Cameron at 10: From Election to Brexit. Anthony Seldon

Lib Dem Energy Secretary Chris Huhne is observed to be in a highly charged state as he waits outside the Cabinet Room for the meeting to begin. He then bursts in with a stack of leaflets from the ‘No’ campaign attacking Clegg for going back on the Lib Dem pledge on tuition fees, and says he is appalled by the actions of those at the very top of the Conservative Party.21 The meeting begins. He turns on Cameron: ‘I want to know if you disassociate yourself from these leaflets smearing Nick.’ He challenges the PM to sack Stephen Gilbert, demanding to know whether he had been responsible for producing them. Cameron is taken aback by the onslaught. ‘I am not responsible for the all party literature produced by the “No” campaign,’ he says. Huhne thinks he is dodging the question and shoves the leaflets across the Cabinet table towards Osborne. ‘This was always going to be a difficult period for the coalition,’ Osborne responds, seeking to pacify him. Huhne comes back at him, even more forcibly, demanding if he had known in advance about these leaflets. ‘I am not going to be challenged by a Cabinet colleague acting like he is Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight,’ responds the chancellor.

      Round the Cabinet table there is a collective dropping of ministerial jaws. Huhne turns on Sayeeda Warsi, and says she must resign as party co-chairman. Several ministers with longer memories, like David Willetts, wonder whether they are about to witness a ‘Heseltine moment’, a reference to the highly charged occasion when the blond-haired firebrand stormed out of Thatcher’s Cabinet in 1986 over the Westland helicopter affair. ‘You could hear a pin drop,’ Willetts recalls.22 It is the trickiest moment in Cabinet for Cameron by a distance: yet Huhne is not finished. He reverts to Cameron and demands that he condemns posters that have suggested that babies’ and soldiers’ lives are at risk if AV is introduced. Cameron and Osborne argue that they are only responsible for the ‘No’ campaign being run by the Conservative Party.23 When asked again on Radio 4’s Today programme to condemn the posters featuring ill babies, Cameron replies, ‘The fact is that if you move to a new voting system it will cost money.’24 After the Huhne inquisition is over, ministers return to Cabinet business.

      Cameron’s team reflect on the outburst at their 4 p.m. meeting. They have different views. Some see Huhne’s outburst as anti-Clegg positioning: Clegg is at a very low ebb, the tuition-fees row has damaged his confidence, with over 30,000 protestors marching on the streets, some carrying effigies of Clegg. He has been suffering both personally and professionally for a number of months: he was ill in the early part of 2011 as well as being ‘crucified in the right- and the left-wing press in a way that I don’t think we’ve seen in British politics since the days of Neil Kinnock’.25 He is further damaged by the poor showing of the party at the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election on 13 January, the first of the parliament, where the Lib Dems were heavily defeated. Most think Huhne is up to something. But Oliver Letwin thinks Huhne is motivated by genuine panic at the prospect of not achieving electoral reform: ‘In Eastleigh, I’ll be in terrible difficulties if we join a coalition with you: we must get AV,’ Huhne had told Letwin, referring to his vulnerable position in his own constituency.26 The truth is that Clegg is desperately weak and has become depressed about his party’s fortunes, and Huhne, for all his indignation, is parading his own leadership credentials.

      Thursday 5 May is referendum day. The AV system is resoundingly rejected by 67.9% to 32.1% on a turnout of 42.2%. Victory strengthens Cameron’s position in the Conservative Party. For a time. And at a cost. As O’Donnell predicted, the episode has inflicted significant and enduring damage to the coalition. To Clegg, ‘a certain kind of hardness entered into the transactions’ thereafter, while to Vince Cable ‘it was perfectly clear that we were dealing with people who have no sentiment’.27 To Danny Alexander, ‘it is the moment the scales fall away from our eyes about the Tories. The personal attacks on Nick were personal and brutal.’28 It ends any notion that the relationship between the two parties will realign British politics. ‘We are one team. We are one government’ had been the mantra of Cameron, Llewellyn and Coulson when they first went into Downing Street. There were joint meetings, shared offices, joint political Cabinets at Chequers, joint press operations and joint policy units. The AV debacle sweeps all this away. There are to be no more joint meetings. ‘Nothing again will rest on goodwill, everything has become a transactional relationship,’ says Astle. ‘It became: “I’ll concede this in return for that.” It was all negotiation and bargaining.’29

      But survive the coalition does. Clegg picks himself up and the Lib Dems put their show back on the road. They’ve lost their primary raison d’être for entering the coalition: electoral reform, and with its defeat, much of the support in the country for their party leadership becomes more flaky. And yet there is now a new purpose for the Lib Dems in the coalition, informed by the sober recognition that pulling out would result in a general election, which would be disastrous for them electorally. The new mission is to continue to show that they can be credible members of government, bring economic stability back to the country, and achieve as many of their own policies as they can. For a while after the defeat, Clegg’s leadership position looks to be in serious danger: but when Huhne resigns in February 2012 to face prosecution for perverting the course of justice over a speeding offence, the pressure recedes, and Clegg’s buoyancy slowly returns. To coalition architect Letwin, the AV episode provides the moment of greatest tension within the coalition to date: ‘If we could get through AV in one piece together, we could get through anything. The coalition would indeed endure until 2015.’30 It is for this reason that for some, the AV referendum proves ‘the key turning point’ that ensures the coalition lasts for the ‘full five years’.

      5 May 2011 also sees the local elections. The Conservatives gain eighty-six councillors while the Lib Dems lose a ‘catastrophic’ 748, compounding their misery.31 For a party in power to have done so well, and from a strong base in the previous local elections, augurs well and strengthens Cameron. The most dramatic result of election day, however, is not the AV referendum. Nor is it the local elections. It is the result north of the border. In Scotland, Alex Salmond’s Scottish National Party gain twenty-three seats, allowing it to form a majority government in the Scottish Parliament for the first time. It will precipitate one of the most historic and perilous episodes of Cameron’s increasingly dramatic premiership.