For the Record. David Cameron
2010 and 2016 we reduced the UK’s perilously high budget deficit from a projected 11 per cent to 3 per cent of GDP (it was more or less eliminated by a Conservative government soon after). People mocked me for setting such store by this metric: the difference between what was coming into the country’s coffers and what was going out. The truth is, as I put it on page 180, ‘nothing matters more than your country having finances strong enough to be able to cope – because you don’t know whether the next crisis is twenty or five years away’. Of course, as we were still running annual deficits, the overall level of debt continued to rise, but it went up by far less than if we had done nothing. This meant that we would have more capacity to act when the next crisis hit. We did fix the roof when the sun was shining.
As it happened, that crisis came ten years later: COVID-19 was the rainy day we had been saving for. Our actions meant that the next but one administration was able to offer an unprecedented package of measures to prop up the economy (I sat watching Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s press conferences thinking how vital it was that we had taken those difficult decisions when we did).
The accusation has been made that our nation was unprepared for a pandemic. The reality is that, for a PM, the prospect is never far from your mind. Indeed a litany of what-ifs – mass terror attacks, cyber warfare, natural disasters, nuclear war and yes, pandemics – hangs over you when you’re in No. 10. As I recount in the pages that follow, officials frequently wander into your office and warn of the next Armageddon. Your job is to decide and to prioritise.
I was clear that Ebola posed a global threat, which is why when the disease struck Africa we leapt into action with America and France. It’s also why, following that outbreak, we established the government-wide International Health Risks Network to survey the world continuously for viruses heading our way.
I was also convinced of the dangers of antimicrobial resistance – the prospect of diseases no longer responding to antibiotics – and so I put the issue on the global agenda for the first time. And I knew a pandemic would come one day, possibly sooner rather than later. That’s why I made it a ‘tier one risk’ at the National Security Council. We also established a sub-committee to deal with Threats, Hazards, Resilience and Contingencies. The accusation – which is partly accurate – is that subsequently not enough was done to prepare specifically for what followed. But this is what strategists mean when they talk about ‘known unknowns’. We knew a pandemic was coming, we just didn’t know what type. It is now clear, in a way it wasn’t then, that the extensive preparations made for pandemic flu were not wholly transferable to handling a pandemic of a very different kind.
However, it is not only the vulnerabilities of individual nations that have become apparent during the events of the past year. It is, as is prefigured here, the failure of key global institutions, including the World Health Organization. (In fact, my frustration with the WHO’s sclerosis and misdirection during the Ebola outbreak, described in Chapter 38, led me to suggest after the epidemic had subsided that I should make reform of this UN agency a priority for the UK. Officials fell about laughing. ‘It would be your life’s work,’ they said. ‘And you would fail.’) If wholesale reform is impossible, we must sort out the parts that most require fixing. I have suggested elsewhere establishing a new Global Virus Surveillance Organisation to track, understand and publicise emerging viruses. This could be done through building a network of scientific and academic organisations. It should be science-led, industry-backed and non-political.
Of course, this leads me on to another multilateral reform that I did pursue in office – and which was ultimately unsuccessful. Changing the European Union.
Whether it came to calling for reform in the EU or the WHO, my feeling was generally one of being a lone voice. Leaders seemed then – and even more so now – to be divided into those so devoted to the multilateral system that they slavishly supported its institutions and those so sickened by the system that they wanted to do away with them altogether. As is so often the case in the following chapters, I fell somewhere between the two, in the pragmatic middle. I was so convinced by the importance of global cooperation that I determined we should improve the system’s institutions. Change to conserve. That has always been the Conservative way. And that was where my strategy to renegotiate Britain’s place in the European Union, and to put it to a nationwide vote, came in.
As I said in the Foreword to the first edition of this book, I have many regrets around the referendum. From the timing of the vote to the expectations I allowed to build about the renegotiation, there are many things that I would do differently.
But on the central question of whether it was right to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU and give people the chance to have their say on it, my view remains that this was the correct approach to take. I believe that, particularly with the Eurozone crisis, the EU was changing before our very eyes, and our already precarious place in it was becoming harder to sustain. Renegotiating our position was my attempt to address that, and putting the outcome to a public vote was fair, necessary and, I believe, ultimately inevitable. Frankly I couldn’t see a future where Britain didn’t hold a referendum. And I am a democrat. I believe people should be able to have their say – especially on an issue as important as this.
It was awful to see whole sections of society torn in two by the subject, and painful to witness three years of anguish in the effort to implement the decision. It has been traumatic for the country. And for the Conservative Party, too. It has led to the departure of talented, socially progressive, liberally minded MPs. I lament this.
Has the Conservative Party changed out of all recognition because of Brexit? No. I support much of what the government has been doing and specifically its mission to help those parts of our country that feel left behind. But there is a potential danger. There is no necessary contradiction in wanting to appeal to working-class voters in the sort of towns energised by Brexit – the current ‘levelling up’ agenda – while remaining liberal, progressive and inclusive. Indeed that’s what I tried to do, opening more good schools, reforming welfare, cutting taxes for the lowest paid, building a Northern Powerhouse, legalising gay marriage, broadening the backgrounds of our candidates and engaging voters in parts of the country that had never voted Tory before. However, there’s often a problem in politics of artificial signposting. To many, Brexit has been the signpost of a party that is less liberal. That doesn’t have to be the case. And if it was to be so, it would be a grave mistake. The Conservative Party can – and must – remain a broad church.
While the coronavirus crisis has demonstrated the importance of European-wide cooperation, it has also laid bare once again some of the divides within, and flaws of, the EU and its current structures.
Of course it’s unfair to castigate the bloc too much on this issue since health is a national responsibility, and the international bodies that should step up first are those that are worldwide and those that oversee public health. But the crisis rapidly became an economic one and the EU was slow to react.
Countries like Spain and Italy were left frustrated by the failure of European institutions to do more, by the restrictions on their fiscal space for action and by the refusal of northern countries to step in. As I repeat time and again in this book, a single currency requires at least some elements of a common fiscal policy in order to work. Just as we didn’t have to worry that Manchester would refuse to support London in its hour of need, Spain needed to see that solidarity from Germany.
If the first phase of the EU’s response demonstrated the urgency of reform, the second phase showed the huge difficulties – and profound questions – that arise as attempts are made to bring about any sort of reform.
The proposal for a €500 billion fund immediately divided those members favouring budget control from those wanting greater solidarity. Had Britain still been a member of the EU I am sure we would have argued that more funding was required but that it should be for the Eurozone countries to both fund and receive the money (so addressing one of the fundamental flaws of the single currency). And yet, as the money has to be spent on measures to improve the single market, we would have wanted some safeguards and involvement.
The Brussels officialdom would have