Northern Ireland enjoyed its most peaceful five-year period since the 1960s, due in part to Cameron’s June 2010 acknowledgement of the culpability of the British army on Bloody Sunday in 1972. In mainland Britain, despite cuts, austerity and high unemployment, civil unrest and trade union disruption were largely avoided, with the notable exceptions of the protests over student tuition fees in November and December 2010, and the riots in London and other cities in the summer of 2011. Fusilier Lee Rigby in May 2013 was the only British citizen to be murdered due to Islamist terrorism on British soil during Cameron’s years, despite a considerable rise in threat levels. Several plots, including some of 7/7 proportions, were foiled, through the skill of the intelligence services and police, together with a degree of good fortune. The successful London Olympics proceeded without incident in the summer of 2012. Cameron spoke out regularly about combating terrorism, and would have wanted to go further to fight the threat both in the UK and abroad. But throughout 2010–16, his close personal alertness to the threat of terrorism on the streets of Britain, and his determination to reduce the risk, was clear.
Cameron’s record as a leader abroad, however, is more mixed. He seized the initiative on insisting that British troops withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and worked hard to try to ensure that the handover to the Afghans was smooth. Credit is due for the timely and orderly way he brought Britain’s involvement in this long-running war to an end. Another lesson he learnt from Blair’s government was to avoid any hint of the ‘sofa government’ that marked the Iraq War in 2003. He thus set up the National Security Council soon after the general election in 2010, which met weekly and which he himself chaired. The organisation’s first great test came over British intervention in Libya. This was driven by Cameron personally, backed by all members of the NSC and by the Cabinet, and additionally supported by a United Nations resolution. The conclusion of the war and the downfall of Gaddafi in the autumn of 2011 brought Cameron short-term acclaim. He hoped along with many others in the heady initial days of the Arab Spring for a new dawn of democracy across the Arab world. This optimism faltered during the following years as Libya descended into violence and tribal infighting, and Syria was torn apart by civil war. His attempt to involve Britain militarily against Syria’s President Assad in August 2013, after Assad used chemical weapons against his own people, produced Cameron’s biggest first-term foreign policy reversal, when he was defeated in the House of Commons. This defeat, and the deteriorating position in Libya, made him less inclined to assert his will in the final year and a half leading up to the general election in 2015. Humanitarian instincts drove him to intervene in Libya in 2011, and to try to intervene in Syria in 2013. He was not the first British leader whose aspirations in the region were to be thwarted by forces far more powerful than anything they could control. He can be criticised certainly for acting; equally, inaction would have resulted in opprobrium, and other risks. His foreign policy was marked by a strong ethical underpinning.
The recovery of the British economy and Cameron’s strong relationship with President Obama were significant in countering the widespread narrative about a loss of British influence on the world stage. Hard though it may be to discern a consistent shape to Cameron’s foreign policy, he succeeded in keeping Britain safe, improving the relationship with the US after the Brown years and in promoting the British brand abroad.
But these years were not a time of heroes. Other national leaders in the West struggled to assert themselves on the world stage. Obama, François Hollande, and leaders across the EU all experienced difficulties given the economic climate, the rise of China and India, Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, and militant Islam’s success in Syria and Iraq. Only Merkel in Germany emerged with credit from these problematic years, though continuing difficulties facing the eurozone and in finding a solution to migration dented her authority. Ultimately, the failure of Cameron’s European gamble will cast a long shadow over his foreign policy record.
David Cameron’s calm stewardship of the coalition government of 2010–15, and his piloting Britain through profound economic weakness back to economic vitality, will be his greatest achievements. His record during these years compares favourably to the first terms of Thatcher and Blair. By defying the odds in winning the 2015 general election, he led his party back into office with an overall majority, a signal personal achievement. Ultimately, he could not prevail against the juggernaut of Euroscepticism in his own party, the press and country. The Conservative Party has not been as divided on any issue since the 1840s, while the nation has not been so divided since the Suez Crisis in 1956. His strengths were his high intelligence, work rate, calm under pressure, integrity and courage. His failings – impetuosity, naivety at times and lack of strategic clarity – were those of a young man. The youngest prime minister for one hundred and ninety-eight years, he was arguably at the peak of his powers when he fell on his sword.
The first six months of his second term showed considerable promise in carving out a distinctly personal agenda focusing on what became known as the ‘life chances’ agenda. The commitment to One Nation Toryism that he made on the steps of Number 10 after his 2015 election victory now lies unfulfilled. To his closest supporters and aides, Cameron’s inability to execute this agenda, which had only begun to crystallise, is one of the tragic consequences of the European referendum. No one knows how the remaining two or three years of his second term would have panned out had the country voted differently. We will never know what David Cameron might have achieved had he not departed in 2016. History tends to condemn prime ministers for one major mistake – Lord North for the loss of the American colonies, Anthony Eden for Suez and Blair for Iraq. It would be cruel and wrong for Cameron’s premiership to be so castigated. He achieved much during his six years. We believe he had little or no choice but to call a Referendum and that he could not have done more to achieve the terms he did in February 2016. But he should have delayed calling the Referendum till better terms were given, difficult though it would have been, and fought a more positive, authoritative campaign.
Anthony Seldon and Peter Snowdon
July 2016
ONE
11 May 2010
‘Snap out of it: we have a job to do,’ barks Jeremy Heywood, Number 10’s permanent secretary, the senior official, the top dog. It is 7.55 p.m. on Tuesday 11 May. Outside, dusk is descending. Staff are still dazed from Gordon and Sarah Brown’s deeply emotional departure moments before.1 They stand around the departed PM’s open-plan office torpid, drained. Many have tears in their eyes. ‘The prime minister will be here in half an hour.’ Heywood’s piercing voice urges them back into action.2 Tom Fletcher, Brown’s (and now about to be David Cameron’s) foreign policy adviser, changes his red and yellow striped tie to one with blue and yellow stripes. Ever the diplomat, he wants to shift emotional and political gear before his new boss arrives in the building.3 Dirty mugs and plates are spirited away, out-of-date papers removed, computer screens cleared. Here is the British Civil Service at action stations. The king is dead. Long live the king.
Just after 8 p.m., Brown delivers his farewell statement to the media circus outside Number 10. His former staff are too busy inside to notice. Three hundred yards down Whitehall, a similar riot of activity is taking place in the Leader of the Opposition’s office in Parliament in the Norman Shaw building. Ed Llewellyn, Cameron’s chief of staff, receives a call from the American ambassador: ‘It looks like you guys are going across the road. The president wants to be the first to talk to your man when he gets there.’4 Coalition conversations with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg are still ongoing, though they are close to reaching an agreement. Cameron’s