On Monday evening, 10 May, with the coalition talks at a delicate point, Cameron meets his Conservative MPs in Committee Room 14 in the House of Commons. It is the most important meeting of that body in the entire 2010–15 parliament. His MPs have the power to strangle the discussions with the Lib Dems before they reach a conclusion. Cameron tells them that Brown is offering the Lib Dems the AV system without a referendum. He tells them that unless he can offer the Lib Dems an AV referendum, the talks might break down.
Critics later accuse Cameron of bouncing the party into a coalition in this meeting. During the discussions with the Lib Dems, only a handful of phone calls take place between the Conservative negotiators and the rest of their party, and senior figures in the 1922 Committee are disappointed to see only ‘some negotiators running by and asking for our views on what should and should not be considered’. Many feel the process is neither ‘systematic’ nor ‘comprehensive’. They also say the PM exploited the fact that 147, almost half of the 307 Conservative MPs elected, are new, overawed and highly biddable. Another ninety-plus had served on the back benches in Opposition and are eager for ministerial jobs. The scenario Cameron offered ‘made most colleagues think there was no choice’, says Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee. ‘A lot of people were unhappy with what was being done, but felt they couldn’t say so.’23 For the time being, discontented MPs are quiet. But they come to bitterly resent being told they effectively have no choice other than a coalition with the Lib Dems. It confirms their impression that Cameron and his allies would sooner deal with Clegg and the Lib Dems than with them. How right they are.
The Conservative shadow Cabinet discuss and approve the Coalition Agreement on Tuesday afternoon, with the world’s media speculating what is going on. Brown is pacing around Number 10 but knows the game is up. He is told by officials that he cannot go to the Palace to resign until details of the new government are locked into place. Cameron is given the green light. Suddenly, everything happens very quickly. Llewellyn needs the ‘If we win’ file. At 5.40 p.m., he calls senior party aide Laurence Mann to retrieve it from CCHQ. Behind Mann’s desk in his office in Downing Street throughout Cameron’s premiership is pinned a fading receipt for a short taxi journey that starts at 5.41 p.m. and finishes at 5.59 p.m. that Tuesday. Mann jumps into a cab in the street outside Norman Shaw building and asks to be taken to CCHQ. He runs in and lifts the file out of the party’s safe, trying to look as unobtrusive as possible. A group of aides crowd around him. ‘He is smiling,’ shouts out one. Mann is silent, jumps back in the cab and just before Big Ben chimes six o’clock, runs back up to Cameron’s office.24
Llewellyn joins him. Moments before, Cameron has called him back to the office from the marathon in the Cabinet Office. Llewellyn worries his departure might lead to media speculation that Cameron is about to form a government. So officials take him from the Cabinet Office through a tunnel that comes out in Horse Guards Parade. He then walks round the back of the Foreign Office and enters the Norman Shaw building, thankful for the detailed preparation work over the last few months which Mann carries in his hands. Cameron’s first hours in Number 10, which follow, have been described in Chapter 1.
Fast-forward to the next day. It is 2.20 p.m. on Wednesday 12 May. Cameron and Clegg are waiting inside the Cabinet Room for a press conference which they have decided will work better outside under a mid-May sun. Aides notice how well and naturally they relate to each other. Warmth, generosity and good humour are palpable.25 Clegg’s aides are watching Cameron closely. They do not know him well yet and do not know what to expect.26 Both leaders hear the journalists assembling for the press conference in the Rose Garden below. Neither have any illusions. They have both said and thought terrible things about each other. Moments before, Cameron has received a brief listing the criticisms he has voiced of Clegg, so he can be prepared for questions.27 ‘What we need is a show of unity and a light touch,’ Coulson tells them both shortly before they walk down the steps into the garden. They hardly needed the advice. The obvious rapport between both men grates with Cameron’s malcontented backbenchers. ‘They saw Cameron and Clegg looking rather smug about being freed from having to deal with their own barking wings,’ says a friend of Cameron’s.28 The word the backbenchers most detest is when Cameron says a minority government would have been ‘unappealing’. Not to them it wouldn’t. Payback will be just a matter of time.
The coalition angers many Conservative MPs further because it means fewer jobs to go around for them. The Coalition Agreement doesn’t say anything about ministerial posts, only policy. Cameron and Clegg agree that positions should be allocated in proportion to the number of MPs, i.e. roughly three to one. But for Cabinet, the Lib Dems do even better with five full members. They say that in addition to Clegg and David Laws, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, they want Energy, Business and they also claim Scotland, because the Conservatives have only one MP north of the border. Lib Dems debate amongst themselves whether Clegg should have his own Whitehall department; Cameron is very happy to place him in the Home Office. Conversations with allied parties in coalition in Europe hurriedly take place: they conclude that the deputy prime minister (DPM), as he will be called, should mirror the prime minister himself and not run his own government department, allowing him to range across all departments. They later wonder whether they have made the right call: the Civil Service fails to provide matching resourcing for the DPM’s office to allow it to compete with the considerable resources at the disposal of the prime minister. The ratio of eighteen Conservatives to five Lib Dems in full-time positions in the Cabinet rubs salt in the coalition wound for many in Cameron’s party, especially when it is announced that these five posts will be retained for the Lib Dems all the way through the life of the parliament. But at the top, all is harmony. ‘What struck me was how relatively easy the appointments for the coalition government were to make,’ says O’Donnell. ‘Much of it was attributable to the closeness of Cameron’s relationship with Clegg. I was really amazed by how mature both sides were, even down to agreeing who should chair the various Cabinet committees.’29
Cameron works closely with Osborne and Hague in making the final switches required for coalition. Hague himself becomes First Secretary of State. The Conservative Cabinet appointments see very few surprises; one is Theresa May to Home Secretary, an appointment that brings tears of joy to her eyes. The appointment of Iain Duncan Smith to Work and Pensions Secretary is another surprise as he hadn’t held a portfolio in Opposition, though he had made it clear it was the post he wanted. Finally, it is a surprise that Chris Grayling is not offered a Cabinet position (though he later joins in September 2012 as Justice Secretary).
The decision to have a small-scale Number 10, attributable to Letwin, causes some consternation. Letwin looks back fondly to his time in the Policy Unit in the 1980s when Downing Street was regarded (not always correctly) as operating very effectively under Thatcher. Two factors were in their minds. ‘Because tensions between the prime minister and Chancellor had gone on for decades and were endemic, we wanted the whole of Number 10, Number 11, the Treasury and Cabinet Office facing in one direction. We knew the money would never be controlled properly if we were not absolutely sharing the same overall strategic direction,’ recalls Letwin.30 Avoiding Number 10 breaking up into a series of sub-units, all pulling in different directions, was another concern. A small PM’s office was thus considered by some to be much more biddable. Others understand that a strong Number 10 is necessary for the delivery of policy. In the months leading up to the election, Hilton and Rohan Silva spoke to some of the key New Labour figures, including Blair (twice), his chief of staff Jonathan Powell, head of policy Matthew Taylor, and speechwriter Phil Collins. They all said that Number 10 should remain big, advice that was ignored. Various Labour-devised units to enhance policy implementation, like the Delivery Unit, are promptly closed down in Number 10. Cameron will be a trusting, ‘hands off’ PM: why does he require a large office at the centre? But he soon realises he has been hasty to throw the baby out with the bathwater.