No effort without error
Notes
1 The Tyranny of the Minority
Ultra-liberalism
Essential liberalism
Elite liberalism
The ultra-liberal ratchet
The motors of ultra-liberalism
The cynical centre
Overreach
Fatal flaws
The unravelling
Notes
2 Destructive Creation
The great stagnation
The effects of globalization
The rise of the robots
New World Disorder
The baby boomer bubble
The British disease
Back to the original sin
Redistributing to the rich
The decline of civic capitalism
Dysfunctional markets
Unregulated markets
Citizens of nowhere
Notes
3 E Pluribus Nihil
The mirage of meritocracy
Forgotten places
Forgotten people
Minority interests
The crisis of the white working class
The constitution of a crisis
Postmodernists and liberals
Identity politics in practice
Culture wars
White decline
The biggest broken promise
Asymmetrical multiculturalism
Citizenship and identity
The rejection of nation
The decline of community
The decline of trust
Notes
4 Reflections on Two Revolutions
The dangerous deceit of illiberal democracy
Illiberal democracy and the radical left
Towards a communitarian correction
Conservatism and liberalism
A human enterprise
Freedom and belonging
Capitalism and community
Equality and solidarity
Inclusion and exclusion
Challenges for conservatives
Conservatism and change
One Nation
Notes
5 Remaking One Nation
Responding to a changing world
Reviving civic capitalism
Bringing Britain together
Repairing democracy
Restoring community
One nation once more
Notes
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Figures
Chapter 2
Figure 1
The Elephant Chart: Change in real income between 1988 and 2008 at various perce…
Chapter 3
Figure 2
The ClockFace Model
Figure 3
The Global Picture
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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‘Refreshingly free from jargon, self-delusion or political partisanship, if you want to know why everything seems to be going wrong for the West, you must read this book.’
Tony Abbott, former Prime Minister of Australia
‘A hopeful and compelling case for a modern state and revitalized communities, recognizing that markets alone will not create a fair and prosperous society. Essential reading across the spectrum.’
Claire Ainsley, Executive Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and author of The New Working Class: How to Win Hearts, Minds and Votes
‘This is an important attempt to chart a way forward for the Conservative Party by an author who has been at the heart of government. Nick Timothy seeks to do for the Conservative Party what Anthony Crosland tried to do many years ago for the Labour Party. I hope that he is more successful.’
Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government, King’s College, London
‘This is an essential book for anyone interested in understanding the forces driving this age of upheaval. It is a book about political power and the power of politics to effect lasting change. And it boldly explains why liberals keep getting it wrong.’
Jason Cowley, Editor of The New Statesman
‘Nick Timothy has long been one of the most imaginative and important writers on the nature and future of conservatism. But this superb book should be read by anyone with an interest in our changing world, the political response to it, and the path forward from an era of turmoil.’
Matthew d’Ancona, Editor and Partner, Tortoise Media
‘There is much in this book I don’t agree with and much I do, but there wasn’t a page I didn’t find absorbing and challenging. I find Nick Timothy one of the most interesting modern Conservative thinkers and he has written a really interesting, important book which demands to be read.’
Daniel Finkelstein, Conservative peer and Times columnist
‘Where does the anger come from? Should capitalism be tamed? Did liberal reform over-reach? Nick Timothy, reflecting in the calm after the storm of office, has produced an analysis that is essential reading, whether you’re from the right or the left, or simply a “neutral” who is trying to understand our baffling times.’
Gary Gibbon, Political Editor, Channel Four News
‘Nick Timothy is one of the few thinkers on the right who understands the dangers of untrammelled free-markets and the value of community. His ideas deserve a hearing from socialists as well as conservatives.’
Maurice Glasman, Labour peer and founder of Blue Labour
‘Nick Timothy was briefly at the centre of power under Theresa May but this book could be more influential than his time in hands-on politics. He has broken with the old political “packages” and crystallized a new centre of British politics, which combines small-c conservative common sense on many of the big social and cultural issues with a sense of economic injustice, and the failings of contemporary capitalism, borrowed from the best traditions of the centre-left.’
David Goodhart, author of The Road to Somewhere
‘Nick Timothy is Britain’s leading conservative thinker if one’s measure is a feel for real people rather than ease with arid theorizing. That this book sets out a trenchant yet sophisticated case for conservatism should come as no surprise. Nor should its stress on what is politically deliverable. But what is most striking is that it is also a serious attempt to find ways of making modern liberalism workable – and rescue it from itself.’
Paul Goodman, Editor of Conservative Home
‘Nick Timothy is a brilliant analyst of our present discontents. His insights are sharp, his writing is compelling and his arguments are powerful. He knows the problems with our politics and takes no prisoners on his quest to put them right.’
Michael Gove MP
‘Nick Timothy has given us a powerful critique of the simplistic liberal ideology that has ruled the right and the left for a generation or more. Analysing the destabilizing effects of unchecked free markets and an exclusive concern with individual freedom, he exposes the insecurities that have led to the dangerous rise of populism. Anyone who worries about the disordered state of politics today will profit from reading this hard-hitting book.’
Professor John Gray, author and philosopher
‘Nick Timothy has written a clear, timely and thought-provoking book, providing a persuasive analysis of how the liberal consensus has lost popular support. Arguing that conservatism should always be focused on how we relate to each other, he points out that its adherents cannot be relaxed about the decline of community or the current extent of inequality. His recommendations will be important for political leaders and thinkers seeking a way forward that is neither veering towards populism nor doomed to be unpopular.’
William Hague, Conservative peer and former Conservative Party Leader
‘Nick Timothy is that rare breed of politico, prophet and philosopher. After masterfully explaining what went wrong, he expertly lays out a new roadmap of how to stop the destruction of our culture and nation. To read this book is to feel convinced that Britain can, once again, lead the Western world back to sanity.’
Ed Husain, author of The House of Islam: A Global History
‘The Conservative Party may now be master of all it surveys, but its obsession with Brexit has denuded it of a consistent and workable political economy – which certainly, as Nick Timothy argues, is not going to lie in reheating some combination of austerity and Thatcherism. In a The State We’re In for the political right that looks unflinchingly at our ills, he sets out a reforming economic and social programme which may chime with Boris Johnson more than the consensus expects – a timely and must-read contribution to the national debate.’
Will Hutton, Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, author of The State We’re In and Observer columnist
‘Nick Timothy’s new book harnesses his unique combination of intellectual depth and practical policy experience to offer a bold and original diagnosis of the ills that bedevil today’s polarized Western societies. He introduces the key idea of the “liberal ratchet”, in which today’s “meritocratic” elite seeks to untether itself from rooted majorities, working through institutions shielded from the electorate – courts, universities, agencies, parts of the media – to advance a universalist vision. Intellectuals are generally drawn to the individualisms of left and right, while their electorates yearn in vain for stability and community. Blending centre-left economics and small-‘c’ conservatism in culture, Timothy’s new book speaks to today’s forgotten majorities.’
Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, and author of Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities
‘People on the left rarely read anything written by conservatives. They should make an exception for Nick Timothy’s book. If they are smart it will make them think. If they are really smart they may be surprised at how much of it they agree with.’
Martin Kettle, Guardian columnist
‘Readers on the right may savour Nick Timothy’s savage take down of the political tribe he brands the “ultra-liberal” – the group he blames for many of the country’s ills. What’s more timely though is what he puts forward as an alternative. The label “One Nation Conservative” is all the rage in SW1, but even to many in Westminster, what it means in practice is still something of a mystery. In an extremely readable way, with the benefit of his experience and agony in government, Timothy defines what that mantra might mean for Conservative policy, and all of our real lives in the 21st century.’
Laura Kuenssberg, BBC Political Editor
‘Nick Timothy has shed a bright light on the crisis facing liberal democracy. Without flinching from hard truths, he offers persuasive diagnoses and plausible prescriptions, where others offer only vitriol and venom. This is a must-read for those struggling to understand this era on both sides of the Atlantic.’
Yuval Levin, author of The Fractured Republic
‘Caught between libertarian economics and social liberalism, contemporary conservatism is in need of a fundamental rethink to address economic and cultural insecurity. Nick Timothy’s brilliant book combines a compelling critique of ultra-liberalism with a thoughtful restatement of One Nation Conservatism that can help to build a majority politics anchored in institutions enabling people to pursue the good life. This is a vital contribution to public political debate in Britain and beyond.’
Professor Adrian Pabst, co-author of The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future
‘Nick Timothy is one of Britain’s most original conservative thinkers. His new book, informed by a near-decade of experience at the heart of government, draws on meticulously researched and well-presented data to examine the complex and chronic maladies of affluent liberal democracies. A must-read for anyone seeking to better understand the deep roots of Brexit and other contemporary political upheavals across the West.’
Bojan Pancevski, Germany Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal
‘In recent years, British politics has blundered into a state of permanent crisis, whose roots run deep. And Nick Timothy didn’t just have a front-row seat – he was on the stage. This book blends an insider account with years of thinking about how we got here and where we might go.’
Amol Rajan, BBC Media Editor
‘Nick Timothy is the genuine Conservative modernizer, forensically challenging fashionable “ultra liberal” orthodoxies and putting the case for a more active state. This is both a gripping read and a route map towards an urgently needed One Nation Conservatism.’
Steve Richards, writer and broadcaster
‘Much of the writing of political philosophy has been done by those who’ve never had to muddy their preconceptions with the grime of power and office. Timothy is unusual in that he combines a ferociously penetrating intellect with a period as a particularly influential chief of staff to the Prime Minister. The resulting book thus has particular authority. Like much of the best political philosophy over the centuries, it is written by someone with understanding.’
Anthony Seldon, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, historian and author
‘Combining philosophical insights with a wealth of policy experience, Nick Timothy offers a powerful critique of our current political malaise as rooted in the excesses of a distorted liberalism and offers a timely reminder of the intellectual and practical resources of a One Nation Conservatism. Those who want to understand where we are, how we got here, and what a future progressive conservative agenda should look like, will find this book a thought-provoking and rewarding read.’
Dr Matt Sleat, author of Liberal Realism: A Realist Theory of Liberal Politics
‘The greatest threat to liberal democracies is when values and principles are neither articulated nor contested. This is a problem for the left and the right. Nick Timothy’s book outlines a way forward for the conservatives, but also charts a path for restoring trust which transcends party politics.’
Gisela Stuart, former Labour MP
‘True to form, Nick Timothy offers his readers an urgent critique of the limits of excessive liberalism that cuts to the heart of our broken political settlement. His ideas are incisive and radical – they should be listened to by anyone who wants to restore trust and sense to government.’
Will Tanner, Director of centre-right think tank Onward
‘Across the Western world democratic states face mounting problems. Old identities dissolve. Disillusion increases. Here, Brexit is a body blow to old party loyalties and has created a new divide. Nick Timothy, both insider and analyst, has written a mordant dissection of the destructive ultra-liberalism that lies at the root of the problem with its “twin traps of impractical individualism and unrealistic universalism”. He argues that a modern One Nation Conservatism is the practical way of repairing society. Brexiteers have put their faith in a rejuvenated nation state alive to the needs of all citizens. This tract for the times provides an ambitious agenda.’
Robert Tombs, Professor Emeritus of French History,Cambridge University
‘A searingly honest and compelling account of an era-defining period of modern British political history. Nick Timothy’s powerfully insightful re-evaluation of what it means to be conservative should be a must-read for anyone wanting to make sense of the failure of liberalism, and the future of centre-right thinking.’
Camilla Tominey, Associate Editor, Daily Telegraph
‘This is a timely and thought-provoking book. Nick Timothy argues that the key question in politics today should not be whether the market or the state can do a better job but how we can reconcile both with community. For those of us who believe that strong communities are the key to our future happiness and prosperity, this book is a powerful call to action, by someone who has thought deeply about the challenges we face, during and since he worked in Number Ten.’
Tom Tugendhat, MP
‘Conservatism is most real and interesting when it confronts the trade-offs between individual freedom and civic obligation, dynamism and rootedness, and seeks to reconcile them. This is why this is an important book on the future of conservatism and indeed the future of our country.’
David Willetts, Conservative peer and author
‘This brilliant book makes a compelling and novel argument about the origins of the crises experienced in Britain and other liberal democracies. Its philosophical analysis is backed by robust empirical research, and its vision of a new conservatism is backed by creative new policy suggestions. Whether you agree with all of those suggestions or not, this is a must-read contribution to the debate that is raging all the way across the West.’
Gavin Williamson, MP
‘The recent Conservative election victory is a complete vindication of the Nick Timothy approach. This book should be required reading for the new government on how to improve the lives of their new voters – and for the Labour Party to understand their seismic loss.’
Rachel Wolf, Partner at Public First and author of Boris Johnson’s 2019 general election manifesto
‘This book is an absolute must-read. It’s both thorough and challenging. Inevitably there will be elements you’ll disagree with but there are many others that are truly enlightening. The bottom line is that this is a vital contribution to a must-have debate.’
Sir Simon Woolley, crossbench peer and director of Operation Black Vote
REMAKING ONE NATION
The Future of Conservatism
NICK TIMOTHY
polity
Copyright © Nick Timothy 2020
The right of Nick Timothy to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2020 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3919-2
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have contributed in different ways to the production of this book. Any errors, needless to say, are my own. But I want to thank the friends and colleagues who have helped me along the way. I owe a debt of obligation to my publishers, Polity Press, and in particular to my editor, Dr George Owers, whose suggestions were indispensable. I owe an equal debt to Wadham College, Oxford, where between 2018 and 2019 I was a Keeley Visiting Fellow. In particular, I am grateful to the Warden, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, for awarding me the Fellowship, and to Lord Wood of Anfield, who proposed me to the College. I am grateful, too, to Dr Paul Martin and Dr Tom Sinclair for their wise advice and support.
I want to thank Chris Evans, my editor at The Daily Telegraph, and Tom Welsh, the newspaper’s insightful comment editor. I should also thank Tony Gallagher, the editor of The Sun, for whom I wrote between 2017 and 2019. It has been a privilege to write about many of the issues covered in this book in their magnificent newspapers. I am thankful to Matthew Taylor, who made me a Fellow of the RSA, which often provided me with a calm and quiet workspace in the middle of London. I should also thank the University of Sheffield, where I am a Visiting Professor, and in particular Professor Andrew Hindmoor and the brilliant Dr Matt Sleat.
Matt has been a wise counsellor throughout, as have Professor John Gray and Professor Vernon Bogdanor. Other friends and colleagues to whom I owe a particular debt for their thoughts and advice include Claire Ainsley, John Bowers, Matthew d’Ancona, Mike Flower, David Goodhart, Paul Goodman, Michael Gove, Tom Greeves, Ygal el Harrar, James Johnson, Professor Eric Kaufmann, Hans Kundnani, Baroness Meyer of Nine Elms, Sir Christopher Meyer, Rick Nye, Lord O’Shaughnessy of Maidenhead, Professor Adrian Pabst, Bojan Pancevski, Nick Pickles, Amol Rajan, Manveen Rana, Russell Rook, Gisela Stuart, Will Tanner, Niva Thiruchelvam, Nick Webb, Rachel Wolf, Sir Simon Woolley and my brother, John Timothy. It goes without saying that not everybody listed here agrees with everything I argue in the book.
In particular, I am grateful to Rick Nye for allowing me to reproduce the Populus ‘Clockface’ research in chapter 3. Nick Webb went far beyond the call of duty – especially given his own liberal beliefs – with his numerous comments and improvements. Adam Brown – my old friend ‘Stumpy’ – put me up for many Oxford nights and never hesitated to get the drinks in. And, of course, there is Martina, who advised and supported me through several draft texts and hundreds of conversations and email exchanges. It is to Martina, and to the whole of my family, that I dedicate this book.
‘Two nations [of rich and poor]; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.’
– Benjamin Disraeli, 1845
‘We stand for the union of those two nations of which Disraeli spoke two generations ago: union … to make one nation of our own people which, if secured, nothing else matters in the world.’
– Stanley Baldwin, 1924
‘We now speak as a one nation Conservative Party literally for everyone from Woking to Workington, from Kensington … to Clwyd South, from Surrey Heath to Sedgefield, from Wimbledon to Wolverhampton.’
– Boris Johnson, 2019
INTRODUCTION: OUT OF THE ARENA
At two minutes to ten, my world fell to pieces. With a couple of hundred staffers watching us through the office glass walls, my friend and colleague Fiona read to me what the rest of the country would be told moments later. She had the exit poll result and it said the general election would produce a hung parliament. Our gamble had failed and we had lost our majority. It was a catastrophe.
The two of us strode through the throngs of volunteers and staffers, and made it through to the back room where the campaign directors were assembled. ‘This is bullshit’, spat Lynton Crosby, the Australian consultant, ‘it’s really wide of the mark.’ Jim Messina, the American data expert, agreed. ‘It’s wrong’, he kept muttering, over and over again. But Mark Textor, Crosby’s business partner and polling expert, sat in stony silence. Stephen Gilbert, the veteran Tory campaigner and a personal friend for many years, took me to one side. ‘Exit polls are never wrong’, he warned, with the solemnity of a doctor declaring a death.
My phone rang. It was Theresa. ‘They’re saying it’s a hung parliament’, she said, barely audibly. I could hear the disappointment and hurt and anger in her voice. There was terror, too. I had seen or heard her cry on a few occasions before, but this was different. She was sobbing. I remember thinking she sounded like a child who wanted to be told everything was just fine. ‘Lynton says the exit poll is wrong’, I told her. ‘We just have to see what happens.’
But by then I knew what was going to happen. We all did. The early results started to come in quickly. Newcastle, Sunderland. Labour holds, but significant swings to the Tories. The analysts fed the data into their models. ‘You see!’ repeated Messina. ‘The poll’s wrong!’ But as more constituencies declared, the wishful thinking died, and the pattern became clear. We were increasing our vote, but so too were Labour.
Lynton showed me a text message he had received from Theresa. ‘She’s fucking blaming me!’ he complained. Fiona got into a car and sped to Maidenhead, where Theresa was still awaiting her own constituency result. I was in a daze. Chris Wilkins, the Number Ten strategy director, knocked up a short speech for Theresa to make at her count. I went for a walk around the war room, the open-plan office where the campaign team had worked, and spoke to staffers. One senior party official – another long-time friend – had collapsed and looked as white as a ghost. An ambulance was called and he was whisked away to hospital.
Chris and I sat alone in the party boardroom as the hours went by. Ben Gummer, the MP for Ipswich and Minister for the Cabinet Office, texted to say he had lost. Other good friends were among the casualties. Chris White, in Warwick and Leamington. Simon Kirby, Brighton Kemptown. Nicola Blackwood, Oxford West and Abingdon. Edward Timpson, Crewe and Nantwich. There was a pathetic cheer from the war room as Amber Rudd clung on to Hastings and Rye. We won new, mainly working-class, constituencies in Mansfield, Middlesbrough and Walsall, but the gains were too few and the losses mounted. Constituencies that CCHQ thought we might win just a few hours earlier – including even Bolsover and Sedgefield – were declared. Labour hold. Labour hold.
Theresa spoke at her count. I watched on television. She was as she was on the phone earlier: teary and shell-shocked. Eventually she returned to CCHQ, and we sat, in awkward silence, around the boardroom table. ‘We will have to resign to give you the space to carry on’, I said. She didn’t really reply. Her mind was fixed on the numbers. ‘We need to talk to the DUP’, she kept saying. ‘We need to keep out Corbyn.’ Her phone kept buzzing with calls and text messages from MPs and others. Eventually, she read one out loud. ‘The donors think you need to go’, she said, staring at Fiona and me.
Riding high
One year earlier, things had been very different indeed. The referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union had been held in June 2016. David Cameron resigned and, after a short leadership campaign in which her rivals self-immolated, one after another, Theresa May became Prime Minister.
As she emerged from the car that had taken her from Buckingham Palace to Downing Street, it was difficult to hear anything from where I was standing, waiting, inside Number Ten. The shutters of cameras opened and closed, and helicopters circled above. At last, standing behind the official lectern for the first time, she addressed the country. ‘If you’re from an ordinary working-class family’, she said, ‘life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise … I know you’re working around the clock, I know you’re doing your best, and I know that sometimes life can be a struggle.’ Looking straight down the camera and into millions of living rooms, she promised, ‘the government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours.’
It was the shortest speech I had written for her, but it was by far the highest profile. As she spoke, Downing Street officials and her political team waited inside the Number Ten hallway. The Cabinet Secretary, the late Sir Jeremy Heywood, motioned to me to stand beside him. I was doubled over with anxiety, but as she spoke it became clear there was no need for nerves. The speech was a triumph. Theresa had been on the Conservative frontbench for nearly twenty years, and Home Secretary for the last six. But this was her introduction to the nation, and the public seemed to like what they heard and saw. The speech catapulted her to unprecedented approval ratings, which remained unusually positive all the way until the general election a year later.
The first job was to reshuffle her ministerial team. George Osborne, Cameron’s Chancellor and author of ‘Project Fear’, the negative campaign against Brexit, was sacked. The media were led to believe he had resigned, and when a member of the Downing Street team corrected his version of events, he claimed to be the victim of vicious dirty tricks. Michael Gove, who had backed Boris Johnson’s leadership bid before suddenly launching his own campaign, was also sent to the backbenches. Despite his intellect and talent, Tory MPs were angry about Michael’s perceived treachery, which made it difficult to appoint him to a top job, but Theresa had never liked him and she played the role of executioner with enthusiasm.
The reshuffle was sweeping, and the media worked out that the Cabinet had more state-school educated ministers than any Conservative government before it. The front page of the Daily Mail hailed the ‘march of the meritocrats’.1 But it was bloodier than it was intended to be. Stephen Crabb, the Work and Pensions Secretary, resigned after failing to promise allegations about his sex life would not continue. Claire Perry and Anna Soubry refused frontbench roles as soon as it became clear they would not be given their own departments.
The summer passed quickly and quietly. Early Brexit talks with other European leaders began. Fairly minor policy announcements were made. Theresa’s low-key and understated style seemed to mark a welcome change in the way the country was governed.
Then came the first controversy. In September, Theresa made a speech in which she said she wanted to make Britain ‘the world’s great meritocracy’. She outlined a new policy that would build on years of English school reform, and in particular free schools and academies, schools set up and sponsored by teachers, parents and community groups. Acknowledging that some communities lack the social capital to make free schools and academies a success, we wanted to get more groups into the system and running good state schools. Private schools and universities would be made to do more. Rules that effectively prevented Catholic – but not other faith groups – from setting up schools would be changed. And new selective schools would be permitted, on the strict condition that they also sponsored good primary schools and non-selective secondaries, and made sure their intakes included more children from poorer families.
The announcement blew up before it was even made. The Education Secretary, Justine Greening, turned out to oppose any new selective schools. She never said so to Theresa, but was less shy when briefing the newspapers. Shortly before the speech, Jonathan Slater, the Department for Education’s permanent secretary, accompanied Greening on her way to a meeting with the PM in Downing Street. There, he was photographed with a folder exposing a sheet of paper revealing the Education Secretary’s concern about new selective schools. Slater had not been invited to attend the meeting, and he did not try to come in. But the damage was done. The stunt was cynical, cheap and, coming from a senior official, completely inappropriate. But it worked: it sparked a row about grammar schools, and the policy never got off the ground.
Next came a warning sign about Theresa’s own decision-making. In July, she had decided to ‘pause’ the process leading to the construction of a new nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point in Somerset. The project would be delivered by the French energy giant, EDF, and financed in part by the Chinese General Nuclear Power Group, a state-run business accused by the United States of stealing nuclear secrets.2 It was eye-wateringly expensive, and relied on technology that had never been tried before. It also meant increasing Chinese involvement in Britain’s critical national infrastructure. Under the terms of a ‘progressive entry’ agreement, Hinkley would be followed by new reactors at Sizewell in Suffolk and Bradwell in Essex. At each stage, the role of the Chinese in running the plants would deepen.
The decision to pause the deal was rancorous enough. The Chinese protested. A junior minister threatened to resign. And Theresa offended Jeremy Heywood when she questioned the contract: he thought she was accusing him of colluding with the French to push the deal through. But after all the hassle of the pause – the controversy, the bruised relations with China and France, and the clash with her most senior civil servant – in September, she backed down. Persuaded that cancellation would send a bad message to the markets so soon after the Brexit vote, and worrying about the need to keep the French onside through the Brexit talks, she let the deal pass. It would not be the last time she would be accused of talking tough before backing down. But at this stage, the criticism was fairly limited.
At the start of October, we headed to Birmingham for the party conference. ‘A country that works for everyone’, was emblazoned around the conference centre, and the mood was buoyant. Theresa spoke on the first day, the Sunday, and set out what would later be criticized as unnecessary red lines for the Brexit negotiations. ‘Brexit means Brexit’, she promised: Britain would take back control of its laws, its borders and its money. The audience was in ecstasy.
At the close of the conference, on Wednesday, she spoke again. This was the opportunity to set out her domestic priorities, and the way she intended to govern. Chris Wilkins and I had worked on the speech for weeks, and, in praising ‘the good that government can do’, it marked a clear break with recent Conservative thinking. The Daily Mail lauded its ‘bold vision’ and even the Guardian respected its ambitious attempt to recast conservatism.3 As the draftsmen, I remember Chris and I were most pleased by praise from Peggy Noonan, the US columnist and former speechwriter to President Reagan, who from across the Atlantic declared it the ‘beginning of a political future’.4
It was only later that the speech was attacked for its condemnation of ‘citizens of nowhere’. It suited campaigners and political opponents to claim that Theresa had used this language to describe opponents of Brexit. But this was nonsense, as anybody listening at the time knew. Her targets were the more irresponsible and selfish members of big international business. The speech was absolutely clear. ‘Today’, she said, ‘too many people in positions of power behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass in the street. But if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word “citizenship” means.’5
The speech was an ambitious blueprint for what we wanted to do. But translating these promises into policy and reality would take more time. Consultation papers were launched on corporate governance, industrial strategy and schools. Fiona was developing a landmark domestic violence bill. In Downing Street and across Whitehall, work was underway on regional policy, market reform, workers’ rights, housing, health, social care, racial justice and mental health. But to me it all felt like it was going too slowly. Behind the scenes, problems were mounting.
Behind the scenes
At the best of times, political parties find it difficult to renew themselves several years into government. If they are honest about problems that need fixing, the media and opposition ask why these things have not been fixed already. If they acknowledge past mistakes, their supporters criticize them for trashing their own record. If they change policies to suit the needs of the day, they are accused of U-turning. If they do any of these things quickly, without a longer conversation about the government’s direction, they encounter resistance within their party. If they take time to build a consensus, they are accused of dithering. Former ministers and their allies guard their legacies jealously, and are quick to denounce perceived slights.
Prime ministers who arrive in Downing Street from opposition have usually had the time and space to develop their ideas and arguments. They can build up their policy programmes, and establish coalitions of supporters among experts, academics and journalists. New prime ministers who arrive straight from a government department have no time to do any of these things. They are thrust into Number Ten with no transition and little or no time to prepare their agenda.
The bold approach Theresa set out in the Downing Street and party conference speeches needed an equally bold policy programme. But here there was another problem. There was no mandate for a break with David Cameron’s agenda. There had been little time to debate policy during the truncated Conservative leadership election. And several senior ministers opposed change. In particular, Theresa’s Chancellor, Philip Hammond, refused to change fiscal policy and opposed reforms to corporate governance and competition policy. ‘You don’t need to actually do any of this stuff’, he once said with a trademark smirk, ‘you’re miles ahead in the polls just talking about it.’
Theresa’s relationship with Hammond was especially bad. At the point at which she made him her Chancellor, she believed she had a good personal relationship with him. But within weeks their relationship was bitter and rancorous. He showed little respect for Theresa or her intellect. He briefed the newspapers that she was ‘economically illiterate’, and he said the same about me. In his first Budget, he insisted on increasing National Insurance contributions for self-employed workers, against Theresa’s advice and breaking a promise in the 2015 election manifesto. His response to the backbench rebellion he caused was not to show contrition but to become even more obstreperous and aggressive in his briefing against Number Ten.
Theresa’s relationships with other ministers were little better. She got on badly with Justine Greening, Sajid Javid and Boris Johnson. Looking back, her relations with colleagues were often poor because she neither trusted them nor even knew them particularly well. She would often patronize Boris and put him down in front of his colleagues.
And what makes a minister successful running a government department – even a department as important as the Home Office – will not necessarily translate to Number Ten. In the Home Office, Fiona and I were able, on Theresa’s behalf, to maintain a tight grip on departmental business. We were equals in everything we did, and worked fluidly across policy, political work, strategy and communications. In Number Ten, we tried and failed to work in the same way. Our status as joint chiefs of staff sometimes caused confusion in the command chain. With notable exceptions like JoJo Penn, James Slack, Will Tanner and Chris Wilkins, we did not build a strong enough senior team to delegate with confidence. We neglected our managerial duties because our other responsibilities overwhelmed us.
Compared to life in a department, the job in Downing Street is much more about setting a strategy and allowing ministers to deliver it, coordinating efforts across departments, solving problems and ensuring delivery, and constant, human communication. The complaint that Theresa – and we, her senior advisers – brought too much of the Home Office into Number Ten was justified. The role of the prime minister is not to play every instrument in the orchestra, but to write the score and conduct the musicians. Too often, Theresa was trying to play the strings, woodwind, brass and percussion all at the same time.
Yet she often backed down when confronted by opposition. She promised to ‘repair the dysfunctional housing market’, but was too nervy about agreeing the policies that would get more houses built.6 She wanted ‘an energy policy ... [with] lower costs for users’, but ended up supporting unilateral climate change policies that will increase bills for households and industry.7 When Hammond and others objected to her policies, she watered them down or gave up on them altogether. On each occasion I tried to convince her to change fiscal policy, she refused to do so. Only once the election had been lost did she accept the need to call time on the age of austerity.
Brexit
All the while, one issue more than any other loomed before us. Brexit was the reason Theresa had become Prime Minister. Yet she had been a Remainer. Back on 24 June, early on the morning after the referendum, I called her to talk about the leadership election that would soon begin. I was surprised to find she was crying. The tears, I judged, were caused by frustration, not grief. But her reaction to the result was to worry that the people who had voted for Brexit – especially manufacturing workers in the regions – were the people who stood to lose most from Britain leaving the European Union.
I thought about that moment many times as, after I left Downing Street, Theresa’s negotiating strategy softened and softened. But at the time I had no cause to dwell on it. She came to terms with the result quickly. She stamped upon any suggestions that the referendum might be re-run. She rejected calls for different forms of associate EU membership. When ministers and officials proposed what she dismissed as ‘clinging to bits of the EU we used to like’, she relished reprimanding them. Taking off her reading glasses and waving them at her victims, she would explain that we needed to negotiate a close economic and security relationship, but we must be entirely outside the EU’s laws and institutions.
When she became Prime Minister, Theresa created two new government departments to help deliver Brexit. The first was the Department for International Trade, whose responsibilities would include the negotiation of free trade deals with other countries. The second was the Department for Exiting the European Union. The logic for creating this department was to create a Whitehall institution with a clear interest in delivering Brexit, and to reassure Leave supporters about her good intentions. ‘I will … create a new government department’, she promised during the leadership campaign, ‘responsible for conducting Britain’s negotiation with the EU and for supporting the rest of Whitehall in its European work. That department will be led by a senior Secretary of State – and I will make sure that the position is taken by a Member of Parliament who campaigned for Britain to leave the EU.’8
Strictly speaking, Theresa stuck to her promise. But the Secretary of State she appointed, David Davis, was never in charge of the negotiations. Brexit policy was discussed by the Cabinet and at regular meetings of a Cabinet sub-committee dedicated to leaving the EU. But the negotiating strategy was discussed in much smaller meetings between Theresa and her senior civil servants and political advisers. Olly Robbins, Theresa’s Brussels ‘Sherpa’, was asked to lead the negotiations, not David Davis.
David Cameron had instructed the civil service not to draw up plans for leaving the EU, fearing that preparations would play into the hands of the Leave campaign by making Brexit seem realistic and safe. So it took a little time to get things moving along. During the summer, officials and ministers conducted talks with their opposite numbers across Europe and with officials in Brussels. Theresa had wanted to start informal negotiations before giving formal notice of Britain’s intention to leave the EU. The mechanism for doing so, Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, set a two-year deadline for concluding a withdrawal agreement. But by the end of the summer, the message from the Europeans was clear, and so was the official policy advice: there would be no negotiating until Article 50 was formally triggered.
In September, Theresa decided that she would have to invoke Article 50 to get anywhere with the talks. On the opening day of the Conservative conference, she announced she would trigger by no later than the end of March 2017. And she promised to repeal the European Communities Act, which gave direct effect to EU law in Britain. ‘We will do what independent, sovereign countries do’, she said. ‘We will decide for ourselves how we control immigration. And we will be free to pass our own laws.’9
Later, it was claimed that this speech set unnecessary red lines that made the Brexit negotiations impossible. It was even claimed that the red lines were invented by Theresa and me alone, with no input from anybody else. Both claims are ridiculous. First, Brexit policy was discussed at Cabinet, in the Cabinet sub-committee, and in bilateral meetings between Theresa and her ministers. No Cabinet Secretary, and certainly not one as experienced and as proper as Sir Jeremy Heywood, would have allowed new policy to be decided and announced in such a manner. And second, as any student of the European Union knows, the EU was established, in its original form, as a customs union. Its single market then developed over time. If Britain did not leave the customs union and single market – and the laws and institutions that underpin both – what would we be leaving? As David Davis said to me at the time, the speech was little more than ‘a statement of the bleeding obvious’. And as Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal proved, it is possible to leave the EU in full accordance with the so-called ‘red lines’.
The speech was still a mistake, however. Theresa’s first significant public intervention on Brexit policy should not have been made before a partisan audience. The Europeans perceived a prime minister playing to the gallery, and that caused some misunderstandings about the way she was planning to go about the negotiations.
The next big Brexit intervention was a different matter altogether. Theresa’s Lancaster House speech was, if anything, tougher than what she said at the party conference. And yet it was received positively by Leavers and Remainers at home, and by Brussels and the remaining member states.
For the first time, Theresa explicitly ruled out membership of the customs union and the single market. She was robust with Brussels too. ‘No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal’, she warned. And if Britain was excluded from the single market, ‘we would be free to change the basis of Britain’s economic model.’ But the tone was still constructive. ‘We are leaving the European Union’, she explained, ‘but we are not leaving Europe.’ She said she had listened to the EU, which was why she would not seek to divide its four freedoms of goods, capital, services and people. The days of British ‘cherry picking’ were over: we would seek fair access to the single market, but not re-join it.10
Theresa’s next big speech – made in Philadelphia to an audience of Republican senators and congressmen – also went down well in Europe. Following the election of President Trump, many member states were worried that he was hostile to the EU and ambivalent about NATO. But in Philadelphia, Theresa came to Europe’s defence. ‘We are not turning our back on [Europe]’, she declared, ‘or on the interests and the values that we share. It remains overwhelmingly in our interests – and in those of the wider world – that the EU should succeed.’11 In Washington, she pressed President Trump and won from him an unequivocal public commitment to NATO and the collective security of the West.
This was a real achievement, but behind the scenes, we were worrying. We had got off to a bad start with Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s permanent representative in Brussels. His advice in meetings was pessimistic and bordered on the destructive. We could not negotiate before triggering Article 50, he said, but neither should we trigger Article 50, because it was a trap. Every policy option was impossible, he would argue: there was no way through the mess, because Brexit itself was impossible.
Ivan also had a strange relationship with the media. Former advisers to David Cameron warned us that he had briefed against them during the renegotiation prior to the referendum. ‘He did it the whole time’, one said. ‘He is super smart, but prone to child-like tantrums and cannot pursue anything but his own personal agenda.’12 During Theresa’s premiership, newspaper reports by Brussels correspondents regularly contained quotations from ‘diplomatic sources’ that bore close resemblance to Ivan’s private criticisms of Brexit.
Ivan’s behaviour frustrated us all, including his fellow civil servants. Eventually, Jeremy Heywood suggested to Ivan that he should move on to another senior post. But very abruptly, Ivan instead resigned, writing an email to his team demanding that they continue to ‘speak truth to power’.13 Unsurprisingly, the email reached the media in no time at all. Ivan was quickly replaced by Sir Tim Barrow, a Foreign Office star, but he was to remain a prominent and trenchant critic not only of Brexit policy, but of Brexit itself.
Things were little better with some senior ministers. Meetings at Cabinet and with ministers were bad-tempered. Philip Hammond kept pushing for Brexit to be softer and softer. He wanted to make commitments about sticking with free movement rules, for example, and refused to consider alternatives to European regulations because he believed Britain would in the end have to accept EU rules anyway. Every attempt to take Brexit policy forward was an exhausting battle with one side of Cabinet pitched against the other.
In Parliament, it was clear that the House of Lords would do what it could to frustrate Brexit. In the Commons, Labour were gearing up to oppose whatever the Government did, and there were enough rebellious Tory Remainers to render the Government’s slim majority meaningless. Fiona and I talked again and again about whether we needed an early election to help get Brexit through Parliament. But when we raised the question with Theresa, she was always quick to rebuff us.
The election campaign
I had first raised the question of an early election during the leadership campaign. Theresa was adamantly opposed: she wanted to use her launch speech to rule out any election before 2020. I thought that was a promise she might come to regret, because of the way Brexit divisions would inevitably cut across the parties in Parliament. Nonetheless, she made the promise, and I chose not to raise the subject again for several months.
But as time went by, the case for an election built. There was little sign of Parliament accepting the referendum result. Every vote in the Commons felt like a dangerous challenge, and we survived only through some deft tactics and the smart whipping operation led by Gavin Williamson. In February 2017, the Conservatives won Copeland, an area represented by Labour for more than eighty years, in a byelection.14 Afterwards, several Cabinet ministers pushed for an early election. And the polls continued to look good. In April 2017, we had a poll lead over Labour of 21 percentage points.15
The coalition of support for an early election grew. Inside Number Ten, JoJo Penn and Chris Wilkins joined Fiona and me in arguing we needed to go back to the country. After Copeland, Stephen Gilbert and senior staff from CCHQ joined the chorus. In March, William Hague used his Daily Telegraph column to say an election would ‘strengthen the Government’s hand at home and abroad’.16 And the pressure was not only political. Jeremy Heywood told Theresa he thought she needed a mandate and a majority to get Brexit done.
Theresa’s attitude changed quite abruptly on 29 March. On that day, she sent her letter giving formal notification to the Council of Ministers of Britain’s intention to withdraw from the EU. When she made her statement in Parliament, the mood in the Commons was uneasy. She was interrupted repeatedly, and her statement prompted jeers and sarcastic laughter from the opposition benches. She did not decide to call an early election immediately after that statement, but I could tell her judgement changed that day. I sensed she was starting to believe an election was unavoidable.
Still, she took her time to decide. Ideally, the general election would have been held on 4 May, the same day as the local and mayoral elections, but the deadline to bring about an election that day came and went. Theresa finally announced her decision on 18 April. By that time, thanks to the timetable set out by the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act and the need to conclude parliamentary business, polling day could be no earlier than 8 June. The campaign was to last seven and a half weeks. We had sacrificed the advantage of surprise and made the first of many mistakes.
It is important to remember that at this point Theresa’s leadership was still incredibly popular in the country. The political strategy we had established – framed in her original Downing Street speech and fleshed out at the party conference – was working well. She was determined to lead Britain out of the European Union, but she was just as determined to bring about lasting change to social and economic policy. She consciously put herself at the service of working- and middle-class families, and talked much more about using the power of government to change lives for the better. This was the strategy that had created her 21-point poll lead.
Yet none of us on the Downing Street staff, nor even among the senior CCHQ staff, had ever run a national election campaign. We had to bring in external support. So Stephen Gilbert returned to the fray, and so did Lynton Crosby, who had run the Tory election campaigns of 2005 and 2015. With Crosby came his business partner, Mark Textor, and the former Obama campaign adviser, Jim Messina.
Lynton was adamant we needed a completely different approach for an election campaign. Talking about workers’ rights or public services, for example, would only increase the salience of issues that make people more likely to vote Labour. Just talking about policy was a bad thing, because policies are complicated. They prompt attacks from critics and opponents, and they muddy the message. It is much better, he said, to keep finding new devices to keep repeating the core message. And the opinion research, he said, showed swing voters did not want change. They wanted stability and continuity. Out went Theresa the changemaker, and in came the soundbite that would soon be mocked mercilessly: ‘strong and stable government’. And so our answer to everything became strong and stable, strong and stable, strong and stable.
Before the campaign began, we had envisaged a campaigning style that would reflect Theresa’s more traditional, unspun manner. We talked about holding daily press conferences, like in the elections of old, in which we would announce a new policy, or highlight a particular issue, or scrutinize our opponents. We expected to use different ministers, as well as Theresa, to front up each event. But this too was rejected. Press conferences would invite the media to cause all sorts of trouble, and we would lose control of the message. And the polling showed that while Theresa was tremendously popular, other ministers were not, and the Conservative brand itself was still badly tainted. And so we ended up with Theresa, introverted and shy, leading a campaign asking people not to vote for the Conservatives but ‘Theresa May’s team’.
We could have chosen to resist these changes. We were powerful enough to do so. But we didn’t. Ironically, after being criticized as ‘control freaks’ in Number Ten, Fiona and I handed over control of the campaign to Lynton and the consultants. We knew we had never run a national campaign, and we put our trust in the people who had. Our roles would be subordinate to the consultants. Fiona took responsibility for communications. I took on policy. JoJo took on a sort of coordinating function. Chris, having been strategy director in Number Ten, was left kicking his heels as the new campaign strategists took over.
And the problems kept coming. Theresa was warm and natural when she met voters in person, on high streets, in markets and at country shows. But she was wooden on the stump and robotic in broadcast interviews. She seemed utterly terrified before her set-piece interviews and debates. And as the campaign went on, she grew increasingly tired and irritable. Interviews with print journalists were defensive and painful to watch.
The senior staff muttered and moaned about biased broadcast coverage. It is probably true that with the country expecting a Tory landslide, our plans were subjected to more scrutiny than Labour’s. But we were not generating the stories to earn good broadcast coverage. Television and radio need a proposition to argue about: a policy that can be promoted by one side and criticized by another. But all we were offering was the same old shots of Theresa saying the same things at the same old rallies of activists. They say you campaign in poetry and govern in prose, but we were campaigning in sullen, monosyllabic grunts.
And we became the victims of what Harold Macmillan called, ‘events, dear boy’. On 12 May, the NHS was struck by a massive cyber-attack, which dominated the news for days. And then, on 22 May, tragedy struck. Salman Ramadan Abedi, a suicide bomber originally from Libya, blew himself up at an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena. Twenty-two innocent victims were killed and hundreds, most of whom were children, were injured. On 3 June another attack came. Three Islamist terrorists rammed a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before stabbing people at random in bars and pubs in Borough Market. They killed eight people and injured forty-eight others. These were the second and third attacks on Britain in only three months, as they followed an earlier Islamist atrocity on Westminster Bridge, which had occurred in March.
