The most hazardous moment for Cameron is when he is called to give evidence on 14 June 2012 in front of the Leveson Inquiry. He is questioned for nearly six hours. Number 10 had begun to prepare for the appearance in March and much of his time and energy is devoted to it. Tristan Pedelty, an official in the Private Office and a former barrister, pilots him through the evidence. Cameron worries about his memory and whether he overplayed his hand in his written statement to the inquiry: was his memory at fault? He is often prone to fret about the reliability of his memory when unsupported by written documents. He worries about his ability to master so much detail: he describes it as like a marathon PMQs session. He remains acutely embarrassed about the texts to Brooks. But he is sure of his ground with Murdoch, and tells the inquiry he doesn’t believe he overstepped any mark, or has gone any further in his relations with News Corp than Blair and Brown had done. Officials have never seen him so anxious or exercised, before or since. Equally, they have no sense of a ‘guilty secret’ that might be rooted out in the inquiry. Some pressure on him eases after Hunt, who has himself been brought under intense scrutiny, provides what are generally considered reasonable explanations for his decisions on BSkyB. Cameron’s appearance in front of the inquiry adds to the febrile atmosphere inside Number 10 during the summer of 2012. The unravelling of the Budget, unpopularity of the NHS reforms and threat of a fuel strike all contribute – as we see in subsequent chapters – to falling poll ratings for Cameron personally and the Conservatives. Aside from the respite of the Olympics, this is a bleak time. Discussion inside Number 10 is about a general feeling of drift and loss of grip as much as it is about Leveson.
The 2,000-page Leveson Report arrives in Downing Street on 28 November 2012. Leveson had indeed moved, as expected, with commendable speed. As with the Saville Report, Number 10 is given twenty-four hours to prepare its response before publication. Llewellyn, Oliver, Dowden and Heywood pore over the principal findings. There is huge relief that the inquiry found no evidence of wrongdoing or impropriety by either Cameron or Hunt. It also finds there was no breach of the ministerial code. Had Hunt not been exonerated, his inevitable resignation would have been very damaging indeed to Cameron. There is, however, a serious sting in the tail. Cameron always recognised that the inquiry could be a minefield, and his apprehensions are justified in the recommendation that a new body to regulate the press be set up. Even though this body would be non-statutory, its existence would be ‘underpinned’ in legislation. The Guardian is positive, News International, understandably, are not overtly hostile. The Telegraph group is against, but the main opposition comes from the Mail group. The report divides the coalition. Clegg approves of proposals to protect the public from unjustified media intrusion. Cameron’s view on regulation is more nuanced. He doesn’t want to impose anything that smacks of political interference with a free press, fearing that any party that introduces mandatory regulation will be ‘done over’ all the way up to the next general election. The notion also grates with his instinct on the sanctity of press freedom.
With Labour and Lib Dems in favour of regulation, and the press overwhelmingly against, Cameron’s response is to hand the problem over to his ‘arch-fixer’, Oliver Letwin. Following negotiations with James Harding, outgoing editor of The Times, Letwin proposes on 14 March 2013 that press regulation be overseen by a Royal Charter, similar to the one that brought the Bank of England and the BBC into being. But the Royal Charter is not a compromise that the press will accept because it still maintains the spectre of press regulation, anathema to most of the profession. The Spectator leads the way in declaring it will not sign up to any Royal Charter. In April, the press produces its own proposals.24 Any collective will to act is being lost. The whole fandango to make the press more responsible and accountable fizzles out. Inevitably, many think.
There is a final twist in the tale. In October, a romantic affair between Rebekah Brooks and Coulson is revealed at the phone-hacking trial. It makes Cameron’s judgement in befriending both appear even more tawdry. On 24 June 2014, the verdict of the court is announced: Brooks and other defendants are cleared, Coulson is found guilty and jailed for eighteen months. ‘I think, once again, it throws up very serious questions about David Cameron’s judgement in bringing a criminal into the heart of Downing Street despite repeated warnings,’ is Miliband’s fiery response.25 To add further embarrassment, Cameron decides to go on television to make a ‘full and frank apology’ for hiring Coulson.26 His comments are immediately criticised by the judge presiding over the phone-hacking trial for launching ‘open season’ on Coulson while the jury is considering other charges against him. The jury is later discharged and a retrial is announced. ‘It was unwise. He should have taken some legal advice first, but I doubt whether it crossed David’s mind,’ Ken Clarke, a former QC, tells the media.27 On 21 November, Coulson is released from prison with a tag under curfew, after serving five months.28
Cameron was greatly unsettled and traumatised by the whole episode. Exceptional though Coulson was as his communications director before and after Cameron became PM, his appointment was a very major error of judgement given the toxicity of the phone-hacking scandal. It revealed how naive Cameron was in dealing with figures far more worldly-wise than him, above all the Murdoch family and Rebekah Brooks, and how flawed his openly trusting approach could be, as indeed could be that of his inner circle. They were a world apart from the harder-nosed courts of Blair, with figures like Campbell and Mandelson, and of Brown, schooled in Labour’s tribal politics.
By initially backing Leveson but then turning away from its recommendation for statutory regulation, Cameron further managed to earn contempt from all sides. The cynical Whitehall view is that ‘governments in the end always give way to the press, every single time’. The fact that Cameron’s worst episode as PM came in one of the areas where he had personal expertise, public relations – he had been director of corporate affairs at ITV company Carlton in the 1990s – makes it all the more perplexing. He displayed insufficient maturity in understanding the dignity of the office of prime minister and the need to be above suspicion, which includes ensuring that one’s close friends are also above suspicion. Most prime ministers have tumbles and lapses in Downing Street – the pressure is so intense, it’s not surprising. The question remained: had Cameron learnt sufficiently from his errors of judgement?
NINE
February–September 2011
Monday 21 February 2011. Cameron goes for a walk through the highly charged streets of Cairo. North Africa is in turmoil. Five weeks before, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia had resigned after violent protests. Events there sparked a wave of unrest across the Arab world. On 25 January, thousands of protestors gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square demanding the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, autocrat leader of Egypt since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. On 11 February, the protestors in Egypt achieved their goal: Mubarak was gone. As Cameron walks the streets and inhales the febrile air, he feels vindicated in his first decision taken in the ‘Arab Spring’ – not to come out in support of the existing regimes and urge them to take back control of their countries.
Back at home, however, his Cabinet is divided on the subject. Defence Secretary Liam Fox urges caution, arguing ‘it is unclear what our long-term strategy is’.1 So too does MI6 head John Sawers, who warns of the danger of mistaking the middle classes protesting as demonstrative of a genuine revolution in the country more generally. At the other pole stands Michael Gove, ranging far from his education brief, who argues that failure to support the protestors could alienate Britain from the Egyptian population. Cameron