For the Record. David Cameron
you could also shut the door, hold very private meetings and work, write or make telephone calls without being disturbed.
It was in that office, on my first evening, that I sat and read the letter Gordon Brown had left for me. Tony Blair’s letter of congratulations came soon afterwards. One of his pieces of advice stuck with me: however tough the job gets, remember that the British people have a grudging respect for whoever is trying their best to do it.
The one issue Sam and I had not settled was where we would live. Sam wasn’t sold on the idea of moving into either the flat above No. 10 or that in No. 11 – it was something we would have to work out. So that night, my first as PM, I went home to North Kensington.
Leaving the next morning for my first full day in my new job, I stepped out of our terraced home and into an armoured Jag. We sped off towards central London, with eight motorcycle outriders around us. Some would split off to block the junctions that fed into the main road, clearing our way. Which was incredible – until I saw the tailbacks I had caused. I felt like President Mugabe. So that was it – day one, executive decision: no outriders, except for emergencies. (I did use the Special Escort Group more and more as time went on. And they really are the most professional elite officers, protecting everyone from the royals to visiting PMs and training other forces from around the world.) The experience also made me wonder how practical our west London home might prove to be.
Then, of course, came the crucial question of who: who would I appoint to each department of government?
The art of the shuffle – and the reshuffle – was something else I had learned a lot about in opposition. But the pressure and media attention in government is many times greater. Basically, reshuffles are a nightmare. You are dealing with egos, big ones. Every move is scrutinised. Any delay is dithering. Any job rejected is a snub. End up with the wrong balance of left and right, male and female, and you are either hopelessly politically naïve or absurdly politically correct – or if you are unlucky, both at the same time.
Friends in business used to say, ‘We all have to take tough decisions to get the right top team – why all the fuss about political reshuffles?’ To which I would reply, ‘Yes, but you don’t have to appoint your entire team all on the same day, in full view of the world’s television cameras. And the ones you sack go away. The ones I sack sit behind me and plot my downfall.’
The best way is to plan reshuffles like a military operation. You need to have a strategy and stick to it. Every move is timed and scheduled. And whatever the resistance, even if you are forced to make small tactical retreats, you need to keep advancing.
Appointing your first government, though, is, relatively speaking, a pleasure. After all, you are helping colleague after colleague achieve one of their political dreams: taking office.
The first moves were obvious: making George chancellor of the exchequer and William Hague my foreign secretary. We had worked closely together over the previous five years, and I had assured them that the jobs they had in opposition would be the jobs they would take in government. I made William first secretary of state, essentially my deputy, so he could chair cabinet and take PMQs in my absence.
On that first night in Downing Street I also confirmed to Patrick McLoughlin that he would be the chief whip, and could work with the team at No. 10 to plan the cabinet and government formation that would happen the next day.
I wanted it to be straightforward. I had long believed that secretaries of state were shunted from job to job too often. Labour’s ministerial musical chairs had become increasingly absurd – they had a new home secretary every two or three years.
Most members of my shadow cabinet knew what jobs they would be doing in government because they had been shadowing them for much of the past five years. Andrew Lansley went to Health, Liam Fox to Defence, Eric Pickles to Local Government, Owen Paterson to Northern Ireland, and Andrew Mitchell to International Development.
But after the shoo-ins there were some surprises.
Theresa May stepped into the Cabinet Room and sat opposite me across the green table. She had huge experience in shadowing government departments, having covered the Education, Transport, Culture and Families portfolios over the years, as well as being the Conservatives’ first female chairman. Most recently I had appointed her to shadow Work and Pensions – and I am sure that’s what she expected to be offered.
‘I want you to be home secretary,’ I said to her. Theresa is not always the most expressive person, but she looked genuinely surprised and delighted. This may have been one of the least expected appointments – but it would turn out to be one of the best.
Another surprise was my choice for Work and Pensions. George – ironically, given their later battles – persuaded me that right-winger Iain Duncan Smith would provide balance in our cabinet.
Then there was the choice of party chairman. I wanted someone who was a loyalist and who would continue the work of delivering a modern, compassionate Conservative Party that reflected and represented all of Britain.
Sayeeda Warsi had joined the party as an adviser to Michael Howard after setting up a legal practice in her native West Yorkshire. She had been by my side through my leadership (halfway through I’d appointed her to the Lords), speaking with a no-nonsense conviction on issues domestic and foreign that I found refreshing and impressive. I told her I wanted her to be joint chairman with Andrew Feldman, who I hoped would continue his great work. She couldn’t believe it. The daughter of a textile worker from Pakistan had taken her place in a Conservative British cabinet, the first Muslim woman to do so. The partnership was a statement about how far we had come, in that we had a Muslim and a Jew jointly chairing our party.
The cabinet jobs lost to Lib Dems would upset some, but there were fortunate solutions for most of them. Ken Clarke, for example, had been shadowing Business, but Justice was a good alternative, given his legal background. Francis Maude and Oliver Letwin were happy – and extremely effective – in the Cabinet Office, which would become an engine room for both delivering savings in government spending and making the coalition work.
Of course there were some people who were disappointed. Chris Grayling and Theresa Villiers had been in the shadow cabinet. Neither made it into the cabinet at the start of the government, but both took their lesser appointments with good grace and worked to prove themselves in their new roles. Theresa later made an excellent Northern Ireland secretary, and Chris served as lord chancellor.
But there were those who were more openly upset that their shadow portfolios were taken by Liberal Democrats. There were some awkward conversations, and in one or two cases it created simmering resentments. I understood how frustrated some colleagues were. Some had shadowed a government department for years on end, asking questions in Parliament and building up their expertise, only to have their dreams of office snatched away by the arrival of an unexpected coalition.
Appointing 118 ministers across just two days, there are bound to be some slip-ups – and I made a couple of errors.
The number of full cabinet members is strictly limited – to twenty-three – and, as other PMs have done before me, I tried to make the numbers add up by having some ministers ‘attending cabinet’ but not paid the full salary. Foolishly, I included Tom Strathclyde, leader of the House of Lords, in this category.
Tom explained – rather forcefully – that it wasn’t about the money, it was that their lordships simply wouldn’t stand for their champion in cabinet having ‘lesser status’. He was right. The problem was that when he told me this I had already filled all the other posts.
Most secretaries of state have to be in the cabinet, so the only solution was to pick on the most agreeable Member of Parliament that I had already appointed and ask them to accept a downgrade. There was one outstanding candidate for this honour: my leader of the House of Commons, Sir George Young, a veteran of the Thatcher and Major governments and known as ‘Gentleman George’. He lived up to his name, and couldn’t have been nicer about the whole thing, pay cut included. All too often in politics the stubborn get rewarded and the