Cameron pauses after his mother’s phone call. His father is far from young, and had suffered health complications all his life, but the family has not expected any sudden deterioration. He picks up his mobile and calls Liz Sugg, the indomitable aide who organises his trips. ‘My father is in hospital and I may need to fly to see him.’ She logs the information calmly. At this stage, the family are still far from certain how serious the illness is and he debates whether he should go. He is anxiously preparing for the first PMQs since the summer recess. He expects to be up against Labour’s Harriet Harman – it is still a month before Ed Miliband will be elected party leader – and the likely questions are the highly charged topics of phone hacking, as well as public spending and electoral reform. Cameron phones Tom Fletcher, his foreign affairs private secretary, to talk over the dilemma. Fletcher, although inherited from Brown’s Number 10, is already much trusted and respected. While Cameron shuffles his papers and contemplates the health of his father, Fletcher calls Peter Westmacott, the British ambassador in Paris, and the Elysée, the French president’s official residence. Sugg researches flights to the south of France.
Nicolas Sarkozy’s and Cameron’s relationship goes back a few years. In his first foreign visit as Conservative leader in January 2006, Cameron deliberately chose to meet the French interior minister and presidential hopeful. They subsequently met in June 2008 and March 2010, establishing an easy rapport, upon which Cameron built when he made his first visit abroad as prime minister, on 20 May, to Paris. A working dinner at the Elysée sees them united on bolstering defence and security co-operation, key for Cameron with the impending budget cuts in the SDSR. Their discussion later bears fruit in two treaties signed in Downing Street following talks at Lancaster House on 2 November. Deepening nuclear co-operation is all part of the new entente cordiale, from which emerges an agreement over joint nuclear research in Burgundy and Berkshire.
Sarkozy is keen to ingratiate himself with Cameron during the May 2010 visit. The Elysée has heard that Cameron is a keen tennis player, and the president presents him with two racquets made by French company Babolat. After dinner, Cameron ruffles French security by insisting on walking the 250 metres from the ambassador’s residence, the Hôtel de Charost, down the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré to the elegant hôtel particulier, purchased by the Duke of Wellington in 1814, that houses the British Embassy. Cameron is in high spirits and, despite the late hour and the fact that it has just rained, wants to play tennis at once on the embassy’s timeworn and rather slippery grass court. Kicking his shoes off, he plays barefoot against Fletcher under the moonlight, staff egging them on. ‘I don’t think we kept a score, but if we had, he would have won,’ recalls Fletcher diplomatically. Cameron sits up late into the night with his staff reflecting on the dinner. Sarkozy had been on expansive form, regaling Cameron with indiscreet stories about fellow leaders, and revelling in his trick of making his guest feel they are the most important figure in the world. ‘You and me will do this together … We are the only two people who really understand,’ the president repeatedly says.
Forward to 8 September. Time is rushing on. Cameron is still split between duty to his father and to his still new job, anxious to provide a strong lead at PMQs. News about his father’s health is uncertain and confusing, but he decides on balance to go. His convoy sets out from Downing Street to London City Airport where Sugg is holding reservations on the 9.45 a.m. flight to Nice. A short time into the journey, fresh calls suggest his father’s condition may not be too serious. Cameron instructs the convoy to turn around. Then his mobile phone rings. He is told that Jean-David Levitte, Sarkozy’s trusted diplomatic adviser, has some worrying news. Sarkozy has dispatched one of his private doctors in haste to the hospital in Toulon, and he is concerned. ‘Go, go, go,’ says the caller from Number 10. ‘Get on the bloody plane.’ At the same time, Sarkozy is speaking to Fletcher: ‘Do your job and send him, just send him.’
Fletcher calls the PM again and reasons with him: ‘Why take the risk? Sarko is telling you to come.’4 Cameron calls Clegg and talks it through with him. The deputy prime minister readily agrees to stand in for him at PMQs. The two party leaders have become quite close. The prime minister’s convoy turns around again and heads back towards City Airport. They are now running very late. It is touch and go if they will make the British Airways flight in time. The convoy speeds through the security gates and goes straight up to the aircraft. Cameron runs up the boarding stairs with his security team and staff and settles at the front of the plane. It takes off just after 10 a.m. They touch down in Nice shortly before 1 p.m. French time. The party are escorted to a French army helicopter laid on by Sarkozy to fly them to Toulon, where waiting French police drive them to the Font-Pré hospital. There he meets his mother and rushes to the bed to see his father, who dies shortly afterwards.
Cameron has taken the right decision. In the hospital ward in the south of France, the world of Westminster politics seems a million miles away. He is able to say goodbye properly to his father. He adored him. Much of Cameron’s philosophy of life can be traced to the head of this very close, old-fashioned, very English, upper-middle-class family. They grew up in Peasemore in Berkshire, a small country village with a parish church opposite the house. The upbringing gave Cameron his sense of community, which was later to blossom in the Big Society’s advocacy of localism. During the election campaign on Sunday 18 April, Samantha’s birthday, he had spoken in his parents’ presence of their influence, at the Sun Inn, near Swindon. ‘The Big Society … is thanks to my mum and dad. It’s down to them,’ he boasted proudly, before going over and kissing them.5
His father taught him the value of pragmatism. A Conservative, though not an ideologue, and a stockbroker, he imparted to his son the merits of fiscal conservatism and prudence with the importance of balancing the books. Earlier in his son’s career, he advised him on investments; when Cameron became prime minister, it was deemed wise to sell them and it horrified Ian that it was done at such an inopportune point financially. Despite his disability, Ian remained a formidable figure, never letting his difficulties act as an excuse, and exuding throughout his life a calm authority and decisiveness, inherited by his younger son. ‘My father is a huge hero figure for me,’ Cameron says in an interview during the 2010 election campaign. ‘He’s an amazingly brave man because [of] his disability. But the glass with him was half full … I think I got my sense of optimism from him.’6 Ian was a huge bon viveur, a lover of a punt on the horses and the good things in life. He was completely single-minded about whatever he turned his attention to. Cameron would often talk about him, and how his confidence, grit and zest shaped him.7
Sarkozy’s timely intervention cements their relationship, which bears fruit in the months to come, notably over Libya. That early September night, Sarkozy offers the Cameron family use of the president’s official residence on the Mediterranean coast, the Fort de Brégançon. The world’s media has descended on the hospital so they welcome the seclusion. Cameron and his brother Alex stay up late drinking the fine wine that Sarkozy has instructed they are given. The loss brings the brothers even closer together.
Ian’s funeral is held on 16 September at Peasemore. The ceremony coincides with Pope Benedict XVI’s speech to Parliament. Cameron has to miss the papal address but meets the Pontiff subsequently at a private audience. Cameron is institutionally, but not spiritually, religious.