He has thought hard about establishing his presence as the new boy with his fellow G8 and G20 leaders. He has formative relationships to build on, but his team are full of trepidation. Typically, he himself is confident. On the morning of 26 June, he goes for a pre-breakfast swim in the lake. Word is put out to G8 delegations that the youthful new British leader has been swimming. His dip becomes the talk of the morning session. The Italian prime minister and doyen of alpha males, Silvio Berlusconi, is palpably disconcerted by the attention given to another leader. The Italian delegation hastily circulate photographs of Berlusconi in Speedos as a weightlifter. Cameron begins to relax, sensing he can hold his own with these leaders. His natural confidence and height give him an easy authority. Fellow leaders express interest in the novelty of coalition in British politics. ‘I’m entirely up to it, I know that I can do this,’ he later tells a close aide. The Afghanistan announcement out of the way, there are no pressing or concerning items on the G8 agenda. There’s downtime and joking with fellow leaders. In the evening, he feels very tired. One of his aides borrows some of Obama’s Pro-Plus to perk him up.
The next day, the G8 leaders travel south to Toronto for the larger meeting of the G20. Marine One, the president’s helicopter, is preparing to take off. When the weather closes in, the helicopter Cameron intends to use is grounded, and only Marine One has clearance to fly the short journey. There is a brief moment of panic – Cameron is stuck. Sugg asks, ‘Why can’t the PM fly with Obama?’ Fletcher goes over to talk to Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and asks if their bosses can travel together on the helicopter. The Americans are happy to help, still influenced, the British suspect, by continuing guilt over their treatment of Brown on his visits to the US as prime minister. They have two spaces spare. Fletcher and Coulson toss a coin to see who will accompany Cameron. Coulson wins. (At Fletcher’s leaving party in 2011, he is presented with a model of Marine One.) Once ensconced on the chopper, the PM and president talk about their young families, their jobs and US politics. It is one of the most personal conversations they are to have. Cameron tries to buckle himself into his seat: ‘We don’t need seat belts here: this is Marine One,’ the president tells him. Cameron is boyishly excited. Driving to the conference hotel afterwards, he calls up Samantha to tell her all about it. ‘We didn’t wear seat belts!’
The World Cup is being played in South Africa, and Cameron has a bet with Obama over the match between England and the United States: a case of Chicago beer versus a crate of Hobgoblin beer from his Witney constituency. The match is a draw. A photograph is released to the press of both leaders in front of their flags toasting each other, beer bottles in hand. England play Germany in the first of the knockout rounds – England go two goals down after thirty minutes, but pull one back in the thirty-seventh minute. Moments later, England player Frank Lampard hits the ball over the German line, but the referee misses it and the goal doesn’t stand. The eventual score is 4–1 to Germany. A photo of Merkel and Cameron perched on armchairs in the conference centre at the G20, avidly watching a screen in front of them, flashes around the world.
Cameron picks up on Afghanistan when he flies over to the US for an important visit from 19–21 July. Llewellyn and National Security Adviser Peter Ricketts visited Washington a month after the general election, saw leading figures in the administration and paved the way. Afghanistan is the biggest topic on the Washington trip. Detailed discussions take place on the pace of the British drawdown, and the political strategy. The British insist on talking to the Taliban and their associates and are sceptical about any further military upgrade by NATO forces. It is Cameron’s first visit to the Oval Office. He glances around in fascination, but his mind is calm and focused. Obama and he are more similar in personality than Obama and Brown, with his brooding passions. It is clear to their respective staffs that the president and PM are on the same wavelength. The White House are impressed by the way Cameron handles himself. They tell Sheinwald after the visit that they like him, and feel that he will be ‘someone they can do business with’.
This is the fourth time both leaders have met: but their personal relationship doesn’t recapture the spontaneity of their helicopter ride in Canada the month before. Cameron is naturally gregarious, but takes his cue from Obama, who settles into a businesslike, emotion-free zone, where he feels most secure. His staff too are very different from their predecessors in the days of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Indeed, Cameron’s team find the White House ‘surprisingly transactional’. They are very aware of what they can get from Cameron, and set out to get it. But the impression of the trip is encouraging, which is why Cameron’s team is so keen that it took place early into his premiership. Back home, the PM is portrayed in the British media as a heavyweight figure, parlaying and at ease with the world’s most powerful man. They have a longer than planned walk around the White House lawn, jackets on shoulders, and a surprisingly warm press conference.
The BP oil spill which threatened at one point to stain the discussions is barely mentioned. Differences emerge instead over the conduct of the economy. The Obama administration is not fond of austerity, and think Plan A is going too far too fast, and will not work. Their economic guru (and close friend of Brown’s), director of the National Economic Council, Larry Summers, is a core figure to them. On the economy, if nowhere else, the Obama White House felt happier with Brown.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber, had been the cause of considerable friction between both countries when the Scottish government released him from jail to Libya in 2009. The US administration suspects that pressure from oil companies was responsible for the release and are angry with Brown. Cameron himself can show a clean sheet. He is on record as resisting the transfer of al-Megrahi to Libya. On his first evening in Washington, he sees four senators to placate them. He impresses figures on Capitol Hill and in the White House, and helps lance the boil. Doing so clears the way for Cameron’s party offering Obama a state visit to the UK, which follows in May 2011.
Cameron is pleased to have resolved the issue of troop withdrawal from Afghanistan before the summer recess. Difficult discussions will need to take place in the autumn with NATO allies. But the British intent has been made public, and he believes that he has achieved the right balance, of a dignified rather than over-hasty exit. He has already started the sad task of writing handwritten letters, as did Blair and Brown, to the next of kin of British soldiers who have lost their lives. He shuts himself away and never wants to be hurried when he writes them. His staff always give him time, recognising that these are sensitive moments for him. The month before the Washington trip, the 300th British soldier had died in Afghanistan. A further 153 soldiers will be killed before the troops leave, and many billions of pounds will be spent. Did he struggle because in his heart he found it difficult to write that the deaths had not been in vain?
SEVEN
Life and Death in the Cameron Family
February 2009–September 2010
Wednesday 8 September 2010. Cameron is up at 5 a.m. in the Downing Street flat, and is soon working through his prime ministerial boxes. Four months into the premiership, he has an early-morning routine of working for two hours on the sixty or so items placed in them by his private office the night before, added to by the overnight duty team. Officials are pleased to go back to the convention of prime ministerial boxes: Gordon Brown did not use them, preferring email or summoning or phoning the person he wanted. But Cameron willingly delves into his red boxes, dealing with all the notes meticulously, writing detailed comments in the margins. Unlike Brown, he is happy to be challenged on paper as in person. Brown would regard questioning of his thinking as a challenge to his authority. ‘Gordon knew he should be in charge but thought everyone else was out to get him. Cameron equally knows he should be in charge, and thinks everyone should know that too,’ says an official who served them both.1
At