After failing to fight back, or even to explain the policy properly, we all accepted we needed to execute a U-turn. Just a few days after the manifesto was launched, Theresa confirmed at a press conference that a ceiling on costs would be added to the floor proposed in the manifesto. It was a clear change, and it was obvious that we needed to be up front about that. But under pressure from journalists, Theresa’s patience – and pride – snapped. ‘Nothing has changed!’ she insisted, denying she was U-turning even as she was announcing the change in policy.22
What little credibility the ‘strong and stable’ mantra had left was now gone for good. We had triggered a snap election that lasted for weeks and weeks. We made the campaign all about a personality who hated the exposure. We had a Chancellor who the consultants insisted – correctly, in my view – must be hidden from the cameras. We ducked the leadership debates. We responded badly to the terror attacks. We made unforced errors, like Theresa’s promise to hold a vote on overturning the ban on fox hunting. We eschewed policy announcements that might have conveyed positive and reassuring values. We screwed up the manifesto and its handling afterwards. We were talking continuity when much of the country wanted change. The campaign limped on towards 8 June.
All too human
Despite everything, when polling day came, the Conservatives won 2.3 million more votes than in 2015, and almost three million more than in 2010. We won more votes, over 13.6 million, than any party had managed in any British election other than 1992. Our vote share increased to 42.4 per cent, the best Tory performance since 1983.
The trouble was – unlike in the 2019 election – Labour surged too. We did too little to convince traditional Labour voters that they could trust us. Jeremy Corbyn managed to convince both Brexit voters and Remainers that he was on their side of the argument. And somehow he was able to unite previously fragmented left-wing voters. To the surprise of almost everybody – including Labour Party headquarters and Labour candidates up and down the country – Corbyn won 12.8 million votes, and a 40 per cent vote share. Theresa had called the election to win a mandate and improve her majority. She emerged from polling day a diminished figure with a disputed mandate and no majority at all.
For me personally, the consequences were dire. During the first year of Theresa’s premiership, my role had been hugely prominent. Because Theresa had not previously said much about her views beyond the Home Office, journalists pored over columns I had written – and even my short biography of Joseph Chamberlain – to try to understand her likely priorities. I was, in the words of The Economist, ‘the Sage of Birmingham’ prescribing a new direction for the Conservative Party.23 I was always uneasy about this kind of coverage, believing advisers, like Victorian children, should be seen but not heard. When I found my parents had kept news clippings of reports and columns that were kind about me, I told them that the higher my profile in the media, the harder my fall was likely to be.
I had no idea just how true that would turn out to be, nor how hard I would fall when the moment came. The briefing against me began as soon as the manifesto started to go wrong. The Financial Times reported that ‘the [social care] policy was inserted by Mrs May into the Tory manifesto at the last minute on the advice of Nick Timothy … against the advice of John Godfrey, head of the Number 10 policy unit.’ I alone, the paper said, had drawn up the manifesto in complete secrecy.24 Whoever was doing the briefing was relentless and the narrative caught hold. A source told The Sunday Times that I had ‘basically overruled everyone’.25
This was completely untrue. A Cabinet Office working group had been established almost a year before the election to develop proposals to fix the social care crisis. The result of that work was the policy that went into the manifesto. The proposition to include the family home in the means test for domiciliary as well as residential care originally came from the Department of Health. Other ministers and officials – including John Godfrey – had worked on the plans. I supported the policy, and defended its inclusion in the manifesto when Fiona wanted it dropped, but the idea that I alone was responsible for it was just wrong. Nor was it true that it had been kept from the campaign consultants. Mark Textor had tested it, along with other policies, in focus groups and polling weeks earlier, in late April.
I knew I was being scapegoated. Many people had their fingerprints on the social care policy. And many more mistakes – including the strategic framing of the whole election campaign – had been made. But I also knew that I had co-authored the manifesto, and the manifesto had blown up. That was why I offered my resignation on election night.
Walking out of CCHQ in the early hours of 9 June was a warning of what was about to happen. Fiona and I stepped onto the street and into hordes of cameramen and photographers. Eventually we cleared them and got back to St Ermine’s hotel, where we had been staying. I packed a bag and headed to the country, far away from London, as fast as possible.
Messages from friends and loved ones came through in the hundreds. But the media barrage was intense. Cameramen gathered outside my flat. Some MPs went on television and radio to condemn Fiona and me. The newspapers were full of nasty and personal quotes about us, made on and off the record. By comparison, the consultants who had been in charge of the campaign got away lightly. The narrative had been spun during the campaign itself, and it had stuck. It was our fault, and only our fault. Theresa went to the 1922 Committee of Conservative MPs and, trying to save her job, reinforced the narrative. ‘I’m listening’, she said. ‘I know changes in Number Ten needed to be made, and I’ve made them.’ MPs texted us, saying: ‘your boss has just thrown you under the bus.’ I told them I thought she was doing what she needed to do.
Still, the attacks on our characters and our records serving the party and government continued. We were routinely described as ‘disgraced’, ‘toxic’, the ‘terror twins’ and the ‘gruesome twosome’. I was even compared to the chicken pox virus, and a secondary infection.26 Stories about us – so many of which were completely fictional – were briefed to the newspapers and to authors writing books about the election. Some were briefed by a source going through a very public mental breakdown. More were briefed by a former colleague we had sacked after she had done her job poorly. Some columnists and commentators did their best to defend us, but overall, we were on the receiving end of a brutal and uncompromising character assassination. We were attacked in the newspapers almost every day, every week for months.
Few people think about the human consequences of this kind of media onslaught. My father was still recovering from a heart procedure conducted the year before. My mother was diagnosed with cancer the next year. My relationship broke down. With no warning, I would sometimes experience a racing heart and shooting pains down my left arm. And there were other costs, which were too personal, too awful and too upsetting to others for me to write about now. Looking back, whole weeks and months are a blur, and today I realize that my mental wellbeing was on the precipice. I was never suicidal but there were times when I felt the people who loved me most would be better off if I was no longer around to cause them embarrassment or trouble.
No effort without error
I probably returned to work too soon. I took up a column in The Daily Telegraph in August following the election in June. But it took me many months to come to terms with what had happened and start to regain my confidence. And by writing a column, I was exposing myself to yet more online bullying and personal abuse.
On a few occasions, perfect strangers who had acquired my phone number texted insults and sarcastic abuse. Twitter, which I rejoined at about the same time as I joined the Telegraph, was even worse. Eventually, I decided to quit social media, and I deleted my Twitter account. Even this prompted yet more abuse, as hundreds of critics danced on my digital grave. I discovered that Sky News were reporting my departure from Twitter as ‘breaking news’ when friends got in touch to check I was okay. They thought I might be having a breakdown, and I sensed some worried I might have even harmed myself in some way.
Slowly, I started to collect my thoughts about what had happened.