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summer passed quickly and quietly. Early Brexit talks with other European leaders began. Fairly minor policy announcements were made. Theresa’s low-key and understated style seemed to mark a welcome change in the way the country was governed.
Then came the first controversy. In September, Theresa made a speech in which she said she wanted to make Britain ‘the world’s great meritocracy’. She outlined a new policy that would build on years of English school reform, and in particular free schools and academies, schools set up and sponsored by teachers, parents and community groups. Acknowledging that some communities lack the social capital to make free schools and academies a success, we wanted to get more groups into the system and running good state schools. Private schools and universities would be made to do more. Rules that effectively prevented Catholic – but not other faith groups – from setting up schools would be changed. And new selective schools would be permitted, on the strict condition that they also sponsored good primary schools and non-selective secondaries, and made sure their intakes included more children from poorer families.
The announcement blew up before it was even made. The Education Secretary, Justine Greening, turned out to oppose any new selective schools. She never said so to Theresa, but was less shy when briefing the newspapers. Shortly before the speech, Jonathan Slater, the Department for Education’s permanent secretary, accompanied Greening on her way to a meeting with the PM in Downing Street. There, he was photographed with a folder exposing a sheet of paper revealing the Education Secretary’s concern about new selective schools. Slater had not been invited to attend the meeting, and he did not try to come in. But the damage was done. The stunt was cynical, cheap and, coming from a senior official, completely inappropriate. But it worked: it sparked a row about grammar schools, and the policy never got off the ground.
Next came a warning sign about Theresa’s own decision-making. In July, she had decided to ‘pause’ the process leading to the construction of a new nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point in Somerset. The project would be delivered by the French energy giant, EDF, and financed in part by the Chinese General Nuclear Power Group, a state-run business accused by the United States of stealing nuclear secrets.2 It was eye-wateringly expensive, and relied on technology that had never been tried before. It also meant increasing Chinese involvement in Britain’s critical national infrastructure. Under the terms of a ‘progressive entry’ agreement, Hinkley would be followed by new reactors at Sizewell in Suffolk and Bradwell in Essex. At each stage, the role of the Chinese in running the plants would deepen.
The decision to pause the deal was rancorous enough. The Chinese protested. A junior minister threatened to resign. And Theresa offended Jeremy Heywood when she questioned the contract: he thought she was accusing him of colluding with the French to push the deal through. But after all the hassle of the pause – the controversy, the bruised relations with China and France, and the clash with her most senior civil servant – in September, she backed down. Persuaded that cancellation would send a bad message to the markets so soon after the Brexit vote, and worrying about the need to keep the French onside through the Brexit talks, she let the deal pass. It would not be the last time she would be accused of talking tough before backing down. But at this stage, the criticism was fairly limited.
At the start of October, we headed to Birmingham for the party conference. ‘A country that works for everyone’, was emblazoned around the conference centre, and the mood was buoyant. Theresa spoke on the first day, the Sunday, and set out what would later be criticized as unnecessary red lines for the Brexit negotiations. ‘Brexit means Brexit’, she promised: Britain would take back control of its laws, its borders and its money. The audience was in ecstasy.
At the close of the conference, on Wednesday, she spoke again. This was the opportunity to set out her domestic priorities, and the way she intended to govern. Chris Wilkins and I had worked on the speech for weeks, and, in praising ‘the good that government can do’, it marked a clear break with recent Conservative thinking. The Daily Mail lauded its ‘bold vision’ and even the Guardian respected its ambitious attempt to recast conservatism.3 As the draftsmen, I remember Chris and I were most pleased by praise from Peggy Noonan, the US columnist and former speechwriter to President Reagan, who from across the Atlantic declared it the ‘beginning of a political future’.4
It was only later that the speech was attacked for its condemnation of ‘citizens of nowhere’. It suited campaigners and political opponents to claim that Theresa had used this language to describe opponents of Brexit. But this was nonsense, as anybody listening at the time knew. Her targets were the more irresponsible and selfish members of big international business. The speech was absolutely clear. ‘Today’, she said, ‘too many people in positions of power behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass in the street. But if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word “citizenship” means.’5
The speech was an ambitious blueprint for what we wanted to do. But translating these promises into policy and reality would take more time. Consultation papers were launched on corporate governance, industrial strategy and schools. Fiona was developing a landmark domestic violence bill. In Downing Street and across Whitehall, work was underway on regional policy, market reform, workers’ rights, housing, health, social care, racial justice and mental health. But to me it all felt like it was going too slowly. Behind the scenes, problems were mounting.
Behind the scenes
At the best of times, political parties find it difficult to renew themselves several years into government. If they are honest about problems that need fixing, the media and opposition ask why these things have not been fixed already. If they acknowledge past mistakes, their supporters criticize them for trashing their own record. If they change policies to suit the needs of the day, they are accused of U-turning. If they do any of these things quickly, without a longer conversation about the government’s direction, they encounter resistance within their party. If they take time to build a consensus, they are accused of dithering. Former ministers and their allies guard their legacies jealously, and are quick to denounce perceived slights.
Prime ministers who arrive in Downing Street from opposition have usually had the time and space to develop their ideas and arguments. They can build up their policy programmes, and establish coalitions of supporters among experts, academics and journalists. New prime ministers who arrive straight from a government department have no time to do any of these things. They are thrust into Number Ten with no transition and little or no time to prepare their agenda.
The bold approach Theresa set out in the Downing Street and party conference speeches needed an equally bold policy programme. But here there was another problem. There was no mandate for a break with David Cameron’s agenda. There had been little time to debate policy during the truncated Conservative leadership election. And several senior ministers opposed change. In particular, Theresa’s Chancellor, Philip Hammond, refused to change fiscal policy and opposed reforms to corporate governance and competition policy. ‘You don’t need to actually do any of this stuff’, he once said with a trademark smirk, ‘you’re miles ahead in the polls just talking about it.’
Theresa’s relationship with Hammond was especially bad. At the point at which she made him her Chancellor, she believed she had a good personal relationship with him. But within weeks their relationship was bitter and rancorous. He showed little respect for Theresa or her intellect. He briefed the newspapers that she was ‘economically illiterate’, and he said the same about me. In his first Budget, he insisted on increasing National Insurance contributions for self-employed workers, against Theresa’s advice and breaking a promise in the 2015 election manifesto. His response to the backbench rebellion he caused was not to show contrition but to become even more obstreperous and aggressive in his briefing against Number Ten.
Theresa’s relationships with other ministers were little better. She got on badly with Justine Greening, Sajid Javid and Boris Johnson. Looking back, her relations with colleagues were often poor because she neither trusted them nor